"Undefined" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 religion and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... 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 Opie as regards the general ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... 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 |
