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oblique
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  • Mrs. Williams stood at the door of Mercer House in a light blue chiffon dress, accepting obliquely worded congratulations as her guests arrived.†   (source)
  • Somehow I landed facedown, which forced the antenna to a strongly oblique angle that put a lot of torque on the hole in the suit.†   (source)
  • Still, why did Elena have to be so oblique about everything?†   (source)
  • Harry did not dare look directly at Draco, but saw him obliquely; a figure slightly taller than he was, rising from an armchair, his face a pale and pointed blur beneath white-blond hair.†   (source)
  • The protruding part was obliquely triangular.†   (source)
  • Jimmy said this indifferently: bad plan for him to show too much interest in any woman, in the presence of Crake: oblique mockery would follow.†   (source)
  • FOR SOME REASON, DURING this strained interlude (possibly because Platt's mysterious trouble reminded me of my own) it occurred to me that maybe I ought to tell Hobie about the painting, or —at the very least—broach the subject in some oblique manner, to see what his reaction would be.†   (source)
  • They turned so they faced Eragon obliquely and, bending at the waists, drew a large pentagram on the ground.†   (source)
  • The hotel's silence seemed to mock him with echoes which were almost there, sly and oblique.†   (source)
  • I sat up: oblique strain to the cartilage between the lower ribs.†   (source)
  • We'll come back to this discussion later, but for now we'll simply note that newer works are having a dialogue with older ones, and they often indicate the presence of this conversation by invoking the older texts with anything from oblique references to extensive quotations.†   (source)
  • Aristotle thought that a projectile hurled obliquely into the air would first describe a gentle curve and then fall vertically to the earth.†   (source)
  • Very obliquely, just interested in you, only natural, of course.†   (source)
  • Oblique winds from left to right, or right to left, are designated as half value winds.†   (source)
  • She would chuckle, and Pari would humor her, but she sensed an edge to these jokes, an oblique sort of chiding, a suggestion that her knowledge had been judged esoteric and her pursuit of it frivolous.†   (source)
  • A battle followed, fought in true Gilded Age fashion with oblique snubs and poisonous courtesy.†   (source)
  • We have ten frames, low obliques, five each bow and stern, and one from each perspective is undeveloped so that Somers can work on them fresh.†   (source)
  • He looked at her obliquely, but didn't answer.†   (source)
  • However, at some point in the conversation, Dr. Udvarhelyi made an oblique reference to a concert he had attended the night before.†   (source)
  • Far in the distance, on the other side of the site, the sun, red and enormous, was rising in haze, its beams cutting obliquely through the gates, the whole building site, and the fence.†   (source)
  • And sure enough, looking obliquely over, he saw not one, not two, but three dogs who, smelling the occasion, their own parade, now ran ahead, now fell behind, their tails like guidons for the platoon.†   (source)
  • Dr. Urbino tried to convince her, with arguments readily understandable to anyone who wished to understand them, that the mishap was not repeated every day through carelessness on his part, as she insisted, but because of organic reasons: as a young man his stream was so defined and so direct that when he was at school he won contests for marksmanship in filling bottles, but with the ravages of age it was not only decreasing, it was also becoming oblique and scattered, and had at last turned into a .†   (source)
  • Unwilling to face the village directly, they would now and then glance across quickly, obliquely, watching without really watching.†   (source)
  • His tone was not friendly; it was as though he suspected Eric of taunting him; and so referred, obliquely, to Rufus, with the intention of humbling Eric.†   (source)
  • My mother's eyes look obliquely to the floor, declaring that on the streets, at all times, in all public places, even a glance can be indiscreet.†   (source)
  • Immediately the kestrel came lower in an oblique glide, closed its wings and dropped.†   (source)
  • The question is," and he turned his head sideways so he could look at the audience obliquely with a sly sense of put-on.†   (source)
  • "This is a great country," he opened obliquely, "a very great country.†   (source)
  • Robert was oblique and guarded about why he was in Europe, not because it was secret but because he could see how frustrated it made Freddie.†   (source)
  • My head snaps up at this oblique reference to redlighting, but August stares beyond me, at a sidewall.†   (source)
  • I'm sorry if I was oblique.†   (source)
  • In the privacy of his journal, he could also admit now, if obliquely, to seeing himself as a figure of some larger importance.†   (source)
  • What the oblique reference could possibly mean was beyond him, but then so was every cipher at first glance.†   (source)
  • But he said it with a warm smile:, and Danny and I were delighted by his oblique compliment.†   (source)
  • To say it was incredible was to obliquely recognize the existence of credibility and that was nearly impossible.†   (source)
  • To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it.†   (source)
  • I didn't answer; I simply cut left oblique to reach Ace about where he said Dizzy was.†   (source)
  • We read page after frustratingly oblique page until the words begin to blind us.†   (source)
  • I could see her there, the picture perched obliquely in his thick hands, her unanswered gaze dead on us both.†   (source)
  • They climbed in silence, but the attorney's heart was light, because his son had brought up, even if obliquely, the very thing about which the attorney had always dreamed.†   (source)
  • We came out obliquely upon a narrow open space where we could see the stars overhead again.†   (source)
  • Pickett's left oblique began.†   (source)
  • It is also a great climber, and can leap forty feet from a tree to the ground, breaking its fall by landing obliquely with its chest, belly and tail.†   (source)
  • They had become almost as oblique as Denny himself.†   (source)
  • Mundt too was looking for a spy within the ranks of the Abteilung..."And so by the time Leamas arrived in Democratic Germany, Mundt was watching with fascination how Leamas nourished Fiedler's suspicions with hints and oblique indications—never overdone, you understand, never emphasized, but dropped here and there with perfidious subtlety.†   (source)
  • "A choice," he answered obliquely.†   (source)
  • All this came through in small, oblique spurts in his conversation.†   (source)
  • Even obliquely?†   (source)
  • That was the story I got, punctuated rather than phrased by his responses to my oblique questioning.†   (source)
  • He looked at me obliquely with darkening eyes, but would say no more.†   (source)
  • One day she'll mention it to you, perhaps obliquely, and apologize.†   (source)
  • She approached the barn from an oblique angle that allowed her a look in the door before she could be seen herself.†   (source)
  • No, by oblique glances and whispered calumny.†   (source)
  • I do so in the hope that my experiences will throw some oblique light on the enigma of Chris McCandless.   (source)
    oblique = indirect
  • The angles of the original triangle were oblique and created more of a distorted quadrilateral.†   (source)
  • Mal'akh tipped his face down now and got an oblique view of the top of his head.†   (source)
  • The sarcophagus was recessed in a niche, obscured from this oblique angle.†   (source)
  • "And you answered," suggested Lieutenant Awn, "equally obliquely."†   (source)
  • At first Burnham tried the oblique approach.†   (source)
  • The leg came down at an oblique angle and snapped.†   (source)
  • Sunny was one store down, in front of the stationer's, and I watched her obliquely from inside.†   (source)
  • Her answers are always oblique and the full story never emerges in a direct line.†   (source)
  • We forded the river obliquely, making for a gap in the opposite cliffs.†   (source)
  • Everybody had a secret that he had to spread obliquely to keep its identity as a secret.†   (source)
  • He kept on a few paces after Rufo had gone left oblique, then did cut left rather sharply.†   (source)
  • And she grinned, delighted at what she took to be an oblique compliment.†   (source)
  • The photos had been taken from a low-oblique angle, probably from the rim of the graving dock that had held the boat during her post-shakedown refit.†   (source)
  • They had lots to say about all kinds of junk they claimed to know something about, and would drone on in an instigated way, delivering themselves of harangues and oblique sermons that were in fact — Jimmy felt — aimed at himself.†   (source)
  • From Langdon's oblique angle, the obelisk appeared ungrounded tonight ....swaying against the dreary sky as if on an unsteady sea.†   (source)
  • He was speaking with a country man, and he knew that all country men feel a similar need to approach their business obliquely, to smell around its corners and sides before plunging into the middle of dealing.†   (source)
  • His work has plenty of mentions of sexual relations, some oblique, some explicit, and in his last novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), the great forbidden reading-fruit of everyone's youth, he pushes right past the limits of censorship of his time.†   (source)
  • The herbalist picked away the wax with his fingernail and pinched the stopper between thumb and index finger and produced from somewhere a long, thin reed whose end was cut on the oblique and sharpened to a needle's point.†   (source)
  • The oblique angle at which she had collided with the wall had spared her the full force of the blow, but it was little comfort now.†   (source)
  • "I would not presume to say," said the girl's mother, oblique condemnation, "what sort of friend your friend is."†   (source)
  • He returned to San Francisco intent on trying a different, more oblique means of winning a concession—one that ultimately would get him a lot more than he had bargained for.†   (source)
  • Aware that this letter, too, would be read by the authorities, Holmes used it to reinforce, obliquely, his claims of innocence.†   (source)
  • No Orsian would make such a request immediately or directly, so likely the child had chosen this oblique approach, turning a casual encounter into something formal and intimidating.†   (source)
  • No one yet had accused Holmes of foul play, but the intensity of this new wave of inquiry was greater, more obliquely accusatory, than anything he previously had experienced.†   (source)
  • The ship's captain—she was Ki, tall and covered in ritual scars—let fall in an oblique, circuitous way that she and all her crew thought I'd taken Seivarden on as a charity case.†   (source)
  • Once again I had no way of determining who had left them, or when, though Denz Ay's oblique statements, careful not to implicate the fishermen I knew usually poached in those areas, implied that they must have arrived some time in the past month or two.†   (source)
  • He delivered oblique slights that, on the surface, never exceeded the bounds of politeness, and he refused to be drawn to anger no matter how Eragon needled him.†   (source)
  • There he found a hogs —head of boiling water waiting for him, the coils of steam opalescent in the oblique light from the large evening sun.†   (source)
  • The fact that Galbatorix was willing to discuss such things with her—that he was willing to refer, even obliquely, to the source of his power—eliminated what little hope she still had that he ever intended to release her.†   (source)
  • The strategy's in place, a strategy so oblique and devious, so long in the making, they believe it can't fail.†   (source)
  • I overhear Marjorie and Babs discussing it in an oblique way: "Listen, kid, it's one way to pass the course," is what they say.†   (source)
  • All this talk so far about classic and romantic understanding must seem a strangely oblique way of describing him, but to get at Phaedrus, this oblique route is the only one to take.†   (source)
  • There was a joy there, if oblique, left-handed, and Wen probably thought here was a man with whom he could share a longing.†   (source)
  • When the sun lit the fields obliquely and put the sides of hills in shadowless light, the smell of grass and dew filled the atmosphere with its promise of contentment.†   (source)
  • Brumby's last squad needed to deploy to the left flank; Cunha's leading squad needed to spread from dead ahead to left oblique; the other four squads must fan out in between.†   (source)
  • As she comes out of the Kiddie Kare she sees me, which happens almost by accident, for she drops her keys and turns on an oblique angle, back toward me, opposite her way to Lerner's, and finds me where I'm standing stock-still in the middle of the mall.†   (source)
  • I realized then that that part of me which experienced this had its place temporarily in the mind of the statement's creator, that this was the dreamsong of Kjwalll'kje'koothai'lll'kje'k, that I witnessed/participated in the timeless argument as he improvised, orchestrated it, drawing entire sections of previously constructed visions and phrasings, perfect and pure, from a memory so vital that its workings were barely distinguishable from the activities of the moment, and blending these into fresh harmonies to a joyous rhythm I comprehended only obliquely, through the simultaneous sensing of his own pleasure in the act of their formulation.†   (source)
  • AUGUST
    The sun, keeping its promise without deception,
    Had penetrated early in the morning,
    Tracing a saffron streak obliquely
    From the window curtains to the divan.†   (source)
  • He saw a cow swimming slowly towards the fill in an oblique line.†   (source)
  • The oblique nod of her head seemed to beckon her sister to join her in the realm of another speech.†   (source)
  • The pale blue light of the transom obliquely overhead.†   (source)
  • At times the first settling in the chair drew a frown from him, sometimes a more oblique look of empoisoned acceptance; but mostly it was a stoical operation.†   (source)
  • We are in a crater, the English are coming down obliquely, they are turning our flank and working in behind us.†   (source)
  • That is the tortuous method preferred, in each of the meanderings of his indefatigable novel, by the oblique Ts'ui Pên.†   (source)
  • The sloping market Square, pocketed obliquely off the public Square, and filled with the wagons of draymen and county peddlers, and on the lower side on a few Poor White houses and on the warehouse and office of Will Pentland.†   (source)
  • Its light slanted, falling obliquely.†   (source)
  • Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.†   (source)
  • He shook his head, eyed her obliquely.†   (source)
  • He sat in an attitude which to anyone else would have been one of extreme discomfort, askew in his upright armchair, with his book held high and obliquely to the light.†   (source)
  • She had a strange sense of having antagonized God by too much prayer and so addressed Him now obliquely.†   (source)
  • The mythological mode is one not so much of direct as of oblique reference: it is as if Old Man had done so-and-so.†   (source)
  • Jan still gripped his hand and Bigger held his head at an oblique angle, so that he could, by merely shifting his eyes, look at Jan and then out into the street whenever he did not wish to meet Jan's gaze.†   (source)
  • This cat, with the small flames dancing in its oblique eyes, was perhaps seeing the pageant of its past eight lives, reviewing them with an animal's stoicism, beyond hope or fear.†   (source)
  • The next throw whizzes obliquely over the corner and clears a passage; as we run past we toss handfuls down into the dug-outs, the earth shudders, it crashes, smokes and groans, we stumble over slippery lumps of flesh, over yielding bodies; I fall into an open belly on which lies a clean, new officer's cap.†   (source)
  • Whereupon he'd go tight with caution and make me an oblique response with his head that might be taken by other eyes as a random motion.†   (source)
  • Most of the time he sat with bowed head, staring at the floor" or he lay full length upon his stomach, his face buried in the crook of an elbow, just as he lay now upon a cot with the pale yellow sunshine of a February sky falling obliquely upon him through the cold steel bars of the Eleventh Street Police Station.†   (source)
  • A dray rattled across the east end of the Square before the City Hall, the old horse leaning back cautiously as he sloped down into the dray market by the oblique cobbled passage at the southeast that cut Gant's shop away from the market and "calaboose.†   (source)
  • He stalked carefully about the neighborhood, keeping a block away from the house at all times, observing it obliquely, laterally, from front and back, with stealthy eye and a smothering thud of the heart, but never passing before it, never coming directly to it.†   (source)
  • He screwed a tip of his mustache to a tighter pitch and regarded David with an oblique, critical eye.†   (source)
  • Absorbed in watching his mother, he would have paid little attention to Luter, but the sudden oblique shifting of Luter's eyes toward himself drew his own gaze toward them.†   (source)
  • Maxie peered obliquely into the window.†   (source)
  • He swerved around his father's milk wagon, crossed the gutter obliquely and turned west— The sudden whirr of wheels behind him-now louder on the side-walk now roaring momentarily over the hollow buckle of a coal chute— "Hey you!"†   (source)
  • Then, advancing obliquely towards us, came a fifth.†   (source)
  • A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor.†   (source)
  • Then he walked rapidly along beside the chains at some distance and crossed the road obliquely.†   (source)
  • "Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and vanished.†   (source)
  • The boat was caught as it obliquely crossed the crest of a wave.†   (source)
  • They began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers.†   (source)
  • Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.†   (source)
  • He was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with occasional violent jerks forward.†   (source)
  • The oblique staring expression in them fascinated him.†   (source)
  • He was clinging to the oblique stem of a palm-tree.†   (source)
  • He held it pointing obliquely downward, and a bank of steam sprang from the water at its touch.†   (source)
  • He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight.†   (source)
  • Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?†   (source)
  • The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well.†   (source)
  • He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness.†   (source)
  • In fact, I could feel it assuming an oblique position, lowering its stern and raising its spur.†   (source)
  • In this, certainly, there was no sacrifice; but there was a pale, oblique ray of inspiration.†   (source)
  • The owl often assumes this oblique attitude.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Bread sat with a dull, oblique gaze fixed upon the lights of the chateau.†   (source)
  • He met Fielding at the railway station on his return, agreed to dine with him, and then started taxing him by the oblique method, outwardly merry.†   (source)
  • The hall is oblong and seen obliquely, so that one of its sides forms the back of the right foreground, and meeting the left background makes an angle with the stage, which is partly visible.†   (source)
  • Without taking my eyes off the black form before me, I stooped and picked up this lump of rock; but at my motion the Thing turned abruptly as a dog might have done, and slunk obliquely into the further darkness.†   (source)
  • They were half a mile away, and swinging obliquely across the flat, which fact proved that they had entertained a fair idea of the country and the fugitive's difficulty.†   (source)
  • And with an easy, felicitous wave of his arm he lifted his little, yellowish hand toward the heavens and simultaneously cast an oblique glance in the same upward direction.†   (source)
  • I little knew that my own lack of will-power, my delicate health, and the consequent uncertainty as to my future weighed far more heavily on my grandmother's mind than any little breach of the rules by her husband, during those endless perambulations, afternoon and evening, in which we used to see passing up and down, obliquely raised towards the heavens, her handsome face with its brown and wrinkled cheeks, which with age had acquired almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn, covered, if she were walking abroad, by a half-lifted veil, while upon them either the cold or some sad reflection invariably left the drying traces of an involuntary tear.†   (source)
  • His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie, but of late she had grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girl's inefficiency.†   (source)
  • He took another oblique step.†   (source)
  • I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Peniston, on whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of Fifth Avenue.†   (source)
  • But Dick, made more angry by this obliqueness and the use of the word blunder, turned away and began arranging his effects, saying: "It's too bad about the young women.†   (source)
  • I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium.†   (source)
  • This door was much better illuminated than the rest of the stairway by the light from a small skylight set obliquely above it, it had been put together from unpainted planks of wood and the name 'Titorelli' was painted on it in broad, red brushstrokes.†   (source)
  • She was headed between two small islets, crossed obliquely the anchoring-ground of sailing-ships, swung through half a circle in the shadow of a hill, then ranged close to a ledge of foaming reefs.†   (source)
  • Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head; no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straightforwardness, and ends are attained by indirection; an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.†   (source)
  • Pulling himself together, he ran obliquely away from the cliff to a point distant from its foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturally failed.†   (source)
  • Down, down, they sped, the wheels humming like a top, the dog-cart rocking right and left, its axis acquiring a slightly oblique set in relation to the line of progress; the figure of the horse rising and falling in undulations before them.†   (source)
  • I suppose he made straight enough for the place where he wanted to get to, but his progress with one shoulder carried forward seemed oblique.†   (source)
  • Before our eyes, in the distance, a promised or an accursed land, Roussainville, within whose walls I had never penetrated, Roussainville was now, when the rain had ceased for us, still being chastised, like a village in the Old Testament, by all the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm, which beat down obliquely upon the dwellings of its inhabitants, or else had already received the forgiveness of the Almighty, Who had restored to it the light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of uneven length, like the rays of a monstrance upon an altar.†   (source)
  • But today her steps were irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner; she tried to take the lower crossing, but a laden dray crowded her back, and she struck across the street obliquely, reaching the sidewalk just opposite the chemist's door.†   (source)
  • Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: "It's a pity—it's certainly a pity—that she refused it."†   (source)
  • That gap was altogether fortunate for me, for the narrow chimney, slanting obliquely upward, must have impeded the nearer pursuers.†   (source)
  • isolated peak the ridge of housetops; or again, when one had to go in and ask for news of Mme. Sazerat, one's eyes followed the line where it ran low again beyond the farther, descending slope, and one knew that it would be the second turning after the steeple; or yet again, if pressing further afield one went to the station, one saw it obliquely, shewing in profile fresh angles and surfaces, like a solid body surprised at some unknown point in its revolution; or, from the banks of the Vivonne, the apse, drawn muscularly together and heightened in perspective, seemed to spring upwards with the effort which the steeple made to hurl its spire-point into the heart of heaven: it was always t†   (source)
  • In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from the right wing.†   (source)
  • But she had obliquely noticed that he was young and slim, and that he wore three chevrons upon his sleeve.†   (source)
  • The harness, which was of a deep, dull black, differing from the glossy varnishing of the present day, was ornamented with enormous plates and buckles of brass, that shone like gold in those transient beams of the sun which found their way obliquely through the tops of the trees.†   (source)
  • He seemed to glance obliquely at Monsieur Rigaud in this remark; but Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed his meal, though not with quite so quick an appetite as before.†   (source)
  • Several times we used our slanting fins, which internal levers could set at an oblique angle to our waterline.†   (source)
  • A ray of light, beginning at a height immeasurably beyond the nearest stars, and dropping obliquely to the earth; at its top, a diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in width; its sides blending softly with the darkness of the night, its core a roseate electrical splendor.†   (source)
  • Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following sharply defined subdivisions of tendencies and parties: The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents—military theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws—laws of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth.†   (source)
  • "Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references to excellent matches.†   (source)
  • I provided this bar in the middle with ribbed machinery, and at each end with a sort of nave, in which, as in a cart wheel, four flat spokes, or paddles, were fixed obliquely.†   (source)
  • "You see, people forget you," he said, smiling at Catherine with his delightful gaze, while he leaned forward obliquely, turning towards her, with his elbows on his knees.†   (source)
  • Lying, in January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on a granite floor, without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but never the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to think.†   (source)
  • He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot.†   (source)
  • Her ears were very wide apart, her saddle deep, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, strongly articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders and a powerful crupper.†   (source)
  • M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil.†   (source)
  • The court-yard of this quarter is enclosed by enormous walls, over which the sun glances obliquely, when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of moral and physical deformity.†   (source)
  • As the stream divided, the place became clear; the two dark columns moving obliquely from the copse, to unite again at the distance of a mile, on its opposite side.†   (source)
  • This was at a part of the valley where the mountains ran obliquely, forming the commencement of a plain that spread between the hills, southward of the sheet of water.†   (source)
  • the life is in his heart yet, and after he has slept awhile he will come to himself, and be a wiser man for it, till the hour of his real time shall come," returned Hawkeye, casting another oblique glance at the insensible body, while he filled his charger with admirable nicety.†   (source)
  • When Miss Ophelia entered the kitchen Dinah did not rise, but smoked on in sublime tranquillity, regarding her movements obliquely out of the corner of her eye, but apparently intent only on the operations around her.†   (source)
  • We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.†   (source)
  • In the manner and tone of these two persons, on first meeting at any juncture, and especially when they met in the presence of others, was something indirect and circumspect, as if they had approached each other obliquely and addressed each other by implication.†   (source)
  • He had a science—the theory of oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous—monstrous collisions in which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and therefore could not serve as material for science.†   (source)
  • As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but with a marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.†   (source)
  • This convinced me that we must be not far from the equator, for twilight results from the refraction of the sun's rays; the more obliquely these rays fall, the further does the partial light extend, while the more perpendicularly they strike the earth the longer do they continue their undiminished force, until when the sun sinks, they totally disappear, thus producing sudden darkness.†   (source)
  • No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular expression: it rains halberds.†   (source)
  • From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry.†   (source)
  • She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if she were considering him.†   (source)
  • "Justice!" repeated the Indian, casting an oblique glance of the most ferocious expression at her unyielding countenance; "is it justice to make evil and then punish for it?†   (source)
  • That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves.†   (source)
  • His retreat in this direction was, however, effectually cut off, and, turning a second time, he urged his course obliquely for the centre of the lake, with an intention of landing on the western shore.†   (source)
  • During conversations each subjected his sapling to great varieties of usage—bending it round his back, forming an arch of it between his two hands, overweighting it on the ground till it reached nearly a semicircle; or perhaps it was hastily tucked under the arm whilst the sample-bag was pulled forth and a handful of corn poured into the palm, which, after criticism, was flung upon the floor, an issue of events perfectly well known to half-a-dozen acute town-bred fowls which had as usual crept into the building unobserved, and waited the fulfilment of their anticipations with a high-stretched neck and oblique eye.†   (source)
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