"Vaguely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chinese, and is to that extent a landmark in the literary history of Japan. His Christianity is an Early Christianity which places him in antagonism, not only to his own countrymen who are Shintoists, Buddhists or Confucians, or vaguely Nationalists, but to such foreign missionaries as are sectarians and literalists. His earliest training was in agricultural science, and the welfare of the Japanese countryside is near his heart. If he ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... cardiac transplant on board this ship?" The questions went on until Tiger and Dal were breathless, as count-down time grew closer and closer. Finally the Black Doctor turned back toward the entrance lock. He seemed vaguely disappointed as he checked the record sheets the orderlies had been keeping. With an odd look at Dal, he shrugged. "All right, here are your clearance papers," he said to Jack. "Your supply of serum globulin ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... was confident she shared his feelings; he was sorry for her; he trusted her judgment; he considered it a merciful dispensation that he could help her once more,—but in his aristocratic heart of hearts he would have found it more easy to reconcile himself to the idea of her turning seamstress. Vaguely he remembered reading years ago a touching piece called the "Song of the Shirt." It was all very well making songs about poor women. The granddaughter of Colonel Whalley, the landlady of a boarding-house! Pooh! He replaced his hat, dived into two ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Such incidental citation of authority is evident in St. Paula, published by Dr. Horstmann side by side with its Latin original.[132] With more simplicity and less display of learning, the translator of religious works sometimes vaguely adduces authority, as did the translator of romances, in connection with an unfamiliar name. One finds such statements as: "Manna, so it is written";[133] "Such a fiend, as the book tells us, is called Incubus";[134] "In the country of Champagne, as the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... dressed as he was to wait. He listened through minute after minute for the expected step. The window was open (for the midsummer night was warm), and all the sounds of belated and revelling London floated vaguely in the air. Twelve o'clock boomed softly from Westminster, and made the heavy atmosphere drowsily vibrate with the volume of the strokes. The reverberation of the last had scarcely died away when a light, measured footfall made him sit up. It came ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... wondering vaguely how he should explain the lie when it was found out, but not caring much. After all, he could easily ascribe the episode to the trick of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the French line. The frigates and scout vessels that might have given more timely warning were at anchor in the bay. Numerous water parties were on shore and with them the ships' boats needed to stretch cables from one vessel to another and rig gear for winding ships, as had been vaguely planned. At a hurried council it was proposed to put to sea, but this was given up for the sufficient reason that there was no time. The French were cleared for action only on the out-board side. Their admiral was chiefly fearful of attack in the rear, a fear ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... lie hidden within many of its pregnant lines. One of the biographer's very strangest suggestions is never made concrete at all, so far as I can discern. The figure of the literary discoverer of the South Seas emerges perhaps a bit vaguely, his head in the clouds, but there is no reason to believe that Melville's head was anywhere else when he was alive. Hawthorne is at last described pretty accurately and not too flatteringly. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850; Moby ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... light and foolish as a wind-tumbled feather. Two women's faces danced before his eyes, one proud and beautiful and young, the other humble and pitiful and old, and he tried his best to shut both of them out of his senses. Vaguely he tried to shape a ballade, a noble ballade in honour of all things good to eat. He had got at least an excellent overword. "A dish of tripe's the best of all." He mouthed the line with a relish, but his eyes were seeing ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... every shade of manner in his companions, they sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased. The cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted window of a book-shop, trying to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal. My lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with scarcely the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that nothing had yet reached the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... offices and retired early to her private apartments. The husband and wife spent their evenings alone. They sat there, facing each other, at the fireside. A shade concentrated the light of the lamp upon the table covered with expensive knick-knacks. The ceiling was sometimes vaguely lighted up by a glimmer from the stove which glittered on the gilt cornices. Ensconced in deep comfortable armchairs, the pair respectively caressed their favorite dream ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... He, also, had heard the latest rumor on the mountain-top. It was highly amusing to watch his movements. He came teetering along in the most aimless, idiotic way. Now he drifted off a little to the right, then a little to the left; his blunt nose seemed vaguely to be feeling the air; he fumbled over the ground, tossed about by loose boulders and little hillocks; his eyes wandered stupidly about; I was in plain view within four or five yards of him, but he heeded me not. Then he turned back a few paces, but some slight ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... being, was to die. Death had done its work with all she loved; she had before borne up against grief; now, for the first time, she resigned herself; out of the deep she called upon God, and in the horror, in the pity, in the unconquerable tenderness which vaguely filled her bewildered soul, she learnt "to cease from man and turn to God." She dared not think, and so she ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... a girl of seventeen may not be feeling out into the spiritual dark,—may not be stretching helpless hands, vaguely, toward the Hands that help? Desire Ledwith laid the book down again, with a great swelling breath coming up slowly out of her bosom, and with a warmth of tears in her earnest little eyes. And Uncle Titus Oldways sat there among his papers, and never ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to a window, gazing vaguely out into the moist blue obscurity. Sidsall, she realized, was maturing with a disconcerting rapidity. Depths were opening in the girl's being at which she, her mother, could only guess. It was exactly as if a crystal through and through which ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... whether Evolutionism can claim that amount of currency which would entitle it to be called British popular geology; but, more or less vaguely, it is assuredly present in ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that if some of the Oracles in the earlier part of the Book—after the account of the Prophet's call—are undated, while the dates of others are stated vaguely; and again, if some, including the story of the call, appear to be tinged with reflections from experiences of the Prophet later than the early years of his career, then these two features support the belief that the Oracles were first reduced to writing at a distance from their composition ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Big-Money, elicit but two replies. Some know, or even pretend to know, nothing about her. The rest say, with entire unanimity, "Hit 's des de ole Witch-Rabbit w'at you done year'd talk un 'fo' now." Mrs. Prioleau of Memphis sent the writer a negro story in which the name "Big-Money" was vaguely used. It was some time before that story could be verified. In conversation one day with a negro, casual allusion was made to "Big-Money." "Aha!" said the negro, "now I know. You talkin' 'bout ole Mammy-Bammy Big-Money," and then he went ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army slouch hat that had long lacked the brush. He was immensely long and sallow, wore a drooping moustache vaguely blonde, between the unkempt curtains of which a thin cheroot pointed heavenward. As he walked nervously up and down, with a suspiciously stilted gait, he observed Rosenheim with evident scorn and the picture with a strange pride. He was not merely ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... buzz of sorrowful friends had passed away with the stroke of midnight. Now Mrs. Hicks sat alone with her dead and gazed upon his calm features and vaguely wondered how, after a life of such disappointment and failure and bitter discontent, he could look so peaceful. She knew every line that thought and trouble had ruled upon his face; she remembered their coming; and now, between her fits of grief, she ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln, the writer cannot now recall a single instance in which he spoke of himself as President, or used that title for himself except when acting in an official capacity. He always spoke of his position and office vaguely, as, 'this place,' 'here,' or other modest phrase. Once, speaking of the room in the Capitol used by the Presidents of the United States during the close of a session of Congress, he said, 'That room, you know, that they call'—dropping his voice and hesitating—'the President's ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... always known vaguely that there was something between Mary Champion and my Uncle Luke, and that explained to some extent her influence with my grandparents. She brought into their shut-up lives, indeed, the open air and the ways of other folk, without which I think we should have all grown too ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... pervades House to-night. Everyone more, or less vaguely, conscious of it. Even without chancing to look up to Peers' Gallery, Members are inspired with sudden mysterious access of Moral Influence. OLD MORALITY himself, that overflowing reservoir of moral axioms, takes on an aggravated air of responsibility and respectability. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day; but I have heard no specification of these charges. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... after hour, as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down in their vaults the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely.... ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Keith's excitement, to which they at length yielded, feeling that resistance might be dangerous to her. She further insisted that the rite should be performed in her presence; nor was she satisfied when Rachel had brought in her uncle, but insisted on likewise calling in her brother, who vaguely anxious, and fully conscious of the small size of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... closed on the child a dozen things occurred to Beulah that might have been done for her. She was vaguely faint for her breakfast. Her feet were cold. She thought of the soothing warmth of antiphlogistine when applied to the chest. She thought of the quinine on the shelf in the bathroom. Once more she tried lifting her head, but she could not accomplish ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... up, struck by a sharp suspicion. Indeed, it was Harriet who was being carried out—and a good thing, he thought, that they didn't have to support her full weight. He wondered vaguely if she would die before they got her to a doctor. He could not give the thought his full attention, or feel as much fraternal anxiety as ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... which the deeper life is born. Her first sense was of a great moral loneliness—an isolation more complete, more impenetrable, than that in which the discovery of Denis's act had plunged her. For she had vaguely leaned, then, on a collective sense of justice that should respond to her own ideas of right and wrong: she still believed in the logical correspondence of theory and practice. Now she saw that, among those nearest her, there was no one who recognized ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... rush of feet toward the dining room and he was vaguely conscious that some one had halted before his door. He turned about. A young man, not over twenty-five, with a delicately chiseled face, was stepping into the room. As he drew closer Fred received the wistful impression of changing-blue eyes and a skin clear ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... went down again, and as I went a problem which had vaguely bothered me during my administrations recurred, now more insistently. There was something familiar in Mlle. Chateray's ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... before the figure, whom Wilhelm vaguely recollected as having seen at some time previously; possibly on the night when he had parted from Mariana. Then the curtain opened again; another figure advanced, "Learn to know the men who may be trusted," he said, and again the curtain closed. "Dispute not with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... She was afraid of his long, cat-like look. Yet she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her to be the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She watched him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in him. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... sometimes I fancy if half the pity we give the dead, who don't need it, was given to the living, who do, they'd bear their troubles more comfortably. I know I should," added Mr. Fletcher, returning to his own afflictions, and vaguely wondering if any one would cry like that when ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... I wish to entertain my readers, except in so far as they may have some intrinsic interest of their own. Dimly I can recall the year of storm and stress on the Continent, when thrones were toppling and the tide of revolution threatened a general catastrophe; vaguely, too, I remember the firing of the guns from the old castle, which announced the death of Queen Adelaide in 1849; but it was not until 1850 that my real life may be said to have begun. In the spring of that ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... were a "stumbling block" and "foolishness" to those who had not the "inner light" of the physics, were the three divisions of the "astral" made known, and the true distinction between the spirit of the three higher planes and the matter of the four lower was kept out of the metaphysics, or only vaguely alluded to. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... with anxiety, blinking his almond eyes behind his shell-rimmed glasses. As, however, he did not know enough about the technique of painting to offer a sensible appreciation, he wisely confined himself to a very few vaguely eulogistic monosyllables, which seemed greatly to ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... gray dawn, interpreted, as no other lyric of the war quite succeeded in interpreting, the mystical glory of sacrifice for Freedom. Soldiers sang it in camp; women read it with tears; children repeated it in school, vaguely but truly perceiving in it, as their fathers had perceived in Webster's "Reply to Hayne" thirty years before, the idea of union made "simple, sensuous, passionate." No American poem has had a more dramatic and intense life in the quick ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... the edge of the next trench. It was thrown forward in front of the wood. After making the usual arrangements that are vaguely called "establishing touch," he turned back out of the shelter of the parapet, over the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... nobody and nothing. Jim's presence, his concerned voice and sympathetic eyes, only vaguely added to her distress. She was frightened now, terrified at the recurring paroxysms of pain; she recoiled from the breezy matter-of-factness of the doctor and the nurse; the elaborate preparations ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... can be induced to help man and does not want to thwart him. And here they were perfectly right. We are at last learning the way by which this may be done, and now see clearly what the Hindus only vaguely felt, that the heart of the river is right enough—that once it is tamed and trained it can bring untold good ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... dictionaries; Jean because it was jolly to have a companion her own age; and Giusippe because he felt that at last he had friends who were to guide for him the future which had loomed so darkly and so vaguely before him. Not a full week of the trip to Paris had passed before Mr. Cabot declared that how he had previously got on without that boy he did not understand. Giusippe had such a wonderful way of making himself useful; ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... nasturtiums and poppies and phlox, a fleeting memory of some association she had in her mind of Uncle Jimmy Purdy and Aunt Martha kept tantalising her. She could not get it out of the background of her consciousness, and yet it refused to form itself into a tangible conception. It was associated vaguely with her own grandmother, as though, infinite ages ago, her grandmother had said something that had lodged the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... temperance tract, or a chunk of advice, or a shuddering recital of the woes of a horrible example, or a warning, or an admonition—or anything at all but a plain tale of an adventure that started out rather vaguely and wound up ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... running, and were so disturbed at it, that Marechal (who related all this curious anecdote to me) made bold to speak to the King upon this sadness, fearing for his health. The King avowed to him that he felt infinite trouble, and threw himself vaguely upon the state of affairs. Eight or ten days. after (during which he continued to feel the same melancholy), the King regained his usual calmness, and called Marechal to explain ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... on my back, I began to look at the misshapen moon, which had four horns, through the vaguely transparent ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... light dabbed on in places, or like vertical cliffs in which our swarming is absorbed. Scattering among the twilight colonnade of the trees, these people engulf themselves in the heaped-up lodgings and rooms; they flow together in the cavity of doors; they plunge into the houses; and there they are vaguely turned into lights. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... his pockets with fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to the tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience, had always pricked him for it; "It was a shame," he said, "to leave them with such painful impressions." The quilting ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and clasped her hands tightly together. She was like a child about to be punished for a crime it has not committed, and it came vaguely to the doctor that he might have broached ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... readily enough; but the battle of doubt and faith that I passed through a few years later I can no more realise than I can now realise your father's blessed assurance of heaven. I know vaguely that it was a time of unspeakable agony for me, a rending asunder, as it were, of soul and body. The doctrine was bred into my bones; I saw the folly of it intellectually, but the emotional comfort ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the road to the village, vaguely at first, as if half in a dream, then with gathering purpose. Back she went, in her tracks, straight to the village and the tavern stable, and asked of Dexter Beers another horse to drive to Kingston. But he refused her, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... embarrassed—vaguely uneasy. The memory of Rice's words came flooding back to him. Whatever else was true, this man's sufferings were real indeed. To him she had never been anything but a most charming benefactor. In a momentary fit of introspection he told himself, then, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... perfect in mould and health, was capable of extravagant and overpowering emotion; a rapturous exaltation that filled her and took possession of her whole being. She tried to turn her thoughts to Sir Julian, and wondered vaguely why he had not come to London. He had intended leaving the castle before this; and why had he not found her? He might know she would like to inquire of those at home,—the Duke of Ellswold and the others ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Mr. Blackadder and Mr. Welsh, were held near Dumfries on the Saturday, but at these the place of meeting on the Sabbath was only vaguely announced as "a hillside in Irongray," so anxious were they to escape being disturbed by their enemies, and the secret was kept so well that when the Sabbath arrived a congregation of above three thousand had assembled round the Communion stones in ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... was the part of the host to see that it was forthcoming. Westray stopped again once or twice, but always with the same result. He did not know whether he was looking at portraits or landscapes, though he was vaguely aware that half-way down the gallery, there stood on the floor what seemed to be an unfinished picture, with its ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the south. The first quarter of a mile was an indistinct blur, out of which a horse might be seen, then a boy, or a wolf arose on wings and soared for an instant. Suddenly the horse doubled back over the lane, and as his rider shot past Joel, a fire of requests was vaguely heard, regarding "a noose that had settled foul," of "a rope that was being gnawed" and a general ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... her round blue eyes on him with astonishment. There was something in his tone that smote vaguely on her consciousness. What could he mean, asking such ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... moment, and instantly returned with two cups of Turkish coffee on a pewter salver, which he deposited on a stool before us. He evidently meant business, for he began to talk of the weather, and seemed in no hurry to show us the object he had vaguely mentioned. At last I asked for it, which I would certainly not have done had I meant to buy it. It proved to be a magnificent strip of Rhodes tapestry, of the kind formerly made for the Knights of Malta, but ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Roldan forgot that he was a captive. His mind had made its first impulse to the mysteries of night and solitude during the few moments between his entry into another forest and the encounter with the bear; it now made its first real opening. He was vaguely troubled by the embryonic thoughts that in their maturity come to men who have lived and suffered, when they are alone in a forest at ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... away doing picket duty, and with the departure of Mercedes and the death of Bert, Saxon was left much to herself in a loneliness that even in one as healthy-minded as she could not fail to produce morbidness. Mary, too, had left, having spoken vaguely of taking a job ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... benefactor to injure him in his nearest tie, but that circumstances drew Shelley to Mary with equal force as her to him. The meetings by her mother's grave seemed to sanctify the love which should have been another's. They vaguely tried to justify themselves with crude principles. But self-deception could not endure much longer; and when Godwin forbade Shelley his house on July 8, Shelley, ever impetuous and headstrong, whose very virtues became for the time vices, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... And Lord Warburton's eyes wandered vaguely in the direction she had indicated. He stood firmly before her now; he had recovered his balance and seemed to wish to show it, though very kindly. "Don't let me disturb you," he went on, looking at her dejected ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... cruelly; those marks could never have resulted from her fall. Poor kid. Subject to fits of some sort, he presumed. She was a good looker, too, and no mistake. He smoothed back the rumpled mass of golden hair and studied her features. They were vaguely familiar. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... of the picture she made—a tall and regal figure in her flowered crimson, her stateliness seeming relaxed and softened by the mere holding of the sealed missive in her hand. But the women were vaguely envious, not of Osmonde, but of her before whom there lay outspread as far as life's horizon reached, a future of such perfect love and joy; for Gerald Mertoun had been marked by feminine eyes since his earliest youth, and had seemed ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were floating vaguely in her mind as she read her letters and unconsciously influenced her in ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... with a pleasant countenance and a manner at once eager and embarrassed. Mr. Daley was usually referred to as Horace, which was his first name, and, as he shook hands, Don very nearly committed the awful mistake of calling him that! After greetings had been exchanged Don explained somewhat vaguely the reason for his tardy arrival and then requested permission to visit Coach Robey in the ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... on her brother's shoulder, Pocahontas sobbed convulsively. She was familiar with the outlines of the tale, and knew vaguely of the weeks of anxiety that had lined her mother's gentle face and silvered her brown hair, but of all particulars she was ignorant. She had been very young at the time these sad events occurred; the young brother ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... destroy them; she must soil them too. Her delicate hands left abominable traces and themselves decomposed whatever they had broken. And he in his imbecile condition lent himself to this sort of sport, for he was possessed by vaguely remembered stories of saints who were devoured by vermin and in turn devoured their own excrements. When once she had him fast in her room and the doors were shut, she treated herself to a man's infamy. At first they joked together, and she would deal him ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... regained his balance, and plunged through a fringe of pines, staggered against one, then another, cursed, and went again forward and out into a clearing. She saw it vaguely before them. At first she doubted, then, as he let his hold on her slip, she gripped his neck with arms that scarcely felt the body they ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... vaguely through the young man's sore mind. Then in a flash they were absorbed in a perception of a wholly different kind. The room seemed to him transfigured; a kind of temple. He thought of the intellectual life which ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is speaking here from hearsay, and hearsay geography without maps is much given to generalising. I apprehend that, along with characteristics specially referable to the Tibetan and Mongol traditions of Udyana, the term Pashai, as Polo uses it, vaguely covers the whole tract from the southern boundary of Badakhshan to the Indus and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... leaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her sternsheets the slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl of her propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely gleaming brass ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... of Nares (1859), this very passage is quoted to illustrate the meaning of the word, which is defined rather vaguely to be A CASK. Obviously the word signifies something of the kind, but the explanation does not at all satisfy me. I suspect that a flute OF CANARY was so called from the cask having several vent-holes, in the same way that the French call a lamprey FLEUTE D'ALEMAN from the fish ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... christened it before it was born. The one thing the Angles obviously and certainly could not manage to do was to become English. But they did become Christians, and indeed showed a particular disposition to become monks. Moderns who talk vaguely of them as our hardy ancestors never do justice to the real good they did us, by thus opening our history, as it were, with the fable of an age of innocence, and beginning all our chronicles, as so many chronicles began, with the golden initial ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... ford. vagar wander, roam, flit, drift, hover. vago, -a wandering, wavering, vague, indistinct, hazy. vagoroso, -a wandering, errant. vaguedad f. vagueness; con —— vaguely, uncertainly. valenta f. valor, courage. valer be worth, help, avail; ms vale it is better. valeroso, -a valiant, brave. valiente adj. valiant, brave, arrogant, blustering. valor m. valor, courage, strength, force, might, amount, value. valle m. vale. vano, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... them by alluvial action; and some of the thick beds of laterite in India may have had a similar origin. In India, however, especially in the Deccan, the term "laterite" seems to have been used too vaguely to answer the above definition. The vegetable soil in the gardens of the suburbs of Catania which was overflowed by the lava of 1669 was turned or burnt into a layer of red brick-coloured stone, or in other words, into laterite, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... gold and vivid colour; the incessant stream of shrill tones from the wind instruments; the wavering, light clatter of the musical stones broken by the steady crash of gongs and the deep booming of large drums; while from outside, the most monstrous bell-like noises vaguely penetrate the smoke-laden atmosphere. The ceremony must be barbarously impressive; the strange magnificence of it all, together with the belief in the actual presence of the spirits, which the vague white wreaths of joss-stick smoke help ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... and to consist largely in BELIEFS: beliefs that what constitutes the thought is connected with various other elements which together make up the object. You have, say, an image of St. Paul's, or merely the word "St. Paul's" in your head. You believe, however vaguely and dimly, that this is connected with what you would see if you went to St. Paul's, or what you would feel if you touched its walls; it is further connected with what other people see and feel, with services and ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... lay before him. However chaotic the material in which he proposed to work, however inadequate his powers, it was yet a truth that, could he execute anything at all, it would be something of the kind thus vaguely contemplated. His intellect was combative, and no subject excited it to such activity as this of Hebraic constraint in the modern world. Elgar's book, supposing him to have been capable of writing it, would have ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... must have been thinking vaguely all the while of Ralph, for suddenly her thoughts became clear and she heard the words as if they had been read to her: 'Lots of men have killed themselves for women, but to die of a broken heart proves a great deal more. Few women have inspired such a love as that.... ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... up the field. "Very nicely hoed," he said, looking vaguely at Sarah Brown's row. "Much better than the other rows. Having your dinner? ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... obtained with ease. But there are two reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rubber does it; and, secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust; in the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... dishonoured and disfigured in its westward reaches, and of the comparatively conservative Avenue. The Avenue still had pretensions, as Miss Staverton said, to decency; the old people had mostly gone, the old names were unknown, and here and there an old association seemed to stray, all vaguely, like some very aged person, out too late, whom you might meet and feel the impulse to watch or follow, in kindness, for safe restoration ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... brute force that commanded a respect not all bred of being weaker. In a way he was magnificent. And Rainey vaguely heralded trouble when Captain Simms was at last given to the deep. He felt certain that the hunters under Deming were hatching something but, in the main, his mental prophecy of trouble coming was ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... recall him only vaguely. He belonged to a much older set and went very little into general society. A man of the highest social connections, however, and of much wealth." And the doctor glanced keenly at her as he ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... articles of faith, find symbols in the outer world. They are glad to fly at certain moments from mankind and its oppressive problems, for which religion no longer provides a satisfactory solution, to Nature, where they vaguely localise the spirit that broods over us controlling all our being. To such men Goethe's hymn is a form of faith, and born of such a mood are the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... abundant than those of the wild or tame hog—save upon the ridge of the neck, where the common hog has more or less of, and generally a conspicuous mane, but the pigmy hog little or none"—"the colour of the animal is a black brown, shaded vaguely with ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... inestimable importance in winning the approval of the public. I do not refer particularly to personal beauty, although it cannot be doubted that a pleasing appearance is helpful in conquering an audience. What I mean is sincerity, individuality, temperament. What we vaguely describe as magnetism is often possessed by players who can lay no particular claim to personal beauty. Some players seem fairly to hypnotize their audiences—yes, hypnotize them. This is not done by ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... discourse learnedly about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Tommy wondered vaguely at the hostility displayed toward Jamison, but Frank explained it all by saying that the fellow was a common loafer and ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... the last of a long correspondence, for all the letters were arranged chronologically, and this was the last of the packet. Written from Neneford Manor, Northamptonshire, and vaguely dated "Wednesday," as is a woman's habit, it was addressed to Mr. Courtenay, and ran ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... vaguely. "But that is not the question to be considered now. I must beg you to understand, Perpetua, that your staying here ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... whistled through the window and entered the room. The outer mist penetrated thither and diffused itself like a whitish sheet of wadding vaguely spread by invisible fingers. Through the broken pane the snow could be seen falling. The snow promised by the Candlemas sun of the preceding day had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... since thought that there was a very important region to the north and west that might be conquered, they made no great effort to gain it. Csar was now to win imperishable laurels by effecting what had been before only vaguely dreamed of. He first made himself master of the country of the Helvetii (modern Switzerland), defeated the Germans under their famous general Ariovistus, and subjected the Belgian confederacy. The frightful carnage involved in these campaigns cannot be described, and ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... shagged eyebrows; scenes, images, incidents, kept breaking upon his mind as he proceeded, mingled with touches of the mysterious and supernatural as connected with the heart of Bruce. It seemed as if a poem or romance were breaking vaguely on his imagination. That he subsequently contemplated something of the kind, as connected with this subject, and with his favorite ruin of Melrose, is evident from his introduction to "The Monastery;" and it is a pity that he never succeeded in following out these shadowy, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the dull glimmer of a lantern, turned low, being borne toward them by an unseen hand. Then the figure of the girl appeared, and soon the lantern's rays lighted up vaguely the interior ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... of stepping from one existence into another, almost of stepping from one body, one identity, to another. When he sat at that desk he would be taking up, not his own career, but the career of the entity who had occupied this office through generations, and would occupy it in perpetual succession. Vaguely he began to miss something. The sensation was like that of one who has long worn a ring on his finger, but omits to put it on one morning. For that person there is a vague sense of something missing throughout the day. Bonbright did not know what he felt the lack of—it ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... LOVE the orchid!" Harriet said, soothingly. He was laughing too, as he disappeared, but something in his face was vaguely troubling to her none-the-less, and she remembered it now and then with a little compunction during her quiet evening of reading. She was tired to-night, excited from the talk with Blondin that afternoon, and by the general confusion and noise of the household. Ward—Nina—Royal—their ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... situation grow blurred and confused. It was as if her point of view had suddenly changed and her eyes failed her. Her eager impulse had beat less and less strongly from the Worsley's door; now it seemed to shrink away in fetters. Her eyes filled with vaguely resentful tears, which sprang, if she could have traced them, from the fact that the man she loved was loyal to his own mistake, and the formless premonition that he might continue to be. She contorted her lip to keep her emotion back, and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... itself; and thus nothing prevents the parts being known before the whole, as stones are known before a house is known. Secondly as belonging to a certain whole; and thus we must needs know the whole before its parts. For we know a house vaguely before we know its different parts. So likewise principles of definition are known before the thing defined is known; otherwise the thing defined would not be known at all. But as parts of the definition ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... bellows that opened and shut at each step; her outer dress was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold chain of curious and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she was near-sighted. Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes were vaguely dark with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak coffee and milk, sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a strong woman of fifty years, well used to the world and its ways; acquisitive, inquisitive and socially progressive; not knowing how to wish back anything from the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the student broke the silence; but his thoughts, which were wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her than vaguely and unconsciously to himself. "Morn breaks,—another and another!—day upon day!