"Distinctness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minute on the dull oblong of the blind, and minute by minute that horrible thing on the bed took something of distinctness. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Bible" has been generally accepted by those who have followed him in the minute analysis of the literary structure of Holy Scripture; and the names of the "Priestly Narrative" and of the "Jehovistic Narrative" have, for the sake of distinctness, been applied to them. The former is so called because the chapters in Exodus and the two following books, which treat with particular minuteness of the various ceremonial institutions of Israel, are considered to be by the same writer. The latter has received its name from the preference ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... know, it is to make the general observation stronger. And then 'mist' is an infamous word for your kind of obscurity. You never are misty, not even in 'Sordello'—never vague. Your graver cuts deep sharp lines, always—and there is an extra-distinctness in your images and thoughts, from the midst of which, crossing each other infinitely, the general significance seems to escape. So that to talk of a 'mist,' when you are obscurest, is an impotent thing to do. Indeed ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... him. His gaze was bent upon the horses, and for a moment she watched him in attentive silence, her eyes dwelling on his massive figure, which cast a gigantic blue-black shadow across the April sunbeams. She saw him at the instant with a distinctness, a clearness of perception, that she had never been conscious of until to-day, as if each trivial detail in his appearance was magnified by the pale yellow sunshine through which she looked upon it. The abundant wheaten-brown ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Witsland, discovered in 1628 by the ship Vianen commanded by G. F. De Witt [*]. In this case, too, it is difficult to determine exactly the longitudes between which the coast-line thus designated is situated. [**] But with great distinctness the chart exhibits the chain of islands of which the Monte Bello and tha Barrow islands are the principal, and besides, certain islands of the Dampier Archipelago, afterwards so called after the celebrated English navigator. I would have these observations looked upon as hints towards the more accurate ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... make this last statement, and continued with the same peculiar implicity of distinctness, which a terrific thunder of "What?" from Wilfrid did not overbear: "I was quite mad that day I went to him. I think, in my despair I spoke things that may have led him to fancy the truth of what he has said. On my honour, I do not know. And I cannot remember what happened after ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no means disagreeable. She found afterwards that she only remembered very indistinctly her selection of the window and her preparations for the fatal blow, but that the effect of the actual breakage remained extraordinarily vivid upon her memory. She saw with extreme distinctness both as it was before and after the breakage, first as a rather irregular grey surface, shining in the oblique light of a street lamp, and giving pale phantom reflections of things in the street, and then as it was after her blow. It ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... terror-stricken lest she might discover his secret, and punish his audacity according to the summary methods of Juno, Diana, and other offended goddesses whom mortals dared to love. It could only have been a few seconds, for he heard her voice in his ears, at first faint and then gathering distinctness, continuing in almost the same ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to-day?" but so completely was his ear the fool of his imagination, that he thought I was speaking Arabic, and made a faint attempt to get out the only word or two of that language which he knew. I then repeated, with as much distinctness as I could command: "Did—you—leave—Jaffa—to-day?" He stammered mechanically, through his chattering teeth, "Y-y-yes!" and we immediately dashed off at a gallop through the bushes. When we last saw him, he was standing as we left ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... of inflexible poetic justice impartially administered upon king and varlet, pope and beggar, oppressor and victim, projected amidst the unalterable necessities of eternity, and moving athwart the lurid abyss and the azure cope with an intense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina Commedia, with a wonderful truth, also reflects the feeling of the age when it was written in this respect, that there is a grappling force of attraction, a compelling realism, about its "Purgatory" ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... door of the inner room, and Schalken thought he saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into that apartment. He drew his sword, and, raising the candle so as to throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the shadow had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which belonged to the room, and yet he could not be deceived as to the fact that something had moved before them into the chamber. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... supplies the substance, and their imagination the ever-varying form; the latter must impress their preconceptions on the world without, in order to present them back to their own view with the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness, and individuality. These in tranquil times are formed to exhibit a perfect poem in palace, or temple, or landscape-garden; or a tale of romance in canals that join sea with sea, or in walls of rock, which, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stooping posture, and stare at him with an amazed and incredulous expression, as if she were asking herself when and where she could have given him birth. In her mental vision, which saw only one thing at a time, but saw that thing with great distinctness, the idea of love slowly presented itself as the cause of such a reversal of the natural order as a Sunday suit on week days. Her conceptions of life were derived so closely from facts, or from a logic as inexorable as facts, that she was conscious of a baffled and exasperated sensation ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... slow distinctness, her hand moving down until it touched his, "I never thought of this as a possibility. You know how much I have always loved you, dear; but oh, Louis, will it hurt you very much, will you forgive me if I have to say no, I cannot be ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... your 'dear,'" she said with slow distinctness. "There isn't a thing in the world you can do for me. I came here to see if I could do something—a very great something—for you; but if I don't like you, I ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it would ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... upper surface broke off, two gangs of men stood beside the tackles that trailed away from the foot of the derrick. The flame that leaped with a roar from a lamp on a tripod picked out some of the figures with harsh distinctness, but left the rest dim and blurred. Dick stood eight or nine feet below, with the end of the line, along which the blocks were brought, directly above his head. A piece of rail had been clamped across the metals to prevent the truck ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... we may bear a sentiment in our hearts without so much as suspecting its existence, until suddenly a chance word shall so urge it into life that it reveals itself with unmistakable distinctness. With her the revelation began in a vague wonder at the scorn with which Crispin invested the notion that Kenneth should have cause for jealousy on his score. Was it, she asked herself, so monstrously unnatural? Then in a flash the answer came—and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... had met. The bishop recalled with an agonized distinctness every moment, every error, of that shameful encounter. He had been too surprised to conceal the state of affairs from the pitiless scrutiny of those youthful eyes. He had instantly made as if to put the cigarette behind his back, and then ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... was after the model of English royal speeches; but one can feel at this day it was spoken in all ingenuousness and sincerity, and that the utterance—remarkable already for clearness and distinctness—for the first time, of the set words, ending in the solemn promise to do a Sovereign's duty, must have thrilled the hearts both of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... most extraordinary impotence in comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,' but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain whats from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness as thus isolated. But this does not prevent him from equally well understanding their combination with each other as originally experienced in the concrete, or their confluence with new sensible experiences ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... delicate, whilst above over the abdomen, and below over the upper part of the thigh, the meshes of the fascia are generally loaded with a considerable quantity of adipous tissue, will account for the permanency and distinctness of the fold of the groin. As this fold corresponds with Poupart's ligament, it is taken as a guide to distinguish between the inguinal and femoral ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... listen, and the yelping barks of the dogs came with marvellous distinctness to my ears, indeed, the sound seemed to grow more distinct. Was the wind rising? the tree-tops against the skyline seemed to be quiet enough. Surely the brutes—but no! they had been securely ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... then fade off into vagueness before once more appearing distinctly; nor has this mode of dealing with a subject ever been more successfully applied than in Lavengro. At the same time the mode is one singularly difficult of treatment by any reviewer. To describe Lavengro with any chance of distinctness to those who have not read it, it would be necessary to give a series of sketches in words, like those famous ones of the pictures in Jane Eyre. East Dereham, the Viper Collector, the French Prisoners at Norman Cross, the Gipsy Encampment, the Sojourn in Edinburgh (with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... opening the door, he went out into the hall, which was empty, except for Harold, who was sitting near the stairs, half asleep again. Most of the guests were in the supper-room, but a few of the younger portion were dancing, and the strains of music were heard with great distinctness in ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... certain individual scenes and plays stand out with startling distinctness as possessed of wit and humor of high order. The description by Cleaereta of the relations of lover, mistress and lena is replete with biting satire (As. 177 ff., 215 ff.). The finale of the same play is irresistibly ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Marco, gleaming in the brilliant illumination, like a shrine studded with precious stones. In the concentrated light of hundreds of gas-jets, each exquisite detail, each shining gold mosaic and lavish carving stood out with marvellous distinctness. The golden-winged angels that mount a mystic stairway above the great central arch, the bronze horses prancing so harmlessly over the main portal, even the quaint bas-relief of St. George, sitting, with such unimpeachable dignity, upon his camp-stool,—each ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... sketch of "Bruno"]. No, no! Please don't give us the (to my mind) very ugly, quite modern costume, which shows with such cruel distinctness a podgy, pot-bellied (excuse the vulgarism) boy, who couldn't run a mile to save his life. I want Bruno to be strong, but at the same time light and active—with the figure of one of the little acrobats one sees at the circus—not "Master Tommy," who habitually ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... or high-sounding, supernumerary words. When he did use the jewelry of rhetoric, he would quietly set a metaphor in his page or throw a comparison into his speech which would serve to light up with startling distinctness the colossal proportions of his argument. Of humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly. The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by a malicious ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... same story. He speaks of a clear idea of substance; but he has not proved that such an idea is within the compass of the mind. A man's own notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he really sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in itself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately with the object of it. No doubt a man who professes to have an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannot doubt, as long as he has it, that substance so exists. It is merely to say that as long as a man is certain ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... to a great deal of this sort of assertion I find that the question forms itself with more and more distinctness in my mind: Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other people and to demand a solution of them? How did they acquire the right to demand that others should solve their world-problems for them? Who are they who are held to consider ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... another characteristic article, on Biography, he furnished for Fraser's Magazine one of the finest biographical portraits ever painted,—that of Dr. Johnson, in which that cyclopean worker stands out, with even more distinctness than in Boswell's "Life," as one of the most honest, earnest, patient laborers in the whole field of literature. Carlyle makes us almost love this man, in spite of his awkwardness, dogmatism, and petulance. Johnson in his day was an acknowledged dictator ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... knowledge; that species have replaced species, not in assemblages, but one by one; and that, if it were possible to have all the phenomena of the past presented to us, the convenient epochs and formations of the geologist, though having a certain distinctness, would fade into one another with limits as undefinable as those of the distinct and yet separable ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... distinctness; transparency, limpidity, lucidity, perspicuity, translucency; serenity. Antonyms: opacity, ambiguity, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... increase of profit from slavery all idea of its abolition had been quietly dropping from the minds of the great mass of the Southern community. It was equally plain that the sentiment against slavery in the North had increased greatly in distinctness and intensity. There was apparent, too, a divergence of material interests, and a keen rivalry of political interests. The South had been losing ground in comparison. From an equality in population, the North had gained a majority of 600,000 in a total of 10,000,000. The approaching ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the only adequate organ, of Humanity; the organ and instrument of all the gifts, powers, and tendencies, by which the individual is privileged to rise above himself—to leave behind, and lose his individual phantom self, in order to find his true self in that Distinctness where no division can be—in the Eternal I AM, the Ever-living WORD, of whom all the elect from the archangel before time throne to the poor wrestler with the Spirit UNTIL THE BREAKING OF DAY are but the fainter and still fainter echoes. And are all these testimonies ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... flame was now plainly visible, gracefully gliding over the lake, and throwing its light on the water in such a manner as to tinge it slightly though in the air, so strong was the contrast, the darkness seemed to have the distinctness of material substances, as if the fire were imbedded in a setting of ebony. This appearance, however, gradually wore off, and the rays from the torch struck out, and enlightened the atmosphere in front of it, leaving the background in a darkness ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Moon is very interesting and beautiful, especially if the orb is observed when waxing and waning. As no aqueous vapour or cloud obscures the lunar surface, all its details can be perceived with great clearness and distinctness. Indeed, the topography of the Moon is better known than that of the Earth, for the whole of its surface has been mapped and delineated with great accuracy and precision. The Moon is in no sense a duplicate of its ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... had learned my "Addition Table," but, strangely enough, that did not furnish me with any clue towards working out the problem of figures set for me on my slate. I was then in my ninth year; and I can remember, to this day, with perfect distinctness, how utterly discouraged I became, as day by day went by, and still I had not found a correct result to any one of my sums, nor gained a single ray of light on the subject. Strange as it may seem, I ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... professional opinion, restraints of which the stringency can only be appreciated by those who have personally experienced them. It may be added that the lines within which movement is permitted, and beyond which there is to be no travelling, were chalked with as much distinctness in the one case as in the other. In England the judge follows the analogies of reported decisions on insulated groups of facts. At Rome, as the intervention of the Praetor was at first dictated by simple ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting much, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and followed the rest of us forrard. Reaching the fore rigging, he climbed into it, and began to make his way leisurely aloft. I could see him with a fair amount of distinctness, as the moon was very clear and ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... the distinctness with which she heard what was said in the next room. That was doubtless due to the construction of the vault, as she vaguely guessed. It was true that Don John spoke very clearly, but she could hear the servants' subdued answers ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... out from the background of the New Mexican plains, desert and mountain with all the distinctness of a Remington sketch." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of our world existence, accompanied by dim but ever present memories of a Destiny more vast—very distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful. We live out a youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for dreams. As memories we know them. During our youth the distinctness is too clear to deceive us even for a moment. But the doubt of manhood dispels these feelings ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... height with apparent facility, and even will manage notes at the same time so low that no fault can be found with the compass of their voices, nor any lack of flexibility; their execution being perfectly clean and correct. I have frequently heard them run the chromatic scale with extreme distinctness and apparent ease, and acquit themselves admirably in the performance of the most intricate and difficult passages, all of which is the result of good teaching and attentive application of the pupil, but sweetness of tone exists not in their voices, which are ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... fundamental doctrine in her Articles, but constantly put into the mouths of her congregation, either expressed or clearly implied. Again, I found that not by works but by faith I was to be justified before God; and this also ran through the prayer-book, with unvarying distinctness; though with that book in my hand and its contents on my lips I had been hitherto attempting to scale heaven by a ladder of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... his heart was full of Mr Cupples; and as he went home he recalled everything with perfect distinctness, and felt that his conduct had been as vile as it was possible for conduct to be. Because a girl could not love him, he had ceased to love his mother, had given himself up to Satan, and had returned the devotion of his friend with a murderous blow. Because he could not have a bed ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the opera of Camilla had been sprung from a fresh Italian well; neither the elegiac-melodious, nor the sensuous-lyrical, nor the joyous buffo; it was severe as an old masterpiece, with veins of buoyant liveliness threading it, and with sufficient distinctness of melody to enrapture those who like to suck the sugarplums of sound. He would indeed have favoured the public with more sweet things, but Vittoria, for whom the opera was composed, and who had been at his elbow, was young, and stern ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... almost indispensible; of these, the darkest should form the perfect centre, then the next (not prominently, though perceptibly) differing from it, and the next four to the lightest tint; the whole, to be so managed, as to give to the flower that fulness, and distinctness, which its position in the design demands. For small flowers, so many shades are rarely necessary. The two darkest shades should be strong, the others soft; this secures sufficiency of contrast, without impairing that harmony of tints, which is so indispensible. You must recollect, ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... expression In some degree to social wants and habits, among the Celts this expression was complete, and argued a peculiar bent of mind given entirely to traditional lore, and never to philosophical speculations and subtlety. We see in it two elements remarkable for their distinctness. First, an extraordinary fondness for facts and traditions, growing out of the patriarchal origin of society among them; and from this fondness their mind received a particular tendency which was averse to theories and utopias. All things resolved themselves ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... indicate that the family or little community who inhabited it were in good circumstances, and the lords of the surrounding country. Looking out from one of their houses, with a great dome of solid rock overhead that echoed and re-echoed every word uttered with marvelous distinctness, and below them a steep descent of one hundred feet to the broad, fertile valley of the Rio San Juan, covered with waving fields of maize and scattered groves of majestic cotton-woods, these old people, whom even the imagination ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... about the middle of the month. Harriet was spending some hours with a friend, Edmund was out, and I had been left alone all day for the first time since I came home. I remember everything that happened with the utmost distinctness. I spent the day chiefly in the garden, gathering roses for pot-pourri, being disinclined for any more reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air, partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, and to participate ourselves in that jubilee of jubilees, and drink in with greedy minds the wonders of that Procession, and the marvelous distinctness of its beauty from the Generation of the Son; to feel ourselves with ecstatic awe, and yet with seraphic intimacy, overshadowed by the Person of the Unbegotten Father, the Father to whom and of whom we have said so much on earth, the Fountain of Godhead, who is truly ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... Rennie!—she could not help being touched with her expression and her appeal. A vision of her own Eliza—without friends—without a mother—doing something as ill-advised, and feeling very acutely when a stranger told her of it, gave a distinctness to Jane's present suffering that, without that little effort of imagination, she could not have realized. Besides, she had a great wish to think highly of Mr. Hogarth, and to please him; and the certainty that he would be extremely pained and, perhaps, offended by her suggestion that he ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... beauty of art, is our greater power to control sensations of vision and hearing. Only colors and sounds can be woven into complex and stable wholes. Tastes and odors, when produced simultaneously or in succession, do not keep their distinctness as colors and sounds do, but blur and interfere with each other. No one, however ingenious, could construct a symphony of odors or a picture of tastes. Nevertheless, the possibility of controlling colors and sounds and of creating stable and public ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... think that middle-aged people recalled their youth as something seen through a haze. I know better now. Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be. The last years that I spent in my native land and my first years in America come back to me with the distinctness of yesterday. Indeed, I have a better recollection of many a trifle of my childhood days than I have of some important things that occurred to me recently. I have a good memory for faces, but I am apt to recognize people I have not seen for a quarter of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... review their entire lives in the few instants that preceded their loss of consciousness, and he acquired a new comprehension of this mystery. All the experiences of his entire existence swept through his mind again and again with a rapidity and a distinctness that astonished him. Like a great shuttle darting back and forth through a fabric, his mind seemed to be passing again and again forward and backward through all the scenes of the past. Finally, and after what ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. "That the sun will not rise to-morrow" is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmative that "it will rise." We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the same conclusion. The proof is again redundant. In this case we have the consequent denied in both, whereas in the former we had the antecedent affirmed. It is only for convenience that such arguments as these are thrown into the form of a single syllogism. Their real distinctness may be seen from the fact that we here deny each proposition separately, thus making two independent statements—C is not D and E is not F. But in the true instance of the simple destructive dilemma, what we deny is ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... before he replied to Mr. Medler's remarks. That suspicion which of late had been perpetually floating dimly in his brain—that vague distrust of his one chosen friend, John Saltram, flashed upon him in this moment with a new distinctness. If this man, whom he had so loved and trusted, had betrayed him, had so utterly falsified his friend's estimate of his character, was it not easy enough to believe him capable of still deeper baseness, capable of growing ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... characterization exhibited by the author fascinates us; we gaze and examine as if we were face to face with real personages, whose passions are laid bare, whose life is traced, whose countenance is portrayed with miraculousness, distinctness and verisimilitude. All the phenomena of life in the camp, the court, the boudoir, the low faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued. This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to row as quickly as possible to the other end of the lake. But before the boat reached the bank, Uvar Ivanovitch once more succeeded in surprising his friends; having noticed that in one part of the wood the echo repeated every sound with peculiar distinctness, he suddenly began to call like a quail. At first every one was startled, but they listened directly with real pleasure, especially as Uvar Ivanovitch imitated the quail's cry with great correctness. Spurred on by this, he tried mewing like a ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... twenty feet from the ground; they are open frameworks of twigs, rootlets and weed stalks, through which the eggs can be plainly seen. The eggs are similar to those of the preceding but are usually of a paler color, the markings, therefore showing with greater distinctness. Size 1.00 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... mind is exactly proportionate to representative scope, and representative scope to rational activity. A steady vision of all things in their true order and worth results from perfection of function and is its index; it secures the greatest distinctness in thought together with the greatest decision, wisdom, and ease in action, as the lightning is brilliant and quick. It also secures, so far as human energies avail, its own perpetuity, since what is perfectly adjusted ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... first week in October) the musical season, in what we take to be the most music-loving of our cities, Boston, has not commenced, or shaped itself into much distinctness of plan. The season is late; hard times may make it later; yet shall "the winter of our discontent be glorious summer" ere long. Boston, for its best music,—best in artistic tendency, though not perhaps the most exciting or most fashionable,—has always relied more than New York on its own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... confidence in the poet's own powers, so natural to the time of life at which it was composed; it evinces a power and soar of imagination unsurpassed in any of his writings; and its images and incidents have a freshness and distinctness which they not seldom lost, when they came to be elaborated, as many of them were, in his minor poems ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... were constantly urged by large numbers of people, going from house to house to witness their sufferings, to reveal who the witches were that still afflicted them. When all was prepared, they began to cry out, with more or less distinctness; at first, in significant but general descriptions, and at last calling names. The next victim was also well chosen. An account has been given, in the First Part, of the notoriety which circumstances had attached to Giles Corey. In 1691 he became ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... over which the two walked, Fred slightly in advance, was marked with such distinctness by the hoofs of the six horses that had passed along it in Indian file but a short time before that it was no trouble for the boys to recognize it, nor were they likely to have any difficulty in keeping to it throughout the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... changes are not so extensive, as in the proof-sheets of the Waverley Novels preserved in the Cornell University Library, it is interesting to trace the alterations which the author was prompted to make by the sight of his paragraphs clothed in the startling distinctness of print. Nor is this at all surprising when one considers how much better the eye can take in the thought and style of a composition from the printed page than it can even from typewriting. The advantage is so marked that some publishers, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... a strong line of demarcation exists between the remains of these people and the earliest traces of the "red Indian" race which Europeans found in possession of the body of the continent; this gap is not one of stratification, or, perhaps, of time, but is shown by a strong distinctness in the character of the worked stones forming the weapons and implements of each people in respect to both material and degree of perfection. Considering further the probability (from known evidence) that the Innuit (Eskimos) once occupied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... whole world no more wonderful natural scenery is to be found. And the eagle with no unusual effort could see it all in a single day, and see it with a distinctness of sight no man could equal. But keen though its eyesight was and wide though its range, the eagle in all that beautiful region would see not a single beauty. Neither in the sunrise, nor in the snowy mountains, nor in the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... of the soldier at the breaking up of camp. Anxious for a change of scenery as he may be, the eye will linger upon each familiar spot, the quarters, the parade ground, and rocky bluff and wooded knoll, until memory's impress bears the lasting distinctness of a lifetime. Those leaving could not banish from their minds, even if disposed, the thought that, although but a temporary sojourn for them, it had proved to be the last resting-place of many of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in my candlelight. A waiting stillness was over everything. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing hidden from me by a corner of the wall; but its shadow fell with marvelous distinctness upon the white paneling, and gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay me. The thing jumped upon my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for half a moment, perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held the revolver, I advanced, only to discover ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... local pride prevails so strongly as in the west of Cornwall. The lower classes, employed for the most part in pursuits which require the constant exercise of observation and judgment, and familiarized to danger in their mines and fisheries, are peculiarly thoughtful and intrepid; while the distinctness of name and character which they derive from the almost insular position of their county, and the general ignorance of strangers in the interesting pursuits with which they are so familiar, have taught the lower classes to regard it less as an integral part ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... &c.; and we find that in proportion as the artist discards the comparatively unworthy minute accompaniments of his subject, and aims at unity of effect, so does he neglect sharpness of outline. Which is the correct practice—distinctness, or indistinctness of outline—will be differently judged by those who hold different opinions on painting in general. While one person will maintain that a picture, to be perfect, must be an exact copy of nature, in short an artistic daguerreotype; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... whole of the second part, the Prophet, as a rule, takes his stand in the time which was announced and foretold in the former prophecies, and especially, with the greatest clearness and distinctness, in chap. xxxix., on the threshold of the second part,—the time when Jerusalem is captured by the Chaldeans, the temple destroyed, the country desolated, and the people carried away. It is in this time that he thinks, feels, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... their expectation to formulate a charge, they began to pour forth many vehement accusations; out of which at length three emerged with some distinctness—first, that He was perverting the nation; second, that He forbade to pay the imperial tribute; and third, that He set Himself up as ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the wooded slope on the western side of the river. The crust of the frozen snow was strong enough to bear them; and as it was not glazed, but covered with an inch of hoar-frost, it retained the imprint of their feet with distinctness. They were obliged to carry their skees, on account both of the steepness of the slope and the density of the underbrush. Roads and paths were invisible under the white pall of the snow, and only the ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of the German chorale, and the recent great development of interest in folk-music, together with the unique importance of Bach's work, have combined to tempt writers on music to over-estimate the distinctness of the art-forms based upon the German chorale. There is really nothing in these art-forms which is not continuous with the universal practice of writing counterpoint on a canto fermo. And it should ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... two gorgeous pieces of Gobelin tapestry. And around her and above, Dolores's amazed eyes lighted upon gems of the painter's art such as few collections might boast. The entire ceiling was covered with a colossal "Battle of the Amazons," by Rubens, each figure thrown out in startling distinctness, full of voluptuous life and action; the walls were mantled by vast golden frames holding the best of Titian, Correggio and Giorgione, Raphael and Ribera. And jewels flashed everywhere; cunningly placed lamps, themselves ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... believed to exceed that of spring water. The mineral and organic substances it holds in suspension actually increase its translucency. In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the sandy bottom with startling distinctness as deep as 145 meters down, and the penetrating power of the sun's rays seems to give out only at a depth of 300 meters. But in this fluid setting traveled by the Nautilus, our electric glow was being generated in the very ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... if possessed by supernatural spirit and strength, she lashed it safe, resumed her seat, and rowed in, desperately, for the nearest shallow water where she might run the boat aground. Desperately, but not wildly, for she knew that if she lost distinctness of intention, all ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... hear shrill, prolonged yells from several parts of the forest, and from their distinctness we knew that the bands of bushrangers, or whoever were the utterers, were gradually closing in upon us, and to stay where we were for half an ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... excellences of the drama besides this dramatic probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the chief end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,—yet ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... litterateurs of his day emerges, with ever sharper distinctness as time goes on, the name of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849.) By the irony of fate Poe was born at Boston, and his first volume, Tamerlane and Other Poems, 1827, was printed in that city and bore upon ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... surface of the pericardial sac, and may ultimately form a union of the opposing surfaces. Generally this adhesion will only be found to occupy a portion of the surfaces. As the serous or watery portion of this effusion is absorbed, the distinctness of the friction sound recurs, and may remain perceptible in a varied degree for a long time. When the serous effusion is very great, the pressure exerted upon the heart weakens its action, and may produce death soon; when it is not so great, it may cause dropsies ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... quarrel with Brown instantly forgotten. "Throw the little greaser out," he spoke with slow distinctness. "This is ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... its operation by affording that firmness and distinctness of outline which was most needed in his work; it gave body to his creations, but in his most characteristic and original tales this body was not to be one of external fact, but of moral thought. His genius contained ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... them. Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers. ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... improper that a young lady should be supported on such an occasion by her own father, that he frankly and gallantly proposed to Mr. Effingham to relieve him of his burthen, an offer that was declined with quite as much distinctness as it was made. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the pitiless sunshine. That moment of intensest depression was come to Janet, when the daylight which showed her the walls, and chairs, and tables, and all the commonplace reality that surrounded her, seemed to lay bare the future too, and bring out into oppressive distinctness all the details of a weary life to be lived from day to day, with no hope to strengthen her against that evil habit, which she loathed in retrospect and yet was powerless to resist. Her husband would never consent to her living away ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a little as if my experience of the previous night were a dream. But as I thought over all that had occurred, what may be called the romantic features seemed to dwindle in distinctness and importance, and I dwelt chiefly on the mental profit I had derived from these new associations. Once more I deplored the existence of the vain and coquettish notions that had led me to construe as devotion the enthusiasm of the clever men who had honored me with an ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... of "The Brethren," after baptism, is also described with much distinctness, in a few words which seem to have been recorded once for all of the first converts, in formal terms which should be applicable to all others: "They continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine, and fellowship, ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... unintelligible. They listened still. There was silence for a few moments, and then the silence was broken once more. Words were again heard. They were French, and they heard them this time with perfect distinctness. ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... see this nocturnal landscape, for his anger seemed, as it were, to lay a hand over his eyes. But gradually the brilliancy of the two stars, the larger and the smaller, caught his attention, then the dark distinctness of the mountains, and then the gray shimmering road and the strange light on the lake. But the more the great silent picture of the night gained power over his soul, the more did it appease his anger, until there grew in the mind of this strange ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... History of Creation" contains a course of lectures delivered to the professors, students, and citizens of Jena. It is, therefore, somewhat popular in its character. The ability of the writer is manifest on every page. The distinctness of his perceptions, precision of language, perspicuity of style, and the strength of his convictions, give the impression of a man fully master of his subject, who has thought himself through, and is perfectly satisfied with the ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... have told you enough, it seems to me, at least to-day, of this function of art in recording fact; let me now finally, and with all distinctness possible to me, state to you its main business of all;—its service in the actual uses of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... every word with a very deliberate distinctness, "we shouldn't get on, you and I. I don't know how it is; but I never get on with people who keep shops or banks. I'm afraid ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... discovered, however, that everything was arranged squarely, according to system, order, and not with a view of placing in the best lights and shadows the beautiful things to be sold. He saw that Mr. Ludolph was annoyed by the same defect. One bright day, when everything stood out with glaring distinctness, he seemed provoked beyond measure by this inartistic rigidity, and stormed through the store at ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... good woman throughout his childhood stood out from among all others surrounding him, with singular distinctness. She seemed not like a servant, nor was she like any other in the household. As he ripened in years, he realised that in his earliest memories of her there was a recollection of a certain grave respect she had seemed to pay him, and he saw it had been not mere deference but respect, as ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... furiously. He remembered Violet Hamilton vaguely, but there came upon him a compelling desire to draw this girl to whom he owed so much into his arms and comfort her. They both stood very still a moment, and Nasmyth heard the snapping of the stove with a startling distinctness. Then—and it cost him a strenuous effort—he ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... without difficulty, and they travelled along in the same carriage together, and then across the lake. When they left the boat they went towards the inn, where the big post-wagon stood with the horses already harnessed. It all came back to Rico's memory with great distinctness,—how he had stood there in the night, quite alone, after the students had all gone their ways; and opposite he espied the stable-door where he had seen the lantern hanging, and had found the friendly sheep-dealer again. It ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... poem in dialogue; the persons being only four in number, and the action a wild yet simple catastrophe of love, jealousy, and revenge. The dramatis personae are gipsies; and it is difficult to select what is most admirable in this exquisite little work—the completeness and distinctness of the descriptions of external nature—the artful introduction of various allusions, (particularly in one most charming passage, indicating Ovid's exile in the beautiful country which is the scene of the drama,) or the intense interest which the poet has known how to infuse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... a few moments later, he rose, looked at himself in the glass, arranged his flowing locks, and then, glaring at us from top to toe, while he pronounced the letter with the utmost distinctness, he ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... the sun, which shines very plainly as it moves across the sky of our life of things—showing them in all distinctness and clearness; so that we see things as they happen to us with our eyes of daylight. But as the sun throws its dim twilight shadows even beyond our earth, so do the souls of men of great mind and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... by the rebellious acts of their inhabitants, and that, the insurrection having been suppressed, they were thenceforward to be considered merely as conquered territories. The legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the Government have, however, with Heat distinctness and uniform consistency, refused to sanction an assumption so incompatible with the nature of our republican system and with the professed objects of the war. Throughout the recent legislation of Congress the undeniable fact makes ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wonder if she were not really a product of his own imagination. His fancy had played upon her so extravagantly that he feared he would not know her if ever they came face to face. His mental picture of her had lost all distinctness; her face was no longer clear-cut before his mind's eye, but so blurred and hazy that even to himself he could not describe ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... by the distinctness and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he told his story, and was ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... in the -Curculio- of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... but the most probable solution of the apparent want of distinctness of explication on this article, in my humble judgment, is—that the so-called Apostles' Creed was at first the preparatory confession of the catechumens, the admission-ticket, as it were ('symbolum ad Baptismum'), at the gate of the Church, and gradually augmented as heresies started up. The latest ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the republic, and who therefore shrank from the expression of their opinions. It must be confessed, however, that the author is obnoxious to the charge which has been made, of the want of perspicuity and distinctness in this part of his work. He does not mean that the press was silent, for he has himself not only noticed, but furnished proof of the great freedom, not to say licentiousness, with which it assailed the character of the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... position under Hiero's hand and the weary intrigue and activity which made the melancholy semblance of a successful life for men less wise and genuine. The lines which the hand of Theocritus has left on the past are few and marvellously delicate, but they seem to gain distinctness from the remorseless years that have almost obliterated the features of the age in which he lived. It is better to see clearly one or two things in life than to move confused and blinded in the dust of an impotent activity; it is better ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... use of a battering ram of wood, suspended near them, causing the huge monsters to give out soft, muffled, though deep and far-reaching notes, that float off among the mountain passes, and come back again from Echo's lips, with startling distinctness. Several priests, clad in long, yellow robes, were seen actively employed, chanting, praying, and performing inexplicable ceremonies. One had a lot of little pine chips by his side, and was busy ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... slightest irregularity causes the current to rise or fall quite beyond the limits required for distinct signals. No important difference was observed between signals sent by alternate reverse currents and those sent by the more usual method. The amount of oscillation, and the consequent distinctness of signalling, were nearly the same in the two cases. An advantage in the first signals sent is, however, obtained by the use of Messrs. Sieman's and Halske's submarine key, by which the cable is put to earth immediately on signalling being interrupted, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the play possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... world was ever done for money, nor while the slightest thought of money affected the painter's mind. Whatever idea of pecuniary value enters into his thoughts as he works, will, in proportion to the distinctness of its presence, shorten his power. A real painter will work for you exquisitely, if you give him, as I told you a little while ago, bread and water and salt; and a bad painter will work badly and hastily, though you give him a palace to live in, and a princedom to live upon. Turner got, in his ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... the mind regards itself and its own power of activity, it feels pleasure: and that pleasure is greater in proportion to the distinctness wherewith it conceives itself and its own power ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... chiefly in the decorative branch of art, preserved in the Northern Counties, pourtrayed by a very competent hand. Many of the objects possess considerable interest; such as the chair of the Venerable Bede. Cromwell's sword and watch, and the grace cup of Thomas-a-Becket. All are drawn with that distinctness which makes them available for the Antiquarian, for the Artist who is studying costumes, and for ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... long, the dead silence broken only by the cheery ring of Kelson's voice giving his orders with a promptness and decision which was sweet music to my ears. A moment more and the whole sky was one blaze of dazzling light; in a second of time I saw with almost supernatural distinctness every rope and spar, every brace and shroud of the ship; I saw the illimitable black expanse of water on the port side, and the Ellen, a mile distant on the starboard bow, her outlines as sharply defined as in a silhouette; I saw the figures of men ascending ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... "water-waves." Water-waves are scarcely to be commended for any type of face, and they are especially unbecoming to the woman who is conspicuously "roly-poly." The round eyes, knobby nose, and round mouth are brought into unattractive distinctness by being re-duplicated in the circular effects of the hair. This mode of dressing the hair makes a short face look common ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... took in the whole scene with cruel distinctness—the press wide open and completely empty; Martine maddened by her fear of fire; Felicite radiant, pushing into the flames with her foot the last fragments of the envelopes. Smoke and flying soot filled the study, where the roaring of the fire sounded like the hoarse gasping of a murdered man—the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... perhaps, a peculiar dress pattern, the shape of a finger-nail, the back of a neck, the toss of a head, the movement of a foot, or the dressing of the hair. In such cases, these images stand out for a time with the distinctness of a cameo, and suggest that the origin of erotic fetichisms is largely to be found in sexual dreams. Very rarely is there any imagery of the organs themselves, but the tendency to irradiation is so ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Ferry," say the journals. What is the character of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out, with glaring distinctness, the character of this government. We needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side of injustice, as ours ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... which had seen much service in New Haven drawing-rooms, was twisted about the suspicious-looking head of an uncommonly dirty boy. A pair of heavy riding-boots were transferred to the shoulders of a youth who bore the 'gallows mark' upon his features with unmistakable distinctness. A satin vest of Mr. Marsh's was circulating through the crowd, on the person of a dirty child, who boasted no other wealth but a ragged shirt and a green pomegranate. I looked at the youngster with a smile of congratulation; but he turned upon his heel and ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... buried in a bed of fine river sand intermingled with sufficient elements of clay to take a perfect cast or mold of all the epidermal markings before any of the epidermal tissues had time to soften under the solvent action of the water. In this way the markings were indicated with absolute distinctness, ... the visitor will be able by the use of the hand glass to study even the finer details of the pattern, although of course there is no trace either of the epidermis itself, which has entirely disappeared, or of the pigmentation or coloring, if ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... work in this war, were magnitude, system, thorough co-operativeness with the other sex, distinctness of purpose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy persistency to the close. There was no more general rising among the men, than among the women. Men did not take to the musket, more commonly than ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of chisels made of a metal which, by reason of its being so corroded, they could not make out. Mallets of stone were also found, looking as if but lately used. These instruments had cheated time of its prey, and lay there in their pristine distinctness a link binding the past with the future. They also found an instrument which was something like our pick-axe, and had evidently been used in dislodging ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... often happens with the face we best love and have reason chiefly to remember. Others will rise unbidden with the vividness of a photograph, but the one face eludes us more and more, till no effort of the mind will call it up with any distinctness. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... life, swelling, diminishing, justifying the world in taking from them its ultimate measure of force; finally, along with chariots, drivers, horses, let the reader see the accompanying shadows fly; and, with such distinctness as the picture comes, he may share the satisfaction and deeper pleasure of those to whom it was a thrilling fact, not a feeble fancy. Every age has its plenty of sorrows; Heaven help where ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... "The distinctness of these groups of foods," says Dr. Hunt, "and their relations to the tissue-producing and heat-evolving capacities of man, are so definite and so confirmed by experiments on animals and by manifold tests of scientific, physiological and clinical experience, that no attempt ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... toward him, and a series of sharp cracks broke out from the farther wing of the row of butts, which stretched across the moor. Lisle watched the birds, with fingers tightening on his gun; one cluster was coming his way, each flitting body growing in size and distinctness with marvelous rapidity. Then there was a flash beside him, and another crash as he pitched up his gun. Something struck the heather with a thud not far away, and swinging the muzzle a little, he pulled again. He was not surprised to ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... upon Tancred by this unusual apparition, it appeared to be only transient. His glance withdrawn, his voice again broke into incoherent but violent exclamations. Suddenly he said, with more moderation, but with firmness and distinctness, 'I am ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... development of one hand more than the other is not due to differences in weight between the two longitudinal halves of the body. As she had not learned to speak or to utter articulate sounds with much distinctness, we may say also that right or left-handedness may develop while the speech centres are not yet functioning. Further, the right hand is carried over after objects on the left side, showing that habit in reaching does not ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's native home. Yet here are millions of the same race maintaining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness, yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above their brethren in their original seat. The contrast in this regard between the race here and there is simply immeasurable. They have been taken out of the blackness of idolatry, ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... figure (neither of the writers mentioned appear to have been aware that there was more than one supposed toucan) is not of sufficient distinctness to identify the original that was before the artist's mind, and it would not be safe, therefore, to make this specimen the subject of ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... servants shot him this morning," said Penelope with great distinctness. There was breathless silence ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... point, and the honest Captain, who could stand many things better than Hollar's throwing such throws so early in the evening, cursed his opponent's luck and sneered at his play, and called the company to witness, with a distinctness which a stranger to smiling Hollar's deafness would have thought hardly civil; and just at this moment the door opened, and Richard Turnbull showed his new guest into the room, and ushered him to a vacant seat near the other corner of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... means to be used, which result from the nature of memory itself, are on the one hand the pronouncing and writing of the names and numbers, and on the other, repetition; by these we gain distinctness ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... than herself a question which showed that her mind had been working under the influence of a new impression. She very soon got over her childish lisp, and even before she was four years old she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father. As for her mother, she regarded her with a feeling which she could scarcely define, not being afraid of her, but not behaving towards her caressingly. As for that, she did not caress even her nurse, although she loved her with her whole heart. She and Agafia were ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... last few hours had become charged with undreamed-of horrors—and there was to be no peace. In the shadowy darkness which rested upon the white-churned sea flying past him, he saw again, with horrible distinctness, the face, the figure of the man who for those few brief minutes he had hated with a desperate and passionate hatred. He saw the broken photograph, the glass splintered into a thousand pieces. He saw the man himself, choking, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... central point for all our emotional responses. We do not see the hands of any other actor in the scene. Everything else sinks into a general vague background, while that one hand shows more and more details. The more we fixate it, the more its clearness and distinctness increase. From this one point wells our emotion, and our emotion again concentrates our senses on this one point. It is as if this one hand were during this pulse beat of events the whole scene, and everything else had faded away. On the stage this ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... her, finding it harder to go away than I had supposed. So closely had I watched the changes upon her face, that every line of it was deeply engraved upon my memory. Other and more familiar faces seemed to have faded in proportion to that distinctness of impression. Julia's features, for instance, had become blurred and obscure, like a painting which has lost its original ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category belongs the comparative hocher for hoeher in the sentence hocher bauen (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... cannon; and at the opposite side may be seen a third, ready to sink whatever hostile fleet should be fortunate enough to force an entrance. But these were not the most striking parts of the scene. The water in this strait is remarkably clear, and exhibits with great distinctness the tops and chimneys of houses at the bottom. It will be recollected, that many years ago, an earthquake not only demolished great part of the town of Port Royal, but likewise covered it with the sea; by which means, the site of the harbour was completely changed, and ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig |
