"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was beginning to think; and to wonder, too, in a vague, not very pleasant fashion. Was this—was Crone's death, murder, whatever it was—at all connected with the previous affair of Phillips? Had Crone told me the truth that night I went to buy the stuff for Tom Dunlop's rabbit-hutches? or had he kept something back? And while I was reflecting on these ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... but now, as the darkness fell, it gradually broke into a dull glow, like a cooling iron. On that wild night, seen and lost with the heave and sweep of the boat, this lurid streak carried with it a vague but sinister suggestion. The red line splitting the darkness might have been a giant half-forged sword-blade with ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... looms of the city, had crept in to tell her beads. Broad, vacant, vast, and suggestive of a sublime desolation, the grand length and width of the Latin Cross which shapes the holy precincts, stretched into vague distance, one or two lamps were burning dimly at little shrines set in misty dark recesses,—a few votive candles, some lit, some smouldered out, leaned against each other crookedly in their ricketty ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... rolled down his thin cheeks. Gusts of rain added their moisture. As much light as the world was to have that day filtered through sheets of vapor. The bluffs bordering the Okaw could not be seen except as a vague bank of forest; and as for the lowlands across the great river, they might as ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... justice has been administered in different ages and nations; and I have entered very little into the detail of particulars of which I see your Lordship is very much master. Your Lordship's particular facts will be of great use to correct my general views; but the latter, I fear, will always be too vague and superficial to be of much use ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... some light work, or resting on the sofa in delicious idleness, while Olive herself, little noticed, but yet treated with uniform kindness by both, sat on the hearthrug, fondling the sleepy cat, or gazing with vague childish reverie into the fire. No more of the proud pleasure with which, on Sunday afternoons, exalted to her grave papa's knee, she created an intense delight out of what was to him a somewhat formal duty, and said her letters from the large ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... crime to reveal, no appointment to keep, no treasure to disclose, no commissions to be executed, and, as an almost invariable rule, he does not speak, even if you speak to him. The recent inquirers, notably Mr. Myers, remark with some severity on this vague and meaningless conduct of apparitions, and draw speculative conclusions to the effect that the ghost, as the Scotch say, 'is not all there'. But the ghosts of the seventeenth century were positively garrulous. One remarkable specimen indeed behaved, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Egyptian territory that was directly affected by the war. The great mass of the people, occupying the rich and fertile tracts which bordered the various branches of the Nile, and the long and verdant valley which extended so far into the heart of the continent, knew nothing of the conflict but by vague and distant rumors. The pursuits of the agricultural population went on, all the time, as steadily and prosperously as ever; so that when the conflict was ended, and Cleopatra entered upon the quiet and peaceful possession of her power, she found that ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... of Louis XVI. are fond of speaking of him as "virtuous." The adjective is singularly ill-chosen. His faults were of the will more than of the understanding. To have a vague notion of what is right, to desire it in a general way, and to lack the moral force to do it,—surely this is ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... she went home through the lamp-lit darkness, feeling as if some vague shadow had descended silently upon ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... be letters, communications from the outside world of friends, people who did not know or care what these two had been through together, and who would not hesitate to separate them with a firm hand. Neither put this thought into words, but it was there in their hearts, in the form of a vague fear. They talked very little, but each was feeling how pleasant the journey had been, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... By such vague and shadowy measurement as the speculations of these wanderers supplied, the sages of the past traced out the ideal limits of the dry land which, at the word of God, appeared from out the gathering together of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the plagues of human society, is generally held to be incurable, save by the vague process of exercising self-control—a process which seldom has any beneficial results. It is regarded now as smallpox used to be regarded—as a visitation of Providence, which must be borne. But I do not hold it to be incurable. I am ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... affording assistance, had recourse to prayers and entreaties, and going about to all the temples, wearied the gods with vows and supplications. While the city was in this state of solicitude and suspense, a vague report first arrived that two Narnian horsemen had come from the field of battle into the camp which stood as a defence in the entrance to Umbria, with intelligence that the enemy were cut to pieces. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... solos, L'Orage, by Steibelt; a fugue for the left hand alone, by Czerny, and a set of etudes after Czerny, being free transcriptions of his famous Velocity Studies, roused the deepest curiosity in our minds, for vague rumors of an astonishing technique were rife. And, finally, when the stage doors were pushed wide open and a covered litter was slowly brought forward by six dusky slaves and gently set down, the pent up feelings of the audience could not be restrained any longer, and ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Dolan, I remember very well!" I said as we shook hands. I could not but note that the acquaintanceship seemed a relief to Miss Trelawny. There was a certain vague uneasiness in her manner which took my attention; instinctively I felt that it would be less embarrassing for her to speak with me alone. So I said to ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... It was so real that Rick almost believed in it. But he was bothered by a vague feeling ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... so angry at this proof of what she had up to now only faintly suspected, that it was not very difficult to make her tell all that she knew of her share in Adela's expenses, only that knowledge proved to be of a very vague kind. Molly had kept no accounts, and had the vaguest notion of what her bills included. One thing she intended to conceal (but Mr. Delaport Green managed to make her confide even that) was the fact that she had given L100 to his ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... assumptions for valid statistics, and at last actually believe themselves to be the enlightened gentlemen, and the people of the Free States the peddlers and sneaks they have so long been in the habit of fancying. They have argued themselves into a kind of vague faith that the wealth and power of the Republic are south of Mason and Dixon's line; and the Northern people have been slow in arriving at the conclusion that treasonable talk would lead to treasonable action, because they could not conceive that anybody should be so foolish ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... a distant relative of mine," resumed Pendleton; "her mother was connected in some vague way with my mother; and because of this indefinite link, we've always been"—here he hesitated for an instant—"well, rather friendly. Last night we happened to meet at Upton's, and I took her in to dinner. Edyth is a nice girl, but ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... him; his eyes followed it idly, until it turned far away into a side street. He strayed on to the market, where he seated himself on a high stool in L'Appel du Matin coffee stall. But a vague, teasing remembrance was beginning to stir in his brain. The turbaned woman on the front seat of the carriage that had rolled past him yonder, where had he seen that dark, grave, wrinkled face, with the great hoops of gold against either cheek? Marcelite! He left the stall and retraced ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the company flocked around her, as though there was something enticing in her tone; the vague promise of an interesting bit of gossip or the indefinite suggestion ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... truth, into which, in a measure, I was led, respected the Lord's coming. My views concerning this point, up to that time, had been completely vague and unscriptural. I had believed what others told me, without trying it by the Word. I thought that things were getting better and better, and that soon the whole world would be converted. But now I found in the Word that we have not the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... impairing the balance of parties, with results damaging to the constitution.[625] It has even been suggested that the friction between the two Houses in the years 1830-1911 resulted in no small degree from the reckless conduct of Pitt in this respect. Vague and sweeping assertions like these can neither be substantiated nor refuted. But the only definite part of them, namely, that Pitt's creations degraded the House of Lords, is obviously overstrained. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... processes. Her impression of the Disruption movement, for example, would be lively and distinct, but her perception of a contemporary lovers' quarrel (particularly if it were fought at her own apron-strings) would be singularly vague. If she suggested, therefore, that Elizabeth Ardmore was interested in Mr. Beresford, who is the rightful captive of my bow and spear, I ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in Chemistry. The young brains were vexed and wearied day after day to acquire by vague description and by rote the details of an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... calling by the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass In splendour through the gloom; Who is it calling o'er the darkened river ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... their "sisters." Going to the Union headquarters on Clinton Street, she learned all she could about the Union. Afterward, in the Bruch factory, whenever any complaints arose, she would say casually, in pretended helplessness, "But what can we do? Is there any way to change this?" Vague suggestions of the Union headquarters would arise, and she would inquire into this eagerly and would pretend to allow herself to be led to Clinton Street. So, little by little, as the long hours and low wages and impudence from the foreman continued, she induced about ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... to mar my prospects. No letter from Denver—no memento from the Klondike, no word even from Wallace, who had gone north with his brother. Soon I should be called wife again, but by lips I loved, and to whose language my heart thrilled. The past, always vague, would soon be no more than a forgotten dream—an episode quite closed. I could afford from this moment on to view life like other girls and rejoice in my youth and the love which every day was becoming ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it's what I would certainly have made it," answered Svidrigailov, with a vague smile. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... regular in his new diet—taking it all the time—he did not seem to thrive as might have been expected. The larger orders he drew, the thinner and the more transparent he became; and at last, when the shadow of his person had become to him a vague and unreal memory, he repented, and applied to be reinstated in his comfortable sinecure at the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... ones,—sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies, new desire to bear one another's burdens. Men and women grew fast in those days of the nation's trouble and danger, and Jane awoke from the vague dull dream she had hitherto called life to new hopes, new fears, new purposes. Then after a year's anxiety, a year when one never looked in the newspaper without dread and sickness of suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was wounded; and without so much as asking Miranda's leave, she packed ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were any warmer corners in hell, and was with difficulty dissuaded by Kate, about whose waist he had passed his arm. His constant whispering in her ear, which had at first amused her, now irritated and annoyed her; other emotions filled her mind with a vague tumult, and she longed to be left to think in peace. She begged of him to keep quiet, and as they crossed one of the yards she asked the guide if he could not go straight to the painting-room. He replied that there was a regular order to be observed, and insisted on marching ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... in spite of themselves, or what they consider to be their better judgment, attach a superstitious importance to these visions of the night; nor is the vague belief in the spiritual agency employed in dreams, diminished by the remarkable dreams and their fulfilment, which are recorded in Holy Writ, the verity of which we are taught to believe ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... who had a vague hope that Marguerite would cease to overwhelm a vanquished enemy, "why do you not go and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more diversity of opinion. That he also was bad, cruel, dissipated, profoundly deceitful, there was no doubt in the minds of his future chattels, but what precise form his idiosyncrasies would take they felt to be uncertain, and gazed with terror—all the more acute for being somewhat vague—at his cold, impassive face. In the mean time, nothing could be more irreproachable than the demeanor of the two brothers. Dr. Alphege was known to be a man of great skill, a graduate of the medical schools of Paris and always interested in the practice of his profession. He devoted himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have been less than a poet if, in the first few minutes, the pathos of the situation had not gripped him by the throat. Vague, elusive fancies stirred his brain; he remembered the franc that he owed at the Cafe du Bel Avenir, and wondered if madame would speak gently of him were he lost at sea. Tender memories of past loves dimmed his eyes, and he reflected how poignant it would be to perish before the papers would ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... of modesty I cry for an authoritative crystallization of the democratic aims of the civilized world. England and France have groped their way through centuries towards a vague ideal. America proudly began her existence by a proclamation of the equal rights of man. She proudly proclaims them now; but the world is involved in such a complicated muddle, that the utterances of George Washington and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... occupied, and he stood for some time looking with vague reproach at the large family of coloured people who had taken it. He had a feeling that he lived there and that these coloured people were trespassers; but upon becoming aware that part of an orange was being rubbed over his left shoe by the youngest of the children, he groaned ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... are sombre and lurid. Sometimes the terror foretold is nameless and mystic, yet even then the Prophet's simplicity does not fail but rather contributes to the vague, undefined horror. In the following it is premature night which creeps over the hills—night without shelter for the weary or ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... sight a rifle. In silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and vague. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... refused to conform were allowed to remain two years for the purpose of winding up their affairs and selling out their property, provided that during that period they lived "without scandal towards the ancient religion"—a very vague and unsatisfactory condition. All prisoners were to be released excepting Teligny. Four hundred thousand florins were to be paid by the authorities as a fine. The patriot garrison was to leave the city with arms and baggage and all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... night noise but that: the crash and whine of trolleys, the footsteps of a scattered handful of belated pedestrians, the infrequent windy roar of trains on the Third Avenue L, empty clapping of horses' hoofs on the asphalt ... the yowl of a sentimental tomcat ... a dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the grandfather's ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... mean?" she thought, while for the first time, with a vague sense of his meaning, tears welled hot and bitter into her sunny eyes, while the pained color burned in her face. Those tears were the first that she had ever known, and they were cruel ones, though they lasted but a little time; ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... station-master's tiny house was at least some hundred yards away, and beyond that there was not another habitation nearer than the farm. On all sides of her, too, were black, frowning precipices, full of seams and fissures and inequalities, showing vague and shadowy in the fading rays of the sun. Here and there were the huge, gaping mouths of gloomy slate quarries that had long been disused, and were now half full of foul water. Around them the earth was ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... a lull; the subject of smallpox was taboo, and nobody heard much about it beyond vague and indefinite rumours. Indeed, most of us were busy with the question of the hour—the eternal question of beer, its purity and the method of its sale. For my part, I made few inquiries; like the ostrich of fable I hid my head in the sands of political excitement, hoping ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... are of that class of 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, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... communiques from General Headquarters and by an "eye-witness" who, as one paper had the audacity to say, wrote nothing but "eye-wash." Even the enormous, impregnable stupidity of our High Command on all matters of psychology was penetrated by a vague notion that a few "writing fellows" might be sent out with permission to follow the armies in the field, under the strictest censorship, in order to silence the popular clamor for more news. Dimly and nervously they apprehended that in order to stimulate ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and hence, no one evinced the boldness to grapple directly with them. The whole region of optics was involved in mists, and those who gave their attention to this department of knowledge, abandoned themselves, for the most part, to vague generalities and loose conjectures. In the conflict of manifold opinions, and the great variety of hypotheses which seemed to promise nothing but endless disputes, the highest idea of the science of optics that prevailed, was that of something in relation to light ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... than Theocritus himself could tell) lay about, and rolled about, and upset their own masters, here and there and everywhere, upon this half acre of slip and stumble, at the top of the boat channel down to the sea, and in the faint rivalry of three vague lights, all making ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... long stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal—he could see only the blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream, a condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds; unrealities seized the quick imagination ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... believe that hour so close at hand as it was. For I had hardly settled down at Algiers, when one fine morning the announcement of the February revolution and the proclamation of the republic came upon us like the bursting of a shell. The news arrived in the shape of vague rumours, uncertain information, reports of various kinds, brought over from Marseilles. As to the amount of authenticity they possessed—whether the movement was a general one or confined to Paris only, whether a stand was being made against it anywhere—on all these points the earliest ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the Newport Art Gallery had sealed up all his vague suspicions in his guilty breast. He never dared to confide even in Robert Wade, sneaking in furtively to ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... but I don't cast it. I'm going to do whatever the others desire, with leave to change their mind, without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was divided between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping up the communications between them. Each was successively seized, the garrison slain or made prisoners, and as each fort fell those in the next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger. Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for little against men with firearms and behind walls. But after the downfall of ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... whereon thine ashes lie, Waiting their urn beyond the alien main; The nations pause to view thy funeral train As slowly moving up 'twixt sea and sky It comes with stately pomp, and Liberty Holds out her hands and calls thy name in vain. And yet, mayhap, in vision vague and sweet, Another sight thou seest beyond the boast Of patriot pride—beside the new-born fleet, Spectral and strange, no guest for such a host, Yet making thy home-coming all complete, The old ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... have mentioned may prepare you for the fact that before we were eight weeks in garrison, Shaugh and myself, upon an accurate calculation of our conjoint finances, discovered that except some vague promises of discounting here and there through the town, and seven and fourpence in specie, we were innocent of any pecuniary treasures. This was embarrassing; we had both embarked in several small schemes of pleasurable amusement, had a couple of hunters each, a tandem, and a running ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... she happy? That was the question. She pretended to be, of course; but how much of it was mere pretence? Beneath her smiles Phil had sensed of late a vague unrest, disappointment—he hardly knew what to call it, so illusive it was. She had laughed at him fondly and called him "a foolish boy" when he had ventured to ask her if anything was wrong. After that she had been careful that he did not surprise any look ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... territory lying between New Spain and Newfoundland, which newly acquired territory was thenceforth designated Norumbega or New France. All such original annexations, whether pretended or real, were in the circumstances extremely ill-defined; and maps of the time were frequently vague, confusing, and contradictory. Cartier, on his way to sow the seeds of a French Empire in North America, sailed past the coast (1534), and on his second voyage (1535) foregathered with Roberval in the roadstead of St. John's. Still ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... still in the distant future. Dim ideas as to some means of avoiding it flitted through his brain. But even though he might see Gordon on that terrible occasion, he need not speak to him. And it would have to be done then, and then only. But now another idea, certainly very vague, had found its way into his mind, and with the object of carrying it out, Mr Whittlestaff had come to the club. "Oh, Mr Whittlestaff, how do ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... only in a vague way," he answered, "confused with what has since been told me. When it was known that my parents were lost, a man and his wife, fellow passengers, offered to adopt me. Beyond the name 'Robert Deane, Wife and Child,' on the list at the ship's ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... the union for a time of his spirit with his corporeal frame we may find at least an intelligible illustration of the connection of God with the universe. Discarding the word mind, as the fruitful source of vague speculation and error, let us look for a moment at that of which it is a mere synonyme,—at the man himself. The sentient, thinking being, which I call self, is an absolute unit. Duality or complexity cannot be predicated of it in any intelligible sense. Personality is indivisible; I am ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... fell on the soft turf. He rode slowly, and his head was bent as if in thought; but almost before Edith could draw her breath, much less to speak, he had passed beneath the boughs of the tree, and was riding on toward the village. Now he had vanished in the vague light and shadow, and a moment later Edith began to doubt whether her senses had not played her a trick. A superstitious horror fell upon her; what she had seen was a spirit, not living flesh and blood. She knelt down by the stone, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... the thing must go on in its own natural course. If misfortunes did come, why misfortunes must come. It was the same thing with any soldier or any sailor. If she were to fall in love with some officer,—for the supposition in its vague, undefined form was admissible even to poor Ada's imagination,—she would not be debarred from marrying him merely by the fact that he would have to go to the wars. Of course, as regarded Captain Yorke Clayton, this was merely ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... A vague recollection of the lost children of his daughter Rhea immediately flashed across Numitor's mind. It changed all his anger against Remus to a feeling of wondering interest and curiosity, and gave to his ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... had not been too deeply scarred by the political pressures from Western Russia. Rebellious of nature, and of a race of people where women fought beside their men in case of necessity, she had first left her tribal area to seek education in the more advanced western provinces with a vague idea of returning to spread—not western ideologies amongst her people—but perhaps some of their know-how. This she had found to be a long and involved process; and more and more, with an increase of education, she had grown ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... century, we spoke of our "age of electricity," yet there were few things in nature about which we knew less. The "electric current" rang our bells, drove our trains, lit our rooms, but none knew what the current was. There was a vague idea that it was a sort of fluid that flowed along copper wires as water flows in a pipe. We now suppose that it is a rapid movement of electrons from atom to atom in the wire or ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... such a vague and general way of accounting for the public money, as tending to render parliaments altogether insignificant, to cover embezzlements, and to screen corrupt and rapacious ministers. The commons having ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... echo of vague rumors, otherwise I have no reason to defame this phenix of notaries. But to return to your projects, D'Harville; what are you going to build at Val Richer? The chateau ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... and vague, and I have been able to obtain nothing like a complete account of it, for I have found no one who appeared to know the story of the beginning of ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... she repeated slowly, looking just a little vague and puzzled. And then—"Oh, yes, of course I do, if that's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... in the jasmine bush when I dropped asleep, and when I awoke he was cheeping there still. Of my dreams I only remember that they ended in a vague sense of discomfort, somehow arising from a vision of Mr. Rogers in the act of throwing bread at the swans, and of the hen bird's flurry as she paddled away. But the sound which I took for the splashing of water came in fact from the rings of the window curtain, which Miss Isabel was drawing ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been dealt with, and that the lighter part. The Helvetii were disposed of, but the Germans remained; and till Ariovistus was back across the Rhone, no permanent peace was possible. Hitherto Caesar had only received vague information about Ariovistus. When the diet was over, such of the chiefs as were sincere in their professions came to him privately and explained what the Germans were about. A hundred and twenty thousand ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... case, these perturbations are ranged under the wide and somewhat vague category of "variations"; in the second, they are called lesions, states of poisoning, or diseases; and, as morbid states, they lie within the province of pathology. No sharp line of demarcation can be drawn between the two classes of phenomena. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... in the monastery of Westminster, it is not at all unlikely that he should wear the habit, nor, considering how vague our knowledge of that age is, impossible but he might ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... of being hurried faster than I could well travel. From the moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, my days were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to my task. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward, toward that vague Success which we ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... it in the night. Although that reef offered in reality no place of safety, that was available to his party, Mulford felt it as a sort of relief, to be certain that it was not distant, possibly influenced by a vague hope that some passing wrecker or turtler might yet pick ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... century affords us glimpses of other readers who were not merely collectors. The author—or authors—of Piers Plowman seems to have had within his reach a fair library. His reading was carelessly done for the most part, his references are vague and incorrect, and his quotations not always exact. But he was well read in the Scriptures, which he knew far better than any other book. From the Fathers he gathered much, perhaps by means of collections of extracts from ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... homely fashion, after having delivered himself of his effective assent: 'Yes. The convict,' and I, far from indulging in a reminiscent excursion into the past, remained sufficiently in the present to muse in a vague, absent-minded way on the respectable proportions and on the (upon the whole) comely shape of his great pedestrian's calves, for he had thrown one leg over his knee, carelessly, to conceal the trouble of his mind by an air of ease. But all the same the knowledge was in me, the awakened ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... more and more perpendicularly, until his nicely got-up cue and bag, then his powdered head, and finally Captain Cluffe's handsome features, went under the surface. When this occurred, he instantaneously disengaged his legs with a vague feeling that his last struggle ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ways to works already described; but not having been over-decorated like the Bargello relief, show greater dignity and less confusion. The background of the Deposition is flat, but broken here and there by faintly-indicated horsemen; naked boys riding on shadowy steeds like those vague figures which seem to thread their way through some panel of Gothic tapestry. There is an element of stiacciato in the Entombment, giving it the air of a mystery rather than of an historical fact. The draperies are thin and graceful, suited to the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... the letter you speak of, though I heard of your grief a good while afterwards. And so sorry I was—we both were—so sorry for Fanny, so sorry for you! May God bless you all! How the spiritual world gets thronged to us with familiar faces, till at last, perhaps, the world here will seem the vague and strange world, even while ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... world, not in a remote region or in the land beyond death, that all this was to be realised. Jerusalem is the centre of the picture and the Jewish nation stands in the foreground of it as the chosen people of the God of all the world. Now these predictions, which with the prophets are vague and idealised, were taken by the Jews always more seriously and worked out in detail. After the prophet comes the apocalyptic writer, such as Daniel (the Apocalypse of the New Testament belongs to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... he haunted restaurants and hotels, in the vague hope that chance might some day yield him a glimpse of her, as a gambler clings to a faint prospect of redeeming his fortunes through some wonderful and unexpected revulsion of luck. But the days passed without the slightest encouragement, and his ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... apoplexy. The attack was known to Penautier sooner than to his own family: then the papers about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined. D'Alibert's brother-in-law, who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an end by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... connection, was a vague word. The whole thing sounded like an opinion uttered by a cautious person mindful of actions ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... ceremony was characteristic of Austrian despotism, aware of the profound sympathy among the Italians for their patriot martyrs, of the widespread disaffection, of the necessity of exciting vague and terrible apprehension,—and at the same time conscious that policy forbade arousing the fury of despair. The accused were thus kept more than two years alternating from hope to desperation, the people in ignorance of the issue, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... imitations were altogether contemptible. But they showed that men had at least begun to admire the excellence which they could not rival. A literary revolution was evidently at hand. There was a ferment in the minds of men, a vague craving for something new, a disposition to hail with delight anything which might at first sight wear the appearance of originality. A reforming age is always fertile of impostors. The same excited state of public feeling which produced the great separation from the see of Rome produced ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... could not cope with the problem, and again the man slept, to awaken at sunrise with ravenous hunger and thirst, and a memory of what seemed to be horrible dreams,—vague recollections of painful experiences,—torturing labor with aching muscles and blistered hands; harsh words and ridicule from strong, bearded men; and running through and between, the shadowy figures of blue-coated, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the voice of the waters was in my ears—a low, sweet voice, intimate, mysterious. Through singing foam and broad, green, glassy depths, by whispering sandy channels atrail with sea-weed, and on, on, out into the vague, cool sea, I sped, rising to the top, sinking, gliding. Then at last I flung myself out of water, hands raised, and the clamor of the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... wife, and said there were only two things he would stipulate for—1,500 a year, and an angel. But it brings us to another definition, you see. We shall agree as to the brains, but how about goodness! What is your definition of that very wide, not to say vague, term?" ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... weary beyond endurance and yet sleep would not come to her, as happens often to the overtired. Before her closed eyes a vague panorama of past events unrolled itself, ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... enemies' sneers, the corroboration of his friends' belief, the practical demonstration of his own theories, the reward of his patient labors. It was there, sure enough. But, somehow, he not only failed to recall the first joy of discovery, but was conscious of a vague sense of responsibility and unrest. It was, no doubt, an enormous fortune to a man in his circumstances: perhaps it meant a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or more, judging from the value of the old Martin lead, which was not as rich as this, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... all paganism together was ever guilty of so many human sacrifices in the same space of time. In the sixteenth, these holocausts were appealed to as conclusive evidence of the reality of the crime, terror was again aroused, the more vindictive that its sources were so vague and intangible, and cruelty was the natural consequence. Nothing but an abject panic, in which the whole use of reason, except as a mill to grind out syllogisms, was altogether lost, will account for some chapters in Bodin's Demonomanie. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Pachmann, and followed him into the car. The door slammed, the driver sprang to his seat, and they were off. In the semi-darkness, Dan fancied he heard a repressed chuckle, and a vague uneasiness stole upon him. But he shook it off. What had he ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... 174: Benjamin's statements as to India and China are of course very vague, but we must remember he was the first European who as much as mentions China. Having regard to the full descriptions of other countries of the old World by Arabic writers of the Middle Ages, and to the fact that the trade route then was principally by sea ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... which he ought to command by putting before it always perfectly determinate forms, it is left here much too free to represent as it wishes these men and these angels, these divinities and demons, this paradise and this hell. We see quite well the vague outlines in which the understanding must be kept to conceive these personages; but we do not find the limit clearly traced in which the imagination must be enclosed to represent them. And what I say here of characters ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the mystery in the tower was tacitly dropped, perhaps from a vague feeling that it was best not alluded to, at any rate by the ladies, and the conversation flowed, with more or less effort, on ordinary local topics. Tea over, ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... the meridian, and with the coming evening rose a gentle breeze, which moaned in the dry ferns; and this and the rustling of the giant creepers that reached from tree to tree, and swung between the branches, fell mournfully on the student's ear. A vague fear, a fatal presentiment of evil began to creep over him; again he shouted, the echo from a dark wild ravine alone replied; he fired his gun again and again, the echo alone answered his signal of distress, and nothing could he hear, except at intervals, far, far away in ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... comparison. "Do you believe such a thing to be true? and why do you believe it? Can you account for such a thing?" are questions we should often ask at this period of their education. On hearing extraordinary facts, some children will not be satisfied with vague assertions; others content themselves with saying, "It is so, I read it in a book." We should have little hopes of those who swallow every thing they read in a book; we are always pleased to see a child hesitate and doubt, and require positive proof ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... one pair?" said Ellen, who had a vague notion that by some mysterious means her stockings were to be prevented from ever looking white ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... m. Mittendorfer has been in, with vague remarks concerning our automobile. Something warns me this young man is trifling with us. He appears to be a practitioner of the Japanese school of diplomacy—that is, he believes it is better to pile one gentle, transparent fiction on another until ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... scales give rise to a feeling of alternate periods of contraction and relaxation—an active tone (or chord) followed by a passive one, but no such effect is possible in the whole-step scale, and it seems suitable therefore only for that class of music whose outlines are purposely intended to be vague and indefinite—the ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... post system was extended so that it embraced the sister Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the rate remaining at 25c per lb. Apparently the weight and size of a parcel acceptable by the postal authorities still remained delightfully vague and indefinite and was simply limited by "the carrying capacity of an ordinary ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... went backwards and forwards all the night, was not called at any particular moment to see the last of his wife, and Blanche had her wish. She died alone with her faithful little cousin before the morning broke. As she was just going, she said, in a vague sort ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is it, Lone?" she exclaimed, when she neared the vague figure of a man unsaddling a horse. "You didn't see Frank coming anywhere, did you? Dad won't have his supper until Frank comes with the things I ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... too much and acts too little," he said to the Duke of Chevreuse; "his most solid occupations are confined to vague applications of his mind and barren resolutions; he must see society, study it, mix in it, without becoming a slave to it, learn to express himself forcibly, and acquire a gentle authority. If he do not feel the need of possessing firmness and nerve, he will not make any real progress; it is ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... harmony, which suggests that the weakness of the older art lay in the last of the three essentials of painting; form, color and composition. The low-toned harmonies of time-mellowed color we would be loath to exchange for aught else, except for that element of disturbance so vague and so difficult of definition, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the others, applies to commodities, services, capital, to anything which can be said, literally, or by analogy, to have a price. "A short period" is, however, a vague expression and, since precision is the hallmark of an important law, we must accord to this one a status inferior to that which the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... shibboleths of freedom and democracy abound, and are satisfied. Yet it ought to be plainly evident to any intelligent person that, even if the decrees and proclamations were as sound as they are in fact unsound, and as definite as they are in fact vague, they would afford no real basis for judging Bolshevism as an actual experiment in social polity. There is, in ultimate analysis, only one test to apply to Bolshevism—namely, the test of reality. We must ask what the Bolsheviki did, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... was, at present, uppermost in his mind—the exploring of unknown regions. Among the grand features of the wilderness about which he was roaming, one had made a vivid impression on his mind, and been clothed by his imagination with vague and ideal charms. This is a great lake of salt water, laving the feet of the mountains, but extending far to the west-southwest, into one of those vast and elevated plateaus of land, which range high above the level of ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... perhaps, the most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for. In passing through the woods, most persons have a vague consciousness of slight chirping, semi-musical sounds in the trees overhead. In most cases these sounds proceed from the warblers. Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Mrs. Kilfoyle said, with wistful interest. For at Lisconnel we still look not a little to the reports brought by stray travellers for news of absent friends, much as we did before the days of penny posts and mail trains. And our geographical lore is vague enough to impede us but slightly in our hopes of obtaining information from any quarter. Only the probability seems to be increased if the newcomer arrives from the direction ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... with both the military and the manufacture movement, in a vague expectation to defeat both, the press, as is usual in such national crises, teemed with publications of great fervour and ability. Dr. Jebb, Mr. (afterwards Judge) Johnson, Mr. Pollock, Mr. Charles Sheridan, Father Arthur O'Leary, and Mr. Dobbs, M.P., were the chief workers in this department ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... curved a pale, quiet river. In the distance wraiths of blue smoke falteringly bespoke the presence of people and cabins; on a cleared hill an object that might be horse or dog or man was silhouetted, small and vague; and in the farthest west the hoister of a deserted zinc mine cut up against the sky a little lonely way. The near and dominant things were constantly those tremulous, fleeing billows of grass, the straight strong trees, the sullen ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... closed around her; these ferocious plunderers, who had been thirsty a moment before to sheathe their weapons in her body, were spell-bound by the sympathy of courageous souls, by some vague perception that there was a greatness in this little tigress of France, whom they had sworn to hunt down and slaughter, which surpassed all they ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... all reminiscent of Isaac Ford. And nobody had told him. Every line of Isaac Ford's face he knew. Miniatures, portraits, and photographs of his father were passing in review through his mind, and here and there, over and again, in the face before him, he caught resemblances and vague hints of likeness. It was devil's work that could reproduce the austere features of Isaac Ford in the loose and sensuous features before him. Once, the man turned, and for one flashing instant it seemed to Percival Ford that he saw his father, dead and gone, peering at him out ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... puerile a vanity. The Queen, however, urged by her advisers, resolutely returned to the charge, declaring that she could assume no prominent position in the temporary government of the kingdom while her own remained so vague and undefined. She reminded him, moreover, of the uncomplaining patience with which she had awaited his pleasure upon this particular; a patience which, as she asserted, she could still have exercised had he not been about to cross the frontier, but which, under existing circumstances, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... bear fruit in the light of day. He knew that a certain great Duchess of Portsmouth had been sent over from France by King Louis to gain something from King Charles, who had fallen in love with her. The meaning of "falling in love" he was yet vague in his understanding of, but he knew that the people hated her because they thought she played tricks and would make trouble for England if she led the King as she tried to do. The common people called her "Madame ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... refers in a vague and indefinite manner to the power of a state to oppose an unjustifiable act of the ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... to the poetic fancy and thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century, but a purely ideal one manufactured ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... picked its landing-place amid the crags and pits of the tumbled scarred valley floor. It came to rest, a vague silver menacing shape lurking in the lower shadows, close at the foot ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... spent at Norwich, 1816-24, the other is probably the years spent at Oulton. Thus the "Veiled Period" may be assumed to have been one of wandering. The seven years are gloomy and mysterious, but not utterly dark. There is a hint here, a suggestion there—a letter or a paragraph, that gives in a vague way some idea of what Borrow was doing, and where. It seems comparatively safe to assume that after the publication of Romantic Ballads he plunged into a life of roving and vagabondage, which, in all probability, was brought to an abrupt ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... attested its accuracy. You will meet with similar stories, implicitly believed, in every society you go into, varying in their circumstances—a ghost being sometimes put in the place of a dream, and sometimes a vague but strong mental impression, a foreboding only. But the common point exists in all, that all intimation of the death of an absent acquaintance has been in one or another way insinuated into the mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... than of any other of the early missionaries of Christianity, we saw that it was indefinite and utterly insufficient. His so-called "circumstantial account of the testimony upon which the belief in the Resurrection rested" consists merely of vague and undetailed hearsay, differing, so far as it can be compared, from the statements in the Gospels, and without other attestation than the bare fact that it is repeated by Paul, who doubtless believed it, although he had not himself been a witness of any ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... to his seat, leaving Paul in a state of vague uneasiness. Why did this fellow, with the infernal sly face and glib tongue, want to prevent him from righting himself with the world, and how could he possibly prevent him? It was absurd; he would take no notice of the young ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... interior drama interests nobody. I know it; and you will one day admit that it is so, you, who at this moment shed tears with me; no one can burden his heart or his skin with another's pain. The measure of our sufferings is in ourselves.—You even understand my sorrows only by very vague analogy. Could you see me calming the most violent frenzy of despair by the contemplation of a miniature in which I can see and kiss her brow, the smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin; which enables me almost to feel, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... closed the door; but didn't shut it at once, for suddenly I heard a policeman's step coming softly towards my house—pad, pad! A dreadful moment, then he passed by. I went into the room again all shaken, wondering whether I had done right, whether Allen would hawk the letter about—a thousand vague apprehensions. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... stretched out his arms to meet it, and his eyes closed as the cool wind struck his throat and face and lifted the hair from his forehead. About him the mountains lay like a tumultuous sea-the Jellico Spur, stilled gradually on every side into vague, purple shapes against the broken rim of the sky, and Pine Mountain and the Cumberland Range racing in like breakers from the north. Under him lay Jellico Valley, and just visible in a wooded cove, whence Indian Creek crept into sight, was a mining-camp-a cluster of white ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... short distance a number of strange sounds, distinct yet vague, indicative of confusion and tumult, fatiguing to the ear which tried to distinguish them. They came from the ground, which seemed to tremble beneath the feet of a multitude of marching men. A momentary clearness ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... had all the worst faults of the author's earliest compositions in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deal more is said of these giants, both by Zarate and Garcilasso de la Vega, p. 363, but so vague and absurd as not to be worth insertion. The whole story seems to have arisen out of the colossal representation of a man and woman at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... great regret the missive contained only some very vague information; and the professor was unable to conceal his disappointment from the young people who listened to the letter ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... administration and military, plans. After these depositions, several others were received respecting the expenses of the Court, the influence of the Queen in public affairs, the scene of the 10th of August, and what had passed in the Temple; and the most vague rumours and most trivial circumstances were ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them. The authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy have, in the conduct of it, derived great advantage from the difference of our intentions and theirs. They meant only to amuse by vague expressions of attachment to the parent state, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt. On our part, though it was declared in your last session ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... passages is true, with one or two exceptions, of all the natural descriptions of Browning in which the pathetic fallacy seems to be used by him. I need not say how extraordinarily apart this method of his is from that of Tennyson. Then Tennyson, like Coleridge—only Tennyson is as vague and wavering in this belief as Coleridge is firm and clear in it—sometimes speaks as if Nature did not exist at all apart ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... as do the eyes towards innumerable and most diverse objects; whence, according to the infinite degrees which exist, it takes on all the natural forms. Hence it is that this particular intellect may be as enthusiastic, vague, and uncertain, as that universal one is quiet, fixed, and certain, whether as regards the desire or the comprehension. Now therefore, as you may very well perceive for yourself, it means that the nature ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... his ruin in stupid and dazed amazement. Usually, to hear or to read about such a catastrophe as this is to get a vague, rather impressive notion of something picturesque and romantic. Ruined, like all the big fateful words, has a dignified sound. But the historians and novelists and poets and other keepers of human records ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... said the voice, which was to me as the fiat of life and of death, so utterly did it fill my existence: "why should we thus yield to a vague terror? Listen, my beloved! I know where the waters of the fountains of life roll their eternal waves—I know I can bear you thither and bid you drink from their source, and over lips so hallowed death hath no longer dominion. But, alas! I know not what may be the punishment. Like yourselves, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... So vague and uncertain was the information thus obtained, that STRABO, writing upwards of two centuries later, manifests irresolution in stating that Taprobane was an island[1]; and POMPONIUS MELA, who wrote early ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... know whether Agnes was not perverse about Caroline, whom she continued to call a mere fashionable young lady, not being able to find any other reproach than this vague one; but as to Clara, Marian herself could have found it in her heart to beat her when she made sillier speeches than usual in Agnes' hearing, and, above all, for having at this time a violent fit of her affection for Marian herself, whom ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... A vague scandal rose in Wyck-on-the-Hill. It went from mouth to mouth in bar parlours and back shops; Major Markham transported it in his motor-car from Wyck Wold to the Halls and Manors of Winchway and Chipping Kingdon and Norton-in-Mark. It got an even firmer footing in the county than in Wyck, ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... Sophy's marriage, Christina was standing one evening at the gloaming, looking over the immense, cheerless waste of waters. Mists, vague and troublous as the background of dreams, were on the horizon, and there Was a feeling of melancholy in the air. But she liked the damp, fresh wind, with its taste of brine, and she drew her plaid round her, and breathed it with a ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... knowledge went, he probably had but a very confused idea. And if we refer to the poetic description in Psalm civ. 25, 26, we find "leviathan," though distinctly a sea creature, still one of which the writer had only a vague traditional idea, certainly not a known Mediterranean dolphin, for in Job xli. the same term is applied ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... those who read the fireside tales of Dickens, and are happy in their homes. The many elements which I have endeavoured to recall, mix all of them in the Christmas of the present, partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and obscure sentiment; partly as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as a portion of our own life. But there is one phase of poetry which we enjoy more fully than any previous age. That is music. Music ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... he could be at the thought that he had succeeded in cheating a foolish gentleman, and away he went to drink the value of his cross. At that time everything that I saw made a tremendous impression upon me. I had understood nothing about Russia before, and had only vague and fantastic memories of it. So I thought, 'I will wait awhile before I condemn this Judas. Only God knows what may be hidden in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
