"Optics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... professors of our Faculty of Medicine, has recently published two pamphlets full of interest relating to the archaeology of that science—[Greek: Melitai peri ten optiken ton archaion] (Studies on the Optics of the Ancients); and another small work in French, "Encore deux mots sur l'extraction de la Catarracte chez ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... thus more distinct when seen in succession are called opposite colours by Sir Isaac Newton in his optics, Book I. Part 2, and may be easily discovered by any one, by the method above described; that is by laying a coloured circle of paper or silk on a sheet of white paper, and inspecting it some time with steady eyes, and then either gently closing them, or removing them ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... other man ever looked into and afterward forgot. His sunburnt, sallow, haggard, ghastly face, stained early and for life with the corpse-like coloring of malarious fevers, was a fit setting for such optics. Although it was nearly oval in contour, and although the features were or had been fairly regular, yet it was so marked by hard, and one might almost say fleshless muscles, and so brutalized by long indulgence in savage passions, that it struck you as frightfully ugly. A large ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... produced by it returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of nature, might ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Electro-optics. The branch of natural science treating of the relations between light and electricity. Both are supposed to be phenomena of or due to the luminiferous ether. To it may ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... London, where his grandfather and father were engaged in business as wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full appreciation he entered into the researches which his son was making ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of these eyes to behold felicity. But besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. In these moral acceptations, the way ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and next they discussed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you meet with a camera obscura, whose effect surprises the spectators the more, as the objects represented within it have the motion which they do not find in common optics. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... certain elementary phenomena; then to point out to you how the theoretical principles by which phenomena are explained take root in the human mind, and finally to apply these principles to the whole body of knowledge covered by the lectures. The science of optics lends itself particularly well to this mode of treatment, and on it, therefore, I propose to draw for the materials of the present course. It will be best to begin with the few simple facts regarding light which were known to the ancients, and to pass from them, in historic ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... thereof, beloved," said Bothwell, in the same tone of raillery, "will be, firstly, that I will tweak thy proboscis or nose. Secondly, beloved, that I will administer my fist to thy distorted visual optics; and will conclude, beloved, with a practical application of the flat of my sword to the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... though they were upon the rocks, they would run away, as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me; from whence I concluded that, by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects that were above them; so afterwards I took this method - I always climbed the rocks first, to get above them, and then had frequently ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... adversaries, and it was through the study of storms that he approached that of meteorology at large. Many who knew him not otherwise, knew—perhaps have in their gardens—his louvre-boarded screen for instruments. But the great achievement of his life was, of course, in optics as applied to lighthouse illumination. Fresnel had done much; Fresnel had settled the fixed light apparatus on a principle that still seems unimprovable; and when Thomas Stevenson stepped in and brought to a comparable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are thoughts which have consequences. Instead of the old deductive method, that of the mediaeval Aristotelianism, which had been worse than fruitless in the study of nature, men now set out with a great enthusiasm to study facts, and to observe their laws. Modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, took their rises within the period of which we speak. The influence was indescribable. Newton might maintain his own simple piety side by side, so to say, with his character, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... steeds in a curious way. When I wanted my turtle to turn to the left, I simply thrust my foot into his right eye, and vice versa for the contrary direction. My two big toes placed simultaneously over both his optics caused a halt so abrupt as almost to unseat me. Sometimes I would go fully a mile out to sea on one of these strange steeds. It always frightened them to have me astride, and in their terror they swam at a tremendous pace until compelled to desist ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... very astonished at this proposition. Ouang, who was very patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had a quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's disciple, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... doing so he begs the whole question at issue. The point is, can we make a better one or must we be content with patching up the old one? Take an illustration. Scientists tell us that from the point of view of optics the human eye is a clumsy instrument poorly contrived for its work. A certain great authority once said that if he had made it he would have been ashamed of it. This may be true. But the eye unfortunately is all we have to see by. If we destroy our eyes in the hope ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Ernest Becker is about to enlighten the benighted inhabitants of this country, by giving a course of lectures on optics. The agonizing doubts that have hitherto enveloped astronomical science, particularly as regards the interiors of the moon and the stars, have arisen from the absurd practice of looking at them during ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... clearer comprehension, the facts themselves must be investigated by one who, like that accomplished philosopher, is conversant with those branches of physical science to which they are related. They unfortunately lie beyond the range of our own optics, but Mr Scrope's practical improvement of the subject is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... disappeared; leaving behind it a clear open area of ice of the same dimensions. We now perceived that this bed of ice, which was thinly suffused with water, had produced the illusion, by reflecting and refracting (as persons skilled in optics would no doubt