"Obtuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of thought and 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 ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... "I mean a most obtuse and insensible young man, walking by my side, who has learned to interpret Greek and Latin at college, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... expected to draw her uncle into a matrimonial discussion by an argument ad omnipotentem, was stupefied; but persons of obtuse mind have the terrible logic of children, which consists in turning from answer to question,—a logic that is ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... hands of men of either of these two classes, we shall show ourselves false to America's past. Moreover, the demagog and the corruptionist often work hand in hand. There are at this moment wealthy reactionaries of such obtuse morality that they regard the public servant who prosecutes them when they violate the law, or who seeks to make them bear their proper share of the public burdens, as being even more objectionable than the violent agitator who ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in the wake of a conqueror, and gorge upon that which is already overthrown. In the succeeding stanza, 29, two other epithetal similes are bestowed upon the monsters—they become 'reptiles' and 'ephemeral insects.' All these repulsive images are of course here applied to critics of wilfully obtuse or malignant mind, such as Shelley accounted the Quarterly ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... warty lenticels; shoots short-jointed, angled, with fine scurfy pubescence; diaphragms absent; tendrils intermittent, simple. Leaves small, broadly cordate or roundish; petiolar sinus wide, shallow; margin with obtuse, wide teeth; not lobed; dense in texture, light green color, glabrous above, sometimes pubescent along veins below. Cluster small (6-24 berries), loose; peduncle short; pedicels short, thick. Berries large, globular or somewhat oblate, black ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... obtuse, then," Mrs. Van Buren replied: "for, if all accounts which I hear are true, your mother is not the person to make a daughter-in-law happy. Neither, it seems, did you do what you could to please her. You annoyed her terribly with your codger-like ways, if I may be allowed that term. You made ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... to globular cells, which acquire a comparatively large 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 others are only just appearing. By degrees, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... right with wrong, and declare barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of his prepossessions and prejudices, who is guided ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... epicondyle. The coronoid process may be detected on making deep pressure in the hollow in front of the joint. As the line of the radio-humeral joint is horizontal, while that of the ulno-humeral joint slopes obliquely downwards, the arm forms with the fully extended and supinated forearm an obtuse angle, opening laterally—the "carrying angle." This angle is usually more marked in women, in harmony with the greater width of the female pelvis. The ulnar nerve lies in the hollow between the olecranon and the medial condyle, and the median nerve passes over the front ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... similar joint, but at an obtuse angle. An example of its use is in fixing boarding around an ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... 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 ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... normal plants, and consequently the nucleus is larger, the cell is larger, and the whole plant is larger in every part. But giantism may occur without tetraploidy, and vice versa. In the OEnothera gigas the rosette leaves are broadly lanceolate with obtuse or rounded tips, more crinkled than in Lamarckiana, petioles shorter. The stem-leaves are also larger, broader, thicker, more obtuse, and more crinkled than in Lamarckiana. The stem is much stouter, almost double as thick, but not taller because the upper internodes are shorter and less ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Marion's obtuse and unreasonable attitude puzzled me. I am quick tempered, and was about to reply hotly, when the door opened and ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... he continued, "that this man or spirit of a man has been sitting here night after night, and that we have not been able to see him, because our minds are dull and obtuse. Last night the elevating force of a strong passion, such as that which you have confided to me, combined with the power of fine music, so exalted your mind that you became endowed, as it were, with a sixth sense, and suddenly were enabled to see that which ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... be 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 est mort: ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I had said, eccellenza, that she was heading across toward Ischia," answered Raoul, with an air of obtuse innocence. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for he thought Tybalt was unusually obtuse. Tybalt thought so himself before the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... animal. I am persuaded that if the brutes even,—if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns,—a shadow of the divinity ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in society, who would from their own consciousness smile at the simplicity with which he can so easily shape men's opinions and dispositions to his mind whether they will or not. He must have been the most charitable or the most obtuse of observers. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... treating me like a child, Smith," I said, slowly. "No doubt I am hopelessly obtuse, but perhaps you will tell me what this Chinaman carried in a leather bag and released upon Forsyth. It was something which you recaptured, apparently with the aid of a plate of cold turbot and a jug of milk. It was something, also, which Karamaneh had been sent to recapture with ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... 