"Unformed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possibilities by which later poets have profited, but his own handling of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of the trouveres which the rude, unformed English failed ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more is wanting, more ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... been an older man, and more fixed in any definite groove, this is what I should have done, but he was still very young, and more than commonly unformed for his age. If, again, I had known of his illness I should not have dared to lay any heavier burden on his back than he had to bear already; but not being uneasy about his health, I thought a few years of roughing it and of experience concerning the importance ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the fashion to deride woman's influence over woman, to laugh at female friendship, to look with scorn on all those who profess it; but perhaps the world at large little knows the effect of this influence,—how often the unformed character of a young, timid, and gentle girl may be influenced for good or evil by the power of an intimate female friend. There is always to me a doubt of the warmth, the strength, and purity of her feelings, when a young girl merges into ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his warlike ardor against peoples who had never furnished room for complaint to Rome? The source of these errors was the theory of emanations. The first dreamers, who were called philosophers imagined that matter and light were co-eternal; they supposed that was all one unformed and tenebrous mass; and from the former they established the principle of evil and of all imperfection, while they regarded the latter as sovereign perfection. Creation, or, one might better say co-ordination, was ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Elizabeth Street as if seeking cover. Here the crowd was thick, and one man might pass unheeded. Elizabeth Street was the busiest thoroughfare of Melbourne—a miserable, unformed street, the buildings of which were perched on either side of a gully. Pedestrians who were not sober ran serious risks of falling from the footpaths into the roadway below, a rather serious fall in places. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... an opportunity of entering into negotiations, with any influential person in Scindia's court, I authorize you to do so in my name; and to agree to any reasonable demands that he may make, either for a payment in money or in estates. Scindia's character is wholly unformed and, though today he may be guided by Balloba, tomorrow he may lean ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... remarkably dissimilar. Frank was two inches the tallest, and had a still greater advantage in width. It was clear that he would grow into a big man, but his figure was at present loose and unformed; he had dark brown hair, with a slight wave, and would hardly have been called good-looking, were it not for his open, fearless expression and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared, for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now, writing ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to her own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a romantic maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her brilliant long eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... of the loose stones, the water, and the masses of crystal rock that we had to climb over, our guides strongly recommended us to return. It was difficult to turn away our eyes from the great unformed masses that now seemed to fill the cave as far as the eye could reach. It looked like the world in chaos—nature's vast workshop, from which she drew the materials which her hand was to reduce to form and order. We retraced our steps slowly and lingeringly through these subterranean ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... of it all, marry me, Pauline, if you can bring yourself to do it. I am the only approach to a friend that you have in the world. As your husband, I can care for you and protect you. You are young, your character is unformed, you are ignorant of the world. You have no home, no protection, literally none, and I am afraid to trust you. You need not be angry if I say so. I think I've earned the right to find some faults in you. I don't expect you to love me. I don't expect to be particularly happy; but ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... the frequent use of the motive of implacable revenge for murder and of a ghost who incites to it. In the early Elizabethan period, however, an age when life itself was dramatically intense and tragic, when everything classic was looked on with reverence, and when standards of taste were unformed, it was natural enough that such plays should pass ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... say,—enough indeed to cover three or four pages of his tablet paper,—then it may be time to begin the study of description, and to acquire more careful and accurate forms of expression. Spontaneity should be acquired first,—crude and unformed it may be, but spontaneity first; and this spontaneity is best gained ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... soon found out it was a mistake—our marriage—for you. I wasn't half clever enough. I was only an ignorant, silly, unformed girl, and you were so different. Oh, I tried my hardest to improve. I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't quite such a little fool as you thought me. I wanted to show you I had a soul—Mr. Herrick said I had, and I tried to make myself more companionable to you—oh, I know I didn't ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to go about it in an entirely different way. She had counted upon an impassioned plea for himself, not this terse, cold-blooded, almost unemotional summing up of the situation. For an instant she was at a loss. It was hard to look into his honest eyes. A queer, unformed doubt began to torment her, a doubt that grew into a question later on: was he ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... them very well for the work they had to do. I should say that the education of the colored race in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in an ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learning upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moral condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... degree tantamount to atheism, or the Establishment principle to Popery. But we would ask them to declare, as wise and honest men, that no schoolmaster, under the pretext of a zeal for truth, should with impunity break faith with the parents of his pupils, or prejudice the unformed and ductile minds entrusted to his care against their hereditary beliefs. Should we, however, do no violence by such a provision, we have heard it asked, to the conscientious convictions of the schoolmaster? No, not in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... head and clasping it in her coffin on her bosom. Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy." John Sterling, in a like spirit, said:- "Periodicals and novels are to all in this generation, but more especially to those whose minds are still unformed and in the process of formation, a new and more effectual substitute for the plagues of Egypt, vermin that corrupt the wholesome waters and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly; and always unformed tears would gloze ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... himself in the esteem of Patricia Langdon, the other disturbed by emotions she could not have named, which she would have declined to recognize, even had they presented themselves frankly to her. She had known, of course, of Duncan's love for her friend, but until this hour there had always existed an unformed, unrecognized doubt in the mind of Beatrice that it ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... could be so dowered as to produce such results by mechanism, could it be dowered to produce the results of intelligence? Could it be dowered with power of choice without becoming mind? If oxygen and hydrogen could be made able to combine into water, could the same unformed matter produce in one case a plant, in another a bird, in a third a man; and in each of these put bone, brain, blood, and nerve in [Page 258] proper relations? Matter must be mind, or subject to a present working mind, to do this. There must be a present intelligence directing the process, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... He had the unformed look of a growing boy, and was so slender as to appear taller than he really was. He had an air of great activity; and though he sat leaning back, there was no lounging in his attitude, and at the first summons he roused up with an air of alert attention ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... simple enough, written in a roundish, unformed hand and badly phrased. Her first two or three showed a shy pleasure in the use of the word "dear," and I remember being first puzzled and then, when I understood, delighted, because she had written "Willie ASTHORE" under ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... For only this will give us the mental perspective demanded of the teacher. Only this will enable our thought to move with certainty and assurance in the field of our instruction. And only this will win the confidence and respect of our pupils who, though their minds are yet unformed, have nevertheless a quick sense for mastery or weakness as revealed in ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... have your written impression of Brittany, I did not see enough to talk about. But I sought a general impression and that has served me for reconstructing one or two pictures which I need. I shall read you that also, but it is still an unformed mass. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of the Spanish drama, seen in the writings of Rotrou and others, might be supposed to make for freedom. It encouraged romantic inventions and ambitious extravagances of style. Much that is rude and unformed is united with a curiosity for points and laboured ingenuity in the dramatic work of Scudery, Du Ryer, Tristan l'Hermite. A greater dramatist than these showed how Spanish romance could coalesce with French tragedy ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... In fact, to embellish my story I have neither leisure nor ability; I shall, therefore, do no more than give a simple narration of events. They are the labours of my evenings, and will come to you an unformed mass, to receive its shape from your hands, or as a chaos on which you have already thrown light. Mine is a history most assuredly worthy to come from a man of honour, one who is a true Frenchman, born of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... community had not yet firmly grasped the conception of public office as a trust for the public good, and the general opinion which stimulates and sustains the official conscience in holding this trust sacred was still unformed. The courts of justice were the first branch of the government to feel the pressure of public opinion, and to respond to the demand for impersonal and impartial right. But this process had only begun when Bacon, who had never before served as judge, was called to preside in Chancery. The Chancellor's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of the city than to instruct mankind, is clear from the totally untrustworthy character of the special gentile records; and when history began to be cultivated in a literary way, we do not observe any higher motive at work. Fabius and Cincius wrote in Greek, partly, no doubt, because in the unformed state of their own language it was easier to do so; but that this was not in itself a sufficient reason is shown by the enthusiasm with which not only their contemporary Ennius, but their predecessors Livius and Naevius, studied and developed the Latin tongue. Livius and Ennius ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... some moments, dexterity; it had needed, at others, self-control. Self-control, however, was habitual to her. She had long since schooled herself into the acceptance of her stupidly maimed life, seeing herself in no pathetic similes at all, but, rather, as a foolish, unformed creature who, partly through blindness, partly through recklessness, had managed badly to cripple herself at the outset of life's walk, and who must make the best of a hop-skip-and-jump gait for the rest of it. She had felt, when she decided that she ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... requires often slight deceptions to be allowed or practiced; hence an unevenness in the writing is observed. Untruthfulness gives greater unevenness still; but do not rush to conclusions on this point for an unformed handwriting shows this peculiarity very often, being due, not to evil qualities, but to an unsteady hand employed in work to ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... who knew the value of essentials; his brain was keen enough to go down to them and judge of them, undeterred and unhindered and undeceived by externals, by fictitious emblems. He saw here that he was in the presence of a tender, youthful, unformed mind of complete innocence, and the abhorrent surroundings affected that essential not ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... You have n't your wings yet. You are too unformed, and your ideals and standards are not yet ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... envelopes was addressed in a clear, ordinary lady's hand; the other, cheap and poor in quality, was in a firm, and yet unformed, handwriting. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... he was possessed of a dauntless courage, a persistency of purpose, and an unscrupulous craftiness and ambitiousness of character which would have won him distinction of a certain unenviable kind in any community. Already his brain was teeming with vague unformed plots of the wildest and most audaciously extravagant description, the possibility of which he was determined to ascertain for himself, and the maturing of which he was quite prepared to leave to time. He therefore ultimately ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... are those in which Camden refers to the plan of a Union as so unformed as to require preliminary inquiries, and in which he presumes that after the Union Dissenters and Catholics will have "the same advantages as are bestowed upon the rest of the inhabitants of the three kingdoms." Clearly, then, Pitt and Camden ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the real potentialities are in the unborn. While there is not life there is hope. When you commence to educate the child it is already too late. But if the great forces of education are brought to bear upon the unformed, you may bring all Itigh qualities to birth. Think, for instance, how this will contribute to the cause of religion. The unborn will simply eliminate the false religions by refusing to be born into them. Persuade the unborn, touch ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to the brain, but it is not originated by the brain. The mysterious spiritual "I" is behind the brain, using the brain—nay further—actually educating and fitting the brain for its work. The brain of a little child with its plastic gray matter is smooth and unformed. It is the "I" behind that is steadily creasing and moulding and training it for its purpose. I don't know of anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and educating my brain. You feel sometimes ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... from the man the song belonged to. Whereupon, my children, I finished that old tune on that bugle, and this is what I got. I knew you'd like to look at it. Don't grab." (We were all struggling for a sight of the well-known unformed handwriting.) "I'll ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... who had entreated to be allowed to put her face into his great picture, and how the house was literally besieged with her lovers. By all this, and much more in the same strain, Marion perceived that her young sister, whom she had last seen in all the raw unformed awkwardness of early girlhood, had developed somehow into ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... dropped my head back into its original position, when there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present—feeble, scarcely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... habits of her rude and ignorant little pupils, I should not do so here. They required peculiar training and an unfailing stock of patience, and it was long before any very perceptible change was wrought in their almost confirmed habits of carelessness, or any improvement in their rude and unformed manners; but at length a material change was apparent, and even the Misses Fairland could not keep their eyes closed to the visible improvement of the children. They were all much more gentle and ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... and flames, {and} less anger. The Gods above call this second-rate thunder; it he assumes, and he enters the house of Agenor. Her mortal body could not endure[64] the aethereal shock, and she was burned amid her nuptial presents. The infant, as yet unformed, is taken out of the womb of his mother, and prematurely (if we can believe it) is inserted in the thigh of the father, and completes the time that he should have spent in the womb. His aunt, Ino, nurses ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... in such a way as will on the whole bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing and utilising this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... this very spot—I asked the permission of your mother two years ago to express to you my love. She thought me a boy, and she treated me as a boy. She said I knew nothing of the world, and both our characters were unformed. I know the world now. I have committed many mistakes, doubtless many follies—have formed many opinions, and have changed many opinions; but to one I have been constant, in one I am unchanged—and that is my ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... have presented itself to the disturbed mind in a dim shape and afar off; but it has been there. After a quarrel, or with some strong sense upon him of irritation or discomfort arising out of the continuance of this life in his path, the man has brooded over the unformed desire to take it. "Though he should be hanged for it." With the entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the fatal beam begins to attend—not on himself, but on the object of his hate. At every new temptation, it is there, stronger and blacker yet, trying to terrify ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... paling in the firmament when I opened my window. Mists clothed the horizon. The rushing wind soon tore them aside, and drove them into the gorges, whence descend, in the shape of a fan, the unformed masses of the lower glacier, soiled with a ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... some librarians even have said it) that for unformed readers to read a bad book is better than to read none at all. I do not believe it. You might as well say that it is better for one to swallow poison than not to swallow any thing at all. I hold that library ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... small quarto shape, bound in limp parchment, with strings to tie the covers together. Its pages, measuring 9 and 3/4 by 8 in., were 64, and numbered throughout; but a bare third of them were written on, and these in an unformed hand which yet was eloquent of much. A paragraph would start with every letter drawn as carefully as in a child's copy-book; would gradually straggle and let its words fall about, as though fainting by the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... re-inventor of the inductive method, and the father of all discovery since his time. These notions have been held firmly, while more special ones concerning his system and himself have been, for the most part, vague or unformed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... who in 1811, at the age of thirty-two, was appointed by Madison in succession to Cushing. Still immature, enthusiastically willing to learn, warmly affectionate, and with his views on constitutional issues as yet unformed, Story fell at once under the spell of Marshall's equally gentle but vastly more resolute personality; and the result was one of the most fruitful friendships of our history. Marshall's "original bias," to quote Story's own words, "as well as the choice of his mind, was to general principles and ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... class, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight, semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of mass? Against this timid and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact that in our ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... the security of our South African possessions were compelled to reckon with two volumes of public opinion—British and colonial. The colonial opinion was at its best (from our point of view) about three months ago. But the British opinion was still unformed. The delays and diplomatic disputes which have gradually roused the nation to a sense of its responsibilities and perils, and which were absolutely necessary if we were to embark on the struggle united, have had an opposite effect out here. The attempts to satisfy the conscientious ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... imagination, to the remote era when men's theories of things were yet unformed; and conceiving to ourselves the conquering chief as dimly figured in ancient myths, and poems, and ruins; we may see that all rules of conduct whatever spring from his will. Alike legislator and judge, all quarrels among his subjects are decided by him; and his words become the Law. Awe of ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... stood beside her chosen one at the altar, how little did she dream of the shadows and darkness that were to fall upon her path! And alas! how little does many a careless girl, who gives herself away, thoughtlessly, to a young man of unformed character, dream of the sorrow too deep for tears that awaits her. Surely this were anguish enough,—and surely it called for the sustaining sympathy of friends. But the friend of her early years, the sister in whose arms, in the days of innocent childhood, she had slept peacefully, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Immortal Pan dance secret in a glade, And, dancing, roll his eyes; these, where they fell, Shed glee, and through the congregated oaks A flying horror winged; while all the earth To the god's pregnant footing thrilled within. Or whiles, beside the sobbing stream, he breathed, In his clutched pipe unformed and wizard strains Divine yet brutal; which the forest heard, And thou, with awe; and far upon the plain The unthinking ploughman started ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same trick of smiling with her eyes when there was no mirth lurking in the corners of her full lips, the same full-throated little laugh that carried the faintest hint of mockery in its thrill. Year by year her slim body lost its unformed boyishness in a new soft roundness which her long outgrown skirt and too scant little waist failed completely to conceal. And the hillsfolk were given to shaking their heads over her now, just as the generation before had done, for to cap it all—the last straw upon the ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... is unformed and imperishable; it has no natural end or beginning. It could begin to be only by creation; it can cease to be only by annihilation. It cannot be affected from without or changed in its interior by any other creature. Still, it must have qualities, without which it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... enjoying some small joke of her own. The fact was that Miss MacDowlas was no other than Griffith's amiable aunt. But, of course, it would not have done to tell this to Euphemia Bilberry. Euphemia's ideas on the subject of the tender passion were as yet crude and unformed, and Dolly Crewe was not prone to sentimental confidences, so, as yet, Euphemia and indeed the whole Bilberry family, remained in blissful ignorance of the very existence of such a person ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the little piece of obstinacy would stay, she would; and Mrs. Harlow politely declared they should all be delighted. But how would she behave at the table? Her manners were as yet unformed; she needed line upon line and precept upon precept. It was dreadful to think of her taking supper at one of the nicest houses in the city, in that dress, and without her watchful mother too! It was a severe trial to Susy. Prudy was also distressed, but her "sky-like spirit" brightened ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... and often I found my eyes wandering to that face of loveliness. Twice—yes, three times—as my gaze thus wandered, I found her eyes fixed upon me with a kind of eager scrutiny—a fixed intensity which actually was startling to encounter. And strange, vague, wild, unformed memories arose, and odd ideas, and fantastic suspicions. Her face became thus like one of those which one sees in a crowd hastily, and then loses, only to rack his brain in vain endeavors to discover who the owner of the face might be. So it was with me ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... by sharpest ear—unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest mind, Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly, Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret—the real of the real—an illusion; Costless, vouchsafed ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... into the cemetery. At a period later than that first mentioned these dances had instrumental accompaniment and became animated even to the verge of hysteria. Thus unwittingly the people of the medieval church were gathering into a loose, but by no means unformed, union the same materials as the ancients used in the creation of ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... sucked her lead-pencil, was quite unconscious that the boulder thought at all. She wrote in an unformed hand, and in letters that began by being large and round, and tailed off into a slanting niggle. "W. Keyse, Esquer." Then she bit the pencil awhile, and dreamed dreams. Then she wrote again, "Jane Keyse" and "Mrs. W. Keyse," ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that man and wife should be agreed in matters of importance.—But to return to Vinland: I have been thinking much about it since I came here, though saying little,—for it becomes a man to be silent and circumspect in regard to unformed plans. My mind is to go thither next spring, but ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the work of an unformed literature, the product of an unperfected art. English poetry, English language, in Spenser's, nay in Shakespere's day, had much to learn, much to unlearn. They never, perhaps, have been stronger or richer, than in that marvellous burst of youth, with all its freedom ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... with an irresistible and magical influence, calls up from the unknown abyss of the feelings new combinations of fancy, which, though vague and obscure, as those nebulae of light that astronomers have supposed to be the rudiments of unformed stars, afterwards become distinct and brilliant acquisitions. In a crowd, I am like the somnambulist in the highest degree of the luminous crisis, when it is said a new world is unfolded to his contemplation, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... between Farragut and Mr. Folsom did not end with this separation. The latter survived to the end of the civil war, and was thus privileged to follow the successful and great career of the admiral to whom, while yet an unformed boy, he had thoughtfully extended a helping hand. As late as 1865 letters passed between the two, showing that both cherished warm recollections of that early association; Mr. Folsom dating his, as ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... woodwork, and his wage-earning, all occupying him. If only there were not some limit to him, some darkness across his eyes! He had to give in to it at last himself. He must submit to his own inadequacy, aware of some limit to himself, of [something unformed in] his own black, violent temper, and to reckon with it. But as she was more gentle with ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... seen, was only seventeen, unformed and wild, full of youthful passion and social despair, on the verge of what we call prostitution; reckless, hopeless, with a deep touch of sullenness and hatred. She was working at the time in the house of one of Terry's brothers. Katie, too, was employed there; although ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... something to do with Voltaire, from serious personages like Frederick the Great and Turgot, down to the sorriest poetaster who sent his verses to be corrected or bepraised. Rousseau's debt to him in the days of his unformed youth we have already seen, as well as the courtesies with which they approached one another, when Richelieu employed the struggling musician to make some modifications in the great man's unconsidered court-piece. Neither of them then dreamed ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... initiation has been too much for her unformed mind," she murmured complacently, pleased with herself for having secured a disciple. "The path is narrow and rugged at the beginning, but it will broaden out before her as she ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... one, Digby," replied Hamilton, in a reserved tone; "nor am I going to wrong any one by uttering unformed suspicions." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... startling and uncanny incidents and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes dangerously near the ludicrous. Brown had not a particle of humor. Of literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the style is to a certain extent unformed and immature, it is neither feeble nor obscure, and admirably serves the author's purpose of creating what the children call a "crawly" impression. There is undeniable power in many of his scenes, notably in the descriptions ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... mutual relation between a lord and his vassal, I would call your attention to political anarchies ending in political degradation; to an unformed state of society; to semi-barbarism, with its characteristic vices of plunder, rapine, oppression, and injustice; to wild and violent passions, unchecked by law; to the absence of central power; to the reign of hard and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... is true my world is in its infancy, unformed and undeveloped; it requires food, ease, material gratifications; but it is growing, and the time will come—(He rises from his chair, approaches the count, and leans against the pillar supporting the escutcheons)—the time will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reader it is dull because he has at hand far better compendia; it is uninspired no doubt: the theme did not lend itself to enthusiastic treatment; the obscurity and awkwardness of expression and the imitative phraseology betray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would be to take the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrote currente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of the verse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... so easily slipped, and let Sally slip? Should I instantly drag her off to France like a proper chaperone? Then how could I explain to Anne—Anne would be heavy dragging with that lodestone of a yacht in the harbor. Or could we stay here as we had planned and not see Cary again? The unformed shapes of different questions and answers came dancing at me like a legion of imps as I lay with my head on the pillow and looked at Anne's confident, handsome face, and admired the freshness and cut of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... artificiality on the one hand and inadequacy of thought on the other, to which the conditions of its birth and growth exposed Roman literature, were aggravated to an almost incredible extent by the absurd system of education to which the unformed mind of the young Roman was subjected. It will be seen that what Greece gave with the right hand she ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... element in their character, is the religious element. It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of self-preservation. It informs the whole intellect and personality of the people. And he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their unformed thoughts must have this great and unanalyzable bond of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and that even the brilliance of the Augustan poets did not lessen his reputation. His utterances were vigorous, bold, fresh, and full of the spirit of the brave old days. He found the language rough, uncultivated, and unformed, and left it softer, more harmonious, and possessed of a system of versification. He was born in 239 B.C., the year after the first plays of Andronicus had been exhibited on the Roman stage, and died just before the complete establishment ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... daughters, who were fourteen and fifteen, looked like unkneaded, unformed mounds ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... hand towards her with some unformed idea of sympathy. He murmured vague words of comfort, as he might have done to a wailing child that had hurt itself; but he had no idea how to still the tempestuous grief of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... she saw what he meant, and she agreed with him that they were altogether unformed, and were the effect of their own ignorant caprices. Probably, however, it was too late to amend them ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which the Arabic has exercised on Castilian versification in other respects, as in the prolonged repetition of the rhyme, for example, which is wholly borrowed from the Spanish Arabs; whose superior cultivation naturally affected the unformed literature of their neighbors, and through no channel more obviously than its ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... aside in favour of the principal actors. Gerald stood by the stake, leaning indolently on his mallet, his long black lashes down-cast over the dark pallor of his cheeks, very handsome, very graceful. Bobby had drawn near on Celia's other side. The comparison showed all his freckles and the unformed homeliness of his rather dumpy, sturdy figure; it showed also the honest dull red of his cheeks and the clear unfaltering gray of his eyes. Celia, between them, looked down, tapping her croquet ball with the tip of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the hum of many lyrics heard by him in his childhood—from mother, or nurse, or some old crooning dame at the fireside—which are to be found in no collection, and which are now to himself but like a distant, unformed sound? All our collectors, whilst smiling in triumph over the pearls which they have brought up and borne to the shore, lament the multitude of precious things irrecoverably buried in the depths of oblivion. Where, for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... no knowing what he might do, when stimulated by the frenzy that lurks in the seductive draught. Peena knew the difficulty, with which an Indian foregoes revenge, and her apprehensions were the more excited by the attachment she felt for the two white men. Fears, vague and unformed had before floated through her mind, but they now assumed consistency, and she determined to take such precautions until the departure of her kinsman as should prevent harm either to himself or others. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... on to a tray to dry in the sun. They are still sticky, but of a brown, mahogany colour. Among them are pieces of fibre and other "trash," as well as small, undersized beans, or "balloons," as the nearly empty shell of an unformed bean is called. While a man shovels the beans into a heap, a group of women, with skirts kilted high, tread round the sides of the heap, separating the beans that still hold together. Then the beans are passed on to be spread in layers on trays in the full heat of the tropical sun, the temperature ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... rigorously to confirm in an anomalous species, by the clearest evidence, that the actual cellular contents of the ovarian tubes, by the gland-like action of a modified portion of the continuous tube, passes into the cementing stuff: in fact cirripedes make glue out of their own unformed eggs! (33/6. On Darwin's mistake in this point see "Life and Letters," III., ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... had been aging rapidly in those long periods of unbroken reflection. To develop a human being, leave him or her alone most of the time; it is too much company, too little time to digest and assimilate, that keep us thoughtless and unformed until life is half over. She astonished him ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... almost before Finn's sticky mouth could open in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed to catch the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Coleridge, tells us that in Biron and his Rosaline we have the first hesitating sketch of the masterly Benedick and Beatrice of "Much Ado about Nothing"; but in this I think Coleridge goes too far. Unformed as Biron is, he is Shakespeare in early youth, whereas in Benedick the likeness is not by any means so clear. In fact, Benedick is merely an admirable stage silhouette and needs to be filled out with an actor's personality. Beatrice, on the other ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... perfect success, the experiment of laying bare the roots in the strongest heat of the sun. The result verified his conjecture. The circulation of the sap was arrested, the vines obtained the needful repose, and the grapes, which before had fallen almost unformed from the tree, are now brought to thorough maturity, though inferior in flavour to those produced ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... of Two Worlds," was an eager, though crude, attempt to explain and express something of what I myself had studied on some of these subjects, though, as I have already said, my mind was unformed and immature, and, therefore, I was not permitted to disclose more than a glimmering of the light I was beginning to perceive. My own probation—destined to be a severe one—had only just been entered upon; and hard and fast limits were imposed on me for a certain time. I was forbidden, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... such a long letter to Mr. Bond, in her childish, unformed way. She told him every little thing concerning their own household, and the Flins', and Pat's misfortunes, and their ejectment from, and reinstalment in, their attic home; and she dwelt a great while upon ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Mr. LOWELL presented the public with a volume of poems, which after being read and blamed and praised with a most bewildering variety of opinion, lived through it all, and remained as a permanent specimen of unformed but most promising genius. Modest however as the offering was, it was duly valued by discerning judges, not so much for its own ripe excellence, as for its appearing a happy token of something else. In the major part of the annual soarings into Cloud-land ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... like intelligence, is naturally an undetermined, unformed faculty, which gets its value and character later from external impressions,—a faculty, therefore, which is negative at the beginning, but which gradually defines and outlines itself ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... centre of Eastern civilization and refinement; but the Lombard of the invasion can never appear as other than the rude barbarian rushing from his wild northern home, and forcing on a defenseless people the laws and the customs suited to his own rugged nature and the unformed state of society in which ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... segregated Marine Corps and the new Air Force, its racial policy still fluid, merely attracted less attention and so escaped many of the charges hurled at the Army by civil rights advocates both in and out of the federal government. But however different or unformed their racial policies, all the services for the most part segregated Negroes in practice and all were open ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... study the youth, who certainly was, as Aunt Ada said, remarkable for the cameo-like cutting of his profile, though perhaps no one without an eye for art would have remarked it, as he had the callow unformed air of a lad of seventeen or eighteen, and looked shy and grave; but his voice was a fine one, and was heard to more advantage in the solos to a hunting song ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Roman Empire, when society was resolved into its original elements,—when barbarism on the one hand, and superstition on the other, made the Middle Ages funereal, dismal, violent, despairing. But commerce, arts, and literature had introduced a new era,—still unformed, a vast chaos of conflicting forces, and yet redeemed by reviving intelligence and restless daring. The one thing which society needed in that transition period was a strong government in the hands of kings, to restore law and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... a black poodle at his heels, as well shorn as his master, newly risen from lying outside the church door; a gentle, somewhat drooping lady in black, not yet middle-aged and very pretty; a small eager, unformed, black-eyed girl, who could hardly keep back her words for the outside of the church door; a tall self-possessed handsome woman, with a fine classical cast of features; and lastly, a brown-faced, wiry hardworking clergyman, without an atom of superfluous ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shake to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling which shelters him. Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but he is himself the result of the labor and the experience of eighteen centuries. He wears the dress, and he speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious of the future, and ready for argument upon the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... "Some unformed idea that we were going to escort, or rescue, benighted travelers flickered dimly in my mind as I galloped through the night air; but when I managed to approach my companion and called out to him for explanation, he only turned half ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... worshipers, perhaps repeated by them all together, tie in the individual soul to the great mass of humanity and it moves on, with its fellows, toward salvation as majestically and steadily as great rivers flow. The extempore and silent prayer, not unpremeditated but still the unformed outpouring of the individual heart, gives each man the consciousness of standing naked and alone before his God. Both these, the corporate and the separate elements of worships are vital; there should be a place for each in ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... he had the paper in his hand. His fingers shook as he unfolded it, and he felt angry at his weakness. Yes, there it was—the address—written in an unformed hand. If he had only thought of the paper before, he would have been saved a deal of trouble—would have had more sleep. He read it over several times—"Three forty-one, North Parker Street"—so that he would remember it, if the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... not a fool, and Daisy was not a fool, though I admit they have thus far appeared to disadvantage. Both had made a great mistake; Guy in marrying a child whose mind was unformed, and Daisy in marrying at all, when her whole nature was in revolt against matrimony. But married they are, and Guy has failed and Daisy is going home, and the New Year's morning, when she was to have received Guy's gift of the phaeton and ponies, found her ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... always romantic and spent long hours of her young life in girlish reveries and dreams. Of course that isn't the way Kittie said it, but if I should tell this story in her crude, unformed fashion, you wouldn't read very far. What Kittie really said was that Josephine used to "moon around the grounds a lot and bawl, and even try to write poetry." I understand Josephine's nature, so I will go on and tell this story in my own way, but you must ...
— Different Girls • Various
... that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin's side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... committed the child, in utter helplessness, and weakness, and ignorance, an unformed being. The power and the knowledge are theirs, and on their side is He, the Almighty and infinitely wise, with his spirit and his laws, and his promises. If they are faithful,—if from the first they ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... each one sees what in his bosom burns. Open alike, as yet, to weeping and to laughter, They still admire the flights, they still enjoy the show; Him who is formed, can nothing suit thereafter; The yet unformed with ...
— Faust • Goethe
... leave her!' Beauchamp interjected. He perceived the quality of Renee's unformed character which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... days passed, and still my plans in regard to her father remained unformed, the men on whom I relied did not appear, and mademoiselle did not speak of resuming her flight southward. There came no further sign of the existence of De Berquin. From or of the outside world we heard nothing, save occasionally, when the wind was in the right direction, the faint sound of the ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... one, the qualities which in them were his pride and delight, were made of no account. Flesh of his flesh, the keeper of his honour and his peace henceforth, the maker or marrer of his life's happiness, be it long or short, was this pretty unformed, wayward child. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... unformed and childish, that poor little thing!—surely a man could make what he would of her. She would give him affection and duty; the core of the nature was sound, and her little humours would bring life ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remarked Nan to Ingua, after a strained pause. "You know so little of the world that your judgment is wholly unformed. I've a notion to take you to Washington and buy you a nice outfit of clothes—like those of Mary Louise, you know—and put you into a first-class girls' boarding-school. Then you'll get civilized, and perhaps amount ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... scarcely doubt that this law of commensurability has largely influenced the present distribution of the asteroids. But its effects must have been produced while they were still in an unformed, perhaps a nebular condition. In a system giving room for considerable modification through disturbance, the recurrence of conjunctions with a dominating mass at the same orbital point need not involve instability.[1026] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... in her room sat down, staring in a sudden panic. She needed to search out a certain faded picture. It was almost with a sob that she noted the thin shoulders, the unformed jaw, the eye betokening pride rather than vigour, the brow indicative of petulance as much as sternness. Mary Ellen laid the picture to her cheek, saying again and again that she loved it still. Poor girl, she did not yet know that this was ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... dimly, the passage of many heavy years since that time of hope and passion, but, perhaps, the vague shadow would pass away, and he could renew the boy's thoughts, the unformed fancies that were part of the bright day, of the wild roses in the hedgerow. All other things should be laid aside, he would let them trouble him no more after this winter night. He saw now that from the first he had allowed his imagination to bewilder him, to create a fantastic world in which ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... was very, very good-looking. A handsome, graceful figure, agreeable, rather unformed features, kindly bluish eyes, golden hair, a clear white and red skin, and, above all, that peculiar, naively-cheerful, confiding, open, at the first glance, somewhat foolish expression, by which ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Dufour, proprietors of the Revue Etrangere de St. Petersbourg. Therefore, in October, before the authorised version was published in Paris, there appeared in Russia, under the title of "Le Lys dans la Vallee," what Balzac indignantly characterised as the "unformed thoughts which served me ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and frame. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; but publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes, with great appearance ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... agreed with some dryness. "For all that, my inquiry was perhaps justified. The girl is unformed, but she's beautiful and ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Drama, the Pageant, the Masque, we work our way to the Play itself. The first beginnings of the modern Drama must here be passed over: there were the rough and unformed comedies such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' performed in a college hall: or the tragedy played on boards spread over a waggon in the courtyard of an inn. Let us suppose that we are past the beginnings and are in Shakespeare's time—i.e. the end of ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... was to come down all the way from Ukraine to have it out with me and to judge by himself, unprejudiced, impartial, and just, taking his stand on the ground of wisdom and affection. As far as is possible for a boy whose power of expression is still unformed I opened the secret of my thoughts to him, and he in return allowed me a glimpse into his mind and heart; the first glimpse of an inexhaustible and noble treasure of clear thought and warm feeling, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... me as being a mere child," said Miss Bax, "so very unformed; is she out yet, or is she ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... always to be trying to look like a child." It was true there was something childlike in her face; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large, blue, wondering eyes, looking straight at you; her nose was unformed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy; she wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened this appearance. I do not know whether she was pretty or not; but I liked her face, and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie |
