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More "Obtuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask me to be his wife as soon as it was proper to do so. This was sooner than any steward or missions mother in his church would have suspected. For, once a man is in love, his sense of propriety becomes naively obtuse and primitive. ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... of the matter was that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to pure reason when quarrelling ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... resonance; the parchment may be tightened or slackened by means of a series of screws disposed round the circumference of the hoop. Attached to the body, which has no back, is a long neck, terminating in a flat head acting as a peg-box and bent back slightly at an obtuse angle from the neck. There are five, six or nine strings to the banjo; they are fastened to a tail-piece as in the violin, pass over a low bridge, on the body, and are strained over the nut or ridge at the end of the neck, where they are threaded through holes and wound round the tuning-pegs fixed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... spent some minutes in debating whether the thief had entered by the window or the door. Having at last decided for the door, he turned to me and asked if there was anybody I suspected. When I answered 'no,' I saw him throw a side-glance at Rashid, as if he thought him fortunate in having so obtuse a master. As he was departing, Rashid, at my command, gave him a silver coin, for which he kissed my hand ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... looked indignant and muttered something about "professions of regard," and "affectionate epistles," etc.; but it was all lost upon the obtuse man who talked on, about what especially concerned him, and then went ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... abruptly; and once more they went on till all at once, after leaving candle after candle burning, they reached a part where the main lode seemed to have suddenly broken up into half-a-dozen, each running in a different direction, and spreading widely, the two outer going off at very obtuse angles. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show to the most obtuse mind the purpose to which the office of Maitre Desroches devoted this register, the first sixty pages of which were filled with reports of fictitious cases. On the first page appeared as follows, in the legal spelling of the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... similar joint, but at an obtuse angle. An example of its use is in fixing boarding around an octagonal ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... but it is fast giving way to newer and more popular varieties. The canes are vigorous, stocky, and tall; spines light-red, numerous, and rather strong. Winter protection is always needed. The berries are large and very obtuse, conical, dark-red, large-grained, and covered with a thick bloom, very juicy, and exceedingly soft—too much so for market purposes. They made a dainty dish for home use, however, and our grandmothers, when maidens, gathered them in the lengthening ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... rather kennel, appropriated to the lodging of the muleteer, was a triangular garret already described, formed by the ceiling of the upper story and the roof of the house, which rose in an obtuse angle above it. Its greatest elevation was about six feet, and that only in the centre, whence the tiles slanted downwards on either side to the beams by which the floor was supported. The entrance was by a step-ladder, and through a trap-door, against which, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... and by the whiche she becomed spotted and cancred, obtuse, rude et ygnorante, et pourquoy elle deuient ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... zeal, my rustic Muse Feels fluttering fain to tell her news, And paint her simple, lowly views With all her art, And, though in genius but obtuse, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... loggerheaded, inapt, doltish, beetle-headed, blockish, sluggish; apathetic, unfeeling, insensate, callous; blunt, obtuse, dulled, pointless; dim, faint; tedious, uninteresting, prosaic, stupid, wearisome, jejune, depressing; lifeless, torpid, slow, inactive; matte, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... experience of being asked about what I knew by those who knew nothing on the subject, and if the legal mind was a little more obtuse than the civil, well, it was only the choice between a grey donkey and ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... of the truth, but the obtuse George saw nothing. "Do you know that you are going to have the Wisharts for neighbours for a couple of months yet? Old Wishart has taken Glenavelin from the end ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... there is a regular sitting up at night, a grand debauch of talk on politics, patent-rights, improved agricultural implements and other themes, the whole interspersed with original jokes. The old farmer is obtuse about jokes— ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... to 30 cm. long; resin-ducts external, the hypoderm often in large masses, some or all of the endoderm cells with thick outer walls. Cones from 10 to 17 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conic; apophyses lustrous brown-ochre or fuscous brown, elevated into thick, often reflexed, beaks with obtuse mutic umbos; seeds with large nuts and adnate striated dark gray or fuscous ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... few Years more, will have the Complexion of a Small-coal Man's Saturday Shirt. I have lost one Tooth and a half on the left Side, and two and a half precisely on the right; and I have two more that stand somewhat out of their Ranks. My Legs and Thighs, in the first place, compose an obtuse Angle, then a right one, and lastly an acute. My Thighs and Body make another; and my Head, leaning perpetually over my Belly, I fancy makes me not very unlike the Letter Z. My Arms are shortened, as well as my Legs; and my Fingers as well as my Arms. In short, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... He was obtuse for the instant in his worriment, and did not catch the subtle shade of bitterness ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... allow of pressing, and a turn round will release it, leaving the stud in position; if on the other hand the point is too prolonged, rough and sharp, the stud will probably be pulled off again. It will thus be perceptible that the best shape will be rather obtuse but very smooth. When the stud is in position and the glue setting or chilling, an additional pressure with a small rod of wood or hard material will drive the glue out from the edges and the work ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... man, in the individual or in the aggregate, has been so fashioned that he goes through life blissfully obtuse to the deeper subtleties of his womankind, so the men of Forty Mile failed to divine the inner deviltry of Joy Molineau. They confessed, afterward, that they had failed to appreciate this dark-eyed daughter of the aurora, whose father ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I define a continuous function which is not differentiable? The raising of the first question led in fact to the discovery of what is ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... parallelepiped; each of the six faces being a parallelogram; and it admits of being split in three directions parallel to two of these opposed faces. Even in such wise, if you will, that all the six faces are equal and similar rhombuses. The figure here added represents a piece of this Crystal. The obtuse angles of all the parallelograms, as C, D, here, are angles of 101 degrees 52 minutes, and consequently the acute angles, such as A and B, are ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... he led an agreeable life enough among all these undercurrents of feeling, which he did not recognise with any distinctness. He was comfortable enough, pleased with his own importance, and too obtuse to perceive that he bored his companions; and then he considered himself to be slightly "sweet upon" both the girls. Ursula was his favourite in the morning, when he embarrassed her much by persistently seeking her company whenever liberated by her father; but ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... plain. To all inquiries as to what these warlike arrangements betokened no reply was made by the soldiers, and when the whereabout of the responsible general was asked there came the stereotyped answer that "he was many li away." To the most obtuse mind these arrangements could convey but one meaning. They indicated that the Chinese government had resolved to make another endeavor to avert the concessions demanded from them by the English and their allies, and to appeal once more to the God of Battles ere they accepted the inevitable. When ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... then, the quiver broken and decayed, In which are kept our arrows. Rusting there In wild disorder and unfit for use, What wonder if discharged into the world They shame their shooters with a random flight, Their points obtuse and feathers drunk with wine. Well may the Church wage unsuccessful war With such artillery armed. Vice parries wide The undreaded volley with a sword of straw, And stands an impudent ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... laugh at it because I have to change Vioget's acute and obtuse angles. They call it 'O'Farrell's Swing.' You see, I've had to change the direction of some streets. There are many more now. Eight hundred acres ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... in the strongest terms the laws they are obliged to enforce. There are few persons who are obtuse to the sense of injustice, but at the same time the suggestion has been expressed that an extreme difficulty would be experienced should the taxes be collected in any other form than dimes. I cannot see the slightest truth in this disclaimer ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the prisoners invariably sat facing down the slope—for of course they were not allowed to lie down while in the stocks, this being too comfortable a position. Upon studying the question he found that in this way much more ease was experienced owing to the more obtuse angle thus formed by the body and the legs. This did not suit him and he issued further orders that in future all prisoners in the stocks should be obliged to sit facing uphill, and that they should not be allowed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... road obliquely, and headed by the bridegroom and his friend Hatchway, who, finding himself hindered by a hedge from proceeding farther in the same direction, fired a pistol, and stood over to the other side, making an obtuse angle with the line of his former course; and the rest of the squadron followed his example, keeping always in the rear of each other, like a flight of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sharpness, and the part just below the rectangular bar in breadth. But the variations in these respects in the wild rabbit are very slight: whilst in the large lop-eared rabbits they are considerable. Thus in some specimens (B) the oblique terminal knob is developed into a short bar, forming an obtuse angle with the rectangular bar. In another specimen (C) these two unequal bars form nearly a straight line. The apex of the acromion varies much in breadth and sharpness, as may be seen by comparing figures B, C, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... evident to the Spaniards in the two remaining ships that the English frigate was approaching them with the most sinister and malevolent purpose. One glance at the sinking remains of their ruined and battered consort established that fact in the most obtuse mind. Consequently the exultant men on the Mary Rose could hear the shrill notes of the trumpeters on the two other ships calling their men ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Depressed-globose: tubercles cylindrical, obtuse, with some axillary bristles: radial spines very much crowded, exceedingly numerous, radiant, very slender and bristle-like, white; central spines 6 to 10 and even more, erect and more rigid: flowers pale ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... will be twelve miles long, and can be completed within six months after the Act of Parliament is obtained. The gradients are easy, and the curves obtuse. There are no viaducts of any importance, and only four tunnels along the whole length of the line. The shortest of these does not exceed a mile and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... beyond the upper, but never sufficiently so as to become visible when the mouth is closed. Nose broad, with widely spreading nostrils when viewed from the front; flat (not pointed or turned up) in profile. Lips diverging at obtuse angles with the septum, and slightly pendulous so as to show a square profile. Length of muzzle to whole head and face as 1 to 3. Circumference of muzzle (measured midway between the eyes and nose) to that of the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the district was clear in his mind—the valley he had just left and the main valley, forming an obtuse angle with the apex out on the wind-torn plain and a double range of mountains lying out between the sides ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty, grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception, strength and precision ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... search the drift Of our domestic women, and may prove 360 Our serving-men, who honours and reveres And who contemns us both, but chiefly thee So gracious and so worthy to be loved. Him then thus answer'd his illustrious son. Trust me, my father! thou shalt soon be taught That I am not of drowsy mind obtuse. But this I think not likely to avail Or thee or me; ponder it yet again; For tedious were the task, farm after farm To visit of those servants, proving each, 370 And the proud suitors merciless devour Meantime thy substance, nor abstain from ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, and had glanced off, as the designer of the smooth exterior had intended it ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... stature he was, and thinly built, but evidently one who could endure a great deal before parting with life. He had all the subtle wiry look of the carnivora, as well as their disposition. The eyes, as already observed, obliqued strongly downwards. The balls were not globe-shaped, but rather obtuse cones, of which the pupil was the apex. Both pupils and irides were black, and glistened like the eyes of a weasel. They seemed to sparkle in a sort of habitual smile; but this smile was purely ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... obtuse boy never saw it, and Alice, feeling that this would be a safe vent for sundry unruly emotions, sat down at once, and sang the song which gave her answer better than ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the figures of Rupert and Teuta sank; they were taking their places on the aeroplane. An instant after, like a great golden bird, it seemed to shoot out into the air, and then, dipping its head, dropped downward at an obtuse angle. We could see the King and Queen from time waist upwards—the King in Blue Mountain dress of green; the Queen, wrapped in her white Shroud, holding her baby on her breast. When far out from the mountain-top ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... knowledge he possessed, or to make plain subjects that were slightly complex. He was not always successful in his attempts at elucidation, partly because some subjects were too complex to simplify, and partly because some intellects were obtuse, but he ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... who's got a right to interfere with you if you do,' she said, stiffly. Then, however, it occurred even to her obtuse and self-centred perception, that she was saying something unexpected and distasteful to a man who was clearly a great friend of the Farrells, and therefore a member of the world she envied. So she ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the rate of her sister's esteem. Perhaps her prominent thought was how cruel were those who fancied that Ethel's lofty faith was unfeeling, and how very good Leonard must be to be thus mourned. At any rate, she was an excellent comforter, in the sympathy that was neither too acute nor too obtuse; and purely to oblige her, Ethel for the first time submitted to her favourite panacea of hair brushing, and found that in very truth those soft and steady manipulations were almost mesmeric in soothing away the hard ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... suit. He had to be swapped off or, as it happened once or twice, given away, and yet Raven was obtuse to the real reason until Charlotte enlightened him. She took him aside, one day in the autumn, when he and his mother were going ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... reason that the Self consisting of bliss is the innermost of all. The /S/astra, wishing to convey information about the primary Self, adapts itself to common notions, in so far as it at first refers to the body consisting of food, which, although not the Self, is by very obtuse people identified with it; it then proceeds from the body to another Self, which has the same shape with the preceding one, just as the statue possesses the form of the mould into which the molten brass had been poured; then, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... rubber ear is even worse than the Berkshire manners. A rubber ear is one that is always stretching itself over some telephone line to hear a conversation which doesn't concern it. For a long time we were singularly obtuse about this little point of etiquette in the country. The fact that all the bells on a line rang with every call was a constant temptation to sit in when we weren't wanted. We listened to other people's conversations when we ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... broad, oval, with pointed recurved tip, and a large obtuse tragus; anterior central crest of nose-leaf produced in front over the top of the flat transverse front edge; hinder leaf lanceolate triangular; above sooty brown or light earthy olive-brown, paler below, some with a rufous or ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... acquirements? The reason appears to me clear; the state they are born in was an unnatural one. The human character has ever been formed by the employments the individual, or class pursues; and if the faculties are not sharpened by necessity, they must remain obtuse. The argument may fairly be extended to women; for seldom occupied by serious business, the pursuit of pleasure gives that insignificancy to their character which renders the society of the GREAT so insipid. The same want of firmness, produced ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... talking with the Squire. Every one was looking at them, and they were entirely conscious of the fact. They laughed and talked with studied pleasantness, though there seemed to be an undertone of sadness that the most obtuse guest ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... 1st, The application of each tooth, E, to its arm, D, by means of a round tenon arranged at an obtuse angle with the axis of the tooth, and going into the arm, the same being substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... solicit free discussion Upon all points, no matter what or whose, Because as ages upon ages push on, The last is apt the former to accuse Of pillowing its head on a pincushion, Heedless of pricks because it was obtuse. What was a paradox becomes a truth or A something like ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... But something must be done. It was then mid-afternoon, and the prospect of spending another night on the mountains, without food or drink, was not pleasant. So we moved down the ridge. Here another line of marked trees was found, the course of which formed an obtuse angle with the one we had followed. It kept on the top of the ridge for perhaps a mile, when it disappeared, and we were as much adrift as ever. Then one of the party swore an oath, and said he was going out of those woods, hit or miss, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the precipice, that I was losing every day some power of resistance. It is terrifying to lose sense of the reality of things, to lose one's own will, to feel that one is merely a stone that has been set rolling. To feel like this is to experience the obtuse and intense sensations of nightmare, and this I know well. Have I not told you, Monsignor, of the dreams from which I suffered, which brought me to you, and which forced me to confession, those terrific dreams which used to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... him Iphidamas on his broad belt Beneath the corselet struck, and, bearing still On his spear-beam, enforced it; but ere yet He pierced the broider'd zone, his point, impress'd 285 Against the silver, turn'd, obtuse as lead. Then royal Agamemnon in his hand The weapon grasping, with a lion's rage Home drew it to himself, and from his gripe Wresting it, with his falchion keen his neck 290 Smote full, and stretch'd him lifeless at his foot. So slept Iphidamas among the slain; ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... present at the inquest," resumed the man in the corner, after he had drunk a glass of milk and ordered another, "and I can assure you that the most obtuse person there plainly realized that Mr. Hazeldene was telling a lie. It was pretty plain to the meanest intelligence that the unfortunate lady had not fallen into a state of morbid dejection for nothing, and that perhaps there existed a third person who could throw more light ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... he certainly appears to the moral judgment more revolting than the criminal acting from passion. Outlawries, rewards to executioners, confiscations of goods, summary procedure with insubordinate officers had occurred a hundred times, and the obtuse political morality of ancient civilization had for such things only lukewarm censure; but it was unexampled that the names of the outlaws should be publicly posted up and their heads publicly exposed, that a set sum should be fixed for the bandits ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much—from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, a la George Eliot. But he must be obtuse indeed to whom this reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... who feels most keenly each pulsation of joy, is alive to corresponding tones of sorrow. The obtuse may receive less positive joy from the happy events that befall them; but let us not forget that they suffer also less than the acutely sensitive. Says one of this sex, of a powerful mind, and a sagacious remarker, "I have seldom met with a truly ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... till I know what 'obtuse' means. See here, Martha; you say this social position, that the girls are so crazy for—but they've never said anything to me about it—can't be bought. In the next breath you urge me to buy it. Phoo! You're a thoughtless, silly woman, Martha, and let ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... temple-entrances, with the winged sun's disc. Above its widely-opened folding doors arose on either side, tower-like buildings, slender obelisks and waving flags. The front of the temple, rising from the earth in the form of an obtuse angle, had somewhat the appearance of a fortress, and was covered with colored pictures and inscriptions. Through the porch Psamtik passed on into a lofty entrance-chamber, and from thence into the great ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of how she had kissed Dick flashed across her mind, but in an instant it was gone; and bending her head, she laid her lips to her husband's. It in no way disgusted her to do so; she was glad of the occasion, and was only surprised at the dull and obtuse anxiety she experienced. They then spoke of indifferent things, but the flow of conversation was often interrupted by complimentary phrases. While Ralph discoursed on his mother's nonsense in always dragging religion into everything, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... assent, determined not to take to herself a visit that did violence to all her habits and notions of propriety. But Mr. Dodge was too obtuse to feel the hint conveyed ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... gentleman should carry the argument all his own way; and we could not help admiring how, with an eye to this result, the writer had succeeded in making the parishioners so amazingly superficial in their information, and so ingeniously obtuse in their intellects. They had both been called into existence with the intention of being baffled and beaten, and made, with a wise adaptation of means to the desired end, consummate blockheads for the express purpose. 'A man is a much nobler animal than a lion,' said ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Little Don Rocco was limping along towards his hermitage of St. Luke with awkward steps, his arms in parentheses, and his back arched, knitting his brows at the road-bed as he went along. He was ruminating over the dark words of Signora Carlotta, and their importance was gradually piercing his obtuse brain. He was also ruminating over the next assembly of the ecclesiastical court, over the pereat mundus and the subtle reasonings of the professor, of which he had understood so little; not to speak of the exposition of the Gospels for the next day, which he had ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... are regarded as appearances of the same "thing" to different people has made it seem as though these "sensibilia" must be regarded as mere subjective phantasms. A given table will present to one man a rectangular appearance, while to another it appears to have two acute angles and two obtuse angles; to one man it appears brown, while to another, towards whom it reflects the light, it appears white and shiny. It is said, not wholly without plausibility, that these different shapes and different colours cannot co-exist simultaneously ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... the solid reserves of its rival, involved in all the exactions that fall on a tributary nation, the cotton manufacture of Ireland lost ground, lost heart, and disappeared. But let us resume the parable. If the "business man" responds to capital, he will certainly not be obtuse to the appeal of coal. In this feeder of industry Ireland was geologically at a disadvantage, and it was promised that the free trade with Great Britain inaugurated by the Union would "blend" with her the resources ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... when the appendage was inserted; and when the central window of the nave was enlarged, and that, and the others which now enliven the inner wall, were filled with perpendicular tracery. The porch is vaulted with stone, and is entered by an obtuse arch, over which is an elliptical window, divided by mullions into six lights under cinquefoil arches, which are again subdivided in the ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... the canine teeth are perfectly efficient instruments for mastication. But their true canine character, as Owen (42. 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. iii. 1868, p. 323.) remarks, "is indicated by the conical form of the crown, which terminates in an obtuse point, is convex outward and flat or sub-concave within, at the base of which surface there is a feeble prominence. The conical form is best expressed in the Melanian races, especially the Australian. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... silks for diamonds, the other hustles in rags for bread, their occupation being identical. New York was Tory even in Revolutionary times. From its very foundation it has been at the feet of royalty and mouthing of "divine right." It is ever making itself an obtuse triangle before the god of its idolatry—its knees and nose on the earth, its tail-feathers in the air; but we had yet to learn that it considered "that divinity which doth behedge a king" capable of sanctifying a woman's shame, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the main branches, or on the trunk itself, but never on twigs or thin branches. The fruit contains from 15 to 25 beans, in regular rows, with pulpy divisions between them like a water-melon. The kernels are about the size, shape, and colour of almonds, obtuse at one end, and contain a fatty or oily matter to the extent of one-half their weight. In order to make "soluble cocoa" as sold in Europe ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... a faint shake of his head at the floor abandoned the thankless task of giving hints to a young man who was too obtuse to see them; and it was not until some time later that Mr. Hardy, sorely against his inclinations, gave his host a hearty handshake and, with a respectful bow to Miss Nugent, ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... from the pursuit of her foes: she also had to set up her observatory whence to watch for her prey and dart out upon it. The Tarantula provides for every contingency: the underground passage, in fact, begins by being vertical, but, at four or five inches from the surface, it bends at an obtuse angle, forms a horizontal turning and then becomes perpendicular once more. It is at the elbow of this tunnel that the Tarantula posts herself as a vigilant sentry and does not for a moment lose sight of the door of her dwelling; it ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... ground, calculating the gradients and summit levels as if he were a railway-engineer for the time being—let him observe where the moss lies deep, and precipices rise too steep to be scrambled over; and he will be very obtuse indeed, if he is not able to chalk out for himself precisely the best way to the top. It is a good general rule to keep by the side of a stream. That if you do so when you are at the top of a hill, you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... apparatus—which, however, does not detract from but rather adds to its value as an invention—and has been a boon to the physician in locating and curing affections of the throat. Its essentials are a small mirror fixed at an obtuse angle to a slender handle. Introduced into the mouth it can be placed in such position that the larynx is reflected in the mirror and thus can be observed by the operator. Those who have had their throats examined with the laryngoscope will recall that the operator wears a reflector over ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... not understand me as attributing to the Arabian originator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endeavored to disentangle it. He spoke what he did not understand; for, as to sentiment of any kind, all Orientals are obtuse and impassive. There are other sublimities (some, at least) in the "Arabian Nights," which first become such—a gas that first kindles—when entering into combination with new elements ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... seemed to thrive upon snubs. He was never in the least disconcerted thereby. He hadn't the brains to take offence, she told herself impatiently, and yet somewhere at the back of her mind there lurked a vagrant suspicion that he was not always as obtuse as he seemed. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... ankle, groin, crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo^, akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel [Arch.], coign^. right angle &c (perpendicular) 216.1, 212; obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, angular distance, angular velocity; trigonometry, goniometry; altimetry^; clinometer, graphometer^, goniometer; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lingered there forgetfully after expressing his condolences, and, overcome by the heavy silence and close atmosphere, had just fallen asleep. And everybody respected his slumber. Was he dreaming as he dozed of that map of Christendom which he carried behind his low obtuse-looking brow? Was he continuing in dreamland his terrible work of conquest, that task of subjecting and governing the earth which he directed from his dark room at the Propaganda? The ladies glanced at him affectionately and deferentially; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Wilton and Bentley lent the same assistance forward, and in an astonishingly brief time, considering her small crew, the Mellish, like the stranger, was going free with the wind on her quarter, her best point of sailing, her course now making a wide obtuse angle with ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... hostelry to which Mr. Bouncer has piloted the party, our hero, on his way back to Oxford, screws up his courage sufficiently to gallop his steed desperately at a ditch which yawns, a foot wide, before him. But to his immense astonishment - not to say, disgust - the obtuse-minded quadruped gives a leap which would have taken him clear over a canal; and our hero, not being ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... efforts to start conversation, the visitor gave up in disgust. The meal was eaten in silence. Even the obtuse Andy sensed that something was wrong, and made no effort to rouse the half-breed, who ate grimly and immediately busied himself with the dish-washing as soon as the meal was over. Andy soon took his departure, the half-breed directing him to a route that would lessen the chances ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... an obtuse angle above and below, sometimes rounded above; a minute projection on each side near the top. Bottom of area long-oval, smooth, sometimes with a perforation above the mouth. Mouth with a minute tooth ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... dogmatic, inspired, perfect, and incorrigible creature. He was innocent and cruel, swift and wayward, illuminated and blind. Being a finished child of nature, not a joint product, like most of us, of nature, history, and society, he abounded miraculously in his own clear sense, but was obtuse to the droll, miscellaneous lessons of fortune. The cannonade of hard, inexplicable facts that knocks into most of us what little wisdom we have left Shelley dazed and sore, perhaps, but uninstructed. When the storm was over, he began chirping again his own ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... by four equal and parallel lines but not rectangular, two of its opposite angles being acute, and two obtuse. ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... I: "The large outpouring Of the Holy Spirit, which has been diffused Upon the ancient parchments and the new, [93] A syllogism is, which demonstrates it With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, All demonstration seems to me obtuse." And then I heard: "The ancient and the new Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive, Why dost thou take them for the word divine?" And I: "The proof, which shows the truth to me, Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature Ne'er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat." 'Twas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... binding is good, and that is all the praise we can give so contemptible an abortion. A reading public that tolerates a novel like this, must be made up of very good-natured persons—assinine in temperament, and mentally obtuse. ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a faint excuse for her slighted task, he said nothing, but slowly lifting up the lid of his desk, he placed his black ruler in a perpendicular position, letting the lid rest upon it, forming an obtuse angle with the desk. Then he piled the books in the back part, leaving a cavity in front, which looked something like a bower in a greenwood, for it was lined ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... six triangles, which vary either according to their sides or according to their angles (the equilateral, isosceles, scalene, right angled, obtuse angled, and acute angled). ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... person's immature feet, certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface, and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... their affected pretences to humility, which they made use of as a cloak to insinuate their writings into the callous senses of the multitude, obtuse to everything but the grossest flattery, have by degrees made that great beast their master; as we may act submission to children till we are obliged to practise it in earnest. That authors are and ought to be considered the masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... perhaps have exclaimed with momentary interest, 'So this is May's room!' And some hint that May was more than a daughter and sister—a woman, withdrawn, secret, disturbing, living her own inner life side by side with the household life—might have penetrated their obtuse paternal and fraternal masculinity. Her beautiful face (the nose and mouth were perfect, and at either extremity of the upper lip grew a soft down), her dark hair, her quiet voice and her gentle acquiescence (diversified by occasional outbursts of sarcasm), appealed to them and won ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... idiots is curiously low; they hardly distinguish between heat and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives, such pain as can be excited in them may literally be accepted with a welcome surprise. During a visit to Earlswood Asylum I saw two boys whose toe-nails ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets." That this lady was Beatrice Portinari, as Browning supposes, Dante's devotion to her, in both "The New Life" and "The Divine Comedy," should leave no doubt. Yet the literalness of Mr. W. M. Rossetti makes him obtuse here, as he and other commentators seem to be in their understanding of Browning throughout this stanza. Browning evidently contrasts Dante's tenderness here towards Beatrice with the remorselessness of his pen in the "Inferno" (see Cantos 32 and 33), where he stigmatized his enemies as if ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... which Iphigenia befools Thoas, my moral feelings may be obtuse, but I certainly cannot feel the slightest compunction or shock at the heavy lying. Which of us would not expect at least as much from his own sister, if it lay with her to save him from the altars of Benin or Ashanti? I suspect that the good people who lament over "the low ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw—only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... luxurious frame, dazzled the adventurer; and years after, when he had become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,—the torpor ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... hear the cheap sneers of the obtuse stay-at-home or globe-trotter critics against missionaries and their converts, I am amused. It gives me the measure of the men, particularly of the globetrotters. When the British and American Churches seek to send out missionaries, the British and ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... washing of the dishes and in putting them away, and then helped the woman of the house in some things about which she was longing for assistance. Perhaps it was a dress to be cut out for herself, or some garments fitted on some of the girls, or other similar things too intricate or difficult for my obtuse mind ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... axis'; and so is the plane of the perforated plate ('a d'.), by which the filaments of the olfactory nerve leave the skull. Again, a line drawn through the axis of the face, between the bones called ethmoid and vomer—the "basifacial axis" ('f e'.) forms an exceedingly obtuse angle, where, when produced, it ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley
... so badly? How chanced it that, having dwelt eighteen months in Paris, he could speak no French? His only grisette had both robbed him and been false to him. He knew that the Colony tolerated him, merely. Was he indeed verdant, as they had said—obtuse, stupid, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... whence I spring! rever'd and lov'd! Who soar'st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear, As earthly thought determines two obtuse In one triangle not contain'd, so clear Dost see contingencies, ere in themselves Existent, looking at the point whereto All times are present, I, the whilst I scal'd With Virgil the soul purifying mount, And visited the nether world of woe, Touching my future destiny ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... knowledge; but they appear sometimes to have wars with each other, not only from their weapons, but the scars with which many of them were marked, and some of which appeared to be the remains of very considerable wounds, made with stones, bludgeons, or some other obtuse weapon: By these scars also they appear to be no inconsiderable proficients in surgery, of which indeed we happened to have more direct evidence. One of our seamen, when he was on shore, run a large splinter into his foot, and the surgeon ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the sweet-scented new hay, and having to lie flat down as the mass passed beneath the tall gateway and under the granary into the yard. On the way back, Harry rode the leading horse, making stirrups of the traces, while his legs stuck out at a very obtuse angle one from the other, in consequence of the round back of the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... himself more than a hundred years before. It was an uncouth sort of implement, with a handle of strong black oak, and a short, compact head, square on the one face and oblong on the other. And though it dealt rather an obtuse blow, the temper was excellent, and the haft firmly set; and I went about with it, breaking into all manner of stones, with great perseverance and success. I found, in a large-grained granite, a few sheets of beautiful black mica, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... hard to bear her contented acceptance of the pervading commonness of things at Mrs. Maxwell's. Either her senses were holden by her fondness for Maxwell, or else she was trying to hoodwink her mother by an effect of indifference; but Mrs. Hilary herself was certainly not obtuse to that commonness. If she did not rub it into Louise, which would have done no good, she did rub it into Louise's father, though that could hardly have been said to do any good either. Her report of the whole ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... means the side of the boat was raised a foot or so, and could not sink back, for the free end of the spar rested on the sand. Then another foot was gained, the end of the spar being dragged along, and so on and on, till from being where it was lashed to the top of the mast, quite an obtuse angle of the widest, it was by degrees worked into a right angle, and by that time the submerged bulwark was quite out of the water, and the keel touched the bottom and kept them from ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... intellectual characteristics, I must admit that I am unusually obtuse; for although boasting a long and intimate acquaintance with both, I have never arrived at any certain conclusion as to their good or ill effects, though I have little doubt but that they contain a mixture of each, only I am uncertain which ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... not so obtuse as to be unaware of this, and when he came down she said all he could wish in praise of Madge, but took pains to enlarge upon his own courage. At this he pooh-poohed emphatically. "What was that duck-pond of a lake to a man!" he said. "Madge herself has become an expert ocean-swimmer, I am told. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... with her mouth half open. She was the least obtuse of mortals, but although she knew that pride was at the root of Magdalena's extraordinary behaviour, she concluded that love had fled, and marvelled, for she had believed Magdalena to be the deepest and most tenacious of women. But she was ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... deg. which they originally form with the lateral edge of the rhombohedron is reduced to 68 deg.. The prism is then cut in two in a plane perpendicular to the new end surfaces, the section being carried obliquely from one obtuse corner of the prism to the other, in the direction of its length. The surfaces of this section, after having been carefully polished, are cemented together again by means of Canada balsam. A ray of light, on entering the prism, is separated by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... that the Union must be preserved.(2) About the same time, in a public speech, he said he was not going to be "humbugged" by the bogy of secession, and gave his fatuous promise that all the trouble would be ended inside ninety days. For all his brilliancy of a sort, he was spiritually obtuse. On him, as on Douglas, Fate had lavished opportunities to see life as it is, to understand the motives of men; but it could not make him use them. He was incorrigibly cynical. He could not divest himself of the idea ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... after, there was a most unaccountable smell in the infirmary. Several stuffed birds hanging there were suspected and smelt, but were found to be quite fresh. One or two of them were put out to air, but still the smell grew worse and worse, until the most obtuse nose did not dare to go near the infirmary. At last they became desperate. A general and thorough investigation was instituted, and there, in a dark corner, under a hair mattress, and flat as a pancake, lay the poor puffin, alive!—but ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... intersected by the natural inclination of two lines or planes meeting each other, the place of intersection being called the vertex or angular point, and the lines legs. Angles are distinguished by the number of degrees they subtend, to 360 deg., or the whole circumference of a circle. Angles are acute, obtuse, right, curvilinear, rectilinear, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... done? For three long hours the night after Lord Hartledon's death, she lay awake, thinking out her plans; perhaps for the first time in her life, for obtuse natures do not lie awake. The death had affected her only as regarded her own interests; she could feel for none and regret none in her utter selfishness. One was fallen, but another had risen up. "Le roi ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... monitor has another set of geometrical definitions on the same principle, as a perpendicular line, a horizontal line, an oblique line, parallel lines, curved lines, diverging or converging lines, an obtuse angle, a circle. No. 10 a different set of geometrical shapes, viz. sociles-triangles, scolene-triangles, rectangle, rhomb, rhomboid, trapezoid, trapeziums, ellipse or oval. Having arrived at No. 11, the class find here the European costumes, viz. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... you were not obtuse you would see it. But you don't see and you don't feel, or you would never have tried to make any one care for you for whom you did not care a bit. But I won't care ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... to what I have said about having upon a previous occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an extract from at Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the deception twice. Now, my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow that? Judge Douglas had said I had made a speech at Charleston that I would not make up north, and I turned around and answered him by showing I had made that same speech up north,—had made it at ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... his part of a wild young cowpuncher ready for any mischief, but beneath his obtuse good humor Flandrau covered a vigilant wariness. Soapy held all the good cards now, but if he stayed in the game some of them would come to him. Then he would show Mr. Stone whether he would have everything ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... turn. But for Sally's disposition to make the most of her last hours with him the drive would have bored Archie exceedingly. By two o'clock he was hungry and at three he was bringing all his powers of eloquence to bear upon the obtuse owner of a village garage who was stubbornly hostile to the idea of leaving his bed to provide a lunatic with gasoline. Archie's vociferous oratory had the pleasing effect of filling all the windows in the neighborhood with unsympathetic hearers ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... done a great deal for the text of Massinger, but not as much as might easily be done. His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary dramatists is obtuse indeed.[1] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... much more obtuse than the most of his friends believed, to fail to recognize the invitation in Bridget's demeanour. Although he had not the slightest intention to profit by it, he could not pretend that for the moment it ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... performance some more; this they did for a time, and then stole off again, or slept in their seats, and the Ncomi were highly disgusted at those brutes of Fans, whom they regarded, they said in their way, as Philistines of an utterly obtuse ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... effects of force on others, and while — labor as he might — Earl Russell and his state papers seemed weak to a secretary, he could not see that they seemed strong to Russell's own followers. Russell might be dishonest or he might be merely obtuse — the English type might be brutal or might be only stupid — but strong, in either case, it was not, nor did it seem ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... commiseration, "can he possibly be blind to what is going on? And what is Lord Strathern dreaming of! What a pity one cannot interfere in these little matters, and put our friends on their guard! But Shortridge is so obtuse, and my Lord so self-willed and wrong-headed, that it would only make matters worse. Indeed, it is too late to help Shortridge, poor fellow! and we must console ourselves with the wise conclusion ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... situation. The most difficult problem had been the attitude of Monk, and that was all the more baffling from the fact that Monk had no clear discernment of his own line of policy, and with all his accidental command of the situation, was too obtuse to choose his own course and follow it consistently. The Presbyterians were monarchical in sympathy, and dreaded the Independents too much to be willing to revert to republican forms; but their determination to alter the ecclesiastical ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... human nature was always making against stupendous odds stirred him to a fine and comprehending clarity. He had many faults. He was obstinate, often dull and lethargic, in many ways grossly ill-educated and sometimes wilfully obtuse—but he was a fine friend, a noble enemy, and a chivalrous lover. There was nothing mean nor petty in him, and his views of life and the human soul were wider and more all-embracing than in any Englishman I have ever known. You may say ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... crocodile that some naturalists have classed them together as forming one genus. It differs from the true crocodile principally in having the head broader and shorter, and the snout more obtuse; in having the fourth, enlarged tooth of the under jaw received, not into an external notch, but into a pit formed for it within the upper one; in wanting a jagged fringe which appears on the hind legs and feet ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... odd whim of Fate that left the destiny of half the American continent to Don Carlos IV, whom Henry Adams calls "a kind of Spanish George III "—virtuous, to be sure, but heavy, obtuse, inconsequential, and incompetent. With incredible fatuousness the King gave his consent to a bargain by which he was to yield Louisiana in return for Tuscany or other Italian provinces which Bonaparte had just ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... believe and drink." How strange to add, in this nefarious trade, That men of parts are dupes by dunces made: That creatures, nature meant should clean our streets, Have purchased lands and mansions, parks and seats: Wretches with conscience so obtuse, they leave Their untaught sons their parents to deceive; And when they're laid upon their dying bed, No thought of murder comes into their head, Nor one revengeful ghost to them appears, To fill ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... most obtuse vanity could ever have induced Bozzy to publish all this. 'Curiosity,' he declares in the preface, 'is the most prevalent of all our passions, and the curiosity for reading letters is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. Had any man in the three kingdoms found ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to speak more plainly than I like, Derek," she was saying, "because you make yourself so obtuse. You seem to forget that years have a way of passing, and that Dorothea is no longer a ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... remind her of her flirtatious preferences for the young beef-witted London chaps, and her incertitude and disdainful capriciousness towards myself, who was not a beetlehead or an obtuse, but a cultivated native gentleman with high-class university degree, and an oratorical flow of language which was infallibly to land me upon the pinnacle of some tip-top judicial preferment in the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... failure to appreciate Storri as a nobleman possessing wealth and station,—in short, if Dorothy betrayed an intention to refuse his exalted hand,—then she, Mrs. Hanway-Harley, would interfere. She would take Dorothy in solemn charge, and compel that obtuse maiden to what redounded to her good. Mrs. Hanway-Harley doubted neither the propriety nor the feasibility of establishing a censorship over Dorothy's heart, should the young lady evince a blinded inability to see ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... thought I was very obtuse, but I could not understand the relation between the parties, and I had not the faintest idea why she was running away from Mrs. Loraine. I was not willing to believe that a young miss like her intended to resort ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... stealthy smile: "It was a coup de theatre, and it had evidently great success. They had to accept peace at my hands as a favor. Ah, if they had guessed how much I needed it myself! But these men are obtuse; they cannot see any thing. They have no aim; they only live from minute to minute, and whenever they find a precipice on their route, they stumble over it, and are lost beyond redemption. My God, how scarce real men are! There are eighteen millions in ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... streets, which Rimmer, a minute observer of English domestic architecture, thus describes: "An acute-angled street may be made to contain rectangular rooms on an upper story.... Draw an acute angle—say something a little less than a right angle—and cut it into compartments; or, if preferred, an obtuse angle, and cut this into compartments also. Now, the roadway may be so prescribed as to prevent right angles from being made on the basement, but the complementary angles are ingeniously made out by allowing the joists ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding-place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Jupiter as long as possible, and moved at tremendous speed. Saturn was somewhat in advance of Jupiter in its orbit, so that their course from the earth had been along two sides of a triangle with an obtuse angle between. During the next four terrestrial days they sighted several small comets, but spent most of their time writing out their Jovian experiences. During the sixth day Saturn's rings, although not as much ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... gasped, and with a faint shake of his head at the floor abandoned the thankless task of giving hints to a young man who was too obtuse to see them; and it was not until some time later that Mr. Hardy, sorely against his inclinations, gave his host a hearty handshake and, with a respectful bow to Miss Nugent, ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... speak to him. I knew then that he had seen the same thing that I had seen: if his strong, rather obtuse material nature had recognized it, what could so blind her mother and father and the doctor? I burst into ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... was heavy, and made a massive shelter for the eyes. So looked the young German who had perhaps heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth century, looked Jacob Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no doubt, was Lady Henry's case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence her theory ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their ears stand out as absurdly. Even assuming that their special malaises are wholly offset by the effects of alcoholism in the male, they suffer patently from the same adenoids, gastritis, cholelithiasis, nephritis, tuberculosis, carcinoma, arthritis and so on—in short, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the masterly air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter (which in a painting is all the obtuse can see) gave but the full spirit of his original for my ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... only, will suppose I mean grate, for the most obtuse nincompoop must know that anybody can become a grate man by going into the stove business; but to develop yourself into a real bona-fide great man, like GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN or DANIEL PRATT, requires much study and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... inexplicable, but there is no mystery in my leaving Chicago. My future sister-in-law bluntly informed me that my absence from the city would greatly facilitate the necessary dressmaking. Although an obtuse person in some ways, I know when I am bumped. Three days after Fuller's luncheon to Howells, I reached the town of Gallup, which is the point of departure for the Navajo Agency, some twenty-five or thirty miles north ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... size. These cells are filled with a protoplasm, to which the plant owes its orange colour. When they have attained their normal dimensions, they elongate at the summit into two, three, or four distinct, thick, obtuse tubes, into which the protoplasm gradually passes. The development of these tubes is unequal and not simultaneous, so that one will often attain its full dimensions, equal, perhaps, to three or four times the diameter of the generative cell, whilst the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... lawyer. Let him always seek to have a clear understanding of his object: be sure it is honest and right, and then march directly to it. The covert, indirect, and insidious way of doing anything, is always the wrong way. It gradually hardens the moral faculties, renders obtuse the perception of right and wrong in human actions, weighs everything in the balances of worldly policy, and ends most generally, in the practical adoption of the vile maxim, "that the end sanctifies the means." If it be true, as he ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... "My merits are grossly undervalued by a stiff-necked and obtuse generation. But what would you have, my learned brother? If poverty steps behind you and claps the occulting bushel over your thirty thousand candle-power luminary, your brilliancy is apt to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... narrow and winding stair, resembling in shape and size a draw-well, the verge of which opened on the threshold of the iron door, showed a descent which seemed to conduct to the infernal regions. The Varangian, however obtuse he might be considered by the quick-witted Greeks, had no difficulty in comprehending that a staircase having such a gloomy appearance, and the access to which was by a portal decorated in such a melancholy style of architecture, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... might. He was a rude, coarse boy. It was scarcely possible, with his past training, that he should be otherwise. But he was very faithful in fulfilling his obligations. Though his sense of right and wrong was very obtuse, he was still disposed to do the right so far as his uncultivated ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... energy in the direction I had pointed out. We followed a parallel line to the high flat plateau on the other side of the stream, the slopes of which, in relation to the plain we were standing on, were at an obtuse angle of about 115 deg.. The snow-covered plateau extended from S.W. to N.E. Beyond it to the N. could be seen some high snowy peaks, in all probability the lofty summits S.E. of Gartok. At the point ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... large masses, some or all of the endoderm cells with thick outer walls. Cones from 10 to 17 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conic; apophyses lustrous brown-ochre or fuscous brown, elevated into thick, often reflexed, beaks with obtuse mutic umbos; seeds with large nuts and adnate striated dark gray or ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... century established the monastery of Mont St. Bernard in the forest, and brought large tracts under cultivation as garden-land. Bardon, the highest hill of Charnwood, which is near by, rises nine hundred feet, an obtuse-angled triangular summit that can be seen for miles away: not far from the forest are several famous places. The abandoned castle of Ashby de la Zouche has been made the site of an interesting town, deriving ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... right angles, for a given triangle, I do not need to prove it for every triangle thereafter. For not only the color and size of the triangle are indifferent, but its other peculiarities as well; the question whether it is right-angled or obtuse-angled, whether it has equal sides, whether it has equal or unequal angles, is not mentioned in the demonstration, and has no influence upon it. Abstracta exist only in this sense. In considering the individual Paul I can attend ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... rustles in silks for diamonds, the other hustles in rags for bread, their occupation being identical. New York was Tory even in Revolutionary times. From its very foundation it has been at the feet of royalty and mouthing of "divine right." It is ever making itself an obtuse triangle before the god of its idolatry—its knees and nose on the earth, its tail-feathers in the air; but we had yet to learn that it considered "that divinity which doth behedge a king" capable of sanctifying a woman's shame, transforming a foul leman ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and muttered something about "professions of regard," and "affectionate epistles," etc.; but it was all lost upon the obtuse man who talked on, about what especially concerned him, and then went ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... dumb students are nothing new to me. But even the worst of them couldn't have been any more obtuse than Bishop. I had the dead plants, all brown and withered. There were simple charts showing exactly, in terms of time, how the virus worked, killing the poppy within forty-eight hours, and even destroying the viability of any seeds ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... and sister. Every thing the reverse of what has been recited of Hector was visible in Olivia. He was boisterous, selfish, and brutal; she was compassionate, generous, and gentle: his faculties were sluggish, obtuse, and confined; hers were acute, discriminating, and capacious: his want of feeling made him delight to inflict torture; her extreme sensibility made her fly to administer relief. The company of Olivia soon became very attractive, and the rambles that I have sometimes taken ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... about twenty hours, in dreams as well as in waking moments, I bad been brooding over the identity of the lady of the ice, and had become convinced that the O'Halloran ladies knew something about it; yet so obtuse was I that I had not suspected that the lady herself might be found in this house. In fact, such an event was at once so romantic and so improbable that it did not even suggest itself. But now here was the lady herself. Here she stood. Now I could understand the emotion, the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... until I have given my friendly counsel. Thou art free to follow it or not to follow it. But for the sake of this beard Sheikh Khalid, do not speak at the Mosque to-day. I know the people of this City: they are ignorant, obtuse, fanatical, blind. 'God hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing.' They will not hear thee; they can not understand thee. I know them better than thou: I have lived amongst them for forty years. And what talk have we wasted. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... short-sighted person's immature feet, certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface, and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching its graceful and refined ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... upon certain days, any individual might have the honour of sharing her family repast; and many, of various callings, though chiefly in commercial life, met at her miscellaneous board. Clarence must, indeed, have been difficult to please, or obtuse of observation, if, in the variety of her guests, he had not found something either to interest or amuse him. Heavens! what a motley group were accustomed, twice in the week, to assemble there! the little dining-parlour seemed a human oven; and it must be owned that Clarence was no ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... character presents as much unlikeness to the Oriental as to the European type, and is comparable only to itself. In nothing is this more apparent than in the fact that a people who are so intelligent, who can reason calmly and cogently on nearly any other subject, should be so obtuse in religious matters. A Japanese believes the little caricature in ivory or wood, which has perhaps been manufactured under his own eye, or even by his own hands, is sacred, and will address his prayers to ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... more form and regularity with increased proportions and the conviction, forced upon the most obtuse mind, that a struggle was at hand demanding most perfect organization, the looseness of a divided system had become apparent. The laws against any State maintaining a standing army were put into effect; and the combined military ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... that he considered poor Tom to be mad; and indeed I was myself completely mystified by his conduct. I had, however, seen so many proofs of my friend's good sense and quickness of apprehension that I thought it quite possible that Wharton's story had had a meaning in his eyes which I was too obtuse to take in. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... of idiots is curiously low; they hardly distinguish between heat and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives, such pain as can be excited in them may literally be accepted with a welcome surprise. During a visit to Earlswood Asylum I saw two boys whose toe-nails had grown into the flesh ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... to, and to convince them of errors to which they have no temptation, they might as well be spending their money to persuade schoolmasters that two and two make four, or geometricians that there cannot be two obtuse angles in a triangle. If this be their notion of the way in which the gospel is to be preached, we do not wonder that they have found it necessary to print a tract upon the impropriety of sleeping ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... crisis. A little cat of manifestly humble origin, with only an innate sense of propriety to oppose to a coarse-minded magistrate, and a circle of mocking friends. The judge, imperturbably obtuse, dropped the kitten on the rug, and prepared to resume their former friendly relations. The kitten did not run away, she did not even walk away; that would have been an admission of defeat. She sat down very slowly, as if first searching for a particular spot in the intricate ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... [from the instant question of life] by any weakness of imagination; 4th, in a tolerably thick skin—not literally, for she was fair and blooming, and decidedly handsome, having such a skin as became a young woman of family in northernmost Spain. But her sensibilities were obtuse as regarded some modes of delicacy, some modes of equity, some modes of the world's opinion, and all modes whatever of personal hardship. Lay a stress on that word some—for, as to delicacy, she never ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... expression in our issue of April 6th concerning the possibility of a crisis in Anglo-Armenian relations. The incident of the Bobadig mules is already bearing fruit, and we can no longer doubt that popular feeling in the vilayet of Arimabug has been dangerously inflamed by the obtuse procrastination of the British Government. These ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... spiritual capital of the world, while Asia—rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories—postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... When the shaft revolves, the balls fly outwards by centrifugal force, and as their velocity increases the quadrilateral figure contained by the four links expands laterally and shortens vertically. The angles between K K and L L become less and less obtuse, and the weight W is drawn upwards, bringing with it the fork C of the rod A, which has ends engaging with the groove. As C rises, the other end of the rod is depressed, and the rod B depresses rod O, which is attached to the spindle operating a sort of shutter in the steam-pipe. Consequently ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Strauss strongly resented the action of one of his opponents who happened to refer to his reverence for Lessing. The unfortunate man had misunderstood;—true, Strauss did declare that one must be of a very obtuse mind not to recognise that the simple words of paragraph 86 come from the writer's heart. Now, I do not question this warmth in the very least; on the contrary, the fact that Strauss fosters these feelings towards ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned. Hoddan went skyward in the spaceboat with feelings of warm gratitude toward the Lady Fani. He had not the slightest inkling that she, who had twice spoiled her father's skulduggery so far as it affected him, felt any but ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... and unfathomable are thy mysteries! And why is it that thou permittest the course of true love, like this, so seldom to run smooth, when so many who, uniting through the impulse of sordid passion, sink into a state of obtuse indifference, over which the lights and shadows that touch thee into thy finest perceptions of enjoyment pass ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... eggs, and afford an acceptable dish. I obtained a live specimen, which Dr. Rayner of this ship describes thus:—"Cereopsis Novae Hollandiae. Body about the size of a common goose; bill short, vaulted, obtuse, two-thirds of which is covered by an expanded cere of a pale greenish-yellow colour, the tip of the bill being black, arcuated, and truncated. Nostrils large, round, open, and situated in the middle of the bill. Wings ample, third quill longest. Legs long, light dull-red, ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... geometry are all lost; they include (1) the Conics in four Books, which covered almost the same ground as the first three Books of Apollonius's Conics, although no doubt, for Euclid, the conics were still, as with his predecessors, sections of a right-angled, an obtuse-angled, and an acute-angled cone respectively made by a plane perpendiular to a generator in each case; (2) the Porisms in three Books, the importance and difficulty of which can be inferred from Pappus's account of it and the lemmas which he gives for use ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... central window of the nave was enlarged, and that, and the others which now enliven the inner wall, were filled with perpendicular tracery. The porch is vaulted with stone, and is entered by an obtuse arch, over which is an elliptical window, divided by mullions into six lights under cinquefoil arches, which are again subdivided in ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... from the rest. It is infinitely the most various sort. It includes all those heresies which result from wrong-headed mental elaboration, as distinguished from those which are the result of hasty and imperfect apprehension, the heresies of the clever rather than the heresies of the obtuse. The former are of endless variety and complexity; the latter are in comparison natural, simple confusions. The former are the errors of the study, the latter the superstitions that spring by the wayside, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... reply to what I have said about having upon a previous occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an extract from at Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the deception twice. Now, my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow that? Judge Douglas had said I had made a speech at Charleston that I would not make up north, and I turned around and answered him by showing I had made that same speech up north,—had made it at Ottawa; made ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... staircases, and iron roofings; and as the employment of these materials increased the outlay, he again ended with a catastrophe, which was all the greater as he was a pitiful manager, and had lost his head since he had become rich, rendered the more obtuse, it seemed, by money, quite spoilt and at sea, unable even to revert to his old habits of industry. This time Margaillan grew angry; he for thirty years had been buying ground, building and selling again, estimating at a glance the cost and return ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Yardsley (obtuse). Ha, ha! Yes. Why, of course! Ha, ha, ha! For repartee I have always said-polite repartee, of course—Miss Andrews is—(Aside.) Now what the dickens did she mean ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... jury, reserving to himself final decision. Was it not an historic scene which was enacted there in that little courthouse in Canandaigua? All the inconsistencies were embodied in that Judge, punctilious in manner, scrupulous in attire, conscientious in trivialities, and obtuse on great principles, fitly described by Charles O'Conor—"A very ladylike Judge." Behold him sitting there, balancing all the niceties of law and equity in his Old World scales, and at last saying, "The prisoner will stand up." Whereupon the accused arose. "The sentence of the court is ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... be the saving of us all!" she insisted significantly. But Alaric was still obtuse. "Now, how would my holding and moulding Margaret save us?" The old lady placed her cards deliberately, on the table as she said sententiously: "She would stay with us here—if you were—engaged to her!" The shock had cone. His mother's ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... desperately wicked. Applying these to the circumstances, what a lurid glare they shed on his behaviour! How quickly, how suspiciously quickly, had he succumbed to her charms! How abruptly had his insouciance changed to devotion, his impertinence to respect! How obtuse, how strangely dull had he been in the matter of her claims and her identity! Finally, with what a smiling visage had he lured her to her doom, showed her to his tools, settled to a nicety the least detail of ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... The vacillating tone,—even when the resolve to suppress vacillation has been most determined,—is perceived and understood, and at once utilized, by the least argumentative of lovers, even by lovers who are obtuse. The word "never" may be so pronounced as to make the young lady's twenty thousand pounds full present value for ten in the lover's pocket. There should be no arguments, no letters, no interviews; and the young lady's love should be starved by the absence of all other ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... enthusiasm. He was aggrieved and annoyed, though he might have reflected that each of them was just passing through a spiritual crisis such as does not come often in a lifetime. But though Rakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others—partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... don't be so—" he hesitated for the right word, not wishing to be unjust,—"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold here. Think what it must be ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... overwhelmed with regret for his own lack of thought and observation, and yet he could not understand why she should hesitate to ask for money. "Why, it is all yours, dear," he said. "You were only asking for what already belongs to you." And many young husbands are just as obtuse, therefore they should receive in advance the instruction that is needed to prevent a possibility of such neglect. Have it understood that if you are worthy to be trusted as a bearer of the name and a sharer of the fortunes of a man, you are worthy to share also the burden of ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... respect which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... stone and bridged with plank, large enough for a man to pass through with a wheelbarrow, and laid diagonally across the road, so that the torrents pouring down the gutter shall not have to turn a right angle, which they would gladly evade doing, but a very obtuse one, which they cannot in conscience refuse; and, as the road all the way is built a little higher on the precipice side than on the mountain side, the water naturally runs into the gutter on that side, and so is easily beguiled into leaving the road, which it would delight to destroy, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... inferior petal about two inches and a half in length, the lower half somewhat triangular, grooved on the two lowermost sides, and keeled at bottom, the keel running straight to its extremity, the upper half gradually dilating towards the base, runs out into two lobes more or less obtuse, which give it an arrow-shaped form, bifid at the apex, hollow, and containing the antherae, the edges of the duplicature crisped and forming a kind of frill from the ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret diplomacy, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... best to keep her thoughts on the move. He compelled her to talk when she yearned to be silent, and again in a vague, disjointed fashion Olga wondered at his lack of penetration. Yet, since he was actually obtuse enough to misunderstand her preoccupation and to be even mildly hurt thereby, she exerted herself for his sake to respond intelligently to his remarks. So, with cheery indifference on his part and aching suspense on hers, they passed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of possibility that his "speaking" brown eyes may have said something without his permission! Mary Jackson, being also modest in a degree, of course did not reveal the state of her feelings, and made no visible attempt to ascertain his, but her bluff sagacious old father was not obtuse—neither was he reticent. He was a man of the world—at least of the back-woods world—and his knowledge of life, as there exhibited, was founded on somewhat acute experience. He knew that his daughter was young and remarkably pretty. He saw that Dick ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear to my cost I've found— God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound Full upon life, and on the rind of things Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings, Content with that, ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... new position was at right angles with my original line, and it took the shape of an obtuse angle, with my three batteries at the apex. Davis, and Carlin of his division, endeavored to rally their men here on my right, but their efforts were practically unavailing,—though the calm and cool appearance of Carlin, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... insane things he did...I understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it's best she should go away for a while. She's made me," Anna summed up, "feel as if I'd been dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!" ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... did not like Bertha's scoffing mirth at Maria's question. Glad as she was to be at home, her glimpse of the outer world had so enlarged her perceptions, she could not help remarking the unchildlike acuteness of the younger girl, and the obtuse comprehension of the elder; and she feared that she had become discontented and fault-finding after her visit. Moreover, when Bertha spoke much English, a certain hesitation occurred in her speech which was apt to pass unnoticed in her foreign tongues, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and when the little delinquent blushed and hung her head, stammering a faint excuse for her slighted task, he said nothing, but slowly lifting up the lid of his desk, he placed his black ruler in a perpendicular position, letting the lid rest upon it, forming an obtuse angle with the desk. Then he piled the books in the back part, leaving a cavity in front, which looked something like a bower in a greenwood, for it was lined with baize within ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... AVERRHOA BILIMBI.—This is called the blimbing, and is cultivated to some extent in the East Indies. The fruit is oblong, obtuse-angled, somewhat resembling a short, thick cucumber, with a thin, smooth, green rind, filled ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... Doctor; "He is actually edible in them. Note moreover, my son, that He is round in an apple, long-shaped in an aubergine, sharp in a knife and musical in a flute. He has all the qualities of substances, and likewise all the properties of figures. He is acute and He is obtuse, because He is at one and the same time all possible triangles; his radii are at once equal and unequal, because He is both the circle and the ellipse—and He is the hyperbola besides, which is ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... of Jimmy, the unbeliever. The fact that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, and had glanced off, as the designer of the smooth exterior ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... that, though the inhabitants of the hives were familiar and friendly with her by this time and recognized that she came among them without hostile intent, it might well happen that among so many thousands there might be one slow-witted enough and obtuse enough not to have grasped this fact. And in such an event a veil was better than any amount of explanations, for you cannot stick to pure reason ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... some twelve feet below. He was up the next instant, and running with huge paces diagonally towards the Surrey side. He had seen the figure of a woman come flying along from the Westminster side, without bonnet or shawl. When she came under the spot where we stood, she had turned across at an obtuse angle towards the other side of the bridge, and Falconer, convinced that she meant to throw herself into the river, went over as I have related. She had all but scrambled over the fence—for there was no parapet yet—by the help of the great beam that ran along ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Sense is obtuse and safe. Morgan was a mass of fine sensibility; his temperament was full of subtle light and shade—therefore dangerous. Plain-souled, clumsy-handed Common Sense, with perception limited to the thick outlines of character, could not have comprehended him, and would ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Bloc, the Red Bloc, the Neutral Bloc and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a Bloc were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... to Laura's object in making request for the services of Beppo. She herself knew it to be obvious that she intended to probe and cross-examine the man, and in her wilfulness she chose to be obtuse to opinion. She did not even blush to lean a secret ear above the stairs that she might judge, by the tones of Vittoria's voice upon her giving Beppo the order to wait, whether she was at the same time conveying a hint for guardedness. But Vittoria said not a word: it was Ammiani who gave the order. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... kennel, appropriated to the lodging of the muleteer, was a triangular garret already described, formed by the ceiling of the upper story and the roof of the house, which rose in an obtuse angle above it. Its greatest elevation was about six feet, and that only in the centre, whence the tiles slanted downwards on either side to the beams by which the floor was supported. The entrance was by a step-ladder, and through a trap-door, against which, when he reached it, Paco gave two very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... joint, but at an obtuse angle. An example of its use is in fixing boarding around an octagonal ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... leaves, the uppermost of four, in the form of a cross; from the top of the stalk grows a single flower, of an exceedingly dark red colour, in shape resembling the flower, of the narcissus, only much smaller; from the centre of the flower rises a style of a triangular form, and obtuse at the end, which is surrounded by six white stamina, whose extremities are yellow. The root is of the bulbous kind, and resembles in shape that of garlic, being much of the same size, but rounder, and having, like that, four or five ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... modest knave; Scapin directly the reverse. He had no cause to boast so much of his tricks: they are so stupidly planned that in justice they ought not to have succeeded. Even supposing the two old men to be obtuse and brainless in the extreme, we can hardly conceive how they could so easily fall into such a clumsy and obvious snare as he lays for them. It is also disgustingly improbable that Zerbinette, who as a gipsy ought to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... if you were not obtuse you would see it. But you don't see and you don't feel, or you would never have tried to make any one care for you for whom you did not care a bit. But I won't care for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show to the most obtuse mind the purpose to which the office of Maitre Desroches devoted this register, the first sixty pages of which were filled with reports of fictitious cases. On the first page appeared as follows, in the legal spelling of the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the mind of Dexter his bride had no knowledge; nor did her keen instincts warn her that the demon of jealousy was already in his heart. Suffering, and the colder spirit of endurance that followed, had rendered her, in a certain sense, obtuse in ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... appear sometimes to have wars with each other, not only from their weapons, but the scars with which many of them were marked, and some of which appeared to be the remains of very considerable wounds, made with stones, bludgeons, or some other obtuse weapon: By these scars also they appear to be no inconsiderable proficients in surgery, of which indeed we happened to have more direct evidence. One of our seamen, when he was on shore, run a large splinter ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... baseless assumptions—"mere theories—"but things self-evident and "obvious to all;"[540] as for example, the postulates and definitions of Geometry. "After laying down hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles [right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square, circle, and the like], he proceeds on them as known, and gives no further reason about them, and reasons downward from these principles,"[541] affirming certain judgments ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... being, by strong influences around him to retain General Abercromby at the head of one of the expeditions in America, but he hoped that the co-operation of Lord Howe would keep up the courage of the army, and prevent any blunders on the part of the slow and obtuse soldier in command. The plan of the campaign which opened in 1758 was to send three expeditions simultaneously against the three all-important French positions held by the French in the Ohio valley, on Lake Champlain, and ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... think of a girl so obtuse that she permits a man like this fat, disgusting actor to dangle about her?" asked Mrs. Crego of her husband, who was Haney's ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the angles were turned away from each other the legs of the angles in the two figures compared were brought into closer relation, so that in 2b, for instance, the average is even higher than in 2a. Similarly the average in 3b, an obtuse angle, is higher than in 3a. The notes show that in such cases the contrasted angles tended to close up and coalesce into a single figure with a continuous boundary. "The ends (2b) came together and formed a diamond." "When the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... human fallibility, and the fine fight that human nature was always making against stupendous odds stirred him to a fine and comprehending clarity. He had many faults. He was obstinate, often dull and lethargic, in many ways grossly ill-educated and sometimes wilfully obtuse—but he was a fine friend, a noble enemy, and a chivalrous lover. There was nothing mean nor petty in him, and his views of life and the human soul were wider and more all-embracing than in any Englishman I have ever known. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... prove in this letter how my head turns round when I write it, than explain why I didn't write it before—and so you will go on to think me the most insusceptible and least grateful of human beings—no small distinction in our bad obtuse world. Yet the truth is—oh, the truth is, that I am deeply grateful to you and have felt to the quick of my heart the meaning and kindness of your words, the worth of your sympathy and praise. One thing especially which you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... further error, by conceiving, that the mind could form a general or abstract idea by its own operation, which was the copy of no particular perception; as of a triangle in general, that was neither acute, obtuse, nor right angled. The ingenious Dr. Berkley and Mr. Hume have demonstrated, that such general ideas have no existence in nature, not even in the mind of their celebrated inventor. We shall therefore take for granted at present, that our recollection ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... disposal of the ground, calculating the gradients and summit levels as if he were a railway-engineer for the time being—let him observe where the moss lies deep, and precipices rise too steep to be scrambled over; and he will be very obtuse indeed, if he is not able to chalk out for himself precisely the best way to the top. It is a good general rule to keep by the side of a stream. That if you do so when you are at the top of a hill, you will somehow or other find your way to the bottom, is, we are convinced, a proposition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... pronoun would have rendered his meaning clear to even a more obtuse man than myself. No Lady ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... and striking circumstances, in our peculiar history and splendid prospects, and, above all, in the character, superstitions, and legends of our aborigines, who, to eyes across the water, look like poetical beings. We are continually reproached by British writers for the obtuse carelessness with which we are allowing these people, with so much of the heroic element in their lives, and so much of the mysterious in their origin, to go into the annihilation which seems their inevitable fate as ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... fellow?" asked Cap, scarcely knowing how to take the other's manner, which was so dry, while it was so simple, that a less obtuse subject than the old sailor might well have suspected its sincerity. "One who has passed the place knows how to feel ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... sweet and fugitive, others are obtuse, complex, and tortuous as nightmares—difficult to understand and well-nigh impossible to relate. And the day after the tennis party was such a day in the Brookes household, nor did its tumult cease when the lights were turned ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... difficult matter in a large family to keep your actions a secret. Obtuse as most men are, with things going on right under their eyes, it is not easy to baffle them when once their curiosity is roused. And yet curiosity is always imputed exclusively to women! Though Eve was the first to taste the apple, Adam had no intention of being behindhand. I know ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... called—are pleasant companions, and the story of those feats in the gymnastics of sentimentalism in which they lived to shine is the prettiest reading imaginable. But others not so fortunate or, to be plain, more honestly obtuse persist in finding that story tedious, and the bewildering appearances it deals with not human beings—not of the stock of Rose Jocelyn and Sir Everard Romfrey, of Dahlia Fleming and Lucy Feverel and Richmond ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
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