easily explain) a rocky and woody section of the opposite mountain ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... which all the other truths of the science are synthetically deduced (as the laws of motion and of the composition of forces in dynamics, the equal mobility of fluids in hydrostatics, the laws of reflection and refraction in optics, are the first principles of those sciences); but are merely necessary assumptions, self-evident indeed, and the denial of which would annihilate all demonstration, but from which, as premises, nothing can be demonstrated. In the present, as in many other instances, this thoughtful ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls aether, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open spaces that are void of gross matter: he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the phenomenon before ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... variation in the number visible at different times. We know too little of the laws which determine their appearances to be warranted in finding contradiction or difficulty here. The power of seeing may depend on the condition of the beholder. It may depend, not as with gross material bodies, on optics, but on the volition of the radiant beings seen. They may pass from visibility to its opposite, lightly and repeatedly, flickering into and out of sight, as the Pleiades seem to do. Where there is such store of possibilities, he is rash ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... do not lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon is immeasurably less distant than Mars, yet with Mars our communication is fully established. I presume you will not say that ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... true spelling of Dr. Kitchiner's name. He was an M. D. of Glasgow, who, having been left a handsome fortune by his father, abandoned the active practice of his profession, and devoted himself to science, notably to that of optics, as well as to gastronomy, being himself eminent as a gourmet. He was the author of a once famous Cookery Book, The Cook's Oracle; and an improved kitchen range ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... lists for telephones are long; local service outside Minsk is neglected and poor; intercity - Belarus has a partly developed fiber-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fiber optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analog system remains operational international: Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) fiber-optic line, and has access to ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... as far as this, I had to get up and see where Shelley really was. It is worse than I thought. He is between Geometrical Optics and Studies in New Zealand Scenery. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whom I find myself to be entertaining unawares, sits beside Anarchy or Order, which was apparently "sent in the hope that you will become a member of the Duty and Discipline Movement"—a ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... because she happened to pass by a perfumery store; but what a nose her ladyship's nose must be, since it is endowed with more wonderful faculties than her eyes, which possess such miraculous powers as to enable her to see things in France perceptible by no other mortal optics! But to proceed with our dismal story. Her ladyship's olfactory nerves, as we have already mentioned, having made her aware of the proximity of a perfumer's shop, she was induced to go into it by the desire of procuring something which might relieve them from the torture produced by ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... since the world began. The Enchanted Isles wear no enchantment to unanointed vision; their skies of Paradise are fog, their angels Harpies, perchance, or harsh-throated Sirens. Besides, we can never describe correctly those whom we love, because we see them through the heart; and the heart's optics have no technology. It is enough to say, that, from almost the first time I looked upon Blanche, I felt that I had at last found the gift rarely accorded to us here,—the fulfilment of a promise hidden in every heart, but often waited for in vain. Hitherto my all-sufficing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peculiar. As Professor of Artillery he was responsible for little more than the drill of the cadets and their instruction in the theory of gunnery. The tactics of artillery, as the word is understood in Europe, he was not called upon to impart. Optics, mechanics, and astronomy were his special subjects, and he seems strangely out of place in expounding ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... poor widow, which had been styled Brown-eyes by the doctor because of its gorgeous optics, was indeed on the point of taking an involuntary bath as he spoke. Mrs Lynch, seeing the danger, rushed tumultuously to the rescue, leaving the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... instead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise as to this world's outcome. Be they false or be they true, the meaning of them is this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called 'total reflexion' in optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler of water a little above your eyes and look up through the water at its surface—or better still look similarly through the flat wall of an aquarium. You will ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... old governor was recalled, or a new creature of office sent out. Those great provinces had been in the especial department of the Secretary of State, assisted by the Board of Trade. That secretary had been the Duke of Newcastle, a man whose optics seem never to have reached beyond Whitehall. It would scarcely be credited, what reams of papers, representations, memorials, and petitions from that quarter of the world lay mouldering and unopened in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... enter more fully into this branch of the science of optics, but the bounds to which I am necessarily limited in a work of this kind will not admit of it. In the next chapter, however, I shall give a synopsis of Mr. Hunt's treatise on the "Influence of the Solar Rays on Compound Bodies, with especial reference to ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. My father's library was a spot of some austerity: the proceedings of learned societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The "Parent's Assistant," "Rob Roy," "Waverley," and "Guy Mannering," the "Voyages of Captain Woods Rogers," Fuller's and Bunyan's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seats, what do you find there, I ask? Cards, comedies, music, the opportunity for an agreeable intrigue in the society of your equals? No—but a hostess engaged in suckling and bathing her brats, or in studying chemistry and optics with some dirty school-master, who is given the seat of honour at table and a pavilion in the park to which he may retire when weary of the homage of the great; while as for the host, he is busy discussing education or political economy with his unfortunate guests, if, indeed, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the laws on which this seemingly mysterious power depends. They are purely structural laws, and relate not to the mind, but to the eye,—not to the province of the metaphysician, but to that of the professor of optics. The lens of the camera obscura transmits the figures to the prepared paper, on quite the same principle on which in vision the crystalline lens conveys them to the retina. In the centre of the field in both cases there is much distinctness, while all around its circumference the images are ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... "only this is not a good time for studying optics. What we want is knowledge that shall bring us to the brig without being ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... ta'en from home and hearthstone, from the newly-wedded bride, To be looked at by cold optics on a microscopic slide; We are boiled and stewed together, and they never think it hurts; We're injected into rabbits by those hypodermic squirts: Never safe, although so very insignificant in size, There's no peace for poor Bacillus, so it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... senna, rhubarb and magnesia, and that sort of thing; but natural science, heat and light, and the wonders of optics." ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... a thing is to discover how it operates. The eternal forms of things are laws of natural action. Such are the law of gravitation, the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A static picture unless so interpreted must be at once valueless ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... objects of my special investigation. As a school-boy I obtained (despite the frequent closing of my visual organs) considerable Insight into Physical Science in the course of numerous pugilistic encounters. A close Application to Optics at that time enabled me to get some ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... fruitful. His was not "black magic," claiming the aid of Satan, but "white magic," bringing into service the laws of nature—the precursor of applied science. His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached on this subject; his researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and possibly the telescope; in chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of several ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... me, and I'll get six months. He knew where I'd go. I haven't any money," and tears not only filled the wondrous optics of poor Miss Montmorency, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... BB] deluded long By Fancy's dazzling optics, these behold The images of some peculiar things With brighter hues resplendent, and portray'd With features nobler far than e'er adorn'd Their genuine objects. Hence the fever'd heart Pants with delirious hope for tinsel charms; Hence ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor, that in MY downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been grievously rent, but I had nothing for it but sitting patiently ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, in the compass of a halfpenny; nor run after a midge or a mote to catch it; and leave off hunting for needles in bushels of hay, for all these ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is so delicate and wonderful, that great knowledge of anatomy or the science of optics is necessary before it can be really appreciated. Briefly, it is made up of a cluster of simple eyes, in each of which there are several parts. Beginning at the surface we have what is known as the facet, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... physics, and yet gravitation itself is a hypothesis. Then, as to the other branches of physics—electricity and magnetism. The whole scheme of these important sciences rests on the hypothesis of "electric fluidity," or of imponderable matter of which the existence is nothing less than proved. Or optics? Optics certainly appertain to the most important and completest branch of physics, and yet the undulatory theory of light, which we accept now as the indispensable basis of optics, rests on an unproved hypothesis, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... he growled, the Royal grumbler spied a bit of broken tumbler In a long undusted corner just behind the chamber door. When his hungry optics spied it, he stood silently and eyed it, Then he smote his thigh with ecstasy ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... by a feigned immaterial principle, called the vital agent. But when it was discovered that the heart is constructed upon the recognized rules of hydraulics; the eye upon the most refined principles of optics; that the ear was furnished with the means of dealing with the three characteristics of sound—its tympanum for intensity, its cochlea for pitch, and its semicircular canals for quality; and that the air, brought into the great air passages, calling into play atmospheric pressure, was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... precedes geometry and mechanics; (2) Astronomy; (3) Physics (with five subordinate divisions, in which the first place belongs to the theory of weight, and the last to electrology, while the theory of heat, acoustics, and optics are intermediate); (4) Chemistry; (5) Biology or physiology; (6) Sociology or the science of society. This sequence, which is determined by the increasing complexity and increasing dependence of the objects of the sciences, is the order in which they have historically ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... end of my studies."[13] In 1629 he asks Mersenne to take care of himself "till I find out if there is any means of getting a medical theory based on infallible demonstrations, which is what I am now inquiring."[14] Astronomical inquiries in connexion with optics, meteorological phenomena, and, in a word, the whole field of natural laws, excited his desire to explain them. His own observation, and the reports of Mersenne, furnished his data. Of Bacon's demand for observation and collection ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... don't go a minute! Here!" says he, "glue your optics to that." He chucked out a specimen peppered with yaller. "That's my mine. I'm just thinkin' of taking a half interest in the mint. You can pick her to go twenty thousand to the ton—help yourselves, gents." He began sortin' rock. "Oh, here!" ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... boldness and wholeness we cannot attribute to Goethe. He is still a little straitened, a little pestered by the doubting and critical optics which our time turns upon man, a little victimized by his knowledge of limitary conditions and secondary laws. Nevertheless, a noble man is not to his eye "contained between hat and boots," but is of untold depth and dimension. He indicates traits of the soul with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... snatched the light, and both men hastened to examine the prisoner's hand. After a single glance their eyes met and each set of optics inquired of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... law of Least Action, which has been applied, not alone in optics, but in many mechanical systems, appears physically based upon the restraint and retardation opposing the transfer of energy ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... on the top of the ancient castle of Montlhery, I was conducting an experiment in optics by means of electrical communications with two assistants at Paris and Juvisy. I was trying to find out if the rays of different colours in the spectrum travel at the same rate. It was just on midnight before I brought the experiment to a successful conclusion. As I covered up my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... us an admirable record of temperatures, barometric pressures, wind force and direction, atmospheric electricity, sunshine when the sun did shine, and the elements of terrestrial magnetism. Thanks to Simpson, we also had investigations of the upper air currents, aurora observations, atmospheric optics, gravity determination and what is more, some fine practical teaching that enabled the various sledging units properly to observe and collect data of meteorological importance. Simpson's place was essentially at the base station; and his consequent ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... were the best that the market could supply, yet he was able, from his knowledge of optics and chemistry, to improve them for his own uses far beyond the ability of the makers. His studio was filled with examples of his work, and his mind was stocked with information and opinions on all subjects ranging from international policies to ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up querulous, that he too, though short, may see,—one squalidest bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs: Jean Paul Marat of Neuchatel! O Marat, Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on Optics; O thou remarkablest Horseleech, once in D'Artois' Stables,—as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared, dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all this? Any faintest light of hope; like dayspring after ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... professional groove laid down for him. On the contrary, his passion for learning seemed to increase with the diminution of the time available for its gratification. He studied Italian, Greek, mathematics; Maclaurin's Fluxions served to "unbend his mind"; Smith's Harmonics and Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy were the nightly companions of his pillow. What he read stimulated without satisfying his intellect. He desired not only to know, but to discover. In 1772 he hired a small telescope, and through it ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of Mathematics as of Physics and are graced with the flowers of both [Footnote: 5. Such of Leonardo's notes on Optics or on Perspective as bear exclusively on Mathematics or Physics could not be included in the arrangement of the libro di pittura which is here presented to the reader. They are however but few.]. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... chapter. It is a statement made by Roger Bacon, the greatest of Oxonian scholars of the thirteenth century, who, long before the Renascence, did much to restore the study of science, especially in geography, chronology, and optics. In his Opus ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... congregated world "tries its own expressive power," madness not inappropriately rules the hour. Once in a hundred years a six months' carnival is allowable to so ponderous a body. Civilization here aims to see itself not simply as in a glass, but in a multitude of glasses. To steer its optics through the architectural muddle in the basin before us it will need the retina that lies behind the facets ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... editor. At a later period he was one of the leading contributors to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (seventh and eighth editions), the articles on Electricity, Hydrodynamics, Magnetism, Microscope, Optics, Stereoscope, Voltaic Electricity, &c., being from his pen. In 1819 Brewster undertook further editorial work by establishing, in conjunction with Robert Jameson (1774-1854), the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, which took the place of the Edinburgh Magazine. The first ten ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... presence of Judith Buck, although they could not help seeing her, since her blue cotton dress and her red gold hair made a spot of color that would surely have affected the optics of a stone blind person. Her color was naturally high, and frying chicken over a hot wood stove and sprinting for the trolley had added to it. Nan did worse than ignore the presence of her neighbor, as she openly nudged her sister ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... "then 'tis time for your eye, dear!" And Bagshaw was compelled not only to suffer his damaged optics to be dabbled by his tormentingly affectionate wife, but to submit again to be hoodwinked, in spite of his entreaties to the contrary, and his pathetic assurances that he had not yet seen a bit of the prospect; a thing he ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... one honde grasp'd the recer's mayne, And with the other he his launce besped; And then felle bleedyng on the bloudie plaine. His launce it hytte Fitz Broque upon the hede; Upon his hede it made a wounde full slyghte, 405 But peerc'd his shoulder, ghastlie wounde inferne, Before his optics daunced a shade of nyghte, Whyche soone were closed ynn a sleepe eterne. The noble erlie than, withote a grone, Took flyghte, to fynde the ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... avec adresse, mais avec grandeur.[65] Another reason, no doubt, besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra, chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's eyes for ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... furnished was a couple of textbooks on lens-grinding and telescope-design, and a book on optics. You see, when we made that deal with them, they realized that we weren't any better fighters than they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began studying technology, they found that they had ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... you know I was there?' said Lake, in rather a changed tone. Larkin looked up, and Lake laughed in his face quietly the most impertinent laugh he had ever seen or heard, with his yellow eyes fixed on the lawyer's pink little optics. 'I was there, and Hockley was there, and Mark Wylder was there—was not he?' and Lake stared and laughed, and the attorney stared; and Lake added, 'What a d—d cunning fellow you are; ha, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... their desert they would long ago have been pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always blasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen it on the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on men sprawled out at full length under disaster, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... a man may wish well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down? And will you cast off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us a facetious anecdote in the seventh volume (p. 10) of Dryden's Works. But the curious investigator of ancient times, and the genuine lover of British biography, will seize upon the more prominent features in the life of this renowned philosopher; will reckon up his great discoveries in optics and physics; and will fancy, upon looking at the above picture of his study, that an explosion from gun-powder (of which our philosopher has been thought the inventor) has protruded the palings which are leaning against ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... coins and medals we expose To th' show, but never part with. Next, As in a more conspicuous text, Thy forehead, let therein be sign'd The maiden candour of thy mind; And under it two chaste-born spies To bar out bold adulteries, For through these optics fly the darts Of lust which set on fire our hearts. On either side of these quick ears There must be plac'd, for seasoned fears Which sweeten love, yet ne'er come nigh The plague of wilder jealousy. Then let each cheek of thine entice His soul as to a bed of spice ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... to me and I'll convince you. It's all a question of optics. I haven't yet seen the head nor do I know how it looks, but this gentleman"—indicating Juanito Pelaez—"tells us that it does not look like the talking heads that are usually exhibited. So be it! But the principle is the same—it's all a question of optics. Wait! A mirror ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... creating light not only involves the Divine Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1] but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the science of Physical Optics investigates. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... of the books an explanation of this beautiful spectacle, all the more pleasing because it generally presents itself in delightful summer weather. It is not mentioned in the part of Moigno's great Repertoire d'Optique which treats of meteorological optics, nor in any other work which I have consulted. It seems desirable, therefore, to make an attempt to search out what appears to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... and affection, were so glorious a thing after all; if a tempering, not of human frailty, but of charity for the shortcomings, sympathy for the needs, of ordinary mortals, would not subdue the effulgence of his talents and virtues into mild lustre, more tolerable to the optics of fallible beholders ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... body, it either passes through it, or is reflected by it, or it may be absorbed. Again, in proportion as the rays of light become distant from the body from which they emanate, they diverge one from the other. In accordance with the laws of optics, the rays of light, in passing through an optical instrument like the eye, must cross each other, and thus produce an inverted image of the object from which the rays proceed. With the general view of the structure of the eye, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... will find in this number an excellent article on "Parlor Magic," in which they are told, by Professor Leo Grindon, one of the Faculty of the Royal School of Chemistry in Manchester, England, how to perform some very interesting, and in some cases, quite astonishing experiments in chemistry, optics, etc. Some of our readers may be familiar with a few of these experiments, but the majority of them will be found novel to nearly all young people. Occasionally, there are materials or ingredients called for, which are somewhat ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... that of houses? Who ever saw a rock with eyes—that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house without eyes—that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good old Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes—his optics are as cheerful as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... pismire, I not grope; Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back A firmament, the skiey vault will crack. Our minds make their own Termini, nor call The issuing circumscriptions great or small; So high constructing Nature lessons to us all: Who optics gives accommodate to see Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, And distant greatness less than ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... had bought, as frisky in its motions as the nervous monsieur who commanded it. At a little distance, the square-shouldered Antwerper, sitting on the elevated poop of his galliot, was enjoying, with his crew, a glorious smoke. You could almost see them (and that, too, without very keen optics) put care into their tobacco-pipes, anxiety curled in fume over their heads. A not unfrequent sight was the star-spangled banner floating in beauty over the bosom of the wave. The serenity of the atmosphere, the ever-changing brilliancy of the scene, the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is practically useful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... these days of question and unbelief, is it matter of wonder that, at sight of the harmony of blended and mingling, yet always individual, and never confused colors, and notwithstanding his knowledge of optics, and of how the supreme unity of the light was secerned into its decreed chord, the imaginative faith of the troubled poet should so work in him as to lift his head for a moment above the waters of that other flood that threatened to overwhelm his microcosm, ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... instead of being flattened, is elongated at the poles: by ignorance of which the loss above mentioned occurs yearly. There is, or is to be, a substitute for attraction and an "application hitherto neglected, of a {138} recognized law of optics to the astronomical theory, showing the true orbits of the heavenly bodies to be perfectly circular, and their orbital motions to be perfectly uniform." all irregularities being, I suppose, optical delusions. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Dicko Smith, in gaudy putties girt, With sand-blight in his optics, and much leaner than he started, Round the 'Oly Land cavorting in three- quarters of a shirt, And imposin' on the natives ez one ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... face, and gave me such a look of sorrowful tenderness as might have melted my heart, but within those eyes there lurked a something that I did not like; and I wondered how I ever could have admired them—her sister's honest face and small grey optics appeared far more agreeable. But I was out of temper with Eliza at that moment for her insinuations against Mrs. Graham, which were false, I was certain, whether she knew ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... left long to ascertain in what direction to expect a recontre, for a fresh eructation of the metrical whine gave them sufficient notice. The black boy soon descried the disturbers of their peace by the glitter of a host of canine optics, and directed his masters and their friend where to fire. This they did; and the effect of their shots was instantly apparent, from the excessive yelping that greeted their ears, and satisfied them that some, at least, of their annoyers had got ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... higher up. Before reaching our ground, we experienced one of the most tremendous thunderstorms that I ever witnessed. A sheet of lightning struck the head of our column, where I happened to be riding, and deprived me of the use of my optics for at least ten minutes. A great many of our dragoon horses broke from their piqueting during the storm, and galloped past us into the French lines. We lay by our arms on the banks of the river, and it continued to rain in torrents ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... centre of another room, dedicated to optics, as we entered, we saw a beautiful nosegay in a vase, which appeared to be composed of the rarest flowers. I approached it with an intention of inhaling its fragrance, when, lo! my hand passed through it. It was an exquisite optical ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the rest, to come to the conclusion Of this true dream, the telescope is gone[hu] Which kept my optics free from all delusion, And showed me what I in my turn have shown; All I saw farther, in the last confusion, Was, that King George slipped into Heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Missal too (it was the family Missal) Was ornamented in a sort of way Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they, Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all, Could turn their optics to the text and pray, Is more than I know—But Don Juan's mother Kept this herself, and gave ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... bad! too bad entirely!" said Mrs. Crews, who was quite a motherly woman. "I hope your eyes are as well as ever in a day or two." And then she added with a twinkle in her own optics: "I suppose that is what you get for running ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... "sulphur and treacle" of "our Scotch connoisseurs;" but what colours has he not added here to his sulphur—colours, too, that we fear for the "idea of truth" cannot coexist! And how, in the name of optics, could it be possible for any painter to take in all this, with the "fathomless intervals," into an angle of vision of forty-five degrees? It is quite superfluous to ask "who is likest this, Turner or Poussin?" There immediately follows a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... critical Science of Religions of this sort might not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics—it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... rates; one, we say, falls behind the other. In this manner of expression, we follow exactly the principles on which we started, and suit our language to our ideas and habits of thinking. By the law of optics things are reflected upon the retina of the eye inversely, that is, upside down; but they are always seen in a proper relation to each other, and if there is any thing wrong in the case, it is overcome ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... De Anima. The anatomy of the eye is next described; this is done well and evidently at first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, his reasoning depends essentially upon his peculiar view of natural agents and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... night at noon. He at fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly motion varies; And twice a year he'll cut the equator, As if there had been no such matter. Some wits have wonder'd what analogy There is 'twixt cobbling and astrology; How Partridge made his optics rise From a shoe-sole to reach the skies. A list the cobbler's temples ties, To keep the hair out of his eyes; From whence 'tis plain, the diadem That princes wear derives from them: And therefore crowns are nowadays Adorn'd with golden ...
— English Satires • Various
... designed to provide energy sources for space vehicles. The glass industry, as a result of work done during and after the Second World War on lenses and plastics, promises substantial gains in the consumer fields of optics and foods. Pyroceram, developed for missile radomes, is now being used in the manufacture of pots and pans. Materials suitable for use in the nuclear preservation of food may make us even better fed ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... words, the origin of this admirable society, by whose indefatigable exertions the air-pump has become necessary to the domestic economy of every peasant's cottage; and the Budelight and beer-shops, optics and out-door relief, and Daguerrotypes and dirt, have become subjects with which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... humming and buzzing about mine ears. They would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller objects. Sometimes they would fix upon my nose, or forehead, where they stung me to the quick, smelling very offensively; and I could easily trace that viscous matter, which, our naturalists tell us, enables those creatures to walk with their ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... contemplation of one dear, dazzling, but distant object, experienced on this occasion by Mr. Titmouse. No, no; I don't mean seriously to pretend that so grand a thought as this could be entertained by his little optics intellectual; you might as well suppose the tiny eye of a black beetle to be scanning the vague, fanciful, and mysterious figure and proportions of Orion, or a kangaroo to be perusing and pondering over the immortal Principia. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... fether" (Cooper), while pencil is from Old Fr. pincel (pinceau), a painter's brush, from Lat. penicillus, a little tail. The modern meaning of pencil, which still meant painter's brush in the 18th century, is due to association with pen. The older sense survives in optics and in the expression "pencilled eyebrows." The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye be called fenell giant. Also a rodde, sticke, or paulmer, wherewith children are striken and corrected ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... observed effect and some material object with which it seems to be in causal connection, will, I suppose, have to be allowed to exercise their ingenuity in any way to satisfy their minds, even though they may have to revise their theory with every fresh discovery in optics or radioactivity. ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... to punish it; only the devil is more cunning, for he picks a living out of others' gains. His living lieth in his eye, which (like spirits) he sends through chinks and keyholes to survey the places of darkness; for which purpose he studieth the optics, but can discover no colour but black, for the pure white of chastity dazzleth his eyes. He is a Catholic, for he is everywhere; and with a politic, for he transforms himself into all shapes. He travels ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... gig, his jocund phiz turned towards his fidus Achates, leads his own horse behind, listening to the discourse of "his ancient," or regaling him "with sweet converse"; and thus they onward jog, until the sign of the "Greyhound," stretching quite across the main street, greets their expectant optics, and seems to forbid their passing the open portal below. In they wend then, and having seen their horses "sorted," and the collar marks (as much as may be) carefully effaced by the shrewd application of a due quantity of ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If Nature thundered ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Douglas's more discerning eye, Mary's happiness did not appear in so dazzling a light as to the weaker optics of her aunts. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... to be abandoned as too expensive, and he proceeded to study optics. He gave a very accurate explanation of the action of the human eye, and made many hypotheses, some of them shrewd and close to the mark, concerning the law of refraction of light in dense media: but though several minor points of interest turned up, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the water quite low, but not low enough to show the mouth of the pipe. Of course, there was no ball in sight. He closed the cistern with a groan, and got out his new book on natural philosophy. First he glanced at optics; but that did not help him to see his way; then at ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Words: optics, optician, ocular, oculary, oculate, oculifonn, ophthalmology, ophthalmologist, ophthalmic, optometry, ophthalmostat, optometrist, chatoyant, chatoyment, cynosure, orbit, strabismus, rheum, ophthalmoscope, ophthalmoscopy, astigmatism, optography, blear, blear-eyed, bleary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1710, succeeding Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy. He was especially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, and optics, having lectured before the King on various occasions. He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an orator made his manner of conferring a degree impressive—which may explain his having been accused of inventing the degrees. He was a loyal and able Mason, a student of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Mechanics. Bartlett's Philosophy Acoustics and Optics. Bartlett's Astronomy. Chemistry.................Fowne's Chemistry. Chemical Physics, from Miller. Drawing...................Landscape. Pencil and Colors. Tactics of Infantry,......Practical Instruction in the Artillery, and Cavalry Schools of the Soldier, Company, and Battalion. Practical ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... her excursion to Marietta, her large, calm eyes searched his countenance with a look of offended dignity, which caused his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Speechless for the moment, but not blinded, Plutarch withdrew his optics from the imperious dame, and took an instantaneous brain-picture of her companion, a light-footed, quick-glancing girl about eighteen years of age, whose arrival put little Harman into an ecstasy, and gave manifest delight to the servants. Her blithe manner and cheerful ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of harmonies in optics is the same as in acoustics, the same as in everything—it is based on simplicity. Those colors, like those notes, the number of whose vibrations or waves in the same time bear some simple ratio to each other, are harmonious; an absolute equality produces unison; and a group of harmonies ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... electric and magnetic phenomena, and that waves set up in it by electro-magnetic actions are capable of being reflected, refracted, polarized, and twisted, in the same way as ordinary light-waves can be, and that the laws of optics ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... this causal connection taking place according to simple necessities, he could not select, make, and use, with certainty, any tool, from the club with which he defends himself against his enemies or cracks the shells of fruit, up to the finest instruments of optics and chemistry, and even to the telegraph and steam engine. The conformity to law, with which the forces of nature act, far from being an impediment to his appointing and reaching his ends is much more the indispensable means by which he is ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the writers on optics, that the eye at all times sees an equal number of physical points, and that a man on the top of a mountain has no larger an image presented to his senses, than when he is cooped up in the narrowest court or chamber. It is only by experience that he infers the greatness of the object from ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... resembling a large cat; a wolf, a fox, or even a lion, as resembling certain kinds of dogs; a howdah as a smaller sofa, and a palanquin, as a light crib. In all these cases, it is worthy of notice, that a mere difference of size never creates confusion;—simply because, by a natural law in optics, such differences are of constant occurrence in the experience both of children and adults. A water neut will convey a sufficiently correct idea of a crocodile; and the picture of an elephant, only one inch square, will create no difficulty, if the correct height be given. When ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... perfectly determined; selenographic maps have been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, those of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs of incomparable beauty—in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; but until now no direct communication with ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology," lest it might have killed our philosopher; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... curious, strange-looking machine that we kept in a box. He meant the microscope.... One of us ran home, and returned with the wonderful instrument. While we were putting it together, we attempted to give, as well as we could, some notion of optics to our auditory; but as we perceived that the theory excited but little interest, we proceeded at once to experiments. We asked if any person in the company would favor us with a louse. The thing was far easier to obtain than a butterfly. A noble Lama, who was secretary to his Excellency ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... day," declared the old man, a fanatic gleam shining in his faded optics. "I'll find it some day, Zeb. I never got to it, but I come mighty close—yes, sir, ole ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... notwithstanding the great advantage which he derived from a habit of patient thinking, indulged bold and excentric thoughts, of which his Queries at the end of his book of Optics are a sufficient evidence. And a quick conception of distant analogies, which is the great key to unlock the secret of nature, is by no means incompatible with the spirit of perseverance, in investigations calculated to ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... despatch within a sheet of paper; but I must impart the contents and consign the answer to your care. In the first place, I cannot address the answer to him, because the epistle is without date or direction; and in the next, the contents are so singular that I can scarce believe my optics, "which are made the fools of the other senses, or ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... treatment of Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk, who not only studied Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages, but who devoted himself to natural science, and made many discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, optics, and mathematics. He is said to have discovered gunpowder, and he proposed a reform of the calendar similar to that introduced by Gregory XIII., 300 years later. His reward was to be hooted at as a magician, and to be confined in a dungeon ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... opponent about the ring at will. He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helpless before him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's" head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling optics of his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... arrived at a cage containing an automatic Devil revealing the future for a penny in the slit, and Miss JESSIMINA worked the oracle with a coin advanced by myself, and the demon, after flashing his optics and consulting sundry playing-cards, did presently produce a small paper ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.—Will you allow me to pursue ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... generations perishing by the way), and at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I construe aright), as the Euthanasia of Metaphysic altogether. May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy eyes, O Son of Adam; thou shalt look, and not forever jargon about laws of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable sets of spectacles (could I but lay them aside,—with gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two. Man lives by Belief (as it was well written ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hieroglyphics on the wall with his fingers. His misty mind searches for some point of egress. Confronting (rather uncomfortably) hat stands, tables, porcelains, and other hall appurtenances, he at length shuffles his way back to the stairs, where, as if doubting his bleered optics, he stands some moments, swaying to and fro. His hat again falls from his head, and his body, following, lays its lumbering length on the stairs. Happy fraternity! how useful is that body! His companion, laying his muddled head ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... evidence: And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense— No optics like yours, at ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... contents of the vehicle are equally an exhibition. Billy, with two watches hung by one chain, undergoing the revolutionary movements of buckets in a well, and his eye-glass set round with false pearls, are admirably "en suite" with his bugle optics. The frowsy madam in faded finery, with all the little Buttons, attended by a red-haired poor relation from Inverness (who is at once their governess and their victim), form the happy tenantry of this moving closet. No less than three, crests surmount the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the local Cabalists who refused to have their "divine science" reduced to "reason." And so, disillusioned, he had rebounded to "human study," setting off on a pilgrimage in the depth of winter to borrow out-of-date books on optics and physics, and making more enemies by his obtrusive knowledge of how dew came and how lightning. It was not till—on the strength of a volume of Anatomical tables and a Medical dictionary—he undertook cures, that he had discovered ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this Treatise has exercised in the development of the Science of Optics, it seems strange that two centuries should have passed before an English edition of the work appeared. Perhaps the circumstance is due to the mistaken zeal with which formerly everything that conflicted with the cherished ideas of Newton was ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... The subject of optics still continuing to engross Newton's attention, he followed up his researches into the structure of the sunbeam by many other valuable investigations in connection with light. Every one has noticed the beautiful colours manifested in a soap-bubble. Here was a subject which not unnaturally attracted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... volume takes a wide survey of the field of error, embracing in its view not only the illusions of sense dealt with in treatises on physiological optics, etc., but also other errors familiarly known as illusions, and resembling the former in their structure and mode of origin. I have throughout endeavoured to keep to a strictly scientific treatment, that is to say, the description and classification of acknowledged errors, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... lineaments. In his progress, Robin encountered many gay and gallant figures. Embroidered garments of showy colors, enormous periwigs, gold-laced hats, and silver-hilted swords glided past him and dazzled his optics. Travelled youths, imitators of the European fine gentlemen of the period, trod jauntily along, half dancing to the fashionable tunes which they hummed, and making poor Robin ashamed of his quiet and natural gait. At length, after many pauses to ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paris. He was master of the Greek and Hebrew languages, then very rare accomplishments; and is pronounced by Roger Bacon, a very competent judge, of whom we shall presently have occasion to speak, to have spent much of his time, for nearly forty years, in the study of geometry, astronomy, optics, and other branches of mathematical learning, in all of which he much excelled. So that, as we are informed from the same authority, this same Robert of Lincoln, and his friend, Friar Adam de Marisco, were the two most learned men in ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... dependence in question is rather upon our bodies than upon our minds. The visual appearance of an object is altered if we shut one eye, or squint, or look previously at something dazzling; but all these are bodily acts, and the alterations which they effect are to be explained by physiology and optics, not by psychology.[27] They are in fact of exactly the same kind as the alterations effected by spectacles or a microscope. They belong therefore to the theory of the physical world, and can have no bearing upon the question whether what we see is causally dependent ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... and physicist, sometimes called the founder of physiological optics. He seems to have initiated the theory of color blindness that was later developed by Helmholtz. The attack referred to was because of his connection with the Board of Longitude, he having been made (1818) superintendent of the Nautical Almanac and secretary of the Board. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan |
