"Definite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he had at first cultivated the intimacy with Wilhelmina more perhaps from distraction than with any definite purpose, is certain; but he soon found that her attractions were too great to permit him to continue it, if he had not serious intentions. When he had entered his own room, before he had been a week in the house, he had taxed himself severely as to the nature of ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... cursory glance, we may carry away wholly mistaken conceptions of its thought and purpose. Thus, for instance, the Roman Republic never assumed the definite design of conquering the world; its people had only the vaguest conception of whither the world might extend. They merely quarrelled with their neighbors, defeated and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the North-West Company. The grizzled partners, as they rubbed elbows in secret conclave, decided that something must be done to crush this troublesome settlement. Whether or not they formed any definite plan cannot be ascertained. It is scarcely believable that at this meeting was plotted the opposition to Lord Selkirk's enterprise which was to begin with deceit and perfidy and to culminate in bloodshed. Among the Nor'westers were men of great worth and integrity. There were, however, ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... destruction suffered by the subcutaneous tissue, and the rapid repair which follows, since macroscopically the track is scarcely discernible. Reference to plate I. shows the remarkable fact that even at this early date considerable progress towards definite healing has occurred, and a thin layer of stratified epidermis covers the original opening. The question may be raised whether the origin of this epidermal layer is not in part a floating up of the margins of the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... uncertain character not devoid of pleasantry, perhaps, but indistinctly felt, and not calculated to raise laughter. This has led some to observe that in contradistinction to it—"Wit is sharply defined like a crystal." So Mr. Dallas writes, "Wit is of the known and definite; humour is of the unknown and indefinable. Wit is the unexpected exhibition of some clearly defined contrast or disproportion; humour the unexpected indication of a vague discordance, in which the sense or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... her difficulty. Then I dispatched a pair of trusty scouts in quest of certain information I needed, and in eight hours they were back with it. After that, I felt more myself than I had done for some time, just because I was now committed to definite, perhaps even dangerous, action. ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... and generosity of nature. He was back at home in the Peschiere on Wednesday the ninth of April. Here he continued to write to me every week, for as long as he remained, of whatever he had seen: with no definite purpose as yet, but the pleasure of interchanging with myself the impressions and emotions undergone by him. "Seriously," he wrote to me on the 13th of April, "it is a great pleasure to me to find that you are really pleased with these shadows ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... shock derived from a wave of ether of such and such a length, we see no reason why it should do so. We may, no doubt, make a still wider generalization, and say that every event in Nature is invariably preceded by some definite complex of conditions, {34} and so arrive at a general law of the Uniformity of Nature. And such a law is undoubtedly the express or implied basis of all inference in the Physical Sciences. When we have once accepted that law (as the whole mass of our experience ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... Rochefoucauld did not stay long with the army. He was badly wounded at the siege of Mardik, and returned from thence to Paris. On recovering from his wounds, the war of the Fronde broke out. This war is said to have been most ridiculous, as being carried on without a definite object, a plan, or a leader. But this description is hardly correct; it was the struggle of the French nobility against the rule of the Court; an attempt, the final attempt, to recover their lost influence over the state, and to save themselves from sinking under ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... housekeeper there, had worked one summer at Saratoga, Wyoming. It was she who told me of the pine forests. I had never seen a pine until I came to Colorado; so the idea of a home among the pines fascinated me. At that time I was hoping to pass the Civil-Service examination, with no very definite idea as to what I would do, but just to be improving my time and opportunity. I never went to a public school a day in my life. In my childhood days there was no such thing in the Indian Territory part of Oklahoma where we lived, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... essential fact of it, simply on some calculation and adjustment about the circumstantials. Of Ireland, who I surmise is busy in the problem even now, you will hear by and by, probably in more definite terms: I did not see him again after my first notice of him to you; but there is no doubt concerning his determinations (for all manner of reasons) to get you to Lancashire, to England;—and in fact it is an adventure which I think you ought to contemplate as fixed,—say for this year and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... disreputable attire, incongruous as it was in that neighbourhood, few people that he passed paid any attention to him, none gave him more than a casual glance—Jimmie Dale swung along, upright, with no attempt to make himself inconspicuous, hurrying a little, as one intent upon a definite errand. As he neared his house he slowed his pace a little until a couple, who were passing in front of it, had gone on; then he went up the steps, but noiselessly as a shadow now, to the front door, opened it ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in particular of Trafalgar, both of high importance—one of the Victory after the battle, now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the death of Nelson, in his own gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealized into compositions, others of definite localities; together with classical compositions, Romes, and Carthages, and such others, by the myriad, with mythological, historical, or allegorical figures—nymphs, monsters, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... expression which did not convey a distinct idea to his own mind. There is none of that "darkness visible" of style which he had formerly affected, and in which the greatest poets only can succeed. Everything is definite, significant, and picturesque. His early writings resembled the gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to imitate ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... having a fundamental and harmonics (multiples), the wave-train consists of a complex series of condensations and rarefactions of the air or other transmitting medium. In the case of mere noises the train of vibrations is irregular and follows no definite order. This is the difference between vowel sounds and other musical tones on the one hand and all unmusical sounds (or noises) ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... pass the word. I'm perfectly willing that others should have the honor and the glory and the limelight; but after the play is over I want to be the boy to whom the report is made and who gives directions for the next performance. Is that definite enough?" ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... called to the navigation room to confer on tactics. The Niccola swerved and drove toward the object Baird identified as a Plumie ship. This was at 05 hours 10 minutes ship time. The human ship had a definite velocity sunward, of course. The Plumie ship had been concealed by the meteor swarm of a totally unknown comet. It was an excellent way to avoid observation. On the other hand, the Niccola had been mapping, which was ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... letter from London to-day," she said, "with definite arrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend to try and master at least the rudiments of the language—barbarous though it is—for I want to get some good from the journey. And if one has one's wits about one, much can be learnt from ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... here, Polly?" she asked. "Can you recall whether she said where she was going? Just a word might give him something definite to work on." ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... own times in the Vedas and Brahmanas and Upanishads. To none of these books, which have, for the most part, reached us in various recensions often showing considerable discrepancies and obviously later interpolations, is it possible to ascribe any definite date. But in them we undoubtedly possess a genuine key to the religious thought and social conceptions, and even inferentially to the political institutions of the Aryan Hindus through the many centuries that rolled by between their first southward migrations into the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Radical Cabinet STEEN did not venture to carry the Consular question to an extreme. They were contented to play with fire. Before the King found an opportunity to give his definite answer to the consular question, the Cabinet retired. The Ministerial strike recently set on the political stage, was even then in the perspective. But the King having vainly tried to form a Conservative ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... would have said furiously, "No, I'm damned if I'd have shown you the letter." She would have liked that. It would have affirmed her suspicions that there was "something in it"; and she wished her suspicions to be affirmed. It would have been something definite. Something justifiably incentive of anger, of resentment, of jealousy. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Mouse, episteuete an emoi. peri gar emou ekeinos egrapsen. Ei de tois ekeinou grammasin ou pisteuete, pos tois emois rhemasi pisteusete];—It is clear that the Lord must here have had in view a distinct passage of the Pentateuch,—a clear and definite declaration of Moses. Dexterous explanations (Bengel: Nunquam non; Tholuck: The prophetical and typical element implied in the whole form of worship) are of no apologetic value, and it is not possible summarily, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... vague to her. She attached no definite danger to his words. She only thought—to see him was so great a joy—if Mary forbade it, would she not take it if she could ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... the cellar, of course, and as the weather has been very cold, the celery and other tender things were frozen. General and Mrs. Bourke have returned, and at once insisted upon our going to their house, but as there was nothing definite about the time when we will get our house, we said "No." We are taking our meals with them, however, and Hang is there also, teaching their new Chinaman. But I can assure you that I am more than cross. If Major Bagley had selected the house the first time he came, or even ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... it can be classed as a disease) may depend upon so many causes, and be so very different in its effects, degrees of intensity, and the kind of pain or sensation attending it, that one will find it very difficult to mark out any definite treatment. I shall, therefore, only point out some of the more frequent cases, and the indications for ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... Negroes in the matter of privileges and accommodations and none in favor of Negroes that compromised disciplinary standards. The committee wanted local commanders to be reminded that maintaining proper discipline and good order among soldiers, and between soldiers and civilians, was a definite command responsibility.[2-68] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... is a state of the soul very clear in my perception, although I may not be able to give you a definite impression of this state. In order to benefit you, it became necessary for me to enter into your state, to have an experimental knowledge, an endurance and suffering of the same state. By this experience I have been brought into closer relation ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... note in using this force for our own benefit. A necessary preliminary is to study our problems, analyze our difficulties, make sure exactly what we want to do and wherein we fail; and thereby to pin our aspirations down to definite resolves to act in certain ways rather than in certain other ways. Our ideals are apt to be vague and even conflicting, or else so abstract and general as to fail to direct us with precision to any concrete act. We realize dumbly that we are not what we should be, and we grope for ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... fell in with the Chief Engineer. Mr. Gray informs me that he applied for work, admitting that he was aboard without leave, or passage, or funds, or anything else, it would seem. But, as for where he lay in hiding, there hasn't been anything definite arrived at as yet, sir. He seems to have been hiding in a rather ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... deepened, and for the first time, as their eyes met, he noticed a faint embarrassment in hers. Could it be that his nearness was, after all, the cause of her confusion? The thought turned his vague impatience with her into a definite resentment toward himself. There was really no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure. Why had he not shipped the girl off to Joigny by the evening train, instead of urging her to delay, and using Cerdine as a pretext? Paris was full of people he knew, and his annoyance ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... "noteworthy" is applied to achievements in all branches of effort that rank among the members of any profession or calling as equal, at least, to that which an F.R.S. holds among scientific men. This affords a convenient and sufficiently definite standard of merit. I could think of none more appropriate when addressing scientific men, and it seems to have been generally understood in the desired sense. It includes more than a half of those whose names appear in the modern editions of "Who's Who," which are ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... "If you bring me definite information," he said slowly, "and on the strength of that my government should come in possession of the Sialpore treasure, I will promise you in writing five per cent. of it for the funds of the priesthood ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... thanks in it, they're coming to you. Between you and the elephant we'll have another turn-away today. You have already put a good bit of money in my pocket, and I'm not forgetting it. I have made definite arrangements for you and your chum to have a berth in a closed wagon after this. You will be good enough to offer no objections this ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... unlimited jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds in the exercise of the mind,—attaining its real end, as an entire contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the more abundant ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... there was one pretty definite menace which had encountered Hope from various quarters of late. By whose agency, and by what means, he did not know, but he apprehended a design to supplant him in his practice. There was something ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... names of men ended in a; and we find such names as Isa, Offa, Penda, as the names of kings. Nouns at this period had five cases, with inflexions for each; now we possess but one inflexion— that for the possessive. —Even the definite article was inflected. —The infinitive of verbs ended in an; and the sign to— which we received from the Danes— was not in use, except for the dative of the infinitive. This dative infinitive is still preserved in such phrases as "a house to let;" "bread to eat;" "water ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... different points. Also there had sifted from the south, from the Isthmus of Darien and the Panama States, some account of these white-skinned demi-gods. Just enough rumor was current to cause alarm and uneasiness in the Aztec Empire when the attention of the rulers was called to some definite facts. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began to interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was startled by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious, so obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently contemptuous of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the point where our faith staggers still? We can believe in the wonder-working power of God on the distant horizon of the past, or on the equally distant horizon of the future; but that He should have a definite and particular care for our life, that our prayers should touch Him, that He should give us the desire of our heart—this staggers us, and we feel it is too good ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... not to perceive the cause, and hastened, by her little attentions, to remove the feeling: not that she had any definite ideas upon the subject any more than Joey; but she could not bear to see ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... in Europe, but which still exists in many parts of the world. Now, just as the flint arrow-heads are scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles, and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of race, so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of folklore. The stone arrow-head buried in a Scottish cairn is like those which were interred with Algonquin chiefs. The flints found in Egyptian soil, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... liked her all the better for saying nothing more definite, but in the ordinary sense of the word she did not have a good night, for long after Thekla Sonnenthal was asleep, and dreaming of her German home, Luke Raeburn's daughter lay awake, thinking of the faith ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... companion, and two agreeable ladies, were already in their berths very sick, but I did not get into mine because a cockroach, looking as large as a mouse, occupied the pillow, and a companion not much smaller was roaming over the quilt without any definite purpose. I can't vouch for the accuracy of my observation, but it seemed to me that these tremendous creatures were dark red, with eyes like lobsters', and antennae two inches long. They looked capable of carrying ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... should be made from the best German potash glass, "blue-lined," stout and heavy, with the edge of the mouth of the tube slightly turned over, but not to such an extent as to form a definite rim. (Cost about $1.50, or 6 shillings per gross.) Such tubes are expensive it is true, but they are sufficiently stout to resist rough handling, do not usually break if accidentally allowed to drop (a point of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... perception, that he was passionately fond of me. And I still think so. But as time went by, things did not alter; our wedding was a vague expectation; even more than before Mr. Morris avoided mention of anything definite. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no brawler, no fanatic, no pharisee; not too credulous in hope, not too desperate in purpose; warm, but not hasty; ardent, and full of definite power, but not running about to be pleased and deceived ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... "Nothing definite to report today, Herr Captain. If rumor speaks truly, discontent will shortly reduce the standing army to a man ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... He gave no definite answer to her inquiry, but requested her to retire for the night, saying that James would probably be home in the morning, bright and early as ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... to get 5s. a week; but he said because I left the work to work at the 'Lessing' I should get no more. I wrote about it to Mr. Bruce, who wanted a detailed account of my work, which I gave him; but I got no definite answer. When Williamson was working at the 'Lessing,' he was not allowed by the laird to employ men Fair Isle. The landlord or his factor said they would be put out if they worked to him. I was forbidden ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... detected, either of omission or commission, as affecting the ministerial policy. The objections were pure generalities; and even Lord John Russell, who adopted the usual complaint against the minister, that he brought forward no definite plan, and whose own field of choice was therefore left all the wider, offered nothing more specific than the following mysterious suggestion, which is probably a Theban hieroglyphic—that, like as the "celebrated" Cromwell, in times past, did appoint ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... intelligence can understand; but the folly in meanness, injustice, or impiety is a harder matter. Believing as I do that the folly is equally demonstrable in all of these cases, I propose not to accept your ready assent in the simpler case until its grounds have been made as clear and definite as possible. I feel convinced that prudence is not so simple a matter as appears; in fact that it involves ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... these charmingly naive representations of country life break absolutely every rule that is supposed to govern the art of sculpture. Their relief is very slight indeed, they have no definite limits, for they wander vaguely round the windows, with trees and running water and clouds and birds and houses all on the same plane, and all with equal "values." I have not the slightest doubt that just as the Field of the Cloth of Gold was copied from a historical tapestry ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... hunting distractedly for you on the hill," said Bob, glad to have something definite to do. "I think he's caught Lady, and I'll go and tell him ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... the life of a home-bred youth, it was becoming a burden to him. What outlet he found in verse we do not know, because nothing survives of what he may then have written. It is possible that the fate of his early poems, and, still more, the change of ideals, retarded the definite impulse towards poetic production. It would be a relief to him to sketch out and elaborate the plan of his future work—his great mental portrait gallery of typical men and women; and he was doing so during at least ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Some said that a husband had surprised his wife; others, that the women had started the row and that the owner of the house had tried to kill them in order to make them stop. But no one knew anything definite. M. le commissaire was greatly perplexed ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... their triumph through Dylks's failure to work the miracle he had promised, and then his failure to show himself in the Temple; but they pushed on with no definite purpose except perhaps to break up some meeting of his followers, when one of the Hounds, yelping and baying in acceptance of their nickname, broke upon them from the woods they were passing with word that they had found Dylks in Enraghty's ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... first, the captain I was after. I found this personage and found him highly scandalised, but he gave me no hope that we were in error, and his displeasure, expressed with seamanlike plainness, was a definite settlement of the question. From the deck, where I merely turned round and looked, I saw the light of another summer day, the coast of Ireland green and near and the sea a more charming colour than it ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... upon the musty subterfuge which, by a shifting value of the term, represents 'gentleman' as simply signifying a man of honour, probity, education, and taste; for, by immemorial usage, by current application, and by every rule which gives definite meaning to words, the man with a shovel in his hand, a rule in his pocket, an axe on his shoulder, a leather apron on his abdomen, or any other badge of manual labour about him—his virtues else be they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo—is carefully ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... other conceptions in the systems of philosophers, and not properly distinguished from the conceptions of the understanding; we have exposed their origin and, thereby, at the same time their determinate number, and presented them in a systematic connection, and have thus marked out and enclosed a definite ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... though out of the world we were near it. It was the new-comer's "singular air" which established his identity. Amedee's vagueness had irked me, but the thing itself—the "singular air"—was not at all vague. Instantly perceptible, it was an investiture; marked, definite—and intangible. My interrogator was "that ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Church; on the left is Lorenzo's dust, coffered in imperishable marble, over which he sits plotting for ever. The statues that Michelangelo has carved there have been called Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn; but indeed these names, as I have said, are far too definite for them: they are just a gesture of despair, of despair of a world which has come to nothing. They are in no real sense of the word political, but rather an expression, half realised after all, of some immense sadness, some terrible regret, which has ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... measure, myself, Mr. Bender," his lordship replied, "the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin of any definite report of which—in such circles!—I'm afraid I rather wonder if you yourself ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... calculation, of having a definite policy, which Caroline gave, was far from a false one; but there was this to be said for her—that there were extenuating circumstances which her friends ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... not yet been able to correct your papers, Patty," said Miss Graveson, "so I cannot set you any definite work; but you can come with me to the Fifth Form room, and I will find something for you ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... definite statement and not a question, and from it Larssen judged that the financier had told her everything from start ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that point the unhappy youth had entertained no definite idea as to why he was hurrying towards the hut of Paul Bevan, or what he meant to say for himself on reaching it. But towards noon, as he drew near to it, the thought of Betty in her innocence and purity oppressed him. She rose before his mind's ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... actively retaliated upon his brother, and he knew him well enough to be sure that such an affront was unforgivable. The farm would no longer be safe for him. With startling suddenness his vague notions of leaving home were crystallized into a resolve. No definite plan formed itself in his mind as he raced over the fields. He only knew that the moment for departure had come, and he was hastening now to secure the little money he possessed and to make a bundle of his clothes and the few things he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... gold, and stamped it with the mint-mark that alone gives currency, the world might have had the profit, and he the fame. My mind was the richer merely by the knowledge that it was there. But the chief profit of those wild days, to him and me, lay not in any definite idea, not in any angular or rounded truth, which we dug out of the shapeless mass of problematical stuff, but in the freedom which we thereby won from all custom and conventionalism and fettering influences of man on man. We were so free to-day that it was impossible to be slaves again ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... together," he said; "and, of course, there are many people who would be but too glad to receive them. Miss Wodehouse is old enough to protect her sister—though, of course, the balance of character is on the other side," said the inconsiderate young man; at which Mr Proctor winced, but made no definite reply. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a teacher in this city, and a subscriber to THE GREAT ROUND WORLD. My pupils read it, in consequence of which they have more definite ideas on subjects relating to current events than many older people. Many of the parents of my pupils have spoken in praise of it. The other members of my family as well as myself read it instead of wasting time over the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the candid friends of his schooldays. A dreamer, indeed, he always was, but he had learned from Bishop Butler, whom he reverenced profoundly and spoke of as "the Copernicus of ethics," that there is no practice more fatal to moral strength than dreaming divorced from action. Some concrete act, some definite thing to be done, was now always in his mind, but always, it may be added, as the realisation of some principle arrived at by serious and accurate thinking. He had acquired clear convictions, his powers of application were enormous, he had a boundless fertility of invention, and was manifestly ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... one of the most definite statements in the present Essay of the possible importance of sports or what would now be called mutations. As is well known the author afterwards doubted whether species could arise in this way. See Origin, Ed. v. p. 103, vi. p. 110, also Life and Letters, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... marked and striking. A direct exchange of the male and female roles can thus be achieved. Castration after puberty cannot modify profoundly structures like the skeleton which are already completed. Yet it may unquestionably bring about definite retrogressive changes in the secondary sex characters: reduction or loss of virility, diminution of facial and body hair, and a general presenility or ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... more hosts upon which they live, alternating from one to the other, and that such is the case with the malarial parasite is at least probable. But as yet bacteriologists have been unable to discover anything very definite in regard to the matter. Until we can learn something in regard to its life outside the blood of man we can do little in the way of devising ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... involuntary cry of pain which is conventionally represented by "Oh!" be looked upon as a true speech symbol equivalent to some such idea as "I am in great pain," it is just as allowable to interpret the appearance of clouds as an equivalent symbol that carries the definite message "It is likely to rain." A definition of language, however, that is so extended as to cover every type of inference ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... agency was directed to follow and the fact that it would be impossible for Congress to prescribe specific minimum wages for particular industries,[77] a unanimous court sustained the law on the ground that the sole function of the Administrator was to put into effect the definite ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... best for him to do with his plot. Find out his inclinations; give him sympathy and help. Bring out his natural aptitude for farming life, teach him method in his work; teach him to think his way out; and, best of all, teach him to work for definite results; that is what is wanted in any line of life, especially in ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Alexis Mikhailof, betrothed of Natalie Ivanhoff, had been, without explanation or chance of parting word, banished to Siberia under sentence of perpetual exile. Later had come rumour of his escape, then of death, then of recapture. Nothing definite could be learned. When the Princess Helene made her invitation, it was accepted gratefully, hope suggesting that in the New World might be found relief from the torture that was relived in every vibration of the invisible wires that held memory fast to the surroundings in which the terrible ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... of the older men in this city but few have been able to give me any definite information. A few days ago a pedler came to the camp. I bought some of his olives and I asked him whether he had ever heard of the famous Messiah who was killed when he was young. He said that he remembered it very clearly, because his father had taken him to Golgotha ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... make longer marches. Eventually the last camp before Tanganyika was reached in safety, and here Stanley took out a new suit of clothes, had his helmet chalked, and made himself spruce, for the reports of a white man's presence at the lake became more definite. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... tide of life at Charing Cross," said Dr. Johnson. Here is Charing Cross, but without the full tide of life. A perpetual stream of figures leaves no definite shapes upon the picture. But on one side of this stereoscopic doublet a little London "gent" is leaning pensively against a post; on the other side he is seen sitting at the foot of the next post;—what is the matter with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... county of Herts it is computed there may be sixty families, having many children. Whether they are quite so numerous in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamptonshire the answers are not sufficiently definite to determine. In Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, greater numbers are calculated upon. 9. More than half their numbers follow no business; others are dealers in horses and asses, &c., &c. 10. Children are brought up in the habits of their parents, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... for keener sensations and an appetite for freer inquiry than was open to a theological student even of a dissenting church. After a year at Hackney he withdrew to his father's home, where he found nothing more definite to do than to "solve some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbled sea-side."[2] This was probably the period of his most extensive reading. He absorbed the English ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... across Owen Fitzgerald's brain as he sat there alone, in his hunting gear, leaning on the still covered breakfast-table. They floated across his brain backwards and forwards, and at last remained there, taking almost the form of a definite purpose. He would make a bargain with Herbert, let each of them keep that which was fairly his own; let Herbert have all the broad lands of Castle Richmond; let him have the title, the seat in parliament, and the county honour; but ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of cases will, however, bear some further illustration. We meet with women who are healthy in mind, but who have some chronic pain or some definite malady which does not get well, either because the usual tonics fail, or because their occupations in life keep them always in a state of exhaustion. If by rest we slow the machinery, and by massage and electricity deprive rest of its evils, we can often obtain cures which ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... once dashing soldier increased daily, and as it could be traced to no definite cause, he gradually became a physiological enigma; and thence naturally a pet of the medical profession. Not that he was a profitable patient, for the necessities of the family were too great to allow of so expensive a luxury as ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... One usually says: 'Did it?' 'Is it then?' or 'Was it?' But I almost think present conditions require a more definite statement of fact. I fancy one would say: 'How do you do, baby? I am your papa!' ... This way, Ronnie, in my own old nurseries. Oh, darling, I am afraid I am going to cry! But you must not mind. They will only be tears of unutterable joy. Think what ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... strangely indistinct, that I could not be certain it was more than a chance combination of tree-shapes. As I drew nearer, its lines yet held together, but neither they nor the body of it grew at all more definite; and when at length I stood in front of it, I remained as doubtful of its nature as before. House or castle habitable, it certainly was not; it might be a ruin overgrown with ivy and roses! Yet of building hid in the foliage, not the poorest wall-remnant could I discern. Again and again ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... once. Despondency had succeeded to her excitement—this was all quite in the Tristram way—and she had expected no fruit from Mina's expedition. But Mina came home, not indeed with anything very definite, yet laden with a whole pack of possibilities. She put that point about the viscounty, which puzzled her, first of all. It alone was enough to fire Cecily to animation. Then she led up, through Lady Evenswood, to Mr Disney himself, confessing however that ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the incompatibility of the Infinite with the Definite; of a Being who loves, who thinks, who hates; of an Actus purus who is called jealous, wrathful and revengeful, with an Eternal that makes for righteousness. In the presence of the endless contradictions, which ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... beseeching not to be told any more; but Miss Landless, begging permission of Miss Twinkleton to go and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing that she would take it if it were not given, struck out the more definite course of going to Mr. Crisparkle's ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... He had no definite notion of what he expected or what he must avoid. He was only conscious that the pavilion, with its silk draperies, its scent of musk, and its intolerable secrecy, was no longer endurable. He felt cramped ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... could be added an untroubled conscience, at least up to that period when Colonel French dawned upon her horizon, and for some time thereafter. If she had put herself foremost in all her thoughts, it had been the unconscious egotism of youth, with no definite purpose of self-seeking. The things for which she wished most were associated with distant places, and her longing for them had never taken the form of envy of those around her. Indeed envy is scarcely a vice of youth; it is ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... named the Benedictus from the first word in the Latin version. It is an ecstatic expression of gratitude to God for his boundless goodness. The poem possibly may be divided into five stanzas of four lines each; but there is a definite pause after the third of these stanzas when the thought turns from the work of Christ to the specific ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... of watching Captain West. In a way he bears a sort of resemblance to several of Washington's portraits. He is six feet of aristocratic thinness, and has a very definite, leisurely and stately grace of movement. His thinness is almost ascetic. In appearance and manner he is the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Museum I am able to supplement the foregoing arrangement in force in Cambridgeshire by more definite particulars of the organized precautions to be taken in counties lying nearest the coast as soon as the presence of the Invader became known. As a preliminary, returns had to be made as to the driving of live-stock farther inland away from the coast "in order that indemnification might ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... was a dense sense of the conventional—a logical enough birthright—in my make-up. I, who had known him so long, so well, seemed, nevertheless, when he married, to have fancied there was some hocus-pocus in the ceremony, which should make a definite change in a man's character, as well as a presumable change in his ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... der Weyden, wherein all idea of beauty, of composition, of universal appeal is subordinated as it is in no other art—in that of Holland no more than in that of Italy—to the representation in the most definite, precise, and powerful way of some intensely human personality. There is the same extraordinary concreteness in one of Matsys's apostles and one ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... in the ancient parental control of marriage choices was the definite placing of youth under the leadership of age and thus holding firm the inherited "mores" to make the family stable in ideal as in practice. We have now a revolt of youth against the leadership of age. We have now, even among those whose affection for their ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes, wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would yield to the professional career she ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... morning. He had forgotten, or put aside, all Maurice Mangan's cool-blooded presentation of his case; undefined longings were in his brain; the future was to be quite different from the past—and somehow Honnor Cunyngham was the central figure in these mirage-like visions. He had formed no definite plans; he had prepared no persuasive appeal; the only and immediate thing he knew was that he wished to be in the same place with her, breathing the same air with her, with the chance of catching a distant glimpse of her, even if he were himself to remain unseen. Would ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... definite information was received from the Khan of Nawagai, that a determined assault would be made on the camp that night. The cavalry reconnaissance again came in touch with the enemy at nightfall. The officers had dinner an hour earlier, and had just finished, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... gathered the sum total of the engagements taking place in a labyrinth of trenches is satisfactory up to the hour of cabling and we have taken some 200 prisoners. I hope I shall be able to send definite news to-morrow morning." ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... general, or a grandee, or a regiment of infantry, usually at the cheapest price at which those articles could be purchased, and always with the utmost delicacy with which such traffic could be conducted. Men conveyed themselves to government for a definite price—fixed accurately in florins and groats, in places and pensions—while a decent gossamer of conventional phraseology was ever allowed to float over the nakedness of unblushing treason. Men high in station, illustrious by ancestry, brilliant in valor, huckstered themselves, and swindled a confiding ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... But it is already clear that, when made acceptable, it will be of the greatest value for the history of Indian literature and of Indian ideas. So much is uncertain at present in that history for want of definite dates that the voluminous writings of an author whose date is approximately certain will afford a standard by which the age of other writings can be tested. And as the original commentaries in Sinhalese are now lost his works are the only evidence we have of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... herself, with her new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,—according to the custom and Christianity of the time,—her hatefullest, neighbours,— Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile states also of those ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... that all in the almshouse went to bed so early. He had not yet given up the hope of escaping that night, though he had as yet arranged no definite plan of escape. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... works or receipt books sold for family use today we discovered that only general information and directions were given. In this connection, we have endeavored, and we believe successfully, to supply what other books have neglected,—definite directions for the preparation, dose, etc. Should a physician leave a bottle of medicine at your home without directions you would not think of using it, and it is just as useless and indiscreet for a young mother to attempt ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... not give his authority for the Spanish original of his Romance Muy Doloroso. In default of any definite information, it may be surmised that his fancy was caught by some broadside or chap-book which chanced to come into his possession, and that he made his translation without troubling himself about the origin or composition of the ballad. As it stands, the "Romance" is a cento of three ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... day they discussed ways and means. His definite picture of getting married and staying in hotels in Sydney had made the dream concrete. She had hitherto simply seen them both glittering along in an aura of Deliverance. Right at the back of her mind she still clung to pictures of knightly mail, obtained from she had not the slightest ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... contemporaries left memoirs or correspondence in which he figures. Above all there is the edition, in fourteen volumes, of his own writings compiled by Mr. Worthington C. Ford. And yet many persons find something that baffles them. They do not recognize a definite flesh and blood Virginian named Washington behind it all. Even so sturdy an historian as Professor Channing calls him the most elusive of historic personages. Who has not wished that James Boswell could have spent a year with Wellington on terms as intimate as those he spent with Dr. Johnson ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... be condemned to read nothing but Ossian for a year. The short staccato sentences, the difficulty of getting hold of anything definite amid so many moonbeams, gliding ghosts, whistling reeds, and feasts of shells, has a very debilitating effect on the mind. There is too much weeping: one is constantly saying with Tennyson, "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean." Yet, no one can ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the king suffered, or perhaps feigned, in Segovia, afforded a plausible pretence for postponing his journey, while meantime the preparations for it were carried on with the utmost activity. At last, when the urgent and repeated solicitations of his sister compelled him to make a definite explanation of his plans, he gave orders that the Duke of Alva should set out forthwith with an army, both to clear the way before him of rebels, and to enhance the splendor of his own royal arrival. He did not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... house is being built provides the carpenters with board and lodging, and is also at hand with his neighbours to help in bringing wood from the bush, scaffolding, and other heavy work. As we have just remarked, a Samoan house-builder made no definite charge, but left the price of his work to the judgment, generosity, and means of the person who employed him. It was a lasting disgrace to any one to have it said that he paid his carpenter shabbily. It branded him as a person of no rank or ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... referred to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs. So warm is the sentiment in favor of Cuba throughout the country, that many members of the House of Representatives are said to believe that they must pass a definite measure in support of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Something definite, however, had been already gained. Congress had asserted its right under the War powers of the Constitution, to release from all claim to Service or Labor those Slaves whose Service or Labor had been used in hostility to the Union. And while some of the Union Generals obstructed the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... at the same time, observe that she had no sails aboard, except her courses and main-topsail. This circumstance made them conclude that it must be one of our squadron, which had probably suffered as severely in her sails and rigging as we had done. They were prevented, however, from forming more definite conjectures concerning her; for, after viewing her a short time, the weather grew thick and hazy, and she was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Chinese intellect, for Chinese to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water; it is imperative that if the nation goes to war she should actually fight, as the experience of the last five years shows what she can do with skill and science. In advancing the contention that a definite offer of a picked Chinese Division, or of several divisions, to Great Britain, against a definite treaty, to hasten the Mesopotamian campaign would be a master-stroke of policy, we have to recall that Japan herself refused to send contingents to the ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... agreed on in the family council. It was in effect a frank apology that I wanted, but I knew him too well to suppose he would ever consent to make an apology in words, or to admit to me that he had made a mistake; and I left the solution in my mother's hands, with the understanding that the definite promise should be made to her, and I knew too that this would hold him as completely as if made to a public authority. Nothing could bring her to contradict him openly, and in all my life I never saw her make a sign ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... from the carriage. But no sooner did she relax her hold of her companion, than the latter rolled over in a senseless heap, and Theresa, in growing alarm and anxiety, could only lift up the fainting figure and support it across her lap. Thus she sat for a while, too perturbed for definite thought, till suddenly, at a turn of the road, she caught sight of the luminous haze that hung over the city, and for a moment felt that she was saved. But the sensation of relief passed like a flash, as the meaning of the whole scheme dawned ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... intermediate one a Cheiracanthus of seven inches. The size of the fish evidently regulated that of the nodule. The coffin is generally as good a fit in size as in form; and the bulk of the nodule bears almost always a definite proportion to the amount of animal matter round which it had formed. I was a good deal struck, a few weeks ago, in glancing over a series of experiments conducted for a different purpose by a lady of singular ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
