"Indefiniteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life of the world we live in. It is herein that he excels! His knowledge is wide, his sympathies are many-sided, his power of exposition is unsurpassed. No one has set before us the mind of our time, with its half-lights, its shadowy vistas, its indefiniteness, its haze on the horizon, so ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... congressional, judicial, and revenue districts, the boundaries of which are fixed by state and national governments. Locally, there are school districts. The boundaries which separate one nation from another are determined by agreement, or treaty, between the nations concerned. Uncertainty or indefiniteness in regard to national boundary lines has been the cause of much international strife, and was an important factor in the European war ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... falls to the lot of numberless men born to keep themselves alive and to propagate their insignificance. But Dyce was not insignificant. As soon as his countenance lighted with animation, it revealed a character rich in various possibility, a vital force which, by its bright indefiniteness, made some appeal to the imagination. Often he had the air of a lyric enthusiast; often, that of a profound thinker; not seldom there came into his eyes a glint of stern energy which seemed a challenge to the world. Therewithal, nothing perceptibly ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... term Mound-Builders will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people who formerly lived throughout the Mississippi Valley and raised the mounds of that region. It should also be clearly understood that by its use the writer ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... intellectual freedom of his country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria.] The Jesuit notion does not err on the score of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... had been taken prisoner at the naval battle of Finisterre; and, pending his release, the Marquis de la Galissoniere presided over the fortunes, or misfortunes, of New France. The indefiniteness of the western boundary between French and English territory was perhaps the chief source of his perplexity; and to put an end to persistent English encroachments in the valley of the Ohio, Galissoniere sent Celoron de Bienville, a colonial captain, to establish a formal ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the game of courtesy with you, yes," said he, "but only when it does not interfere with serious things. In this matter there must be no indefiniteness, no chance for misunderstanding. Politeness, between the sexes, means both. I will repeat: in this you must leave me free hand no ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Principle and elsewhere—that pleasure and not instruction or moral exhortation was the end of poetry; that beauty and not truth or goodness was its means; and, furthermore, that the pleasure which it gave should be indefinite. About his own poetry there was always this {531} indefiniteness. His imagination dwelt in a strange country of dream—a "ghoul-haunted region of Weir," "out of space, out of time"—filled with unsubstantial landscapes, and peopled by spectral shapes. And yet there is a wonderful, hidden significance in this uncanny scenery. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Branches were established in various towns in England. Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in Brussels in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a chintz in which both colour and design are indefinite, the kind which gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background. The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colours, or of any ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts—"subject" and "object"—are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. And that is all. Definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender—all these are given no expression in the Chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication—provided, of course, there is that ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... things which mark eras in a mind's history, and open a new door which no man can shut. Of the two, I think Niagara is the most impressive, perhaps because those aerial elements of foam and spray give that vague and dreamy indefiniteness of outline which seems essential in the sublime. For this reason, while Niagara is equally impressive in the distance, it does not lose on the nearest approach—it is always mysterious, and, therefore, stimulating. Those varying spray wreaths, rising ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... limit of sea and sky. Very lovely were the effects of light, the gradations of colour; from the blue-black abysses, where no shape could be distinguished, to those violet hues upon the furrowed heights which had a transparency, a softness, an indefiniteness, unlike anything to be seen ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Japanese impersonality we shall consider the remarkable deficiency of personal pronouns in the language, and the wide use of "honorifics." This substitution of the personal pronouns by honorifics makes possible an indefiniteness of speech that is exceedingly difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to appreciate. Fancy the amount of implication in the statement, "Ikenai koto-we shimashita" which, strictly translated, means "Can't go thing have done." Who has done? you? or he? or I? This can only be inferred, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... as much as possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and definiteness of view; while the latter associates and combines them in the largest possible variety consistent with unity of interest and impression, so as to produce the effect of indefiniteness and mystery. Thus a Shakespearian drama is like a Gothic cathedral, which, by its complexity of structure, while catching the eye would fain lift the thoughts to something greater and better than the world, making the beholder feel his littleness, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... native] of Arbela. The dignity of the diction is very marked. The very frequent assurance 'fear not' and the solemn repetition of 'I am Ishtar' lend impressiveness to the message. The oracle, it will be seen, deals in general phrases. This indefiniteness characterizes most of them; and the more impressive the diction, the greater vagueness in the statements made. So an oracle, coming from Ishtar and Nabu and uttered by a woman Baya, a ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... of common aspiration to the civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms. These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves they scarcely constitute a religion that will satisfy, much less one that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can judge, these ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... name given without a long rigmarole of dazzling titles or senseless adjectives. The Muse is neither pathetically invoked nor anathematically abused, but the author proceeds at once to describe his hero's present situation, which, it strangely appears, is in "a corner." The indefiniteness of the locality—a corner—is not of the slightest moment; for it does not concern the general reader to know in what corner little JACK was stationed. Suffice it, as is apparent from the context, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various |
