"Tangent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place; inside as well as out, a noble place—a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could never have been planned by any mortal ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Lady, but you're so pretty!" she smiled, as the streets ran by. Downtown and still downtown the taxi sped, past the Washington Square district, which they had explored together, shooting off at a tangent into the kind of neighbourhood where Bambi had fallen sick at the sights and the filth. They drew up before an old-fashioned house, with dirty steps and windows and curtains. It looked like a better-class citizen on the down grade, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... came down the road flanking the fort. There had been a rain and the road was slippery with red mud. As the driver took the turn at the corner his wheels began skidding and he lost control. The car skewed off at a tangent, hurdled the moat, and tore a hole in the mud wall; and, as the occupants spilled sprawlingly through the gap, a front tire exploded with a loud report. The garrison took just one look out the front door, jumped to the conclusion that the Villa crowd ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... Epicycloid. Evolute. Flying Buttress. Focus. Gnomes. Hexagon. Hyperbola. Hypothenuse. Incidental. Isosceles. Triangle. Parabola. Parallelogram. Pelecoid. Polygons. Pyramid. Rhomb. Sector. Segment. Sinusoid. Tangent. Tetrahedron. Vertex. ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... actually gaining in effectiveness by doing so. It seems that each speaker was allowed only twenty minutes, and rather than run the risk of going off on a tangent, he had written the whole thing out—but he ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... recollection. He particularly dwelt on the unheard-of manner in which I had picked up the Irish language, and drew from thence the conclusion that I was not fitted by nature to cut a respectable figure at an English university. "He will fly off in a tangent," said he, "and, when called upon to exhibit his skill in Greek, will be found proficient in Irish; I have observed the poor lad attentively, and really do not know what to make of him; but I am afraid he will never make a churchman!" And I have no doubt ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... obviously, is an exact statement of the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakspere and Montaigne. Not that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked for; rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakspere's thought often diverging at a tangent from that of the writer he is reading, or even directly gainsaying it. But there can be no solid argument as to such indirect influence until we have fully established the direct influence, and this can only be done by exhibiting a considerable number of coincidences. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... whose white cap the unlucky moth, frightened by its benefactor's vehemence, was fluttering wildly. Jack even forgot himself so far as to swear softly in French at the frightened insect as it flew wildly off at a tangent, not to the open window, but to Miss Leonora's candles, where it came to an immediate end. Miss Leonora sat rather grimly looking on at all this byplay. When her elegant nephew threw himself back once more upon his ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... youngster," said he, with a significant twinkle in his eye which made the other two chaplains grin, I could see, at some joke they had between them. "I'll try and call on your father, if I can find time before he leaves Portsmouth. Tell him when you get back, that old Tangent ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of much more recent date than the creation of the worlds, and could not therefore account for it. He next tried an ingenious idea, comparing the perpendiculars from different points of a quadrant of a circle on a tangent at its extremity. The greatest of these, the tangent, not being cut by the quadrant, he called the line of the sun, and associated with infinite force. The shortest, being the point at the other end of the ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... from the engine room to do this, and as he paused on the threshold there was a sudden crash. Part of the air pump seemed to fly off at a tangent, and a second later had smashed down on the Cardite motor. This stopped in an instant, and the projectile began falling. Fortunately it was but a short distance above the moon's surface, and came down with a jar, which did not injure ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... emergency the sensible animal will instantaneously check his impetuosity, 'prop,' and swing round at a tangent." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... own way of getting at things—generally more circuitous than now, though he struck on a tangent sufficiently acute momentarily to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... question whether this force which operates so tangibly here at the earth's surface may not extend its influence out into the depths of space, so as to include, for example, the moon. Obviously some force pulls the moon constantly towards the earth; otherwise that body would fly off at a tangent and never return. May not this so-called centripetal force be identical with terrestrial gravitation? Such was Newton's query. Probably many another man since Anaxagoras had asked the same question, but assuredly Newton was the first man to ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... passage towards the center of the Globe, whence, according to the laws of refractions made in a triangular Prism, and the generation of colour set down in the description of Muscovi-glass there must necessarily appear a red colour in the transitus or passage of those tangent Rays. To make this more plain, we will suppose (in the sixth Figure) ABCD, to represent the Globe of the Atmosphere, EFGH to represent the opacous Globe of the Earth, lying in the midst of it, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of rose, black, silver. Short twists and upstartings, Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles: Sunshine playing between red and black flowers On a blue and gold lawn. Shadows and polished surfaces, Facets of mauve and purple, A constant modulation of values. Shaft-shaped, With green bead ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... approaching the Moon. It had by this time turned over considerably under the influence of attraction, but its own original motion still followed a decidedly oblique direction. The consequence of these two forces might possibly be a tangent, line approaching the edge of the Moon's disc. One thing was certain: the Projectile had not yet commenced to fall directly towards her surface; its base, in which its centre of gravity lay, was still turned away considerably from ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... After all, the imagination ought not to be startled any more at so many orders of infinites than at the so well-known proposition, viz., that curve lines may always be made to pass between a circle and a tangent; or at that other, namely, that matter is divisible in infinitum. These two truths have been demonstrated many years, and are no less incomprehensible than the things we ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... accipiet te laeta; neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... papist; what need is there of flying off at such a tangent?" said Mr. Stillinghast, with a grim smile; "I did not mean that, but what will become of you when I ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and living power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a tangent. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... and I can even imagine her adoring me. I really think this is my only way. Curiously, as I look back upon my brief career, it all seems to tend to this consummation. It has its graceful curves and crooks, indeed, and here and there a passionate tangent; but on the whole, if I were to unfold it here a la Hogarth, what better legend could I scrawl beneath the series of pictures than So-and-So's Progress to a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... mean opposition distance. As they wished to start by daylight—i. e., from the side of the earth turned towards the sun—they could not steer immediately for Jupiter, but were obliged to go a few hundred miles in the direction of the sun, then change their course to something like a tangent to the earth, and get their final right direction in swinging near the moon, since they must be comparatively near some material object ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... of railway hands who had learned what was in progress—were out on the porch of a cottage to see us pass. And it must have been a sight worth seeing, for we were running at 70 miles an hour now, with 60 miles of tangent ahead of us. At Butler, seven miles beyond, we passed a Wabash train on a parallel track, which made great show of travelling fast. Perhaps it was doing so—moving, perchance, at 40 miles an hour. But we were running at 72, and the Wabash train ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... but one man—this particular one man—has ever made any attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women told her: the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that nothing on earth could change their ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... down, and a rushing river glimmered before us. We struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north, stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be blinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the ocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, roughened. gathered itself for the shock, was shattered, and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... speech she seemed to strike off at a tangent. She spoke with a lightness that appeared to conceal a hint of pain. "They say the mounted police are the guides, philosophers and friends of the people up North. They say you have to do everything, from feeding babies ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... off at a tangent. "By next winter, with everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the vegetables, an' I'll be able ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for a no less personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this story, my granduncle, Rumgudgeon, was accessible and pacific only upon the points which happened to chime in with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... run, he crawled. Naked, now, and with only a few kifs still clinging to him. And the blind tangent of his flight had taken him well out of the path of ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... been the first of the Danes to break down the barriers of their own exclusive set. To be sure, he realized that in a city like New York it was quite possible for circles of equal choiceness to exist tangent to each other, yet in mutual ignorance of one another; but his years abroad in slower-moving countries had not prepared him for the countless agile performers clambering up and down over the social ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... while to go into its details, we should need some further diagrams to make it quite clear. Nor is it worth while to go into the description of various minor points of refinement about the gun mounting, such as the very exposed long tangent scale seen in the figure, by which the elevation or depression is read off, nor the still more exposed and rather ricketty arrangement by which the rear sight is arranged to rise and fall with the gun, and allowance for dispart avoided. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he had ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... a tangent to describe the men in his platoon. "The best man in our lot is an ex-grocer's assistant, but in order to save us from vain generalisations it happens that the worst man—a moon-faced creature, almost incapable of lacing up his boots without help and objurgation—is also ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting-house of Dodson & Fogg. From Dodson & Fogg's it flew off at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep. So he roused himself, and began to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Geordie's home and refuge. The tall flag-staff came suddenly into view, and in less than four minutes they would be rushing by. Over forty miles to the hour were they flying now. Big Ben had just let out another notch as they swung into the two-mile tangent, when at the same instant he and Geordie caught sight of three or four black dots dimly bobbing in the midst of a little dust-cloud on the roadway far ahead, and almost at the same instant came from each the low cry, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the pitch of mysticism, the imagination harassed and goaded beyond the normal round, suddenly flipping from the circumference, spinning off at a tangent, out into the void, where all things seemed possible, hurtling through the dark there, groping for the supernatural, clamouring for the miracle. And it was also the human, natural protest against the inevitable, the irrevocable; the spasm of revolt under the sting of death, the rebellion of the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... looks and her fascination she ought to have married well. I'm sure her friends have tried hard enough for her. But what can you do with a girl who throws herself at the heads of ineligibles, and when one trots out an unexceptionable PARTI and does one's best to bring them together, goes off at a tangent and lets the whole thing drop through. You know how it was with....' Lady ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Happy Valley ran Market Street, a bias cut across the city that was to be. Market Street is about all that saved that city from making a checker-board of its ground-plan. Market Street flew off at a tangent and set all the south portion of the town at an angle that is rather a relief than anything else that I know of. Who wants to go on forever up one street and down another, and then across town at right angles, as if life were a treadmill and there were no hope ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... around, and bending low to avoid the bullets he sped at a tangent in the opposite direction, for the timber of Wheeling Hill. The Indians afoot could not catch him, no bullet caught him; he would make it—he would make it; there he goes, up the hill. He was safe—but ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... For although the particular waves produced by the particles comprised within the space CAE spread also outside this space, they yet do not concur at the same instant to compose a wave which terminates the movement, as they do precisely at the circumference CE, which is their common tangent. ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... afforded you, Virginia, for mental discipline. I can see that Miss Kingsley has taken a fancy to you. She is not a person who goes off at a tangent. She must have discerned capabilities for culture in you, or she would never have invited you to one of her entertainments. To you, who are accustomed to society fine speeches that mean nothing, it will probably occur that she is asking you on my account. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... flying to? You are off at a tangent—I thought we were talking about the mercenary nature of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... The lower part is constructed similar to our Comparator A1201. The top slide carries a divided circle for measuring position angles. The circle is arranged similar to a position micrometer. It is fitted with quick gear motion and tangent screw and the two verniers read to 1-100 degree. The microscope has variable magnifying power and is provided with reversing eye piece. This machine has been furnished for and is in use at Yerkes, Lick and ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... separator of grains and seeds is very neat. (Pat. 167,297.) See Fig. 32. That part of the machine with which we have to do consists essentially of a horizontal revolving disk. The mixed grains are cast on this disk, pass to the edge, and are hurled off at a tangent. Suppose at A. Each particle is immediately acted on by three forces. For all particles of the same size and having the same velocity the resistance of the air may be taken the same, that is, proportional to the area presented. The acceleration of gravity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... ray-gun did not move for an instant from the line it held on the metal and fabric giant. He said at a tangent, quite pleasantly: ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... had the ordinary heroism to intervene, and I with ever increasing rapidity was borne helplessly down the declivity towards the gates of Hyde Park Corner, when, by the benevolence of Providence, the anterior wheel ran under a railing, and I flew off like a tangent into the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... back and front edges should be made to coincide, that is, the eye should be placed in exactly the same plane which passes through the edges; they should then be brought carefully down until they form a tangent with the curve produced by the convex surface of the mercury and the light is just excluded from between them and the point of contact. It is desirable in making this adjustment that the eye should be assisted by a magnifying-glass. The reading of the scale should ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... flew off at a tangent, and our knight could not help smiling at the peculiar virulence of his disposition. Sir Launcelot then endeavoured to enter into conversation with his attendant, by asking how long Mr. Distich had resided in the house; but he might as well have addressed ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Application of Power. The Supporting Surfaces. Area not the Essential Thing. The Law of Gravity. Gravity. Indestructibility of Gravitation. Distance Reduces Gravitational Pull. How Motion Antagonizes Gravity. A Tangent. Tangential Motion Represents Centrifugal Pull. Equalizing the Two Motions. Lift and Drift. Normal Pressure. Head Resistance. Measuring Lift and Drift. Pressure at Different Angles. Difference Between Lift and Drift in Motion. Tables of Lift and Drift. Why Tables of Lift ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... lodestone, the magnet of my heart was here," he answered half-playfully, half-tenderly. "When that is gone, I shall be likely to fly off in a tangent again." ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... pivoted working beam and a vertical plunger-type pump beneath the other end. Heavy, flat chains were secured to a sector at each end of the working beam and to the engine and pump piston rods in such a way that the rods were always tangent to a circle whose center was at the beam pivot. The weight of the reciprocating pump parts pulled the pump end of the beam down; the atmosphere, acting on the open top of the piston in the steam cylinder, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... twinty-nine, subthract three f'r th' duchess, a quarther to one o'clock an' eighty miles fr'm Narragansett pier is two-an'-a-half, plus th' load-wather-line iv th' saloon companionway, akel to two-fifths iv th' differentyal tangent. Huroo! Misther Sicrety, ye can go home an' tell ye'er wife th' counthry's safe.' He has to be a smart man. A good book-keeper, as th' pote says, is th' counthry's on'y safety. He mus' be careful, too, d'ye mind. Th' honor iv th' army an' the navy is at stake. Wan or th' other iv ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... to 'ear of anybody dyin'," she said. "I never been in a 'ouse before where it's 'appened, an' besides she's been good to me!" Her mind wandered off at a tangent "Any'ow," she said, wiping her eyes, "I done me best. No one can't never say I ain't done me best, an' the best can't ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... rule may be described in words as follows: Required the area between a curve, the axis of x and two ordinates; it is necessary to draw a new curve, such that its steepness, as measured by the tangent of the inclination, may be proportional to the ordinate of the given curve for the same value of x, then the ascent made by the new curve in passing from one ordinate to the other is a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... For the sake of economy of space, our cut omits the Point and Swannanoa tunnels (the latter is the summit tunnel), but covers all of the location which is of interest to engineers, the remainder at the Swannanoa end being almost "on tangent" to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... he quickly concealed these emotions and proceeded to plunge into an animated conversation with his guests. Indeed, it assumed the character of a monologue in which he frequently adverted to the weather, to be off on a tangent the next moment on a discussion of finance, politics, sociology, on which subjects, however, he was far from showing the positiveness and fixed opinion that he did while descanting upon the weather. In all the subjects he touched upon, he exhibited a certain skill ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... had unfortunately taken fire. He was poring over mathematics till, in his own phraseology,—still affected in its prose by the classical pedantries caught from Pope by Ramsay,—"the sun entered Virgo, when a charming fillette, who lived next door, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the scene of my studies." We need not detail the story, nor the incessant repetitions of it, which marked and sometimes marred his career. The poet was jilted, went through the usual despairs, and resorted to the not unusual sources of consolation. He had found that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Delight came in, straight from Boston, where she had been doing two days' shopping; and in her hand she carried a parcel in white paper. I was going to say a round parcel, which it would have been but for something which ran out in a sharp tangent from one side, and pushed the wrappings into an odd angle. This she put ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney |
