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More "Undefined" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantage was promised by following on the steps of Alexander and annexing countries too poor to bear the cost of their maintenance. To the west it was different. Beyond the Alps there was still a territory of unknown extent, stretching away to the undefined ocean, a territory peopled with warlike races, some of whom in ages long past had swept over Italy and taken Rome, and had left their descendants and their name in the northern province, which was now called Cisalpine Gaul. With these races the Romans had as yet no clear relations, and from them ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... will refuse to be in your company!" said Helen. She was angry now at something undefined in Van Shaw's manner. "If you do not leave me at once, I will try to leave you." She actually made a movement to rise and put her foot on the ground at the edge of the kiva. Van Shaw instantly got up and said ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... torchlight. A sound came from afar—a sound not unmelodious but singular beyond power of language to express—a whisper of sinister significance to him who knew its meaning, of sheer mystery to all others. A murmur filled the air, a murmur of undefined noises still far distant. They might have been human, they might have arisen from the flight and terror of beasts, from the movement of vast bodies, from the reverberations of remote music; Earth or Heaven might have bred them, or the upper chambers ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Charles, to the despotism of Cromwell—how again that produced a restoration which settled none of the great moral or political questions which had generated all those agitations, and which, in return, those agitations had complicated and inflamed—and how, at last, the undefined, discordant, and antagonistic pretensions of the royal and democratical elements were reconciled by the Revolution and the Bill of Rights—and finally, whether with too much or too little violence to the principles of the ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... diamond of enormous size and incomparable purity and of that undefined blue which clear water takes from the sky which it reflects, the blue which we can just suspect in newly-washed linen. People admired it, went into raptures over it ... and cast terrified glances round the victim's room, at the spot where ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... analysis, what he had seen and heard had proved mysteriously disturbing—all this outpouring of irrational sentiment in which he had no share. So had his conversation with the girl disturbed him. He was in a condition of mental unrest, undefined but acute; odds and ends of curious thought kicked about within him, challenging him to follow them down to unexplored depths. But he was paying no attention to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He thrust it ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... of delight, and sets life in motion, so as to give a pleasure which any one not in the same state would be unable to explain. In fact, a more jovial night we had not passed in the forecastle for months. All seemed in unaccountably high spirits. An undefined anticipation of radical changes, of new scenes and great doings, seemed to have possessed every one, and the common drudgery of the vessel appeared contemptible. Here was a new vein opened,— a grand theme of conversation and a topic for all sorts of discussions. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... they were! Look how amiable Mrs. Masham had made believe to be, an hour ago! A shade of graciousness—an infinitesimal condescension—certainly nothing worse than that! But the hypocrisy of it! She had never been quite comfortable in her ill-assigned position of guest undefined—dear, beautiful Gwen's fault! Never, since the housekeeper on first introduction had jumped at her reluctance to taint the servants' hall with Sapps Court, interpreting it as a personal desire to be alone. But she had never suspected that she was a plaguy old cat, and did not feel ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to pay;- Grown, made, and smoked in a few short hours. Smoke not - smoke not! Smoke not, smoke not, the weed you smoke may change The healthfulness of your stomachic tone; Things to the eye grow queer and passing strange; All thoughts seem undefined - save one - to be alone! ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Captain Twinely, Lord Dun-severic's grave face, and his summons to Neal had filled Una's mind with an undefined dread of some threatening evil. She was nearly as anxious as her aunt to know what was to happen. The prospect of a scamper across country through the rain daunted her very little. She had no doubt of her ability to keep in touch with the horsemen without being discovered. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... continental shelf: 200-m or to the depth of exploitation exclusive economic zone: undefined territorial sea: 12 nm ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... received with animated and undefined surprise this most unexpected intelligence. It was, as a fine old poem expresses it, 'like a fire to heather set,' that covers a solitary hill with smoke, and illumines it at the same time with dusky fire. His tutor, or, I should say, Mr. Pembroke, for he scarce assumed the name ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... into the nebulous territory of dreams was undefined. The actual was dropping away into an impalpable mistiness as the earth drops from under ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... effects of his brother's rashness from his child. By the time the brother had got with his god to Adhartal, three miles from Jubbulpore, on the road to Benares, he heard of the death of his nephew; but he seemed not to feel this slight blow in his terror of the dreadful but undefined calamity which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he trotted on his road. Soon after, an infant son of their uncle died of the same disease; and the whole town became at once divided into two parties—those who held that the children had been killed ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... shall find running through the literature, the character, and the mind of the two nations. The North is misty, undefined, illimited; the Greek is clear as crystal, sharp and angular, on every side. Its conceptions are never vague, but are tangible, real, and human. Thus with the Greek, a vast ocean, like that they know, encircles the whole earth, and fixes its bounds and the limits which man shall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... becomes very slippery. Mathematicians, physicists, etc., may feel that the expression is just a "well adapted one," and they may not be very much inclined to look closer into it or attentively to analyse it. Theologians and metaphysicians probably will speculate a great deal about it vaguely, with undefined terms and incoherent ideas with incoherent results; which will not lead us toward a scientific or true solution, but will keep us away from ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... perfect faith in the speaker and his statements, with a little undefined sort of regretfulness. So, then, Pitt need not have been lost to them, if only they could have been found! Just what that thought meant she had no time then to inquire. She hardly interrupted him ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... this remarkable fragment was strangely recalled by the following passage in a recent book that has interested many:—"Masses of strange, nameless masonry, of an antiquity dateless and undefined, bedded themselves in the rocks, or overhung the clefts of the hills; and out of a great tomb by the wayside, near the arch, a forest of laurel forced its way, amid delicate and graceful frieze-work, moss-covered and stained with ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... yet undefined extension may safely be given to the direct and indirect results of natural selection; but I now admit, after reading the essay by Nageli on plants, and the remarks by various authors with respect to animals, more especially those recently made by Professor ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... swiftly acting brain and clear insight, undoubtedly the most remarkable man at the Paris Conference, found himself in a difficult situation between President Wilson's pronouncements, some of them, like that regarding the freedom of the seas, undefined and dangerous, and the claims of France tending, after the brutal attack it had had to meet, not towards a true peace and the reconstruction of Europe, but towards the vivisection of Germany. In one of the first moments, just before the General Elections, Lloyd George, too, promised ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... religion has played in the past in the evolution of rational life, and to look upon it as a necessary factor in the earlier stages of that process whose place is to be taken hereafter by some as yet undefined substitute. If indeed Nature thus works by illusions and justifies the lying means by the benevolent end, it is hard to believe in a moral government of the universe, or to hope that an "absolute morality"—righteousness for its own sake—will be the outcome of such ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... upon an exploring expedition, intending to inspect all corners of the camp. But if we thought we were going to wander whither we pleased we were soon disillusioned. We were huddled in one corner and our boundaries, although undefined in the concrete were substantial in the abstract, being imaginary lines run between sentries standing with ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... feeling of indignation is joined a desire for vengeance, with the feeling of penitence a desire of atonement, the former tending towards an act of vengeance and the latter towards an act of expiation. The jural judgments of individuals are not complete judgments; they are based upon an undefined sense of right and wrong. In the consciousness of the individual there exists no standard of right and wrong under which every single circumstance giving rise to the formation of a jural judgment can be subsumed. A simple instinct impels the individual to declare an action ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... knowledge. We all know that the power of government does not reside in practice with the people, but with some body which remains for most of us undefined. It is the peculiar service of the authors of The Party System to have defined that body for us and to have exposed its nature and composition. Bagehot referred to this body as the Cabinet; in The Party System it is shown that this body is really ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... melting as Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor: but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman of the University, his head full of poetical fancies, his heart perhaps throbbing with desires undefined, admired this rising young divinity; and gazed at her (though only as at some "bright particular star," far above his earth) with endless delight and wonder. She had been a coquette from the earliest times almost, trying her ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the suffering women and children, by the keen excitement of the struggle, by the religious scruples sternly suppressed but occasionally asserting themselves, now on one side and now on the other, and by that undefined psychology of the crowd which we understand so little. All of these factors also influence the public and do much to determine popular sympathy and judgment. In the early days of the Pullman strike, as I was coming down in the elevator of the Auditorium hotel from one of the futile ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... recently made important changes here. An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancy for building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me. There is commonly such a one at the junction of two rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit their respective sands in the eddy at their confluence, as it were the womb of a continent. By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... which the angel Gabriel was sent to "give him skill and understanding," and to inform him, that their chastisement would not be terminated by the captivity of seventy years, but by one of "seventy times seven," i. e. a long and undefined period. The words "seven," and "seventy," were frequently used by the Hebrews to signify an indefinite number, and "seventy times seven" is a Hebreism used to signify a great and indefinite number. Thus one of the disciples of Jesus is represented ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... all as admirably felt as expressed, and to those acquainted with and accustomed to love the works of the painter, it leaves nothing to be asked for; but we must again remind Lord Lindsay, that he has throughout left the artistical orbit of Giotto undefined, and the offense of his manner unremoved, as far as regards the uninitiated spectator. We question whether from all that he has written, the untraveled reader could form any distinct idea of the painter's peculiar merits or methods, or that the estimate, if formed, might not afterwards ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... L4 per L100, and extinguished his debt in 42-1/2 years. If he availed himself of them he paid L3 8s. 7d. per L100 after the first ten years, and continued to pay, with two further reductions in prospect, till the debt was extinguished in a period undefined, but estimated at about 72-1/2 years. But this privilege was made retrospective, so that purchasers under the Ashbourne Acts could also reduce their instalments of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Could I reach the snowy mountain before sunset? If so, I trusted in being able to follow our old trail to the mine. Thence, I might keep on to the Del Norte, by striking a branch of the Paloma or some other lateral stream. Such were my plans, undefined as I rode forth. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... quite alone, and the moon was rising. There are always liberating moments at sea when the spirit seems to grow—to expand to the limits of sky and water, to become one with them. Such a moment was theirs, the perfect hour of moonrise on a calm and empty sea. The horizon was undefined. They seemed suspended in limitless ether, which the riding moon pierced with a swale of living brightness, like quicksilver. They heard nothing save the hidden throb and creak of the ship, mysterious yet familiar, as the night itself. It was the perfect time. Stefan ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... adoption of such a meridian? We think not, unless we are assured by a previous declaration as to the principle which is to govern the selection of that meridian. Without such a declaration, we should have no power to begin a discussion on an undefined subject, and we are not authorized to ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... period either of mental indolence or of sleep.—With the greater part of the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a passive state of the intellectual powers. Thoughts come and go, as chance, or some undefined power in nature may direct, uninterfered with by the sovereign will, the steersman of the mind. And often the understanding appears to be a blank, upon which if any impressions are then made, they are like figures drawn in the sand which the next tide obliterates, or are even ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... on, guided by the balustrade, passing three doors, all open, through which the undefined proportions of a drawing-room and boudoir were barely suggested in a ghostly dusk. By each he ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... answers. What is deepest in them is growing in silence; it is not yet formed into conceptions, and has no language. The difference between the spoken questions of children and their impressions, as yet so undefined, is like that between pictures of the snapshot camera and the astronomer's plates which, for hours, gather and develop the figure of some ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... opposed to all the calculations of personal interest, it seems to me that the desire of glory, or the expectation of reward, will not wholly account for it, but rather that it is indicative of there being in the warrior's breast an undefined conviction that he better fulfils the purpose of life by braving a painful death than by living at home in ease. It is worthy of remark that although in Scripture war is spoken of as a calamity, the occupation of a soldier is nowhere condemned, but is rather ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... this hollow street in which I live; whatever comes from that quarter must be malarious, if anything. The windows are thrown open as far as they were made to be thrown, and I get as far out of one of them as I safely can, by tilting my chair back, and extending my legs out into that undefined everywhere called the wide, wide world. The only newspaper within reach of my hand is one I have already looked over, but I glance at it again, reading backwards from the end an account of a terrible poisoning case lately brought to light in England, which I had already read forwards ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "I never met him there." He recollected that Lucia had expressed more pleasure at Major Campbell's coming than even, at that of her brother; and a dark, undefined phantom entered his heart, which, though he would have been too proud to confess it to himself, was none ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Germany and Spain, through a six years' terrible war, in which the great Turenne was killed at Saltzbach, in Germany. At last, from exhaustion, all parties were compelled to conclude the peace of Nimeguen in 1678. Taking advantage of undefined terms in this treaty, Louis seized various cities belonging to German princes, and likewise the free imperial city of Strassburg, when all Germany was too much worn out by the long war to offer resistance. France was full of self-glorification, the king was viewed almost as a demi-god, and the splendour ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... countenance of death as the face of a familiar friend. The mind invests itself in the sombre shades of a melancholy longing after eternal rest—a longing which is sometimes connected with unqualified disbelief, and sometimes associates itself with an undefined desire ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... afternoon the boatbuilder's heart was, somehow, heavy with undefined dread as to what he ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... numbers having been gathered by the crew of the Dolphin at their leisure time, the aggregate value of which, I am told, is between 500 and 600 pounds; besides pearls, one of which has been valued by competent persons at 25 pounds. The limits of the bed are as yet undefined, but there is good reason to believe, from the position of it, that with proper apparatus ships could soon be ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... the consoling fancy unfounded. Lucilla's nerves were not at their usual pitch, and an undefined sense of loss of a safeguard was coming over her. Moreover, the desire for a last word to Robert was growing every moment, and he would keep on hunting out those boxes, as ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a poem is enough to generate a better mood, to make one feel the air of higher regions, and wish to rise "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot". The best influences which bear upon us are of this vague sort—powerful upon the heart and conscience, although undefined ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... is depressed and projects upward. If not corrected while in its earlier stages, it progresses very rapidly, and a second curvature is developed. The symptoms vary in different cases, and in the early stages are somewhat obscure and undefined, but generally the patient feels a sense of uneasiness, languor, stupor, and nervousness, loss of energy and ambition, general debility, poor appetite, gradually declining health, loss of strength and flesh, and, as the disease progresses, a slight elevation of one of the shoulder-blades is ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... concept of the nature of light which is further than ever from the truth. For what then remains of light is - in Eddington's words - a 'quite irregular disturbance, with no tendency to periodicity', which means that to light is assigned the quality of an undefined chaos (in the negative sense of this ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... thou rulest the mind It is not given for us to know; We glow with feelings undefined, Nor can explain ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... he had been dreaming faded into vagueness. He couldn't have said what he had been dreaming about. He was neither asleep nor awake, but in the shadowland somewhere between. Something as yet undefined had brought him halfway toward awakening, but the influence was not powerful enough to bring his ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... and afterwards by the people, till the greatest part of its most formidable pretensions became extinct. But it was not till the revolution in 1688, which elevated the Prince of Orange to the throne of Great Britain, that English liberty was completely triumphant. As incident to the undefined power of making war, an acknowledged prerogative of the crown, Charles II. had, by his own authority, kept on foot in time of peace a body of 5,000 regular troops. And this number James II. increased to 30,000; who were paid out of his civil list. At the revolution, to abolish ...
— The Federalist Papers
... with unearthly suspicions and alarms. I would have made any sacrifice short of ruin, to emancipate our household from the odious mental and moral thraldom which was invisibly established over us—overcasting us with strange anxieties and an undefined terror. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... remembering them when chance led me into the oak parlor. Then, indeed, I recollected their manner and my fears, and then I also felt repeated, though every time with fainter and fainter power, the old thrill of undefined terror which stopped my record of that day with the half-finished question as to who had uttered the shriek that had startled me the night before. To-day I again take up my pen. Why? Because to-day, and only since to-day, can ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal voices of Deities, Titans, and departed heroes were heard in awful conference; heaven bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead and yet more undefined and ghastly forms of those infernal deities who struck horror into the gods themselves." His imagination dwells in the loftiest regions of the old mythology of Greece; his tone is always pure and moral, though stern ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Curatorship of the Industrial Museum. The expenditure of thought, of ingenuity, of research, and management—the expenditure, in a word, of himself—involved in originating and giving form of purpose to a scheme so new and so undefined, and, in our view, so undefinable, must, we fear, have shortened his life, and withdrawn his precious and quite singular powers of illustrating and adorning, and, in the highest sense, sanctifying and blessing science, from this which seemed always to us his proper sphere. Indeed, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... who used this argument against economic equality would have felt aggrieved to have it made out the baldly sordid proposition it seems to be. They appear, to judge from the excerpts collected in this book, to have had a vague but sincere apprehension that in some quite undefined way economic equality would really tend to make people monotonously alike, tediously similar, not merely as to bank accounts, but as to qualities in general, with the result of obscuring the differences in natural endowments, the interaction of which ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... peace concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle, which had put an end to the general war of Europe, had left undefined the boundaries between the British and French possessions in America; a singular remissness, considering that they had long been a subject in dispute, and a cause of frequent conflicts in the colonies. Immense regions were still claimed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... some undefined fear of it," he said to himself. "I almost felt there would be some fearful gulf intervene between Isabella and myself, when I had again left her side. O, prophetic soul, though our eyes cannot fathom the future, ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... descent reached the floor of a second cave, as level and nearly as smooth as a table. On her left hand, what light managed to creep through the tortuous entrance was caught and reflected in a dull glimmer from the undefined surface of a well of fresh water which lay in a sort of basin in the rock: on a bedded stone beside it sat the laird, with his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, and his hump upheaved above his head, like Mount Sinai over the head of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... far as a French deed could give it away. But the French king forgot when he was making this lavish gift of a continent, that the British laid claims to the same region and had already established a colony in Virginia, which was then an undefined territory, extending from Florida to New France. Both France and England were now face to face on the new continent, and a daring English adventurer was about to strike in Acadia the first blow for ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... reply relieved Zashue of an undefined feeling of suspicion that had arisen within him. During his moment of thoughtfulness he had been led from the accusations of Hayoue against Tyope unconsciously to the accusation which Tyope had launched before against Shotaye and his own wife. Quick as lightning ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... which promises more unity of action in these Departments, and takes notice of the fact that the powers and functions of the Commander-in-Chief are not to be changed. As these, however, rest entirely on tradition, and are in most cases ambiguous and undefined, the Queen would wish that they should be clearly defined, and this the more so as she transacts certain business directly with him, and ought to be secured against getting into any collision with the Secretary of State, who also takes her pleasure, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a solid limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he would have thought could content him in the years of undefined possibilities. Then he will find the river a more natural intimate than the ocean. It is individual, which the ocean, with all its gulfs and inlets and multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be. It does not ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... continued, and Carl crawled along the edge of a business precipice, looking down. He became so accustomed to it that he began to enjoy the view. The old Carl, with the enthusiasm which had served him for that undefined quality called "courage," began to come to life again, laughing, "Let the darned old business bust, if ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... to indicate the serious disposition of the new Age. If we find the thinkers of humanity uniformly tending towards a given direction, we may be sure there is an undefined, perhaps unconscious, though none the less real, desire on the part of the age to be led thither. Thus, at the close of the last century, Immanuel Kant, while undermining the ground on which the faith of old rested, attempted that new presentation of religion, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... with a warning. He has done more than any other writer to perpetuate in England the memories of the great thinkers and actors—Fichte, Richter, Arndt, Koerner, Stein, Goethe,—who taught their countrymen how to endure defeat and retrieve adversity. Who will celebrate their yet undefined successors, who will train Germany gracefully to bear the burden of prosperity? Two years later Carlyle wrote or rather dictated, for his hand was beginning to shake, his historical sketch of the Early Kings of Norway, showing ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... her the value of useful books; and while one read aloud to the other of deeds historic and names renowned, Frado expe- rienced a new impulse. She felt herself capable of elevation; she felt that this book information supplied an undefined dissatisfaction she had long felt, but could not express. Every leisure moment was carefully applied to self-improve- ment, and a devout and Christian exterior in- vited confidence from the villagers. Thus she passed months of quiet, ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... ideal they dare not disappoint, they must live up to their size, be able to get the story, and be the biggest little people in the kindergarten by showing what they could do with it. Again there was an undefined problem thrown at them, as it were—an element of wonder. They did not know just what was coming and they were mentally alert, waiting, on the lookout. The way for the story was open.—This is what you want, for no matter how perfect a gem of folk-lore you tell, it will fall heedless if ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... great nuisance;" whereas that would have meant "Next door was a public-house that (i.e. the public-house) was a great nuisance." *"Who," "which," &c. introduce a new fact about the antecedent, whereas "that" introduces something without which the antecedent is incomplete or undefined.* Thus, in the first example above, "inspector" is complete in itself, and "who" introduces a new fact about him; "guard" is incomplete, and requires "that travelled with the train" to complete ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... now presented. There was a girlish shyness in her fluttering glance, honesty in the depths of her limpid hazel eyes, while her white, unmarred forehead suggested the serenity of a good woman, and Van Lennop was dimly conscious that for some undefined reason he never had thought of her as that. She had personal magnetism—that he had conceded from the first, for invariably he had found himself sensible of her presence even when disliking her the most. To-night he was more strongly ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... impresses a form upon matter, he cannot be injured by its effect; for a spirit can only be injured by that which deprives it of its freedom. Whereas he proves his own freedom by giving a form to the formless; where the mass rules heavily and without shape, and its undefined outlines are for ever fluctuating between uncertain boundaries, fear takes up its abode; but man rises above any natural terror as soon as he knows how to mould it, and transform it into an object of his art. As soon as he upholds his independence toward phaenomenal nature, he maintains his ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... peculiarity entirely his own—that of enveloping parts in beautiful obscurity, and the light again emerging from the shadow, like the softness of moonlight partially seen through demi-transparent clouds, and leaving large masses of undefined objects in darkness. This principle he applied to compositions of even a complicated character, and their bustle and noise were swallowed up in the stillness of shadow. If breadth constitutes grandeur, Rembrandt's works are exemplifications of mysterious ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... years, or one generation, can be viewed as nothing more than a trifling quantity. But it must also be considered that the exact time, and even the exact personality,[36] of Sardanapalus in all his relations are not known. All are vast phantoms in the Assyrian empire; I do not say fictions, but undefined, unmeasured, immeasurable realities; far gone down into the mighty gulf of shadows, and for us irrecoverable. All that is known about the Assyrian empire is its termination under Sardanapalus. It was then coming within Grecian twilight; and it will be best to say that, generally ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... had been placed near the door as it happened, away from the light which fell warmest in the centre of the barn. Thus, during the whole evening, the young musician had been constantly surrounded by shadows that left his features mysteriously undefined. Still, uncle Nathan hovered by; his warm heart yearned to sun ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... not, however, suppose that I even then entertained the purpose of taking away my enemy's life. No, I could not bring my mind exactly to that; but I had a vague, undefined hope, that if we met, some new provocation on his part would afford me just occasion for avenging myself on all; so ingenious, my dear friend, is ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... austere Greek sculpture; and, as matter of fact, it is just with such a world—with a period of refined and exquisite [192] tectonics (as the Greeks called all crafts strictly subordinate to architecture), that Greek art actually begins, in what is called the Heroic Age, that earliest, undefined period of Greek civilisation, the beginning of which cannot be dated, and which reaches down to the first Olympiad, about the year 776 B.C. Of this period we possess, indeed, no direct history, and but few actual monuments, great or ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of you possesses some share of this mysterious, and undefined, and immeasurable gift of influencing his neighbour's life. Every sin that may have a root in your heart is acting, though you may not think of it or intend it, as a pestilent influence outside your own life; every virtue you exercise ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... not improbable that rumors of the advent of a strange and mysterious race should have spread gradually among the Indian tribes along the great table-land of the Cordilleras, and should have shaken the hearts of the stoutest warriors with feelings of undefined dread, as of some impending calamity. In this state of mind, it was natural that physical convulsions, to which that volcanic country is peculiarly subject, should have made an unwonted impression on their minds; and that the phenomena, which might have been regarded only as extraordinary, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and — lo! — Infinity Came down and settled over me; And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the burros at a good trot, his mind at once busy and absent, happy with the pictures of that last hour, gloomy with the undefined, unsatisfied cravings of his heart. Friendship with Neale, affection for Allie, acquainted him with the fact that he had missed something in life—not friendship, for he had had hunter friends, but love, perhaps of a sweetheart, surely love of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... learned there's a secret something That remains yet undefined, That touches the springs and pulleys That open the ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... here, have received many petitions in direct opposition to many of their claims of prerogative,—have listened to them,—condescended to discuss, and to give answers to them. This refusal to admit even the discussion of any part of an undefined prerogative will naturally tend to annihilate any privilege that can be claimed by every inferior dependent community, and every subordinate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Disceptat., p. 96.; Beneventi, 1716); but Joannes Diaconus (S. Greg. Vit. lib. i. cap. i.) employs these decisive terms, "quartus Felix, sedis Apostolicae Pontifex." It is of course possible to translate "atavus meus" merely "my ancestor;" and this will leave the relationship sufficiently undefined. ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... "collectivists," "anarchists," "socialists." Even these terms they had not defined, and it was only toward the end of the International that the two combatants classified their principles into two antagonistic schools, socialism and anarchism. Anarchism was no longer a vague, undefined philosophy of human happiness; it now stood forth, clear and distinct from all other social theories. After this no one need be in doubt as to its meaning and methods. On the other hand, no thoughtful person need longer remain in doubt as to the exact meaning and methods of socialism. This work ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... been Clementina's thoughts since learning that Florimel had not run away with her groom? It were hard to say with completeness. Accuracy, however, may not be equally unattainable. Her first feeling was an utterly inarticulate, undefined pleasure that Malcolm was free to be thought about. She was clear next that it would be matter for honest rejoicing if the truest man she had ever met except his master was not going to marry such an unreality as Florimel—one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... her ears was still ringing Pollyanna's story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with the handsome man that had "noticed too much." Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna's amazing twisting of her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing hostess. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... not been until after a lengthened preparation of fasting, prayer, and night-watching that a resolution so appalling had been formed. Yet it was easier to consent to the proposal, abstractedly placed before them, than to yield themselves to all its undefined and irrevocable consequences, when the awful surrender of what is most precious to man—his individuality—was to be made, not to a chief unnamed, but to this or that one among themselves. To whose hands could the ten consign the irresponsible disposal of their souls and bodies? They had, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... knows what has happened; they both feel changed with an undefined sorrow, with a regret that pride will not enunciate. She is now again in India with her husband. There are duties, courtesies, nay, kindnesses which both will perform, but the ghost of love and sympathy will only rise in their hearts to jibber in mockery words and phrases ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... argue with Princesses—partly because Princesses did not argue with one. He humbly retired, revolving an undefined notion of flight. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... unconscious of any foreign influence working upon him—he could not see that Ashton had in any way exerted a power over him; nor in the new and undefined feelings which had taken possession of him could he recognise the presence of evil. He had consulted conscience, and, he fancied, had satisfactorily met the warnings ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... Debby stole up to her room to look over the dress she was to wear in the evening; as the ruffles in neck and wrists were fresh, she found there was nothing for her to do but brush it and lay it out on the bed. Still she lingered with an undefined feeling that it was Christmas-day everywhere else, and if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... general; and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin. A young man of twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it. But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the Colonel jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. His regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove. His mustache and his manner jarred him, and, worst ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... would tell strongly in his favour. The woman and child would bear witness to his tenderness and skill, and plead for him. As he had said, the convict deserved a pardon. The mean, bad man, burning with wounded vanity and undefined jealousy, waited for some method to suggest itself, by which he might claim the credit of the escape, and snatch from the prisoner, who had dared to rival him, the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... openings in the terminal cell, from one of which grumous filaments projected; these appeared to communicate with the mass in the terminal cell, which like that in all the others, is congealed; but it assumes a different and very undefined form. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... comprehending, he felt suddenly and strangely at a loss. Something in her face struck him silent and perplexed. It seemed that without preparation he had stepped upon dangerous ground. With an undefined apprehension he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... have!" cried Jane; and both ladies rushed into the kitchen, gave simultaneous and hurried orders to the servant-girl, and sent her out of the house impressed with an undefined feeling that life or death depended on the instant procuring ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... England among all classes of society. But the failure of the Samaj to attract any large number of converts from among the Hindus was only what might have been expected. For it requires its followers practically to cut themselves adrift from family and caste ties and offers nothing in return but an undefined theism, not calculated to excite any enthusiasm or strong feeling in ordinary minds. Its efforts at social reform have probably, however, been of substantial value in weakening the rigidity of Hindu ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... brushed from his summit the nearest, and now The balm of the midnight's quiet soothed Nature's agonized brow: A midnight of murkiest darkness, and Lookout's dark undefined mass Heaved grandly a frown on the welkin, a barricade nothing might pass. Its breast was sprinkled with sparkles, its crest was dotted in gold, Telling the camps of the rebels secure as they deemed in their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ancient English script, although so uncouth and shapeless were the characters, that it was not easy to resolve them into letters, or to believe that they were anything but arbitrary and dismal blots and scrawls upon the yellow paper; without meaning, vague, like the misty and undefined germs of thought as they exist in our minds before clothing themselves in words. These, however, as he concentrated his mind upon them, took distincter shape, like cloudy stars at the power of the telescope, and became sometimes English, sometimes Latin, strangely ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... barriers against their dissipation by appropriating specific sums to every specific purpose susceptible of definition; by disallowing all applications of money varying from the appropriation in object or transcending it in amount; by reducing the undefined field of contingencies and thereby circumscribing discretionary powers over money, and by bringing back to a single department all accountabilities for money, where the examinations may ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of the "neighborhoods", for they were known, or may be known by any who will take the trouble to plunge boldly in and throw themselves on the hospitality of any of the dwellers therein. It is rather of the unknown tract, which lay vague and undefined in between the several neighborhoods of the upper end. The history of the former is known both in peace and in war: in the pleasant homesteads which lie on the hills above the little rivers which make down through the county to join the great river below, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... or what determines the country? Is the country the whole territory of the globe? That will not be said, especially since the dispersion of mankind and their division into separate nations. Is the territory indefinite or undefined? Then indefinite or undefined are its inhabitants, or the people invested with the rights of society. Is it defined and its boundaries fixed? Who has done it? The people. But who are the people? We are as wise as we were at starting. The logicians say that the definition ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... seeks his home With a step assured I come; Still behind the tread I hear Of my life-companion, Fear; Still a shadow deep and vast From my westering feet is cast, Wavering, doubtful, undefined, Never shapen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the full black beard and moustache showed me that he was a Spaniard. There were no other corpses to be seen; and as I looked at the object in the broad daylight, with the fresh breeze blowing in my face, the undefined horror I had before felt completely vanished. I felt ashamed of my previous fears, and releasing myself from his support, assured him that I had recovered my strength. The effort itself assisted to restore my nerves to ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... growing clearer. Then a tree seemed to start up on the scene, and a clump of bushes nearer the fire. Soon after he could make out a great patch of feathery green, and this had hardly grown clear enough for him to be certain what it was, when something misty and undefined appeared to be moving along the bank close to the tree to which the boat was tethered. The next moment it melted away into ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Old Crow that day, but, in the early evening, when they were before the fire, Raven brought down the book, always in the drawer of the little table by his bed. It was, in an undefined way, kindliness and company, always reminding him that, whatever his undesirable status now, he had been "the boy," and this was his own personal message ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... far more. The idea of this coming separation, the knowledge that he was running a risk, had left her singularly depressed. She had tried to remain calm and control her emotion, but the effort was beyond her. The prospect of this separation, with its vague, undefined forebodings of disaster, was simply intolerable. The tears she was unable to restrain rolled ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... wills, man hopes; in common souls 65 Hope is but vague and undefined, Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls A blessing to ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and she spoke no word of her double sorrow and her irreparable loss. Her love for her remaining child never showed itself in caresses, and was not even discernible in her speech; but in spite of her reserve there was an undefined feeling in most people's minds that Mrs. Ogilvie idolized her son. Of the two who were dead no one ever heard her speak. Whatever she thought of them seemed to be buried in her heart as deeply as though that heart had been ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... had an undefined feeling that Annie was in danger, and I wrote to Lucy about her, asking Lucy to induce her to break away from the gay life she was leading. Soon afterward, I went to sea again, and, during my absence, Henry was given command of one of the finest ships in the line. Two years passed quickly away, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... come so near lovemaking, and his honest face was all one burning glow with the suppressed feeling, while Dennet lingered till the curfew warned them of the lateness of the hour, both with a strange sense of undefined pleasure in the being together in ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of two kinds: one kind which has its length defined, and two kinds which are undefined; and the defined shadow is pyramidal. Of the two undefined, one is a column and the other spreads out; and all three have rectilinear outlines. But the converging, that is the pyramidal, shadow proceeds from a body that is smaller ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... was her speech, and undefined its meaning, it produced within me a presentiment sufficiently real: that the removal was not a mere flit to some temporary shelter under a neighbour's roof, but a departure for a distant point. Scarcely a presentiment, but a belief—a conviction. Around me ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and the remoter South Brooklyn, and, in later days, also from Prospect Park Slope. But at the houses of the officers of the bank she had caught somewhat bewildering vistas of those involved and undefined circles of people that make up in one way and another metropolitan society on the New York side of East River. Three years before Hilbrough entered the bank his family had removed into a new house in South Oxford street, and lately ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... we invariably find three principles: 1, rhythm; 2, the howl or descending scale of undefined intervals; and 3, the emotional raising of the voice. The rhythm, which characterizes the most primitive form of song or chant, consists of the incessant repetition of a very small group of rhythmic sounds. This incessant recurrence of one idea is characteristic of primitive, weak, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... a grazing steer to a moving vehicle; from a prowling coyote to a log hut. The music of the waking night-world droned on the scented air, emphasizing the calm, the delicious peace. It was like some fairy kingdom swept by strains of undefined music which haunted the ear without monotony, and peopled with shadows which the imagination could mould at ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... easy for a false hypothesis to maintain some appearance of truth, while it keeps wholly in generals, makes use of undefined terms, and employs comparisons, instead of instances. This is particularly remarkable in that philosophy, which ascribes the discernment of all moral distinctions to reason alone, without the concurrence of sentiment. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... That undefined line between the large retailer and the small jobber is a delicate one on which to tread. It is rarely that a retailer will buy of his home jobbers. Every jobber will sell more or less at retail; will tread on the toes of his retail ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... of that undefined discomfort experienced by generous young spirits when their elders, more worldly-wise (or foolish), fail even to comprehend the purity or loftiness of motive which they themselves thoroughly believe. Yet, though she had infinitely more faith in Humfrey's affection than she had in that ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worthless or worse. We will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the black man we say, this cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when and where and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing to both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... incapable, I should say, of making any impression whatever even under the most favorable circumstances. They were probably women of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggy land they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, but merely a languid expectation of something undefined. My comrade was disposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel but throughout the Provinces generally,—a resentment that could be shown to be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty in these lands, and it was probably a bad year for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... It is not with reference to the struggle for Western expansion that I call the South the conservative and constitutional party. There, as it seems to me, the question was entirely an open one, the power of Congress over territories being undefined in the Constitution; and no doubt the South, in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagant positions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever its protestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in the old slave States, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... calm and confident repose in himself. But he, in whom talents, genius, and principle are united, will have a firm mind, in whatever embarrassment he may be placed; will look steadily at the most undefined shapes of difficulty and danger, of possible mistake or mischance; nor will they appear to him more formidable than they really are. For HIS attention is not distracted—he has but one business, and that is with the object before him. Neither in general conduct ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use. Thus, while here keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists have alternately done—too literally losing or shirking essentials of Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... the immutable law which bids them wait their time, their great deep is but troubled, and while, from their swaying and surging, a delicious emotion spreads over the soul, filling the whole being with indescribable joy, it is an emotion which we cannot fathom, vague and undefined, at which we wonder even while we enjoy. To each and all of us the doors of heaven are closed for the present; we never have heard the songs of the celestial spheres, and how should we recognize their echo here on earth, even though that echo is swelling through ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... despite his knowledge of the thorny paths along which Cuckoo walked habitually, along which all her poor sisterhood walked incessantly, had not entirely disabused himself of the fallacy that a life such as hers was, in some vague, undefined and indefinable way, a life of pleasure. Even when we know a thing to be, we often cannot feel it to be. Knowledge in the mind does not inevitably bring to the birth sensation in the heart, or even the mental apprehension, half reasonable and half emotional, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... correctly; so that the most ready and the most trustworthy gauge of probability that he has is an immediate appeal to consciousness as to whether he feels the probability. Thus every man learns for himself to endow his own sense of probability with a certain undefined but massive weight of authority. Now it is this test of relative conceivability which all men apply in varying degrees to the question of Theism. For if, from education and organised habits of thought, the probability in this matter appears ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... increasing passion for the sea and distant expeditions. Objects with which we are acquainted only by the animated narratives of travellers have a peculiar charm; imagination wanders with delight over that which is vague and undefined; and the pleasures we are deprived of seem to possess a fascinating power, compared with which all we daily feel in the narrow circle of sedentary life appears insipid. The taste for herborisation, the study of geology, rapid excursions ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and welcome in her eyes, and it gave him a peculiar thrill, a thrill at first of absolute and unthinking joy, followed at once by a little catch. Before him rose the square and massive vision of "King" Plummer, and he had an undefined sense ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Indian serfs has blotted out every feeling of nationality. A few vagabonds among them still claim royal descent, and, by virtue of their blood or their imposture, pretend to exercise, in obscure villages, an undefined jurisdiction over Indians as oppressed as themselves. But the characteristics of the North American Indians are still visible; they still exhibit the contradictory traits of Indian character—cruelty and kindness, shyness and self-possession; enduring the greatest trials without a murmur, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... gone out. There was no flame, and the room was lighted only by the glow of the burning embers. Mary Erskine was frightened to find herself alone. The tranquillity and happiness which she had experienced a few hours ago were all gone, and her mind was filled, instead, with an undefined and mysterious distress and terror. She went to the fire-place and built a new fire, for the sake of its company. She took the baby from the cradle and sat down in the rocking-chair, determining not to go to bed again ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... Sir Giles, and that probably no allusion was intended. But my first apprehension made way only for another pang, for, although I did not know the man, a strange dismay shot through me at sight of him. His countenance was associated with an undefined but painful fact that lay crouching in a dusky hollow of my memory. I had no time now to entice it into the light of recollection. I took ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... to increase their fleets and to perfect their armaments at immense cost, the European powers are striving at aims undefined and unattainable. But the financial and social difficulties which yearly increase may result in such dangers that governments must be compelled after immense sacrifices to do what it would be wiser to do to-day—namely, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... chill green slope that dips and heaves The road runs rough and silent, lined With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray, And poplars pallid as the day, In masses spectral, undefined, Pale greenish stems half ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... comfort up to now, but we both have an undefined idea that one of his periods of "rest" is approaching. He works with feverish haste, alternating with times of sitting and looking at the ground, that I fear bodes no good. He also seems to take a diabolic pleasure in tormenting Amos ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... amongst men. It encourages to the practice of virtue; it supports the unfortunate under the stroke of affliction; and consoles the believer in the hour of adversity. But what encouragement, what support, what consolation can be imparted to the mind from these undefined and undefinable shadows? No one, indeed, will deny that hope is sufficiently useful to the priests, who never fail to call in its assistance for the vindication of Providence, whenever any of the elect have occasion to complain of the unmerited hardship or the transient injustice of his dispensations. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... known and occupied by this band of villains? With such and a hundred similar suggestions her mind was occupied, and she began to feel unpleasant. Perhaps she was venturing into the presence of those who would have even less regard for her than Duffel. An undefined terror for a moment seized upon her, and she was about to yield to the dictates of fear, and return to her room, when a kind of murmuring sound, as if of voices in the distance, met her ear. Listening a moment she ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... read the letter, leaving out the mention of Harz, and for some undefined reason the part ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... breaking down. The State governments, although badly hampered wherever British raids took place, were operating regularly and steadily, but the only common government continued to be the voluntary Continental Congress, whose powers were entirely undefined, and rested, in fact, on sufferance. In 1776 a committee, headed by John Dickinson, drafted Articles of Confederation which, if adopted promptly, would have provided a regular form of government; but, although these ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... Chilo's words with pleasure. Though his feeling for Lygia assumed at times the seeming of hatred, he felt a relief when he heard that the religion which she and Pomponia confessed was neither criminal nor repulsive. But a species of undefined feeling rose in him that it was just that reverence for Christ, unknown and mysterious, which created the difference between himself and Lygia; hence he began at once to fear that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... felt himself to be provoked. When next he went to Bolton Street he found that Lady Ongar had left London. She had gone down to Ongar Park, and, as far as the woman at the house knew, intended to remain there till after Easter. Harry had some undefined idea that she should not have taken such a step without telling him. Had she not declared to him that he was her only friend? When a friend is going out of town, leaving an only friend behind, that friend ought to tell her only friend what she is going to do, otherwise such a declaration ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the mores. The element of sentiment and faith inheres in the mores. Laws and institutions have a rational and practical character, and are more mechanical and utilitarian. The great difference is that institutions and laws have a positive character, while mores are unformulated and undefined. There is a philosophy implicit in the folkways; when it is made explicit it becomes technical philosophy. Objectively regarded, the mores are the customs which actually conduce to welfare under existing life conditions. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of merely conventional women lacked the prowess to anchor only one man in all the years of their life, whereas, judging by the Adair incident, Maisie had not yet completed her list of husbands. There was an undefined danger in coming into contact with such a woman, which lent this expedition to Chelsea ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... had heard of "the King" of course, but what it was I had never thought of. To me it represented strength and omnipotent protection, but it was an abstraction only; an undefined something of awful portent; and that it could die was very mysterious, and set me wondering ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... that she should be counting on Sorell's neighbourhood. If she had often petulantly felt at Oxford that he was too good, too high above her to be of much use to her, she might perhaps have felt it doubly now. For although in some undefined way, ever since the night of the Vice-Chancellor's party, she had realised in him a deep interest in her, even a sense of responsibility for her happiness, which made him more truly her guardian than poor harassed ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perpetually entangled in that endless labyrinth. Besides, there is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard them round about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words. Which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than the fortresses of fair warriors; which, if it be hard to get them out of, it is not for the strength that is in them, but the briars and thorns, and the ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... and results, not from the mere love of change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the Forest that the woodland child, as they still called her, was again about to leave them for some undefined time, ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... with a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the world in possession of certain characteristic and relatively fixed behavior patterns which we call instincts. This is his racial inheritance which he shares with all members of the species. He comes into the world, also, endowed with certain undefined capacities for learning other forms of behavior, capacities which vary greatly in different individuals. These individual differences and the instincts are ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Wensley Dale; but at Wensley there is a unity, a softness, a melting together, which in the large vales of Scotland I never perceived. The difference at Strath Erne may come partly from the irregularity, the undefined outline, of the hills which enclose it; but it is caused still more by the broken surface, I mean broken as to colour and produce, the want of hedgerows, and also the great number of new fir plantations. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... board the raft, he had no binnacle, and no lamps by which to illuminate the compass card. It is true the island was still in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so indistinct indeed that only the practised eye of a seamen could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore useless as an object to steer by, even to so keen-eyed an old ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... answers from their own independent knowledge. These serve as leaders; the others, sheep-like, follow. Still, by frequent repetition, even in this blind way, something gradually sticks to the memory, although the impression is always apt to be vague and undefined. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... external form we usually confide in the representations of others, and picture to ourselves, so far as our existing perceptions enable us, the combinations they affirm,—provided always these have a certain undefined conformity with our own experience. But in respect to association, not of mere notions, but of spiritual elements in the soul,—of truths evolved by the spiritual nature of man,—the case is quite different Thus, if the fool who once said in his heart, "There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... murder and it flashed across her mind that if any one really knew of her presence there it was Gilmore himself. She studied him furtively, and she observed that his black waxed mustache shaded a pair of lips that wore a mirthless smile, and what had at first been no more than an undefined suspicion grew into a certainty. Gilmore shifted uneasily in his chair. He felt that since their last meeting he had ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... trotted away to dream-land, Debby stole up to her room to look over the dress she was to wear in the evening; as the ruffles in neck and wrists were fresh, she found there was nothing for her to do but brush it and lay it out on the bed. Still she lingered with an undefined feeling that it was Christmas-day everywhere else, and if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... many times at the portrait which was in the panel that at length he felt an undefined sensation of terror creep over him whenever he took ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... bold, apparently unpremeditated reply relieved Zashue of an undefined feeling of suspicion that had arisen within him. During his moment of thoughtfulness he had been led from the accusations of Hayoue against Tyope unconsciously to the accusation which Tyope had launched before against Shotaye and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... very small, when her father was dangerously sick, and the coming of the doctor had wakened her. She had always somehow associated the hour with mysterious flickering lights, and anxious whispers and softened steps, and a dread as terrible as it was undefined. Now, out here in this desolate place, where the birds were asleep in their nests, and the winds quiet among the mountain-tops, and the very frogs tired of their chanting,—herself the only waking thing,—these two far, deep-toned syllables seemed like a human voice. Like the voice, Gypsy fancied, ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... memory of a dream; and I have never seen the place since. The day was extremely beautiful, clear sunlight, with bracing air, and an unusual feeling of exhilaration seemed to pervade all minds—a feeling of something to come, vague and undefined, still full of venture and intense interest. Even the common soldiers caught the inspiration, and many a group called out to me as I worked my way past them, "Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!" Indeed, the general sentiment ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... glances of admiration which the young chief cast at her, and was compelled more than once to turn round and speak to Nigel, who remained close to her. He himself observed the looks of the young chief, which created an undefined feeling in his breast, though his pride forbade him in any way ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... sofa, staring into space. He was no longer thinking of the women, nor of the men, nor of missionary work. His whole attention was turned upon the spiritual agony which was torturing him. It was a dull, vague, undefined anguish akin to misery, to an extreme form of terror and to despair. He could point to the place where the pain was, in his breast under his heart; but he could not compare it with anything. In the past he had had ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... eludes all tests. We get no explanation of what the strange insight is which we find in the man of Genius, or of the faculty that gives the capacity for absorption and that excites it in us. The genesis of this wonderful faculty remains unknown to us, undefined. Unconsciousness is a necessary ingredient in it, according to Schopenhauer, and this helps us to realise the difficulty of expressing it. What thinker will reduce the quality to intellectual symbols? Until that is done, however, Philosophy ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... "Knickerbocker legend," a fantastic creation, which in a manner took the place of history, and stamped upon the commercial metropolis of the New World the indelible Knickerbocker name and character; and even now in the city it is an undefined patent of nobility to trace descent ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... sight, and I got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... invariably presented itself between my eyes and the object of my scrutiny; whichever way I looked, it stood in my way, and I could not remove it. It was like a cloud, yet transparent, and with a certain undefined shape. I tried for some time, but in vain, to decipher it, but could not. At last it appeared to cohere into a form—it was the Dominie's great nose, magnified into that of the Scripture, "As the tower which looketh towards Damascus." My temples throbbed ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to me," said Mr. Belamour, in a voice that added to her undefined alarm by what seemed to her imperious displeasure as uncalled for as it was unusual; but the usual fatherly gentleness immediately prevailed, "My child, I should never have entertained the thought for a moment but for—but for Lady Belamour. This sounds like ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended by the relater but to mystify and surprise, the hearer so little understood him as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed to him, to waken the dead. Starting up he demanded ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... and it was quite her way to say what she thought; yet she did not say it. She had an undefined, shadowy impression that the hearing would not be grateful to her companion. Her reply was a very inconclusive remark, that she had not seen much of Mr. Masters; and an inquiry where Mr. Knowlton ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... to be added to the cloud or to the sky or to the earth, but it springs from the cloud and the sky and the earth, and is slowly elaborated into an independent concept. As many words in ancient languages have an undefined meaning, and lend themselves to various purposes according to the various intentions of the speakers, the names of the gods also share in this elastic and plastic character of ancient speech. There are passages where Parganya means cloud, there are ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... with those necessary safety exits which were now so badly needed. As no artificially prepared defenses were at hand, natural ones had to be found. The first defense was irretrievably lost; the second line was a vague, undefined terrain extending across the hills between Biala in the west and the River Wisloka in the east. Between Tuchow and Olpiny, the Mountain Dobrotyn formed one of the chief defensive positions, being 1,800 feet high and thickly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... which seemed to rouse her attention, and lifted her drooping lids. She looked at it a moment before she would touch it. Then she took hold of it by one corner and slid it off from the rest. One would have said she was afraid of it, or had some undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of their fingers in water, after ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thought, maybe, you could help me get started—or something." She gazed at him with open-eyed trust, as if she expected him with a word to solve her undefined problem. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... exultant, radiant child at the close. Something about her putting away some of the childish things, and taking up the gentler and nobler ways of first young girlhood now. She thought in an almost undefined way of mother's words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... fluttered between illusion and reality, and every breast panted with undefined terror, quailing before the awful power that watches secret crimes and winds unseen the skein of destiny. At that moment a cry burst forth from one of the uppermost benches "Look! Look! Comrade, yonder are the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... meantime the astute ecclesiastics quietly took possession of rich arable lands in many places, the most valuable being within easy reach of the Capital and the Arsenal of Cavite. Landed property was undefined. It all nominally belonged to the State, which, however, granted no titles; "squatters" took up land where they chose without determined limits, and the embroilment continues, in a measure, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the essential and dearest privileges of social and domestic life, with the denial of the rights of conscience too. For slavery, as distinguished from service by contract, is this thing and no other:—it is labor undefined, unrewarded, on the condition of being used as vendible property, and every independent right of the slave, as an intellectual and moral being, is ignored. By practical indulgence such rights may be sometimes conceded. But the slave-law ceases as ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... no matter how undefined, may lead up to splendid creations, when it starts from a fixed point. Then the imagination, like a soaring hippogriff, stamps the earth with all its might and journeys straightway towards infinite regions. But when it applies itself to a subject devoid of plastic art ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... were the characters, that it was not easy to resolve them into letters, or to believe that they were anything but arbitrary and dismal blots and scrawls upon the yellow paper; without meaning, vague, like the misty and undefined germs of thought as they exist in our minds before clothing themselves in words. These, however, as he concentrated his mind upon them, took distincter shape, like cloudy stars at the power of the telescope, and became sometimes ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that are States. We cannot, therefore, be satisfied with what we may call this "peddling" view of Providence, to which the belief alluded to limits itself. Equally unsatisfactory is the merely abstract, undefined belief in a Providence, when that belief is not brought to bear upon the details of the process which it conducts. On the contrary our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition of the ways of Providence, the means ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Our plans are perfectly undefined, but we do hope to escape England.... Robert talks of Egypt for the winter. I don't know what may happen; and in the meantime would rather not be pulled and pulled by kind people in England, who want ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... daily expected in Dublin, belonged to County Mayo. He represented himself as a member of an ancient but impoverished family, boasted of his military experience, and professed to be profoundly skilled in all matters relating to horses. Miss Goold's inquiries elicited the fact that he held an undefined position under his brother, a respectable manufacturer of woollen goods. His military experience had been gathered during the few months he held a commission in the militia battalion of the Connaught ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... with eyes into which a new interest had come. In a moment she turned and halted so suddenly that the man found her face close to his as she spoke. "I don't know what's the matter with me tonight. I feel faint and giddy—and full of undefined longings. I sha'n't sleep—unless—" she looked questioningly up at him—"unless you will play for ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... elevated, while the left hip is depressed and projects upward. If not corrected while in its earlier stages, it progresses very rapidly, and a second curvature is developed. The symptoms vary in different cases, and in the early stages are somewhat obscure and undefined, but generally the patient feels a sense of uneasiness, languor, stupor, and nervousness, loss of energy and ambition, general debility, poor appetite, gradually declining health, loss of strength and flesh, and, as ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... he was released. These excursions led us often to the Devil's Den, an excavation in an abandoned ledge of limestone, in a solitary situation at some distance from the town, and guarded, now as then, by three rather spectral-looking Lombardy poplars, which to us boys had a sort of mystic and undefined significance. Here we procured bits of serpentine, interspersed with veins of rag-stone, as we denominated asbestos, which, strangely enough, we used to chew. I suppose that no boy ever went to that place alone, and a sort of solemn ceremony attended his first visit with his older playmates, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... stand before us and demand a solution, and we are assailed by oracles, threats, and warnings in reference to those problems. There is a school of writers who are playing quite a role as the heralds of the coming duty and the coming woe. They assume to speak for a large, but vague and undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a fulfillment, and threaten punishment for default. The task or problem is not specifically defined. Part of the task which devolves on those who are subject to the duty is to define ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... watchfulness, and of its prudence. With Spain, there was also a contest respecting boundaries. The treaty of peace had extended the limits of the United States to the thirty-first degree of north latitude, but the pretensions of the Catholic King were carried north of that line, to an undefined extent. He claimed as far as he had conquered from Britain, but the precise limits of his conquest were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... should have ended with a warning. He has done more than any other writer to perpetuate in England the memories of the great thinkers and actors—Fichte, Richter, Arndt, Koerner, Stein, Goethe,—who taught their countrymen how to endure defeat and retrieve adversity. Who will celebrate their yet undefined successors, who will train Germany gracefully to bear the burden of prosperity? Two years later Carlyle wrote or rather dictated, for his hand was beginning to shake, his historical sketch of the Early Kings of Norway, showing no diminution of power either of thought or expression, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... world in possession of certain characteristic and relatively fixed behavior patterns which we call instincts. This is his racial inheritance which he shares with all members of the species. He comes into the world, also, endowed with certain undefined capacities for learning other forms of behavior, capacities which vary greatly in different individuals. These individual differences and the instincts are what ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in silence. At some distance from where he was, Mrs. Goddard was talking to Mrs. Ambrose. He could see her graceful figure, but he could hardly distinguish her features in the gloom of the dimly-lighted church. He longed to leave Nellie and to go and speak to her, but an undefined feeling of hurt pride prevented him. He would not forgive her for having taken the vicar's arm in coming home through the park; so he stayed where he was, pricking his fingers with the holly and rather impatiently pulling the string ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... kitchen, and she hastened off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way, returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the parlor ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... their way. Whatever changes the future might bring, he would have one more long day in rambling about his fields and in thinking over the past. Feeling that there need be no haste about anything, he leisurely inhaled the air, fragrant from springing grass, and listened with a vague, undefined pleasure to the ecstatic music of the bluebirds, song-sparrows, and robins. If anyone had asked him why he liked to hear them, he would have replied, "I'm used to 'em. When they come, I know that plowing and ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... also be considered that the exact time, and even the exact personality,[36] of Sardanapalus in all his relations are not known. All are vast phantoms in the Assyrian empire; I do not say fictions, but undefined, unmeasured, immeasurable realities; far gone down into the mighty gulf of shadows, and for us irrecoverable. All that is known about the Assyrian empire is its termination under Sardanapalus. It was then coming within ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the name passed his lips than the stranger drew back suddenly, with a hasty exclamation. Some suspicion seemed to engender a mixture of terror and defiance which placed him on his guard against undue intimacy, even when some undefined fear was knocking at his heart. "Who are you?" he demanded in a steadier tone. "How do you ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... which bids them wait their time, their great deep is but troubled, and while, from their swaying and surging, a delicious emotion spreads over the soul, filling the whole being with indescribable joy, it is an emotion which we cannot fathom, vague and undefined, at which we wonder even while we enjoy. To each and all of us the doors of heaven are closed for the present; we never have heard the songs of the celestial spheres, and how should we recognize their echo here on earth, even though that echo is swelling through our own hearts? And the sadness and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the figure rested in the chair, there was less outward token of suffering than he had often seen about her,—more appearance almost of youth and beauty. But it was not an earthly beauty; there was something about it which filled him with a kind of indescribable undefined awe, together with dread of a sorrow towards which he shrank from looking. She thought him fatigued with the exertion he had made, and allowed him to rest, while she contemplated with pleasure even the slight advances ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Professorship of Technology, and to the Curatorship of the Industrial Museum. The expenditure of thought, of ingenuity, of research, and management—the expenditure, in a word, of himself—involved in originating and giving form of purpose to a scheme so new and so undefined, and, in our view, so undefinable, must, we fear, have shortened his life, and withdrawn his precious and quite singular powers of illustrating and adorning, and, in the highest sense, sanctifying ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty. It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dim confession of undefined horror. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... shortened walks, and dissuade from climbing hills. I think how the children will have outgrown daisy-chains, or even got beyond the season of climbing trees. The middle-aged man enjoys the prospect of the time when he shall go to his country house; and the vague, undefined belief surrounds him, like an atmosphere, that he and his children, his views and likings, will be then just such as they are now. He cannot bring it home to him at how many points change will be cutting into him, and hedging him in, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... morning stretched interminably before her. A dozen times it was on her lips to order the trunks brought down from the garret. A dozen times some undefined sense of fitness held her back. When his answer came, when he actually said the word—then; but not till then.... What time was it? After eleven! She would go into the garden, where she could look down the road and have the first glimpse of Eddy Minns climbing ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Should your suitor be one who is worthy, who will make you happy, this same blessed instinct will whisper in your soul the happy news. From the first interview there is frequently thrown around the maiden a peculiar, undefined spell; she will feel differently in his presence, and watch him with other eyes than she has for the rest of men, and in due time, when he shall ask her to decide upon the question which shall seal the temporal and eternal destiny of two human souls, she will gladly respond, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... responsiveness, yet with undefined misgivings. He had an arm about her firmly in an instant, and when they had caught step with the music he held her close to him. He was an excellent dancer. Sylvia was instantly transported away from the world of petty discretions ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... wood-work with the handle of her sunshade. This summons eliciting no response, she repeated it; but by-and-by the opening of a door within the house let out upon her the sound of Sennacherib's voice, hitherto audible only as an undefined ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... from that quarter must be malarious, if anything. The windows are thrown open as far as they were made to be thrown, and I get as far out of one of them as I safely can, by tilting my chair back, and extending my legs out into that undefined everywhere called the wide, wide world. The only newspaper within reach of my hand is one I have already looked over, but I glance at it again, reading backwards from the end an account of a terrible poisoning case lately brought to light ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the human being is the climax of animal evolution and the starting-point of psychical development. The lower animal, he maintained, as all will now agree, is hindered by his definite instincts, but the instincts or instinctive tendencies of the human being are so undefined that there is room for spontaneity, for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... proposed, or if none, the state of the case acknowledged, and I can bear the contemplation of almost any thing. I think it is not patience, but courage, that your poor mother wants, my child. Uncertainty—any thing that is vague—the evils of which are undefined, seems to swell into such terrific magnitude. I am like a poor frightened child, Catherine; the glimmering twilight is full of monstrous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... it?" asked Panton excitedly, as he too caught sight of the undefined hazy figures of the Papuans ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the Military District of Western Tennessee, with limits undefined, sent General C.F. Smith from Fort Donelson, fifty miles up the river to Clarksville, to take possession of the place and the railway bridge over the river there. General Grant wrote to General Cullum, ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... felt an undefined presentiment of coming evil—had seen it in Ella's failing health—in the increased tenderness of Mr. Hastings's manner, whenever he bent over the pillow of his young wife, or bore her in his arms, as he sometimes did, to the window, that she might look out upon, the garden, and the winding ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... voice had grown softer than a child's. The same look of unutterable tenderness brooded on the mournful face of the phantom by his side; but its thin, shining hand was laid upon his head, and its countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man, beautiful and wan, and marked ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... is; an' what more would, you have from me barrin' I take my book oath of it?" Thus does he, under the mask of an insinuation, induce you to believe that he has actually sworn it, whereas the oath is always left undefined and incomplete. ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... reflected that, because of this young girl with the mocking laugh, he was losing the climacteric expression of the three- weeks' campaign, his displeasure grew. Within him was an undefined thought vibration akin to surprise, caused by the serenity of the hushed sky. Was it not incongruous that the heavens should be so peaceful with their quiet star-beacons, while man was exerting himself to the utmost of gesture and noise to glorify the Maker ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... praying in the sight of men, started again to her feet, and, wrapping her closed hand tight in the scanty border of her cloak, hurried, with the pound-note she had rescued, to the friend whose need was sorer than her own—not without an undefined anxiety in her heart whether she was doing right. How much good the note did, or whether it merely fell into the bottomless gulf of irremediable loss, I cannot tell. Annie's friend and her shiftless mate at once changed their dirty piece of paper for silver, bought food and ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... arranged the horses' trappings. Taras assumed a stately air, pulled his belt tighter, and proudly stroked his moustache. His sons also inspected themselves from head to foot, with some apprehension and an undefined feeling of satisfaction; and all set out together for the suburb, which was half a verst from the Setch. On their arrival, they were deafened by the clang of fifty blacksmiths' hammers beating upon twenty-five anvils sunk in the earth. Stout tanners seated beneath awnings were scraping ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... dear boy, I can similies find For a heap of similitudes so undefined. And why should I censure tastes not my concern? 'Tis as well for the arts that ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... recognized the Durward of the cars—grown handsomer and taller since then, she thought. With a nimble bound he leaped from his saddle, kissing his hand to Carrie, who with her sunniest smile ran past him to welcome Nellie. A pang, not of jealousy, but of an undefined something, shot through 'Lena's heart, and dropping the heavy curtain, she turned away, while the tears gathered thickly in her large ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the North as to present sketches of the world through which Erasmus passed, and to view it as it appeared to him and to some of his contemporaries, famous or obscure. And firstly of the generation that preceded him in the wide but undefined region ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Committee express their unanimous opinion that the one important physical fact thus proved to exist, that motion may be produced in solid bodies without material contact, by some hitherto unrecognised force operating within an undefined distance from the human organism, and beyond the range of muscular action, should be subjected to further scientific examination, with a view to ascertaining its true source, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... seriously threaten the Eastern dominions; and no advantage was promised by following on the steps of Alexander and annexing countries too poor to bear the cost of their maintenance. To the west it was different. Beyond the Alps there was still a territory of unknown extent, stretching away to the undefined ocean, a territory peopled with warlike races, some of whom in ages long past had swept over Italy and taken Rome, and had left their descendants and their name in the northern province, which was now called Cisalpine Gaul. With these races the Romans had as yet no ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... upon matter, he cannot be injured by its effect; for a spirit can only be injured by that which deprives it of its freedom. Whereas he proves his own freedom by giving a form to the formless; where the mass rules heavily and without shape, and its undefined outlines are for ever fluctuating between uncertain boundaries, fear takes up its abode; but man rises above any natural terror as soon as he knows how to mould it, and transform it into an object of his art. As soon as he upholds his independence toward phaenomenal nature, he maintains his dignity ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... rate, that the old Duke of Morecambe, the head of Lady Eleanor Cliffe's family, the great Tory evangelical of the north, who was a sort of patriarch in English political and aristocratic life, had been induced by some undefined pressure to speak very plainly to his kinsman on the subject of Lady Kitty Ashe. Cliffe had expectations from the duke which were not to be trifled with. He had, accordingly, swallowed the lecture, and, after the loss of his election, had again left England with an important newspaper commission ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of an undefined curiosity drove me on through this succession of darksome chambers, till, like the jeweller of Delhi in the house of the magician Bennaskar, I at length reached a vaulted room, dedicated to secrecy and silence, and beheld, seated by a lamp, and employed ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... he could properly understand it and then, without a word of comment—for he could not have spoken at that moment to save his life—he passed it to Nora, who felt, as she read it in her turn, as if a great burden had been lifted from her heart. All the undefined terror of the future faded away as she thought of all this small ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... generally carried to the Pope, who, as the Head of Christendom, was regarded as having supremacy over all Religious Orders. But the Pope himself often encroached upon the rights of the Order, not only by sending nuncios to Malta with large and undefined powers, but by arrogating to himself the patronage of the langue of Italy when he wished to bestow gifts upon his relatives and friends. This led to bitter resentment among the Italian Knights, who saw all the lucrative ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... scholars attempted a translation of the Bible [2] into English (see Figure 93), that the people might read it, and he and his followers (called Lollards) went about the country teaching what they believed to be the true Christianity. What had before in England been a widespread but undefined feeling of disaffection for the rich and careless clergy and monks, the work of Wycliffe organized into ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the nature of light which is further than ever from the truth. For what then remains of light is - in Eddington's words - a 'quite irregular disturbance, with no tendency to periodicity', which means that to light is assigned the quality of an undefined chaos (in the negative sense of this word) ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... powers delegated to the United States were not reserved to the States or to the people. What is the meaning of the clause 'or to the people,' as contradistinguished from 'the States'? Does it mean that any of this mass of undefined powers, but embracing all not granted to the General Government, was reserved to the people of the United States in the aggregate? Then there would exist, and does now exist, a consolidated despotism. No, it was to the people of each State the reservation was made. Then it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... professors and pupils, scholars grown old in meditation and young folks eager for truth, liberty, action, and renown, who welcomed passionately those boundless and undefined hopes, those yearnings towards a brilliant and at the same time a vague future, at which they looked forward, according to the expression used by Lefevre of Etaples to Farel, to a "renewal of the world." Men holding a social position very different from that of the philosophers, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... troubled consciences of the minority directors, by the suffering women and children, by the keen excitement of the struggle, by the religious scruples sternly suppressed but occasionally asserting themselves, now on one side and now on the other, and by that undefined psychology of the crowd which we understand so little. All of these factors also influence the public and do much to determine popular sympathy and judgment. In the early days of the Pullman strike, as I was coming down in the elevator of the Auditorium ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... no, and felt my heart grow cold with new and undefined fears as he turned his face toward the front of the building, and cried, in a suppressed tone, full of ire ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... efflorescences, if one may so term them, which are so generally visible at four cardinal points of its solar prototype. The outer portion of the band faded very rapidly into the darkness of space; but the edge, though absolutely undefined, was perfectly even. But on the generally rainbow-tinted ground suffused with red—which perhaps might best be described by calling it a rainbow seen on a background of brilliant crimson—there were here and there blotches of black or of lighter ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... honour me by the assumption that such a kingly component is mine. I cannot gainsay thy assertion, but who but my King could touch to life the almost undefined limning of moral faculty that has been my ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... "flat, stale, and unprofitable;" the face of nature gloomy; the sky a "congregation of pestilent vapours." It was not the hazard of life; exposed, as it might be, in the midst of scenes of which the horrors were daily deepening; it was a general undefined feeling, of having undertaken a task too difficult for my powers, and of having engaged in a service in which I could neither advance with hope nor retreat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... upon that enchanted ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a strange road, or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only escape with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regions that we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, 'half flying, half on foot.' The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... test better than the other, and this, too, in face of the fact that it has cost much less labor to produce. Remember we are only now considering the question of visibility in the design. You may like the undefined and suggestive masses into which the leaves and shadows of the Southwell one group themselves better than the unbending severity of the lines in the other, but that is not the point at present. You can not see the actual work which produces that mystery, and I may point out to you, that what ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... Darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very undefined outline. I cannot say it was of a human form, and yet it had more resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else. As it stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light around it, its dimensions seemed gigantic, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... cleared; I moved no longer in a deaf, blind stupor. A flash of lightning danced vividly before my eyes, followed by a crashing peal of thunder, I saw to what end of a wild journey I had come! Those heavy gates—that undefined stretch of land—those ghostly glimmers of motionless white like spectral mile-stones emerging from the gloom—I knew it all too well—it was the cemetery! I looked through the iron palisades with the feverish interest of one who watches the stage curtain rise on the last scene of a tragedy. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... alias Points, Bishop of Winchester, the founder of the college to which the tithes were granted; it was, however, afterwards confirmed by William de Edyngton, by whom the vicar's rights, which before were probably undefined, and perhaps the subject of contention, were ascertained and secured to him by endowment. This instrument is still in being, bearing the date of 1362. It may be seen in Bishop Edyngton's Register, part I, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... tame, those hours. The widow still felt an undefined fear that she was wrong, and though her heart yearned to know that her daughter was happy in the sweet happiness of accepted love, yet she dreaded to be too confident. Not a word had been said about money matters; not a word of Aaron Dunn's relatives. So she did not leave them by ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... ground more than an hour or so before I felt sleep stealing over me. At length I tried to arouse myself. I was completely overpowered, though I still retained a consciousness of where I was, and of the necessity of being on my guard. Suddenly I awoke, feeling an undefined dread. I could hear Natty breathing, but all was dark inside the hut. On looking out I discovered that I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire was entirely extinguished. I sprang up, leaving my gun on the ground. My first impulse ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... keeping to simple words in everyday use, we may employ and combine them to analyse out our Town into its elements and their inter-relations with all due exactitude, instead of either leaving our common terms undefined, or arbitrarily defining them anew, as economists have alternately done—too literally losing or shirking essentials of Work in the above formula, and with these missing essentials of Folk ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... little snowy hand with almost senile delight, and holds it for—as long as he dares. During this undefined period he tells himself what a perfect picture she is, with her clear, pale, beautiful face, and her nut-brown hair, and the tender sweetness of her attitude, as she bends over the smiling baby. Could any vaunted Madonna ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... In task more meet for mightiest powers, Wouldst thou engage my thriftless hours. But say, my Erskine, hast thou weighed That secret power by all obeyed, Which warps not less the passive mind, Its source concealed, or undefined: Whether an impulse, that has birth Soon as the infant wakes on earth, One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us than ours; Or whether fitlier termed the sway Of habit formed in early day? Howe'er derived, its force ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... departments. No caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too exact. It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in the power, of the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark and undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... distinguished from the mores. The element of sentiment and faith inheres in the mores. Laws and institutions have a rational and practical character, and are more mechanical and utilitarian. The great difference is that institutions and laws have a positive character, while mores are unformulated and undefined. There is a philosophy implicit in the folkways; when it is made explicit it becomes technical philosophy. Objectively regarded, the mores are the customs which actually conduce to welfare under existing life conditions. Acts under the laws and institutions ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... south-east Inverness-shire, Scotland, bounded on the N. by the Monadhliath mountains, on the E. by the Cairngorms and Braemar, on the S. by Atholl and the Grampians, and on the W. by Lochaber. Its area is somewhat undefined, but it may be estimated to measure 36 m. from N.E. to S.W. and 15 m. from N. to S. Excepting the valley of the Spey and the great glens, it is almost entirely a wild mountainous tract, many hills exceeding 3000 ft. in height, and contains in the forests ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... strange perhaps that she should be counting on Sorell's neighbourhood. If she had often petulantly felt at Oxford that he was too good, too high above her to be of much use to her, she might perhaps have felt it doubly now. For although in some undefined way, ever since the night of the Vice-Chancellor's party, she had realised in him a deep interest in her, even a sense of responsibility for her happiness, which made him more truly her guardian than poor harassed Uncle Ewen, she knew very ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from any premature speech. She had heard that he was prone to take a glass too much, but she saw nothing in that. A handsome fellow, a man such as one seldom sees, a little weather-beaten perhaps, but most sailors are the same. Something undefined in his eyes frightened her, as did his greediness at table. Sometimes she was startled at the vehemence of his opinions. If only she had been at home, and could have made inquiries beforehand! But he was to leave very soon, and had said jestingly that the next time ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... life, and given her nothing tangible in their stead. Even Coldwater and Joe, and "them that lay up on the hill," were beginning to be like dreams, cold and far-off. It was just a wild whirling through space, night-storms, strange faces crowding about her from place to place; undefined sights, sounds that terrified her, and a long-drawn sickening hope to find Joe through all. No more warm rooms and comfortable evenings beside the fire with mother, no more suppers made ready for the boys, and jokes and laughing when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... a strange undefined longing to hear that Mr. Bell had gone to pay one of his business visits to Milton; for it had been well understood between them, at the time of their conversation at Helstone, that the explanation she had desired should only be given to Mr. Thornton ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ever be eliminated. Such stories as that of the origin of languages at Babel, and that of the resurrection of ancient saints at Jesus' resurrection are indubitable cases of it. But the legendary element, though permanent, is at present undefined. To define it is the problem of the critical student, a problem most difficult to him whose judgment is least subjective; and he will welcome every contribution that advancing ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or other about his own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of his difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had urged him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only Katharine now who could help him to be sure. He must take his time. There were so many things that he could not say without the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... ghostly stillness, the exhortation to the living to prepare for death, the solemn prayer, the mournful chant, the funeral cortege, the solemn, tolling bell, the burial. How I suffered during those sad days! What strange undefined fears of the unknown took possession of me! For months afterward, at the twilight hour, I went with my father to the new-made grave. Near it stood two tall poplar trees, against one of which I leaned, while my father threw himself on the grave, with outstretched ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... as admirably felt as expressed, and to those acquainted with and accustomed to love the works of the painter, it leaves nothing to be asked for; but we must again remind Lord Lindsay, that he has throughout left the artistical orbit of Giotto undefined, and the offense of his manner unremoved, as far as regards the uninitiated spectator. We question whether from all that he has written, the untraveled reader could form any distinct idea of the painter's peculiar merits or methods, or that the estimate, if formed, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... splendour! that land of poets and roses! that cradle of mankind, that uncontaminated source of Eastern manners lay before me, and I was delighted with the opportunities which would be afforded me of pursuing my favourite subject. I had an undefined feeling about the many countries I was about to visit, which filled my mind ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... to the temper and the natural prejudices of the speakers, by degrees spread an undefined apprehension of evil among all the crew; and fellows who, I believe, would have faced any known danger, and struggled manfully with death to the last, were now full of fear, and ready to be startled at the sound of a gun, or even the flap of a sail. On came the dark mass, as it ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... life had now but one hope. The only star that shone in the blackness of her heaven, was the undefined prospect of seeing her rival's blood flow. She would greatly have preferred taking her life herself; and as she left the wigwam of the chief, she grasped the handle of her knife—how quick her heart beat! it might be now ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... hat; and as he shook his head, throwing completely back the hair that had in some degree overshadowed his face, the old woman started, and an undefined expression of astonishment and doubt burst from her lips. The gentleman either did not, or appeared not to notice the effect he produced; but carefully drew from his bosom a small book or tablet, and read in it for some minutes with much attention, turning over and over the one or two ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... everything—in birth, in beauty, in irony, in brilliancy—almost a queen. She had felt a moment's enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to break horseshoes between his fingers. She regretted that Hercules was dead. She lived in some undefined expectation of a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... more general; and Edouard took a dislike to Colonel Dujardin. A young man of twenty-eight nearly always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it. But Edouard was a little vain as we know; and the Colonel jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. His regimentals jarred him: they fitted like a glove. His mustache and his ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... upon the pavement, in the purlieus of the courts at Westminster, and swear to himself that he would win the game, let the cost to his heart be what it might. What must a man be who would allow some undefined feeling,—some inward ache which he calls a passion and cannot analyse, some desire which has come of instinct and not of judgment,—to interfere with all the projects of his intellect, with all the work which he ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... was the quest of an undefined and undefinable something wherein was supposed to be contained all the powers and potencies of life, and whatever makes life ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... there is more than ever need to be quick to detect and foil the new public enemies that present themselves. The public needs a victim to harrow up its feelings. The injury that is problematic, or general, or that falls in undefined ways upon unknown persons, is resented feebly, or not at all. The fiend who should rack his victim with torments such as typhoid inflicts would be torn to pieces. The villain who should taint his enemy's cup with fever germs would stretch] [Footnote continued from previous page: hemp. But think ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... wise-men, and consequently are farther removed from necessity. Our way of thinking in this particular is, therefore, absolutely inconsistent; but is a natural consequence of these confused ideas and undefined terms, which we so commonly make use of in our reasonings, especially on the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... still quite half a mile away, a peculiar change came over the sea. The sun was still shining brightly, but the other boat grew dim and enlarged-looking, as if it were magnified and set in a bluish opal. There was the long range of ice cliff, but it was curiously blue and undefined. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... superintendence of production, all these proposals, point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest, indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... direction the night that Derrick slipped into that half soliloquy about Joan. She might well be startled. This man and woman could scarcely have been placed at a greater distance from each other, and yet those half dozen words of Fergus Derrick's had suggested to his hearer that each, through some undefined attraction, was veering toward the other. Neither might be aware of this; but it was surely true. Little as social creeds influenced Anice, she could not close her eyes to the incongruous—the unpleasant features of this strange situation. And, besides, there was ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... who hung between life and death. What she had done was done because irresistible impulse, born of knowledge, or at least of memories, drove her on, though mayhap the knowledge was imperfect and the memories were undefined. Who save Ayesha could have known anything of Leo in the past? None who ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding restores things to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful pretensions. Hence the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is much the same; and both have received ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... from finding his way by a thick mist which rose as the night fell; one of those mists which come on autumn evenings when the whiteness of the moonlight renders them more undefined and more treacherous. The great pools of water scattered through the glades gave forth a vapor so dense that when the gray crossed them, their presence was known only by a splashing noise, and the difficulty with which she drew her feet ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... words. All enduring forms establish a modus vivendi with their surroundings. They can do this because both they and the surroundings are plastic within certain undefined but somewhat narrow limits. They are plastic because they can to some extent change their habits, and changed habit, if persisted in, involves corresponding change, however slight, in the organs employed; but their plasticity depends in great measure ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Every eye— excepting perhaps Percival's and the helmsman's—was accordingly directed anxiously to the dark frowning mass which stood out indistinctly from the dark background of land, and which every moment grew more and more vague and undefined, expecting to see the lurid line of fire blaze out from the darkness once more. But minute after minute passed by, the frigate drawing out from the land all the while, and the breeze freshening with every fathom of additional distance, until nothing could be discerned, even with the aid of our ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the reason why not all things are according to law, because there are things about which it is simply impossible to lay down a law, and so we want special enactments for particular cases. For to speak generally, the rule of the undefined must be itself undefined also, just as the rule to measure Lesbian building is made of lead: for this rule shifts according to the form of each stone and the special enactment according to the facts of the case ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
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