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More "Indefiniteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thumps in the mist brought memories of spring house cleaning and the dusting out of old cushions, but it was really the three-year-old song of the guns. Nature had censored observation by covering the spectacle with the mantle of indefiniteness. Still this was the big thing we had come to see—night work in and behind the front lines of the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... with infinite extension. In both cases Mr. Mill confounds infinity with indefiniteness. But with regard to an absolute minimum of space, Mr. Mill's argument requires ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... assemble, but they do so in a manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwards they all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; but again the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And this indefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, for example, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging' of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whether Edgar is mad that he should return from his hollow tree (in a district ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have a sort of value of its own as denoting poetic sensitiveness. Hence the excessive softness, the indefiniteness, the languishing and the effeminacy which since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been tolerated in poetry because poetry was supposed to be the proper vehicle for such weakness. It is significant that the most admired poem of Keats ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of a clear evening the harbour gathers to itself the additional charm of mysterious indefiniteness, and among the long-drawn-out reflections appear sinuous lines of yellow light beneath the lamps by the bridge. Looking towards the ocean from the outer harbour, one sees the massive arms which Whitby has thrust into the waves, holding ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Plato does away with the above and below in space, as he has done away with the absolute existence of past and future.) The course of time, unless regularly marked by divisions of number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... peace and prosperity, however, there was a serious trouble. This was a dispute with Lord Baltimore over the dividing line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. By the inaccuracy of surveyors, the confusion of maps, and the indefiniteness of charters, Baltimore believed himself entitled to a considerable part of the territory which was claimed by Penn, including even Philadelphia. The two proprietors had already discussed the question without settlement; indeed, it remained a cause of contention for some seventy ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... her real name: it was given to her by her brothers and sister. People with very marked qualities of character do sometimes get such distinctive titles, to rectify the indefiniteness of those they inherit and those they receive in baptism. The ruling peculiarity of a character is apt to show itself early in life, and it showed itself in Madam Liberality when she was ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the technical appellation of that mildest form of subjection, but it probably did not come into use till a considerably later period (Cic. pro Balbo, 16, 35). The appellation of clientship derived from private law, aptly as in its very indefiniteness it denotes the relation (Dig. xlix. 15, 7, i), was scarcely applied to it ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... be covered in this way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. Often the effect is very successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. Too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... dullness. Technically it is poor. The action is as scattered as the parts of a futurist picture. A whole chapter is devoted to a picture of a newspaper editor at work, inventing the phraseology of indefiniteness. Epigrams are few and are very much overworked. Once a catchword is sprung, it is run to death. The Turk who by means of silly puns attempts to prove that Islamic civilization is better than European, never ceases in his efforts. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Sunday morning I made a discovery—a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... father, as above). The elders are acquainted only with figurative language ("Similitudines," "Figmenta," etc.); but the wanderer is well informed in practical life, in experience he is an adept. As a fact, parents in their indefiniteness about the question, Where do babies come from? give a figurative answer (however appropriate it may be as a figure of speech) in saying that the stork brings them, while the child expects clear information (from experience). On the propriety of the picturesque information that the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... deep canons of granite, eternal snows,—mountains so extended, so wonderful, that their secrets offered whole summers of solitary exploration. We came to feel their marvel, we came to respect the inferno of the Desert that hemmed them in. Shortly we graduated from the indefiniteness of railroad maps to the intricacies of geological survey charts. The fever was ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Indefiniteness of Opinion on this Subject. Every Person needs some Recreation. General Rules. How much Time to be given. What Amusements proper. Those should always be avoided, which cause Pain, or injure the Health, or endanger Life, or interfere with important Duties, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... of the association of ideas. Associations of similarity give related symbols, of contiguity coincident symbols. Symbols tend either toward personification (iconolatry), or toward secularization. The symbol has no fixed interpretation. Its indefiniteness shown by the serpent symbol, and the cross. The physiological relations of certain symbols. Their classification. The Lotus. The Pillar. Symbols discarded by the higher religious thought. Esthetic and scientific ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... monotheistic force, through the modifications or corrections supplied by the context or even by the same verse [Footnote Ref 3]. "Henotheism is therefore an appearance," says Macdonell, "rather than a reality, an appearance produced by the indefiniteness due to undeveloped anthropomorphism, by the lack of any Vedic god occupying the position of a Zeus as the constant head of the pantheon, by the natural tendency of the priest or singer in extolling a particular god to exaggerate his greatness and to ignore other gods, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Colonel Burr should dislike his refusal to acknowledge or deny, he was ready to meet the consequences. This Colonel Burr deemed a sort of defiance, and would have felt justified in making it the basis of an immediate message; but, as the communication contained something concerning the indefiniteness of the request; as he believed it rather the offspring of false pride than of reflection; and as he felt the utmost reluctance to proceed to extremities while any other hope remained, his request was repeated in terms more explicit. The replies and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... types had been done. One seemed as properly the function of the assembly as the other. In the composition of the court, and in the practice as to time and place of meeting, there was something of the same indefiniteness. The court was the king's. It was his personal machine for managing the business of his great property, the state. As such it met when and where the king pleased, certain meetings being annually expected; and it was composed of any persons who stood in immediate relations with ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... life of the world we live in. It is herein that he excels! His knowledge is wide, his sympathies are many-sided, his power of exposition is unsurpassed. No one has set before us the mind of our time, with its half-lights, its shadowy vistas, its indefiniteness, its haze on the horizon, so ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... congressional, judicial, and revenue districts, the boundaries of which are fixed by state and national governments. Locally, there are school districts. The boundaries which separate one nation from another are determined by agreement, or treaty, between the nations concerned. Uncertainty or indefiniteness in regard to national boundary lines has been the cause of much international strife, and was an important factor in the European war ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... falls to the lot of numberless men born to keep themselves alive and to propagate their insignificance. But Dyce was not insignificant. As soon as his countenance lighted with animation, it revealed a character rich in various possibility, a vital force which, by its bright indefiniteness, made some appeal to the imagination. Often he had the air of a lyric enthusiast; often, that of a profound thinker; not seldom there came into his eyes a glint of stern energy which seemed a challenge to the world. Therewithal, nothing perceptibly ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... term Mound-Builders will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people who formerly lived throughout the Mississippi Valley and raised the mounds of that region. It should also be clearly understood that by its use the writer ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... intellectual freedom of his country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria.] The Jesuit notion does not err on the score of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... had been taken prisoner at the naval battle of Finisterre; and, pending his release, the Marquis de la Galissoniere presided over the fortunes, or misfortunes, of New France. The indefiniteness of the western boundary between French and English territory was perhaps the chief source of his perplexity; and to put an end to persistent English encroachments in the valley of the Ohio, Galissoniere sent Celoron de Bienville, a colonial captain, to establish a formal ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the game of courtesy with you, yes," said he, "but only when it does not interfere with serious things. In this matter there must be no indefiniteness, no chance for misunderstanding. Politeness, between the sexes, means both. I will repeat: in this you must leave me free hand no ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Principle and elsewhere—that pleasure and not instruction or moral exhortation was the end of poetry; that beauty and not truth or goodness was its means; and, furthermore, that the pleasure which it gave should be indefinite. About his own poetry there was always this {531} indefiniteness. His imagination dwelt in a strange country of dream—a "ghoul-haunted region of Weir," "out of space, out of time"—filled with unsubstantial landscapes, and peopled by spectral shapes. And yet there is a wonderful, hidden significance in this uncanny scenery. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Branches were established in various towns in England. Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in Brussels in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a chintz in which both colour and design are indefinite, the kind which gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background. The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colours, or of any ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts—"subject" and "object"—are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. And that is all. Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender—all these are given no expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication—provided, of course, there is that ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... things which mark eras in a mind's history, and open a new door which no man can shut. Of the two, I think Niagara is the most impressive, perhaps because those aerial elements of foam and spray give that vague and dreamy indefiniteness of outline which seems essential in the sublime. For this reason, while Niagara is equally impressive in the distance, it does not lose on the nearest approach—it is always mysterious, and, therefore, stimulating. Those varying spray wreaths, rising ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... limit of sea and sky. Very lovely were the effects of light, the gradations of colour; from the blue-black abysses, where no shape could be distinguished, to those violet hues upon the furrowed heights which had a transparency, a softness, an indefiniteness, unlike anything to be seen ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Japanese impersonality we shall consider the remarkable deficiency of personal pronouns in the language, and the wide use of "honorifics." This substitution of the personal pronouns by honorifics makes possible an indefiniteness of speech that is exceedingly difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to appreciate. Fancy the amount of implication in the statement, "Ikenai koto-we shimashita" which, strictly translated, means "Can't go thing have done." Who has done? you? or he? or I? This can only be inferred, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... as much as possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and definiteness of view; while the latter associates and combines them in the largest possible variety consistent with unity of interest and impression, so as to produce the effect of indefiniteness and mystery. Thus a Shakespearian drama is like a Gothic cathedral, which, by its complexity of structure, while catching the eye would fain lift the thoughts to something greater and better than the world, making the beholder feel his littleness, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... native] of Arbela. The dignity of the diction is very marked. The very frequent assurance 'fear not' and the solemn repetition of 'I am Ishtar' lend impressiveness to the message. The oracle, it will be seen, deals in general phrases. This indefiniteness characterizes most of them; and the more impressive the diction, the greater vagueness in the statements made. So an oracle, coming from Ishtar and Nabu and uttered by a woman Baya, a ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... of common aspiration to the civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms. These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves they scarcely constitute a religion that will satisfy, much less one that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can judge, these ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... name given without a long rigmarole of dazzling titles or senseless adjectives. The Muse is neither pathetically invoked nor anathematically abused, but the author proceeds at once to describe his hero's present situation, which, it strangely appears, is in "a corner." The indefiniteness of the locality—a corner—is not of the slightest moment; for it does not concern the general reader to know in what corner little JACK was stationed. Suffice it, as is apparent from the context, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
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