"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seeing and hearing about the presents the school-girls were making, she had been full of vague longings to do something for some one; but she had neither money nor material, and was not at all sure how a present from her would be received by her father and mother. "Perhaps I might make a pin-ball," she thought, beginning to search through the old chest of drawers that stood ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... philosophy,—that theory of the sole Divine Substance, the All-One, which Goethe in early life found so pacifying to his troubled spirit, and which, vague and barren as it proves on nearer acquaintance, induces at first, above all other systems, a sense of repose in illimitable vastness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... FitzGerald chuckles at the morality of the "salwagers," and chuckles again at the expansiveness of the East Anglian "half a pint," which may mean anything between its nominal measure and the full holding capacity of the drinker—which is as vague as ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... photograph of Irene Mitchell. He sat on the edge of the bed, thrust his feet into his slippers, and stared at the picture. Was it possible that he had really thought seriously of marrying her? It seemed like a vague dream, his entire association with her. For months he had been her chief escort; he had called on her at least twice a week. He had made no denial when his and her friends spoke of the alliance as a coming certainty, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... had little more than the Huguenots at his back. There were also formidable claimants for the throne. Charles II. Duc de Lorraine, who had married Claude, younger daughter of Henri IL, and who was therefore brother-in-law to Henri III., set up a vague claim; the King of Spain, Philip II., thought that the Salic law had prevailed long enough in France, and that his own wife, the elder daughter of Henri III. had the best claim to the throne; the Guises, though ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sitting-room opened and Lans entered noiselessly. Marian Spaulding's back was toward it and in her slow, vague way Cynthia was wondering why he should be there just then. The last shielding crust of childhood was breaking away from Cynthia—her womanhood, full and glowing, was being fanned to flame by the appeal this strange woman was making upon it. Cynthia, the girl who had been caught ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... encountered each other in single combat. Alaric fell by the hand of his rival; and the victorious Frank was saved by the goodness of his cuirass, and the vigor of his horse, from the spears of two desperate Goths, who furiously rode against him to revenge the death of their sovereign. The vague expression of a mountain of the slain, serves to indicate a cruel though indefinite slaughter; but Gregory has carefully observed, that his valiant countryman Apollinaris, the son of Sidonius, lost his life at the head of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... struck him so forcibly. He was sure that it did exist, and that he had looked upon it no very long time before. But he tried in vain to fix it. The impression floated still in his mind only as a vague idea. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... little doubt that Russia will gain the enormous advantage of a free opening into the Mediterranean and that the battle of the Marne turned the fortunes of France from disaster to expansion. But the rest of the settlement is still vague and uncertain, and German imperialism, at least, is already working hard and intelligently for a favorable situation at the climax, a situation that will enable this militarist empire to emerge still strong, still capable of recuperation and of a renewal at no ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true! And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Theodore stands out from its whole annals as a great preacher, and no less for the charm of his personal character. It was he, fitly, who gave to the house that special Rule, which stood in the same relation to the general customary observance by Eastern monks of that somewhat vague series of laws known as "the Rule of Basil," that the reform of Odo of Cluny stood to the work of S. Benedict himself. It was an eminently sensible codification of floating custom in regard to monastic life. All that Theodore did—and this ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... to be here to speak to his character. I sent him a sub-poena on Saturday night. Though, after all, juries go very little by such general and vague testimony as that to character. It is very right that they should not often; but in this instance unfortunate for us, as we must rest our case on ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... vague sadness, that generally accompanies a gloomy atmosphere, weighed upon the spirits of the colonists. Recollections of the Nelson and her sudden disappearance thrust themselves more vividly than ever upon their memory; and Willis was observed to throw ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... characteristics, its interests, and its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... vague diffidence, "I was feeling pretty good by that time, and I seen the poster. I had the price—why shouldn't I go?" he demanded brusquely; and with another sardonic laugh the real motive came out,—"I ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... heard her little cry, "Ah!" How changed her voice had been when she said, "I love you." It had had no apparent connection with the moment, their actual passion. It had disturbed him with the suggestion of a false, a forced, note. In a situation of the utmost accomplishable reality it had been vague, meaningless. I love you. It was a strange phrase, at once empty and burdened with illimitable possibilities. He had said it times without number to Fanny, but first—how seductively virginal she had been—on a veranda at night. Then, though not quite for the first time, he had kissed her. And suddenly ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the French people would improve the first possible opportunity to re-establish the Empire; and consequently the conviction which he so confidently cherished, that he was destined to be the Emperor of France, was not a vague and baseless impression, but the dictate of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... when out on his solitary rambles; but sometimes he would flash out such a glance from beneath his broad-brimmed hat and shaggy eyebrows as would make timid country-folk hasten on their way filled with vague thoughts and fears of the evil eye. Mr. John Murray has referred to this love of mystery on the part of his father's friend, and also to his moody and variable temperament; while Mr. G. T. Bettany has related how ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... time-marks told of its advancement, step by step, in the march of improvement. There it has rested for thousands of years, wrapped in the mysteries of its own exclusiveness—gloomy, dark, peculiar. It has been supposed to possess great powers; and vague rumors have attributed to it arts to us unknown. Against nearly all the world, for thousands of years Japan has obstinately shut her doors; the wealth of the Christian world could not tempt her cupidity; ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... to look upon as a daughter, and he did not wish to give her up. It was true that it might be possible, under favourable pressure, to induce young Newcombe to come to Jamaica and settle there, but this was all very vague. Had he had his own way, he would have driven from Kate every thought of love or marriage until the time when his new clerk, Dickory Charter, had become a young merchant of good standing, worthy of such a wife. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Charlotte Bronte and her sisters wrote from their earliest years those little books which embodied their vague aspirations after literary fame. Now and again the effort is admirable, notably in The Adventures of Ernest Alembert, but on the whole it amounts to as little as did the juvenile productions of Shelley. That poet, it will be remembered, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... whence they might possibly have hit something, and from roofs with ordinary guns and revolvers which could not possibly have hit anything at all. In the gray haze that hung over Paris the next morning, I wandered through empty streets and finally, with some vague notion of looking out, up the hill of Montmartre. All Paris lay below, mysterious in the mist, with that strange, poignant beauty of something trembling on the verge. One could follow the line of the Seine and see the dome of the Invalides, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... left, while the boy lay back with them working desperately above him, it was almost possible to see the strength ebbing back into his veins. They dashed water upon his head, inverted bottles of it into his face, and emptied it from his eyes, but during that long half minute the vague smile never left his lips—nor his eyes the face of ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... imperfect and vague, and I have been able to obtain nothing like a complete account of it, for I have found no one who appeared to know the story of ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... that three thousand pounds give him! He wondered if Dr. Lee would turn his back upon him now when they met in consultation; and Mr. Chubb, the county apothecary, would he laugh and ask him if he could read his own prescriptions? Then he recurred to a dream—for it was so vague at that time as to be little more—whether it would not be better to abandon altogether country practice, and establish himself in the metropolis—London. A thousand pounds, advantageously spent, with a few introductions, would do a great deal in London, and that was not a ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... two, the majesty and the lowliness, the power and the love, the God inaccessible and the God who has tabernacled with us in Jesus Christ, is sure to be almost an impotent religion. Deism in all its forms, the religion which admits a God and denies a revelation; the religion which, in some vague sense, admits a revelation and denies an incarnation; the religion which admits an incarnation and denies a sacrifice; all these have little to say to man as a sinner; little to say to man as a mourner; little power to move his heart, little power to infuse strength into his weakness. If once you ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... long duration, and he examined the man from head to foot. A vague recollection of having met him somewhere, mingled with an indefinable feeling of suspicion and pain, crossed Harson's mind as he studied the sunken features which were submitted unshrinkingly to his scrutiny. He thought, and pondered, and wondered; and still the man remained unmoved. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... or nothing of the subject, and hence both the style of writing and the treatment of the subject will be simple. At the same time, I assume that the reader desires a full and accurate account, and not a vague story in which the difficulties are ignored. I hope that, as a result of this method of dealing with my subject, even experts will find much in the book that is of interest and value. After a brief survey of the history ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... Ravenna a few names have descended. These craftsmen were, Cuserius, Paulus, Janus, Statius and Stephanus, but their histories are vague. Theodoric also brought some mosaic artists from Rome to work in Ravenna, which fact accounts for a Latin influence discernible in these mosaics, which are in many instances free from Byzantine stiffness. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... dreaming, she suddenly bent forward and, parting the cloud of fair hair that fell about her, she looked in the glass before her, at the worn, delicate face haloed within it—thinking all the time with a vague misery of Lucy ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fear, whole armies and legions of the enemy that were close at hand, and that they were hastening toward the city in hostile array. Those who were nearest carried to others the reports heard from these, reports vague and on that account more groundless: and the hurry and clamour of those calling to arms bore no distant resemblance to the panic that arises when a city has been taken by storm. It so happened that the consul Quinctius had returned to Rome from ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... brows, and puckered her lips. Hitherto it had been taken for granted that Mr. Lord would be ready with subsidy; Horace, in a large, vague way, had hinted that assurance long ago. Fanny's disinclination to plight her troth—she still deemed herself absolutely free—had alone interfered between the young man and ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... so pure, and to gaze at a sky so transparent, that some of those undefined longings for surroundings that have never been realized were instinctively uppermost in the mind. It is, I imagine, that vague recognition of perfection which has its effect on even superficial minds when impressed with beautiful scenery, for to what other cause can be attributed the remark one hears, that such scenes 'make one ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... vague theories of the earth, theories which contain no principle for investigating either the general disorder of strata or the particular form of mountains, such theories can receive no confirmation from the examination of the earth, nor can they ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... beg your pardon!" she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the gold-fish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... of the strong, organised monarchy was indeed completely to alter the position of the nobles. The German barons in the south had succeeded in throwing off the control of their territorial lords; they owned no authority but the vague control of the distant Emperor, and ruled their little estates with an almost royal independence; they had their own laws, their own coinage, their own army. In the north, the nobles of Mecklenburg Holstein, and Hanover formed a dominant class, and the whole government of the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the vessel to put the pinnace together, and we might afterwards think how we should launch it. Under any other circumstances I should have shown them the folly of such an undertaking; but in truth, I had myself a vague hope of success, that encouraged me, and I cried out, "To work! to work!" The hold was lighted by some chinks in the ship's side. We set diligently to work, hacking, cutting, and sawing away all obstacles, and before evening we had a clear space round us. But now ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... telephone made both of us fairly jump, so nervous had we become. Kennedy reached over instantly for the instrument in the vague hope that at ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... past them; how for hundreds of years it has always been flowing, and always passing, passing, passing so quickly to the great silent sea of death and oblivion, to the dark night whose silence is only sometimes stirred by vague whispers, anxious yet faint, dying upon the ear before the sense can ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... momentous event was accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really, simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia. But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless weapons to the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... years. We think the girl rather inclines to a hauteur based upon the general neglect of that quality in the family, where even the eldest sister is too much engaged in ruling to have much force left for snubbing. The child carries herself with a vague loftiness, which has apparently not awaited the moment of long skirts for keeping pretenders to her favor at a distance. In the default of other impertinents to keep in abeyance we fancy that she exercises her gift upon her younger brother, who, so far as we have ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... possession of the latter, he must have exchanged them with, or presented them to, the Earl of Arundel. For in 1627 Sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an enthusiastic admirer of Holbein's work. After this, one or two vague notices suggest that they somehow drifted to Flanders, and thence to Paris. But there every trace of them is lost. Federigo Zucchero thought they yielded to no work of the kind, even among Italian masters; and copied them from pure admiration. Holbein's drawing for the Triumph of Riches ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... fled like chaff before the wind, while Di, full of remorseful zeal, charged at the kettles, and wrenched off the potatoes' jackets, as if she were revengefully pulling her own hair. Laura had a vague intention of going to assist; but, getting lost among the lights and shadows of Minerva's helmet, forgot to appear till dinner had been evoked from chaos ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... she perceived only two sides to the question, and this that Ruth had just presented seemed infinitely more convincing than the one Miss Blake had tried to make clear to her. Ruth's logic she could understand; the governess' seemed vague and incomprehensible. In one case she had been coerced into making a promise from which she had later been absolved; in the other she had given her word of her own free will, and she was being stoutly held to it. There were other influences at work, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... state, by the events of these last days, to be reasoned with. Mrs. Woodford was afraid he would work himself into delirium, and could only soothe him into a calmer state. She found from Anne that the children had some vague hopes of his being allowed to remain at Portchester, and that this was the ground of his disappointment, since he seemed to be attaching himself to them as the first who had ever touched his heart or opened to him a gleam of ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she heard somebody coming across the rocks, stiffened as she listened with some vague presentiment ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... of finding it unanswered on awakening. That seemed to be reason enough for many resentful recoils from the very portals of sleep; serving no end, as Maisie had been overcome without a contest, and lay still as an effigy on a tomb. A vague fear that she might die unwatched, looking so like Death already, may have touched Phoebe's mind. But fears and unsolved riddles alike melted away and vanished in the end; and when Ruth Thrale, an hour ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... executors were hinting at the eventual necessity of taking out probate in regard to Sir Mark's will; this done, a considerable change in affairs was inevitable. In consequence of the information, Gertie could not avoid looking about her in the vague hope of encountering Henry; she wanted to see him, although she knew a meeting would only disturb and confuse. She waited outside the street door after business was over, gazing up and down before making a start ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... of 1815 only bound the four powers to common action in the event of a fresh revolution in France which might endanger the tranquillity of other states. The holy alliance was more comprehensive and wider in its aims, but was too vague to form the practical basis of a federation. The settlement of Europe by the treaty of Vienna was, however, the work of all the powers, and they had therefore an interest in everything that might be likely to ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Horton, invited me, a mere passer-by, into your house in Stretton Street. He said you were very much worried and asked if I would meet you. Why? I cannot imagine. When we met you were very vague in your statements, and at first I could not for the life of me discover why I had been asked to meet you. But soon you confided to me the fact that your wife, being spiteful towards you, had abandoned your heir, little Oswald, in Westbourne ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... ceiling or the floor of the circular room. Mryna had no way of making a differentiation. Eight brightly lighted corridors opened into the side walls. Mryna heard footsteps moving toward her down one of the corridors; she pulled herself blindly into another. As she went farther from the circular room, a vague sense of gravity returned. At the end of the corridor she was able to stand on her feet again, although she still had to walk very carefully. Any sudden movement sent her soaring in a graceful leap that banged her ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... state the end in a great many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from the way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the end of God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call 'salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take them to mean neither more nor less than dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all its mysticism, even when it soars highest, and speaks ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bottom. However, as she was a capital sea-boat, it was possible she might have weathered the gale, in which case Jerry and I concluded that she would find her way to some rendezvous or other with the pirate. We hoped she might, for vague ideas ran through our minds that she might by some means or other enable us to make our escape from our captors. We could not tell how, but we thought that perhaps we might some night get on board her in some harbour, when the large schooner was refitting, and run off with her. Very slender hopes ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... his original state of perfec- tion, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires evil through which to develop good. Were we to [10] admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we begin with the correct statement, with harmony and its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and its harmony, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... part. Yet of the immense body of literature dealing with the war, the greater part is given to telling the story of the great armies of the North and South. The details of the great land battles are familiar to many who have but a vague idea of the service done by the "blue jackets" of the North, and the daring deeds performed by ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being built up, girder by girder, around the vague spirit. Space, the physical space of savage shyness, is now ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... saw me, however, he did not wait for any retort on my part. He faded away—this is not slang; he did—he absolutely disappeared in the dusk without my getting more than a glimpse of his face. I had a vague impression of unfamiliar features and of a sort of cap with a visor. Then he ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud - there was always some such ready to help them - stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... With some vague juvenile notion of making himself unrecognizable he turned up the collar of his coat and pulled down ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... indistinct; the child will not know whether he understands or no, but will soon gain the habit of supposing that he does, as that is at once the least troublesome, and the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this same vague impression is often received by uneducated persons from reading or bearing either the Scriptures or sermons; it is by no means the same as if they had read or heard something in an unknown language; but yet they can give no distinct account ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... haunted Agatha when she retired to her stateroom that night, and she wondered what awaited all those aliens in the new land. It occurred to her that in some respects she was situated very much as they were. For the first time, vague misgivings crept into her mind as she realized that she had cut herself adrift from all to which she had been accustomed. She felt ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... that a situation between a number of people is vague and indefinite, until a certain moment, often quite undramatic and negative in itself, arrives, when the situation suddenly fixes itself and stands forward, set full square to the world, as a definite concrete fact. There was a certain Sunday in the April of this year that became for ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Her father was a well-to-do trader; he had had just enough schooling to give him a high notion of its value, and he resolved to equip his child with the best there was in reach. This meant an Illinois college. She entered at seventeen. Here many vague aspirations of schoolgirl life took definite shape, and resulted in some radical changes in her course of studies. Her mother had but one thought—to prepare Belle for being a good wife to some one. Her views on ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the main in vague generalities can never be justified. Preaching presumes a pulpit and has little place in classwork. The teacher who persists in talking most of the time overvalues his own thoughts and minimizes the ideas of others. Much ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... Champagny, I will and must succeed! No objections! I told you that I have made up my mind, and nothing can shake my determination. You will commence by encouraging Romanzoff in his hopes, and throw out only, now and then, a vague hint that there are countries, the annexation of which would be more important and advantageous to Russia. After having prepared his mind in this manner for our plan, you will gradually, and as soon as I have gained over the emperor, point ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... was most extraordinary, and Bella could make nothing of it but that John was in the right. How in the right, and how suspected of being in the wrong, she could not divine. Some vague idea that he had never really assumed the name of Handford, and that there was a remarkable likeness between him and that mysterious person, was her nearest approach to any definite explanation. But John was triumphant; that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... depicting the marvels of London. A limited vocabulary, no less than the dense ignorance of his guide on such topics as railways, electricity, paved streets, cabs, and other elements of existence in towns, rendered the descriptions vague. Suddenly, the sheikh broke in on Dick's labored recital with a query that gave ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... plan?" said Harry, very gravely. A vague idea of what the plan might be had come across Harry's mind during Lady ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... solitary and sad-looking, formed a worthy companion to that mysterious house of which we have already spoken to our readers. One might have thought that these two houses were yawning in each other's face. Not far from there the noise of brass was heard, mingled with confused voices, vague murmurs, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... It was a very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... however, were always satisfying, and even the sordid surroundings of the home were gilded by the warmth and glow of his imagination. Some day, somewhere he seemed to feel, there was a place for him to fill in the hearts of men. Vague stirrings told him of great future events which no one could dominate, save the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... offices, his two sons, who had been sent out by a generous friend, were placed in situations of respectability and emolument. But the thoughts of the poet himself were directed towards Britain. He sailed from Jamaica, with a thousand plans and schemes hovering in his mind, equally vague and indefinite as had been his aims and designs during the past chapter of his history. A small sum given him as the pay of an inland ensigncy, now conferred on him, but antedated, sufficed to defray the expenses of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies. Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... attorney gave answer, insisting that the King of Portugal had moved first in this matter, and therefore should be the plaintiff. As to the rest he said that the suit was obscure, vague, and general, insufficient to form a case on possession, and to pass a sure sentence upon it, let them specify wherein they thought the treaty was not observed, and let them attempt the fitting remedy and interdict, and he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... in Helena to a couple of days, which were devoted to arranging for an exploration of what are now known as the Upper and the Lower Geyser Basins of the Yellowstone Park. While journeying between Corinne and Helena I had gained some vague knowledge of these geysers from an old mountaineer named Atkinson, but his information was very indefinite, mostly second-hand; and there was such general uncertainty as to the character of this wonderland that I authorized an escort of soldiers to go that season from Fort Ellis with a small ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness. Perhaps it is only by a kink in my nature, strong in me even in those days, that I felt in such an existence, the share of the great majority, something amiss. I recognised its social values, I saw its ordered ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... follows her lover to Bath in the guise of a chambermaid, or that "The Fair Hebrew" relates the "true, but secret history of two Jewish ladies who lately resided in London," but without the labels the settings could not be distinguished from the vague and unidentified mise en scene of such a romance as "The Unequal Conflict." Placentia in England raves of her passion for Philidore exactly as Alovisa in Paris, Emanuella in Madrid,[10] or Cleomelia in Bengal expose the raptures and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... report, and particularly in his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Howe speaks as if he had received from Sedgwick only general—in fact, vague—and rare instructions, as to the dispositions to be made of his division; and that all his particular manoeuvres were originated and completed on his own responsibility, upon information, or mere hints, from headquarters of the corps. His line, over two miles long, was covered by less ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... that shortly there would be new developments. Jimmy, the veteran newspaperman, took this all for exactly what it was worth. He knew that most of it or all of it was "dope." The reporters had run out of facts and were having recourse to vague speculations. Strange too, Jimmy wondered that in a story so replete with color and glamour, that this should be ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... grave reproach cannot be spared Mr. Wilson of having been weak, vague, and inconsistent with himself. He constituted himself the supreme judge of a series of intricate questions affecting the organization and tranquillity of the European Continent, as he had previously done in the case of Mexico, with the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... vague discontent for any number of years, while yet they do no more than complain and wish they were more comfortable. So, for example, the farmers have been doing. But, so long as they go no further, there is no definite ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... (Riedel, Taubenzucht, s. 25, and Bechstein, 'Naturgesch. Deutsch.' B. iv. s. 44). Turbits (Riedel, s. 26) have been crossed with pouters and with jacobins, and with a hybrid jacobin-trumpeter (Riedel, s. 27). The latter author has, however, made some vague statements (s. 22) on the sterility of turbits when crossed with certain other crossed breeds. But I have little doubt that the Rev. E. S. Dixon's explanation of such statements is correct, viz. that individual birds both with turbits and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... depends on some law:" "it is a law, that there is a law for every thing." We must not, however, conclude that the generality of the principle is merely verbal; it will be found on inspection to be no vague or unmeaning assertion, but a most important and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Across fifty miles of sea and fifty miles of land the sound is borne to us as we sit in the midst of this great peace of earth and sky. When once detached, as it were, from the vague murmurs of the breathing air it becomes curiously insistent. It throbs on the ear almost like the beating of a pulse—baleful, sepulchral, like the strokes of doom. We begin counting them, wondering whether they are the guns of the enemy or our own, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... more vague and destitute of cohesion than Aino religious notions. With the exception of the hill shrines of Japanese construction dedicated to Yoshitsune, they have no temples, and they have neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship. Apparently ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... out to him clearly, fastening itself on his mind, and though in a vague way he heard the service through, his mind was busy with the thought that the Saviour of men had been betrayed by a friend, betrayed to his death, and had died blessing and forgiving ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Mrs. Catesby's decision to remove to the city that her daughter might have educational advantages. It was with genuine regret that Ree had learned her plans. He would never have admitted even to himself that he had, in a certain boyish, vague way, dreamed of a dim, distant time when he and Mary might be more than friends; but maybe some such thought had been in his mind at some time. Strange it would be had nothing of ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... his companion at her brother's dwelling, De Vessey came to his own, moody and dispirited. A vague sense of some grievous but impending misfortune hung heavily upon him. Night brought no mitigation of his fears. Spectres, skeletons, and demon-painters haunted his slumbers. He awoke in greater torment than ever. The duplicate portrait was brought to his remembrance with a vividness, an intensity ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... people must have queer notions about the lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing upon the deeds of Eric ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... prompted, were accepted by generous friends as indicating faculties 'beyond the reaches of my soul,' and induced them to encourage me by genial prophecies which, with unwearied purpose, they endeavored to fulfill. I renew that golden season when such vague aspirations were at once cherished and directed by the Christian wisdom of the venerated master of Reading School—who, during his fifty years of authority, made the name of our town a household word to successive generations ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... intend to send me back to the Keys?" asked the captain, whose military education appeared to have been neglected, so that his ideas of a state of war were very vague. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... habitually dispensed with; nothing is, for instance, more common than the simple ommission of the subject or predicate of a sentence. And when here and there a Sutra occurs whose words construe without anything having to be supplied, the phraseology is so eminently vague and obscure that without the help derived from a commentary we should be unable to make out to what subject the Sutra refers. When undertaking to translate either of the Mima/m/sa-sutras we therefore depend altogether ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... consequence. Crown-Prince has written from Potsdam to his Sister, 'No doubt I am left here lest the English wind get at me ( de peur que le vent anglais ne me touchat ).' Saw King at Parade, who was a little vague; 'is giving matters his consideration.' Majesty has said to Borck and Knyphausen, 'If they want the Double-Marriage, and to detach me from the Kaiser, let them propose something about Julich and Berg.' Sits the wind in that quarter? King has said since, to one Marschall, a Private-Secretary who ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... my tutor and is now my frequent correspondent. Not a bad sort of mentor, either!" The new arrival paused and smiled reflectively. "Only recently I received a letter from him, with private details of the flight of the king and vague intimations of a scandal in the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... peace-loving an element of the population to be capable of united action, and never do they seem to have provoked any outburst of Moslem fanaticism. They had local quarrels and fights with the more warlike Kurds who encroached on Armenia, and in the towns where they settled they often incurred the vague jealousy and dislike which are the penalties of a race superior morally and intellectually to those among whom they live. But that superiority constituted in course of time the 'Armenian question,' to which Abdul Hamid alluded. In all, some sixty years ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... these facts reached Firmus, first through vague reports, and subsequently by precise information, he, terrified at the approach of a general of tried valour, sent envoys and letters to him, confessing all he had done, and imploring pardon; asserting that it was not of his own accord that he had been driven ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... glimmering twilight when that one very bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch, or when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with her fingers—at such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reality, and disturb her new, assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find herself all mixed up, confused as to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... fired. His bullet ripped into the wall, tearing a hole through the partition where a brief instant ago Lee had stood. The light out in the barroom was extinguished. In the cardroom it was utterly, impenetrably dark now, only a vague square of lesser darkness telling where was the window through which ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... a word. She felt at home. A vague, delicious sense of rest stole over her as she listened to these kind words, and felt the subtle, beautiful influences of the place about her. It was only a pleasant family room, which taste and wealth ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first the Idea of her Life—all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time—then the idea of her life creeps—is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY creeps,—it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of affection to all this, and bringing ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the process whereby Arius should be rehabilitated by being received back into the Church he was invited by Constantine to appear at the court. He was there presented to the Emperor and produced a confession of faith purposely vague and general in statement, but intended to give the impression that he held the essentials of the received orthodoxy. The text is that given by Hahn, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... for some reason, unexplainable to herself, she was conscious of a vague sense of disappointment and injury. She would not admit to herself that she was troubled because Scott had gone, it was the manner of his departure. Surely, after the friendship and confidence she had shown him, he might at least have sent ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... on our way, I pondered much over this new discovery and the singular appearance of these birds, of which Jack could only give us a very slight and vague account; and I began to long to commence our boat, in order that we might go and inspect them more narrowly. But by degrees these thoughts left me, and I began to be much taken up again with the interesting peculiarities of the country which ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... house through wet blackberry vines whose thorns had outlived the winter. My steps broke the blank silence that brooded over the place. At this season there was no insect life; nor any other stirring thing within hearing or sight. But just as I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north. There was no wind, yet the water had seemed to move with a sound like the smacking of soft, glutinous lips. Or as if some soft body drew itself from a bed of clinging mud. I wondered idly if ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... shoulder; not always so, indeed, but often enough to be remarkable; and then he would occasionally start it straight again, eyes right, with a nervous twitch, any thing but pleasant to the marvelling spectator. It was as if he was momentarily expecting to look upon some vague object that affrighted him, and sometimes really did see it. Mr. Jennings had consulted high medical authority (as Hurstley judged), to wit, the Union doctor of last scene, an enterprising practitioner, glib in theory, and bold in practice—and it had been mutually agreed between ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wondered how Sabina could be her daughter, drew an armchair into place for her, and sat down again by his writing-table. The windows were open and the blinds were drawn together to keep out the glare, for it was a hot day. A vague and delicious suggestion of Florentine orris-root spread through the warm air as the Princess sat down. Malipieri watched her face, but her expression showed no signs ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... merely the background for the human figures. Much of his vividness lies in the use of specific words. If he should employ the phraseology of his jungle laws to frame the first commandment for writers, it would be: "Seven times never be vague." Few authors have at the very beginning of their career more implicitly heeded such a commandment, obedience to which is evident in the following description from The ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the manner in which the bone had been cracked open with a stone to let the marrow be sucked out. The sight of this gruesome relic revived all his fears, tenfold more acutely than ever, and filled him with a sense of vague, impending evil, of peril deadly ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... true of these passages is true, with one or two exceptions, of all the natural descriptions of Browning in which the pathetic fallacy seems to be used by him. I need not say how extraordinarily apart this method of his is from that of Tennyson. Then Tennyson, like Coleridge—only Tennyson is as vague and wavering in this belief as Coleridge is firm and clear in it—sometimes speaks as if Nature did not exist at ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... than a few seconds, before Harriet Burrell's benumbed senses began to perform their natural functions. Deep down in her inner consciousness was the feeling that, though the surf was breaking over her, underneath her was something solid, immovable. In a vague sort of way she wondered at this, but for the time being was too weary and dulled to reason out the cause of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... a little amused, Eleanor watched him. All at once, she felt a catch in her throat, was aware of a vague, uncomprehended fear—fear of him, of her loneliness with him, of something further and greater which she could not understand, did not try to understand. She wanted air; wanted to get away. When he turned about, she stood ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... no progress during these seemingly resultless sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there, and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... the fraternity. With the audacity of youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her spirit. Scheible was ambitious, and it was his plan, as she knew, to go to Philadelphia to make his fortune; and she and he together, what might they ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... us with a more admirable representation than our own minds could have furnished of some one whose name we have long known, and of whose personal bearing, and habits, and daily thoughts, we had but a vague and misty idea; and acknowledging the fidelity of the portrait we may adopt it; and then this historical person becomes to us what the imagination of genius, not what history, has made him, and yet the portrait is probably one in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... there." Minty pointed a vague finger behind them seaward. "We lived there when father went fishin' afore he was drownded. I was real small, and I didn't have no cow. Daisy was born the year we come here, and Thinkright gave her ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... me to hear the news from Tripoli and Algeria. I found them all interested in the fate and fortunes of the latter country. Some vague rumours had reached them of serious and bloody skirmishes. I calmed them, telling them "all people were on an equal footing in Algeria, Christians as Mussulmans, even as Mussulmans were in our British India." Some doubted ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson |