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 overrun with his armies. "Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his Prime ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... three to seven 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 ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... his face fell, and his reply showed him less obtuse than he appeared on the surface, seeing he was the first and only person to see through my ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... names have been used, such, for example, as dog-tooth-spar for the crystals of scalenohedral habit, so common in the Derbyshire lead mines and limestone caverns; nail-head-spar for crystals terminated by the obtuse rhombohedron e, which are common in the lead mines of Alston Moor in Cumberland; slate-spar (German Schieferspath) for crystals of tabular habit, and sometimes as thin as paper: cannon-spar for crystals of prismatic habit terminated by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... natural in itself—may be mischievous for them; our nation has never any sympathy for minorities. The leaders of the Clerical party have lowered their teaching and their practices to the level of the most obtuse intellects and the most childish enthusiasms; they make conquests by myriads; and as, in our present state of society, numbers are accounted for everything, the Government and ruling party have already encountered, and shall encounter ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... that their Congress must become a territorial legislature, and that the higher law for them is to be the laws of Congress. The Philippine flag is oriental in cut and color, having red and blue bars—a white obtuse angle—the base to the staff, and a yellow moon with fantastic decorations occupying the field. This flag is one that Admiral Dewey salutes with respect. General Aguinaldo is giving much of his strength to the production of proclamations, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... 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 Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Christian man does not pray for the guidance of God's good Spirit? The dispassionate reader of "The Force of Truth," will naturally say, that the arguments for the Calvinistic creed were either sound or unsound. If the former, then Mr. Scott was either very obtuse or very obstinate to resist so long their power. If the latter, he acted with great weakness in yielding at length to insufficient evidence, on the score of an undefinable impulse. In either case, his name is divested of commanding ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... supplications. Humiliation appears the very discipline of genius. At one time the manuscript was actually recalled by its author and despatched to Garrick. Before it had really come under his consideration, which very likely might have been just as obtuse, Johnson intervened. To send it to Garrick, in his opinion, would be tantamount to an acknowledgment of its refusal by Colman. This had not taken place. The manager would neither accept the piece nor produce it. He said he would keep his ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... removed. It was not that she had ever given him occasion to feel that marriage and not inheritance was the source of his distinction in the land, but that having a soul as keenly sensitive to small material rights as it was obtuse to great spiritual ones, he never felt the property quite his own until his wife was no longer within sight. Had he been a little more sensitive still, he would have felt that the property was then his daughter's, and his only through ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that the door of this church led to social position and the most aristocratic circles. Of course, mistakes were made. People sometimes elbowed their way in who were evidently flaunting weeds among the patrician flowers, and occasionally plain, honest, but somewhat obtuse souls would come as to a Christian church. But people who were "not desirable"—the meaning of this phrase had become well understood in Hillaton—were generally frozen out by an atmosphere made so chilly, even in August, that they were glad to escape to other associations less benumbing. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... 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 lost sight of the kind which peculiarly concerns her ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... like an aerolite, and, as the deed is explained to us, doubles up his yellow hand into a fist, and deals the animal a sharp blow on the skull. Directly, as the horsemen approach, he is found with his obtuse head bent over his prey, digging out its eyes by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... It affects a system without having any intelligible clue to one; and instead of unfolding a principle in various and striking lights, repeats the same conclusions till they become flat and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind is obtuse, except as it is the organ and the receptacle of accumulated feelings: it is not analytic, but synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than theoretical. The EXCURSION, we believe, fell still-born from the press. There was something abortive, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... case, he had no choice but to do so, and did not mind doing so. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce: was he to go the round of the twelve Reverend Gentlemen who had just been appointed licensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found one of them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his imprimatur to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remained but to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it in its unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both running the risk. Whatever hesitations the printer ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... part of it; a line perfectly circular has no straight parts; between two points given the straight line is the shortest; the centre of a perfect circle is equally distant from all the points of the circumference; an equilateral triangle has no obtuse or right angle: all these truths admit of no exception. There never can be any being, line, circle, or triangle, but according to these rules. These axioms are of all times, or to speak more properly, they exist before all time, and will ever remain after any comprehensible duration. Let ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... beveled edge flat on the stone, feeling to see if it does lie flat, then tip up the chisel and rub it at an angle slightly more obtuse than that which it was ground, Fig. 78. The more nearly the chisel can be whetted at the angle at which it was ground the better. In rubbing, use as much of the stone as possible, so as to wear it down evenly. The motion may be back and forth ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... as it now exists, dates back only to the time when the church was restored in the middle of the nineteenth century. Up to 1891 the side walls were about two feet lower than at present, and the gable more obtuse. At the summit of the old gable stood a block of masonry carrying a sundial; this, when the transept was altered, was removed, the new gable being finished with a cross. A pillar was built in the churchyard to the south of the western tower in 1894, and on ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... said that my touch had grown almost as delicate as that of a blind man; but had it been ever so obtuse, I could have told at that moment, what were the two flat round objects which I held between my fingers. There was no mistaking the "feel" of ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... city. Ten days previously the body had been removed thither from the brick tomb where it had reposed since August 8, 1885. Four massive granite piers, with rows of Doric columns between, supported the roof and the obtuse cone of the cupola, which rested upon a great circle of Ionic pillars. The interior was cruciform. In the centre was the crypt, where, upon a square platform, rested the red porphyry sarcophagus. From the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... suggestions of a possible coarseness of fibre. If a vain man, he may take it as a tribute to his personal charms, or at least to the superior claims of a representative of old-world civilisation. But even to the obtuse stranger of this character it will ultimately become obvious—as to the more refined observer ab initio—that he can no more (if as much) dare to take a liberty with the American girl than with ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... after the threatened discovery of those fraudulent measures by which he lost his fortune, his mind had become singularly enfeebled; his memory failing, and all his faculties of judgment—never very strong—growing capricious, or else obtuse and unobserving. These were the symptoms of a rapid physical change, the catastrophe of which was at hand. How far the excitement growing out of his daughter's flight and marriage may have precipitated this result, is problematical. It may be said, in this place, that my wife's mother charged it ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... calls an English garden to a set of stone terraces, with steps of turf. There are three or four very high hills, almost as high as, and exactly in the shape of, a tansy pudding. You squeeze between these and a river, that is conducted at obtuse angles in a stone channel, and supplied by a pump, and when walnuts Come in I suppose it will be navigable. In a corner enclosed by a chalk wall are the samples I mentioned: there is a stripe of grass, another of corn, and a third en friche, exactly in the order of beds in a nursery. They ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... 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 reddish: fruit unknown. ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... thrust a dimpled finger In each ear, shut eyes and ran: Curious Laura chose to linger Wondering at each merchant man. One had a cat's face, One whisked a tail, One tramped at a rat's pace, One crawled like a snail, One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry-scurry. She heard a voice like voice of doves Cooing all together: They sounded kind and full of ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... at this moment was of ideal nobility, and shone with additional splendour among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free imagined with a thrill what such a woman's love would be; he who loved already conceived a vague regret, and dreamed of raptures hitherto unknown; he who bore a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... sceptics obtuse Who Progress impede with crude cackle, Predestinate duffers of prattle profuse, Who the biggest world-problems would tackle; State-quacks, shouting Emperors, queer School-Board cranks, We'll give you our best benediction, And speed you at parting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... judgment of ignorance in words of flame. Her anger was not abated, but merely turned in another direction, by the discovery that it was not ignorance, but blindness which she had now to denounce—the blindness of the obtuse Englishman who had been granted a privilege which he was incapable ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... no water, and promised that if we would follow him he would shew us water in which we could swim. On this condition I turned as he desired, and keeping along the western base of the main or front range, took up a course somewhat obtuse to that by which I had crossed the plains of Cawndilla. The productions on the ground were of a salsolaceous kind, although it was so much elevated above the plains, but amongst them there was not any mesembryanthemum. At about three miles we passed a very ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... same moment 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 and over the Blue ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... 