"Indefinite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lowering of her hand the flame jumped and died in the throat of the chimney and set the hall awash with shadows. Falling away to a point of yellow, the lamp allowed the hall to assume a certain indefinite dignity of height and breadth and calm proportions; but when the flame rose Donnegan could see the broken balusters of the balustrade, the carpet, faded past any design and worn to rattiness, wall paper which had rotted or dried away and ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... from all allegiance to the Sardinian Government, because that government chose to abolish the infamous monasteries, which had been so long supported at the expense of an oppressed people! Was this not interfering in temporal matters? I could multiply authorities, Governor, to an indefinite extent, sustaining Mr. Wesley's views, and falsifying all you say, but this would swell my reply beyond what I intended in the outset. Let me call your attention to Brownson's Review, for July, 1853, where you will find all this power, and even more, claimed for the Pope, over temporal sovereigns ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... by these kind words, and a hope returned to him, that of winning the support of the all-powerful Prefect of the Index. He already regarded this ex-nuncio—who at Brussels and Vienna had acquired the worldly art of sending people away satisfied with indefinite promises though he meant to grant them nothing—as a man of rare intelligence and exquisite cordiality. And so once more he regained the fervour of his apostolate to express his views respecting the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of its pitch, intensify, and duration, without dragging in loose allusions to the endlessly varying sounds of nature. So should color be supplied with an appropriate system, based on the hue, value, and chroma[2] of our sensations, and not attempting to describe them by the indefinite and varying colors of natural objects. The system now to be considered portrays the three dimensions of color, and measures each by an appropriate scale. It does not rest upon the whim of an individual, but upon physical measurements ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... without conjugation; no parthenogenesis or budding. So far as we have studied the question we see in the animal and vegetable kingdoms sexual reproduction, or conjugation, as a sine qua non for the indefinite continuation of life. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... to leave out the words 'shall be equal to the pound avoirdupois now in use, and,' for the reasons suggested on the second resolution, to wit, that our object is, to have one determinate standard. The pound avoirdupois now in use, is an indefinite thing. The committee of parliament reported variations among the standard weights of the exchequer. Different persons weighing the cubic foot of water have made it, some more and some less than one thousand ounces avoirdupois; according as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and the Cherub and Pilar had not had many hours beauty sleep; but we could not leave for an indefinite absence without bidding them good-bye; and we were on our way to knock at Colonel O'Donnel's door when Pilar appeared from the ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for reputable fairies, the good people are not solitary, but quite sociable, and always live in large societies, the members of which pursue the cooeperative plan of labor and enjoyment, owning all their property, the kind and amount of which are somewhat indefinite, in common, and uniting their efforts to accomplish any desired object, whether of work or play. They travel in large bands, and although their parties are never seen in the daytime, there is little difficulty in ascertaining their line of march, for, "sure they make the terriblest ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... involuntarily as he recalls similar indefinite promises; but it is impossible to insist upon interrupting important business. He ventures another remark, implying that prompt payment would oblige ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... George and I do, that the days are not half long enough. They have got their bedsteads and washstands done, and are now going to make couches for George and myself, and an indefinite number of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... indefinite question, and became a shade paler than it was by nature, as he replied, hesitatingly, that he had been thinking over it, and that he had made up his mind not ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... disengaged times, the tobacconist had announced it in his window as 'apartments' for a single gentleman, and Mr Swiveller, following up the hint, never failed to speak of it as his rooms, his lodgings, or his chambers, conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leaving their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty halls, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... habits closely, says of them: "They are rarely seen on their way down stream, and it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature to the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare's description ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... son-in-law's failure fell like a thunderbolt and affected him more than it did Daisy. Shrewd, ambitious, and scheming, he had for years planned for his daughter a moneyed marriage, and now she was returned upon his hands for an indefinite time, with her naturally luxurious tastes intensified by recent indulgence, and her husband a ruined man. It was not a pleasant picture to contemplate, and Mr. McDonald's face was cloudy and thoughtful for many days until ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... perhaps in her middle thirties. Her hair beneath the simple blue chip hat, had gray strands. There was a hesitating quality about her, as though she had never done so daring a thing as reach a decision; a wavering, indefinite figure, with a wistfulness, a soft appeal, quite charming. That she had never come in contact with realities showed in the wide innocence of the childlike eyes; the sometime trembling of the lips as when a thought as now engendered by ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... glory or of happiness. I have never seen myself in imagination great or famous, or even a husband, a father, an influential citizen. This indifference to the future, this absolute self-distrust, are, no doubt, to be taken as signs. What dreams I have are all vague and indefinite; I ought not to live, for I am now scarcely capable of living. Recognize your place; let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so. Renounce yourself, accept ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... subject of a spiritual future, could have given any rational explanation of why he or she held certain vague ideas on the subject of salvation, or put off the deeper consideration of the subject to some indefinite period when they would have had their fill of vanities, and lost either the means or ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with in definite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definiteness." Music embodied in a golden mist of thought and sentiment— this ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Julian, but he did not stop slaying them; and so intent was he on stretching his bow, drawing his sword and whipping out his knife, that he had little thought for aught else. He knew that he was hunting in some country since an indefinite time, through the very fact of his existence, as everything seemed to occur with the ease one experiences in dreams. But presently an extraordinary ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... certainly puzzled me at that instant to define my identity. "Thirty years ago," I reflected, "I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am I, sure enough?" It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me then. Standing there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with the problem, and was constrained to fall back ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... away with the confusion resulting from an indefinite meaning of the term boiler horse power, the Committee of Judges in charge of the boiler trials at the Centennial Exposition, 1876, at Philadelphia, ascertained that a good engine of the type prevailing at the time ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... lying on the couch beside the crystal, idly watching what scenes were drifting, mist-like, through its depths—scenes vague, and faded in colour, and of indefinite outline; for, like the monotone of a half-heard conversation which does not concern a listener these passing phantoms ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... I don't know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But it's something quite indefinite—hard to think, hard to comprehend. I'd like to howl with laughter and I don't know why ... to shriek, and I don't know ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... father's next of kin, but it would save trouble to talk it over. All things considered, Mr. Carruthers did not find it a difficult task to make his pleasant new acquaintance reconsider his decision and commit himself to an indefinite prolongation of Bridesdale hospitality. Yet, as he entered the gate, he almost repented his weakness, on hearing the eye-glassed Lamb say: "What ohfully jawlly times we hod, Morjorie, when you and I were sweethorts." He wished ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to capital punishments. He believed, not in the ultimate perfection of mankind, but in their progressive perfectibility. He thought that improvement was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under Republican than under Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what hands the power itself ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of cultures. As a result of the unprecedented migrations of the last half-century we have in the United States the greatest variety of social types ever brought so closely together. An opportunity is offered either for the perpetuation of each racial type by inbreeding, with the prospect of an indefinite stratification of society, or for the amalgamation of all cultural and racial elements into a homogeneous whole, and the development of a race more versatile and adaptable than any the world has yet known. The general tendency will undoubtedly ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... written on those principles upon which art is founded, and great ingenuity displayed. But treatises on taste, on beauty, on grace, and other perceptions of intellectual pleasure, are not very satisfactory, and must be necessarily indefinite. In what does beauty consist? Do we arrive at any clearer conceptions of it by definitions? Whether beauty, the chief glory of the fine arts, consists in certain arrangements and proportions of the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Ages; therefore, as soon as men came into existence that were not serfs and were not nobles, they had to struggle for status by organizing themselves into associations that should come to be acknowledged members of the great feudal hierarchy; for indefinite and negative freedom was not allowed to any person in those days; if you had not status you did not exist except ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... in, which the French, as the votaries of art for art, excel all other people. The little soldiers, weighed down by the contents of their enormous pockets, pass with respect from one of these masters of the rod to the other,as he sits soaking an indefinite bait in the large, indifferent stream. After you turn your back to the quay you have only to go a little way ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Commons, and the popular branch of the American Congress. A seat lost in the latter—it may be by a single unfortunate utterance, or unpopular vote—is usually a seat lost forever; while in the former, membership may continue for an almost indefinite period, and until an "appeal to the country" by the Ministry upon a new and vital issue. If defeated by one constituency, the member of Parliament may soon be returned by another, the question of residence having ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of the boundary with Vietnam are in dispute; maritime boundary with Vietnam not defined; parts of border with Thailand are indefinite; maritime boundary with ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Homicide in Exile, segregation self-defence for an indefinite period in some Homicide to avenge remote town or some wrong or settlement. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... colour also it is deeper; but the colour of both, like that of the two dry wines, increases in proportion to their age, a circumstance exactly the reverse of that which takes place in French wines. German sherry wines are capable of preservation both in bottles and casks for an indefinite period. In one of the bodegas or cellars belonging to the firm of M. P. Domecq, at Xeres, are to be seen five or six casks of immense size and antiquity (some of them, it is said, exceeding a century). Each of them bears the name of some distinguished ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... harvest among our people, especially among our carefully taught Sunday scholars, has about come, and he thinks that, with a little more definite help and teaching, many of you would be glad to come to Jesus, and be enrolled as his followers now, instead of waiting for that indefinite sometime which may never come. I have a book here which, in words so simple that the youngest girl here can understand, explains how we may come to Christ by repentance and faith in his sacrifice upon the cross, etc. ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... supposed him to be one of the walking tourists or climbers who invaded those valleys at Easter; but they were, for the most part, young men from the cities, and this stranger's face was darkened by the sun. There was also an indefinite suggestion of strength in the pose of his lean, symmetrical figure, which, though she did not recognise that fact, could only have come from strenuous labour in the open air. She, however, noticed that while ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... consequently, he could neither solve the problem of progress nor explain the rise and fall of empires. Indeed, egoism and war are in no way, as he says they are, the sole causes of the fall of races: the soil cannot feed a great nation for an indefinite period even if the country is prevented by emigration from becoming over-populated; the very nature itself of the civilisation of the time prevents it from continuing for ever. Modern western races, for instance, have ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... a seeming existence. The original cause of this lies in the fact that a substratum, viz., matter, lies at the basis of bodies. Matter is the foundation of each ([Greek: to bathos hekastou he hule]); it is the obscure, the indefinite, that which is without qualities, the [Greek: me on]. As devoid of form and idea it is the evil, as capable ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Abstract and indefinite terms should be employed in satire only as they are in algebra, in place of concrete and specified quantities. Moreover, it should be used as sparingly as the dissecting knife on the body of a living man. At the risk of forfeiting his life it is ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... clearing from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years."[39] Another periodical says: "The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... faces, I never had thought of taking one for my own. I was like a good boy in a flower-garden, who looks about him with delight, admiring each beautiful blossom, but plucking none. Not that I meant to live a bachelor; for, whenever I looked forward,—an indefinite number of years,—I invariably saw myself sitting by my own fireside, with a gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with beans and buttons. But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet assumed a tangible shape. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... these barbarous tribes held their women, and the privileges which they conceded to them; and it must be admitted that certain stern virtues characterized those who were addicted to military achievements, resulting partly from their incessant occupation as warriors, and partly from some indefinite but splendid ideas of fame and glory. Seduction and adultery were vices of rare occurrence; the bridegroom bestowed a dowery upon the bride, consisting of flocks, a horse ready bridled and saddled, a shield, a lance, and a sword; [52] and they were often stimulated by their presence and excitement ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... confused mixing of church and kingdom, but always with the church the big thing, and the kingdom a sort of vague, indefinite—folks don't seem to know just what—an ideal, a spiritual conception, or something like that. The church is supposed to have taken the place of the kingdom. Its mission seems to be supposed to be the doing for ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... I answer his question truthfully? I was old enough to know that the truth would disgrace my Uncle Peabody. I could not tell the truth, therefore, and I didn't. I put it all on Dug Draper, although his swearing had long been a dim, indefinite and useless memory. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... as vessels which he filled with feeling, not all of which need be accepted as healthy, though much of it is. As to his titles, "Preludes" is purely an arbitrary designation for compositions which are equally indefinite in form and character; Niecks compares them very aptly to a portfolio full of drawings "in all stages of advancement—finished and unfinished, complete and incomplete compositions, sketches and mere memoranda, all mixed indiscriminately together." So, too, they appeared to Schumann: ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... height, his manner of bowing, an indefinite air about him, had convinced Ruth that Nicko's double was Henri Marchand. Who else could it be? Could there be some person who so resembled the countess' ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... drifted to the watchers—a sound no louder than a feeble clack of the tongue—this indefinite luminosity began to sink, to fade, falling slowly, gradually dissipating itself in the dim light over ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... be said that the young Jew helped himself in this stress. Besides his usual strength, he had the indefinite extra force which nature keeps in reserve for just such perils to life; yet the darkness, and the whirl and roar of water, stupefied him. Even the holding his breath ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... By having the pulp transferred from one chest to the next in the reverse order to that in which the liquid is transferred it will be seen that all parts of the pulp are acted upon uniformly and equally and that the operation may go on continuously for an indefinite period of time without necessitating stopping to empty the vats, as is the case when the liquor only is transferred from one vat to the next. A pump may be used for lifting the bleaching liquid, as shown, for example, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Mexican mode of life, and took kindly to the havanera, the bull-fights, the Paseo, and the style of flirtation preferred by the Mexican women. For this they soon coined a French word, noviotage,* and thus expressed the semi-Platonic love-making of indefinite duration and undefined limits which with the natives usually culminates in marriage, after a prolonged term of years, but which with foreigners seldom culminated at all, for lack of time. They "played the bear,"** and ogled their chosen one from the street or at the ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... reflected that I was associated in these fatal disadvantages with twelve hundred millions of other more or less human beings, I found I could bear my share of his good-natured and contemptuous pity for the sake of something indefinite and attractive in the man. I have never defined to myself this attraction, but there were moments when I envied him. The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... by the Boers and was more or less effectively occupied by them; and had they acted with enterprise and concurrence during the period of Lord Roberts' journey from England, the task before the new Commander-in-Chief would have been still more formidable. In rear of French and Gatacre was an indefinite area through which ran the British lines of communication, and which, if not indeed actually under arms, was ready to spring up whenever a ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... amount of provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one six months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had really had the charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through secret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt— Well, there is no use adding to the picture. Every one knows the spirit of sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut up for an indefinite length of time from air ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... minutes may well be spent in a quick survey of the assembled guests. All peoples, nations and languages appear to be represented in the crowd. Nawabs and other Indian dignitaries of unpronounceable names and indefinite rank, in gorgeous, many-colored raiment (presumably their national idea of evening full dress), culminating in jeweled caps and terminating in the opposite direction, somewhat incongruously, in London-made dress-boots; envoys from Burmah ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of the government. The Regent, on the other hand, who it must be confessed never exhibited any remarkable proof of intellectual ability during the period of her residence in the Netherlands, was often inspired by a feeble and indefinite hope that the matter might be arranged by a compromise between the views of conflicting parties. Unfortunately the inquisition was not a fit subject for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about Florence at all, was to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he could do no better than preserve her image in his mind as something precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite—indefinite in all but its power of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the surface of the state with forests for fuel, the Creator hid away under the forests an additional supply of heat and power sufficient to last its future citizens an indefinite period. The white man was not slow to find and locate the coal measures in many counties, notably in Kittitas, King, Pierce, Lewis, Whatcom and Thurston, and to put it to the task of driving his machinery. The coal measures of these ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... favorite plan (varied sometimes in detail) was therefore to dine lightly about five or six, then to go to bed and sleep till eleven, twelve, or one, and then to get up, and with the help only of coffee (which he drank very strong and in enormous quantities) to work for indefinite stretches of time into the morning or afternoon of the next day. He speaks of a sixteen hours' day as a not uncommon shift or spell of work, and almost a regular one with him; and on one occasion he avers that ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... pink, and knew that he had not said the name before, even to himself; straightway said it again, to prove the absurdity of something, he was not sure what, and felt his throat dry and hot. Now Rose Ellen herself was gone, and for an indefinite time. She had not gone willingly, of that he was sure; but it was equally evident that her mother had no such thoughts as those two harridans had suggested. He glanced up furtively, to meet a broad, beaming glance, and the question ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... understander of men, and he was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have been an impostor.' But the arguments, in great part negative, set forth in 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject. Christ remained for Mr. Browning a mystery and a message of Divine Love, but no messenger of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... hastily recovered my hold, which I marvel now that I had the temerity to let go; but to have at my side my dear little faithful Diane was a comfort which no one not planted, and for a term that seemed indefinite, in so unknown-a solitude, can conceive. What cries of joy the poor little thing uttered when thus safely lodged! and with what tenderness I sought to make her sensible of my gratitude for ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... dogma is indeed no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the Christian religion, which at all times will feel the need of a scientific apologetic.[10] But the question here is not as to something indefinite and general, but as to the definite dogma formed in the first centuries, and binding ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... worship,—which was once common to all men, the sun, fire, water, light, wind, the procreative and productive energies and the mystery of sex and birth, which impressed with wonder and awe the mind of primitive humanity. As these deities became more and more vague and indefinite in the popular mind, and the simple, instinctive appeal of the human soul to a Power it could not see or comprehend was gradually debased into what is now known as Brahminism, and the most repugnant, revolting, cruel, obscene and vicious rites ever practiced by savages or barbarians. There ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... briefest intervals; it does not seem possible that a greater number should be run on the existing lines; and, that being so, there is no alternative between overcrowding and the far greater inconvenience of indefinite delay. Fancy having to "take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your turn for a seat! New York would be simply paralysed. It is needless to point out, of course, that where steam or electricity is the motive power there is no cruelty ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... frequently when "d" is used as when "b" or "c" is employed, but the "d" bid conveys information so comprehensive and important that one call is of greater value than several "b" or "c" bids, which, at best, furnish the partner with indefinite data. ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... twenty-four hours elapse, she will be well received, and reign from the moment of her introduction into the hive. Here I speak of the good reception given to a queen after an interregnum of twenty-four hours. But as this word reception is very indefinite, it is proper to enter into some detail for explaining the exact sense in which I use it. On the 15. of August, I introduced a fertile queen, eleven months old, into a glass hive. The bees were twenty-four hours deprived of their queen, and had already begun the construction ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the publick expectations which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. I have, indeed, disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... more. She wondered if her father really thought that she would be comforted in her great grief by a phrase. She did not want to know how marriage might be defined. She knew that all definitions are indefinite. She knew that in the case of marriage everything depends upon the definer ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... herewith returned without my approval, for the reasons, first, that it appropriates from the Treasury a large sum of money at a time when the revenue is insufficient for current wants and this proposed further drain on the Treasury. The issue of bonds, authorized by the bill to a very large and indefinite amount, would seriously embarrass the refunding operations now progressing, whereby the interest of the bonded debt of the United States is being largely reduced. Second, I do not believe that any considerable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... have not yet addressed Miss Middleton. I could not venture to do so without your sanction. It is to obtain it that I have come to you this evening. I would like very much to have an understanding with Miss Middleton before we part for an indefinite time." ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... disasters, since their tendency is to cause needlessly painful death, under circumstances, which in the main, enhance its terrors; but the sufferings of the victims cannot be added together because they occur within a limited area, any more than if they had been spread over an indefinite tract of space. As for war, it increases the liability of every individual who comes within its wide-flung net to intense bodily and mental suffering, and to premature and painful death. Moreover, it destroys social values which can be added up. In this respect it leaves the world face ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... scheme has been long in my mind and I have spoken to Mr. Emlie about it, to apply the remainder of the estate for the benefit of the quarrymen, the stone-cutters, their families and, incidentally, the city of Flamsted. My plans are, of course, indefinite; I cannot give them in detail, not having had time to think them out; but I may say that this house will be eventually a home for men disabled in the quarries or sheds. The plan will develop further in the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and built a rough hut of stone, in order to ensure safety during the night, as their stay at Weld Springs seemed likely to be indefinite, and a fresh attack might be made at any moment. When the hut was finished, Forrest, taking a boy with him, started on a flying trip due east. This time they were fortunate enough to find a small supply in some clay waterholes, and the whole party ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... occupied the thoughts of the king to the exclusion of everything else. Grimcke and Long could not be far off, and a vigorous hunt was likely to discover one or both of them, but the king gave orders that no attempt of the kind should be made. It was his intention to leave the village for an indefinite time, and he wished every one of his warriors to remain while he was absent. It cannot be said that he was afraid of such an insignificant force, but there was a strong vein of superstition in his nature, which caused a vague fear of the men that had escaped him with such ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... her mother and the household through long galleries to the chapel, where she knelt to her devotions, illumined by a window blazoned with the arms of that illustrious family of which she was a member, and of which she knew nothing. She had an indefinite and painful consciousness that she had been early checked in the natural inquiries which occur to every child; she had insensibly been trained to speak only of what she saw; and when she listened, at night, to the long ivy rustling about the windows, and the wild owls ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... entreaties that she might be allowed to "come out" that winter. She succeeded so far with her father, who could seldom deny her anything, as to obtain leave to go to as many private parties as she could, without interfering with her studies. But of course, with a limit so indefinite, the bounds were often overstepped. Her love of gaiety only grew with the indulgence of the taste, and she felt really unhappy when she had to see her sisters go ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... artist may dare much for a long time. Without it he exists as long as those qualities which are perfectly natural to him exist. A voice fades, but a manner of applying that voice (even when there is practically no voice to apply) to an artistic problem has an indefinite term of life. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... autonomy. The separate states of Greece lived, as it were, in the presence of each other, and at the same time resisted all influences and all efforts towards a coalescence with each other, until the time of Alexander. Their country, a word of indefinite meaning to the Asiatic, conveyed to them as definite an idea as that of their own homes. Its whole landscape, with all its historic associations, its glorious monuments of heroic deeds, were perpetually present to their eyes. Thus their patriotism, concentrated within a narrow ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... eager to apologise for being in the way. For two years I watched him and amused myself by guessing at his occupation and character. But I never asked who he was; I didn't want to know, you see, for then all the fun would have been spoiled at once. That man had just your quality of being indefinite. At different times I made him out to be a teacher who had never got his licence, a non- commissioned officer, a druggist, a government clerk, a detective— and like you, he looked as if made out of two pieces, for the front of him never quite fitted the back. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... ought to have been, and Solomon, as a disciplinarian, was in high repute in the family connection. I am sure that I was put forthwith to bed and left alone for an eternity without even Musidora to bear me company. I had an indefinite impression that they feared the effect of association with such a wicked child upon ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... interpretation of the "general welfare" clause of the Constitution. The former co-labourers for efficient government parted at this point. Madison thought the adoption of such an interpretation would change the National Government from a limited one, possessing certain specified powers, to an indefinite one, subject only to particular exceptions. The phrase concerning "the general welfare" had been taken from the Articles, he said, where it was understood to be nothing more than a general caption to specified powers, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Florine's left hand, and on the other side of him Bixiou, whom Esther had enjoined to make the Englishman drink freely, and challenge him to beat him. Bixiou had the power of drinking an indefinite quantity. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... on Roger. Death revealed no significance in him. The smallness of his head, the indefinite colour of his hair, palliated what had occurred and made them feel incredulous of their knowledge that presently much importance would be ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... it," added the young man, who considered the information rather too indefinite for ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... This is merely one of those odd coincidences which are always turning up. Come, protect the Yank from that cheapest and easiest of all charges—plagiarism. Otherwise, you see, he will have to protect himself by charging approximate and indefinite plagiarism upon the official servants of our majestic twin down yonder, and then there might be war, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Japan? No one can venture any positive prediction on the assumption that existing tendencies will continue far into that future. Not to dwell upon the grim probabilities of war, or the possibility of such internal disorder as might compel indefinite suspension of the constitution, and lead to a military dictatorship,—a resurrected Shogunate in modern uniform,—great changes there will assuredly be, both for better and for worse. Supposing these changes normal, however, one may venture some qualified predictions, based upon the reasonable ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... strong to those who believe in the indefinite possibility of change of forms in organized bodies, and think that during a succession of ages, and by alternations of habits, all the species may change into each other, or one of them give birth ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... had received its death-blow that afternoon. Already, that evening, it began to revive a little. It was very much enfeebled; it was very indefinite and diffident; but it was not dead. It amounted, perhaps, to nothing more than a vague kind of feeling that he would not, on the whole, make his departure for England quite so precipitate as, in the first heat of his anger, the first chill of his despair, he had intended. Piano, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... to make a remark upon the Virginia resolutions of 1798. I cannot undertake to say how these resolutions were understood by those who passed them. Their language is not a little indefinite. In the case of the exercise by Congress of a dangerous power not granted to them, the resolutions assert the right, on the part of the State, to interfere and arrest the progress of the evil. This is susceptible of more ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... gain access to the old customers. They know him and they are always glad to see him. But if there is a chance that the customer may be out of town, or if it is during a busy season, he telephones ahead to make sure. He prefers indefinite to definite appointments, especially if he has to see two or three people during the course of a morning or an afternoon; that is, he would rather have an appointment to come some time between ten and eleven or between three and four than to have ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... so fine a nature, it is not to be questioned that, according to our opportunities, it is incumbent on us to carry forward its improvement from childhood to hoary age. A power like this, of indefinite expansion, in directions surpassingly noble, among subjects infinitely grand, has been conferred that it might be expanded, and go on expanding in an eternal progression; that it might sweep far beyond its present horizon and firmament, where the stars now shining above us, shall become ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... taxation and education. But the political forces of the country will have moved into totally new formations. One foresees plainly a vertical section of parties into Agrarian and Urban, a cross section into Labour and Capitalistic. Each of these economic groupings is indefinitely criss-crossed by an indefinite number of antagonisms, spiritual and material. In a situation so complicated it is idle to speculate as to the conditions of the future. A box of bricks so large, and so multi-coloured, may be arranged and re-arranged in an infinity of architectures. The one thing quite ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... while with others he is still more fortunate, as he can produce them by seed, stimulate variation until the desired mutation is found and can then reproduce the desired variation with certainty by the use of cuttings. This latter is not true inheritance with its inevitable variation, but the indefinite prolongation of the life of one individual. In this sense there is only one seedless ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... of message received. Meantime word had been sent to all the governments that an indefinite armistice had been declared, to commence at the end of ten days, for it had been found necessary to allow for the time required to transmit the orders to the various fields of military operations throughout Europe. In the interim the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... for the time being, all thought of Anne Medway from his mind. It was true that he had plenty of other things to occupy it with, for the day after to-morrow was to see his departure from England for an indefinite period. ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... of the Imperial Austrian police, is one of the great experts in his profession. In personality he differs greatly from other famous detectives. He has neither the impressive authority of Sherlock Holmes, nor the keen brilliancy of Monsieur Lecoq. Muller is a small, slight, plain-looking man, of indefinite age, and of much humbleness of mien. A naturally retiring, modest disposition, and two external causes are the reasons for Muller's humbleness of manner, which is his chief characteristic. One cause is the fact that in early youth a miscarriage of justice gave him several years in prison, an experience ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... any great satisfaction now, for it has shaped itself to me as an acute angle. And the earth's surface! how I used to glow with the excitement of the bare thought of Rome! and Athens! and Constantinople! and their thrilling histories and wonders of art, and beauties of nature, seemed to me an indefinite world of unattainable delight and ecstasy. But now, I have lived in all these places, and the light and glory have gone. They have fallen within the freezing light of reason. They are no longer like beautiful dreams to me. They are squared down into fixed, unalterable facts. ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... greatly irritated, was not discouraged. His engines were not, in the first place, like Newcomen's, mere pumps, mere draining-pumps. In a few years he transformed them into universal motive powers, and of indefinite force. His first step in this line was the invention of a double-acting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... The fact is, that none of the causes which we know to be now operating on our globe, seem at all adequate to account for all the changes it has already undergone. We may, therefore, very fairly infer, that an indefinite allowance must be granted to exterior interference of some sort or other, the agency of which may altogether subvert whatever is now known to exist.—See Cuvier's Essay, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... wind, tack and tack, requiring a long time to get on a short distance. But still you do go, although but slowly; and in both cases we must take the foul wind with the fair. If a ship were to furl her sails until the wind was again favourable, her voyage would be protracted to an indefinite time; and if an author were to wait until he again felt in a humour, it would take a ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... all very vague, very indefinite. If only Cherryvale afforded a chance to know people like Ridgeley Holman Dobson! Unprosaic people, really interesting people. People who had travelled in far lands; who had seen unusual sights, plumbed the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... according to custom, cavilled at the nature of this address. They observed, that the late pacification was the worst and most inglorious of all the bad treaties to which the English nation had ever subscribed; that it was equally disgraceful, indefinite, and absurd; they said, the British navy had gained such an ascendancy over the French at sea, that the sources of their wealth were already choked up; that the siege of Maestricht would have employed then-arms in the Low Countries till the arrival of the Russians; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the United Provinces was a regular force of one hundred ships—large at a period when a vessel of thirteen hundred tons was a monster—together with an indefinite number of smaller craft, which could be put into the public service on short notice? In those days of close quarters and light artillery a merchant ship was converted into a cruiser by a very simple, process. The navy was a self-supporting one, for it was paid by the produce ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hands may not meet on the far side of it, a successful ascension will be impossible. On the other hand, a very slim tree is like to bend beneath your weight, and even precipitate you heavily to the ground, which disaster might retard events for an indefinite period." ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... suits only with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the true Ecbatana, (D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the royal seat of Mithridates, king ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... large liberality, and it was found that they sometimes conflicted with one another. The consequence was that while the boundaries were well marked near the coast, where they separated Virginia from the long-settled regions of Maryland and North Carolina, they became exceeding vague and indefinite the moment they touched the mountains. Even at the south this produced confusion, and induced the settlers of the upper Holston to consider themselves as Virginians, not Carolinians; but at the north the effect was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt |
