"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, lights, and pictures, have raised the character of the instrument ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... point of view about the treatment of desertion has been changing during the past fifteen years. The case worker's attention used to be focussed on the danger of increasing the desertion rate by a policy of too sympathetic care for deserters' families. Little study was made of individual causes, and in so far as there was a general policy of treatment it was to insist, wherever a desertion law existed, that the deserted ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... rumours had come that he was wandering from village to village, but no one had been brave enough to detain him. Trenholme knew that people on the railway line to the south believed firmly that the old man was still alive, or that his ghost walked. Now, as his eyes focussed more intently upon the moving thing, it looked ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... so hoped he would help her to sweep them all back to the cellar labeled "morbid" and lock them down in the dark again. Any other man would, she thought, amazed at him, any other husband! She focussed all her personality passionately to force him ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... with a flashlight set back in a metal tube so that the rays of the light are not diffused but can be focussed only on one spot at ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... in which the workers were engaged. They constituted rather an accurate kinetoscope view of the yearly lives of chance passing workers in those trades. Wherever the facts ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were so focussed as to express definitely and clearly the wisdom of some ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... you, you straightway enter upon a glorious career. There is, however, no royal road to advancement on the Press. Proprietors and editors simply could not afford it. Living as newspapers do in the fierce light focussed from a million eyes, fighting daily with keen competition, the instinct of self-preservation compels their directors to engage the highest talent where it is discoverable, and, failing that, the most sedulously nurtured skill. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Mr. Dinwiddie focussed his eyes, then stumbled to his feet and caught Clavering by the arm. "Yes," he muttered. "Get me out of this and take me where I can get a drink. Seen ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... between Bergson and common sense is, precisely, how far it does go. Both sides would admit that, in this fact directly known, what is in the full focus of attention at any given moment is very limited; on the other hand both would admit that this fully focussed fact is set in a context, or fringe, with no clearly defined limits which also goes to make up the whole fact directly known though we do not usually pay much attention to it. The fact directly known being given the problem is to find ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... she turned back to the stage, fluttering her fan to and fro. Attracted by its movement, or by the glances focussed upon her, Cornelia tilted her head upwards, recognised Guest, and whispered to her companion. Mr Moffatt's eyes travelled obediently towards the box, to fasten, not on Guest but on the man by his side. For a moment they widened in unmistakable recognition, before, of set purpose, as it were, they ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of science, the attention and interest of the universe have been largely focussed on the marvellous achievements of the human intellect. Discoveries, inventions, advanced methods and great strides of progress in countless directions are the boast and pride of modern times. There is no ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... Piers yielded. The water dripped from his shoulders. They gleamed in the strong light like a piece of faultless statuary, godlike, superbly strong. But it was upon no splendour of form that Sir Beverley's attention was focussed. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... set our camera in the proper position to permit the plate to take in what we wish. Usually it will be necessary to shift our position several times until we find the proper position. The tripod should be firmly set on the ground and the camera made as level as possible. The camera should then be focussed with the stop or diaphragm wide open. The fact that the image is inverted as it appears on the ground glass will at first be confusing to a beginner, but we soon become accustomed to it and never give it a thought. Our ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... advertising that interests me. Take, for instance, a Coles Phillips painting for some brand of silk stockings. Of course the high lights of the picture are cunningly focussed on the stockings of the eminently beautiful lady; but there is always something else in the picture—an automobile or a country house or a Morris chair or a parasol—which makes it just as effective ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... had left it behind, the pride and grandeur of the scenery beggared description. It was as though for days we had been looking upon a mighty canvas, and while we had caught something of its splendour, now for the first time had we focussed it aright. The memory we took away was that of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... reserved, appeared indifferent to the mute questioning of the hundreds of eyes focussed on him. Our journalist wore Corporal Vinson's uniform. He had begged the authorities to let him appear in civilian clothes: demands and entreaties had been so much ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... which covered it. His eyes were gazing with horrible fixity at a pneumatic trough. The receiver of this instrument was covered with a lens made of double convex glasses, the space between the glasses being filled with alchohol, which focussed the light coming through one of the compartments of the rose-window of the garret. The shelf of the receiver communicated with the wire of an immense galvanic battery. Lemulquinier, busy at the moment in moving ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... squeaking as it went down. It was the sort of impression one disregards. The collapse of the pile of goods just sufficed to end his subconscious efforts to get something to hit somebody with, and his whole attention focussed itself upon the struggle in the window. For a splendid instant Parsons towered up over the active backs that clustered about the shop window door, an active whirl of gesture, tearing things down and throwing them, and then he went under. There was an instant's furious struggle, a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... table, flushed with wine and the exertion of hilarity. Twenty eyes were focussed on the queer, insignificant little man in the doorway. If they had not been capable of focussing them on anything a moment before, they acquired the power ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the liberating genius of modern culture. Not ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... a desperate effort to sit up and look round. He looked at her, bewildered, at the room, and then his eyes focussed on the lion over ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... there in the study-room, her frowning eyes focussed on a spot straight ahead of her, her spirit slowly rose to meet the challenge of the debate. These others had all had to live through their "first," ease had come to them only with practice, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... who thought to feel for a pulse. The eager searchers from farther away had come to the place. A dozen pair of eyes or more were focussed on the man as he held his breath and felt ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... he said, narrowing his eyes in speculative fashion. "No less than three times I have had the idea that something, or some one, has just dropped out of sight, behind us, as I focussed...." ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... with sleep, looked along the rifle barrel. For several seconds he could see nothing but the dead grey grass. Then a dim movement focussed his eyes. A hundred yards away the Indian ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only did she miss the excitement of her contest with Christine over the possession of Riatt, but she was positively wearied by the Usshers' anxiety, by her brother's agony of jealousy and fear, and by Wickham's continual effort to strike an original ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... old age. Perhaps to bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating companionship of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn and ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing but humanity, and humanity writ very large at that, so that once the twins nearly died of scarlatina while ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... have tried to emphasize must never be lost sight of, if we wish to face the future with confidence. All our measures must be calculated to raise the efficiency of the army, especially in attack; to this end all else must give way. We shall thus have a central point on which all our measures can be focussed. We can make them all serve one purpose, and thus we shall be kept from going astray on the bypaths which we all too easily take if we regard matters separately, and not as forming parts of a collective whole. Much of our previous omissions and commissions would have borne ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... day long in the light of His face, and He sees and marks all our else hidden evil. It needs something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a blessing to us. And what we need is offered us when we read, 'His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me and said, Fear not! I am He that liveth and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... obediently and scanned the west and north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another grim menace ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... if you have not a piece of ground glass at hand, insert a plate which you would otherwise excite in the bath after the application of collodion, but now dull it by touching it with putty. Observe whether you get an equally clear and well-focussed picture on this; if you do, you may conclude there is no fault in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... the bats come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... a sudden squealing sound from the communicator on which all the extra recording devices were focussed. Betsy's screen lighted up. Peculiarly curved patterns appeared on it. They shifted and changed. Noises came from her speaker. They were completely unearthly. Now they were shrill past belief, and then they were chopped into very small bits of sound, and ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a moment, to address his mother. She turned; there was an exchange of greetings, in which Mistress Hortensia standing rigid as stone—took no part. A silence fell about; quizzing-glasses went up; all eyes were focussed upon the group. Then Rotherby and his friends ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... for us, as Eucken constantly insists, to stop short of this. Who can prescribe limits to the capability of consciousness when it is focussed, in the form of a conviction, on the deepest problems which press themselves upon it? There is only one objection that the empiricist can bring forward, and that is that all such ideals can never be proved to exist as ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... of a history of furniture from the earliest time of which we have any record, until from the extraordinary growth of the vast Roman Empire, the arts and manufactures of every country became as it were centralised and focussed in the palaces of the wealthy Romans, brings us down to the commencement of what has been deservedly called "the greatest event in history"—the decline and fall of this enormous empire. For fifteen generations, for some five hundred years, did this ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... Office of the Local Government Board, over which he then presided, 'that few, if any, conferences held in London in recent years have done more good for the cause of social progress than the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885. The Conference focussed public opinion and sympathy upon a large number of important questions, which have since made greater headway than they would have done if the Conference had not taken place. I have the highest opinion ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in consequence shrunk. It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe with maps ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... moment, under the conditions of perspective and illusion which it imposed. Both these conditions were less well satisfied by drama, which directly "imitates action," than by the dramatic speech or monologue, which imitates action as focussed in a particular mind. And Browning's dramatic genius found its most natural and effective outlet in the wealth of implicit drama which he concentrated in these salient moments tense with memory and hope. The insuppressible alertness and enterprise ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... thrill of alarm pass over him, even before he had focussed the glasses upon Jimmy's so-called "cloud." He suspected what it might prove to be, and the very thought of being caught out on the ocean by a fog gave ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... their relationships with them. We are offered a plant in the soil, not a flower cut from its stem. Every man is rooted to the soil, touches through his senses the physical, and through his mind and heart the spiritual, order of his time; all these influences are focussed in him, and according to his capacity he gathers them into his experience, formulates and expresses them. The greater and more productive the man, the wider his contact with and absorption of the life of his time. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... than of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon's occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain reservations. By way of overcoming these reservations, she focussed her whole attention upon Captain Leo Frazer. Across the table, Weldon, in the intervals of his talk with his hostess, could hear the low murmur of their ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... tentacle flung out like a striking cobra, its forked tip flaming blue and green fire as it focussed upon the open door. But Leah was already gone. Gordon heard her flying footsteps as she raced down the hall. Arlok promptly sped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... halfback! As a rule, Steve could hardly be called a genuine sprinter, and doubtless that was just why Jack had selected him for this special occasion, for the lighter fellows would of course be under suspicion, and interference focussed on their actions. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Forster focussed his eyes on the writing again. There was no doubt at all that it was Bentley's. They had roomed and studied together for four years at MIT, and then there had been a couple of years' post-graduate work after that. During all that time they ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... Skylark leaped away, Seaton focussed an attractor upon the one who had apparently signaled the attack. Rolling the vessel over in a short loop, so that the captive was hurled off into space upon the other side, he snatched the tube from the ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... prepared for the apprehension of a great purpose should fix the thoughts upon the faultless performance of their duty, no matter how insignificant their task may appear. Only in this way can the thoughts be gathered and focussed, and resolution and energy be developed, which being done, there is nothing ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... a black figure rose from the water almost at their feet so suddenly that Mrs. Evans screamed. The black figure was the Monkey, who had quietly slipped into the water behind a large rock while all attention was focussed on the girls, and swimming under water came up in front of them. The new arrival on the scene turned out to be the waiter who announced that tea was ready. "We will be down immediately, Thomas," said Sahwah in her best society manner and promptly ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... trying to quiet her uneasiness with prayer. These petitions were no longer vague and generous for the fate of millions of unknown men, for the victory of an entire people. With maternal self-centredness they were focussed on one single person—her son, who was a soldier like the others, and perhaps at this very moment was exposed to the greatest danger. The tears that he had cost her! . . . She had implored that he and his father might come to understand ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in an inner pocket, surprise affording him some amusement. His interest in Sachigo had abruptly focussed itself on ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... within a hair's-breadth of the third bull's-eye from the bottom. To-morrow it will surely shine through my suspect, and if the latter be a true lens it will concentrate, for several minutes, a high degree of heat at the particular spot upon which its rays are focussed. That spot I have found, by experiment, to be one of a series of small bosses set in the pivot-base of the big chair. I applied the flame of a match and immediately the metal boss began to soften. I understand now. The boss is made of a fusible alloy that melts at a certain prearranged temperature; ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... His father had told him, and the uncanny events of the evening stood evidence of Dr. Cairn's wisdom. The mysterious and evil force which Antony Ferrara controlled was being focussed upon him! ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... persons take exception to the last statement, and give contrary proof by referring to some hair-lifting incident which seemed to be a refutation. But most of these attacks by Cougars have failed to stand the disintegrating power of a carefully focussed searchlight. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tended to relax her strained nerves. Gade concertos are a species of mental gruel, easy to assimilate and none too stimulating; but all the innate barbarism of humanity, all of her nervous force responded to the clashing rhythm of the Slavonic Dance, and the swift color came into her face and focussed itself in a tiny circle in either cheek, as she listened. For the moment, she was as fiercely defiant of fate as a ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... drove him to do the unwelcome and the unexpected. Now he gave her a long account of the day-school that he sometimes patronized. The account was interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before, but she could not attend now, for her mind was focussed on the invisible. She discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life—her house—and that the moment was solemn when she invited a friend to share this passion with ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... electric light illuminating the opera house fell with a curious distinction in tone upon the crowd which filled the building and overflowed through darkened doors and windows. Beneath the electric jets the faces were focussed to a white hush of expectancy, which mellowed into a blur of impatient animation where the dim gas ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... at her sharply: Was it his own imagination, or had the girl laid a significant emphasis upon the "He." Her eyes did not meet his squarely, but seemed focussed upon the edge of the bandage. He shook his head: "I reckon not," he ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... half-dazed for an hour or more, and was roused only at a curious light which flashed above me in the sky. Its first aspect led me to the conclusion that I saw a reflection of the Aurora; but the second flash altered the opinion. The light was clearly focussed, being a volume of intensely bright, white rays which passed right above me with slow and guided motion, and then stopped altogether, almost fixed upon the jolly-boat. I knew then what it was, and I sat up to see the great beams of a man-of-war's search-light, showing an arc of the water almost ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Mr Burne; and he too focussed his glass. "Why, so it is!" he cried—"just such a one as we used to have upon the pomatum pots. Now, from what gardens can ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... an unwonted significance to the simple occupation in which he was employed, and focussed his mind expectantly upon the event which, in the fuller life he had left, would have been accepted as a matter ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... The reality was too solid for a longer dream. Thoughtless, over-confident as her fantasy had been, she had the sense which a child has when a running man comes threateningly near—of a great shape, of unexpected size and dangerousness, looming out of the focussed picture, and setting all previous conceptions at nought. Here was this giant house, and Madam lying dead in it, and servants who would resent her appearance, and Gaga; and Sally was such a little girl in the face of a definite trial. She was a little girl, and ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... halted than the officers' glasses were focussed, and all waited anxiously for an explanation of the movements which the non-commissioned officers and privates could see somewhat indistinctly with the ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance. It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in Ann Veronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-table from Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed a brightly tactful disregard upon this throughout the meal. Ann Veronica had come down thinking of nothing in the world but her inflexible resolution to go to the dance in the teeth of all opposition. She did not know Mr. Manning's handwriting, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... before the store was perceptibly agitated. Its members whispered excitedly one to another, and all their eyes were focussed upon three men approaching from up the trail. The trio were ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even ragged. In a more stable community their apprehension by the village constable and arrest for vagrancy would have been immediate. "French ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... with the same result. Then I wake up, so to speak, make an effort of attention, fix my thought on what I am reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page, just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge. Atten. tion to spiritual things is the first step ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... finish, for as the airship approached nearer the ground, he caught up a pair of binoculars, and focussed them on something on ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... open jewel box which one of the masked men held, then, like lightning, his sinister eyes focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... river plunged down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the binoculars and focussed them. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... the glass, focussed it on the boats, and watched the men for long enough. The forces had been equalised by four men being sent out of Jarette's boat to take the places of the men who had returned to their allegiance, and, as I watched them, I could see that as they slaved away at the oars, their ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... biographer—Fra Raimondo of Capua. It is evident that the simple Italian priest and his companions have become somewhat daunted by the conditions they have encountered at Avignon; and, indeed, the subtlest temptations and most perplexing problems that Europe could furnish were doubtless focussed at the Papal Court. Just what the difficulties were which Raimondo had confided to Catherine and which called forth this spirited answer, we do not know, but we can easily imagine their nature. A holy man of considerable learning, Fra Raimondo was ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... curtain and nodded to the Nubian to draw it aside, and slower still she passed into the other room. Only a little larger than the one she had left, almost as bare, but her mind took in these things uncomprehendingly, for all her attention was focussed on the central ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... corrugated iron on rocky, sunburnt Rattlesnake Island, and who lost the habit of living a few years ago, I was on social terms—terms of vague but cosy intimacy. On occasions of our rare meetings we found ideas in common. Peradventure similarities of environment focussed similar thoughts. Perhaps abnormal temperaments gave rise to becoming tenderness and sympathy. Whatsoever and howsoever the mutual sentiment, it is of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... on certain comparatively unessential outworks of that system—necessarily of its own force developed into an attack on the organization representing it, and on the economic basis of the latter. The battle against ecclesiastical abuses, again, in its turn, focussed the ever-smouldering discontent with abuses in general; and this time, not in one district only, but simultaneously over the whole of Germany. The movement inaugurated by Luther gave to the peasant groaning under the weight of baronial oppression, and the small handicraftsman ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Greece and the maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... mysterious intelligence which rules and pervades nature and which is focussed and gathered up in the mind of man and becomes conscious of itself—what becomes of it at death? Does it fall back again into nature as the wave falls back into the ocean, to be gathered up and ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Rothenstein brightly focussed him. 'Yes, I do,' he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusion—pride in ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... heaved spasmodically; his breath came in dry gasps. Howard stooped over him and called to him softly. The eyes flew open and, after a heavy gathering of the brows bespeaking the effort made, focussed ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... her face to her father frankly and said: "I realize that, father. Don't concern yourself about that. But I see Grant some way, eating the locusts and wild honey in the wilderness, calling out to a stiff-necked generation to repent. His eyes are focussed on to-morrow. He expects an immediate millennium. But he is at least looking forward, not back. And the world back of us is so full of change, that I am sure the world before us also must be full of change, and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... neglected state of the road. Fifteen men happen to know that Pete's nose is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after all the time) some tribal authority ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... beams earthward. And there, in the glare, they saw a youth speeding along on a motor-cycle. In an instant Tom grabbed up the binoculars and focussed them on the rider. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... humour, and the quaintly untrammelled American intelligence, focussed upon diverse and age-encrusted civilizations, which caught the instantaneous fancy of a vast public. It was a virgin field for the humorous observer; Europe had not yet become the playground of America. It was rather a terra incognita, regarded with a sort of reverential ignorance ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of mind will be disposed to see a sombre beauty where other eyes see nothing of the kind. And then there are all the effects of temporary conditions of the imagination and the feelings. Thus, the individual mind may be focussed in a certain way through the suggestion of another. People not seldom see a thing to be beautiful because they are told that it is so. It might not be well to inquire too curiously how many of the frequenters of the annual art exhibitions use their own eyes ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Crochard walked on until he was opposite the wreck. There he sat down, with his legs overhanging the quay. Two or three searchlights were still focussed on the ruin, but the rescue parties had been withdrawn, and only a few sentries remained. He could see how that formidable monster of a ship had been torn and twisted into an inextricable and hideous mass of iron and steel. One turret remained above the water, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... developed. His efforts culminated, after mirrors of ten, twenty, and thirty feet focal length had successively left his hands, in the gigantic forty-foot, completed August 28, 1789. It was the first reflector in which only a single mirror was employed. In the "Gregorian" form, the focussed rays are, by a second reflection from a small concave[309] mirror, thrown straight back through a central aperture in the larger one, behind which the eye-piece is fixed. The object under examination is thus seen in the natural direction. The ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... a divine Christ. To apprehend a human Christ makes a larger call on their imagination and their sympathy. Spiritual men are naturally monophysite in their thinking. They shrink from the mental effort that diphysitism demands. Their attention is focussed on Christ's superiority to human limitations. They scarcely see the miracle of the human, and thus they miss the import of the divine miracle. In the atmosphere of monophysitism mysticism thrives, but devotion decays. We may instance the almost total disappearance of the crusading spirit. ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... She whirled with the evident intention of issuing her commands direct. Kingozi's weary, slow indifference fell from him. In one bound he faced her, his chin thrust forward. His blue eyes had focussed ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... instinct for the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Psychologically it is an induced state in which the field of consciousness is greatly contracted: the whole of the self, its conative power, being sharply focussed, concentrated upon one thing. We pour ourselvea out or, as it sometimes seems to us, in towards this overpowering interest: seem to ourselves to reach it and be merged with it. Whatever the thing may be, in this ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... thoughts of self. It is free of these impediments if he shall have been waiting alone in the room. To be come in to is a thing that needs no art and induces no embarrassment. One's whole attention is focussed on the comer-in. One is the mere spectator, the passive and receptive receiver. And even supposing that the young man could come in under his hero's gaze without a thought of self, his first vision would yet lack the right intensity. A person found ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette, but let it fall immediately, smiling on her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Him alone. And then imagine the struggle required to defeat this opposing power. Think of what the ordinary man has to meet and overcome to conquer the desire for Personal Aggrandizement—and then think of what the Master had to fight, with the focussed desire of the entire Race-Thought striving to express itself through Him! Truly the Sins of the World bore down upon Him with their mighty weight. And yet He knew that He had taken upon Himself this affliction by entering upon the Life of Man. And He met it ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... emphasis fell on the mystic and uncanny powers possessed by woman. Thus it was that in ancient nations there was a deification of woman which found expression in the belief in feminine deities and the establishment of priestess cults. Not until the dawn of the Christian era was the emphasis once more focussed on woman as a thing unclean. Then, her mystic power was ascribed to demon communication, and stripped of her divinity, she became the witch to be excommunicated and put ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... forward, intent on passing beyond the railing, but each lead encountered the judge, formidable and forbidding, and had turned aside. Gradually the many pairs of eyes roving over the little group surrounding the outlaw focussed themselves on Slocum Price. It was in unconscious recognition of that moral force which was his, a tribute to the grim dignity of his unshaken courage; what he ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... now focussed their attention upon him, the fourth of the line, standing beside the tree brought into the house. Each of them in his own way had wrought out a work for civilization, using the woods as an implement. In his own case, the woods around him having disappeared, the ancestral passion had made ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations; or, to vary the simile, while the former two have captured certain outworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of the citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been focussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the critic ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... power of Simon Giguet was not the only serious event that was happening in Arcis. For the last two days the attention of the little town had been focussed on a personage just arrived, who proved to be the first Unknown of the present generation. The stranger was at this moment the subject of conversation in every household in the place. He was the beam fallen from heaven into ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... of thought as more or less imperfectly focussed pictures, all a little askew and vague as to margins and distances. In the internal world arise motives, and they pass outward through the circle of thought and are modified and directed by it into external acts. And through speech, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... waiting until, by very force of motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person. Then, according to the mandates of the Ladies' Galaxy, she hurled her bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... never forget the agony of that first meal in the great dining room. She could have dined alone in her room; but courage had demanded that she face the ordeal and have done with it. Every eye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensation to be ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... he employed focussed attention from the first on the apparent murderer rather than his victim. It appeared impossible to doubt what had happened and Pendean's death was assumed but never proved. Particulars concerning Robert Redmayne were abundant; yet, during the whole course of the official ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... picture, because it was at my back; but in the photograph it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of being burst open. The details were vague, in part—probably the picture had never been properly focussed;—but the main figures stood out with perfect clearness, and everything in the room was, allowing for the changed point of view, exactly as I remembered it in my persistent ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... none of the three uttered a word. She was trembling so that she could not speak. There were tears in the old man's eyes. To Wayland's face had come a look. It was like the blue flash of a pistol shot. The pupils of his eyes had focussed to pin points of fire. He ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... offences of the character described by the Prisons Board, both before and since the Committee commenced its sittings, has focussed public attention more strongly upon the necessity for immediate action in regard to the more adequate treatment of this class of degenerate than upon the much larger and relatively more important class of mental defective ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... blinked. Automatically he got to his feet; it might be an officer. His eyes focussed suddenly. It was Anderson's face that was between him and the light. In the greenish obscurity the skin looked chalk-white in contrast to the heavy eyebrows that met over the nose and the dark stubble ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... stable earth was in the Moslem's ideal posture—that of perpetual prostration. The Brittany coast was a long, flat, green band; the rocks of Cancale were brown, but scarcely higher in point of elevation than the sand-hills; the Normandy forests and orchards were rippling lines that focussed into the spiral of the Avranches cathedral spires: floating between the two blues, hung the aerial shapes of the Chaunsey and the Channel Islands; and nearer, along the coast-line, were the fringing edges of the shore, broken with shoals and shallows—earth's fingers, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... moment the adoring eyes of the three musicians who were "hairdressers in the daytime" focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn, distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent upon her ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... even as she set out again to grow In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam). She will love well," I said, "The flowers of the dead; Where dark Persephone the winter round, Uncomforted for home, uncomforted, Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily, With sullen pupils focussed on a dream, Stares on the stagnant stream That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell, There, there will she be found, She that is Beauty veiled from men ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focussed to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... I focussed the lens on the flush-cut surface of closely-rolled leaf, and explored every part of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort of crepuscular gloom, the world besides steeped ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Professor. He swung the searchlight in an arc and focussed it at length on something that appeared only as a field of blurred movement. He wiped the moisture from the wall before the lens, and there was revealed to us a sight that makes my heart pound even now when I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... while, in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez, to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... rapidly through the papers on the desk, as he flashed his electric bull's-eye on them, when the panel in the wall opened slowly and Del Mar stepped into the room noiselessly. To his surprise he saw a round spot of light from an electric flashlight focussed on his desk. Some one was there! He drew ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... you live, Amarilly?" she asked, her eyes sparkling as she focussed them on the family. "You needn't come for the washing the first time. I will bring it myself so I can see all your little brothers. Be sure to come to the Guild next Saturday, and then I'll have the rug for you ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... up and fixed her searching gaze on the face of her companion. Maggie was looking straight in front of her in the direction of the fire, but not with eyes focussed to see any thing so near at hand. She bore the scrutiny without flinching. As soon as Catrina's eyes were averted the mask-like ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... water, brush heaps, rocky bits of woodland, are favorite resorts. The Carolina wren decidedly objects to being stared at, and likes to dart out of sight in the midst of the underbrush in a twinkling while the opera-glasses are being focussed. To let off some of his superfluous vivacity, Nature has provided him with two safety-valves: one is his voice, another is his tail. With the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive that it seems to be a certain index ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... been focussed on the occupant of Stateroom A he would have wondered a good deal as to what had taken Justin O'Reilly on a "flying trip" west. This was O'Reilly's first year in Congress, and he'd manoeuvred to make ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all great ages, shall ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... it is upon the margin that our attention should be focussed, because it is round about the margin (wherever it is found) that the changes are taking place which really matter for society. When Mr. Mallaby-Deeley buys an estate in Covent Garden from the Duke of Bedford, the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... rivalries of the political parties grew apace; and in 1797, just before the retirement of Washington at the close of his second administration, the struggle between Democrats and Federalists became focussed on the prize of the Presidency—the "Father of his Country" having declined to stand for a third term. The candidates, we need hardly say, were John Adams, who had been Vice President in Washington's administration, and Thomas Jefferson, the former being the ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in that calm statement, those commonplace letters written ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... to the shore, and every now and then I could catch a glimpse of the water. The air was keen—not just the ordinary, unnoticed air that we breathe in and out and don't think about, but a sharp and tingling essence, as strong in the nostrils as camphor or ammonia. The sun seemed focussed upon Parnassus, and we moved along the white road in a flush of golden light. The flat fronds of the cedars swayed gently in the salty air, and for the first time in ten years, I should think, I began amusing ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... of speedy flying, Bob, idly scanning the sky through the glass, focussed upon a tiny speck in the distance. All three had clamped on their radio receivers and hung the transmitters by straps across their shoulders. Speaking into ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... handkerchief. Her eyes strayed to Pete Lowry. He was looking upward with that measuring glance which belongs to his profession, estimating the length of time the light would be suitable for the scene he had focussed. She followed his glance to where the shadow of the kitchen had crept closer to the bench. Jean was not stupid, and she had passed through the various stages of the kodak fever; she guessed what was in the mind of the operator, and when she ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... keener, because we recognise that the Poet never thought about us at all. He excites our sympathies by his own intuitions into the clashing ideas, which he represents in the tragedy of a passionately loving and a jealous nature. We learn truths, not of fact, but of life, focussed and arranged as an artist arranges them, and permeated with that strange sense of wonder which only Life can give. We feel the suggestion of an inevitable dim something beyond, to explain the unexplainable, the tragedy of character, ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... more solitary we are, the larger the gifts of His companionship. Our need is the measure of His prayer. 'Satan hath desired to have you, but thou, Peter, dost stand in the very focus of the danger, and so on thee are focussed, too, the rays of My love and care.' Be sure, dear friends, that it is always so for us, and that when you want Christ most, Christ is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
