Oblique

Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andréy 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.

He was known there, and even the maddest of them could only gaze upon his dark and grinning face at an oblique angle.

The golden globe with its conventionalized rays, and the oblique cigar shape that was a space vessel.

He smiled at Isidore but his bright, small eyes remained oblique.

Are these last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet?

No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: dévisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; être gerbé, 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.

In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom’s) house the light of a paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind supplied by Frank O’Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.

I cherished my independence almost as did a Beduin, but my impotence of vision showed me my shape best in painted pictures, and the oblique overheard remarks of others best taught me my created impression.

Then she thought he might be speaking (in equally oblique fashion) of his sorrow, his state of mourning.

They approached everything from an oblique angle, revealing only at the last instant what they really sought.

All night I slept, oblivious of my pain: Aurora dawned and Phoebus shined in vain, Nor, till oblique he sloped his evening ray, Had Somnus dried the balmy dews away.

He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall.

Some say he bid his Angels turn askance The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the sun’s axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins, Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change Of seasons to each clime: else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers, Equal in days and nights, except to those Beyond the polar circles; to them day Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun, To recompense his distance, in their sight Had rounded still the horizon, and not known Or east or west; which had forbid the snow From cold Estotiland, and south as far Beneath Magellan.