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Ocular   Listen
noun
Ocular  n.  (Opt.) The eyepiece of an optical instrument, as of a telescope or microscope.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ocular" Quotes from Famous Books



... regard her sternly. It was at some little distance, within the shade cast by the lofty bedstead. Still she could distinctly discern it. There was no ocular deception; it was attired in the costume Sir Piers was wont to wear—a hunting dress. All that her son had told her rushed to her recollection. The phantom advanced. Its countenance was pale, and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions consisted of the ocular spectra of their brain and the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... tell me the reason of thy recovery!" So he told him all that he had seen, and Shehriyar said, "I must see this with my own eyes." "Then," replied Shahzeman, "feign to go forth to hunt and hide thyself in my lodging and thou shalt see all this and have ocular proof of the truth." So Shehriyar ordered his attendants to prepare to set out at once; whereupon the troops encamped without the city and he himself went forth with them and sat in his pavilion, bidding his servants admit no one. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is conducted through a narrow canal, so congested with boats that there are innumerable delays. Even when the boats reach the waters of the bay, the remaining channel is shallow for lack of dredging, and launch-progress is very slow. We had ocular proof of this latter evil; but we at last ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... result of stimulations coming from remote parts of the organism, may be classed the ocular impressions which we receive in indirect vision. When the eye is not fixed on an object, the impression, involving the activity of some-peripheral region of the retina, is comparatively indistinct. This will be much more the case when the object lies at a distance for which the eye is ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... of a sufficient quantity of nerve tonic, Mr. Gibney suddenly recollected that he had to go over to Market Street and redeem the sextant which he had pawned several days before. And since McGuffey knew, from ocular evidence, that Mr. Gibney was "flush," he decided to accompany the mate and preserve him from temptation. There was safety in numbers, he reasoned. Captain Scraggs said he thought he'd go back to the Maggie. He had forgotten to lock the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... the difficult task of substituting manners of my own invention, instead of the genuine costume of the East, almost every traveller I met who had extended his route beyond what was anciently called "The Grand Tour," had acquired a right, by ocular inspection, to chastise me for my presumption. Every member of the Travellers' Club who could pretend to have thrown his shoe over Edom was, by having done so, constituted my lawful critic and corrector. It occurred, therefore, that where the author of Anastasius, as well as he ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... next. Our recent experiences had been of such a character as to convince us that our prospects of reaching Rio before our stock of provisions should be consumed—if ever—were exceedingly slight. On the other hand, we had already had ocular demonstration of the fact that we were not far from the track of south-bound craft; we therefore eventually arrived unanimously at the conclusion that, taking all things into consideration, the best thing we could do was to cruise to the northward, in the hope ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... whiskey-bottles, and superannuated eggs. The Eye-witness closed the window with an undignified bang, and retired into the depths of his chamber, where he remained until after the election. Owing to a dimness of vision, resulting from the eggs-cruciating condition of his ocular organs, the occupation of the Eye-witness was from that moment gone. And to this fact must be attributed his inability to state, with any certainty, whether the Right Party has succeeded in putting the Right Man in the Right Place; but ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various

... in man, plainly throws the blood into the heart, and the heart in its turn conspicuously transmits it by a pipe or artery, or vessel analogous to an artery; these are facts which are confirmed by simple ocular experiment. I have seen, farther, that the same thing ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... Darwin? And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy, which he thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his other studies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like obtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re- oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. And shall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... a woman who appeared, a sharp featured, well-dressed matron with a challenging eye. Perhaps no stranger, or person out of the exclusive circle that she assumed to represent ever approached her without being met with the ocular ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... is this!" continued Dudley, throwing up the robe of the captive, and giving his companions the ocular evidence which had so satisfactorily removed all his own doubts. "Though the color of the skin may not be proof positive, like that named by our neighbor Ergot, it is still something, in helping a man of little learning to make up an opinion ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... accented by sculpture;' on the other hand, in solid colored statues,—Dresden china figures, for example,—we have pretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in my Fifth Lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and of color only;—a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it becomes a question in ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... quote from a book or other document, have the book on the table beside you; its appearance will add substance to your point, and the audience will have ocular proof ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... spinous processes" (p. 370). In the cervical vertebrae the transverse processes represent the ribs. The skull consists of four vertebrae, the occipital, the parietal, the frontal and the nasal, or, named after the sense with which each is associated, the auditory, the lingual, the ocular and the olfactory. The "bodies" of these vertebrae are the body of the occipital (basioccipital), the two bodies of the sphenoid (basi- and pre-sphenoid), and the vomer. The transverse processes of each are the condyles of the occipitals (exoccipitals), ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... furnish ocular evidence of the value of this line of verification, I have had the following series of drawings prepared. Another and equally striking series might be made of the products of artificial selection in the case of plants; but it seems to me that ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... of color, and even the slaves, have on numerous occasions given ocular demonstration of their attachment to this country. Large numbers of them were distinguished for their patient endurance, their ardent devotion, and their valorous conduct during our revolutionary struggle. In the last war, they signalized themselves in a manner which extorted the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... what a comical account he had written of it to her mother, such, as Amy told him, deserved to be published in a book of good advice to young ladies, to show what they might come to if they behaved well. However, she was glad to have ocular demonstration of the success of the cookery, which she had feared might turn out uneatable; and her gentle feelings towards Philip were touched, by seeing one wont to be full of independence and self-assertion, now meek and helpless, requiring to be lifted, and propped up with pillows, and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true, constituted the greatest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... solar cedar jugular scholar calendar secular dollar grammar tabular poplar pillar sugar jocular globular mortar lunar vulgar popular insular Templar ocular muscular nectar similar tubular altar ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... for himself from which to construct. The essential difference between these two forms lies in the angularity of the latter. It would be very difficult to describe accurately the several points of deviation unless the reader could handle the specimens for himself and have ocular demonstration; the upper portion from the curve of the centre bouts is increased, and, in consequence, the sound-holes are placed slightly lower than in the Stradivari model. Bergonzi was peculiar in this arrangement, and he seldom ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... twig to the branch, from the branch to the bough and from the bough, by a no less angular path, to go back home. It is useless to rely upon sight as a guide on this long and erratic journey. The Processionary, it is true, has five ocular specks on either side of his head, but they are so infinitesimal, so difficult to make out through the magnifying-glass, that we cannot attribute to them any great power of vision. Besides, what ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... and become incorruptible; none as to what means above or below, up or down, as to where God is and where he is not, where his right hand, where before and where behind him; or as to whether the world is full of his glory. No such questions were asked, and there was the ocular demonstration of immortality, tangible and intelligible to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... reiterate: you cannot mingle and confuse the various modes of dynamic love. If you try, you produce horrors. You cannot plant the heart below the diaphragm or put an ocular eye in the navel. No more can you transfer parent love into friend love or adult love. Parent love is established at the great primary centers, where man is father and child, playmate and brother, but where he cannot be ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... Winterfield's door. For Mrs Winterfield herself, this desolation had, I think, a certain melancholy attraction. It suited her tone of mind and her religious views that she should be thus daily reminded that things of this world were passing away and going to destruction. She liked to have ocular proof that grass was growing in the highways under mortal feet, and that it was no longer worth man's while to renew human flags in human streets. She was drawing near to the pavements which would ever be trodden by myriads of ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... might be added in the case of this particular axiom (for the assertion would not be true of all axioms), that the evidence of it from actual ocular inspection is not only unnecessary, but unattainable. What says the axiom? That two straight lines can not inclose a space; that after having once intersected, if they are prolonged to infinity they do not meet, but continue to diverge from one another. How can this, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... ideas; and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... the male. In the inheritance of colour-blindness (p. 117) we have already discussed an instance in which the defect is rare, though not {176} unknown, in the female. Sex-limited inheritance of a similar nature is known for one or two ocular defects, and for several diseases of the nervous system. In the peculiarly male disease known as haemophilia the blood refuses to clot when shed, and there is nothing to prevent great loss from even a superficial scratch. In its general ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... deer in the Hudson River itself, or a moose in a Maine village is a signal, not for a wild chase and cruel slaughter, but for a general effort to save the animal from being hurt, or killed. I know this through ocular proof, at least half a dozen lost and bewildered deer having been carefully driven into yards, or barns, and humanely kept and cared for until they could be shipped to us. Several have been caught while swimming in the Hudson, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... answered.—"He that knoweth, but answereth not a question from temptation, anger or fear, casteth upon himself a thousand nooses of Varuna. And the person who, cited as a witness with respect to any matter of ocular or auricular knowledge, speaketh carelessly, casteth a thousand nooses of Varuna upon his own person. On the completion of one full year, one such noose is loosened. Therefore, he that knoweth, should speak the truth without concealment. If ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... gardener; appearing in another form, and not known by the two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him there; not known by His most intimate apostles on the borders of the Sea of Galilee; and presently, out of these vague beginnings, the recognitions getting asserted, then the ocular demonstrations, the final commissions, the ascension; one hardly knows which of the two to call the most evident here, the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators, or the plainness with which they themselves really say to us Behold a ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who could not help ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... The testimony of Funes is as follows: 'A/ juicio de testigo ocular no es ma/s admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes' ('Historia Civil del Paraguay', book ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... a question of time and money, the facilities being ample, and the inducements abundant. Intelligently and successfully to consummate such a purpose is an education in itself. The tourist will find all previous study enhanced in value by ocular demonstration, which imparts life and warmth to the cold facts of the chroniclers, besides which a vast store-house of positive information is created which time cannot exhaust. Perhaps the majority of travelers see only that which comes clearly before them; but this they do most faithfully, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... morning it appeared to me that you did not realize the extent to which it is possible to conceal identity under suitable conditions of light. So I arranged, with Polton's rather reluctant assistance, to give you ocular evidence. The conditions are not favourable—which makes the demonstration more convincing. This is a very well-lighted room and Polton is a very poor actor; in spite of which it has been possible for you to sit opposite him for several minutes ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... the principle of a surgeon cutting off your head, to get a good chance to tie a small artery according to system; or would show you a roundabout way of half a dozen miles to accomplish what the same number of rods would do. Had we not ocular demonstration of the fact, we could not suppose so many variations for the same end could be invented. But if we reward ingenuity, it will be stimulated to great exertions. Perhaps if we describe the merits of one or two of this class, the utility of this principle ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... A written description can never convey so true an idea of anything, as an ocular inspection. I will therefore say that it will afford me much pleasure to show any member of the profession the apparatus I am about to ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig

... firm grip upon actuality. The only drawback is that we have conclusively proved by ocular demonstration that there are no water channels ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... capital sets toward the most profitable trades, and that it rapidly leaves the less profitable and non-paying trades. But in ordinary countries this is a slow process, and some persons, who want to have ocular demonstrations of abstract truths, have been inclined to doubt it because they could not see it. The process would be visible enough if you could only see the books of the bill-brokers and the bankers. If the iron-trade ceases to be as profitable as usual, less iron is sold; the fewer the sales ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... occurrence to most working botanists, having to elaborate collections from countries not so well explored as Europe—when the forms in question, or one of the two, are as yet unnamed? Does he introduce as a new species every form which he cannot connect by ocular proof with a near relative, from which it differs only in particulars which he sees are inconstant in better known species of the same group? We suppose not. But, if he does, little improvement for the future upon the state of things revealed in the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... Cochran and Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprise them of their fare? As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned, I will. It is needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies. Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... spring of 1690 Frontenac dispatched a force of a hundred and fifty men to reinforce the garrison at Michilimackinac. On their way westward these troops encountered a band of Iroquois and fortunately killed a number of them. The scalps were an ocular proof of success; and Perrot, who was of the party, knew how to turn the victory to its best use by encouraging the Ottawas to torture an Iroquois prisoner. The breach thus made between the Ottawas ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... proportion of prisoners to (British) casualties increases: his casualties are growing, his resistance becoming less effective: the wearing-out process tells. Mark the concluding phases of the Somme battle. The PRISONERS line is nearer to that of casualties. The Tank has been introduced, and here is ocular evidence of its effectiveness. More tanks is one of ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... validity in the latest old age of the fortunate parties. Ballanche believed, after the death of his mother, that he saw her, several successive mornings, enter his room, and ask him how he had passed the night. This ocular illusion affords us an affecting glimpse of his heart. He wrote to his friend, "Antiquity confides its weariness and grief to us, without doubt, to beguile us from our own." "Had Orpheus never met Eurydice, his existence would have remained incomplete; and, in place of the cruel ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in the laws, they bring such a case ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... write again, "Coleridge is dead," at the end of a line, and tamely come in with "to his friends" at the beginning of another. Love is quicker, and fear from love, than the transition ocular from Line ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... subscriptions through both Volumes, evident by ocular inspection above the ordinarie custome of most famous Notars, delivers the same from all ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... the ocular orb, on which the orb depends, which is situated to the front of the black iris and has ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... the State of New York, to prevent sending provisions to the enemy. The accounts I have recently received on that subject from the States of Jersey and Connecticut, give me more pain than I can express. They are positive, and from people who had ocular demonstration; they prove, that the enemy's fleet could not have quitted New York for some time, if they had not received immense quantities of provisions, living and dead. This commerce is carried on regularly and openly, as if it were peace, or as if the cattle were for your army. Your ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... satisfied herself, by ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil, had neither horn, hoof, nor tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length commenced her story, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... them to the Indian camp, and arrived at dawn of day. I met with a very friendly reception, and had the good fortune to prevail upon the Indians to deliver me their furs upon the spot, which formed a very heavy load for both myself and men. We met our opponents in returning; but though they had ocular proof of my success, they nevertheless ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... anchorage. This money was sent to Ancon, on the pretence of placing it in safety from any attack by the Spanish forces, but possibly to secure it for the further purposes of the Protector. The squadron having thus ocular demonstration that its arrears could be paid, but were not, both officers and men refused longer to continue in a service which had brought ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... snug little party, consisting of Maria Lobbs and her cousin Kate, and three or four romping, good-humoured, rosy-cheeked girls. Nathaniel Pipkin had ocular demonstration of the fact, that the rumours of old Lobbs's treasures were not exaggerated. There were the real solid silver teapot, cream-ewer, and sugar-basin, on the table, and real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... They not only have appeared to me, but were as real to my ocular vision as any other external physical object which I saw with ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... class of omens we are considering. The monsters guarding the approaches to temples and palaces[658] were but one form which this popular belief assumed, and when a colt was observed to have a lion's or a dog's claw, an ocular demonstration was afforded which at once strengthened and served to maintain a belief that at bottom is naught but a crude and primitive form of a theory of evolution. In a dim way man always felt the unity of the animal ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... ne'er a drap among the whole o' yees?" Receiving an answer in the negative, he turned about with a Kilkenny, "It don't signify," and toddled for the door, which he left open, to await Tommy's return. Redman knew Daley's propensity too well, and having ocular proof that he had wet t'other eye until it required more than ordinary effort to make either one stay open, he declined ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... Parallax the same morning was creditable to his ingenuity. Nothing better, perhaps, was ever devised to deceive people, apparently by ocular evidence, into the belief that the earth is flat—nor is there any clearer evidence of the largeness of the earth's globe compared with our ordinary measures. On the Hoe, some ninety or a hundred feet above the sea-level, he had a mirror suspended in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... parts grayish tawny; ocular stripe pale; skull, rostrum, nasals, and upper incisors ...
— The Baculum in the Chipmunks of Western North America • John A. White

... any proof of this? is there nothing remaining to give ocular demonstration of these facts?" ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... ocular (eye) muscles.—The vision becomes double, the eyelids do not act normally, may droop. The eye may not move in every direction as ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... her limbs, and her mature age; at the same time pinching her tender flesh, by way of proving the truth of his assertions, till the poor creature shrieked out with agony. He then tore down her eye-lids, to exhibit the healthiness of her eye-balls; and wrenched open her mouth, to prove, by ocular demonstration, that he practised no deception in speaking of her age. The old woman herself examined her all the time, and haggled, as to the price, like a butcher when purchasing an ox in the cattle market. As I witnessed all this, my heart sickened, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... Russian law divorce was only obtainable if ocular evidence of adultery was forthcoming, and a great deal of perjury was usually ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy

... derived from Harvey: following by ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment of 'appearance' for the moment of 'formation' he imagined ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... vague notion that it was like a sort of religious transformation-scene, millions of miles away, up somewhere in the sky. He, on the contrary, knew that the spirit-world was all around him, because he had had ocular as well as intuitive ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... excepting one. It was old Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... imagery was from the worlds which no mortals can see but with the vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty—so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... so well as the Secretary, who opens and reads the letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety. Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven churches to be erected with half-crowns, forty-two parsonage houses to be repaired with shillings, seven-and-twenty organs to be built with halfpence, twelve hundred children ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... one scrap of science I've evidence ocular. A heart of one chamber they call unilocular, And in a sharp frost, or when snow-flakes fall floccular, Your wise man of old wrapp'd himself in a Roquelaure, Which was called a Wrap-rascal when folks would be jocular. And shell-fish, the small, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Spanish testimonies," says Adair, "for time and ocular proof have convinced us of the labored falsehood of almost all ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... feet hanging out, as the bed is made too short for her upon principle. Round her waist she occasionally wears a band with iron points turning inwards; on her breast a cross with nails, of which the points enter the flesh, of the truth of which I had melancholy ocular demonstration. Then, after having scourged herself with a whip covered with iron nails, she lies down for a few hours on the wooden bars, and rises at four o'clock. All these instruments of discipline, which each nun keeps in a little box beside her bed, look as if ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... consisted of fern roots and kumara; fish they never saw, and the only flesh he then partook of was human. But I will no longer dwell on this humiliating subject. Most white men who have visited the island have been sceptical on this point; I myself was before I had "ocular proof." Consequently I availed myself of the first opportunity to convince myself of the fact. I have reflected upon the subject, and am thoroughly satisfied that nothing will cure the natives of this dreadful propensity but ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one of the numerous pictures ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... superlative degree of the impossible, we said "I can no more do it than I can fly." But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be daunted by a priori demonstrations of impossibility. One day there came the rumour that the thing had been achieved, followed soon by ocular demonstration; and now we rub shoulders every day with men who have outsoared the eagle, and—alas!—carried death and destruction into the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... etc. But this is a false charge. On the contrary they are very actively useful creatures, and the humane naturalist, Mr. Waterton, says that "if this useful bird caught his food by day instead of hunting it by night, mankind would have ocular demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice, and it would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what the ibis was with the Egyptians." The ibis is a bird that was found so useful in destroying locusts and serpents ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... investigation, which lasted for a long time—a very long time; for the doctor analyzed and explained each symptom, and the more studious of the assistants wished to join practice to theory, and have an ocular assurance of the state of the patient. As a consequence of this cruel scene, Jeanne experienced an emotion so violent that she had a severe nervous attack, for which Dr. Griffon gave an additional prescription. The visit was continued. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... Indeed, we had ocular proof of their dangerous position, for there were seven or eight wrecks upon them, and the small islands of sand were crowded with masts, spars, chests, interspersed with human bones bleaching in the powerful sun. On one of the islands we discovered ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... light, the over-small type common in school-books, the frequent use of the blackboard, on which the teacher is not always careful to make the size of the characters he traces proportionate to the distance at which they have to be read, are so many causes of ocular fatigue. The visual keenness of a given eye, says Doctor Leprince, decreases rapidly when the intensity of the light falls below a certain limit. The pupil, working with insufficient light, repairs the defective keenness of which this is the cause, by increasing the visual angle under which the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... that if this affair concerned you, he would not listen to it. I attempted to remonstrate upon this injustice, when he passionately broke forth into new and horrible charges against you, affirming that he had them from authority as indisputable as ocular demonstration. I was then certain of ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... I am romancing when I attribute this virtue to ocular demonstration—don't imagine that that which enters the eye does not sometimes penetrate to the mind and feelings. I will give you an instance to the contrary. I remember within these walls seeing two gentlemen who evidently, from their remarks, were very good judges ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... than those of which another source is specified I have to thank Miss M. O'Shea, on whom has occasionally fallen the difficult task of giving ocular form to the mental visions of one who happens to be no draughtsman. For the rest I make acknowledgment to those books from which the illustrations have been directly derived for my own purposes, without reference to more ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceiving him—though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked that he can hardly conceive it credible—is a kind of hope. He furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it from the unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough. And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... was wrong there, as it has been on some other questions. Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, but dead he was not; and of that we soon had ocular proof. One morning in 1812, an amateur surprised us with the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brushing with hasty steps the dews away to meet the postman by the conduit side. Even that was something: how much more, to hear that he ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... presence, and I thought it a great height to come to this knowledge; but I assure you I had more to do to unlearn this principle than ever I had to learn it."[50] He tries to call his hearers away from "the childish apprehensions" that heaven is a place of "visible and ocular glories," or that "it shall be only hereafter," or that its glory "consists in Thrones, and Crowns, and Scepters, in Music, Harps and Vyols, and such like carnal ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... nature that Natt should resist the temptation to show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he could be if he liked. Natt never ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... forth as a necke, is supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along his backe seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too neare it, hath already beene too dearely payd for, as ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... grandeur of a divine logic. According to the Seer, the inhabitants of Jupiter will not cultivate the sciences, which they call darkness; those of Mercury abhor the expression of ideas by speech, which seems to them too material,—their language is ocular; those of Saturn are continually tempted by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as six-year-old children, their voices issue from the abdomen, on which they crawl; those of Venus are gigantic in height, but stupid, and live by robbery,—although a part ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... of those, whose successive exertions have prepared and completed it, is the more striking, when we consider that the hydrography of an unknown country is the most important step to a correct knowledge of its geography, and that in barbarous Africa, nothing short of the ocular inquiries of educated men, is sufficient to procure the requisite facts, and yet it is not a little extraordinary, that the termination of the Quorra or Niger has been discovered by two men, who, in point of scientific knowledge, education, or literary acquirements, stand ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... inquiries after the monsters said to have been seen in the northern sea; but though I conversed with several captains, I could not meet with one who had ever heard any traditional description of them, much less had any ocular demonstration of their existence. Till the fact is better ascertained, I should think the account of them ought to be torn out of our ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... fashion of that easy-going and democratic community, but he feared to make the girl at his side conspicuous; so he contented himself by uncovering gravely to the women and waving debonairly to the men. This constituting ocular evidence that he was not a ghost or a man who bore a striking physical resemblance to one they mourned as dead, the men so saluted ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... encouraged not the notion, or I should have been apt to think, that the young ladies and Mr. Lovelace were of longer acquaintance than of yesterday. For he, by stealth as it were, cast glances sometimes at them, when they returned; and, on my ocular notice, their eyes fell, as I may say, under my eye, as if they ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... bound to solve riddles, but to find to whom pertained a certain right of inheritance. The birth of the child had been sworn to by the nurse, as well as its death, and the final placing of it in the coffin; and now the court had, as it were, ocular demonstration of these facts by the body having been seen by their own commissioner, placed on the breast of the mother in that very peculiar way described by Mrs. Temple. All claim on the part of the girl was thus virtually excluded, for the proceedings which took place that evening ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the torn pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket—ocular evidence of the success of her mission. She reminded him of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous flaunting life in her than in that other girl of the working class whom he had seen twice. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... is needless to premise that my table is large enough to hold the ladies: of this they had ocular demonstration yesterday. To say how it is usually covered is rather more essential, and this shall be ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... cannot be estimated as under other skies. The far-off mountains are brought near and made to glow in a halo of mellow light. Manifold ocular illusions appear in the mirage and deceive the uninitiated. An indefinable dreamy something steals over the ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... their friend, "it can boast of three things—its heroic defence against the Spaniards, of which I will give you an account by-and-by as we walk round the ramparts; of its cleanliness, of which you have ocular proof; and of the vast amount of excellent cheese which it exports; indeed, it is said to do more business in cheese than any other town in the world. There are also two or three quaint and curious buildings which are worthy of ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... tower itself stood Etienne de Malville, eager to see the end of his hated rival, and to make sure, by ocular evidence, of his death. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to wear one dress: her father's worth millions, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows she can have a dozen new dresses for every day of the year. But we poor folks have got to give ocular demonstration of our ability to have new dresses, or nobody will ever believe that we can. Everybody knows that I wear that white muslin because I can't afford any other, I do wish I could have a new dress for Mrs. Alderson's: it will be a dreadfully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... the common stories of phantoms by attributing them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some little material for it; and in my case there was absolutely none—no waving sheet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... course, always to get the weather-gage of your patient. I mean, to place him so that the light falls on his face and not on yours. It is a kind of, ocular duel that is about to take place between you; you are going to look through his features into his pulmonary and hepatic and other internal machinery, and he is going to look into yours quite as sharply to see what you think about his probabilities ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was wrung from me by a sudden conviction ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... the prominent results already obtained in past years, in the dyeing department of the Yorkshire College, where it has been our custom to expose to light and other influences the patterns dyed by our students. Further, I wish to give you an ocular demonstration of the action of light or dyed colors, by means of these silk, wool, and cotton patterns, portions of which have been exposed for 34 days and nights on the sea coast near Bombay, during the month of February of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... Macquarie to lose no time in fitting out a second expedition, which should have the elucidation of this point for its principal object. This expedition was also entrusted to my direction. I had scarcely a doubt of ultimate success, and set out with a confidence which nothing short of ocular demonstration could destroy. The result of our voyage down the Macquarie River, and the conjectures which naturally arose in my mind founded upon observations of its apparent termination, together with our subsequent journey to the east coast, will ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... be done? If a continuous field of ice lay 150 miles off the southern coast of Spitzbergen, what would be the chance of getting to the land by going further north? Now that we had received ocular proof of the veracity of the Hammerfest skipper in this first particular, was it likely that we should have the luck to find the remainder of his story untrue? According to the track he had jotted down for me on the chart, the ice ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... power, is always agreeable. 2. When it is excited into such successive actions, as relieve each other; as when a limb has been long exerted in one direction, by stretching it in another; as described in Zoonomia, Sect. XL. 6. on ocular spectra. 3. And lastly by the associations of its parts with some agreeable sentiments or tastes, as of sublimity, beauty, utility, novelty; and the objects suggesting other sentiments, which have lately been termed picturesque as mentioned in the note to Canto III, l. 230 of this work. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... necessary. I had imagined, that as you must have seen the Dona with Mr. Smith, any communication from me on the subject must be superfluous. And now that I have taken up my pen in compliance with your wish, what can I tell you that you have not perhaps conveyed to yourself by ocular inspection, and better ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... a strong, opaque, fibrous membrane, which, in a great measure, maintains the form of the eyeball and protects the more delicate structures within it. Its interior portion, which is covered by the ocular conjunctiva, is commonly known as the "white of the eye." In form it is bell-shaped, and the optic nerve pierces it behind like a handle, the perforation being a little to its inner side. In front, the rim of the bell becomes continuous with the cornea. The outer surface of the membrane ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... enjoys the best of opportunities for learning Botany, both analytically and synthetically. A series of models in wax would make the ocular study of botany possible throughout the year. The taste for wax flowers is becoming widely extended, and high prices are brought by the finest specimens of the art. Humanity should heartily welcome an employment which enables ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... surface; the mind sees at the same instant many other co-existent but unapparent facts—it reinstates in their due order these unapparent facts. Were it not for this mental vision supplying the deficiencies of ocular vision, the coloured surface would be an enigma. But the suggestion of Sense rapidly recalls the experiences previously associated with the object. The apparent facts disclose ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... gossip a private chapter of family history. So here Sir John Chillington has remained since his death, and here he will stay till the last of the twenty years has become a thing of the past. Two or three times every year Mr. Winter, Sir Mark's lawyer, comes over to Deepley Walls to satisfy himself by ocular proof that Sir John's instructions are being duly carried out. This he has a legal right to do in the interests of his client. Sometimes he is conducted to this room by Lady Chillington, sometimes by me; but even in his case her ladyship will not relax her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable distresses—one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me that ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... qua author, is essentially a gossip; an oral, ocular, imaginative, common-place book: a pot pourri mixed from the hortus siccus of education, and the greener garden of internal thought that springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain; a compound of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... it may. He does not care what it ends in. One of Fred's theories is, that the imagination, by constant and intense exercise, may so project the image it conceives, as to make it the subject of ocular contemplation and imitation. Why not? All objects of sight are painted on a flat surface, and it is by experience, comparison, nay, in some measure by the will, that we get our ideas of their shape ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... lies therein that they promote the knowledge of things as they really are, and this is also the nature of whatever promotes knowledge and the means thereof. Nor is it even true that the mirror manifests the face. The mirror is only the cause of a certain irregularity, viz. the reversion of the ocular rays of light, and to this irregularity there is due the appearance of the face within the mirror; but the manifesting agent is the light only. And it is evident that the ahamkra is not capable of producing ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... has been so recently concluded that it is not necessary to enter at any length into a consideration of the Japanese Army. The history of that war gave ocular demonstration to the European nations, however incredulous they may previously have been on the subject, that Japan was in fact a great military Power. In the course of that war she put in the field somewhere about 700,000 men, conveyed them across the sea to a ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... gratifying and cheering to me, namely, the ocular proof which I possessed that the books which I had disposed of were read, and with attention, by those to whom I sold them; and that many others participated in their benefit. In the streets of Aranjuez, and beneath the mighty ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... distinctness of their images those which come in later life. It shows itself, too, in the frequency with which, even when awake, the active organs perceive unreal sounds, or in the dark, at night, conjure up ocular spectra; and then not merely colours, but distinct shapes, which pass in long procession before the eyes. This power fades away with advancing life; except under some conditions of disease, the occasional appearance of luminous objects in the ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... I have asked myself a hundred times; but, Charles Holland, the judgment, the feelings, and all the prejudices, natural and acquired, must succumb to actual ocular demonstration. Listen to me, and do not interrupt me. You shall know all, and you shall ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... any,' says the Doc. 'All I should do would only be to increase his nerve supply. In time I could remedy his ocular defecks, too,' says he. He allows that if we will give him time, he can make Pinto's eyes straighten out so's he'll look like a new rockin' horse Christmas mornin' at a church festerval. Incidentally he suggests that we get ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... the ruler of the Madras, addressed Shalya, saying, "That which Vasudeva and Arjuna are is well-known to me. The skill of Saurin in the management of cars, and the might and the high weapons of Arjuna, the son of Pandu are well known to me at this hour. Thou however, O Shalya, hast no ocular proof of those matters. I shall fearlessly fight with the two Krishnas, those two foremost of all wielders of weapons. The curse, however, of Rama that best of regenerate persons, paineth me greatly today. I dwelt, in the disguise of a Brahmana, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... he could settle all the disputes instantly, and dazzle the whole world into the bargain by simply delivering a lecture, say, before the Royal Society, on the existence of a world of four dimensions, and then proving by ocular demonstration that it does exist; but what would happen ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... as could be judged from clinical symptoms, indirect fractures of the base such as we are accustomed to meet in civil practice in connection with fractures of the vault were decidedly rare, and, as has already been mentioned, ocular evidence of extensive fissures extending from perforating wounds of the vertex was wanting, except in the extreme cases classed under heading I. For these reasons I am inclined to ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... is supposed to be about an ell long, with a white ring as it were of scales about it. The scales along his backe, seeme to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red: for I speak but of no nearer description than a reasonable ocular distance; for coming too neare, it hath already been too dearely paid for, as you shall heare hereafter. It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be deceved, for some suppose that serpents have no feete, but glide along upon certain ribbes and scales, which both defend ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley

... thought we could distinguish the cabins and barracoons of King Dingo Bingo, peeping out from among the green trees. The barque looked no larger than a little boat, and although she appeared very near the river's mouth, that was also an ocular deception, for we knew that she was more ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... been a boat or the shadow of a boat, he could not be sure. In fact, there were moments when he doubted whether it was not some ocular illusion, brought about by too ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... odious, but absurd, and impossible to gratify; since, according to the notions and experience I had of things, it was not in nature to force such immense disproportions. Mrs. Cole only smiled at my ignorance, and said nothing towards my undeception, which was not affected but by ocular demonstration, some months after, which a most singular accident furnished me, and which I will here set down, that I may not return again to so ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... where your own face is at? You don't need no mirror to eat with, do you? Well, it's the same way with shavin'. But if you got to have ocular evidence, just hang out over the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... Astraea; it has done more—it has given us the probable prospect of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to ocular demonstration." ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge



Words linked to "Ocular" :   sight, eye, reticle, seeable, reticule, opera glasses, sights, binoculars, eyepiece, optic, field glasses, lens, lense, optical



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