—while we drag on our load like the blind beast which knows not when the burden shall be cast off and the hour of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Conception that fill the room with light and majesty! They hang side by side, so alike and yet so distinct in character. One is a woman in knowledge and a goddess of purity; the other, absolute innocence, startled by the stupendous revelation and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of the future. It is before this picture that the visitor always lingers longest. The face is the purest expression of girlish loveliness possible to art. The Virgin floats upborne by rosy clouds, flocks of pink cherubs flutter at her feet waving palm-branches. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music. "Soul"—(accept A word which vaguely names what no adept In word-use fits and fixes so that still Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain Innominate as first, yet, free again, Is no less recognized the absolute Fact underlying that same other fact Concerning which no cavil can dispute ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... to shape her conduct in accordance with her friend Sophie's advice, and especially not so when that advice had reference to Sophie's brother. She had, therefore, said very little in return to the lady's eloquence, answering the letter on that matter very vaguely; but, having a purpose of her own, had begged that Count Pateroff might be asked to call upon Harry Clavering. Count Pateroff did not feel himself to care very much about Harry Clavering, but wishing to do as he was bidden, did leave ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... her story. As he did not do so, a heavy silence fell in the room. Sir Tiglath had returned to his measuring, and Lady Enid, for the first time, began to look slightly embarrassed. Sending her eyes vaguely about the apartment, as people do on such occasions, she chanced to see a newspaper lying on the floor near to her. She bent down towards it, then raising herself up ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... He vaguely felt the warmth of the sun drying his skin while the sea hummed in his ears; he felt distinctly the sharp pain between his eyes, and a parching thirst. He groped around in a delirious search for water, which he did not find; he pressed his head and limbs against ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the outside of a few hundred thousand of these homes and the insides of a few score, you begin to understand why the American (the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call "politics," and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the country that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby crawling ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... slaughtered the Fair Gentiles, plundering their fort and carrying away both people and property." The next year saw a new struggle between the Dark Gentiles and the Fair Gentiles, with much mutual slaughter. This leads us to realize that these raiders, vaguely grouped by modern writers under the single name of Danes, really belonged to several different races, and doubtless came from many parts of the Baltic coasts, as well as from the fiords of the great Scandinavian peninsula. The Dark Foreigners are without doubt some of that same race of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... talk to Sir Lionel, except a word flung over shoulders now and then, for Mrs. Senter sits by him. She asked to. Did I tell you that before? So the day we left Exeter things were just the same between us; not trustful and silently happy, as at the time of the ring, but rather strained, and vaguely official. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Committee was appointed to find out, if possible, the legal rights, of the people and the Crown. I was a member of that committee, and I am able to state that although we waited on several eminent lawyers, it was only from Mr. Bradlaugh that we obtained any light. The others talked vaguely about the right of public meeting, and the primary and secondary uses of public thoroughfares, but Mr. Bradlaugh gave us the facts of the case. Trafalgar-square was Crown property, its control was vested in the Commissioner of Works, and at any moment ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... the ticket doubtfully. Usually, he would not have considered the matter a moment. But somehow the incident of the morning had placed him at a disadvantage toward the pale youth. Vaguely he was moved by a wish to regain by some act the respect of this exacting person. He ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... writes. "When one says chair, one thinks vaguely of an average chair. But collect individual instances, think of armchairs and reading-chairs, and dining-room chairs and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become settees, dentists' chairs, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... along the walks. The electric lamps hummed amid showers of flakes. As Horace emerged from the kitchen, a shrill squall drove the flakes around the corner of the house. He cowered away from it, and its violence illumined his mind vaguely in new directions. He deliberated upon a choice of remote corners of the globe. He found that he had no plans which were definite enough in a geographical way, but without much loss of time he decided upon California. He moved briskly as far as his mother's front gate on the ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... really hungry before. What he had felt earlier in the day had been a mere trifling qualm. This was the real thing at last, and no mistake; and it would have to be dealt with speedily, too, or there would be trouble for somebody or something. He looked the gipsy over carefully, wondering vaguely whether it would be easier to fight him or cajole him. So there he sat, and sniffed and sniffed, and looked at the gipsy; and the gipsy sat and smoked, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... the mist, he paused, pushed open a swing door, and stepped into a long, narrow passage. He descended three stairs, and entered a room laden with a sickly perfume compounded of stale beer and spirits; of greasy humanity—European, Asiastic, and African; of cheap tobacco and cheaper scents; and, vaguely, of opium. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... that has been taking shape vaguely in my mind. I've been told that your brother reviewed a book very severely not long before he died, and just lately I have happened to cross the path of the man who wrote that book in a way he ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... and the cities.] The most signal part played by the English boroughs and cities, in securing English freedom, dates from the thirteenth century, when the nation was vaguely struggling for representative government on a national scale, as a means of curbing the power of the crown. In that memorable struggle, the issue of which to some extent prefigured the shape that the government of the United States ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... death-blow to all future inquiries in that quarter, and the whole of the information concerning the affair of the boat, her crew, and cargo, was indefinite and unsatisfactory. Every one, in fact, appeared uneasy when any information was required; and they always stifled any further inquiry by vaguely answering, that it happened before their remembrance, or they had forgotten it, or they had not seen it. They, however, pointed out the place where the boat struck and the unfortunate crew perished. Even this, however, was done with caution, and as if by stealth, although ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... later he had sunk back on the seat out of which he had sprung. He knew she was disappearing through the crowd that, satiated with gazing, was sauntering away from the parapet. But he made no attempt to follow her with so much as a glance. Slowly, vaguely, mistily, like a man tired of the earthly vision, he was letting his eyes roam along the ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... sensations were confused. He vaguely remembered having sunk into a chair opposite a window, having murmured, as he put a finger to his tooth: "It has already been filled and I am afraid nothing more can ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Peres, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... at the stern profile beside her and felt vaguely comforted. "I shall be most grateful for your advice," she said humbly. "I know I shall ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... eventually coming out at a small enclosure where stood a sort of bungalow in those days—it is probably pulled down now, but then it stood with a wonderful view over the desert, and over the green world. Tamara had vaguely observed it in the distance before, but imagined it to be some water-tower of the hotel, it was so bare and gaunt. It had been built by some mad Italian, they heard afterward, ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... have purposely worded his laws vaguely and with several interpretations, in order to increase the powers of these juries, because persons who could not settle their disputes by the letter of the law were obliged to have recourse to juries of the people, and to refer all disputes to them, as being to a certain extent ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... a creed, elaborated in every detail, the accuracy of which she continued to maintain, although I never heard from her a single striking proof. To dream of flowers, of water, of money, of blood - it all meant something, but it was always equally vaguely asserted, equally inaccurately observed, and with equally little foundation accounted proved. For me it was absolutely worthless and I carefully guarded against contradicting her in these things and making her a partner ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... nature of the matrimonial arrangement so vaguely specified?"... said the respectable Norwich solicitor who, like all his kind, had a better coat than his client, for those who live on the vanity and greed of their ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... silent, thinking the negro might not be altogether wrong. No doubt the dim, dark soul of him saw vaguely, with that prophetic sense which is in all races of men, a great truth. A fire was indeed coming—was already kindled—which was to set the bondman free: and God was in the fire. But of that mightier conflagration, the combustion of the forests was but ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Norway, like fire through dried grass," says an old chronicler. So that Eric, with his Queen Gunhild, and seven small children, had to run; no other shift for Eric. They went to the Orkneys first of all, then to England, and he "got Northumberland as earldom," I vaguely hear, from Athelstan. But Eric soon died, and his queen, with her children, went back to the Orkneys in search of refuge or help; to little purpose there or elsewhere. From Orkney she went to Denmark, where Harald Blue-tooth took her ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... gallantly, kept the secret of Elsmere's remark to himself like a man, and allowed himself certain counsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs. Thornburgh into well-simulated slumber. However, in the morning he was vaguely conscious that some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded of him peremptorily, 'When do you get back, William?' To the best of his memory the vicar had sleepily murmured, 'Thursday'; and had then heard, echoed through ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was forced to go away with this assurance. He returned home, but not to sleep. He wondered vaguely if he had been wise to lean upon so frail a reed as Fogerty seemed to be; and above all he wondered where poor Louise was, and if terror and alarm were breaking ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... speaking, Alwyn's countenance had grown vaguely troubled, and now into his deep poetic eyes there came a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... this case the organized tendency to take one visual impression for one object asserts its force, and I tend to fall into the illusion of seeing two separate pencils. If I do not wholly lapse into the error, it is because my experience has made me vaguely aware that double images under these circumstances answer to one object, and that if there were really two pencils present I should have ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Of this there could be no doubt, and such a condition of body was little short of an abuse of the privileges of the place. But since he could give no real explanation of his feelings, and only sighed vaguely when engaged in the daily preprandial game of billiards at the club, it was thought best to ignore his new departure, and to ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... first, and in an instant, exercised over his susceptible temperament that magnetic influence to which he was so strangely subject. In the heart of the wilderness and in the person of his victim, the young Emir suddenly recognised the heroic character which he had himself so vaguely and, as it now seemed to him, so vainly attempted to realise. The appearance and the courage of Tancred, the thoughtful repose of his manner, his high bearing amid the distressful circumstances in which he was involved, and the large views which the few words ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the first knight—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the extreme importance of the problem, and would like to do something about it. What is as yet not even vaguely seen is the large possibility that the problem might be self-liquidating if all junior officers became more concerned with learning all they could about the private character and personal nature of their subordinates. This does not mean invading their privacy; but it implies giving every man ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... in the end that someone named Hugo did not wear a moustache, though someone named Hermann did. She was vaguely shocked and interested. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... a large apartment in Irwadi City's New Quarter. This surprised Ramsey, for not many outworlders lived there. That night, though, he was too tired to think about it. He vaguely remembered a couch for himself, a separate room for the Vegan girl, another for Margot Dennison. He slept ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... of the Supreme Council of the Mureess rose solemnly and inclined their heads in his direction. They were tall bipeds of vaguely reptilian ancestry, most of their height being body. They stood on short powerful legs, terminating in flippered feet, and their long arms were flanged to the second elbow with a rubbery fin. Only four opposed fingers flexed ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... I was to receive, and which, passing through him and the Regent done, told nothing to the public, as my preparations would have done. But I could not obtain them. Dubois carelessly replied to me, that in one or two conversations the matter would be exhausted. He wished me to know nothing, except vaguely; to leave no time for reflection, for questions, for explanations; and to throw me thus into embarrassments, and to cause me to commit blunders which he intended to make ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Tom said, though he knew the other only vaguely understood him. Turning the wheel so as the better to focus the light upon the man, he saw that he had been wounded in the foot, which was shoeless and bleeding freely, but that the chief cause of his suffering ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... place. I study well, and must improve. My education will be complete, and I may perhaps become a superior woman, as I have always desired to do; but I need much study and close application to bring me to that point; above all, must I chain my wandering fancies, and not suffer them to stray about so vaguely ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... story the young men roared, but Eleanor's cat awoke no interest. Then one of the "faded flowers" spoke to Brown, who said, vaguely, "What, ma'am?" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Houck stumbled forward. Vaguely there rose before him a boulder-strewn slope that marked the limit of the valley. Up this he scrambled in a desperate hurry to reach the rocks. For the pursuit was ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... already seen. It is that there is a sense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but may vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary logic, since it denies this, must be overcome. Ordinary logic denies this because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts are their own ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Government had been disillusioning to many others besides Belloc and the Chesterton brothers. Probably many men in newspaper offices and elsewhere continued vaguely to support the party to which their own paper belonged. But there were others who were in those days going through a struggle between principles and Party which became increasingly acute. Gilbert has described his own feelings in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... a table which commanded a view of the entrance, toyed with the menu card, absent-mindedly ordered a Scotch highball, and slowly scrutinized the occupants of the tables in his neighborhood. He felt vaguely annoyed, slightly uneasy, without being able to sift ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... whatever had been at any time heard of him, and a great deal that was, in the ears of simple folk living in that unsophisticated part of the world, vaguely awful. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and for myself and for the Little Russian, who mournfully watched her every time she ran through the cloud of chaff to the carts. Whether it was envy of her beauty, or that I was regretting that the girl was not mine, and never would be, or that I was a stranger to her; or whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty was accidental, unnecessary, and, like everything on earth, of short duration; or whether, perhaps, my sadness was that peculiar feeling which is excited in man by the contemplation of real beauty, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... traversed the dark streets across town he was vaguely wondering whether Jane's eyes would ever lose the pained, hopeless expression he had last seen in them. He wondered whether she would retract her avowal that she could not be his wife with the shame upon her; he rejoiced in her tearless, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... request that Venner would see her at once, and the intimation that there would be no danger in his going up to the suite of rooms occupied by Mark Fenwick. Venner lost no time in answering this message. He felt vaguely uneasy and alarmed. Surely, there must be something wrong, or Vera would not have sent for him in this sudden manner. He could not quite see, either, how it was that he could call at Fenwick's rooms without risk. However, he hesitated ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... edge of a road she had never seen, a quarter of a mile from the great wrought-iron entrance that had closed behind her half a year ago, and looked vaguely about her, at the mercy of Fate. And Fate, that quaint old lady who holds you and me and Miss Mary in the hollow of her hand, smiled and gave a tiny pat and a push to the shiny little electric run-about ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... vaguely, "ambitions, and what one is going to make of themselves in life. And then you make fun of me by saying you want Mr. Dwyer's house." She laughed again. "I can't imagine you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of indiscretion, to dogmatize on what they call the appropriate sphere of woman. You remember the thundering retort which came, like a box on the ears, to one of these philosophers, when he was wisely discoursing vaguely on his favorite theme. "And pray, my young sir," asked a stern matron of forty, "will you please to tell us what is the appropriate sphere of woman?" Thus confronted, he only babbled in reply, "A celestial sphere, madam!" But ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... such thought. In the end, though, the wish for exercise only took him down across the valley, and spent itself just as he reached the river's brink. There, on the long white bridge, he stood by the half-hour at a time, his arms folded on the rail, his eyes fixed vaguely on the wintry current, a steel-gray stretch of sliding, slipping water down which the rough white ice cakes came floating, drifting silently, relentlessly, unendingly, to crash against the stone piers of the bridge. In that same way, out of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... other in perfunctory manner, Ron shook hands, and nodded vaguely in response to half a dozen injunctions and reminders; then the travellers took their places in the cab, bending forward to wave their adieux, looking extraordinarily alike the while— young and eager and handsome, with the light of the summer ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... houses are closed on Good Friday, and it used to be the custom to give evening concerts, vaguely termed "Sacred Concerts," because their programmes were made up wholly or in part of religious music. This good custom has disappeared and with it the opportunity to give the public such delightful works as the Seven Words, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... stating that he would support the dignity of his crown against the interference of Great Britain, and calling upon the assembly to support him. He at the same time, however, declared that he would be faithful to his engagements in putting an end to the trade in Africans. This was so vaguely expressed, and the desire of the Brazilian government was so evidently to foster that illicit commerce, and, if possible, involve England in a quarrel with some of the other maritime powers, that the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... arm; and inspired with fresh courage and trust she called anew this time a shrill, echoing call, and Harry Jardine shivered, sobbed, and stretched himself, and slowly opened his sealed eyes, looking her first vaguely and then wonderingly in the face, and her father's and Lilias's voices rose from opposite sides of the heath, near and far in reply. "What is it, Joanna? What has kept you? What has happened? We missed you; we were getting ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... appeared He thus spake: "And verily, I say unto you, that ye are they of whom I said, other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd."[879] The Jews had vaguely understood Christ's reference to other sheep as meaning in some obscure way, the Gentile nations; and because of their unbelief and consequent inability to rightly comprehend, Jesus had withheld any plainer ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the lower manifestations of these powers we find that they are exercised unconsciously. Many a crystal-gazer watches scenes from the past without being able to distinguish them from visions of the present. And many a vaguely-psychic person finds pictures constantly arising before his eyes, without ever realizing that he is in effect psychometrizing the various objects around him, as he happens to touch them or stand near them. An interesting variant of this ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Garvington was talking; about shooting a burglar," said the other woman vaguely. "Such nonsense, for I'm sure no burglar would enter a house filled with nothing but ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... perhaps you had," she said. "I seem to recall you, vaguely—that is, I seem to remember a crowd of people, and a noise—I dare say I did see you in a crowd somewhere. You know, you are rather ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... whip-poor-will, who, perched on some lone tree, wearied the ear of night with his incessant moanings. The mind, soothed into a hallowed melancholy, listened with pensive stillness to catch and distinguish each sound that vaguely echoed from the shore—now and then startled, perchance, by the whoop of some straggling savage, or by the dreary howl of a wolf, stealing forth upon his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving |
