"Definiteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the champions of the existing order, "even if it is true that public opinion, when it has attained a certain degree of definiteness and precision, can convert the inert mass of men outside the Christian world—the non-Christian races—as well as the coarse and depraved who are living in its midst, what proofs have we that this Christian public ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... would assume an offended air. That would subdue him instantly. Or, if it did not, they might quarrel, and Susan liked the definiteness of a quarrel. She must force this thing to a conclusion one way or the other now, her own dignity demanded it. As for Peter, his own choice was as limited as hers. He must agree to the announcement,—and after all, why shouldn't he agree to it?—or he must ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the dim figure, gaining definiteness now with each step toward them. "It doesn't walk like him," Penelope commented, her face already showing that she knew it was not he. But the mother hung a little longer to her hope. "No, it isn't Felix," she presently acquiesced, disappointment evident in her gentle tones. "I so hoped ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... philosophy, art, personality, character, were the product of the time, which, in its definiteness and consistency, stands apart from all other epochs in history. The social system was that of feudalism, a scheme of reciprocal duties, privileges and obligations as between man and man that has never been excelled by any other ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... are told in more detail than most of the earlier incidents, but whatever is referred to is treated, we hope, with such simplicity and definiteness of statement that it will be comprehensible and instructive to pupils ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... foreign children, in a tale of repetition, such as The Cat and the Mouse, Teeny Tiny, or The Old Woman and Her Pig, will the repetitive passages be an aid to verbal expression. The child learns to follow the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order. He catches the note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his thinking. He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world, and which is one of the biggest things he will ever come upon in life. Never can he meet any critical situation ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... the jurisdiction of the Canadian Government and in which the bulk of the gold has been found, has a total area, approximately, of 192,000 square miles, of which 150,768 square miles are included in the watershed of the Yukon. Illustrating this, so that it may appeal with definiteness to the reader, it may be said that this territory is greater by 71,100 square miles than the area of Great Britain, and is nearly three times that of all the ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... of streaks round Copernicus seem to respond more happily to the requirements of Professor Pickering's hypothesis, for here there is an absence of that definiteness of direction so manifestly displayed in the case of the Tycho rays, and we can well imagine that with an area of condensation surrounding this magnificent object beyond the limits of the streaks, and a number of active ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... to determine with very great definiteness what Bergson's view of Intuition really is, for he has made many statements regarding it which appear at first sight irreconcilable and, in his earlier writings, has not been sufficiently careful when speaking of the distinction between Intelligence and Intuition. Some of his ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... have now analyzed what is implied in the two principal requisites of a philosophical language; first, precision, or definiteness; and, secondly, completeness. Any further remarks on the mode of constructing a nomenclature must be deferred until we treat of Classification; the mode of naming the Kinds of things being necessarily subordinate to the mode of arranging those ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which one after another certain elements at first inclined to support Luther fell away from him. During these years he violently dissociated himself from the extreme radicals and thus lost the support of the proletariat. In the second place the growing definiteness and narrowness of his dogmatism and his failure to show hospitality to science and philosophy alienated a number of intellectuals. Third, a great schism weakened the Protestant church. But these losses were counterbalanced by two ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... orderly too busy with its ends to know itself, receives through expression the fixed, clear outlines of a thing, and can be contemplated like a thing. Every one has verified the clarifying effect of expression upon ideas, how they thus acquire definiteness and coherence, so that even the mind that thinks them can hold them in review. But this effect upon feeling is no less sure. The unexpressed values of experience are vague strivings embedded in chaotic sensations and images; these expression sorts and organizes ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... two different kinds of realism, according as we make a thought consist of act and object, or of object alone. Their difficulties are different, but neither seems tenable all through. Take, for the sake of definiteness, the remembering of a past event. The remembering occurs now, and is therefore necessarily not identical with the past event. So long as we retain the act, this need cause no difficulty. The act of remembering occurs now, and has on this view a certain essential relation ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the last of the Palestine travellers—of those Westerns whose real horizon was the sacred East of Syria. He is a little before the awakening of universal interest in the unknown world, for the Christian Northmen lost with the new definiteness of the new faith much of their old infinite unrest and fierce inquisitive love of wandering, and their spirit, though related to the whole Catholic West by the crusading movement, was not fully realised till the world had been explored and made known, till the men of Europe were at home in ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the web. Mrs. Treat Hilyar driving in a leisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at her compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural order of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the situation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... terms with Him; and that his own experience of divine protection ought to prevent him from temporizing.