"Compass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ship had been in a remorseless solitude. No voice had come to us; no spark of intelligence from the universe touched us, save from the stars and the sun, but at the hour of the night, and the point of the compass, our navigator had foretold, we should hear the deep-throated horn on Reyes point—it came to us out of the gloomy abyss—and science had not failed. Across the trackless waste we had been guided aright, and there was music the angels might have ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... canals and marshes which protected it, had been so well kept up or restored since his time, that their security was absolutely complete; a besieging army could do little harm—it needed a whole nation in revolt to compass its downfall. A whole nation also was required for its defence, but the Babylonians were not inclined to second the efforts of their sovereign. Nabonidus concentrated his troops at the point most threatened, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a young man of twenty-two, whose cheeks betrayed a soft, peachy down, and whose voice had scarcely a compass of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... they should want no translation, but till some of them should be able to make a much better than the present. The great advantage of understanding Moliere your Lordship best knows. What is it, but almost to understand mankind? He has shown such a compass of knowledge in human nature, as scarce to leave it in the power of succeeding writers in comedy to be originals; whence it has, in fact, appear'd, that they who, since his time, have most excelled in the Comic way, have copied Moliere, and therein were sure of copying nature. ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... easy matter to give in short compass an account of Lamarck's biological philosophy. He is an obscure writer, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... was as fine and calm as the night; at seven bells, suddenly a bell began to toll very much like that of a country church, and on going on deck we found an awning raised, a desk with a flag flung over it close to the compass, and the ship's company and passengers assembled there to hear the Captain read the Service in a manly respectful voice. This, too, was a novel and touching sight to me. Peaked ridges of purple mountains rose to the left of the ship,—Finisterre and the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... within her, this fact was beyond question. Also, she had come of her own free will. The foot which had dared to stamp upon the torn fragments of the Pope's mandate, had, with an equal courage, stepped aside from the way of convention and had brought her within the compass ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... surveyors came along. They might have run the track over the lonely grave but for the thoughtfulness of the man who wielded the compass. He changed the line, that the resting place of the pioneer mother should not be disturbed, and the grave ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... for instance, against those who in any way injure or deface his album; or who summon a parent or patron without magisterial sanction; or who violently rescue persons summoned before himself, or who compass such ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... journey about one o'clock this morning, after taking the compass bearings of the principal points within sight on Wrangell Land, and making a hasty collection of the flowering plants on my way. I found one species of poppy, quite showy, and making considerable masses of color on the sloping uplands, three ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... spectators rushed in and filled it in an instant. They were standing, and so thickly pressed together that the movement of a single arm sufficed to cause in the crowd a movement similar to the waving of a field of corn. There was one man whose head thus described a large circle, as that of a compass, without his feet quitting the spot to which they were fixed; and some young men were ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... long strayed over the incident which romanticized that utilitarian structure, he became aware that he was not the only person who was looking from the terrace towards that point of the compass. At the right-hand corner, in a niche of the curtain-wall, reclined a girlish shape; and asleep on the bench over which she leaned was a white cat—the identical Persian as it seemed—that had been taken into the carriage at ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... field Turpin the Archbishop passed; Such shaven-crown has never else sung Mass Who with his limbs such prowess might compass; To th'pagan said "God send thee all that's bad! One thou hast slain for whom my heart is sad." So his good horse forth at his bidding ran, He's struck him then on his shield Toledan, Until he flings him dead ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... it will be my duty to report your conduct to my superior officer. In command of this ship! Why, you don't know enough to lay off the course of the ship, or even to box the compass." ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... rough the canoe had made good progress towards our destination when night came on. The wind had been increasing, and I saw the natives looking anxiously at the sky, which had become overcast. The darkness was intense, and we had no compass in the canoe by which to direct our course. The native boatmen, however, continued steering on, trusting to the wind, which had remained steadily blowing from one quarter. Still, as the waves rose, and our frail canoe ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Tivoli—the old crowd that had seen Daylight depart two months before; for this was the night of the sixtieth day, and opinion was divided as ever as to whether or not he would compass the achievement. At ten o'clock bets were still being made, though the odds rose, bet by bet, against his success. Down in her heart the Virgin believed he had failed, yet she made a bet of twenty ounces with Charley Bates, against ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the ass was called, presenting himself for admittance. On entering, he proceeded immediately to the stable of a merchant, which he had formerly occupied. The poor animal had not only swam safely to the shore, but without guide, compass, or travelling map, had found his way from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected by streams, which he had never traversed before, and in so short a period, that ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... government, but a fundamental revolution in the whole idea of government, its motives, purposes, and functions—a revolution equivalent to a reversal of polarity of the entire social system, carrying, so to speak, the entire compass card with it, and making north south, and east west. Then was seen what seems so plain to us that it is hard to understand why it was not always seen, that instead of its being proper for the sovereign people ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... unconsciousness of the attention he is giving, and the brain power he is exerting, that we may find it difficult to awaken his attention to any particular part of his performance without putting him out. Indeed we cannot do so. We observe that he finds it hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary consciousness of what he has once learnt so thoroughly that it has passed, so to speak, into the domain of unconsciousness, than he found it to learn the note or passage in the first instance. The effort after a second consciousness of detail baffles ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... for safety. Miki followed, yelping at every jump. No longer did Neewa feel a horror of the river. The instinct of his kind told him that he wanted water, and wanted it badly. As straight as Challoner might have set his course by a compass he headed for the stream, but he had proceeded only a few hundred feet when they came upon a tiny creek across which either of them could have jumped. Neewa jumped into the water, which was four or five inches deep, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... message, heed it well, Tell to his own, Orestes is no more. And—whatsoe'er his kinsfolk shall resolve, Whether to bear his dust unto his home, Or lay him here, in death as erst in life Exiled for aye, a child of banishment— Bring me their hest, upon thy backward road; For now in brazen compass of an urn His ashes lie, their dues of weeping paid." So much I heard, and so much tell to thee, Not knowing if I speak unto his kin Who rule his home; but well, I deem, it were, Such news should earliest reach a ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... which had been turning now to one point of the compass now to another, was fortunately just then ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must add the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose. There's a melody born of melody, Which melts the world into a sea. Toil could never compass it; Art its height could never hit; It came never out of wit; But a music music-born Well may Jove and Juno scorn. Thy beauty, if it lack the fire Which drives me mad with sweet desire, What boots it? What the soldier's mail, Unless he conquer and prevail? What ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... as two men would have met, but he knew that they had not done so, and she must have known it. All that was plain sailing enough, but beyond this lay a sea of conjecture in which he found himself without helm or compass. Why, should she have acted a fib about his being an actor, and why, after the end, should she have added an end, in which she returned to own that she had been fibbing? For that was what it came to; and though Verrian tasted a delicious pleasure in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... can help it,' he urged me; 'for things somehow, my dear Harry, appear to me to look like the compass when the needle gives signs of atmospheric disturbance. My only reason for saying so is common observation. You can judge for yourself that he is glad to have you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again in terror, for there was a huge pit full of fire right in front, which stretched as far as one could see to east and west. Yet Lemminkainen was not discouraged, but prayed to great Ukko, that he would send a great storm from all the four points of the compass, and fill the pit with snow. And the snow came and as it fell into the seething pit of fire it melted and formed a lake; and Lemminkainen quickly cast a spell upon this lake so that a solid bridge of ice was formed over it, and he drove ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... certain distance, she gave way to reflection. "This is indeed," she thought, "knowing a person, as far as face goes, and not as heart! Can there be another such a beast as he! If he really continues to behave in this manner, I shall soon enough compass his death, with my own hands, and he'll then know what ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... after passing the schooner that was in distress when they "spoke," as the quartermaster called it, the revenue cutter which had been sent to help the disabled vessel, steaming swiftly toward the point of the compass where the schooner was wallowing. Mr. Sparks, as the wireless operator was called, had exchanged messages with the Government vessel and he told the little Bunkers that the lumber schooner would be towed into Hampton Roads, from which the cutter ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... two chapters I have regaled the reader with a delectable picture of the good Peter and his metropolis during an interval of peace. It was, however, but a bit of blue sky in a stormy day; the clouds are again gathering up from all points of the compass, and, if I am not mistaken in my forebodings, we shall have rattling ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... under but a rag of canvas the brig was pressed down gunwale deep, and each wave as it struck her broadside seemed to heave her bodily to leeward. Malcolm on coming on deck made his way aft and glanced at the compass, and then took a long look over the foaming water towards where he knew the French coast must lie. The wind was two or three points east of north, and as the clumsy craft would not sail within several points of the wind ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... which the jeweller accommodated to the subject, the better to compass his design, the prince of Persia changed colour, and looked at the jeweller in a manner which convinced him how much he was disconcerted at the intelligence. "I am surprised at what you inform me," said he; "a greater misfortune could not befall ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... young woman, devotedly attached to her father, and fully appreciating his value to his family, should have regarded his ill-health as sent by God for her especial benefit, to interrupt her worldly course, and compass her salvation. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... compensate that tranquillity of which they bereave the muses. The speeches of the parliamentary orators, during this period, are of a strain much superior to what any former age had produced in England; and the force and compass of our tongue were then first put to trial. It must, however, be confessed, that the wretched fanaticism, which so much infected the parliamentary party, was no less destructive of taste and science, than of all law and order. Gayety and wit were proscribed; human ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... steward's acknowledgment, ere he ran aft, disrupted the binnacle, and carried the steering compass back to the boat. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... constant turmoil in the ether which creates the magnetic area explains why the magnetized needle of a compass unfailingly points north and south. This one simple fact is a certain proof of its existence. And once granting a magnetic field to be there it is less difficult to understand how wireless waves are produced in this congenial ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... boy thanked the turtle-dove and recommenced his journey, following the course of the wind as it changed and chopped about to different points of the compass. The country gradually grew sadder and more arid; and, as night approached, the path led between bare and sombre rocks, a vast black mass among them being the tower wherein dwelt the witch whom the boy was in search of. The sight of the hideous ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... days might offer to dispute de omni scibile, and in accepting the challenge I, as a young man, was not guilty of any extraordinary presumption, for all which books could teach was, at that time, within the compass of a diligent and ardent student. Even then we had difficulties to contend with which were unknown to the ancients. The curse of Babel fell lightly upon them. The Greeks despised other nations too much to think of acquiring their languages ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... big species of pigeon that nests in the Hills. It seldom sings, and then only at nightfall. It is reverenced by these people, who believe that it sings prophecies of good or evil, the character of the omen being determined by the point of the compass in which it lights to offer its rare evening song. Direction is gauged from where the Tribal Agong hangs—I will show you that after supper. It is a queer superstition, Major: they think that a song in the west means greatest harm—death ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... even more flushed as the minute hand of the big wall clock showed the passing of five flying minutes. Next came, "Thrust forward, upwards, and from your sides," "bend trunks," to all points of the compass, "lunge to the right and left, and thrust forward," and a baker's dozen of other exercises designed to offset the weakening influences of cramped ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... changed. Iron-gray hair becomes him. But I was horribly disappointed in myself. I had expected to feel at least a romantic thrill, but all I felt was a comfortable interest, such as I might have taken in any old friend. Do my utmost, Louisa, I couldn't compass a thrill." ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had watched with baby during the measles) when the sea, as if scorning all previous performances, seemed lashing itself into a very climax of rage. Smutty rags of clouds flew across the ominous horizon, and spiteful gusts, apparently from every direction of the compass, caught the old Nautilus in wild arms, and tossed her about ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... violent and outrageous Winds blow from all Points of the Compass in twenty-four Hours. And this is one material thing to distinguish them from the regular and ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... for the winter. Our silent partner was rapidly awakening to the importance of his usefulness in securing future contracts with the War and Indian departments, and vaguely outlining the future, we separated to three points of the compass. ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... dreadful journeys by canoe and sledge, its frozen barrens, its mighty forests, its solemn charm. All at once this post of Conjuror's House, a month in the wilderness as it was, seemed very small and tame and civilized for the simple reason that Death did not always compass it about. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... public squares are traversed by hurrying crowds. Groves which have since become classic were then impenetrable thickets; and the only guides the emigrant found, through forest and prairie, were the points of the compass, and the courses of streams. But in the years eighteen hundred and seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, the western slope of the Sangamon country began rapidly to improve. Reports had gone abroad of "the fertility of its soil, the beauty of its surface, its genial climate, and its ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... sport of me with the most barefaced effrontery. I thought she was trying to fetter me again with her chains; and although I had no inclination for them, I made up my mind to render her the service she claimed at my hands, and which she believed I alone could compass. She felt certain of her success, but in what school had she obtained her experience of the human heart? Was it in reading novels? Most likely the reading of a certain class of novels causes the ruin of a great many young girls, but ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... instrument used to discover the latitude, which it would give to a nice observer to within five or ten miles. Quadrants and sextants were the invention of a much later period. Indeed, considering that they had so little knowledge of navigation and the variation of the compass, and that their easting and westing could only be computed by dead reckoning, it is wonderful how our ancestors traversed the ocean in the way they did, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were absolutely necessary. They included the Mummery tent with pegs and poles, the mountain-mercurial barometer, the two Watkins aneroids, the hypsometer, a pair of Zeiss glasses, two 3A kodaks, six films, a sling psychrometer, a prismatic compass and clinometer, a Stanley pocket level, an eighty-foot red-strand mountain rope, three ice axes, a seven-foot flagpole, an American flag and a Yale flag. In order to avoid disaster in case of storm, we also carried four of Silver's self-heating cans of Irish stew and mock-turtle ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... not too much your own opinion, When your vessel's under weigh, Let good advice still bear dominion; That's a compass will not stray." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less compass than two months. This vehemence of his, I confess, is more suitable to my temper; and therefore I have translated his first book with greater pleasure than any part of Virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pains: the continual agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... passed through the city, and then along the water-side streets, where there were shops displaying tarpaulins, canvas, and ropes; others dealing in ships' stores; and again others whose windows glittered with compass, sextant, and patent ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... gale. Ten minutes after the storm struck and the cattle turned to drift with it, all knowledge of the quarter of the compass was lost. It was a reasonable allowance that the storm would hold a true course until its wrath was spent, and relying on that slender thread, the boys attempted to veer the herd for the sand hills. By nature cattle are none too gregarious, as only under fear will they flock compactly, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... must be looked for on the actual road from Charchan to Charkalyk. Ouash Shahri, five days from Charchan, and where small ruins are to be found, corresponds well to the position of Lop according to Marco Polo, a few degrees of the compass near. But the stream which passes at this spot could never be important enough for the wants of a considerable centre of habitation and the ruins of Ouash Shahri are more of a hamlet than of a town. Moreover, Lop was certainly the meeting point of the roads of Kashgar, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in. Season it with a little salt, a grate of nutmeg, and the least bit of lemon peel. Boil it gently for a few minutes till it be tolerably thick, but so it may be drank. The flesh of a chicken thus reduced to a small compass, will be found ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... round is the shortest road to a given place. The reason for this was to ward off any suspicion that might have arisen if the watchers had always come and gone by the same trail. Therefore they started for any point of the compass, swung round in a wide detour, and in course of ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... (died in 1772) made some worthy contributions to the literature of the mariner's compass. As De Morgan states, he was librarian of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... of the sun? How few, moreover, of the discoveries which have changed the face of the world, either were or could have been arrived at by investigations aiming directly at the object! Would the mariner's compass ever have been found by direct efforts for the improvement of navigation? Should we have reached the electric telegraph by any amount of striving for a means of instantaneous communication, if Franklin had not identified electricity with lightning, and Ampere with magnetism? ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... man shall believe it was by chance and accident that she met her cousin on these moors? She is not a compass that pointeth, of miraculous ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and wandering feet, Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? So in light and shadow the preacher went, God's erring and human instrument; And the hearts of the people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, Under the spell of a voice which took In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook, And the mystical chime of the bells of gold On the ephod's hem of the priest of old,— Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... advance or until he died. The noble guard hewed down the pagans by the hundreds until the earth was heaped with the slain. Where Roland stood wielding Durendal, dripping with blood from point to hilt, lay a circle of dead Moslems, for from every side the multitude came to compass the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... coincidences, but there is still enough to evince acquaintance with "Sylvester, Spenser, Drummond, Drayton, Chaucer, Fairfax, and Buchanan." The literary merit of these versions seems to us to have been underrated. There may be no individual phrase beyond the compass of an apt and sensitive boy with a turn for verse-making; but the general tone is masculine and emphatic. There is not much to say, but what is said is delivered with a "large utterance," prophetic of the "os magna soniturum," and justifying his own report of his youthful ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the local attraction of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... they were most essential, and that when properly inflated one could float about in them for a week. Indeed, as Tish said, with a compass and a small sail one could probably make the nearest land, such as the Azores, supporting life in the meantime with ship's biscuits, and so on, in waterproof packages, carried in the pockets provided for the purpose. She did indeed go so far as to place a bottle of blackberry cordial ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... brows, and her beautiful figure. And—as a last diagnostic to guide the judgment of a connoisseur—Natalie's pure voice, a most seductive voice, had certain metallic tones. Softly as that brassy ring was managed, and in spite of the grace with which its sounds ran through the compass of the voice, that organ revealed the character of the Duke of Alba, from whom the Casa-Reales were collaterally descended. These indications were those of violent passions without tenderness, sudden ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... aspect, and their being drawn with absolute geometrical precision, as if they were the work of rule or compass, has led some to see in them the work of intelligent beings, inhabitants of the planet. I am very careful not to combat this supposition, which includes nothing impossible. (Io mi guarder bene dal combattere questa supposizione, la quale nulla include d'impossibile.) But it will ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... holy-stones to try and get the blood-stains out of the deck before they had sunk deeply in. We were thus employed till breakfast. By this time the wind had completely dropped, and it became a stark calm, such as so often occurs in the Mediterranean. The brig's head went boxing round the compass, and chips of wood thrown overboard lay floating alongside, unwilling to part company. The heat, too, was almost as great as I ever felt it in the West Indies. Still we tried to make ourselves as happy as we could. We were out of sight of the African coast, and were not likely to be attacked ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... removing which Defects is not so great but that it might easily fall even within the compass of a private Ability to remove, if at least Publick Authority Would but Countenance the Design, how much less then would it be if the same would afford also ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Aben Hafuz, King of Granada, a magical mode of repulsing all invaders without risking the lives of his subjects or diminishing the contents of the royal treasury. He caused a tower to be built, in the upper part of which was a circular hall with windows looking towards every point of the compass, and before each window a table supporting a mimic army of horse and foot. On the top of the tower was a bronze figure of a Moorish horseman, fixed on a pivot, with elevated lance. Whenever a foe was at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... This is an astrological superstition. It is said that when this God is in any part of the compass, at the time being, it is most unlucky to proceed towards it, and to remain in the same ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... particular people. It reaches every race and every individual, and if in any respect it commits one race to the nation, it commits every race and every individual thereof. Slavery or involuntary servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo-Saxon are as much within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... and glorify their Author: and, if rightly directed, may be of greater benefit to mankind than the monuments of exemplary charity that have at so great charge been raised by the founders of hospitals and almshouses. He that first invented printing, discovered the use of the compass, or made public the virtue and right use of KIN KINA, did more for the propagation of knowledge, for the supply and increase of useful commodities, and saved more from the grave than those who built colleges, workhouses, and hospitals. All that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... appeared, that if the knight was not a complete master of the minstrel art, his taste for it had at least been cultivated under the best instructors. Art had taught him to soften the faults of a voice which had little compass, and was naturally rough rather than mellow, and, in short, had done all that culture can do in supplying natural deficiencies. His performance, therefore, might have been termed very respectable by abler judges than ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... eighteen miles south of the island of Takeshima. The "Izumrud" had used her superior speed to get away to the south-west. The four battered ships that remained with him saw more than twenty enemies appear from all points of the compass, including Togo's battleships and heavy armoured cruisers, all as fit for work as when the first fighting began. They opened fire at long range with their ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... my cup-companion and sitting-comrade." So he rose forthright and saying to Masrur, "Take him up," returned to the palace. Accordingly, the Eunuch took up Abu al-Hasan and carrying him to the palace of the Caliphate, set him down before Al-Rashid, who bade the slaves and slave-girls compass him about, whilst he himself hid in a place where Abu al-Hasan could not see him. Then he commanded one of the hand-maidens to take the lute and strike it over the Wag's head, whilst the rest smote upon their instruments. So they ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... helpers. Soon they were in the steerage among the children; commenced packing of blankets, &c., as we were expecting to make the port soon after breakfast In this, however, we were disappointed, as in Travers's Strait the Mineral Mountains attracted the compass, and a dense fog hiding all headlands retarded our progress, making it necessary to lower one of the boats to take the soundings, and go before the great 'Sardinian,' showing her how to shape her course in the narrow way. A sweet reminder ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... movement has its origin, that is to say, that the Divine Thought is Wisdom. She was, when God made the World; whence it follows that she could make it, and therefore Solomon said in the Book of Proverbs, in the person of Wisdom: "When He prepared the Heavens, I was there: when He set a compass upon the face of the depth; when He established the clouds above; when He strengthened the fountains of the deep; when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment; ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... We'll probably meet up with them again one of these days, and I hope we do," he replied, looking thoughtfully up at the sky. His survey took in all quarters of the compass, and when he turned to the Overlanders again, Grace thought ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... known, it would be my fate to expire of hunger. This idea penetrated me with horror, not merely for my own sake, but that of the innocent Creature, who still lived within my bosom. I again endeavoured to open the door, but it resisted all my efforts. I stretched my voice to the extent of its compass, and shrieked for aid: I was remote from the hearing of every one: No friendly voice replied to mine. A profound and melancholy silence prevailed through the Vault, and I despaired of liberty. My long abstinence from food now began to torment me. The tortures which hunger ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... in Genoa about the year 1447, when the navigation of Europe was scarcely extended beyond the limits of the Mediterranean and the other narrow seas that border the great ocean. The mariner's compass had been invented and in common use for more than a century; yet with the help of this sure guide, and prompted by a laudable spirit of discovery, the mariners of those days rarely ventured from the sight ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... impression for a time, independently of official suggestion as to what ought to be thought of him. This course resulted in a division of sentiment among the people, so much so that when the leaders, both secular and religious, sought to compass his arrest, the officers sent to take Jesus were themselves entranced by his teaching. In spite of the wish of the leaders Jesus continued to teach, and many of the people began to think of him with favor. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... The helm was very long, which gives the advantage of a long arm of leverage, but the disadvantage of a small arc of effort. Two wheels in two pulleys at the end of the rudder corrected this defect, and compensated, to some extent, for the loss of strength. The compass was well housed in a case perfectly square, and well balanced by its two copper frames placed horizontally, one in the other, on little bolts, as in Cardan's lamps. There was science and cunning in the construction of the hooker, but it was ignorant science and barbarous cunning. The hooker was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... not, at present, my business; but it is my business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion sedulously inculcated by these 'historians' is this; that, before the Protestant times came, England was, comparatively, an insignificant country, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... midnight the Milky Way is behind them and out of sight. But, though they breathe more freely, they are by no means out of danger—alone in a frail skiff on the still turbulent ocean, and groping in thick darkness, with neither moon nor star to guide them. They have no compass, that having been forgotten in their scramble out of the sinking ship. But even if they had one it would be of little assistance to them at present, as, for the time being, they have enough to do in keeping the boat baled ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... a quarter which he had, thus far, kept out of the compass of observation. He looked up the jagged range of Broadway where, over a terra-cotta pile, floated a crimson flag with "John Wingfield" in big, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... tranquilly by, and the next morning we proceeded as before. The apparently boundless prairie stretched out ahead, covered chiefly with long grass and here and there small bushes, which the buffalo and deer had allowed to struggle into existence. We advanced as rapidly as we could, steering by the compass, the scenery monotonous in the extreme, not a hill to be seen to break the wide circle of the horizon. One advantage was that we could not be taken by surprise, as we could see for a long distance any enemy which might approach ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... He had no compass to guide him, and he needed none. He knew the woods by heart. The mysterious line beyond which scarcely an artu tree was to be found. The long strip of mammee apple—a regular sheet of it a hundred yards broad, and reaching from the middle of the island ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the little party rode forward in silence, winding in and out between pretty lakes and bunches of timber, with no path to guide them, but with the help of the compass, managing to edge slowly to the west. Charley still maintained the lead, but in the open country through which they were traveling it was possible to ride abreast, and Walter soon spurred ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the following morning I took the compass to the borders of the lake to survey the country. It was beautifully clear; and with a powerful telescope I could distinguish two large waterfalls that cleft the sides of the mountains like threads of silver. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side pale and exhausted—a wreck ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... brave little berry-brown man At the opposite side of the earth; Of the White, and the Black, and the Tan, He's the smallest in compass and girth. O! he's little, and lively, and Tan, And he's showing the world what he's worth. For his nation is born, and its birth Is for hardihood, courage, and sand, So you take off your cap To the brave little Jap Who ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... and their strong-throated cries were a strident music. For a time, they passed in seeming thousands, growing from scarcely visible dots into speeding shapes with slender outstretched necks and bills, pointed like reversed compass needles to the south. As yet, they were all flying high, ignoring with lordly indifference the clamor of their renegade brothers, who shrieked to them through the morning mists to drop down, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... know; perhaps I was wrong," replied the old man, "and Mr. Mackintosh is right: the wind does seem to come steady from the north-east, that's certain;" and Ready walked away to the binnacle, and looked at the compass. Mr. Seagrave and William then went below, and Mr. Mackintosh went forward to give his orders. As soon as they were all gone, Ready went up again ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... covenant. Such a bundle of duty is tied up in this present covenant; what duty is there which we owe to God, to His churches, or these commonwealths whereof we make not promise, either expressly, or by consequence in the compass of this covenant? And how great an obligation to duly doth this contain, wherein there is an obligation to ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... important period in the experience of Paracelsus, the celebrated German-Swiss physician, alchemist, and philosopher of the sixteenth century. Book I tells of the eagerness and pride with which he set out in his youth to compass all knowledge; he believed himself commissioned of God to learn Truth and to give it to mankind. Books II and III show him followed and idolized by multitudes to whom he imparts the fragments of knowledge he has gained. But though these fragments seem to his disciples the sum and substance ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... or trade, is the measure of national greatness; and he criticises the general injustice of his age, quoting a heartrending story of toil and suffering from the newspapers to show how close his theory is to daily needs. Here is an astonishing variety in a small compass; but there is no confusion. Ruskin's mind was wonderfully analytical, and one subject ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... evil, move about at liberty in the wide expanse of life, as fishes move about in the deep broad sea; but certain mysterious, invisible lines, have been let down into the water, and are silently, slowly creeping near, and winding round us. The net at first has a vast compass: a fish within its circle has as much room as it needs, and cares not for distant danger. Even when the cords begin to come near, he moves out of their way, and for his own comfort embraces warmly the opinion that these cords ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... The compass had not been shuttered when he went aft to relieve the wheel, and he had seen Nils standing in the light. He couldn't be mistaken. "Yust as plain like a picture." He knew him by his boyish stature, by his beardless features, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... end, gazed straight before him. Young Powell might have thought that his captain was not aware of his presence either. However, he knew better, and for that reason spent a most uncomfortable hour motionless by the compass before his captain stopped in his swift pacing and with an almost visible effort made some remark to him about the weather in a low voice. Before Powell, who was startled, could find a word of answer, the captain swung off again on his endless tramp with a fixed gaze. And till the supper bell ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... over the table and struck a resounding blow on it with his knuckles. "This is a nutshell proposition and we'll keep it in small compass. You gave me a layout of your proposed stock issue. No matter what has been done by the best of big financiers, no matter what is being done or what is proposed to be done, in this particular case your consolidation means that you've ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... quite as coolly correct as I apprehend him to be; and if I could only have contrived to compass the charming, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... the mercy of guides who did not know their own country, and when I insisted on following the compass, they threatened, 'no food for five or ten days in that line.' They brought us down to the back or north side of Bangweolo, while I wanted to cross the Chambeze and go round its southern side. So back again southeastward we had to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... a strong-minded woman from I don't know where) 'Auld Lang Syne,' with a tender melancholy expressive of having all four been united from our cradles. The more dismal we were, the more delighted the company were. Once (when we paddled i' the burn) the captain took a little cruise round the compass on his own account, touching at the Canadian Boat Song,[3] and taking in supplies at Jubilate, 'Seas between us braid ha' roared,' and roared ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... were some twenty miles off, in a distant township, having made their way through bush and swamp, creek and lake, back to their former owner, with an instinct that supplied to them the want of roads and compass. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... compiled, while at Paris, his great work, The Principal Navigations, Voyages ... and Discoveries of the English Nation made by Sea or over Land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth ... within the Compass of these 1500 Years. It appeared in its final form (three folio vols.) in 1599. Besides it he pub. A Discourse of Western Planting, and he left a vast mass of MS. afterwards used (in far inferior style) by S. Purchas (q.v.). In all his ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... I look upon myself with the greatest seriousness, how ill do I think of myself! I see myself endowed with powers, which I often, (I hope, with a pure and unfeigned heart,) wish may be applied aright. But in my mind, what strong 'bulls of Bashan' compass me about! What I fear most, and that which sometimes comes upon me most awfully, is, that my will is not properly brought into subjection. * * * Often when clothed with something of heavenly love, do I feel that I had rather be a door-keeper in the house ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... so that their footprints might be followed by any one versed in woodcraft. At times they were forced to skirt unusually thick places, but in spite of these deviations Mr. Heatherbloom was enabled generally to keep to their course by consulting a small compass he had found in the boat. It was essential to maintain as straight a line as possible. People sometimes walked round and round in forests; he took no chance of that; better a moment lost now and then, while stopping ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the later literature? A new solar system was established by Copernicus. America was discovered. Science entered on her definite and ceaseless progress, and religion and art became significant forces in human life. Printing had been invented and the compass discovered. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... projecting a little near the glass, is for the purpose of preventing the instrument from leaving the position coinciding with the plane of the drawing. For architects and engineers is provided a small compass, b, of about 2 cm. diameter, for laying off parallel widths, for making smaller scales and the like. In these cases it is substituted for the needle. In like manner for calculating cross profiles by graphical methods, for reading parallel divisions, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... mutual jealousy which must be composed. The successes of the Iroquois in their raids on the French settlements must be explained and minimized. 'The Rat' Kondiaronk, the cleverest of the western chieftains, must be conciliated. And to compass all these ends, Perrot found his reliance in the word that Frontenac had returned and would lead his children against the common foe. Meanwhile, the Iroquois had their own advocates among the more timid and suspicious members of these western tribes. During the ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... "Religious Musings" the other day, and sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language next after the "Paradise Lost;" and even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths. "There is one mind," etc., down to "Almighty's throne," are without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... moment in which to speak of love and joy; but let me ask at least the right to be near thee and to comfort thee in the hour of darkness and trouble. Those who are in peril are dear to us both. I will do all that one man can compass on their behalf. But let me have one word of hope and comfort ere I leave thee. Say, my beloved—dost thou, canst ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... learning will be the amount of his voluntary ignorance," said Thoreau. If we go into a factory where the mariner's compass is made we can see the needles before they are magnetized, they will point in any direction. But when they have been applied to the magnet and received its peculiar power, from that moment they point to the north, and are true to the pole ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of his astonishing life-work, of even that part of it exhibited here, could be written within brief compass, even by the most appreciative, admiring, and art-loving of his sorrowing friends or colleagues. Let the British Public go to New Bond Street, and see for itself, in the very hand-work of this great artist, what he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... opposite page 2. To me it is one of the most beautiful things in Holland. It is, however, in no sense Dutch: the girl is not Dutch, the painting is Dutch only because it is the work of a Dutchman. No other Dutch painter could compass such liquid clarity, such cool surfaces. Indeed, none of the others seem to have tried: a different ideal was theirs. Apart, however, from the question of technique, upon which I am not entitled to speak, the picture has to me human interest beyond description. There is ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... intrude," he said, "but I had lost my boat, and all points of the compass, when your husband kindly took me ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... to be helmsman, because he was a star-gazer and knew the points of the compass. Lynceus, on account of his sharp sight, was stationed as a lookout in the prow, where he saw a whole day's sail ahead, but was rather apt to overlook things that lay directly under his nose. If the sea only happened to be deep enough, however, Lynceus could tell you exactly ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... the blood off his face and hands with some of the precious fluid). Then we started for the oasis, only to discover, though we were all sure that we knew the way, that not one of us had a slightest idea of its real direction. In the hurry of our departure we had forgotten to bring a compass, and the sun, that would have been our guide in ordinary circumstances, and to which we always trusted in the open desert, was hidden by the curious ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... remarkable technique and skill. Another young lady sang very badly. Filipinos have natural good taste in music, have quick musical ears, and a natural sense of time, but they have voices of small range and compass, and what voice they have they misuse shamefully. They also undertake to sing music altogether too difficult ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... to his star, as the compass to the pole, as the river to the sea, so come I, fair tyrant of my heart. For thy sake, I even salute these thy satellites, O moon of my vision! who ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we made no Stay to get our Breakfast, but hasted on our Voyage, the Land increasing in Marble and Richness of Soil. At Noon we halted, getting our Dinner upon a Marble-Stone, that rose it self half a Foot above the Surface of the Earth, and might contain the Compass of a Quarter of an Acre of Land, being very even, there growing upon it in some Places a small red Berry, like a Salmon-Spawn, there boiling out of the main Rock curious Springs of as delicious Water, as ever I drank in any Parts ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... character from his Maker; but next to his sin itself, it would be the greatest injury that he could do to himself, should he succeed in his attempt. Even after the commission of sin, there is every reason for desiring that God should compass our path and lying down, and be acquainted with all our ways. For, He is the only being who can forgive sin; the only one who can renew and sanctify the heart. There is the same motive for having the disease of the soul ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... and leaving it for him to find out what objects will be encountered by the way, and where the journey will end. We propose to finish the work that is thus left incomplete, and to set forth the doctrine in its plainest terms. We would reduce the theory at once to its narrowest compass and simplest expression; but at the same time, would incorporate into it every doctrine which properly belongs to it, and follow out each hypothesis to its remote, though necessary, inferences and conclusions. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... said seriously, "we have entered upon something that will take all our wits to compass. We have cunning people to deal with; but Englishmen have brains of their own, and perhaps we can circumvent those who are against us. I wonder whether Garcia will get safe ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn |
