"Define" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Art Pastoral, as attempted in the 'Golden Age,'" pursued Valentine, turning over a leaf, "I will now, with your permission, proceed to Art Mystic and 'Columbus.' Art Mystic, I would briefly endeavor to define, as aiming at the illustration of fact on the highest imaginative principles. It takes a scene, for instance, from history, and represents that scene as exactly and naturally as possible. And here the ordinary thinker might be apt to say, Art Mystic has done enough." ("So it has," ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For when we define, we seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard, or embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial consideration of the object before us, instead of extending our ideas to take ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... recently received a manuscript from a teacher which embodied a number of answers given by her pupils to questions propounded. These answers show that the children had nothing but the sound to go by—the sense was perfectly empty. Here are some of their answers to words they were asked to define: Auriferous—pertaining to an orifice; ammonia—the food of the gods; equestrian—one who asks questions; parasite—a kind of umbrella; ipecaca—man who likes a good dinner. And here is the definition of an ancient word honored by a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Fichte did not mean the subjective ego, the particular individual self with all its idiosyncrasies, but the universal ego, the reason that manifests itself in all conscious individuals as universal and necessary truth. In his earlier period he did not define his thought very carefully, but in time the absolute ego came to be conceived as the principle of all life and consciousness, as universal life, and ultimately identified with God. His philosophy is, therefore, not subjective idealism, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Many a weighty philosopher has followed him in this opinion. The denial of place is by no means necessarily the denial of being. So, too, with consciousness. It is conceivable that there is a being superior to all the modes of consciousness now known to us. We are, indeed, unable to define this, yet it may be. The profoundest analysis shows that consciousness consists of co ordinated changes.45 "Consciousness is a succession of changes combined and arranged in special ways." Now, in contrast to the Occidental thinker, who covets alternation because ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... said Charles, 'though I can't say it sounds to me promising. Come, Maurice, define ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... place, it educates by Written Law. To be sure, laws are passed to define and protect human rights, in person, purse, family, or good name. People sometimes think that is all they do. But consider. These laws on the Statute Book are the Nation's deliberate convictions, so far, on right and wrong, a real code of morals, the decisions of the national conscience on moral ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... even in the face of the current gospel of art for art's sake. There is something that made Scott and Irving personally loved by the millions of their readers, who had only the dimmest of ideas of their personality. This was some quality perceived in what they wrote. Each one can define it for himself; there it is, and I do not see why it is not as integral a part of the authors—an element in the estimate of their future position—as what we term their intellect, their knowledge, their skill, or their art. However you rate it, you cannot account for Irving's influence ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... been more dignified, more gracious, more gracefully condescending than her poise. She dramatised not only her role, but the whole of her surroundings. The interior of the little cottage seemed to define itself with almost visible distinctness the moment she set ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... path; And proves new ways to come to learned ears: Pied ignorance she neither loves, nor fears. Nor hunts she after popular applause, Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws The garland that she wears, their hands must twine, Who can both censure, understand, define What merit is: then cast those piercing rays, Round as a crown, instead of honour'd bays, About his poesy; which, he knows, affords Words, above action; ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... and its four towers—counting the clock tower as one—clearly define the precincts; or, as a surveyor would say, the perimeter of the Palace, as it was from the time of the Merovingians till the accession of the first race of Valois; but to us, as a result of certain alterations, this Palace is more especially representative ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... open to censure by the philosopher who places women (and girls, i.e. unmarried women) in the rank of responsible or even rational creatures. But in this disposition he would be clearly wrong. Before venturing to define the precise capacity of either an individual or a class, their own opinion on the subject should assuredly be consulted; and we are quite sure that there is not one of the lady Tiptoes who would not recoil with horror from the suspicion of advancing or even of entertaining an idea—it having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... greasy, black-haired, sallow-faced cures, two farmers' wives with a puking child each, our own portly self, and the sixth passenger. Now, this sixth individual, who was in reality the eighth Christian immured in this quasi Black-hole, was one of those nondescript Parisian existences, to define whom is almost impossible to those who have never witnessed the animal. He might have been a commis-voyageur, or a clerk in the passport-office, or the keeper of a small cafe, or an epicier, but he did not look stupid enough for the last. Be this as it may, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... nor young, nor at the years Which certain people call a "certain age,"[205] Which yet the most uncertain age appears, Because I never heard, nor could engage A person yet by prayers, or bribes, or tears, To name, define by speech, or write on page, The period meant precisely by that word,— Which surely is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed— in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them—conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... a pause. Beautrelet watched Raymonde. She had listened to Lupin without saying a word and looked at him with eyes in which he read love, passion and something else besides, something which the lad could not define, a sort of anxious embarrassment and a vague sadness. But Lupin turned his eyes upon her and she gave him an affectionate smile. Their hands met over ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... science. A good action is not distinguished from a bad action by marks so plain as those which distinguish a hexagon from a square. There is a frontier where virtue and vice fade into each other. Who has ever been able to define the exact boundary between courage and rashness, between prudence and cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... voids, felt, more than anything else, tastes sharp and fine that seemed to cut into her own tastes and show her suddenly that she did not really like what she had thought she liked, or that she liked what she had hardly before been aware of. All that Helen could be brought to define was that she liked looking at things in the country: at birds, clouds, and flowers; but though striking Althea as a creature strangely untouched and unmoulded, she struck her yet more strongly as beautifully definite. She marvelled at her indifference to her own shortcomings, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... course they did not constitute two different languages, and that which they had in common was far greater than the element peculiar to each, or, to put it in another way, they in large measure overlapped each other. Perhaps we are in a position now to characterize colloquial Latin and to define it as the language which was used in conversation throughout the Empire with the innumerable variations which time and place gave it, which in its most highly refined form, as spoken in literary circles at Rome in the classical period, approached indefinitely near its ideal, literary Latin, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... his late conduct that the contingency referred to was likely to occur, resolved to be careful and not give him any opportunity to express his feelings, and furthermore, to kindly and cautiously teach him the meaning of the word Friendship, and particularly to define the broad distinction between ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... the night's study, he recalled his visit to The Pines with a degree of pleasure hitherto unknown. He had found Kate Underwood far different from his anticipations, though just what his anticipations had been he did not stop to define. There was at times a womanly grace and dignity in her bearing which he would have expected from her portrait and which he admired, but what especially attracted him was her utter lack of affectation or self-consciousness. She was ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... of our school have intended, so far as any creative art can have deliberate intention, to make this change, a change having more meaning and implications than a few sentences can define. When I was first moved by Lord Dunsany's work I thought that he would more help this change if he could bring his imagination into the old Irish legendary world instead of those magic lands of his with their vague Eastern air; ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... known as the "levee law," and the other as the "farm drainage act." They cover nearly the same subject matter, and were passed to compromise conflicting views. These laws relate to "combined drainage." "Individual drainage" was not discussed. As the law does not undertake to define how deep you may plow or what crop you shall raise, so it was thought unnecessary to make any provisions about the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... interchange of words in the vernacular of the country we define at once each other's nationality and linguistic abilities. He is a Russian and can speak a little Persian. It is difficult, however, to believe him anything else than a little French professor, wise above his generation and skin-full of occult wisdom in some particular branch of science; but ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... which the large majority of abolitionists was decidedly opposed. Even among them, however, there was a difference of opinion, Garrison, H.C. Wright and others, non-resistants, encouraging the agitation of Woman's Rights. A few lines from one of Angelina's letters will best define the position taken by ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Obed. "It was a Mexican and he was shooting with what the law would define as an intent to kill. He sent a rifle bullet across the Guadalupe, aimed at our young friend, Edward Fulton. Ned did not see the bullet, but his sensitiveness to touch showed that it passed within ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nome. In his disappointment he accused his successful antagonist of Sabellianism, and, in retaliation, was anathematized. It was no wonder that, in such an atmosphere, the question quickly assumed a philosophical aspect. The point of difficulty was to define the position of the Son in the Holy Trinity. Arius took the ground that there was a time when, from the very nature of sonship, the Son did not exist, and a time at which he commenced to be, asserting that it is the necessary condition of the filial relation that ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... place, that there is such a thing as luck, using the word in its common acceptation. In what is called a scientific treatment of the subject in hand I ought to say, as exactly as I can, what I myself understand by luck. It will leave abundance of room for criticism if I venture to define it—as some advantage that comes to a man independent of his moral worth, his native gifts, or of any equivalent he has rendered for it of industry and self-denial. That some people have such an advantage ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... eat it; to make up soft white beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly conscious of it. I could not imagine Antonia's living for a week in any other house in Black Hawk than ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... way. He was himself for the moment uneasy at the appearance of the French on the Flemish coast, and he owned that "he could never live at ease with his subjects" if Flanders were abandoned. He allowed Danby therefore to press on both parties the necessity for mutual concessions, and to define the new attitude of England by reviving the project for a match between Mary and William of Orange. William's distrust of Arlington, by whom the proposal of it had been made to him, had led the Prince at first to set aside the scheme. But he had never lost sight of it, and the counsels of Sir William ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... not look at him, would not speak to him; he supposed that he had offended her. He himself was aware of an increasing feeling of dissatisfaction—whether with her, or with her circumstances, he could not define—and this feeling found expression in a sentence which he addressed to her two days after the game of battledore and shuttlecock. Hugo had been to the house again, and had been even less guarded than usual in his love-making. Kitty meant to put a stop to it sooner ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... law. It may be said, perhaps, that, obviously, the good man does not always reap his reward of good results, nor does the wicked man always suffer. Not always immediately; not always within our ken; but assuredly, eventually and inexorably." The writer then goes on to define his conception of Good and Evil. He says: "We shall see more clearly that this must be so if we define exactly what we mean by good and evil. Our religious brothers would tell us that that was good which was in accordance with God's will, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... resignation; it was too bad, he said, to talk of him to his face so dismally. Bessie Fairfax was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and fancying she saw a change; he was certainly not so brown as he used to be, nor so buoyant, nor so animated. But it would have perplexed her to define what the change she fancied was. Conscious of her observation, Harry dissembled a minute, then pushed back his chair, and invited her to come away to the old sitting-room, where the evening sun shone. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... probably develop the fact that there was a certain superstition which prevented a great many people from interfering with the possible deposits which Captain Kidd had made in their neighborhood, and although few persons would be able to define exactly the foundation of the superstition, it was generally supposed that most of the pirates' treasures were guarded by pirate ghosts. In that case, of course, timid individuals would be deterred from going out by themselves at night,—for that was ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... the radiator. She was accustomed to that. The rattle of the L trains, and the milkman's artillery disturbed her as little as does the chirping of the birds the farmer's daughter. A sensation new, yet familiar; delicious, yet painful, held her. She groped to define it, lying there. Her gaze, wandering over the expanse of the grey woollen blanket, fixed upon a small black object trembling there. The knowledge that came to her then had come, many weeks before, in a hundred ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... think I want to be preachy or a beast in any way, but I want to what Father calls define the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... advice. 2. Give three reasons why worry can make you thin. 3. Define "Medical Trust" and "League for Medical Freedom." 4. Memorize paragraph about nature 5. Enumerate the things you can ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... something highly poetical about a forge. I am not singular in this opinion: various individuals have assured me that they can never pass by one, even in the midst of a crowded town, without experiencing sensations which they can scarcely define, but which are highly pleasurable. I have a decided penchant for forges, especially rural ones, placed in some quaint, quiet spot—a dingle, for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... all events, must be Mongolians of Turanian origin. The Mahrattis are aborigines of the West of India, as the Bengalis are of, the East; but to what group of tribes belong these two nationalities no ethnographer can define, save perhaps a German. The traditions of the people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient manuscripts is disfigured, and, in fact, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... quiet in the house on Sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any other member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces. But our definition is less broad. We all rest alike on Sunday—by secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to define the difference between the only two parties with definite principles. The real contest was, not between Lincoln and Douglas, or between Cox and me, but between Breckenridge and Lincoln, between free institutions and slave institutions, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... to measure the wit of man, and to define his resources. The problem was solved; the aerial messengers were on the wing, diffusing over hundreds of leagues of water the intelligence that an English lady had been wrecked on an unknown island, in longitude 103 deg. 30 min., and between the 33d and 26th parallels ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the merchants is more difficult to define; but you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as opposed to the military license ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... the intellect to the Word is, according to some, the faith insisted on in Scripture, but this is a mere fiction. Such as thus define faith do not duly ponder the saying of Paul, "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." Assent itself is more a matter of the heart than the head, of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... forth some of the liveliest sort of vituperation. Such combinations of opprobrious epithets are rarely exhibited. That man's relatives, near and remote, male and female, were brought into requisition to define the exquisite meanness of his nature and origin. The discomfited nabob appealed to Colonel Pattee for redress, who sent Adjutant Wright back to ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... mystery began to define itself, as figures grow clearer with the lifting of a fog. Here was this good and pious lady pursued from place to place by a sinister and unrelenting figure. She feared him, or she would not have fled from Lausanne. He had still ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... simple matter to define exactly one's likes and dislikes. Even a tiny protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the microscope. How can we hope to analyse, with any degree of certitude, our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling, we see as ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... growing." "You would call groundsel a weed in the garden of a man who does not keep a canary, but not a weed in the garden of a man who does?" "I would." Socrates would burst out laughing at this, and say: "It seems to me that a weed is more difficult to define even than justice. I think we had better change the subject and talk about the immortality of the soul." The only part of the definition of a weed, indeed, that bears a moment's investigation is contained in the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... men to idols, madly on my knee; And then uplifted by those arms of thine, I sat beside thee, warm'd with other wine Than vintage balm; and, mindful of thy blush, I guess'd a thought which words will not define. ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... direct practical question. The term took its origin in the efforts made in William and Mary's reign to give such increased latitude to the formularies of the English Church as might bring into its communion a large proportion of the Nonconformists. From the first there was a disposition to define a Latitudinarian, much as Dr. Johnson did afterwards, in the sense of 'one who departs from orthodoxy.' But this was not the leading idea, and sometimes not even a part of the idea, of those who spoke with praise or blame of the eminent 'Latitudinarian' bishops of King William's time. Not ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... create Demeter and Persephone as we know them in art and poetry. From the vague and fluctuating union, in which together they had represented the earth and its changes, the mother and the daughter define themselves with special functions, and with fixed, well-understood relationships, the incidents and emotions of which soon weave themselves into a pathetic story. Lastly, in proportion as the literary or aesthetic activity ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of this book may not unnaturally provoke suspicion. After all, howsoever we define it, socialism is a modern thing, and dependent almost wholly on modern conditions. It is an economic theory which has been evolved under pressure of circumstances which are admittedly of no very long standing. How then, it may be asked, is it possible ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... many consequences. A harsh but a salutary truth! If Elsmere needed it, it was bitterly taught him during a terrible half-hour. When the half-coherent enigmatical sentences, to which he listened at first with a perplexed surprise, began gradually to define themselves; when he found a woman roused and tragically beautiful between him and escape; when no determination on his part not to understand; when nothing he could say availed to protect her from herself; when they were at last face ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no idea. Has a necessary being, of sovereign intelligence, created them out of nothing, or has he arranged them? did he produce this order in Time or before Time? What even is this Time of which I speak? I cannot define it. O God! Teach me, for I am enlightened neither by other men's darkness nor by ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... attempt, praised by some, condemned by others, to establish articles of the Jewish faith, the Bible being used in authentication. Thirteen articles of faith were thus established. The first five naturally define the God-idea: Article 1 declares the existence of God, 2, His unity, 3, His immateriality, 4, His eternity, 5, that unto Him alone, to whom all created life owes its being, human adoration is due; the next four treat of revelation: 6, of revelations made ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the addition of a vast number of names, and would have made the work unwieldy, and the very object of this volume as a book of ready reference would not have been achieved. But the difficulty has been to define the exact meaning of a pirate and of a buccaneer. In the dictionary a pirate is defined as "a sea-robber, marauder, one who infringes another's copyright"; while a buccaneer is described as "a sea-robber, a pirate, especially of ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... critical authors had been less anxious to square truth with orthodoxy, and not orthodoxy with truth, they would have known that where the entire force was "superstitious" the influence of the sacred arm would enormously intensify soldierly enthusiasm, and that it is impossible to define its comparative share in the result. Robert Bruce, indeed, appears to have been sensibly impressed by the good offices of the sacred relic, and attested his gratitude in a substantial manner. He founded a priory at Strathfillan, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... rejection unless such act be again passed, or that of such particular legislature should be again negatived by a specified number of members of each branch. Eighthly, To establish a national judiciary, the members of which should hold office during good behavior; and to define their duties, powers, privileges, and emoluments. Ninthly, To provide for the admission of new states into the Union. Tenthly, To guaranty a republican form of government to each state and territory. Eleventhly, To provide for a continuation of a Congress with its delegated powers, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... and matter are related force the investigator to consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very good reason that scientific method, which we are to define shortly, cannot be employed for their solution. Evolution is a science; it is a description of nature's order, and its materials are facts only. In method and content it is the very science of sciences, describing all and ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... American type of mind is evident in many other fields than that of politics. The stimulating book from which I have just quoted, attempts in its closing paragraph, after touching upon the more salient features of our national activity, to define the typical ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... I could not define began suddenly to fill my mind, and I said to her, "Didn't you write ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... quantitative theory of money. This theory is still occasionally called in question, but is on the whole accepted by most economists of to-day, and seems to me to be a mere arithmetical truism if we only make the meaning of the word "currency" wide enough; that is to say, if we define it as including all kinds of commodities, including pieces of paper and credit instruments, which are normally accepted in payment for goods and services. This addition of credit instruments, however, is a complication which has considerably confused the problem of gold ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... le definir—The soul cannot move, wake, or open the eyes without perceiving God. We perceive God through the soul as we feel air on the body. Dare I say it? We can know God easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define Him." ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... muscular fellows, every one of them apparently in the pink of condition, while the faces and figures of the women, especially the younger ones, would have excited the envy of many an English belle. But there was a something, very difficult to define, in the expression of these people that I did not at all like, a hardness about the mouth, and a cruel glint in the eyes—especially of the men— which looked at me in a manner that suggested all sorts of unpleasant possibilities, and excited within me a distinct ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... impressed by the wonders and beauties of Niagara. They are always asking: "What does this beauty or that music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?" In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... only to start for discussion the idea of an electoral representation of the nations upon these three bodies that must in succession set themselves to define, organize, and maintain the peace of the world. I do not wish to complicate the question by any too explicit advocacy of methods of election or the like. In the United States this college which elects the President is elected ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... ourselves compelled to dissent very widely from many of Professor Kolliker's remarks; and from none more thoroughly than from those in which he seeks to define what we may term the philosophical position ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... who, for some reason she could not at this moment define, was finding the conversation ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... it; this provision was made much fuller and more definite by a second conference at Brussels in 1890, on the demand of Britain, who had hitherto contended almost alone against the traffic in human flesh. But no attempt was made to define native rights, to safeguard native customs, to prohibit the maintenance of forces larger than would be necessary for the maintenance of order: in short, no attempt was made to lay down the doctrine that the function of a ruling ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... thick nor braid?" King Jamie said, "I'll eat my gude hat-band If arra line as ye define Be ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... side of things and I had not the remotest idea what the position and functions of an adjutant are. I know now that he is something like an archdeacon, a man of enormous importance whose duties it is a little difficult to define exactly. He expected me. With the help of the sergeant-major he had found a servant for me and assigned ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... among rebel groups, warlords, and youth gangs in neighboring states have spilled over into Guinea, resulting in domestic instability; Sierra Leone considers Guinea's definition of the flood plain limits to define the left bank boundary of the Makona and Moa rivers excessive and protests Guinea's continued occupation of these lands, including the hamlet of Yenga, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... attaint With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; That every wretch, pining and pale before, Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks. A largess universal like the sun His liberal eye doth give to every one, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night. And so our scene must to the battle fly, Where—O for pity!—we shall much disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, Minding true things by what ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... which this exhibition created in me, and Lord Gower laughed, and said, "You perhaps do not know who it is?" Indeed I did not. Je define seulement que sa figure n'est pas laide. His chevelure was like that which I see in a picture of the grand Conde. If there is anything of that hid under this disguise je lui passerai cette singularity and yet, if your sons or either of them should have all which Monsieur le Prince possessed, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the new reading public, they begged him to say what he meant. He answered that there was nothing more phenomenal in the modern American life; and he paid a pretty tribute to their ignorance in owning that he was not surprised they knew nothing of that public. He promised that he would try to define it, and he began by remarking that it seemed to be largely composed of the kind of persons who at the theatre audibly interpret the action to one another. The present company must ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... SPEECH, AND SENTENCE ELEMENTS. What are the four kinds of sentences? What are the different parts of speech? Define each. What is the difference between a clause and a phrase? What is the difference between a principal clause and a subordinate clause? Illustrate. Illustrate an adverbial clause. An adjective clause. Illustrate an adverbial ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... embark upon your explanation, permit me to define my position—mine and Lady Filson's. [PHILIP nods.] I am going to make a confession to you; and I should like to feel that I am making it as one gentleman to another. [PHILIP nods again.] Mr. Mackworth, Lady Filson and I are ambitious people. Not for ourselves. ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Precieuses Ridicules," Coquelin becomes delicate and extravagant, a scented whirlwind; his parody is more splendid than the thing itself which he parodies, more full of fine show and nimble bravery. There is beauty in this broadly comic acting, the beauty of subtle detail. Words can do little to define a performance which is a constant series of little movements of the face, little intonations of the voice, a way of lolling in the chair, a way of speaking, of singing, of preserving the gravity of burlesque. In "Tartuffe" we get a form of comedy which is almost tragic, the horribly ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... be surprised at my not having called this "beauty." Of course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not provoke ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... subordinate to this inward monition of the Spirit. Their ministers may be either male or female, the only qualification necessary being the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They decline to define in any way the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They deny the necessity of any outward sign accompanying Baptism, it being a wholly spiritual matter. Also they affirm that taking or receiving the Eucharist is not of perpetual ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... you have life. You may not be competent to define or analyze it; you may not be able to specify the place or time, when it first broke into your soul; you may hardly be able to distinguish it from the workings of your own life: but if you have ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know not. A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... craving. Each evening the temptation to go and see him came strong upon her in the solitude of her own room. She experienced an uncomfortable irritating feeling, a vague desire which she could not define, and only calmed down somewhat on ascribing this troubled state of mind to a wish to evince her gratitude. She was so utterly alone, she felt so stifled in that sleepy abode, the exuberance of youth seethed so strongly within her, her heart ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... only half grown. Her shoulders were unnaturally high, and one leg was considerably shorter than the other. Her face was not in any way beautiful, yet there was a certain mysterious attraction about it. Something looked out of her eyes which Clarice studied without being able to define, but which disposed her to keep on looking. They were dark, pathetic eyes, of the kind with which Clarice had gifted her very imaginary Countess; but there was ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... define a scientist, a philosopher and a psychologist, but they halt in more or less indecision when they are asked to define a transcendentalist, and it is only when we understand that a transcendentalist is one who has extended his normal consciousness ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bevan, "that though I make a distinction between the instinct and the reason of bees, I do not confound their reason with the reason of man. But to obviate all possibility of misconception, I will at once define my meaning, when I use the terms insect ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... enough, if national policy required. Great Britain then was scarcely in a position to object seriously to retaliation by a nation thinking itself injured; but to define such a measure as not hostile was an insult to her common-sense. It was certainly hostile in nature, it was believed to be hostile in motive, and it intensified feelings already none too friendly. In France, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... may define Memory as the return to consciousness of some experience, accompanied by the awareness that it has been present earlier at a definite time and place.[Footnote: The above is to be taken as a definition of the normal memory. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... there will foe some faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments. It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better expressed indirectly; thus Plato's weak point is exactly that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa; and so, too, Kant is deficient just where ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... distinction between the gesiethcund and ceorlisc classes is nowhere clearly explained; but it was certainly hereditary and probably of considerable antiquity. In general we may perhaps define them as nobles and commons, though in view of the numbers of the higher classes it would probably be more correct to speak of gentry and peasants. The distinction between the twelfhynde and sixhynde classes was also in part ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... minute; and, as small errors in the time may be of consequence, methods depending on this element of the earthquake are seldom employed. If, however, the number of observations is large for the size of the disturbed area, the construction of coseismal lines may define approximately the position of the epicentre. In the Hereford earthquake of 1896, the centre of the innermost coseismal line (Fig. 62) is close to the region lying between ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... difficult in a war to define the limits of military and political spheres of action. The activities of both encroach to so great an extent on each other as to form one whole, and very naturally in a war precedence is given to military needs. Nevertheless, the complete displacement ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... she declared, "the moment you begin to try and define it. It is a sensation, not a state of being. Let us drift. The waters are not dangerous for you ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... already, in his "Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs," attempted to re-define the distinctions of Whig and Tory. The latter, he urged, was of that party which pronounced for the principles of loyalty to the Church and the preservation of the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover. Swift felt that the majority of the people at large ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... and it is possible to define it all, the sac should be opened at its lower end, as there a small quantity of serous fluid which intervenes between the sac and the bowel will be found. Where this is present, there is no danger of wounding the bowel, as the sac can be easily pinched up; but ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... political aristocracy, and represented the English constitution as essentially antagonistic to the American, not as its type. I have accepted universal suffrage in principle, and defended American democracy, which I define to be territorial democracy, and carefully distinguish from pure individualism on the one hand, and from pure socialism or humanitarianism ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... To define an epitaph is useless; every one knows that it is an inscription on a tomb. An epitaph, therefore, implies no particular character of writing, but may be composed in verse or prose. It is, indeed, commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished with a stone but by ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... his desperate efforts to answer firmly, to answer loudly. But having answered, he immediately forgot question as well as answer, and was again struggling with himself silently and terribly. Death was disclosed in him so clearly that the judges avoided looking at him. It was hard to define his age, as is the case with a corpse which has begun to decompose. According to his passport, he was only twenty-three years old. Once or twice Werner quietly touched his knee with his hand, and each ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... Bealdin (the Gaelic for no other than Baal) to appease the spirits of the mists, the winds, the ravens, the eagles, and thus protect the crops and flocks. There is a thin boundary line as difficult to define as "to distinguish and divide a hair 'twixt south and southwest side," between true belief and ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... forigi, surstreki. Defame kalumnii. Defeat venki. Defeat (n.) malvenko—ego. Defect difekto—ajxo. Defend defendi. Defer prokrasti. Deference respektego. Deficiency deficito. Defile (n.) intermonto. Defile (soil) malpurigi. Define difini. Definite difinita. Definitive definitiva. Deform malbonformigi. Deformed malbelforma. Defraud trompi. Defray elpagi. Defunct mortinto. Defy kontrauxstari. Degenerate degeneri. Degrade degradi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... fair young face, and each time he asked himself what change had come over it; he felt there was a change, but could not define wherein it lay. Egon had only seen her when her cold, proud reserve held every one in check. Now all coldness had disappeared, he saw and felt it, and yet there seemed a mystery about her which he could ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... creative vigor and wealth of imagination." In Chopin's music there are many pianists, many styles and all are correct if they are poetically musical, logical and individually sincere. Of his rubato I treat in the chapter devoted to the Mazurkas, making also an attempt to define the "zal" of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Fulkerson's nature to revere anything; he could like and dislike, but he could not respect. Apparently, however, Dryfoos daunted him somehow; and besides the homage which those who have not pay to those who have, Fulkerson rendered Dryfoos the tribute of a feeling which March could only define as a sort of bewilderment. As well as March could make out, this feeling was evoked by the spectacle of Dryfoos's unfailing luck, which Fulkerson was fond of dazzling himself with. It perfectly consisted with a keen sense of whatever was sordid and selfish in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... moment from excess of happiness, and began again to speak, as his eyes were opened gradually to this,—that she was different utterly from Roman women, and resembled Pomponia alone. Besides, he could not explain this to her clearly, for he could not define his feeling,—that beauty of a new kind altogether was coming to the world in her, such beauty as had not been in it thus far; beauty which is not merely a statue, but a spirit. He told her something, however, which filled her with delight,—that he loved her just ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to define the limits of a topic. This book is concerned with one educational subject alone, politics in the very broad sense we here attach to the term. Our contention is that that subject is of paramount importance, and ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... gradually drifting up. Little tongues are carried up in advance by the heated currents. The aliens retreated before it. On the plateau you can see the sentries. I guess they posted themselves there, at intervals, between the edge and the new caves, to define the limits of safety. They died there. Six of them. The rest, several hundred, reached the caves. They are ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... write to you once more, but, after that—I swear by all the saints—I am silent and supercilious. I have met Curran at Holland House—he beats every body;—his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics—I never met his equal. Now, were I a woman, and eke a virgin, that is the man I should make my Scamander. He is quite fascinating. Remember, I have met him but once; and you, who have known him ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... healthful action of the body politic, was nourished by its vicious humors, and might be lopped off at any time, when the health of the system demanded it. Far from being protected by the laws, the only aim of the laws, in reference to them, was to define more precisely their civil incapacities, and to draw the line of division more broadly between them and the Christians. Even this humiliation by no means satisfied the national prejudices, as is evinced by the great number of tumults ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... full of hatred, her disdain, the scope and variety of her reading which sometimes struck me, or, for instance, the nun-like expression I had seen on her face the day before—all that was unknown and incomprehensible to me. When in my collisions with her I tried to define what sort of a person she was, my psychology went no farther than deciding that she was giddy, impractical, ill-tempered, guided by feminine logic; and it seemed to me that that was quite sufficient. But now that she was crying I had a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. 'I prefer to doubt' he said, 'rather than rashly define what is hidden.' The battle with the schools had then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics:— the disbelievers in human reason; the passive agnostics; and the sceptics proper, who would have ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... he began. "There has, within the last half hour, been a most important development. I am at a loss to define its significance, but its importance ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... 'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out of touch with life,—and he thought himself justified in making destinies, and capable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps, define the feelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of their tendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in a kind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the vast and ill-defined powers of the king and his ministers were perhaps the fundamental evils. One of the cahiers says: "Since arbitrary power has been the source of all the evils which afflict the state, our first desire is the establishment of a really national constitution, which shall define the rights of all and provide the laws to maintain them." No one dreamed at this time of displacing the king or of taking the government out of his hands. The people only wished to change an absolute monarchy into a limited, or constitutional, one. All that was necessary was that ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... almost traitorously evasive—a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, and the flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions of a people intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to define by that phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, even though they show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of the form of a normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... my childhood and youth I try to define to myself wherein I differed from my brothers and from other boys in the neighborhood, or wherein I showed any indication of the future bent of my mind. I see that I was more curious and alert than most boys, and had more interests ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... that he would protect and defend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions and privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that he would leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dispensing power; and that he would maintain the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... He had watched his cousin's struggle, had accepted its reality, sympathising, through friendship rather than through moral or intellectual agreement. For he was one of those fortunate mortals who, while possessing a strong sense of God, have but small necessity to define Him. Many of Julius's keenest agonies appeared to him subjective, a matter of words and phrases. Yet he respected them, out of the sincere regard he bore the man who suffered them. He did more. He tried a practical remedy. Modestly, as one asking ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... charm. Infinite knowledge of human nature was shown in the text, 'Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant'; and it would be hard to define how much Gillian's satisfaction was owing to the sense of benevolence, or to the pleasure of eluding Aunt Jane, when, after going through her chapter of Katharine Ashton, in a somewhat perfunctory manner, she hastened ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we could fix with exactness the great Ostrogoth's birth-year, but though several circumstances point to 454 as a probable date, we are not able to define it with ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... refinement." This, too, we think inadequate to express what we mean by taste, which appears to us to have something of a sense, independent of knowledge. Using words in a technical sense, we may define them to mean what we please, but certainly the words themselves, "copy" and "imitation," do not mean very different things. He thinks "precision of eye, and obedience of hand, are the requisites for copy, without the least pretence to choice, what to select, what to reject; whilst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... manner adequate? He lacked confidence. He desired the moment of her arrival, and yet he feared it. His heart and his brain were all confused together in a turmoil of emotion which he could not analyse nor define. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the manifold evils of which it was the parent; and it was in the highest degree proper that woman should take the lead in doing it, as it is her sex that always suffers most in that condition of things wherein might triumphs over right, and which we are accustomed to define ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... separated any more than sheep and a shepherd, but I am minded to speak of the bookman rather than of his books, and so it will be best at the outset to define ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... embitter the feelings of the South, but whether I am inclined to such a course as would in fact embitter their feelings you can better judge by my published speeches than by anything I would say in a short letter if I were inclined now, as I am not, to define my position anew. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... were always thinking of the better days when we should be able to sit hours together with no knock at the door and no imperative summons from the kitchen. Some man of sufficient eminence to give his words currency ought to define life as a series of interruptions. There are a good many valuable and inspiring things which can only be done when one is in the mood, and to secure a mood is not always an easy matter; there are moods which ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... liberty of protruding itself through various slits in it here and there; the weight of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a dingy-hued flannel waistcoat beneath. With something of a coxcomb's manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, tightening the girdle to define his reedy figure; then with a blow of the tongs, he effected a reconciliation between two burning brands that had long avoided one another, like brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden bright idea struck him, and he rose from ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... kinds of knowledge,—a confusion which has been already noticed in the Lysis, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues. In the infancy of logic, a form of thought has to be invented before the content can be filled up. We cannot define knowledge until the nature of definition has been ascertained. Having succeeded in making his meaning plain, Socrates proceeds to analyze (1) the first definition which Theaetetus proposes: 'Knowledge is sensible ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... mental processes and acts illustrates the true mind of America. In the autumn of 1916 Mr. Wilson declared that "the people of the United States want to be sure what they are fighting about, and they want to be sure that they are fighting for the things that will bring the world justice and peace. Define the elements; let us know that we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group of nations, let us once be convinced that we are called in to a great combination for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in advance of the march outpost. A support commander's order should fully explain the situation to subordinates, or to the entire command, if it be small. It should detail the troops for the different outguards and, when necessary, define the sector each is to cover. It should provide the necessary sentinels at the post of the support, the patrols to be sent therefrom, and should arrange for the necessary intrenching. Connection should be maintained with adjoining supports and with the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... this by the saying of a Moslem philosopher that chess was the invention of a Mu'tazil, while Nard (backgammon with dice) was that of a Mujabbar proving that play can do nothing against Destiny. Between the two are the Ashariyah; trimmers whose standpoint is hard to define; they would say, "Allah creates the power by which man acts, but man wills the action," and care not to answer the query, "Who created the will ?" (See Pocock, Sale and the Dabistan ii. 352.) Thus Sa'adi says in the Gulistan (iii. 2), "The wise have pronounced that though daily bread ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... had called, there had been a difference—not an unusual sequel to an acquaintanceship begun in a Continental watering-place. It was difficult to define, but unmistakable—a certain formality and constraint on Mrs. Futvoye's part, and even on Sylvia's, which seemed intended to warn him that it is not every friendship that survives the Channel passage. So he had gone away sore at heart, but fully recognising that any advances in future ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... advice to the student is to learn to recognize the Amanita family, and to avoid them all; next, to define and recognize any mushroom he is using for food, so that he could pick a single specimen of the same out of a basketful of assorted fungi; and finally, never to pick mushrooms at random for food, unless he has tested by ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... matters as they now are. The one thing we are all sure of is that we were born for something better than our present employment; and even those who school themselves most religiously in the virtue of contentment know very well how to define that grace so as not to exclude from it a comfortable mixture of "divine dissatisfaction." Well for us if we are still able to stand in our place and do faithfully our allotted task, like the mountain spruces ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... sewing circle. Duly appreciating all these difficulties, Brother Spyke chose a mission to Antioch, where the field of his labors would be wide, and the gates not open to restraints. And though he could not define the exact character of his mission to Antioch, he so worked upon the sympathies of the credulous old lady, as to well-nigh create in her mind a resolve to give the amount she had struggled to get and set apart for the benefit of those two institutions ("the Tract Society," ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... estimated by comparison. The height assures us of its loftiness, not by the inferior summits below it, but by the wide, full sunlight and the free winds that flow around it and rest upon it. The perception of genius is so sure that we need not attempt to define what it is. Every artist, full of its power, shows something more than the last. Like beauty, it will not be measured, but every beautiful person shames our analysis and philosophy of beauty. Yet the impression of genius is always the same, and its appearance in any one individual ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... should like to define the form of my conviction of better things in the near future, resulting from this war. These events prepare the way to a new life: that of ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... wire from Frank on the night previous, and to her surprise it had been dated from Great Bradley. For some reason which she could not define she was annoyed that he could leave London, and be so absorbed in his work on the eve of his wedding. She gathered that his presence in that town had to do with his investigations in the Tollington case. She thought that at least he might ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... bodies of men invested with more or less arbitrary power. Its role has varied greatly in different places and at different times. It has numbered in its ranks good men and bad, and has favored sometimes righteous, sometimes unrighteous, causes. It is not possible to define its influence on religion further than to say that it has been a natural element of the organization of religion, taking its form and coloring from the various communities in which it has existed, embodying current ideas and thus acting as a ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... pearly depths, Nor gleaned from diamond mine, Nor all the chemist's subtlety Its substance could define. ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... was quivering in vivid waves of feeling just the same. It seemed to her as if she was looking at life now through an atmosphere charged with some rare, refining essence, and that in it she stood exultingly. Perhaps she did not define it so; but that which we define she felt. And happy are they who feel it, and, feeling it, do not lose it in this world, and have the hope of carrying ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... observes the able and impartial author of Ireland and its Rulers[35], "when he announced his new agitation in 1829, can be left only to him to determine." It is probable that they were of so mixed a nature, that he himself could not accurately define them.... It is, however, quite possible, that, after having so long tasted of the luxuries of popularity, he could not consent that the chalice should pass from his lips. Agitation had, perhaps, begun to be necessary to his existence: a tranquil life would have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It might have been called patience, an acceptance of a situation rather than her ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown |