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, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... baby slumbered and I packed experiment to "Find Period in middle" explained. This was difficult; not that Bess is as a general thing obtuse, but because the picture of Aunt Jane embarking for some wild, lone isle of the Pacific as the head of a treasure-seeking expedition was enough to shake the strongest intellect. And yet, amid the welter of ink ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... now ordered dinner to be served up; and he observed to his officers as they rose from the table: "Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey." The enemy's ships were moored in compact line of battle, describing an obtuse angle, close in with the shore, flanked by gunboats, four frigates, and a battery of guns and mortars on an island in their van. This was a formidable position, and to some commanders one which would have deterred from an attack. But it was not so with Nelson. As soon as he discovered the enemy's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Magdalena 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 ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... deserve the rod for having, like a gudgeon, so greedily devoured the delusive bait, which you, so temptingly, threw out to catch the eye of my piscatorial inclination! I have read of right angles and obtuse angles, and, verily, begin to believe that there are also right anglers and obtuse anglers—and that I am really one of the latter class. But never more will I plant myself, like a weeping willow, upon the sedgy bank of stream or river. No!—on no account will I draw upon these banks ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... spurs on their wings. But the Egyptian goose (Chenalopex aegyptiacus) has only "bare obtuse knobs," and these probably shew us the first steps by which true spurs have been developed in other species. In the spur-winged goose, Plectropterus gambensis, the males have much larger spurs than the females; and they use them, as I am informed by Mr. Bartlett, in ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... or oval-oblong, spines, evergreen Holly A D Broad-ovate, one-sided, serrate Linden A D Obovate, oval, lanceolate, oblong Chestnut oaks A D Broad-ovate to broad-elliptical, thorny Thorns A E F Lobes rounded Sassafras A E F Base truncate or heart-shaped Tulip tree A E F Obtuse, rounded lobes White oaks A E F 3-5-lobed, white-tomentose to glabrous beneath White poplar A E G 5-lobed, finely serrate Sweet gum A E G Irregularly 3-7-lobed, serrate-dentate with equal teeth Mulberry A E H Pointed or bristle-tipped ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... the slight fringe of whiskers which distinguished Alken's merry sportsmen. His business taking him deep into the county among the farms, he was always in walking trim, with an umbrella crooked over one arm, his other hand grasping the obtuse-angled handle of a ground-ash stick. These sticks, of which he had scores, he cut himself, his eye never losing its vigilance as he passed through a copse. Under the handle, about an inch from the end, he screwed a steel peg, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... with Pa; it was Emmy who hated him in the middle of her love because he stood to her as the living symbol of her daily inescapable servitude in this household. Jenny could never have felt that she would like to kill Pa. Emmy sometimes felt that. She at times, when he had been provoking or obtuse, so shook with hysterical anger, born of the inevitable days in his society and in the kitchen, that she could have thrown at him the battered pot which she carried, or could have pushed him passionately against the mantelpiece in her fierce hatred of his helplessness and his occasional ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... true, I was called down within the hour; but that hour of suffering had done me much constitutional mischief. I was stupified as much as if I had committed a debauch upon fat ale. However, I was too angry to complain, or to seek relief from the surgeon. I went on deck at half-past eight, with obtuse faculties ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... little forced laugh, it was scarcely flattering to hear one had altered out of all recognition. Then, without allowing me time to reply, she plunged into a general topic of conversation which, as I should have been obtuse indeed not to take the hint, I did my best to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... way inward along the wall, keeping a short distance back from it, and he saw that after twenty or thirty yards it turned again at a very obtuse angle away from him and once more ran on in a long straight line. Just beyond this angle he came upon a little wooden door thickly studded with nails. It was made to open inward, and on the outside there was no knob or handle ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... for this 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 ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Flinders in the Investigator, despite contrary winds, covered the distance by the Bass Strait route in thirty days (April 9 to May 9), including several days spent at King Island and Port Phillip, is sufficient to show how much Baudin's obtuse temper contributed to aggravate the distress ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of Le Mans is in the Hotel de la Prefecture, and as we heard that the famous enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet, formerly on his tomb in the cathedral, was preserved there, we hastened to behold so interesting a remain of early art. A remarkably obtuse female was the exhibitor on the occasion, and, on my asking her to point out the treasure, she took me to a collection of Roman coins and medals, assuring me they were very old and very curious. It was impossible not to agree with ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of a light brown colour. The epistoma is edged with brown. The labrum is prominent, white and trapezoidal. The mandibles are black, strong, short, obtuse, only slightly curved, sharp-edged and furnished each with a broad tooth on the inner side. The maxillary and labial palpi are brown and shaped like very small studs with two or three joints to them. The antennae, inserted just at the base of the mandibles, are brown, and consist ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... good. He would not take my advice. His brother-in-law, Strahan, sent him a subscription of fifty pounds, and said he would send him fifty more, if he would not publish.' GARRICK. 'What! eh! is Strahan a good judge of an Epigram? Is not he rather an OBTUSE man, eh?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, he may not be a judge of an Epigram: but you see he is a judge of what is not an Epigram.' BOSWELL. 'It is easy for you, Mr. Garrick, to talk to an authour as you talked to Elphinston; you, who ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... little wider than usual when he was asked sympathetically whether so many people in the house did not interfere with his quiet. "Mrs Hadwin's talk is very gentle," said the Curate; "she never disturbs me." And the mistress of the house was equally obtuse, and would not comprehend any allusion. The little household came to be very much talked of in Carlingford in consequence; and to meet that shabby figure in the evening, when one chanced to be out for a walk, made ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... himself to listen but with so bristling an expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an obtuse class of scholars. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... marks of the style justly denominated DEBASED, to distinguish it from the former purer styles. Depressed and nearly flat arched doorways, with shallow mouldings, square-headed windows with perpendicular mullions and obtuse-pointed or round-headed lights, without foliations, together with a general clumsiness of construction, as compared with more ancient edifices, form the predominating features in ecclesiastical buildings ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... 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 ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... lesson of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows. Our eyes see that ye see not; our ears hear that which ye have not considered. We read your melodious story through, but we have read other stories since, and only its haec fabula docet remains very fresh. You will be as obtuse as we are some day, young things! It is not neglect; it is not disapproval,—we simply forget. But from such forgetfulness may the good Lord graciously deliver us, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Limestone. It presents in the cross section the same radiated structure as the Turbinolia fungites, and nearly the same furrowed appearance in the longitudinal one; but, seen in the larger specimens, we find that it was a branched coral, with obtuse forky boughs, in each of which, it is probable, from their general structure, there lived a single polype. It may have been the resemblance which these bear, when seen in detached branches, to the older Caryophyllia, taken in connection with the fact that the deposit in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... 21/2 Inches Diameter at the steeled end, the rest being somewhat more slender. The steeled end is so shaped, as makes it most apt to pierce the Rock, the Angles at that end being still to be made the more obtuse, the harder the Rock is. This Tool is to be first held by the hand, in the place, where the Hole, to be made for the use, which shall here be shewed, is to be placed; that is, in the middle between the sides of the Rock, that is to be cut, but as ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different in shape from every different point of view. If our table is 'really' rectangular, it will look, from almost all points of view, as if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles. If opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if they converged to a point away from the spectator; if they are of equal length, they will look as if the nearer side were longer. All these things are not commonly noticed in looking at a table, because experience ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... will always be obtuse men in the pastoral office— men who know no way of getting into a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walking in with their boots on; but all such men are out of their place. The souls of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... beak is bent, convex and sub-compressed, and in some degree obtuse; the tongue is obtuse, triangular and very short, and the feet are ambulatory. As this bird has a great abundance of feathers, it appears considerably thicker than it is. It is, in fact, about the size of a mistletoe thrush, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... riches, inhabited the woods and the fields, and {followed} Pan, who always dwells in caves of the mountains; but his obtuse understanding[11] still remained, and the impulse of his foolish mind was fated again, as before, to be an injury to its owner. For the lofty Tmolus, looking far and wide over the sea, stands erect, steep with its lofty ascent; and extending in its descent ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... them; no visible sky. Even had there been both, it would scarce have mended the matter. The steersman could not tell whether, on straying from the channel, he had drifted to the south or the north, the east or the west; and, indeed, an intellect less obtuse than that of Tipperary Tom might have been puzzled upon the point. It has been already mentioned, that the Solimoes is so tortuous as to turn to every point of the compass in its slow course. The mere fact that the moon was ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the midst of his enjoyment an insistent despair of heart returned as he recalled a certain good fellowship in her attitude towards Raymond, which was missing with him. Obtuse as lovers usually are, it never occurred to him that this was one of the best ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... 