[760] To Henry Killigrew, who came to meet him at Vendome with a friendly message from Queen Elizabeth, he spoke with more definiteness and volunteered the expression of the most pious intentions. He declared "that he thought that God had hitherto preserved her Majesty from so many dangers for the setting forth of His word; and, he ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... object of it is desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... of black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as I have said, lacked definiteness. Yet, such as they were, they were sufficient to make me very excited and I shoved the thing quickly back ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... that music without words is very difficult to understand. ("Laws," ibid., 668.) All these inconsistencies disappear, however, as soon as we recognize the limitations of the music which Plato knew, upon its tonal side. All the richness of sense incitation, and all the definiteness of expression which come into our modern music through the magic of "tones in key," were wholly outside the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... discuss methods of controlling big business by the National Government until it was definitely settled that the National Government had the power to control it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that the National Government had ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... night of her return to Friars' Holm—Gillian had merely laughed the notion aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness, she grew suddenly frightened. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... that so far from being the best or the only true Method or Process of intellectual investigation, the Inductive is far inferior to the true Deductive Method or Process, in all the essentials of a Scientific guide. The Inductive can give us only a high degree of precision and definiteness, with only proximate certainty for the future as the result of a slow mode of procedure; while the true Deductive Method gives us perfect precision, exactitude, and complete certainty, as the result of a rapid mode. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the modern and the classical aesthetic mind is the greater precision and definiteness of the latter. The modern genius is Gothic, and demands in art a certain vagueness and spirituality like that of music, refusing to be grasped and formulated. Hence for us (and this is undoubtedly an improvement) there must always be something about a poem, or any ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... human emotion which lie too deep for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by the listener or by the action and accessories of the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... are at all alike. They are again distinguished by the combination subsisting among their constituent changes. The acts that make up digestion are mutually dependent; as are those which compose a train of reasoning. Once more, they differ in being characterised by definiteness. Assimilation, respiration, and circulation, are definitely interdependent. These characterisations not only mark off the vital from the non-vital, but also creatures of high vitality from those of low vitality. Hence our formula ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... contribution I could make to the work on which I was engaged. I wished, if I could, to bring into clearer light the essential unity of the various progressive movements in Ireland, and to do something towards promoting a greater definiteness of aim and method, and a better understanding of each other's work, among those who are in various ways striving for the upbuilding of a worthy national life ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... defend Browning's principle and practice exactly. There is no characteristic of his work more evident, none more admirable or more rare, than the unity, the compactness and completeness, the skill and care in construction and definiteness in impression, of each poem. I do not know any contemporary of whom this may more truly be said. The assertion will be startling, no doubt, to those who are accustomed to think of Browning (as people once thought of Shakespeare) as a poet of great gifts but ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... language is decidedly weak in synonyms, and in the various shades of meaning that make for precision. Indeed, with the exception of Polish, Russian is probably the greatest language in the world, in richness, variety, definiteness, and elegance. It is also capable of saying much in little, and saying it with tremendous force. In Turgenev's "Torrents of Spring," where the reader hears constantly phrases in Italian, French, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... regret to say, repeated by that charming and graceful writer who has lately deserted the turmoil of literature for the peace of the House of Commons, I mean the author of Obiter Dicta. In point of fact, there is no such thing as Shakespeare's Hamlet. If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a work of art, he has also all the obscurity that belongs to life. There are as many Hamlets ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... the recurrence of total solar eclipses occasions upon the earth. For the inhabitants of Venus the study of the earth must be the most absorbing branch of observational astronomy, and the subject, we may imagine, of numberless volumes of learned memoirs, far exceeding in the definiteness of their conclusions the books that we have written about the physical characteristics of other members of the solar system. And, if we are to look for attempts on the part of the inhabitants of other worlds to communicate with us by signals across the ether, it would certainly ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... with a loose meaning. Seek the verb, the noun, the adjective, the adverb, or the phrase which expresses your thought with precision. Such words as said, proposition, and nice are often used too loosely. Observe the possible gain in definiteness by substitution. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... solemnity, and their vagueness and indeterminateness into that misty immensity and weird obscurity which, as constituent factors in a poem, not as back-ground, form one of the elements of the false sublime. Either not seeing the literary necessity of definiteness, or having no such abundant and ordered literature as we possess, upon which to draw for details, and being too conscientious to invent facts, however he might invent language, he published his epics of Ossian—false indeed to the original, ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... to Justin the knowledge that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... to say that all the greatest painters had begun with a hard and precise manner, from which they had only broken after several years of effort; and that in like manner all the early schools were founded upon definiteness of outline to the exclusion of truth of effect. This may be true; but in my brother's case there was something even more unpromising than this; there was a commonness, so to speak, of mental execution, from which no one could have foreseen ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... music is an essential, since comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definiteness.' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... expression has occasioned much unnecessary comment on the score of its alleged artificiality. There might be a gain in definiteness in substituting "lake," or "river," as the case might be, but there would be a corresponding loss in poetry and in meaning at this particular place. "Had 'a great lake' been substituted for it, the phrase would have needed to be translated by the mind into water of a certain shape ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a definite discussion ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... that there was one groping for recognition which as yet he had not recognized. The more ho dwelt upon it, the more it seemed to attach itself to the song Alice had sung, but he could not give it any definiteness. After he had gone to bed, this undefined impression of something significant attaching itself to the song besieged him, and worried him with tantalizing glimpses, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying nor shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the bull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... eyes, her rapid progress toward Manti. Then he urged Nigger onward, toward Levins' cabin. "I'll have to erect another monument to my faith in women," he muttered. And certain reckless, grim thoughts that had rioted in his mind since the day before, now assumed a definiteness that made his blood leap ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the peculiarities of The Blessed Damozel was a definiteness of sensible imagery, which seemed almost grotesque to some, and was strange, above all, in a theme so profoundly visionary. The gold bar of heaven from which she leaned, her hair yellow like ripe corn, are but examples of a general treatment, as naively detailed ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... and processes of a higher education, and of the subjective conditions of mental growth and training, comparatively few, either of the students or their parents, appeared to have any definite idea. There was no lack of definiteness of choice. Tastes and inclinations were usually positive; reasons were not so plentiful. That the young lady 'liked' this study or 'disliked' that, was the reason perhaps most frequently assigned. If its force was not at once ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... in the habit of "drinking in" with their vigorous and eager imaginations what is told them and read to them, and hence they are specially likely to fall into this kind of error. Not only so: when they grow up and their early recollections lose their definiteness, becoming a few fragments saved from a lost past, it must pretty certainly happen that if any ideas derived from these recitals are preserved, they will simulate the form of memories. Thus, I have often caught myself for a moment under the sway of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Mr. Ravenel?) has gone in for all sorts of things since then. Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling the Countess ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... reform of the laws which he carried out; he improved the status of slaves, revised the laws of divorce and of intestate succession; and in his "Digest," "Institutes," and other sections of the "Corpus Juris Civilis," first gave definiteness to Roman law and laid the basis of the civil law of most ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the padrona, a large and lustrous woman with sleepy, ox-like eyes, sitting behind a sort of counter. Italian girls, with coal-black hair, slipped deftly to and fro among the tables serving the customers. The musicians stared at Craven with the fixed, unwinking definiteness which the traveller from England begins to meet with soon after he passes Lugano. Where was ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... gradations. Somewhat of this greater fixity of higher groups, therefore, is rather apparent than real. On the other hand, that varieties should be less definite than species, follows from the very terms employed. They are ranked as varieties, rather than species, just because of their less definiteness. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of those workers who had received first-hand impressions. It would be something like a present-day musician identifying an unfamiliar composition as belonging to the "French school," the "Italian school," or the "Russian school;" and yet, this same musician might not be able to point out with definiteness a single characteristic ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... was feeling sure that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise. The felicitous word "demise," which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Featherstone's death assumed a merely legal aspect, so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff-box over it and be jovial, without even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both solemnity and affectation. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... be unchangeable because it is true." I would not even read the works of my mothers favourite Stanley, because he was "unsound," and because Pusey had condemned his "variegated use of words which destroys all definiteness of meaning"—a clever and pointed description, be it said in passing, of the Dean's exquisite phrases, capable of so many readings. It can then be imagined with what a stab of pain this first doubt struck me, and with what ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... compared to him, I'm afraid, are as molehills to the mountains yonder. If I described them by their amiable qualities alone they'd be as indistinguishable and as insipid as a row of dolls. Only through their aberrations, their unconscious perfidies, iniquities, do they develop definiteness of outline and begin to live. Oh! nothing could be unkinder than to whitewash them. Take Mrs. Callowgas, for instance, with one eye on the Church, the other on the world. The permanent inconsistency of her attitude, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... true picture of the stage of my development then, partly because it shows the manner in which I had worked together external influences, the Kierkegaardian thoughts and the Hegelian method, partly because with no little definiteness it reveals a fundamental characteristic of my nature and a fundamental tendency of my mind, since it is, throughout, a protest against the ethical conception of poetry and is a proof of how moral ideas, when they become part ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... a certain crisp definiteness about those two words which carried conviction with them. Mabane and I were a little staggered. Our position was such a strong one, our request so reasonable, that I think that we had never realized the possibility ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 'eruditus oculus,' and his ear has a fairy fineness. There is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has more definiteness and roundness of general conception than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; we recognize the spirit of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of the Renaissance we find already outlined with surprising definiteness, and at the same time with an almost childlike naivete, a careless, mirth-provoking nonchalance, in the Carmina Vagorum. They remind us of the Italian lyrics which Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano wrote for the Florentine populace; ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... sent out in assortments, and labelled Vienna, via London, through Stockholm. After reading them with feverish eagerness for nearly four years, I decided that they somehow lack definiteness. Here is the way ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... in the first six books are believed to be substantially in accord with the wishes of Professor Morgan. The suggestions for illustrations in the later books were incomplete, and did not indicate, in all cases, with sufficient definiteness to allow them to be executed, the changes from conventional plans and designs intended by the translator. It has, therefore, been decided to include in this part of the work only those illustrations which are known to have had the full approval of Professor Morgan. The one exception ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... relation with a woman would be secured through the responsibility which fatherhood involved. Here was the interest his life had lacked, after all—here was the explanation of that vacancy his emotions had not filled; and it appeared to him that his loves had failed in definiteness, in any vital purpose, because he had never seen himself fulfilled in the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of the Romans had established itself in Greece. His great work was a universal history, but of the forty books of which it consisted only five have been preserved; perhaps no historical work has ever been written with such definiteness of purpose or unity of plan, or with such self-consciousness on the part of the writer. The object to which he directs attention is the manner in which fortune or providence uses the ability and energy of man as instruments ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... felt, or appreciated by any of the senses, and substituted for it a principle which, although a falsely conceived one, was still much more tangible than the "spirit," since it could be seen and felt as free phlogiston and weighed and measured as combined phlogiston. The definiteness of the statement that a metal, for example, was composed of phlogiston and an element was much less enigmatic, even if wrong, than the statement of the alchemist that "metals are produced by the spiritual action of the three principles, salt, mercury, sulphur"—particularly when it ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... But definiteness of aim does not necessarily imply narrowness of scope. The Wellesley Calendar for 1914-1915 contains a list of three hundred and twelve courses on thirty-two subjects, exclusive of the gymnasium practice, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... merit of definiteness, thoroughness, and unity. There seems to be some doubt as to his success in carrying it out. It is certain that but few students completed his course compared with the number who began it. Instead of sixty ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... with the idea at hand in what may without the least temerity be called a masterly fashion; he has run the gamut of experience with his materials from the earliest Turner tonalities, through Whisterian vagaries on to American definiteness, and has incidentally noted that the Chinese have been probably the only supreme masters of the wash in the history of water-color painting. I can say for myself that Marin produces the liveliest, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... conditions with which we are not acquainted. As in the East, so here there is the suggestion of a movement away from a form of organization that resembles true totemism. The Northwest has a remarkable system of ceremonies, but in definiteness and elevation of religious conceptions it is greatly inferior ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... which is a corruption of the word asparagus, illustrates how readily the uneducated mind associates an unusual term with another that is familiar, and as the mental impression is received through the ear, and lacks that definiteness which the printed form would give, the new idea, when repeated, often assumes a picturesque, if not a ludicrous, form. Many of Mrs. Partington's quaint sayings furnish ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... have endeavored to give my statements definiteness by the employment of numerous examples, both good and bad. I have made no attempt to present an exhaustive analysis of the technique of individuals or of schools, but have chosen my illustrations with a single view to their aptness; I have, however, for the convenience of ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... tests were in progress I noticed that the animal became increasingly afraid of the entrances to the small boxes; it seemed absolutely helpless in the face of the situation. Partly because of the definiteness of the negative results obtained with No. 4 and partly because of the cruelty of subjecting an animal to disagreeable conditions which it is unable to avoid, the experiment was not repeated with other individuals. I have never conducted an experiment which ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... its allies are not only almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of amoeba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the Polyzoa, we see compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more determinate than those of plants. But among the higher animals, we find not ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the greatest possible length, and also by the way they work out their thoughts, which are half-true, perverse, forced, and vacillating; then also by their love of evasion, so that they may seem what they are not; and this is why their writing is lacking in definiteness ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... with a real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... familiar expression of supreme thought, not yet so rich in metaphysical phrase as to render possible that ideal representation of the great passions which is the aim and end of Art, not yet subdued by practice and general consent to a definiteness of accentuation essential to ease and congruity of metrical arrangement. Had he been born fifty years later, his ripened manhood would have found itself in an England absorbed and angry with the solution of political and religious problems, from which his whole nature was averse, instead ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... contained the extended argument of a stump speech. Its one pervading thought, emphasized in resonant phrase, iterating and reiterating, "that reform is necessary," was an additional proof of its origin. But with all its effusiveness of expression, it lacked definiteness in the enunciation of principles. Only two or three propositions upon pending issues were explicitly set forth. It accepted the Constitutional Amendments; denounced "the present tariff levied upon nearly four thousand articles ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... all parts of the ancient Law of Persons which fall within the scope of this treatise, and the result of the inquiry is, I trust, to give additional definiteness and precision to our view of the infancy of jurisprudence. The Civil laws of States first make their appearance as the Themistes of a patriarchal sovereign, and we can now see that these Themistes are probably only a developed form ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... of papers with some novel, preferably The Vicar of Wakefield, in respect to clearness of setting, delineation of character, structure of plot, definiteness of purpose, and clearness and grace of style. What is lacking to make ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... Jesus' ministry could not be earlier than the spring of 29. This is at least two years later than is indicated by the statement in John. The remark in John is, however, so incidental and so lacking in significance for his argument that its definiteness can be explained only as due to a clear historic reminiscence; but it does not follow that Luke has erred in the date given by him. Although Augustus did not die until A.D. 14, there is evidence that Tiberius was associated with him in authority over the army and the provinces ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... are being made in these days to meet the evident lack of homemaking knowledge in the rising generation. And since definiteness of plan lends power to accomplishment, we cannot do better than to analyze as carefully as possible the various lines of knowledge required by the prospective homemaker in entering upon her ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... elaborateness of its conventions in literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they revolt against and break through it, their extravagance passes beyond all ordinary bounds. French ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... consider a change of persons in the management of a new institution is not desirable. In intellectual movements in particular the leaders of them are especially recommended to keep themselves conservative as regards their people. The public requires definiteness before all else—and just this is endangered by a change of persons. The substitute for B., whom you mention to me (his name also begins with B.), is certainly highly to be recommended in all that ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... began to take con-structural shape and definiteness of purpose in Elizabethan days. Up to the sixteenth century the tales were either told in verse, in the epic form of Beowulf or in the shrunken epic of a thirteenth century ballad like "King Horn"; in the verse narratives of Chaucer or the poetic musings of Spenser. Or else ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil. His periods are fresh and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr Stevenson's style is over-smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most gentlemanly young ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of human life, these vast antinomies of the spirit, has arisen man's belief in a Saviour-God. Sublime and awful are the sanctions upon which it rests. Out of the extremity and definiteness of our need we know that He must be and we know what He must be like. He is the One to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, from whom no secrets are hid. Who could state the mingling of desire and dread with which men strive after, and hide from, such a God? We want Him, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the blue ether; we point upward to the world of bliss, and say, There the celestial hosannas roll; there the happy ones, the unforgotten ones of our love, wait to welcome us. These forms of speech are entirely natural; they are harmless; they aid in giving definiteness to our thoughts and feelings, and it is well to continue their use; it would be difficult to express our thoughts without them. However, we must understand that they are not strictly and exclusively true. God is everywhere; and wherever he is there is heaven to the spirits that are like ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that?" said Leslie, with a sort of abruptness, as of one who must have definiteness, but who hurried with her asking, lest after a minute she might not dare. "That He really knows, and thinks, of every special thing and person,—and ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the question and not in the facts themselves. For example: If a cannon ball were to be fired off by some mechanical device a million miles from where there was any ear to hear, would there be any sound? The lack of definiteness here which permits difference of opinion lies in the word "sound." If we add after the word "sound" the phrase, "in the sense of a conscious auditory sensation," the answer would obviously be, No, since there can be no auditory sensation without an ear to hear it. ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... the footsore man from Boston developed an alacrity and definiteness of purpose that would have surprised the Desert Rat, had he been in condition to observe it. He seized the gad which the mozo had dropped, climbed upon the lightest laden burro and, driving the others before him, set off for Chuckwalla ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... said loftily, as he stood beside his sister on the platform a few moments before, "go into the Army or Navy and become admirals or generals or something of that sort." And then he had hinted with less definiteness that his own career would probably combine the advantages of all the professions though he only followed one. But Tom soon dropped from these sublime heights to more mundane considerations, and his last words concerned a new cricket bat which Nettie was to "screw out of the gov'nor" for him, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... belongs. That book is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even the "Mysteries of Paris" and Gaboriau's "Crime d'Orcival" are raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and forewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible civilization, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis of such figures as ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... though he records the evidence brought forward by those who believed in Shakespeare's knowledge of the Ancients, he does not fail to convey the impression that he belongs to the other party. And, indeed, in another passage of the Preface he says with definiteness, inconsistent with his other statements, that Shakespeare was "without assistance or advice from the learned, as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among them, without that knowledge of the best models, the Ancients, to inspire him ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... rough model. But this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleon's, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown, on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had acquired a certain definiteness which contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry, bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green by some dauber, and now painted ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the flesh over and over! Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not, till you rivet and publish ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... surrounded by a broad white belt of coral sand, exactly like that which ringed round and protected their own enclosure. But what specially attracted Felix's attention was the fact that the space outside this circle had been cleared into a regular flower-garden, quite European in the definiteness and ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... whatever was meant by the word, as the instrument of trial and purification; and that, at some time between the present time and the Judgment, or at the Judgment. As the doctrine, thus suggested by certain striking texts, grew in popularity and definiteness, and verged towards its present Roman form, it seemed a key to many others. Great portions of the books of Psalms, Job, and the Lamentations, which express the feelings of religious men under suffering, would powerfully recommend it by the forcible ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... with an expression that, to her consciousness, gradually became less vague,—became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered,—something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... with apprehensions as to the result of the Proclamation, and whether, indeed, Mr. Lincoln himself would be able to resist the pressure, and stand up to his promise of that Supplemental Proclamation which would give definiteness and practical effect to the preliminary one, the masses of the people of the Loyal States had ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... of Spirit, so far from affording any excuse for laxity of conduct, adds an emphatic definiteness to the Bible exhortation to flee from the wrath of God. But, on the other hand, it delivers us from groundless terrors, the fear lest our repentance should not be accepted, the fear lest we should be rejected for our inability to subscribe to some traditional dogma, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Vondervotteimittiss has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from her pocket-book, on which was inscribed, in Spencerian definiteness of black and white, "Miss Barbara Allen." It had been the card of Lady Boxspur's eminently respectable maid—and Frances Durkin had saved it ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... earth based on any data at hand are little better than rough guesses. Long before the definite estimates were undertaken, geologists had proved that the earth is very, very old, and it can hardly be said that the attempted computations have added much of definiteness to that proposition. They have, indeed, proved that the period of time to be drawn upon is not infinite; but the nebular hypothesis, to say nothing of common-sense, carried us as far as that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... is the work of science to reduce to order. And as mental facts religious phenomena are seen to follow the same 'laws' that govern mental phenomena in general. It is perfectly true that we cannot test and measure the material of psychology with the same definiteness and accuracy that the chemist applies to the subject-matter of his department; but that may be due to want of knowledge, or to the extreme complexity and variability of the matter with which we are dealing. And if it were true that the same ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... "leit-motiv" in modern music. Here too a particular idea, if not a particular set of words, is associated with a particular musical phrase; the intention of the practice being clearly the same as that which is indicated in the passage just quoted, namely to add precision and definiteness to the vague emotional content of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... which, joined to its schematic definiteness, gives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have tried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to present ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Western gravity of manner and expression, the distinguishing definiteness of purpose. Though the quality of his voice, its modulation, bespoke the man of poise and education, the accent was unmistakably ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to induce neutrals and simple-minded pacifists of allied nationality to save the face of Germany by initiating peace negotiations. But apart from their steady record and reminder of German brutalities and German aggression, the press organisations of the Allies have none of this definiteness in their task. The aim of the national intelligence in each of the allied countries is not to exalt one's own nation and confuse and divide the enemy, but to get a real understanding with the peoples and spirits of a number of different ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Parnell will not be able to attend the League convention intended to be held in Chicago in January next, and that he is "inclined to think it best to postpone the convention until after the meeting of parliament in February." It is, doubtless, the desire of the Irish party to know with some definiteness the probable outcome of the present situation before making any authoritative announcement of their plans, or before sending any message to their American brothers; and it also seems that they regard Mr. Parnell's constant presence on the scene of negotiations as indispensable. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... But it is evident that the whole trouble lies in the precise meaning to be attached to the expressions "superfluous" and "needy." And here, where we feel most of all the need of guidance, it must be confessed that few authors venture to speak with much definiteness. The instance, indeed, of a man placed in extreme necessity, all quote and explain in nearly identical language. Should anyone be reduced to these last circumstances, so as to be without means of subsistence or sufficient ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... her despair seemed to be wringing his own faith out of him, forcing into definiteness things and thoughts that had been lying in an accepted, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or distort the organs upon which his ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... hadn't been made so explicit. Its very definiteness is somehow—stultifying. And, Mr. Hodder, if we were not meant to know its details, it seems to me that if the hereafter is to have any real value and influence over our lives here, we should know something of its conditions, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the results of previous philosophers are neither discarded out of hand nor accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any way useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its disciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while, on ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the great Gothic windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; but any one entering that dining-room ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... after resistance "sacrilege." That Edward could appreciate what was sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He was never wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... may be modified by future experiments it is, of course, impossible to predict, but they clearly point the way towards definiteness and boldness in the design of types as well as to a preference for the larger sizes in their use. All this, as we shall see in the next chapter, is in harmony with what experience has been gradually confirming in the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, functions, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... relation between the facts of experience and the a priori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cognition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and definiteness, in all rational minds. The a posteriori, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... perception of their import; while the second uses the same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so profoundly entering into our views of the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... A suggestion of grandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express itself through the humble domestic exterior of her everyday self; at first, as though some greater personage towered shadowy behind her, but presently with a growing definiteness that showed it to be herself and nothing separate. The two, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... skin tight on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, looking unutterably weary—but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit. Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman, waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and other leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they should overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became darkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the night; I ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... being misinterpreted as a nation. We have suffered a good deal in the past from having attributed to us motives which were not ours. The reason was the assumption that the apparent absence of definiteness in national purpose must have been designed as a cover for hidden and selfish ends. It is not true. We are indeed very insular, and what has been called the international mind is not common among the people of ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... a good judge of character. You have a full development of language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when excited—that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than of feeling. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... earthly, and diabolic—on the varying human face. One fancies each corbel to have had its history, its archetype in nature; a thousand possible stories spring into one's mind. They are wrought with such a startling and individual definiteness, that one feels as about Shakspeare's characters, as if they must have had a counterpart in real existence. The pure, saintly nun may have been some sister, or some daughter, or some early love, of the artist, who in an evil hour saw ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... long descent are marked out with a precision and definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He began His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... little more of India before he went. I frankly despaired of his ever being able to pay his way in Simla without Kauffer, but that was no reason why he should not make a few more notes for further use at home, where I sometimes saw for him, when his desultory and experimental days were over and some definiteness and order had come into his work, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... leads people into emotional transports, in which the pre-eminent respect that is due to truth, the difficulty of discovering the truth, the narrowness of the way that leads thereto, the merits of intellectual precision and definiteness, and even the merits of moral precision and definiteness, are all effectually veiled by purple or fiery clouds of anger, sympathy, and sentimentalism, which imagination ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... voice. "Any paper may have a sensation every day, if it wishes; but what I want is accuracy, otherwise our sheet has no real influence. When an article appears in the Bugle, I want our readers to understand that that article is true from beginning to end. I want not only sensation, but definiteness and not only ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... Causates, in respect of their Nature, or of the Subsistences, Vessels, and openings assigned to them; whereby the Single and Infinite Essence, being inclosed or comprehended in these limits, bounds, or externalnesses, takes on Itself Definiteness of dimension, and becomes Itself manifold, by the manifoldness ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted upon thought. These things ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... else that the subject is supposed to yield or the extended time given to it could not be justified. It yields large fruitage in the development of the power of concentration and intellectual keenness. Yes, but better than that. All mathematical subjects, in that they require absolute accuracy and definiteness in their operations, are particularly helpful in developing those fine moral qualities of honesty, integrity, and upright dealing. Again, history is taught in the schools as an intellectual subject. In intellectual development alone it is worth all it costs. But over and above the value as a ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... attended Mrs. Smith, the tenant's wife, and saw that girl there for the first time. Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose, made her put on a black dress every afternoon. I don't know what induced me to notice her at all. There are faces that call your attention by a curious want of definiteness in their whole aspect, as, walking in a mist, you peer attentively at a vague shape which, after all, may be nothing more curious or strange than a signpost. The only peculiarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which passes ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... into bed and took her into his arms, he was taking what he had paid for; but it was horrible. If only it had been a healthy, reckless, sinful woman; but here he had youth, piety, meekness, the pure eyes of innocence. . . . While they were engaged her piety had touched him; now the conventional definiteness of her views and convictions seemed to him a barrier, behind which the real truth could not be seen. Already everything in his married life was agonising. When his wife, sitting beside him in the theatre, sighed or laughed spontaneously, it was bitter to him that she enjoyed herself alone ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... though not always, to create out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Messianic prophecies contained in Genesis we cannot fail to perceive a remarkable progress in clearness and definiteness. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... lying among the long, thick weeds of the pond. And it would not have been the accident it would have appeared to be. Of that she felt sure. Brought face to face with this definiteness of ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... progressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in any action. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moral character reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moral ideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. And yet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to the most ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him to distinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guides his practical life. The same truth holds ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... with incredible fidelity the things in nature that held the poetical quality. On the other hand he had a friend of real poetical genius, who was also an artist, but who could only produce the stiffest and hardest works of art, that had no quality about them except the quality of tiresome definiteness. This was a great mystery to Hugh; but it ended eventually, after a serious endeavour to appreciate what was approved by the general verdict to be of supreme artistic value, in making him resolve that he would just follow his own independent taste, and discern ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... indenture, the L4 the earnest money, and the "final concord" for L40 the conclusion of the whole. This is supported by the absolute indefiniteness of the first as to part or parts in two messuages, and by the apparent definiteness of the second. But the peculiar wording has further puzzled many writers. In referring to Robert Arden's settlements, we find that one tenement is settled upon three daughters, and the other tenement ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... the Biographic Sketches which she contributed to a London newspaper. They have since been collected in a single volume, now in its fourth edition. They are masterpieces in the style of the vignette. Their conciseness, their clearness in fact, their definiteness in judgment, and above all, the rightly graduated impression of the writer's own personality in the background, make them perfect in their kind. There is no fretting away of the portrait in over-multiplicity of lines and strokes. Here more than anywhere else Miss Martineau shows ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... came upon us, you could not find anywhere a happier home than that created by the Indian woman. There was nothing of the artificial about her person, and very little disingenuousness in her character. Her early and consistent training, the definiteness of her vocation, and, above all, her profoundly religious attitude gave her a strength and poise that could not be ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... and the sun shewed the same faint tinge of red. Yes, it was like that, he said wearily to himself—like a second-rate sketch; there was no sense of mystery as of a veiled city, but rather unreality. The shadows seemed lacking in definiteness, the outlines and grouping in coherence. A storm was wanted, he reflected; or even, it might be, one more earthquake on the other side of the world would, in wonderful illustration of the globe's unity, relieve the pressure on this side. Well, well; the journey ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... its own answer) seemed to drive one or two brass tacks with some definiteness. Cope himself was eking out his small salary with a small allowance from home; next year, with the thesis accomplished, better pay in some better place. A present partner and pal ought to be a prop rather than ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... mile to the right and up the first creek after Milk River issued from a deep gorge to flow across a heavily timbered stretch of bottom. They would know it when they saw it. One-Eyed McCarthy had described it with sharp definiteness. It was impossible to miss ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the Reverend Murdo, "Mr. McGinnis is right in asking for definiteness. My answer is that we must trust this committee to do what is wise and reasonable, and we must accept their decision as ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... always see hardiness and insensibility go together, and it may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... on, John seemed to take a more personal delight in life than he had done before. He forgot his ancient prejudices if not his ancient ideals, and, as was characteristic of him, he avoided thinking with any definiteness on the nature of the new life into which he was to enter soon. His neighbours declared he was very much improved; and there were dinner parties at Thornby Place. One of his great pleasures was to start early in the morning, and having spent a long day with Kitty, to return home ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... city, the symbols of the Apocalypse are terminated. What follows are the words of Christ. The import of these is guarded by his declaration that they are "true and faithful." There is a reality and definiteness in them, which will not admit of their being added to, or taken from. So that any attempt to fritter away their meaning, will be followed by the curses written in the book, and a loss of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... 3. Where greater definiteness is necessary, the periphrastic forms in -urus sim and -urus essem are employed, especially in clauses of Result, Indirect Questions, and ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... not to know he should have been ashamed, how he had secured the model he desired despite her husband, the speculation came into his mind how far he could push his influence over Ninitta. At first a mere impersonal idea, the thought was instantly, by his habit of mental definiteness, realized so clearly that his cheek flushed, partly, it is to be said to his credit, with genuine shame. He looked at the beautiful model, and turned away his eyes. Then, hardly conscious of what he was doing, he laid down his palette, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... vast wealth? It is impossible to answer the question with anything like definiteness. Figures have been compiled to show that five per cent of the people own two-thirds to three-quarters of it; that the poorest two-thirds of the people own five per cent of it, and that the well-to-do ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... usually lingers among the impedimenta of the childless. He brought this out, refurbished it, and applied it to Jane. At first he thought his wife had not overrated the quality of the child's mind. Jane seemed extraordinarily intelligent. Her precocious definiteness of mind was encouraging to her inexperienced preceptor. She had no difficulty in fixing her attention, and he felt that every fact he imparted was being etched in metal. He helped his wife to engage the best teachers, and for ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... valid within single geographical divisions? On what principle can we divide the earth into sections for economic purposes? These are some of the questions which must be answered if a theory of distribution is to have any definiteness of meaning, and they arise whenever we try to establish a static standard of any kind. If we talk about natural wages, we must know in how much of the world they are natural. The questions become even more urgent when we try to solve dynamic problems. We shall have to determine the ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... go back between the bamboos and their shadows, from unreal reality into a definiteness of cot and pajamas and electric torch. But wild nature still keeps touch with me; for as I write these lines, curled up on the edge of the cot, two vampires hawk back and forth so close that the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... to admit that the actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field, with any definiteness. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... are half ashamed, and yet remain curious. Some are half afraid. Some rather more than half disgusted. Some indeed try to banish the whole subject from their minds. This may seem to be a refined thing to do; but, as we know with a new definiteness since the psychologists have explored the matter, it is really a disastrous thing to do. For to adapt ourselves to sex is one of the problems that cannot be escaped. In this world we cannot live the disembodied life. What we may do is to live a clean and happy ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... are most rudely neglected. At moments they impress one as nothing more than abstractions from the idiosyncrasies and mannerisms of the works of Schoenberg's second period made in the hope of arriving at definiteness of style and intensity of speech. They smell of the synagogue as much as they do of the laboratory. Beside the Doctor of Music there stands the Talmudic Jew, the man all intellect and no feeling, who subtilizes over musical art as though it were ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld |
