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Finality   Listen
noun
Finality  n.  (pl. finalities)  
1.
The state of being final, finished, or complete; a final or conclusive arrangement; a settlement.
2.
The relation of end or purpose to its means.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Finality" Quotes from Famous Books



... suffers from the want of finality in legislation. Nothing is left to prove itself, and the tinkering never ends. A fifteen years' bargain under the first Land Act is broken up under the next as if Governmental pledges were lovers' vows. When, on the faith of those pledges, a landlord ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... stories often seemed to be ended when they were not really so, and strangers were betrayed into premature interjections of finality; though old friends knew better. The narrator ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... hands of the whole affair," he stated in accents of finality. "I refuse. I shall go, and you can do as you will,— blunder on," scornfully, "with your nitroglycerin, your rags, and drills and—and rouse the entire ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... the swift, futile manner of a creature helplessly trapped, then she pressed her fingers an instant to her eyes and straightened. "You never will forgive yourself," she said; not in anger, not in judgment, but in a tone so low, so sad, it seemed to express not only regret but finality. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... country by stimulating a fresh demand for parliamentary reform. A year or two before, he had provoked the dissatisfaction of the "Advanced Liberals," as they called themselves, by insisting on the finality of the Reform Bill of 1832, and by advising his followers "to rest and be thankful" for what had been then obtained. But now he began to advance an opinion that that act required "some amendments to carry into more complete ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... time the doctor came, Mrs. Cavers insisted on paying him for the tent and everything that was in it. There was a finality in her manner that made ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... grandmother that that formidable old lady respected her; and as she was one of those who can give affection only where they give respect, she loved Margaret—loved her with jealous and carping tenacity. The girl's words of finality made her erect and unyielding soul shiver in a sudden dreary blast of loneliness, that most tragic of all the storms that sweep the ways of life. It was in the tone of the anger of love with the ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... men and women stand before the cunning machinery of industry, in the pose of helplessness before a mechanical finality. They cannot help feeling that in so far as their special task is involved, the machine has said the last word. The challenge dies out of their work. The brain that has ever been on the quiver of adventurous expectancy relaxes its ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... the Constitution. The Missouri Compromise. Cotton and the Cotton-Gin. The Race between Free and Slave States. The Admission of Texas. The Wilmot Proviso. New Mexico and California. The Compromise Measures of 1850. Finality ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... of it. "Here I am and here I stay," he said with finality. "I've been seeing white shadows and feeling clammy ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... is contrary to the analogies of life on earth. Here change indicates not a finality but a new opportunity. Every crisis of life is an opening into a newer and larger world. Why should we say that what we call death, alone of all the changes through which we pass, leads to that ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... with a slowness that meant finality. "Why need to-morrow or a year from now be different from to-day ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... how, in your more recent discoveries, light rays penetrate solid metals formerly called opaque. When I say that these vibrations are interpenetrable and non-obstructive, the statement must be taken as approximating the truth, and not as a finality, independent of all conditions; for by the power of the will, or as a result of mental habit, a man may either exclude or admit to his consciousness the thought vibrations of others. But you may set it down as a fundamental fact that there is nothing ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... flowed past them steadily, like a soft current, stirring the long fronds into purring contact. A sharp challenge from an alert native sentry rang clear, followed by the crunching sound of a heavy iron gate opening and closing with grating finality. The hourly call was sounded by a guard, who, unseen by them, paced the main entrance to the inclosure: "All's Well." It sounded six times from invisible lips. Terry pondered its ironic message to those ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... frowningly concentrating his mind upon each point as he struggled with it. The time had come now when the decision he made must be one of absolute finality. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... too. She knew that every hour of postponement would cost her fresh humiliations and difficulties. He did not love her, but he was quietly taking her for granted again, and until she could summon courage to speak to him with utter frankness and finality, he would of course claim his ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... indeed, the all-in-all; but not any particular form of it as a finality. This is not a world for finalities of any kind, as he constantly teaches us: it is a world of broken arcs, not of perfect rounds. Formulations of some kind he would, no doubt, admit there must be, as in everything else; but with him all formulations and tabulations of beliefs, especially such ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... will you?" said Captain irritably. "Of course, one man can't haul an outfit that far, but two can, so I'm going to take Klusky with me." He spoke with finality, and the Jew started, gazing queerly. "We'll go light, and drive back a herd ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... "Let's see. He's big. He's got blue eyes. He's good looking. He's—he's like a whirlwind. He's got lots of money." She counted the attractions off on her fingers. "Guess I'll sure have to marry him," she finished up with a little nod of finality. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... retching tore my stomach; I swayed dizzily. The utter brutality, the finality of the thing! "And any more of you carrion that I catch slacking will get the same thing," the Russian said. "You, Renaud, I've got my eye on you. Watch out!" The sergeant's voice rasped through the mist about ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... such thing as human infallibility. There is no finality in human knowledge and human progress. Fixed authority in matters of knowledge or belief is ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... with eyes full of a listless wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... the many burners for lighting by the use of incandescent mantles which have been devised, a few of the more widely used types may be briefly referred to. There is no doubt that finality in the design of these burners has not yet been reached, and that improvements in the direction of simplification of construction and in efficiency and durability will continue ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... no call to argue that point. She was gone.... And she had carefully refrained from slamming the door. Somehow that trifling act of restraint impressed him with a sense of finality oddly lacking in her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... of colour, form, sound or whatever else," (Path, May, 1886) These higher interpretations I am unable to give; it requires the deeper being to know the deeper meaning. Those here appended may prove suggestive; I do not claim any finality or authority for them, but they may be interesting to students of the occult Upanishads where the mystic power of sound ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... there was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven't got. Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning, after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown (which Alice much admired), ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... finality in the tones and in the faces of his colleagues had daunted him; but with a tremendous effort he put down the weakness of age and turned fiercely upon Whitney to shame him from indorsing Scarborough's suicidal policy. But Whitney, with intent of brutality, took out ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... space and opportunity to consider the consequences. Being the only good sailor in the trio, she had her own self-communings for company during the greater part of the six days, and the incident sentimental took on an aspect of finality which was rather dismaying. It was quite in vain that she sought comfort in the reflection that she was committed to nothing conclusive. Vincent Farley had not taken that view of it. True, he had asked for nothing more ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... of checking the current of the melodic phrase with such emphasis and determination as to convey the impression of finality; either absolute finality, as we observe it at the very end of a composition, or such relative finality as is necessary for the completion of some independent section of the piece,—conclusive as far as that section is concerned, though not precluding the addition ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... note of this in his pocket-book with an air of finality, and asked Miss Heredith to see that the servants were sent to the library one by one, to be questioned. Miss Heredith said she would arrange it with the housekeeper, and was then politely escorted to the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... be the mind of coming man; if not the final attainment of his intellectual progress, at all events a long period of self-satisfaction, assumed as finality. We talk of the "ever aspiring soul"; we take for granted that if one religion passes away, another must arise. But what if man presently find himself without spiritual needs? Such modification of his being cannot be ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... to get out of here," said Ogden with finality. He put his hand in his trouser-pocket and pulled out a sticky mass which looked as if it might once have been a cream-puff or a meringue. He swallowed it contentedly. "I'd forgotten I had that," he explained. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... contemplation of what they will term our crudities, and which we now call progress. Science is ever on the march and what is new to-day will be old to-morrow. We cannot go back, we must go forward, and although we can never reach finality in aught, we can improve on the past to enrich the future. If this volume creates an interest and arouses an enthusiasm in the ordinary men and women into whose hands it may come, and stimulates them to a study of the great events making for the enlightenment, progress and elevation ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... a dream, monsieur," she said with sad finality. "It is folly to encumber one's life ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... books were gone from the old book-case; the furniture itself was being carried away, the marble-topped table being the last piece left. The woman was washing the parlor floor, slopping on the soapy water with that air of finality that made Ellen Robinson realize that the old home was broken up at last. Grimly she walked into the dining-room, and saw immaculate empty closets and cleanly shining window-panes. As far as the work had progressed it had ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... only the faintest gleam of light in the cleft, but it sufficed to show me that the way to the cave was open. The hidden turnstile in the right wall stood ajar; I entered, and carelessly swung it behind me. The gates clashed into place with a finality which told me that they were firmly shut. I did not know the secret of them, so how should I get ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... its chief interest. Indeed, there is no other salient feature in the Democratic platform. Resolutions in the usual form were adopted on several other political topics; but the main discussion, and the absorbing interest of the convention, was on the question of accepting as a finality the series of Republican measures which is generally regarded as the natural and legitimate result of the overthrow of the rebellion, and which is embodied in the last three ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... Uncle Dick," he said with an air of finality. "I think I'll be Scarlet Sam, 'cause I know all about him, an' you can be Timothy ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... sat there until dark just for the sheer joy of teasing her, making her pay a little for her recent treatment of him. But there was a note of finality in her voice which did not escape him; in another moment she would jump down and go on on foot and he knew it. So at last he rode up to the car, dismounted, and ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... poop lights, dancing there above the invisible hull of the ship that was to carry Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, lately Lord Chancellor of England, into exile. As a dying man looks down the foreshortened vista of his active life, so may Edward Hyde—whose career had reached a finality but one degree removed from the finality of death—have reviewed in that moment those thirty years of sincere endeavour and high achievement since he had been a law student in the Temple when Charles ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... remained in that book; in the course of their lives various figures rose and faded after their names, recording the ups and downs of their financial histories. It was only when Festus Clasby had supplied the materials for their wakes that the great pencil, with one mighty stroke of terrible finality, ran like a sword through their names, wiping their very memories from the hillsides. All purchases were entered up in Festus Clasby's mighty record without vulgar discussions as to price. The business ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... as they were called, won the day; and the great reform which they effected was of incalculable service to mankind. But the Nemesis of all reformers is finality; and the reformers of education, like those of religion, fell into the profound, however common, error of mistaking the beginning for the end of the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... made during the earlier period of the present war and now collected together for publication, do not—as will be evident to the reader—pretend to any sort of completeness in their embrace of the subject, or finality in its presentation. Rather they are scattered thoughts suggested by the large and tangled drama which we are witnessing; and I am sufficiently conscious that their expression involves contradictions ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... her free arm across her lips in shuddering remembrance of his kiss, then she continued with the tone of finality: ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... an air of finality about a grave: one watches the earth thrown in, with the feeling that this is the end. Whatever has gone before, whatever is to come in eternity, that particular temple of the soul has been given back to the elements ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... The finality in her voice belied her face, which beamed without a ray of stubbornness or perversity. He did not know how to interpret her; but he felt that he had begun wrong. He half regretted that he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... consequences broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man, the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... his feet. Then he took out the remaining sandwich,—which he himself, still shaken from his fall, had no desire to eat,—and contemplatively, in small fragments, he fed it to the wolf's great blood-stained jaws. At last he spoke, with the finality of one whose mind is quite ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... day were such as would now be called "old-fashioned Unitarianism." But no creed can be held to be a finality. From Edwards to Mayhew, from Mayhew to Channing, from Channing to Emerson, the passage is like that which leads from the highest lock of a canal to the ocean level. It is impossible for human nature to remain permanently shut up in the highest lock ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... all my foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off—I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning—and even ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... position, however, is more potent than the first. It is because of their finality that exit speeches are emphatic. It has become customary in the theatre to applaud a prominent actor nearly every time he leaves the stage; and this custom has made it necessary for the dramatist to precede an exit with some speech or action important enough ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... wiped out. That's admitted. In ten years, if she keeps on building, she might have a chance. But not now! Not yet! And she knows it." George did not mention that he had borrowed the whole weighty argument from his stepfather; but he spoke with finality, and was rather startled when Mr. Prince blew the whole weighty argument into the air with one scornful, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... time upon the mental plasm does print at last a very substantial portrait of the parent, a very well-filled concept in the child mind. And the nearer a conception comes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of which this concept has arisen, draw to a close. To know, is to lose. When I have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then the love and ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... new mind of the Lambeth Conference." Whether it is a new mind in Lambeth Conferences we need not consider; it is certainly no new mind in the Anglican Church, but is precisely its characteristic attitude of not claiming perfection or finality for itself, but of looking beyond itself to Catholic Christendom, and longing for the time when reunion of the churches which now make up its "broken unity" will enable it to speak with the same voice of authority with which it did in its primitive and ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... his shoulders. The conversation had ceased to interest him. So, evidently, had his letters, for he thrust them from him with an air of finality as he rose to his feet and glanced at his watch. It was not yet very late, but with the waning of summer the days were growing perceptibly shorter and the light in the office where the two men were talking was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... study. "Joy-bells pealed and bonfires blazed," is a phrase of the Doctor's which sets all the caverns of the mind ringing, even though its historical setting is long forgotten. But unction is the chief feature of the history: there is a rotund finality about the author's spacious utterances, and a dodging of investigation by means of pious generalisations. The book has all the effect of a benediction. When it is really too tiresome to inquire into all the authorities on some affair of magnitude, it is so respectable ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... him. "Then why this?" and she held out the statement. He was silent. "I repeat," she said, "I will not be under obligations to you or to anyone." She rose with finality, picked up the statement and cheque, crossed to the fire and dropped both the papers on the blazing logs. "If you will have the kindness to send me the purchase money, plus the sum I consigned to your keeping—as ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... hesitating, scanning the terrace pavement with troubled eyes; when she raised them to his face the chance was gone. He straightened his shoulders with an air of finality and picked up his ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust—the trust of my reader. For having limned in the colors at my command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write Finis to the end ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,—compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,—Browning makes of it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an element ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... that reedy youth said, with profound finality, "they're working fer a bust up. I'd gamble one o' Arizona's hogs to a junk o' sow-belly ther' ain't no more of them rustlers around come the fall. Things is hot, an' they're goin' to hit the trail, takin' all they ken get ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... out her right hand in a gesture of finality. "You know about the rest—so much more than any other man," she added; and glanced up at him with a ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... England fair stiff wi' men. . . . The sooner we get Conscription, the better I'll like it. Conscription solid for every bloomin' able-bodied man an' boy. An' I 'ope Ben Shrillett an' 'is likes is the first to be took. Conscription,' he said with the emphasis of finality as he fumbled in wet straw for a wetter boot, 'out-an'-out, lock, stock, 'n ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... is plain, was very firmly convinced that his own cosmopolitanism was a European finality and was worth all that it had cost. What would he have said if he could have looked ahead a hundred years and beheld the nations still snarling at each other's heels in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... she deserted. The motor conked with a non-stuttering finality. Now for a dead stick landing, straight ahead! If he could only pancake her down just beyond that big hole, maybe she would ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... softened her a little, else she would have been as silent as Betty; for it was from her mistress that Betty had learned this mode of torturing a criminal. So she was just able to return his greeting in the words, 'Weel, Robert,' pronounced in a finality of tone that indicated she had done her utmost, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... said Albert with great finality, "but bulb work seems to me like fancy work. And then ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... There was such superior finality in his tone, that the girl was apparently crushed. She started to walk, he followed; she waited for him, and they tramped along side by side in silence; he, covertly taking stock of his companion; she, gazing straight ahead as though for the moment ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... was a language inconsistent with the definitions of orthodoxy; it set bounds to the infinite, and by implication withdrew from the creative rule all such processes as could be brought within the descriptions of research. It ascribed fixity and finality to that "creature" in which an apostle taught us to recognise the birth-struggles of an unexhausted progress. It tended to banish mystery from the world we see, and to confine it to a ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... formulate, were first discovered and worked out for the short-story in the medium of poetry.[8] The ballad and narrative poem must be, by reason of their highly artificial form, comparatively short, possessing totality, immediateness, compression, verisimilitude, and finality. The old ballad which commemorates the battle of Otterbourne, fought on August 10, 1388, is a fine example of the short-story method. Its opening stanza speaks the last word in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... to the coloured canvas and looks at the walls of stone. This also was far too great a thing for facile praise or blame, a vast bureaucracy busy and yet intensely dignified, the most civilised thing ruling many other civilisations. It was an endless end of the world; for ever repeating its rich finality. And I myself was still walking in that long evening of the earth; and Caesar my lord ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... descriptive volume bearing the imposing title, Der Mond; oder allgemeine vergleichende Selenographie. This summation of knowledge in that branch, though in truth leaving many questions open, had an air of finality which tended to discourage further inquiry.[927] It gave form to a reaction against the sanguine views entertained by Hevelius, Schroeter, Herschel and Gruithuisen as to the possibilities of agreeable residence on the moon, and relegated ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... of exultant Harry was about to be followed by a shout of rejoicing, he continued. "And I'm sure that when Harry makes a mistake we'll all be as considerate of his feelings as we are able. But Tom washes the dishes as a penalty for using slang!" he announced in a tone of pleasant finality that ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... give greater impressiveness to the conclusion of his harangue. His voice as he continued held a note of savage finality. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... 729; fate; doom, doomsday; crack of doom, day of Judgment, dies irae, fall of the curtain; goal, destination; limit, determination; expiration, expiry^, extinction, extermination; death &c 360; end of all things; finality; eschatology. break up, commencement de la fin, last stage, turning point; coup de grace, deathblow; knock-out-blow; sockdolager [U.S.]. V. end, close, finish, terminate, conclude, be all over; expire; die &c 360; come-, draw-to-a-close &c n.; have run its course; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the certainty of the gradual cooling and eventual death of the Earth, gave me a conclusive impression of the finality of all earthly existence and of the merely temporary ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... up to the main idea. The vocal indication of this connective principle is the circumflex inflection. The tone will be raised, as in the principal emphasis, but instead of being allowed to fall straight to a finality, it is turned upward at the finish, to hook on, as it were, to the following. The weight of voice will be less marked, the inflection less long, and the pause usually less decided, than in the case of the primary emphasis. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... of all, there's the great contentment—the sense of a definite step. You're strong enough to like finality." ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... reverend gentleman thought he was to enjoy a lingering hand-clasp he was mistaken, for the gloved finger-tips merely touched his hand and were withdrawn, and the girl turned to her hostess with a smile of finality as if he were dismissed. He did not seem disposed to take the hint and withdraw, however, until on a sudden the great dog came and stood between them with open-mouthed welcome and joyous greeting in the plumy, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... a tone of finality in it. Elizabeth recognized it, but her plans were made and she was not ready to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... came this way," said the sergeant, with finality. "Hauled over this pass to the Cerberus. Somebody must've knocked this bush loose while workin' at getting 'em along. So he replanted it. Only not good ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Jefferson Craig, you couldn't possibly wonder that!" contradicted Georgiana, in such a tone of finality that her husband laughed and told her that flattery could go ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... things of life—like the couple, in A Woman's last Word. But even the complete surrender of individuality resolved upon by the wife in that poem would not now avail, if indeed it ever would have availed, the wife of James Lee. All is over, and, as she gradually realises, over with such finality that there is only one thing she can do, and that is ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... on thet bargain," said the mountaineer, gravely. "Tam'rack," he added, in a voice of finality, "ye've got ter go." ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... and turned from her with an air of finality. The house-maid hesitated, drew a long breath, pulled in her head, and closed ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... No matter with what finality things seem to end, there is always a next day and a next. During those first few hours the extent of our disaster had dazed us. Then, the odds seemed so overwhelmingly against us that there was no use in going on. The only trouble was that we ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... universal manner; for that which is highest in an inferior nature approaches to that which is lowest in the higher nature, as is made clear by Dionysius (Div. Nom. vii). Therefore, of these three powers, the generative has the greater finality, nobility, and perfection, as the Philosopher says (De Anima ii, 4), for it belongs to a thing which is already perfect to "produce another like unto itself." And the generative power is served by the augmentative and nutritive powers; and the augmentative ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... his solid legs, his red neck and close-cropped, wiry hair were visible to her strangely. She had a peculiar feeling of acquaintedness and of aloofness, intimate knowledge and a separation of sharp finality caused her to stare at him with so intent a curiosity ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... of superhuman intelligences, and declares the supreme object of the individual love and devotion should be humanity. The rational demonstration of the truth of this system is sought in the course of history, which is claimed to prove Positivism the finality of social evolution. You will find anything else you want to know about it in the books. I dare say you will not be converted; but if you were nineteen instead of twice that, with Hippolyte Regnier to indoctrinate ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... There is such a finality about death; however interesting it may be as an experience, one cannot discuss it afterward with one's friends. I have thought it a great pity that Mark Twain could not discuss, with Howells say, or with Twichell, the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... considered more important and occupying a larger space in medical literature, is the cell doctrine of Schwann, a doctrine still under discussion and by no means a finality. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... large as a farm in her own country. Towns appeared and disappeared in a continual procession. The whole land was so unlike anything she had ever known that she began to feel unlike herself. In the valley where she had been born and where she had lived all her days everything had an air of finality. Nothing could be changed. The tiny fields were chained to the earth. They were fixed in their places and surrounded by aged stone walls. The fields like the mountains that looked down at them were as unchangeable as the passing days. She had a feeling they had always ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... To be a great lover is to be a great mystic, since in the highest conception of mortal beauty that the mind can form there lies always the unattainable, the unpossessed, suggesting the world of beauty and finality beyond our mortal reach. It is in this power of suggestion that the Chinese poets excel. Asked to differentiate between European and Chinese poetry, some critics would perhaps insist upon their particular ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng

... preparing a despotism and no mistake about it. For what else is the meaning of that sudden marriage union,[245] the Campanian land affair, the lavish expenditure of money? If these measures were final, even then the mischief had been very great; but the nature of the case makes finality impossible. For how could these measures possibly give them any pleasure in themselves? They would never have gone so far as this unless they had been paving the way for other fatal steps. Immortal Gods!—But, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... but I prefer to take his word." Stanton's tone of overbearing finality made Nancy clench her hands with rage. She ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... is in sort a preliminary death. Making hers, Charity felt herself already gone, and looked back at life with a finality as from beyond the grave. It was a frightful thing to review her journey from a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... of finality in her tone that struck dismay to Alan's heart. He prepared to entreat and argue, but before he could utter a word, the boughs behind them parted and Captain Anthony stepped ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... are also infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises; for it is clear that those which are put forward as ultimate are not self-supporting, but are based on others which, again having others for their support, do not permit of finality. But we represent some as ultimate for reason, in the same way as in regard to material objects we call that an indivisible point beyond which our senses can no longer perceive anything, although by its nature ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... finality to this that was uncanny. Janice became sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen. The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... father, with a finality in his tone that caused Daphne to go with him meekly, if unwillingly; "Daphne ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... whether sex is determined at the time of fertilization, before or after. Biologists now generally prefer to say that a fertilized egg is "predisposed" to maleness or femaleness, instead of "determined." The word "determined" suggests finality, whereas the embryo appears to have in the beginning only a strong tendency or predisposition toward one sex type or the other. It is now quite commonly believed that this predisposition arises from the quantity rather than the quality or kind of factors in the chemical ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... surprised at the calm with which she came to this decision. It had all the force of finality to her. She cared for the hurt to her pride as little as she cared for what Rose Parker would think of her ignominious return, as little as she cared for what the world thought of a wife who deliberately left the father of her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Lung: "Truly, it is as it is said, astute Thang-li, though the encircling wall of a hollow cedar-tree, for example, might impart to the voice in question a less uncompromising ring of finality than it possesses when raised in a silk-lined chamber and surrounded by a band of armed retainers. Nevertheless the pronouncement is one which appeals to this person's sense of justice, and the only improvement he can suggest ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... the contrast that it presents to the ruling idea of the modern world that new truths are discovered by reason and experience every day, and even in those cases where the old truths remain, they change their hue and character every day, and that in matters of ultimate truths no finality can ever be achieved; we are to be content only with as much as comes before the purview of our reason and experience at the time. It was therefore thought to be extremely audacious that any person howsoever learned and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... of one synod might be revised by another. Their own envoys had asked him to hold a council, and the men who set aside the decisions of Nicaea by using the services of heretics like Secundus, Pistus and Carpones could hardly claim finality for their own doings at Tyre. Their complaint that he had given them too short a notice would have been reasonable if the appointed day had found them on the road to Rome. 'But this also, beloved, is only an excuse.' They had ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... The simple finality of the police officer's reply left the other speechless for the moment. The tone of it amazed him. He had hastened across from the Agency directly he had received the Corporal's dispatch, not because he had to pay out Treaty Money in the morning, not because ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... the progenitors of the Israelitish nation. The declaration that Jehovah is not the God of the dead but of the living was an unanswerable denunciation of the Sadducean perversion of scripture; and with solemn finality the Lord added: "Ye therefore do greatly err." Certain of the scribes present were impressed by the incontrovertible demonstration of the truth, and exclaimed with approbation: "Master, thou hast well said." The proud Sadducees were confuted and silenced; "and after that they durst not ask ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... be here!" he declared, and mounting his wheel with an air of finality, sailed away down the platform, curved off the high step with a bump into the road and coasted down the road below the tunnel toward Monopoly, leaving Sabbath Valley glistening in the sunshine off to the right. With all that money in his pocket what was the use of going back ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... in the remote places of Alaska. As she went forward she heard the White Chief's name and some words that were unintelligible to her. Then Shane came to his feet. He was speaking in a voice toneless, dispassionate, but weighted with finality. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... to Knowledge is that one cannot have the editor at hand in order to cross-examine him. This is particularly so in the case of a Children's Encyclopaedia, for the child's first question, "Why does this do that?" is meant to have no more finality than tossing-up at cricket or dealing the cards at bridge. The child does not really want to know, but it does want to keep up a friendly conversation, or, if humourously inclined, to see how long you can go ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... had time to count the cost or reckon the result, he felt he was giving up the fight. He, or his counsel for him, had contested the ground with all the resourceful ingenuity known to the American legal practitioner. He was told that, in spite of the seeming finality of what had happened that morning, there were still loopholes through which the defence might be carried on. In the space of a few hours Fate had offered him the choice between two courses, neither of them fertile ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... last pay-day Beauty Stanton's dancing-hall ever saw. Likewise it was to be the last she would ever see. In the madness of that night there was written finality—the end. Benton had reached its greatest, wildest, blackest, vilest. But not its deadliest! That must come—later—as an aftermath. But the height or the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... settled," proclaimed Ben Badger, with an air of finality. "The dance begins at nine. It's all stated on ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the regiment to make swift report of the absent darlings. Kate was besieged in the grand house with tearful watchers, waiting in agonizing impatience for the fatal finality. Olympia, to spare her mother the distress of the vague responses her telegrams brought from Washington, spent most of the time at the Boones', where, thanks to the father's high standing with the Administration, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the mountain wall through which the railroad left the valley. He had been looking longingly toward that door of escape all his life, and now he said goodby to it. "Ah, well, 'twan't to be," he said, with an accent of weary finality; but then, suddenly out of the chill which oppressed his heart there sprang a last searing blast of astonished anguish. It was as if he realized for the first time all that had befallen him since the morning. He was racked by a ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... with an air of finality, and began lazily to refill his pipe. From the open mud fireplace he picked a coal. Outside, the rain, faithful to the prophecy of the wide-ringed sun, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... inspiration to which Professor Draper might have more completely yielded with decided benefit. For the lift which the author of the Positive Philosophy and the founder of the Positive Religion has given the world, let us be deeply grateful; although we must reject, as a finality, a System of Science which cannot Demonstrate the correctness of its Principles and Phenomena, or a System of Religion which emasculates mankind of its diviner and more spiritual aspirations, and dwarfs him to the dimensions of a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... stood close to Rhoda's chair. He looked down at her, and when he spoke there was a change in his manner. Now there was a finality in his tone that ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... of the pretension made by certain sects of dogmatic Christianity that it is the last word of religion, that all saving truth was once for all revealed some nineteen centuries ago. History, says the Jewish controversialist, teaches no such lessons of finality. Forces appear, work their destined course, and then make way for other forces. The world does not stand still; it moves on. Then how can Judaism claim for itself a permanence, a finality, which it must deny to every other system, to every other influence which ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... reconsider his recent decision in her favor. Three minutes' conversation with him showed her that, had she made the request, it would have availed her nothing. The brisk little man's mind was made up. He congratulated her on capturing second honors with a finality that could not be assailed. Then a brilliant ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... than a fortnight since Sturk's mishap in the Butcher's Wood, and he was still alive, but still under the spell of coma. He was sinking, but very slowly; yet it was enough to indicate the finality of that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... stop him," Peter said. "And, after all, why shouldn't they? If it makes them happy—well—" His finality conveyed his creed; if it makes them happy, what else is there? To be happy is to have reached the goal. Peter was a little sad about Hilary, who seemed as far as ever from that goal. Why? Peter wondered. Couldn't ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... meant by settling it he would have told himself that he meant nothing; that last night had settled it; that his resolution had been absolutely self-determined and absolutely irrevocable then, and that his signature gave it no more sanctity or finality than it had already. If he was conscript, he was conscript ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... least, the Protestant principle contained within itself the germs of the destruction of the finality, which the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and other Protestant Churches fondly imagined they had reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... business to have a quick ear for the note of finality, and he offered no resistance to Stanwell's friendly impulsion; but on the threshold he paused to murmur, with a regretful glance at the denuded studio: "You could haf done it, Mr. Sdanwell—you could haf ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... gave the Koran as the sufficient guide for all time. It arrested the world's progress as far as its power extended. Very different was the spirit of Judaism. "It distinctly disclaimed both finality and completeness. Every part of the Mosaic religion had a forward look, and was designed to leave the mind ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... exclaimed Larry, "I don't like to hear your foot come down just yet. I know that tone of finality, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... least—an event stranger, indeed, than any I had ever before witnessed. In the wild writings of the old romancers the dead have sometimes been resuscitated, but never in this workaday world of ours. There is a finality in death that ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... Engines and High-pressure Steam;" then proceeded to continue the subject from the date of that meeting, to trace out whether any, and if so what, progress had been made; further, to consider whether or no we have reached the finality so strongly deprecated by Sir Frederick Bramwell in the discussion referred to, and, if not, then in what direction we are to ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... may be the accurate signification of the word 'eternal,' the words 'eternal life,' regarded as the ideal of man, can mean nothing else than life at its highest, the fulfilment of all that personality has within it the potency of becoming. In one sense there is no finality in life. 'It seethes with the morrow for us more and more.' But in another sense, to say that the moral life is never attained is only a half truth. It is always being attained because it is always present as an ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... the picture which Hinduism has drawn of the finality of life to its followers? After the weary fugue of births and rebirths, with its interludes of many heavens and hells, the "self" passes on into final union with the Divine Soul. It loses all consciousness and self-knowledge; every vestige of personality and all that this ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... this last and greatest of revolutions in the nature of the case absolutely differed from all former ones in the finality and completeness of its work. In all previous instances in which governments had abolished or converted to public use forms of property in the hands of citizens it had been possible to compensate them in some other kind of property through which their former economic advantage should be perpetuated ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... comfort him for Margery. He seemed to bear it better after he knew you. I shall not feel as if they were quite gone away from me while I can talk to you about them. You will spare an hour now and then to come and sit with me?" She looked round the plain, respectable little room with a quiet finality. "I am too old and tired to live long," ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... last day or two he had faced the fact that, not only must he use every endeavor to revive his past, but that such revival threatened with cruelty and finality to separate him from ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Doctor with the finality of one to whom all things have been revealed. "But we must not discuss these things now. Miss Wuster has just been reading me the account of young Dillingham's trial. Perhaps you ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... most indefatigable hostesses, and the Uplift Club the chief medium of expression. To a critic, obliged by his trade to cultivate convictions, it was the essence of luxury to leave them at home in his hours of ease; and Bernald gave his preference to circles in which less finality of judgment prevailed, and it was consequently less embarrassing to be ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... just that when Hiram said it. There was now in Tweet's question a tone of finality. Hiram felt that his reply would end the matter. Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled on "No." He could not bring himself to part with this semblance ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... and 'settle down.' You were surprised at so decided a step I dare say, and, I believe, though too considerate to say it in your letter, you have wondered in your thoughts at our fixing at Florence instead of Rome, and without seeing more of Italy before the finality of making a choice. But observe, Florence is wonderfully cheap, one lives here for just nothing; and the convenience in respect to England, letters, and the facility of letting our house in our absence, is incomparable altogether. At Rome a house would ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... brave enough to defy the vain terrors of public opinion. The critical time came when the elder of the boys on attaining his majority, in the year 1811, asked for the accounts and some part at least of the inheritance to begin life upon. It was then that the stepfather declared with calm finality that there were no accounts to render and no property to inherit. The whole fortune was his very own. He was very good-natured about the young man's misapprehension of the true state of affairs, but, of course, felt ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... with dull finality. "But I don't care what the explanation is. I knew Alice. She was human all right, more so than either you or I. She was completely normal, I tell you—all except for this idea she had the last year or so that we'd gone together on a vacation ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones

... evolved: they are seeking new ways of carrying on their work and experimenting with new methods at the same time as they are guiding others along paths already familiar to themselves. This absence of finality, characteristic of the teaching profession as a whole, and constituting one of its chief attractions, is especially noticeable in all work connected with the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... rather to his companion's discomfiture, his queer little mind swung back to the woman to whose house they had just been. "Mrs. Crofton," he observed, with an air of finality, "may be pretty, but she's got what ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... "My brother's there at the cabin. I got to set up with him." There was no arguing against that tone of simple and utter finality. ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris

... the debt," he said, in a low tone of finality. "I'll wait here till the sheriff comes. Up to now there hasn't been a force in all Gawd's world that could 've come 'tween me an' the things you're teachin'. I didn't care about Potter. He was in the way. I've got no sorrows about anythin' ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... day, and were reproduced in many parts of the new cathedral at its rebuilding, and may be seen exquisitely carved by Grinling Gibbons over the entrance to St. Dunstan's Chapel; but with the arms of the City it was very different, and, in fact, they do not appear even now to have reached finality. When, early in the seventeenth century, the seal of 1380 became too worn for further use, a new one was made, which reproduced on the obverse all the essential features of the earlier one, the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... is in a peculiar position, and Russia, through her tardiness in equipment, in a peculiar position of another kind, yet one may fairly say that the vague margin between the second period of growth and the third period of finality appears roughly somewhere round the month of June. It will fall earlier with Germany, a good deal earlier with France; but from the middle of May at earliest to the end of June at latest may be said to mark the entry ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... only on account of its intrinsic righteousness—which God forbid that I should deny—but because it was the first of a glorious line of steps towards their enfranchisement; and now the very men who told them this, talked peremptorily of "finality," showed themselves the most dogged and careless of conservatives, and pooh-poohed away every attempt at further enlargement of the suffrage. They were told to support it as the remedy for their own social miseries; and behold those miseries were year by year becoming deeper, more ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... behaving like that with me," she said, with the same challenging definiteness, finality: a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... gave a little half-cry, half-gasp; and from the look on his face the woman saw that he realized what was missing. He peered at her, with alert and narrow eyes, for a full minute of unbroken silence. Then, with a little movement of finality, he turned away ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... revolver. But he had yet to learn that there is no supreme crisis in the human span, save that which ends it; that all the wayfaring duels with fate are inconclusive; conflicts critical enough at the moment, but lacking finality, and likely to be renewed indefinitely ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... words did not deceive Matheson. So his answer came with deliberate finality: "I've said ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... away with a sigh at the note of finality in Molly's voice. Kut-le was climbing the trail toward the camp with a little pile of provisions. So far he had not failed to procure when needed some sort of rations—bacon, flour and coffee—though since her abduction Rhoda ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... You're excited. You mustn't talk like that. I give you credit for an honest hatred, but—I can't sympathize with it. Neither can I believe so ill of Henry Nelson. Remember, I've known him and Bell for years." With a complete finality the banker concluded, "You'll have to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach



Words linked to "Finality" :   final, definiteness, inconclusiveness, inconclusive, conclusiveness, decisiveness, conclusive



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