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More "Definiteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attributing the fulness of the use which he made of this gift to the influence of his Italian studies—more especially to those which led him to Dante, whose multitudinous characters and scenes impress themselves with so singular and immediate a definiteness upon the imagination. At the same time, Chaucer's resources seem inexhaustible for filling up or rounding off his narratives with the aid of chivalrous love or religious legend, by the introduction of samples of scholastic discourse or devices of personal or general ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definiteness.' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... not uncivil," said Father Payne. "He did not deride my absence of definiteness, he only deplored it. But I really got more out of the subsequent talk. We adjourned to a sort of portico, a pretty place looking on to a formal garden: it was really very charmingly done—a clever ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... extent these conclusions may be modified by future experiments it is, of course, impossible to predict, but they clearly point the way towards definiteness and boldness in the design of types as well as to a preference for the larger sizes in their use. All this, as we shall see in the next chapter, is in harmony with what experience has been gradually confirming in the practice of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... amendment involves the concurrent authority of State and Federal Governments, for the enforcement of the policy it defines. A certain lack of definiteness, through division of responsibility is thus introduced. In order to bring about a full understanding of duties and responsibilities as thus distributed, I purpose to invite the governors of the States and Territories, at an early opportunity, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... a good judge of character. You have a full development of language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when excited—that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than of feeling. It seeks an intellectual development rather than to be developed through ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... appreciated by any of the senses, and substituted for it a principle which, although a falsely conceived one, was still much more tangible than the "spirit," since it could be seen and felt as free phlogiston and weighed and measured as combined phlogiston. The definiteness of the statement that a metal, for example, was composed of phlogiston and an element was much less enigmatic, even if wrong, than the statement of the alchemist that "metals are produced by the spiritual action of the three principles, salt, mercury, sulphur"—particularly when it is explained ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... The Cat and the Mouse, Teeny Tiny, or The Old Woman and Her Pig, will the repetitive passages be an aid to verbal expression. The child learns to follow the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order. He catches the note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his thinking. He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world, and which is one of ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... restrain the individual, as the right of an individual in any community to do what he pleases, is incompatible with the best interests of the whole. Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty. Experience has shown the importance of definiteness in the law; and in this country, where customs are so slightly established and the published manuals of parliamentary practice so conflicting, no society should attempt to conduct business without having adopted some work upon the subject, as the authority in all cases ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their possession these little colored certificates which ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... and exaggeration, bringing whatever medium they employed into accord with the idea. It is this felicity and luminousness that gives to the art of the Greeks a peculiar appeal to the intelligence. For the mind delights in definiteness ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... who are not merely loyal, but also enlightened, loyalty, never losing the definiteness and the concreteness of its devotion to some near and directly fascinating cause, sees itself to be in actual spiritual unity with the common cause of all the loyal, whoever they are. The great cause for ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... here sketched out is enticing, and at first sight seems calculated to throw much light on the history of plant development; but on further consideration, it seems wanting in definiteness, while it is beset with difficulties at every step. Take first the shortening of the raceme into the umbel and the capitulum, said to be caused by arrest of vegetative growth, due to the antagonism of reproduction. If this were the whole explanation ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... depends, and then to estimate the comparative value of these ratios. Now I think there can be no doubt that the value of any probability in this its last analysis is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown; and, consequently, that in all cases where the sum of the unknown relations is larger, or more important, or more indefinite ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... feeble and vague description which belongs to a mind that stops at amusement or at simple contemplation. The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Veds. With respect to practical improvement, the case is still more evident. The character which improves human life is that which struggles ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... shall forget the first morning of my waking in my new abode. At this very moment it is as if I saw how the day dawned in the chamber; how all the objects gradually assumed, as it seemed to me, an unaccustomed definiteness. From the near church ascended the morning hymn with its pleasant serious melody, which attuned the soul to harmonious peace. I rose early; I had to care for house and children. All was cheerful and festival-like ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Laurance Donovan was in Constantinople, at a café where I was dining. He got into a row with an Englishman and knocked him down. It was not my affair, but I liked the ease and definiteness with which Larry put his foe out of commission. I learned later that it was a way he had. The Englishman meant well enough, but he could not, of course, know the intensity of Larry’s feeling about the unhappy lot of Ireland. In the beginning of my own acquaintance with Donovan ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... myself, the self-analysis could lead to but one result—the expression to myself of the reality and definiteness of an already-formed though unconscious intention. I wished to do the woman good—to serve her in some way—to secure her some benefit by any means, no matter how difficult, which might be within my power. I knew ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... as was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony. Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact that they were, for the present, bound up with a different political system. Nor was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the land of the Hindus, is a term that never had any geographical definiteness. In the mouths of Indians it meant the central portion of the plain of North India; in English writers of half a century ago it was often used when all India was meant. In exact writing of the present time, the term is ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... skulls—one with the skin tight on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, looking unutterably weary—but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit. Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman, waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and other leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they should overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became darkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the night; ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... intersection.[108] He further attempted to show that the limits of this vast assemblage must remain for ever shrouded from human discernment, owing to the gradual extinction of light in its passage through space,[109] and sought to confer upon this celebrated hypothesis a definiteness and certainty far beyond the aspirations of its earlier advocates, Cheseaux and Olbers; but arbitrary assumptions vitiated his reasonings on this, as well as on ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... monsters, on the other hand, may well have been an actual belief. All men are prone to believe in such marvels; and it is quite possible, as Niebuhr supposes, that some discoveries of the remains of mammoths and other monstrous forms embedded in the crust of the earth, may have given definiteness and prominency to the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... explain it to his own shocked senses, to realize it as some illusion, some combination of natural causes, the hour, the pallor pervading the air, the distance, for his boat was near the middle of the stream,—but the definiteness of ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Russians, the French, the English, the Germans there is a similarity of will, but not, it seems, an analogy of sentiment. I shall undertake to analyze the case of Germany. It has peculiar interest on account of its importance, of its definiteness, of the comparisons to which it leads, and the reflections which it suggests. Numerous facts easy to verify and in part recent permit us to throw some light upon it and offer us ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... again to obtain, among gentlemen coming up to that picked examination of the University of London. Now, I do not think that is a desirable state of things. I cannot understand why physiology should not be taught—in fact, you have here abundant evidence that it can be taught—with the same definiteness and the same precision as anatomy is taught. And you may depend upon this, that the only physiology which is to be of any good whatever in medical practice, or in its application to the study of medicine, is that physiology ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... it could not be justified. It yields large fruitage in the development of the power of concentration and intellectual keenness. Yes, but better than that. All mathematical subjects, in that they require absolute accuracy and definiteness in their operations, are particularly helpful in developing those fine moral qualities of honesty, integrity, and upright dealing. Again, history is taught in the schools as an intellectual subject. In intellectual development alone it is worth all it costs. ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to the right and up the first creek after Milk River issued from a deep gorge to flow across a heavily timbered stretch of bottom. They would know it when they saw it. One-Eyed McCarthy had described it with sharp definiteness. It was impossible to miss it—unless McCarthy ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... embodied therein are different from what they would have been had it not been for Sterne's example. Some of these secondary fruits of the Sterne cult have been mentioned incidentally and exemplified in the foregoing pages. It would perhaps be conducive to definiteness to gather them here. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to the window and sat there waiting for the light to come. It crept ghostly over the garden, trees and plants taking form, the walks and lawns, a vagueness of dark patches and lighter windings, emerging in gradual definiteness. The sky above the next house grew a lucid gray, then a luminous mother-of-pearl. She could see the glistening of dew, its beaded hoar upon cobwebs and grassy borders. There was no footstep here to disturb the silence; the dawn stole into being in a ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... hours, with the materials he needed; and by tea-time he had completed his first rough sketch of the elements common to the two faces. He brought it out to us in the drawing-room. I glanced at it first. It was a curious countenance, slightly wanting in definiteness, and not unlike those "composite photographs" which Mr. Galton produces by exposing two negatives on the same sensitised paper for ten seconds or so consecutively. Yet it struck me at once as containing something of Colonel Clay in every one of his ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... her. Dion did not know this; he suspected it because, since Robin's illness, he had become much more sharply aware of the depth of mother-love in Rosamund, of the hovering wings that guarded the nestling. That efficient guarding implies shutting out was presently to be brought home to him with a definiteness ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... knew with an absolute definiteness as we crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with which the lightnings filled the blue globe—that ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... a short time ago he had refused or gratified, according to the mood of the moment, like those of a child, had since gained, even in his eyes, so well founded a claim to respect, she opposed him in her courteous, modest way with such definiteness of purpose, Biberli's fate interested him so much, and the prospect of seeing his daughters brought before the court was so painful, that he admitted the force of Eva's reasons and let her set forth on her difficult mission accompanied ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... music in expressing those sides of human emotion which lie too deep for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by the listener or by the action ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... streaks round Copernicus seem to respond more happily to the requirements of Professor Pickering's hypothesis, for here there is an absence of that definiteness of direction so manifestly displayed in the case of the Tycho rays, and we can well imagine that with an area of condensation surrounding this magnificent object beyond the limits of the streaks, and a number of active ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... result of removal or injury to the testis of one side, or the opposite, have been completely disproved by experiments in which unilateral castration has been carried out without any effect on the antlers at all. In birds, however, a few cases have been recorded by competent observers with a definiteness of detail which leaves no possibility of doubt. One of the more recent of these is that of a pheasant of the white-ringed Formosan variety, P. torquatus, of the Chinese pheasant. [Footnote: C. J. Bond, 'Unilateral Development of Secondary Male Characters in a Pheasant,' ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... up at the corners. There was little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness of outline in the piquant features, not often found ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... books, and the elements it gave him he used freely. But his combinations of them were seldom along the lines of the possible. Here a colour would flash out at one; there a jewel would sparkle; now a perfume would be wafted; now a bird would sing. But all this individual definiteness was merged into a general blur, or formed itself into a sort of kaleidoscopic pattern that subtly suggested a meaning ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... about the figure's line of symmetry, and in a higher dimension. In three-dimensional symmetry (the symmetry of solids) revolution must occur about the figure's plane of symmetry, and in a higher—i.e., the fourth dimension. Such a movement we can reason about with mathematical definiteness: we see the result in the right- and left-handed symmetry of solids, but we cannot picture the movement ourselves because it involves a space of which our senses fail to give ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Justin the knowledge that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Edward could appreciate what was sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He was never wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. The high conception of royalty which he borrowed from St. Lewis united with ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... means properly, though not always, to create out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted, for the first time ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... renders life in Kingston tolerable. Owing to the sea breeze invariably blowing from the same direction, Jamaicans have the puzzling habit of using "Windward" and "Leeward" as synonyms for East and West. To be told that such-and-such a place is "two miles to Windward of you" seems lacking in definiteness to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... applied only to unreasonable restraints. But the matter had never been decided by competent authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in these two outstanding cases, however, put an end to the previous uncertainty. Chief Justice White, in his two opinions, laid it down with definiteness that in construing and applying the law recourse must be had to the "rule of reason." He made clear the conviction of the court that it was "undue" restraints of trade which the law forbade and not incidental or inconsiderable ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... colours, had a share in developing the abstract conception of equality—that the ideas of equality in size, relations, forces, resistances, and sensible properties in general, were evolved during the same period. But however this may be, it is clear that as fast as the notion of equality gained definiteness, so fast did that lowest kind of quantitative prevision which is achieved without any instrumental aid, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... serious to buy and equip the doll that Robina, with eight-year-old definiteness, had specified. The girl in the Red Cross dress read ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... monopoly, the problem now before us, there is a good deal of vagueness and misunderstanding because of lack of definiteness in the use of words which have rapidly shifted in meaning. The word "trust" originally applied, and still in legal usage applies, to a particular form of organization, that of a board of trustees holding the stock, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... Wagner's "Waldweben" means in that instance waves of air, and we know it by the context. His swaying figure of the "Prelude to Rheingold" is as plainly water as is the same figure used by Mendelssohn in his "Lovely Melusina." Not that Wagner plagiarized, but that he and Mendelssohn recognized the definiteness of musical suggestions; which is more than proved by their adopting the same musical ideas ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... great Gothic windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... which, by the close of the fourth decade under the Constitution, a majority of the people of the United States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they put into popular convictions that until then were vague and inarticulate—convictions which, as has been well said, "went on broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a force sufficient ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... necessary. He helped to determine another characteristic of the beautiful, the absence of all lust or desire in the pleasure it bestows. The universal elements of beauty, again, Aristotle finds (in the Metaphysics) to be order (taxis), symmetry and definiteness or determinateness (to orismenon). In the Poetics he adds another essential, namely, a certain magnitude; it being desirable for a synoptic view of the whole that the object should not be too large, while clearness of perception requires that it should not be too small. Aristotle's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be drawn from all this is that the language of primitive man consisted of isolated words, sounds which may originally have been mere cries or calls, but which gradually gained some definiteness of meaning, as signifying some of the varied conditions of the outer world. This is the conclusion to which philologists have now very generally come. The recognition that language consists of root words, variously modified and combined, leads back irresistibly to a ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... apprehensions as to the result of the Proclamation, and whether, indeed, Mr. Lincoln himself would be able to resist the pressure, and stand up to his promise of that Supplemental Proclamation which would give definiteness and practical effect to the preliminary one, the masses of the people of the Loyal ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of definiteness which is at present so general in color nomenclature, is due in large measure to the failure to appreciate the fundamental characteristics on which color differences depend. For the physicist, the expression of the wave length of any particular light is in most cases sufficient, but in ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... describing the taking of a city are once more specified, so as to fulfill all the demands of definiteness ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... aChristianity that is alive, though it may count but twelve apostles. As in India, so in Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted reticence, and what is at the root of it all, want of true love of Man, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... animals, the Amoeba and its allies are not only almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of amoeba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the Polyzoa, we see compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more determinate than those of plants. But among the higher animals, we find not only that the mature shape of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... yet delicate colouring of everything I saw. I can give no idea in words of the pure radiance which shone from every object, which illumined every scene. More remarkable, when I thought of it next day, was the minute finish of these pictures, the definiteness of every point on which my eye fell. Things which I could not know, which my imagination, working in the service of the will, could never have bodied forth, were before me as in life itself. I consciously wondered at peculiarities of costume such as ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Lord's time believed in a waiting life of departed souls before the Judgment. Owing to vagueness and contradictions in the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to state their notions about it with definiteness. But in the main it may be said that when they speak of that life as a whole without distinguishing between the states of the good and the evil they call this whole by the general name of HADES, i. e., "the Unseen" (the Hebrew word was Sheol), but they also distinguished in it the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... relation between the facts of experience and the a priori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cognition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and definiteness, in all rational minds. The a posteriori, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... to supply the necessary foundation for a science such as physiology. Herein lies the great value of experiments and observations. They supplement the pupil's experience, and increase both the number and definiteness of his concepts. No degree of success can be attained if this phase of the study ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... lofty order; genuine, sincere, and incapable of question; more valuable in this class of composition than in any other, because both more important and more difficult. For the song appears to us to possess a definiteness peculiarly jealous and exclusive; to be less flexible in character and to permit less variety of tone than most other classes of composition. If a man shall say, "I will put more force into my song than your model allows, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... whole body of the visible Church, are the same as the bride, who does not appear in the parable, might warn against such an error. They were ten, as being the usual number for such a company, or as being the round number naturally employed when definiteness was not sought. They were divided equally, not because our Lord desired to tell, but because He wished to leave unnoticed, the numerical proportion of the two classes. One set are 'wise' and the other 'foolish,' because He wishes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... convenience of discussion. It goes to the root of conduct and character, and is the key to the present mood of our society. It is always a hardy thing to attempt to throw a complex matter into very simple form, but we should say that the want of energy and definiteness in contemporary opinions, of which we first complained, is due mainly to the following notion; that if a subject is not ripe for practical treatment, you and I are therefore entirely relieved from the duty of having clear ideas ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... to our being misinterpreted as a nation. We have suffered a good deal in the past from having attributed to us motives which were not ours. The reason was the assumption that the apparent absence of definiteness in national purpose must have been designed as a cover for hidden and selfish ends. It is not true. We are indeed very insular, and what has been called the international mind is not common among the people ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... overbrowed—with a suggestion of character which had not yet asserted itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his nose, although of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than clearness of line or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness along with a definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had not yet begun to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least large enough not to contradict the promise of his face; his shoulders were square, and his chest and limbs well developed: altogether it was at present a fair tabernacle—of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... height is the height of humanity in his time. It is thus with the discoveries of Kirchhoff. Much had been previously accomplished; this he mastered, and then by the force of individual genius went beyond it. He replaced uncertainty by certainty, vagueness by definiteness, confusion by order; and I do not think that Newton has a surer claim to the discoveries that have made his name immortal, than Kirchhoff has to the credit of gathering up the fragmentary knowledge of his time, of vastly extending it, and of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... are of vital character in determining the salubrity of the climate of this State, we append the following table, both for the purpose of comparison with other places and definiteness ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... An Old-Fashioned Home The Swelling of Jordan A Call to Judgment A Changed Life The Lost Opportunity A Great Victory Paul a Pattern of Prayer A Startling Statement The Grace of God Conversion Five Kings in a Cave Definiteness of Purpose in Christian Work The Morning Breaketh An Obscured Vision The Compassion of Jesus Sanctification An Unheeded Warning The Approval of the Spirit A Reasonable ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... Egyptian and Greek chroniclers; for, to all appearance, it was he that launched into the world the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii, whom the following times accordingly did not neglect to furnish in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater definiteness, also a portrait. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... little building near the yellow house. It was the new school, but of that Northrup had not heard. From the distance the chapel bell sounded. It did not have that lost, weird note that used to mark it—there was definiteness about it that suggested a human hand sending forth ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Angelo in Florence, with a copy of Browning in my hand, and gazed with delight on the panorama of the fair city below. Then I read aloud the first two stanzas of Old Pictures in Florence, and realised for the thousandth time the definiteness of Browning's poetry. This particular poem is a mixture of art and doggerel; but even the latter is ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... incredible fidelity the things in nature that held the poetical quality. On the other hand he had a friend of real poetical genius, who was also an artist, but who could only produce the stiffest and hardest works of art, that had no quality about them except the quality of tiresome definiteness. This was a great mystery to Hugh; but it ended eventually, after a serious endeavour to appreciate what was approved by the general verdict to be of supreme artistic value, in making him resolve that he would just follow his own independent ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the city, the symbols of the Apocalypse are terminated. What follows are the words of Christ. The import of these is guarded by his declaration that they are "true and faithful." There is a reality and definiteness in them, which will not admit of their being added to, or taken from. So that any attempt to fritter away their meaning, will be followed by the curses written in the book, and a loss of the blessings ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... try to summon this vision of Chaucer's into definiteness, and as it fades before me, and reappears, like the image of Piccarda in the moon, there mingles with it another;—the image of an Italian child, lying, she also, upon a hill of sand, by Eridanus' side; a vision which has never quite left me since I saw it. A girl of ten or twelve, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... AND SPENDINGS [XIII]. If the reader should feel that the following details are lacking in comprehensiveness or definiteness, he should understand that reports of a national and authoritative character on the economic condition of the farmer were not available. There existed certain reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, but they were subjected to criticism. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... consciousness, gradually became less vague,—became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered,—something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... walked along in unbroken silence. His eyes were steadily fixed upon the ground, hers were wandering idly across the sparkling blue sea with its foam-crested furrows to the horizon. Whatever her thoughts were, they had changed her expression for the time; to a certain extent its late definiteness was gone, and a dreamy, refined abstraction had ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bishop of Wakefield, said he recently noticed a paragraph in the newspapers which said that the Bishop of Wakefield had given it out that he was very much against the clergy wearing moustaches. "After a little while this legend increased in definiteness, and the next paragraph I saw was that the Bishop of Wakefield had 'commanded' the curates of his diocese to shave clean. A little while after that I took up a London paper, and I saw it stated: 'The Bishop of Wakefield has joined the ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... Miss Lyon's seminary, Ipswich, 1828; Bradford Academy limited its work to girls, 1836; Mount Holyoke, 1835; Vassar College, Smith College, and Wellesley College later, but dates are uncertain, as confusion results from lack of definiteness as to whether they represent the year of founding, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... said but little about the use of medicine in the treatment of typhoid fever, save for one symptom, I may add, for the purpose of definiteness, that I use none except for special symptoms. The rare exceptions are stimulants such as strychnia, in less marked indications coffee. Alcohol as a routine drug I have entirely abandoned, having found that the doses formerly given ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... comes and goes with a rush, and, even while the skipper had been speaking, the object which had first revealed itself to me, a minute earlier, as a mere wan, ghostly suggestion had assumed solidity and definiteness of form, and now stood out against the sky behind her as a full-rigged ship of some seven hundred and fifty tons burthen, her hull painted bright green, and coppered to the water-line. She was lying stern-on to us, and sat deep in the water, from which latter fact one inferred ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... were disposed to wink, and to call him a sly dog; others found food for malicious gossip in the way Louise had deserted him; and, when he met Miss Martin in a quadrille, she snubbed his advances with a definiteness that ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Berlin in 1878 marks the close of the era of nationalist revolutions and wars in Europe. By the same date all the European states had attained to a certain stability in their constitutional systems. With equal definiteness this year may be said to mark the opening of a new era in the history of European imperialism; an era of eager competition for the control of the still unoccupied regions of the world, in which the concerns of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... in that long descent are marked out with a precision and definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He began His descent, and whilst yet He is 'in the form of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cornea and iris, were inserted. [Footnote: Marble statues also sometimes had inserted eyes] Finally, the whole was gone over with appropriate tools, the hair, for example, being furrowed with a sharp graver and thus receiving a peculiar, metallic definiteness of texture. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... other side, I consider a change of persons in the management of a new institution is not desirable. In intellectual movements in particular the leaders of them are especially recommended to keep themselves conservative as regards their people. The public requires definiteness before all else—and just this is endangered by a change of persons. The substitute for B., whom you mention to me (his name also begins with B.), is certainly highly to be recommended in all that concerns ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... be expressed at a man in the position of a teacher of languages knowing all this with such definiteness. A novelist says this and that of his personages, and if only he knows how to say it earnestly enough he may not be questioned upon the inventions of his brain in which his own belief is made sufficiently manifest by a telling phrase, a poetic image, the accent of emotion. Art is great! ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... indeterminateness into that misty immensity and weird obscurity which, as constituent factors in a poem, not as back-ground, form one of the elements of the false sublime. Either not seeing the literary necessity of definiteness, or having no such abundant and ordered literature as we possess, upon which to draw for details, and being too conscientious to invent facts, however he might invent language, he published his epics of Ossian—false indeed to the original, ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... universal validity, are there any that are valid within single geographical divisions? On what principle can we divide the earth into sections for economic purposes? These are some of the questions which must be answered if a theory of distribution is to have any definiteness of meaning, and they arise whenever we try to establish a static standard of any kind. If we talk about natural wages, we must know in how much of the world they are natural. The questions become even more urgent when we try to solve dynamic problems. We shall have to determine the effects of ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force the religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man. But it has always been with us. The popular religions, disgraced by their Opportunist cardinals and bishops, have been kept in credit by canonized saints whose secret was their conception of themselves as the instruments ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Muscular sits down he does it as he does everything—with definiteness and force. He does not spill over as does the Alimentive nor drape himself gracefully like the Thoracic, but planks himself as though he ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose, made her put on a black dress every afternoon. I don't know what induced me to notice her at all. There are faces that call your attention by a curious want of definiteness in their whole aspect, as, walking in a mist, you peer attentively at a vague shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious or strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Berkeley now planned a more formidable invasion of the Western Shore. Public sentiment, he hoped, was beginning to turn in his favor. The death of Bacon had deprived the rebellion of all coherency and definiteness of purpose. The country was getting weary of the struggle, and was anxious for the reestablishment of law and order. In Gloucester and Middlesex especially there were many prominent planters that awaited an opportunity to take up arms against the rebels. And although ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... lingers among the impedimenta of the childless. He brought this out, refurbished it, and applied it to Jane. At first he thought his wife had not overrated the quality of the child's mind. Jane seemed extraordinarily intelligent. Her precocious definiteness of mind was encouraging to her inexperienced preceptor. She had no difficulty in fixing her attention, and he felt that every fact he imparted was being etched in metal. He helped his wife to engage the best teachers, and for a while continued to take an ex-official interest in his ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... war credits. As we shall see later on, the Laborites and most of the Socialist-Revolutionists afterward supported the war. The declaration of the Social Democrats in the Duma was as weak and as lacking in definiteness of policy as the Manifesto of the Socialist-Revolutionists already quoted. We know now that it was a compromise. It was possible to get agreement upon a statement of general principles which were commonplaces of Socialist propaganda, and to vaguely expressed hopes that "the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... a corruption of the word asparagus, illustrates how readily the uneducated mind associates an unusual term with another that is familiar, and as the mental impression is received through the ear, and lacks that definiteness which the printed form would give, the new idea, when repeated, often assumes a picturesque, if not a ludicrous, form. Many of Mrs. Partington's quaint ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... Spirit, so far from affording any excuse for laxity of conduct, adds an emphatic definiteness to the Bible exhortation to flee from the wrath of God. But, on the other hand, it delivers us from groundless terrors, the fear lest our repentance should not be accepted, the fear lest we should be rejected for our inability to subscribe to some traditional dogma, the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out. I knew that I could not see round him, and could never be certain that I saw over him; and I never presumed to judge him with any definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one greatly the superior of us both—who was more a poet than he, and more a thinker than I—whose own mind and nature ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... did not call for a systematical treatment with equal urgency, as it was in no way connected with practice; the mental attitude of the authors of the Upanishads, who in their lucubrations on Brahman and the soul aim at nothing less than at definiteness and coherence, may have perpetuated itself through many generations without any great ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... be something like a present-day musician identifying an unfamiliar composition as belonging to the "French school," the "Italian school," or the "Russian school;" and yet, this same musician might not be able to point out with definiteness a single characteristic ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... as these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... my part without any too great display of my own disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client's instructions, the definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb and flow within me of an undercurrent of thought full of question and uneasiness. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... are wholesale, and rest on such worn-out commonplaces, on such wordy vapourings as degeneration and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the past. Every accusation, even if it is uttered in ladies' society, ought to be formulated with all possible definiteness, or it is not an accusation, but idle disparagement, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... about this special fund of knowledge. But he nowhere cares to make his modesty conspicuous to the reader, and his cocksureness is only the obverse of his best literary virtue. It comes from the very crispness and definiteness with which he sees things. There are no clouds about the edges of his perceptions. They are all clear and nette, Things observed by such a man dogmatise to the mind, and it is natural that he should dogmatise as to what he sees with such apparent ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... greatest distance from the sun, by which time the velocity has abated to the value from which we supposed it to commence. We thus observe that the nearer the planet is to the sun the quicker it moves. We can, however, give numerical definiteness to the principle according to which the velocity of the planet varies. The adjoining figure (Fig. 39) shows a planetary orbit, with, of course, the sun at the focus S. We have taken two portions, A B and C D, round the ellipse, and joined their extremities to the focus. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity ... nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... psychologists are tending, first, to admit that the actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field, with any definiteness. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... sense of lacking strength or effectiveness, covers a wide range of meaning, signifying overcome with physical weakness or exhaustion, or lacking in purpose, courage, or energy, as said of persons; or lacking definiteness or distinctness of color or sound, as said of written characters, voices, or musical notes. A person may be faint when physically wearied, or when overcome with fear; he may be a faint adherent because naturally feeble or purposeless, or because half-hearted in the cause; he may ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... lose by the housemother's continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices that ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... desultoriness superinduced by alcohol. I do not need a bracer to get me going or a hooker to keep me under way. I find, now that I know the other side of it, that the chief mental effect of alcohol, taken as I took it, is to induce a certain scattering and casualness of mind. Also, it induces a lack of definiteness of view and a notable failure of intensive effort. A man evades and scatters and exaggerates and makes loose ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... being made in these days to meet the evident lack of homemaking knowledge in the rising generation. And since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do better than to analyze as carefully as possible the various lines of knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... lying among the long, thick weeds of the pond. And it would not have been the accident it would have appeared to be. Of that she felt sure. Brought face to face with this definiteness of situation, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... may be a gradual restoration of the lost function, proving that other centres have acquired the capacity to take the place of the one destroyed. There are limits to this capacity for substitution, however, and with this qualification the definiteness of the localization of motor functions in the cerebral cortex has become an ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I perceived through conversation, through examples, and through my own reflections, that the first step in delivering ourselves from the wishy-washy, long-winded, empty epoch, could be taken only by definiteness, precision, and brevity. In the style which had hitherto prevailed, one could not distinguish the commonplace from what was better; since all were brought down to a level with each other. Authors had already tried to escape from this wide- spread disease, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as a moment later she went rather slowly upstairs to summon her mother. It occurred to her that Mrs. Marshall might very reasonably be at a loss as to the reason of this call. Indeed, she herself felt a sinking alarm at the definiteness of the demonstration. What could Mrs. Fiske have to say to Mrs. Marshall that would not lead to some agitating crystallization of the dangerous solution which during the past months Mrs. Marshall's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... not open to the charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may teach, as has been said, what the poet never dreamed his ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... desirable, instead of having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, daydreaming; and the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... scheme not connected with its immediate gratification. Machinations for the further accomplishment of his designs must be postponed for a calmer moment. It came after the interruption occasioned by the arrival of his wife, and soon his active brain had shaped his ideas into definiteness. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Murdo, "Mr. McGinnis is right in asking for definiteness. My answer is that we must trust this committee to do what is wise and reasonable, and we must accept their decision as ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... term "soldier" for the sake of definiteness. The soldier approaches the queen in size, and in many of the specimens the head is larger than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... customs seem all to assume a definiteness of preference, a singleness and a limitation of love, which is not psychologically justifiable. People do not, I think, fall naturally into agreement with these assumptions; they train themselves to agreement. They take refuge from experiences that seem to carry ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the Bering Sea Arbitration Tribunal. The application of the principles laid down by that august body has not been followed by the results they were intended to accomplish, either because the principles themselves lacked in breadth and definiteness or because their execution has been more or less imperfect. Much correspondence has been exchanged between the two Governments on the subject of preventing the exterminating slaughter of seals. The insufficiency of the British patrol ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... the difficulties of interpretation to which they give rise serve rather to mark the prevailing clearness and simplicity of his expression than seriously to impede its easy and unperplexed current. There are few sentences in the Divina Commedia in which a difficulty is occasioned by lack of definiteness of thought or distinctness ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... them as falling under the finite class. Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... himself better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment, and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against la Esmeralda. They had supposed Phoebus to be dead, and that was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... But this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleon's, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown, on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had acquired a certain definiteness which contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry, bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... beneath a mass of verbiage about Ahasuerus, and before them my forebears had every one of them left imprinted some sage injunction gained from their experience in living. So I gathered my strength to do my best. But there was a lack of definiteness in my purpose. There was no goal at which I aimed. In my younger days I had had instilled into me the necessity of aspiring to a particular height, to something concrete, to become a leader at the bar, in politics or commerce, a Webster, a Clay, or ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... collected and arranged by experimental science in favour of the hypothesis are such as to demand some kind of Evolution-philosophy; assuming that the very imperfect serial classification of living things according to their degree of organic definiteness, coherence, and heterogeneity not merely represents a variety which has always coexisted since life was possible on this earth, but rather traces out or hints at the genetic process by which this variety has been produced, let us see if there be any other governing principle directing the process, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Torricelli—to which we shall refer in a moment—had thrown new light on the question of atmospheric pressure. Still later the celebrated Huygens hit upon the idea of using the melting and the boiling point of water as fixed points in a scale of measurements, which first gave definiteness to thermometric tests. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness, gives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have tried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and facility and their ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... more definiteness of thought than ever before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little mother—Marguerite was an inch the taller—kept hid in that dear breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible heavings at the time of her father's death, and the later silent ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the heart suggests that these beliefs may be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... first duty was to make a careful study of the publications of the parent society in England, with a view of learning their discoveries. The result was far from hopeful. I found that the phenomena brought out lacked that coherence and definiteness which is characteristic of scientific truths. Remarkable effects had been witnessed; but it was impossible to say, Do so and so, and you will get such an effect. The best that could be said was, perhaps you will get an effect, but more likely you ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Kentucky Resolutions, certain clauses of the Constitution, and extracts from other historical documents may well be required to be memorized accurately. It is scarcely to be supposed that the student can improve on the clarity and definiteness of the English in such documents. He is expected to understand the principles which they assert. He may well be required to train his memory to accuracy by learning certain assignments verbatim. If memory work received a little more attention in our high schools to-day, ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... regularity, stability, consistency, unity, realness, system, government, organization, liberty, independence, soul, self, personality, entity, individuality, truth, beauty, justice, perfection, definiteness— ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... at a greater speed. He had only been stunned by Shad's blow—a part of the force of which he had caught on his arm. The arm was still numb and his head thumped, but as he went on in the cool air his brain cleared and he found it possible to plan with some definiteness. Brierly knew the sheriff at May's Landing. There was nothing his friends would rather do than to be sworn in as deputies for a job like this. He had thought it a wonder that Peter hadn't ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... comprehensiveness, penetration, and self-consistency. By the necessity of concentration, thought is sometimes led to forget its origin and the source of its problems. But in naming itself philosophy, thought has only recognized the definiteness and earnestness of its largest task. Philosophy is still thought about life, representing but the deepening and broadening ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. He always hit the bull's-eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... its own answer) seemed to drive one or two brass tacks with some definiteness. Cope himself was eking out his small salary with a small allowance from home; next year, with the thesis accomplished, better pay in some better place. A present partner and pal ought to be a prop rather than a drag: however welcome his ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted reticence, and what is at the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death, and rise again on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus. It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such definiteness his approaching death; nor is it very likely that he entertained any hope of being raised from the grave "on the third day." To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... with Laurance Donovan was in Constantinople, at a café where I was dining. He got into a row with an Englishman and knocked him down. It was not my affair, but I liked the ease and definiteness with which Larry put his foe out of commission. I learned later that it was a way he had. The Englishman meant well enough, but he could not, of course, know the intensity of Larry’s feeling about the unhappy lot of Ireland. In the beginning of my own acquaintance ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... for all of a teacher's ills. The larger portion of the twelve pages is devoted to this object, although the explicit statement is made, on the third page, that "psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help." But so little space is given to this declaration that, in spite of its definiteness and positive character, the class as a whole reached the conclusion that he was advising teachers not to study psychology at all. In other words, they had failed to balance up one part of the chapter against the other; and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... made him a warlike creature. Man does seem to be a creature of feelings rather than of instincts as far back as we find much account of him, and to be characterized rather by the weakness and variability of his instincts than by their definiteness. It is quite likely, too, that man never was at any stage a herd animal; in fact it seems certain that he was not, and that his instincts were formed long before he began to live in large groups at all. So he never acquired the mechanisms either for aggression ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... patch of moist mould was almost as large as that of the lynx himself—and the lynx well knew that the wildcats were a small-footed tribe. Like most of the hunting beasts, he was well-schooled in the lore of the trails, and all the signs were to him a clear speech. From the depth and definiteness of that footprint, he felt that both weight and strength had stamped it. His long claws protruded from their hidden sheaths, as he pondered the significance of this message from the unknown. Was the stranger a deliberate invader of his range, or a mere ignorant trespasser? ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle had made the small Felicia recite them over and over until she ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... he does it as he does everything—with definiteness and force. He does not spill over as does the Alimentive nor drape himself gracefully like the Thoracic, but planks himself as ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity—nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... sisterhood—the decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the night of her return to Friars' Holm—Gillian had merely laughed the notion aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... illuminated, has obscured its genesis and diverted attention from the simplicity and force of its fundamental principles.[1] In this, its progress has been like that of slang, which, gaining in popularity, must inevitably decrease in aptness and definiteness. ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony. Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact that they were, for the present, bound up with a different political system. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... may be modified by future experiments it is, of course, impossible to predict, but they clearly point the way towards definiteness and boldness in the design of types as well as to a preference for the larger sizes in their use. All this, as we shall see in the next chapter, is in harmony with what experience has been gradually confirming in the practice ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... unless they are frequently revived by personal intercourse, are apt to alter insensibly and to become untrue. They acquire increased definiteness ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... that lay almost at her feet. And then someone took her by the arm—she thought it was Uncle Jepson—and she was led toward the door. At the threshold she paused, for Randerson's voice, cold and filled with deadly definiteness, reached her: ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... producing chiefly in this manner are poverty, or at least only a moderate prosperity, but, to offset this, a certain definiteness and steadiness of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... all that appears in any way useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its disciple has neither impulse nor strength ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the same as the bride, who does not appear in the parable, might warn against such an error. They were ten, as being the usual number for such a company, or as being the round number naturally employed when definiteness was not sought. They were divided equally, not because our Lord desired to tell, but because He wished to leave unnoticed, the numerical proportion of the two classes. One set are 'wise' and the other 'foolish,' because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the garden and dug round things with her finger. And she thought about the brightness of that Chautauqua scene to which Ina and Dwight had gone. Lulu thought about such gatherings in somewhat the way that a futurist receives the subjects of his art—forms not vague, but heightened to intolerable definiteness, acute colour, and always motion—motion as an integral part of the desirable. But a factor of all was that Lulu herself was the participant, not the onlooker. The perfection of her dream was not impaired by any longing. She had her dream as a saint ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... of business in the underworld is one of the main props of white slavery it is well to go into it with definiteness and to give ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... went on, John seemed to take a more personal delight in life than he had done before. He forgot his ancient prejudices if not his ancient ideals, and, as was characteristic of him, he avoided thinking with any definiteness on the nature of the new life into which he was to enter soon. His neighbours declared he was very much improved; and there were dinner parties at Thornby Place. One of his great pleasures was to start early in the morning, and having spent a long day with Kitty, to return home across the downs. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... consequently from all possibility of error, affirms a necessary relation between the facts of experience and the a priori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cognition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and definiteness, in all rational minds. The a posteriori, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise of the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... vein and contact deposits, a series of names which has the considerable advantage of definiteness:—hypogene ores, formed in general by ascending non-oxidizing solutions, perhaps hot; supergene ores, formed in general by oxidizing and surface solutions, initially cold and downward moving; ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... general sense of lacking strength or effectiveness, covers a wide range of meaning, signifying overcome with physical weakness or exhaustion, or lacking in purpose, courage, or energy, as said of persons; or lacking definiteness or distinctness of color or sound, as said of written characters, voices, or musical notes. A person may be faint when physically wearied, or when overcome with fear; he may be a faint adherent because naturally feeble or purposeless, or because half-hearted in the cause; he ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... validity, are there any that are valid within single geographical divisions? On what principle can we divide the earth into sections for economic purposes? These are some of the questions which must be answered if a theory of distribution is to have any definiteness of meaning, and they arise whenever we try to establish a static standard of any kind. If we talk about natural wages, we must know in how much of the world they are natural. The questions become even more urgent when we try to solve dynamic problems. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... thousand small details which made for the weaving of the web. Mrs. Treat Hilyar driving in a leisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at her compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural order of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the situation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the senses, and substituted for it a principle which, although a falsely conceived one, was still much more tangible than the "spirit," since it could be seen and felt as free phlogiston and weighed and measured as combined phlogiston. The definiteness of the statement that a metal, for example, was composed of phlogiston and an element was much less enigmatic, even if wrong, than the statement of the alchemist that "metals are produced by the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... towards this ideal, which we cannot describe with greater definiteness, we are bound to recognise that GOODNESS is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our present puzzles us, our future sometimes ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... therein are different from what they would have been had it not been for Sterne's example. Some of these secondary fruits of the Sterne cult have been mentioned incidentally and exemplified in the foregoing pages. It would perhaps be conducive to definiteness to gather them here. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise was not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices that unless a married woman has a high-grade ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... such worn-out commonplaces, on such wordy vapourings as degeneration and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the past. Every accusation, even if it is uttered in ladies' society, ought to be formulated with all possible definiteness, or it is not an accusation, but idle ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... throughout a Communist revolution, a number of conditions must be fulfilled which are not, at present, fulfilled anywhere. Consider, for the sake of definiteness, what would happen if a Communist revolution were to occur in England to-morrow. Immediately America would place an embargo on all trade with us. The cotton industry would collapse, leaving about five million of the most ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... The Blessed Damozel was a definiteness of sensible imagery, which seemed almost grotesque to some, and was strange, above all, in a theme so profoundly visionary. The gold bar of heaven from which she leaned, her hair yellow like ripe corn, are but examples of a general treatment, as naively detailed as the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... having to toil with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... question and not in the facts themselves. For example: If a cannon ball were to be fired off by some mechanical device a million miles from where there was any ear to hear, would there be any sound? The lack of definiteness here which permits difference of opinion lies in the word "sound." If we add after the word "sound" the phrase, "in the sense of a conscious auditory sensation," the answer would obviously be, No, since there can be ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... foreign observers. It mattered little in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the issue. Of all European statesmen there was one man who saw this point with a definiteness which, in itself, gives him a clear title to fame. That was Sir Edward Grey. The time came when a section of the British public was prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary in the streets of London, because they believed ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... is interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... of passions—saintly, earthly, and diabolic—on the varying human face. One fancies each corbel to have had its history, its archetype in nature; a thousand possible stories spring into one's mind. They are wrought with such a startling and individual definiteness, that one feels as about Shakspeare's characters, as if they must have had a counterpart in real existence. The pure, saintly nun may have been some sister, or some daughter, or some early love, of the artist, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... movements of the Irishman O'Hara, but the efforts were altogether unavailing. The man seemed to have disappeared as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself. He was unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man's departure from Paris. Some of O'Hara's old acquaintances maintained that they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... important period of his life was that from 1841 to 1845, when his talent was forming and ripening. Little is known with definiteness regarding this period, but it is certain that while pursuing his literary labors, he moved in widely differing circles of society—fashionable, official, literary, theatrical, that of the students, and others—which contributed to the truth of his pictures from these different spheres in his poems. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... conjectured rather than affirmed, and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in some degree in ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... steak, Steve observed the brooding eye of Culvera upon him. Faint suspicions, recollections too vague as yet for definiteness, were beginning to stir in the mind of the man. He had taken on the look of wariness, masked by a surface smile, that his face had worn the night ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... flatly refused. In answer to inquiries, he explained the position of the pope on the subject of lay investiture, declared that he must stand by that position, and that if Henry also would not obey the pope, he must leave England again. Here was a sharp issue, drawn with the greatest definiteness, and one which it was very difficult for the king to meet. He could not possibly afford to renew the quarrel with Anselm and to drive him into exile again at this moment, but it was equally impossible for him to abandon this right of the crown, so long unquestioned and one on which ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... the charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may teach, as has been said, what the poet ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... far, however, lose something of their authority, as well as definiteness, on the way; there was always room for charity to suggest a mistake or exaggeration; and if good men turned up their hands and eyes after a new story, and ladies of experience, who knew mankind, held their heads high and looked grim and mysterious at mention of his name, nevertheless ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of what others do, and vague ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But Lentulus was at once so unreceptive, and so little gifted with the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... what people thought. It was difficult to influence him, but when influenced he was almost painfully open in his acknowledgment of the power that had reached him. As a rule, however, despite his apparent definiteness, his decisive violence, there seemed to be something fluid in his character, something that divided and flowed away from anything which sought to grasp and hold it. He had impetus but not balance; swiftness, but a swiftness that was uncontrolled. He ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness of outline in the piquant features, not often found in ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... his one talon into his side coat pocket with swift definiteness. "A hell of a chance you two cheap bums 'd have ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... volition, he sought to explain it to his own shocked senses, to realize it as some illusion, some combination of natural causes, the hour, the pallor pervading the air, the distance, for his boat was near the middle of the stream,—but the definiteness of the ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that long descent are marked out with a precision and definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He began His descent, and whilst yet He is 'in the form of God.' He stands on the lofty level before ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thing—though it was but a few hours old 'twas not as red and crumple visaged as new-born infants usually are, its little head was covered with thick black silk, and its small features were of singular definiteness. She dragged herself nearer ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... book is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even the "Mysteries of Paris" and Gaboriau's "Crime d'Orcival" are raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and forewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible civilization, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis of such figures as the Vicomte d'Orcival, the Stabber,[40] ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... curious. Some are half afraid. Some rather more than half disgusted. Some indeed try to banish the whole subject from their minds. This may seem to be a refined thing to do; but, as we know with a new definiteness since the psychologists have explored the matter, it is really a disastrous thing to do. For to adapt ourselves to sex is one of the problems that cannot be escaped. In this world we cannot live the disembodied life. What we may do is to live ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... chaotic, or when orderly too busy with its ends to know itself, receives through expression the fixed, clear outlines of a thing, and can be contemplated like a thing. Every one has verified the clarifying effect of expression upon ideas, how they thus acquire definiteness and coherence, so that even the mind that thinks them can hold them in review. But this effect upon feeling is no less sure. The unexpressed values of experience are vague strivings embedded in chaotic sensations and images; these expression sorts and organizes ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... crisp definiteness about those two words which carried conviction with them. Mabane and I were a little staggered. Our position was such a strong one, our request so reasonable, that I think that we had never realized ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his successes, Berkeley now planned a more formidable invasion of the Western Shore. Public sentiment, he hoped, was beginning to turn in his favor. The death of Bacon had deprived the rebellion of all coherency and definiteness of purpose. The country was getting weary of the struggle, and was anxious for the reestablishment of law and order. In Gloucester and Middlesex especially there were many prominent planters that awaited an opportunity to take up arms against the rebels. And although the common people were indifferent ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... some among the audience began to wince. Helen came before the curtain several times, and each time with eyes that searched for some one, and Douglass knew with definiteness that she sought her playwright in order that she might share her triumph with him. But a perverse mood had seized him. "This is all very well, but wait till the men realize the message of the play," he muttered, and lifted the programme to ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... between the modern and the classical aesthetic mind is the greater precision and definiteness of the latter. The modern genius is Gothic, and demands in art a certain vagueness and spirituality like that of music, refusing to be grasped and formulated. Hence for us (and this is undoubtedly an improvement) there ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... to find within that mysterious room, they could not perhaps have explained with any definiteness. Once they stood within the threshold, however, they became slowly conscious of a vague disappointment. Here was nothing so very strange, after all! The room appeared to be in considerable disorder, and articles of clothing, books, and boyish ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... himself, deny it persistently through long periods of time. And there was the weakness in Claude which instinctively wished to give to others what they expected of him, or strongly desired from him. On that evening in the studio Charmian's definiteness gained a point for her. She was encouraged by this fact to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... may say quite truly—through the will and power which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted upon thought. These things ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... disproportionate attention which has been given to the person and work of the Holy Spirit, as compared with that bestowed on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is affirmed, moreover, that in many of the works upon the subject now extant there is a lack of definiteness of impression which leaves much still to be desired in the treatment of this subject. These observations lead us to ask: Why not employ the same method in writing about the Third Person of the Trinity as we use in considering the Second Person? Scores of excellent ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... current, pressure, or resistance, in the terms of the other two. This relation holds true and is accurate in every possible case and condition of practical work. This remarkable precision and definiteness of action has made possible the creation of an extensive school of electrical testing, by which we are not only enabled to make accurate measurement of electrical apparatus and appliances, but also to make determinations in other fields by ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... and even took definite shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began to seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire. He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... consonants boldly tackles and utilizes them. It will never be possible to sing so sweetly in the English and German languages as in Italian; but it is possible to sing with much more vigor, dramatic definiteness, and ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... class had acquired a thorough knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their possession these little colored certificates which they ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... not love her," was Barbara's quick decision, and she laid the open letter down with a definiteness which said that you, too, are laid out and laid low. Your sister's very wrists can be articulate. However, I laughed at her and she soon joined me. We do not mean to be extravagant with our fears. Who shall prescribe the letters of lovers to their sisters and foster-fathers? ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... his sleep, or laughing with holiday glee—at the drolleries possibly of some pantomime performed for his amusement in the Theatre Royal, Dreamland—a theatre mercifully open to all boys free of charge, long after the holidays have come to an end, the only drawbacks being a certain want of definiteness in the plot and scenery, and a liability to premature termination of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... round Copernicus seem to respond more happily to the requirements of Professor Pickering's hypothesis, for here there is an absence of that definiteness of direction so manifestly displayed in the case of the Tycho rays, and we can well imagine that with an area of condensation surrounding this magnificent object beyond the limits of the streaks, and a number of active little craters ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... an interesting woman. She has opinions of her own, which she expresses clearly and firmly. I like her," responded Morgan with a definiteness of manner which suggested that he was not to be debarred by fear of banter from ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so profoundly entering into our views of the world around us that that world loses the greater ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... in the definiteness of detail. He expected some kind of result. But there was none, except that the smile remained on her lips a moment longer, and there was a laughing flash back in the clear depths of her eyes. Her level glance was as innocent as a child's ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to pass,—affrighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her brother,—stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and obliterated all definiteness of thought,—she yielded without a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... favor of the United States Government. It was useless to discuss methods of controlling big business by the National Government until it was definitely settled that the National Government had the power to control it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that the National Government had not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... definiteness and certainty to determine in what sense the apostle in such connections uses the word "brother." It describes a relation inconsistent with and opposite to the servile. It is "NOT" the relation of a "SERVANT." ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... are not merely loyal, but also enlightened, loyalty, never losing the definiteness and the concreteness of its devotion to some near and directly fascinating cause, sees itself to be in actual spiritual unity with the common cause of all the loyal, whoever they are. The great cause for all ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
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