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 ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... see her relatives. It had been ascertained at the shipping offices that Browner had left aboard of the May Day, and I calculate that she is due in the Thames tomorrow night. When he arrives he will be met by the obtuse but resolute Lestrade, and I have no doubt that we shall have all our ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indignation. But the sisters are appalled at the revelation of her misdeed, and no less at the suggestion that they should join in her act of rebellion. Her prayer for the loan of one of their horses on which the woman may escape, meets with obtuse looks, headshakes, uncompromising denial. She is appealing urgently, hurriedly, to one after the other, when Sieglinde who, stony, death-struck, dazed with grief, has appeared unconscious, up to this moment, of all taking ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... 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 ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... Holland, 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
... a psychological study. Amazement, consternation, humiliation—all seemed determined to possess her. Here was the obtuse Swede, for whose dear sake she had dallied with the intricacies of the language of Stockholm, furiously familiar with admirable English! The dense, dumb Scandinavian—the lady of the "me no understand" rejoinder—apparently had the "gift of tongues." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... 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 ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... on the other hand, was liked by many. Still there were those who thought that John Ridd was a fool, a slow, obtuse rustic, and so on, while Lorna was too divine ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light. The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the big room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead, beside it, nearest the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other flat. Two ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of Sir Nigel Anstruthers was that they were, on some points, singularly unbusinesslike. In the perfectly obvious and simple matter of the settlement of his daughter's fortune, he had felt that Reuben Vanderpoel was obtuse to the point of idiocy. He seemed to have none of the ordinary points of view. Naturally there was to Anstruthers' mind but one point of view to take. A man of birth and rank, he argued, does not career across the Atlantic to marry a New York millionaire's daughter unless he anticipates deriving ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... But by hypotheses he does not mean 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 as ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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 it in his hearing; made it in the Abolition ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... attacked; just as a dog will attack a great beast of prey, so he hung upon the big man's fists, and would not be shaken off. He hated his father, and he longed in his heart to be a policeman when he was grown up. With his blind and obtuse courage he was particularly adapted to such a calling; but he actually ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... blatantly on politics, while Cuthfert, who had been prone to clip his coupons and let the commonwealth jog on as best it might, either ignored the subject or delivered himself of startling epigrams. But the clerk was too obtuse to appreciate the clever shaping of thought, and this waste of ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... on the brow, which 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
... to the end, That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst And men may mingle for thee when they hear." "O plant! from 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... was some lack of courtesy, some annoying error in your bill which we were exasperatingly obtuse in rectifying? Were we stupid in filling some order or did we delay in delivery? Perhaps we did not have just what you were looking for, or our prices ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... 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 ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... 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
... too harshly for being distant to former acquaintance, even though he may have been much obliged to them.' It is, no doubt, to be wished that a proper degree of attention should be shewn by great men to their early friends. But if either from obtuse insensibility to difference of situation, or presumptuous forwardness, which will not submit even to an exteriour observance of it, the dignity of high place cannot be preserved, when they are admitted into the company of those ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... followers of the blind, obtuse to every argument, impregnable to incontrovertible facts, who have cast in their lot with the avowed enemies of England. They have their day—every dog has it—but their day is far spent, and their night is at hand. For England will never again submit to Romish rule. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... failed to get Jumbo he would have caused his notion of buying the Nelson Monument to be treacherously smuggled into print by some trusty friend, and after he had gotten a few hundred pages of gratuitous advertising out of it, he would have come out with a blundering, obtuse, but warm-hearted letter of apology, and in a postscript to it would have naively proposed to let the Monument go, and take Stonehenge in place of it at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 and degraded type. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the practical demands of daily life could hardly come in question. With such general laws we could never have mastered the concrete situations of society, because we should have had to leave out of view the fact that there are gifted and ungifted, intelligent and stupid, sensitive and obtuse, quick and slow, energetic and ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg |
