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Remoteness   /rimˈoʊtnəs/   Listen
Remoteness

noun
1.
The property of being remote.  Synonyms: farawayness, farness.
2.
A disposition to be distant and unsympathetic in manner.  Synonyms: aloofness, standoffishness, withdrawnness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Remoteness" Quotes from Famous Books



... his arm tightly,—"dost think, thou knowing the ways of men, Cedric could have some bright being here to keep him from the dumps, and when guests are present, hides her in some remoteness?" There was more in Constance' meaning than what ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... an earlier republic in Europe, Switzerland. But the Swiss maintained themselves by their isolation, their remoteness from other nations and from one another in their bleak mountain valleys. The Dutch, on the contrary, inhabited a flat sea-coast; they were traders; their very existence depended on intercourse with other lands. Hence they had to be ever alert in defence of their hard-won freedom. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... boughs were all still, and past the bitter lonely fields where the mist seemed to fade away into grey darkness. As he wandered along these unfamiliar and ghastly paths he became the more convinced of his utter remoteness from all humanity, he allowed that grotesque suggestion of there being something visibly amiss in his outward appearance to grow upon him, and often he looked with a horrible expectation into the faces of those who passed by, afraid lest his own senses gave him false intelligence, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... sketched by Traherne is as close to Reid's as it is remote from Augustine's. This remoteness comes plainly to expression in the way Traherne and Augustine regard the summons of Christ to His disciples to become as little children, a summons to which Reid was led, as we have seen, on purely philosophical grounds. Let ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... had even feared an edition de luxe, which would have been intolerable. She was prepared for distinction; but she saw with a finer agony the slight figure, the sweet proud face with its setting of pale gold hair, and worse than all, the indefinable air of remoteness and reserve which made Mrs. Langley Wyndham more than a "distinguished" woman. Wyndham lifted his hat and would have passed on; but Audrey, to show her perfect self-possession, stopped and held out her hand. He felt it trembling as he took it in a preoccupied manner; and Mrs. Langley ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... the spontaneous interests of his age. They absorb him, and leave impressions durable and profound. Compared with the youth taught by these methods, one brought up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from reality: he stands, as it were, out of the pale, and feels that he stands so; and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... valley, looking forward and upward through a vista which gradually rises into a bold mountain peak. The atmosphere is all morning, early morning, with purple hues on the hill-side, mists rising from the river, and a vague remoteness even in the nearest forest; deep shadows lie over the valley, but the rising sun shines on the mountain-peak, lighting it up with a golden radiance, while behind it, there seemed to spread away into distance the atmosphere of another country, a beautiful unseen Paradise. Towards this ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... were more fortunate even than their fellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the arid cliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertile soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos River provided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness canyons from the trails of raiders and traders and their ease of defense made for long generations of peace. The enterprise innate in the spirit of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... heap frailer than I allowed for at the time," said Mrs. Yellett, with similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed Mary ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... much absorbed in his own thoughts that he hardly heard what was said to him as the three sat down, a little forlorn, as the late summer twilight began to close over all the brightness of that long fatiguing day. The evening of the wedding, with its sense already of remoteness to the great event of the morning so much prepared for and looked forward to—with the atmosphere so dead and preternaturally silent which has tingled with so much emotion, with the inevitable reaction after the excitement—nothing ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... The remoteness of the situation gave the very boldness of his plan feasibility. Was he not his own magistrate in his own province? Why, then, he had thought, waste the golden moments? He had but one heed now; a study of physical ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... When I am near it, the visual experience is not just what it is when I recede from it. But how can I know that I am near the desk or far from it? What do these expressions mean? Their full meaning will become clearer in the next chapter, but here I may say that nearness and remoteness must be measured for me in experiences of some sort, or I would never know anything as near to or far from ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... a small one, and had been chosen for its remoteness from the dwelling rooms. It had formed the billiard room, which the former owner of Weald Lodge had added to his premises, and John Minute, who had neither the time nor the patience for billiards, had readily handed over this damp annex ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... could she clearly see out of her eyes, and she felt all power of resistance dissolve within her. He might have taken her in his arms and kissed her then; but though sitting by her, he seemed a thousand miles away; his remoteness chastened her, and she asked him of ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... former of these two controversies the charge brought against its studies was their remoteness from the occupations and duties of life, to which they are the formal introduction, or, in other words, their inutility; in the latter, it was their connexion with a particular form of belief, or, in ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... arrangements for his marriage, secret, but complete and soon to be made public. Long since he had cast complacent eyes on a strange architectural relic, an old grange or hunting-lodge on the heath, with he could hardly have defined what charm of remoteness and old romance. Popular belief amused itself with reports of the wizard who inhabited or haunted the place, his fantastic treasures, his immense age. His windows might be seen glittering afar on stormy nights, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... perfection, its charms were imperative, partly because of remoteness from the taint of man-trodden land, mainly because, by right of discovery, it was joyfully mine. Could anything be more desirable than such a blending of jungle-clad mountains, verdurous hills, sheltered valleys, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... silent London house that was their home by force of dear companionship. Christopher saw it in a flash, saw it so clearly that he involuntarily glanced at his companion to assure himself of the remoteness of that dread chance. Hard on this thought pressed the knowledge that neither of these two men who had done so much for him made the least claim on his life or asked ought of him but success in his chosen line—and that knowledge was both sweet and ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... this, that here Mr. Peregrine Palmer was in a place whose remoteness lightened the pressure of conventional restraints, while its wildness tended to rouse all the old savage in him—its very look suggesting to the city-man its fitness for an unlawful deed for a lawful end. Persons more RESPECTABLE than Mr. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... 1619 a B.A. candidate from Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College), who failed to present himself for his 'grace', was excused 'because he had not been able to hear the bell owing to the remoteness of the region and the wind ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells

... cherished friends," they might perhaps have excited Pansy's childish jealousy but for the singular fact that they had all long ago been rewarded by marriage with senators, judges, and generals—also associates of the colonel. This remoteness of presence somewhat marred their effect as an example, and the colonel was mortified, though not entirely displeased, to observe that their surprising virtues did not destroy Pansy's voracity for sweets, the recklessness ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... are others of much smaller size. No approximation of the magnitude of telescopic stars can be arrived at; many of them may rival Sirius, Canopus, and Arcturus, in size and splendour, their apparent minuteness being a consequence of their extreme remoteness. If the Sun were removed a distance in space equal to that of many of the brightest stars, he would in appearance be reduced to a minute point of light or become altogether invisible; and there are other stars, situated at distances still more remote, of which sufficient is known to justify us ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... Island has three fathoms of water and can winter fifty ships. Landing and looking about us, we experience a feeling of remoteness, of alienation from the world of railroads and automobiles and opera tickets. Back of the harbour are the officers' quarters of the whaling company, the barracks of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, the huts of the Eskimo; in ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... Indies. The 5 French and 10 Spanish at Ferrol and the 6 or more ready for sea at Cadiz were held in check by forces barely adequate. In the Gulf of Lyons Nelson with 13 ships had since May, 1803, stood outside the distant but dangerous station of Toulon. Owing to the remoteness from bases, a close and constant blockade was here impossible; moreover, it was the policy to let the enemy get out in the hope of bringing ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... illustrate very clearly this perception of the remoteness of dream-life from waking experience. By the simple mind of primitive man this dream-world is regarded as similar in its nature or structure to our common world, only lying remote from this. The savage conceives that when ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... impropriety). I was told severely that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my recollections. "Alas!" I protested, mildly. "Could I begin with the sacramental words, 'I was born on such a date in such a place'? The remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all interest. I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related seriatim. I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass fatuous ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... commander's parting charge. They were about to depart for a life of comparative separation from the mass of the nation. Their remoteness and their occupations drew them away from the current of the national life, and gave them a kind of quasi-independence. They would necessarily be less directly under Joshua's control than the other tribes were. He sends them away with one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... formerly supposed to be the case, the second highest summit of the Downs. The view is superb both northwards to the Weald and southwards over the Channel. Alciston calls for little comment, the charm of the place consists in its air of remoteness and peace. The small church is partly Norman, and in the walls of Court House Farm are the remains of a religious house. Note the ancient barn and dovecote. A mile to the north is another little hamlet called "Simson," and spelt Selmeston. The curious wooden pillars in the church were fortunately ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... calling anxiously through the neighboring wood for the lost Sukey of the herd, and at times a dusty rumble announced a wagon jolting homeward over the unseen road away to his right. Dan's sense of satisfaction was possibly heightened by this mingling of nearness and remoteness. He had all life at his ear, so to speak, yet held it back by his will, as one might listen at the receiver of a telephone and yet refuse to yield up one's own presence by opening the lips in response. And here there was no "central" to cut him off, though he ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... sovereigns of neighbouring nations paid similar visits of ceremony and of curiosity, yet this illustrious woman is particularly noticed in the sacred page, on account perhaps of her sex, her inquisitiveness, the remoteness of her situation, the magnificence of her equipage and offerings; but especially the piety of her views, and the impressive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... white and gray, with old rococo moulding over the doorways and mantlepiece. The open garden gateway, with its tangled vines, makes a frame for the picture that lies beyond the little grassy esplanade where the thistles have been suffered to grow around a disused stone well, placed at quaint remoteness from the house (if, indeed, it is not a relic of an earlier habitation), a picture of a wide green country rising beyond the unseen valley, and stretching away to a far horizon in deep blue lines of wood. Behind, through other windows, you look ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... of the difficulty of recognition, of the remoteness of the field, and of the expense attending the recovery of any remains, particularly those of the enemy, that, left hastily behind in retreat, were commonly buried in trenches without headboard or record. She said, sadly, that she had very little ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... the devastation. Not a single chair, table, sofa, etagere or console had been left in the state rooms of the Intendencia. His Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was very far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his siesta? He had expected to find comfort and luxury in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... fail of their usual influence, though they meet with no impediment to their operation. But philosophers, observing that, almost in every part of nature, there is contained a vast variety of springs and principles, which are hid, by reason of their minuteness or remoteness, find that it is at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of contrary causes. This possibility is converted into ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... fact, it was the very saddest picture ever painted or conceived; it involved an unfathomable depth of sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer by a sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this beautiful girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set her in a far-off region, the remoteness of which—while yet her face is so close before us—makes us shiver ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... statute of the Twelve Tables, which, with the simplicity proper to all legislation, conferred reciprocal rights of succession on all agnates alike, whether males or females, and excluded no degree by reason merely of its remoteness, after the analogy of family heirs; but it was introduced by the jurists who came between the Twelve Tables and the imperial legislation, and who with their legal subtleties and refinements excluded females other ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... implied in her remoteness seemed to trigger a polarized reaction in Nuwell. The furious dark eyes melted suddenly, the stubborn anger of the face altered on the instant to a sentimental, wistful ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... his arm over my neck; there was the calming austerity of death on his lips, that just touched my ear and departed, together with the far-away sound of the words, losing themselves in the remoteness of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... Headley was of a different opinion. He thought that the very remoteness of his post, rendered it the more necessary that no appearance of carelessness should be remarked by the tribes of Indians, who were in the vicinity, and who, however amicable their relations THEN with the United States, might later, from caprice or ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... translators. Few will deny that Coleridge's wondrous "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" stands at their very head. "Le Juif-Errant" would have claims, had Beranger been a greater poet; and, but for their remoteness from popular sympathy, "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Blessed Damozel" might be added to the list. It was given to Edgar Allan Poe to produce two lyrics, "The Bells" and The Raven, each of which, although perhaps of less beauty than those of Tennyson and Rossetti, is a unique. ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... follow that the range of variety in the sidereal system is enormously greater than had been supposed, and that estimates of distance based upon apparent magnitude must be wholly futile. Thus, the splendid Canopus, Betelgeux, and Rigel can be inferred, from their indefinite remoteness, to exceed our sun thousands of times in size and lustre; while many inconspicuous objects, which prove to be in our relative vicinity, must be notably his inferiors. The limits of real stellar magnitude are then set very widely apart. At ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... booming against the castle walls. I arose, looked out of the window of my bedchamber, and saw that the whole prospect bore an air of savage wildness. As I contemplated the scene, my imagination was seized with the idea of remoteness from civilized society: the melancholy feeling of solitary grandeur took possession of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... poor old boy was! Skipworth wondered, with a sudden twist at his heart, if the war was playing the deuce with his home people, too. Was his own father going to pieces like this, and had his mother's gay vivacity fallen into that still remoteness of Lady Sherwood's? But of course not! The Carys hadn't suffered as the poor Sherwoods had, with their youngest son, Curtin, killed early in the war, and now Gerald knocked out so tragically. Lord, he thought, how they must all bank on Chev! And of course they would want to hear at once ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... his doubt on Will's uneven character; he pictured Blanchard's fight with the world and showed how probable it was that he would make it a losing battle by his own peculiarities of temper. He declared the remoteness of happiness for Miss Lyddon in that direction to be extreme; he deplored the unstable nature of a young man's affection all the world over; and he made solid capital out of the fact that not once since his departure had her lover communicated with Phoebe. She argued against ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... remoteness of people from the truth, there is another cause which prevents people from seeing the obligation for them of the simplest and most natural personal, physical labor for themselves: this is the complication, the inextricability of the conditions, the ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... system as he describes rather than the revelation of an all-wise and benevolent ruler. It is true, as 'Philip Beauchamp' argues, that the system has all the faults of the worst human legislation; that the punishment is made atrociously—indeed infinitely—severe to compensate for its uncertainty and remoteness; and that (as he would clearly add), to prevent it from shocking and stunning the intellect, it is regarded as remissible in consideration of vicarious suffering. If, then, the religion is really what its dogmas declare, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... tea-time, she was met by a stream of nurses, protesting infants and middle-aged women on their way home. And as the men who had just arrived from a day's business in the city made straight for their lodgings, Thorhaven in the very midst of the season took on an air of exclusion—of remoteness. You could notice the wash of the ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... of once lived here." Dickie's voice had taken on a certain remoteness, and even Lorrimer knew that here questions stopped. He accepted a chair, declined "the makings," proffered a cigarette. During these amenities his eyes ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... probably been quite passive, and rarely with the man, who is ever the real transgressor. Having a man down after her at Nuncombe Putney! It had never struck Martha as very horrible that Brooke Burgess should fall in love with Dorothy in the city;—but this meeting, in the remoteness of the country, out of sight even of the village, was almost indecent; and all, too, with Miss Stanbury's will just, as one might say, on the balance! Dorothy ought to have buried herself rather than have allowed Brooke to see her at Nuncombe Putney; and Dorothy's mother and Priscilla must be worse. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... crisscross network, showed clearly against the blue sky. She looked in vain for birds. Then her gaze went wonderingly to the lofty fringed rim of the great amphitheater, and as she studied it she began to grasp its remoteness, how far away it was in the rarefied atmosphere. A black eagle, sweeping along, looked of tiny size, and yet he was far under the heights above. How pleasant she fancied it to be up there! And drowsy fancy lulled ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... than the Temple, for in Him, in no symbol but in reality, abode and abides the fulness of that unnameable Being whom we name Father and God. And not only does the fulness abide, but in Him that awful Remoteness becomes for us a merciful Presence; the infinite abyss and closed sea of the divine nature hath an outlet, and becomes a 'river of water of life.' And as the ancient name of that Temple was the 'Tent of Meeting,' the place where Israel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, almost with a shock, that one of them was hers, Dolly, the companion of her girlhood and womanhood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows and sung her joys. A moistness welled into her eyes at the sight, and she came back from the remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and sorrow, to be ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... that in the idea of a sepulchre there is something funereal, and this was thus removed, after wards they cautiously admitted into the sepulchre something atmospheric, with an appearance of thin vapor, by which with proper remoteness they signified spiritual life in baptism. Afterwards I saw a representation by the angels of the Lord's descent to those that are "bound," and of His ascent with these into heaven, and this with incomparable ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... classing him with the other great Florentines. Nay, by a happy irony of things, the reasons for this exclusion are probably those to which we owe the very purity and perfection of this man's Tuscan quality. For the remoteness of his home on the southernmost border of Tuscany, and in a river valley—that of the Upper Tiber—leading away from Florence and into Umbria, may have kept him safe from that scientific rivalry, that worry and vexation of professional problems, which told so badly on so many Florentine craftsmen. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... out, still unnoted, and went to the supper-room for more cups of coffee. But that minute had set its seal on his heart for ever. She was sitting there alone with her side to the entrance, so that he had to pass around in order to face her. Her elegance and a certain air she had of remoteness from the scene of which she was the glowing center when she smiled, awed him and made his hand loosen a little on the slender stiletto he held close against the bottom of the tray. But such resolution does not easily ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... possibly many people were a little stupid in seeing that their own time was over. Of course he had thought, in a vague way, that his working time couldn't be much longer, but it seemed part of the way human beings managed with themselves that things in even the very near future kept the remoteness of future things. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... peculiar charm, that they combine in one exquisite presentation the passions that are living with the picturesqueness that is dead. And when we have the modern spirit given to us in an antique form, the very remoteness of that form can be made a method of increased realism. This was Shakespeare's own attitude towards the ancient world, this is the attitude we in this century should adopt towards his plays, and with a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... cannot afford to ignore this potential rival. The cheaper labor of India is quite an element in her favor, but cheap labor is not always cheap. One educated Minnesotan, with his machinery, must count for many spindle-shanked Hindoos with their wooden rakes. India's remoteness from Europe and the lack of inland transportation facilities, give America the vantage-ground. The present low price of wheat in Liverpool today, however, warns our western friends that there are other great sources of supply. Until 1873, only ten ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... incedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in revel or war, is still an angel's hair, and glorious under a halo. Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she rebelled. Heaven's light, following her exile, pierces its confines, and discloses their forlorn remoteness. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... essential to that accuracy of judgment to which alone finality can be attributed,—first, the diligent and close study of detail, by which knowledge is completed; and, second, a certain detachment of the mind from the prejudgments and passions engendered by immediate contact, a certain remoteness, corresponding to the idea of physical distance, in virtue of which confusion and distortion of impression disappear, and one is enabled not only to distinguish the decisive outlines of a period, but also to relegate ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... burnished blue. Here, there, the etherial wonder of a mirage painted the sandy sea. Vast distances opened on all sides; the sparkling air, brilliant with what seemed a kind of suspended jewel-dust, made every object visible at an incredible remoteness. The wonder of that morning sun and desert could not be ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... his engine were soon to proceed to make the acquaintance of other friends and admirers further along the line. Llanbrynmair was soon to be reached, and another writer in the local Press is moved to compare its former remoteness, "verging close upon the classic 'Ultima Thule' of the first Roman," with the new conditions. "The railway," he says, "with its snorting, puffing and Vesuvian volumes of clouds, now to a certain extent breaks upon the whilom monotony of this valley among ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... sufficient authority and force on the idea. I rather choose to ascribe this incredulity to the faint idea we form of our future condition, derived from its want of resemblance to the present life, than to that derived from its remoteness. For I observe, that men are everywhere concerned about what may happen after their death, provided it regard this world; and that there are few to whom their name, their family, their friends, and their country are in any period of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... lonely places. There are those who have known it, and for shame have scarce dared to own it, in highland glens, in the loneliness of an island in the western sea, in a green valley amongst the "solemn, kindly, round-backed hills" of the Scottish Border, in the remoteness of the Australian bush. They have no reasons to give—or their reasons are far-fetched. Only, to them as to Mowgli, Fear came, and the fear seemed to them to come from a malignant something from ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... and law; and it was not a nation nor were its provinces nations, yet everywhere but in Italy it prepared them for becoming nations. And while everywhere else parts were uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the English of an American. It brought the man too near for confidence. They might easily find themselves involved in a host of common acquaintances, a fact that would preclude intimate talk. Had he been a Russian the remoteness of each from the other's world would have made the exchange of secrets—perhaps of secret griefs—a possibility. Not so with a man whom one might meet the next time one entered a club in New York. Such a man ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... with himself had brought a faint flush to her cheek, but without lowering her eyes she stood regarding him with her warm, grave smile. The pale oval of her face, framed in the loosened waves of her black hair, had for him all the remoteness that surrounded her memory; and yet, though he knew it not, the appeal she made to him now, and had made long ago, was that he recognised in her, however dumbly, a creature born, like himself, with the power to experience the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... from every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose, unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph, leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. For the first time, as his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out of these floating and fugitive ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... of which have been known to weigh from seventeen to twenty pounds, and their cusps elevated into great mammae-like protuberances, to which the creature owes its name, and wholly differ in their proportions and outline from the grinders of the elephant. The much greater remoteness of the mastodonic period in Europe than in America is a circumstance worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts that seem to indicate a general transposition of at least the later geologic ages on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Groups ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... activity consists primarily of subsistence farming and fishing. The islands have few mineral deposits worth exploiting, except for high-grade phosphate. The potential for a tourist industry exists, but the remoteness of the location and a lack of adequate facilities ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... of these Northland men; hurry is not necessary where time is unrecognised, and turbulence of emotion, whether of grief or gladness, is felt to be out of place in a dream-being, whose sole reality is its unreality. Their personal unimportance to the Universe, and remoteness from the Market-place of Life allow them to dawdle. Their experiences have no sharp edges, no abrupt precipices, no divisive gulfs, no defined beginnings and endings. The book of their sojourn in this world has neither chapters ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... battle quarters and her decks all cleared for action The chase was called the 'Spitfire' by the Spaniards because she was much better armed than any other vessel there. But, all the same, her armament was nothing for her tonnage. The Spaniards trusted to their remoteness for protection; and that was ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... in the case of that universally used and apparently inconsequential word "the," to which the normal person can be expected to have such a large number of associations, of varying degrees of intimacy or remoteness, how much truer is it when we have such a definite mental fact or mental state as a dream as the starting-point of our ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... silence giving magic to the western hills and to the cloudless sky in the west. It was suggestive of peace and of remoteness, suggestive of things clarified, purged, made very wonderfully pure, but not coldly pure. When it died away into the breast of the softly advancing night, Nigel felt as if it had purged him of all confusion of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... them. In other words, Art aspires to interest permanently, and even to be more interesting the more it is seen; and when it does not proceed in the order of this "modest charm of not too much," this remoteness of meaning where far more is inferred than is directly shown, there we may be sure the vital principle of the thing ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... this fits in with Swedenborg's contention that physical remoteness has for its higher correspondence a difference of love and of interest; and physical juxtaposition, a similarity of these. In heaven, he says, "Angels of similar character are as it were spontaneously drawn together." So would it be on earth, but for ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... the stars low down there and thought of England and the home where I was brought up until the tears gathered, and with them went something of the dreadful burning aching out of my head. Those distant, silent, shining bodies amazingly intensified the sense of my loneliness and remoteness, and yonder Southern Cross and the luminous dust of the Magellanic clouds seemed not farther off than my native country. It is not in language to express the savage naked beauty, the wild mystery of the white still scene of ice, shining back to the stars with a light that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... And Time too; the remoteness of its origin, no less than the enormity of its proportions, screens an Egyptian Pyramid from the easy and familiar contact of our modern minds; at its base the common earth ends, and all above is a world—one not created of God, not ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... However the blame may be apportioned, the evil must be recognized as one which is bound to occur in the existing forms of democracy. Another evil, which is especially noticeable in large States, is the remoteness of the seat of government from many of the constituencies—a remoteness which is psychological even more than geographical. The legislators live in comfort, protected by thick walls and innumerable policemen from the voice of the mob; ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... peculiares) as pursued indifferently in all directions. The steady drift extricable from them by rules founded upon the science of probabilities is presumed to be solar motion visually transferred to them in proportions varying with their remoteness in space, and their situations on the sphere. If this presumption be in any degree baseless, the result of the inquiry is pro tanto falsified. Unless the deviations from the parallactic line of the stellar motions balance one another on the whole, their discussion may easily be as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... the most part uppermost in their thoughts, and about which habitually their hearts are most interested. This state of mind contributes, if the expression may be allowed, to rectify the illusions of vision, to bring forward into nearer view those eternal things which from their remoteness are apt to be either wholly overlooked, or to appear but faintly in the utmost bounds of the horizon; and to remove backward, and reduce to their true comparative dimensions, the objects of the present life, which ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... place to a dark tide suffusing his countenance. "You and David," he half stuttered, "getting married—like that." Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness from which she watched the conflicts of her family. "I know I'm fearfully bold, yes, indecent," Caroline went on, "and undutiful, impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me, later. But I won't apologize ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... phosphate deposits were exhausted at the time of independence from the UK in 1979. Copra and fish now represent the bulk of production and exports. The economy has fluctuated widely in recent years. Economic development is constrained by a shortage of skilled workers, weak infrastructure, and remoteness from international markets. Tourism provides more than one-fifth of GDP. The financial sector is at an early stage of development as is the expansion of private sector initiatives. Foreign financial aid from UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and China equals 25%-50% ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... search was renewed with zeal. We climbed the mountain-side, in the rear of the town, among vines, orchards, hamlets, terraces castles, and villas, to see one of the latter, which was refused on account of its remoteness from the lake. We then went to see a spot that was the very beau ideal of an abode for people like ourselves, who were out in quest of the picturesque. It is called the Chateau of Piel, a small hamlet, immediately on the shore of the lake, and quite near Vevey, while it is perfectly retired. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... captain and his men. The casting was to take place in the great plaza before the cathedral, that all might attend: it was long since any episode of war had caused such excitement and sorrow. The wild character and remoteness of the scene of the tragedy, the meagreness of detail which stung every imagination into action, the brilliancy and popularity of De la Torre, above all, the passionate sympathy felt for Delfina de Capalleja, served to shake society from peak to base, and no event had ever been anticipated ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... it follows that the condition of aesthetic enjoyment, or in other words the appreciation of beauty, is detachment of spirit and remoteness from practical consequences. The classic illustration of the truth is the saying of Lucretius, that it is sublime to stand on the shore and behold a shipwreck. It is sublime only as one's personal interests and feelings are not engaged. It would not be sublime ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes

... entered, and what it might be that he wished with me. I caught a glimpse of a smile that lurked vaguely on his lips. Neither this smile nor the expression of his eyes was forbidding, though both were uncanny and inexplicable. He seemed to be conscious of a remoteness which would render futile any effort of his ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... the salt tide had prevailed. Between where they stood and the distressed waters of the bay was a stretch of yellow sand. A little to their right was a dismantled, tumble-down cottage, which served to emphasise the romantic remoteness of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... But the very remoteness of the problem, its lack of contact with the practical world, fascinated me. It was like something that had drifted away in the fog, on a sea of unknown and fluctuating currents. The only possible way to find it was to commit yourself to the same wandering tides and drift after ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... excessively pictorial stanzas of "The Ancient Mariner." Ryder has typified himself in this excellent portrayal of sea disaster, this profound spectacle of the soul's despair in conflict with wind and wave. Could any picture contain more of that remoteness of the world of our real heart as well as our real eye, the artist's eye which visits that world in no official sense but only as a guest or a courtly spectator? No artist, I ought to say, was ever more master of his ideas and less ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... Comte de Brienne, whose thirty villages are to demand liberty of the Convention.[1339] The rest, for the most part liberals, content themselves with discussions on public affairs and on political economy. In fact, the difference in manners, the separation of interests, the remoteness of ideas are so great that contact between those most exempt from haughtiness and their immediate tenantry is rare, and at long intervals. Arthur Young, needing some information at the house of the Duc de Larochefoucauld himself, the steward is sent for. "At an English nobleman's, there would ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... eyes more luminous, and his voice shaking through the atmosphere almost like wind, his personality, in some curious fashion, seemed at the same time to retire and become oddly tinged with a certain remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twice caught himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or pagan figure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that presently he, Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most wonderful vision the world had ever known. His imagination, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... of the incessant efforts of the present French administration to preserve the old monuments of Morocco from injury, and her native arts and industries from the corruption of European bad taste, the impression of mystery and remoteness which the country now produces must inevitably vanish with the approach of the "Circular Ticket." Within a few years far more will be known of the past of Morocco, but that past will be far less visible to the traveller than it is ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... nearer we approach those countries which were once inhabited by the sons of Noah, in the greater perfection we find the arts and sciences; whereas they seem to be either neglected or forgotten, in proportion to the remoteness of nations from them; so that, when men attempted to revive those arts and sciences, they were obliged to go back to the source from whence they ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... direction of the enemy. So rapid were his movements, so vigilant his watch, so well devised his plans, that he reached the Pedee country long before his approach was suspected. His presence, on the present occasion, was a surprise. It had long been a terror; so much so that but for his remoteness at the camp of Greene, they had, in all probability, never ventured to resume their arms. Three separate bodies of men, by a judicious arrangement of our partisan, were prepared to enter their country at the same moment. These were so placed, that, though operating separately, they might yet be ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct tho rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... her elegance, her rank, all charmed and fascinated him; but her sympathy with Erin was irresistible. It was not the first time that he had been in love, by a great many times. The list of the idols he had worshipped stretched backwards to the dim remoteness of boyhood. But to-day, awakening all at once to a keen perception of his hapless state, he told himself that he had never loved before as ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... the emperors abandoned Rome, the ancient seat of their dominion, and fixed their residence at Constantinople; for by this step they exposed the western empire to the rapine of both their ministers and their enemies, the remoteness of their position preventing them either from seeing or providing for its necessities. To suffer the overthrow of such an extensive empire, established by the blood of so many brave and virtuous men, showed no less folly in the princes ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... that there was something eerie in the isolation and remoteness of St. Enimie. Compared to the savagery and desolation of the Causses, it was a little modern Babylon—a corner of Paris, a bit of boulevard and bustle, but with such narrow accommodation, and with such limited means of locomotion ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... me. On the one side, not the warriors of a nation that has made its mark in war, but peaceful peasants who had sought this place for its remoteness from persecution, to live and die in harmony with all mankind. On the other, the sinewy advance guard of a race that knows not peace, whose goddess of liberty carries in her hand a sword. The plough might have been graven on our arms, but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... remoteness of the North are many of his kind—the black sheep, the undesirables, the discards of the pack. Their lips are sealed; their eyes are cold as glaciers, and often they drink deep. Oh, they are a mighty company, the men you don't enquire about; but it is the code of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... of last night, and in accordance too with the custom of the time. He would there, perchance, learn more of her, of her home, of her life, of her friends. But would he excite in her the interest she was exciting in him? The thought of his possible remoteness from her, pained him and made his heart sink. The noblest characters experience strange sensations of desolation and wretchedness at the thought of disapproval and rejection. Esteem, the testimony of our neighbor's appreciation, the approval of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... encountered Mrs. Perceval's direct look. She bowed to him with that regal air of hers that for all its graciousness yet managed to impart a sense of remoteness to the man she ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... beauty is realized instantly. So, also, with respect to other objects of an opposite character; they can speak without deliberating, and call them plain, homely, ugly, and so on, thus instinctively expressing even their degree of remoteness from the condition of beauty. Who ever called a pelican beautiful, or even many animals endeared to us by their valuable qualities,—such as the intelligent and docile elephant, or the affectionate orang-outang, or the faithful mastiff? Nay, we may run through a long list of most useful and ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness, perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "Behold how the other half lives!" The Russian writes of the poor, as it were, from within, as one of them, with no eye to theatrical effect upon the well-to-do. There is ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... the natives with awe and respect for the colonists, and to give Liberia an independent position in the eyes of foreigners. A year before his death, it was my good fortune to be a shipmate of this great and excellent man; for great and excellent I do not hesitate to call him, although the remoteness of his sphere of action has left his name comparatively obscure. Like all who came in contact with him, I was deeply impressed with his pure, high, determined, and chivalric character. In a grove, near the village, he selected ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... of the moon from the sun is double her remoteness from the earth. The mathematicians, that her distance from the sun is eighteen times her distance from the earth. Eratosthenes, that the sun is remote from the earth seven hundred ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the stained-glass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the Southern heat of passionate conviction that coloured his slow Northern speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his deep-set eyes, that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably never practised,—all this led to our ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the surprise of it his senses whirled, but even in the chaos of the moment he was conscious of two conflicting impressions—the first, an odd disappointment in her, his friend; the second, an absurd resentment against the singular remoteness of those cool, soft lips that for an instant brushed his own. She gave ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... in my case, it was not a subject of reasoning or of faith; I could derive no comfort, either directly from the unbelief which, upon religious subjects, some men avow to their own minds; or secretly from the remoteness and incomprehensibility of the conception: it was an affair of sense; I felt the fangs of the tiger striking deep into ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... my shoes as though she speculated on the remoteness of the journey I had come if it were measured by my ignorance, replied, "The urn, stranger, the urn does that—what else? How it may be in that out-fashioned region you have come from I cannot tell, but here—'tis so ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... that X must have had a hand in it. And yet, had these coincidences then been observed, they would certainly—now that strong suspicions had been directed to the man from the extraordinary character of his nocturnal precautions—not have passed without investigation. But the remoteness of Bristol, and the rarity of newspapers in those days, caused these indications to pass unnoticed. Bristol knew of no such Knutsford highwayman—Knutsford knew of no such Bristol murder. It is singular enough that these earlier grounds of suspicion against ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... there, shone clean and fresh in the sparkle of morning. Except for a black cat whose fur glistened like jet, dozing on a white doorstep, the settlement, steeped in sunshine, showed no sign of life. There was a strange remoteness from time about the place; a sort of emptiness, and a silence that ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... success, and their immense national value, are convincing proofs of the determined energy of the Southern character, now that it has been roused; and also of the zeal and skill of Colonel Rains. He told me that Augusta had been selected as a site for these works on account of its remoteness from the probable seats of war, of its central position, and of its great facilities of transport; for this city can boast of a navigable river and a canal, besides being situated on a central railroad. Colonel ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... assassin managed to enter and leave Mr. Whitmore's office without being seen by the clerks. The point is, that Collins wasn't within fifteen miles of Mr. Whitmore's office on the day Mr. Whitmore was found dead. And the same circumstance of remoteness from the scene of the crime, absolves Mrs. Collins, Mr. Ward and Beard from participation ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... begins to know that there is a past, he has a most noble rod to measure it by—he has his own ten years. He attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting into the extremities of the past. He assigns the Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... put them on, with a dazed obedience. His hand shook in buckling them. Mary Ellen passed him his coat, but he noticed that she did not offer to hold it for him. There was suddenly a fine remoteness in her presence, as if a frosty air had come between them. The parson put the sermon in his inner pocket, and buttoned his coat tightly over it. Then he pinned on his shawl. At the door ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... Multitude: what remedy of composure do these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly. In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some courteous, deferent ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... distances. His voice dropped and softened, and, when he spoke again, she felt vaguely and strangely that he was hardly thinking of her or her question, except as a part of the great wonder-world surrounding and enfolding their companioned remoteness. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... two stupendous tasks—that of winning the favor and support of the frontiersmen and that of rallying the rapidly dwindling forces in Kentucky in defense of the settlements. Recognizing the difficulty of including Martin's Station, because of its remoteness, with the government provided for Transylvania, Judge Henderson prepared a plan of government for the group of settlers located in Powell's Valley. In a letter to Martin (July 30th), in regard to the recent energetic defense of the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... more, "how fair and dear you are become to me in your remoteness. But oh, if you appear so beautiful from this summit, what must you appear from the summit of the clouds?" And he glanced from the earth to the sky, and saw the sun running down his airy hill. "Dear Temptress!" he said, ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... sandwiches were wrapped in—part of some back number of The Working Man. Or perhaps it would happen that he felt something in the air, that passed him by, something in which he had no part; and then he would raise his head with a listening expression. But Ellen was familiar with the remoteness that came into his eyes at such times, and she knew how to dispel ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... her new frock when she reached the studio on Monday morning. She greeted Mr. Garfinkel with an entreating smile, and was alarmed by the remoteness of his response. He was cold because she was not for him. He led her respectfully to the anteroom of the sacred inclosure where Ferriday was behaving like a lion in a cage, belching his wrath at his keepers, ordering the fund-finders ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... eagerness, and marked social readiness of manner, Charmian was disagreeably conscious of a mental remoteness in him. Only the tip of his mind, perhaps scarcely that, was in touch with hers. Now she almost regretted that she had chosen to begin their acquaintance with absurdity, that she had approached Heath with a pose. She scarcely knew why she had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... of cattle, which continued a certain lucrative employment, long after agricultural produce had become of a depreciated and precarious value. The reason why these two branches of husbandry did not keep pace in this as in other countries, is obvious, from the remoteness of its situation, which rendered the conveyance of cattle thither so extremely difficult and expensive, that but a very limited supply of them was furnished, in comparison with its necessities. The increase, therefore, of these cattle could only be proportionate to their number; ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... for such an object should not be, in the case of the United States, military but economic, by means of the definite organization of non-intercourse against the recalcitrant power. America's position of geographical and historical remoteness from European quarrels places her in a particularly favorable position to direct this world organization, and the fact of undertaking it would give her in some sense the moral leadership of the western world, and make her the centre of the World ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... this regulation, by which Athens obtained the most extensive influence, and an almost absolute dominion over the allies, was possibly found in other Grecian states which had subject confederates, such as Thebes, Elis, and Argos. But on account of the remoteness of many countries, it is impossible that every trifle could have been brought before the court at Athens; we must therefore suppose that each subject state had an inferior jurisdiction of its own, and that the supreme jurisdiction alone belonged to Athens. Can it, indeed, be supposed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... times, and these accounts are such delightful reading that a few extracts must be quoted. They begin with the year 1573; the quaintness of diction and the "indifferent spelling" add piquancy and remoteness to some of ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... had been early dissipated and I had settled down to a struggle for mere existence. On one essential fact, too, was I silent. It arose to my mind as I told my brief story and it spread like a cloud darkening this brightest of my days. You know what the shadow was. By her absence, by her remoteness, Gladys Todd had for me a shadow's unreality. At this moment the tie between us was so attenuated that it was hard for me to believe that it existed at all. I knew that it did exist, but I could not surrender myself to be bound by so frail a thread. I was silent. Childlike, I wished the clouds ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... river, then, or on some old backwater. She remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning—had it only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had been her life before—she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... well," said Tregelly. What was more, it looked so well that the big fellow decided to stay there at once, and put in his pegs, the only drawback seeming to be its remoteness from the scattered claims of the others up ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... herself descends From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal bends 190 That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven's remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty's praise? Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My noble pain that heightened all my years With crowns ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... smooth calmness of surface—to watch all this is to intimately taste a great delicious joy of life. The researches of the historian of bygone times are fascinating—absorbingly fascinating, although he is always handicapped by remoteness; but the historian of to-day—of his day—this day—whose day-page of history is read by hundreds of readers, the day after has set to him a task that calls for all, and more than all, that he can give—stimulates while it appalls, and would be killingly wearying if it were not so fascinatingly ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... kindred with Sir William, David Gordon received better treatment than he might have expected, and in a short time was allowed to go free, either on an exchange of prisoners or more probably on his parole. This incident is specially interesting, because, after making every allowance for the remoteness and vagueness of the old Highland custom of cousinship, it seems to bring Charles Gordon's ancestry into sufficiently close relationship with the main Gordon stem of the Huntlys. After his release David Gordon does ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... and his natural flirtatiousness towards beauty guarded him specially in his relations with a woman. He would have liked to draw her out, but though she murmured and smiled and seemed to be enjoying what he told her, he remained conscious of that mysterious remoteness which constituted half her fascination. He could not bear women who threw their shoulders and eyes at you, and chattered away; or hard-mouthed women who laid down the law and knew more than you did. There was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him—charm; and the quieter it was, the more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of Dramatic Reality. A romantic allegory like 'The Faerie Queene' does not aim at intense lifelikeness—a certain remoteness from the actual is one of its chief attractions. But sometimes in Spenser's poem the reader feels too wide a divorce from reality. Part of this fault is ascribable to the use of magic, to which there is repeated ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... are no less neighborly In their ethereal remoteness swung, Than these near human orbits wherein we Live out our lives and speak ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... violent contrasts and equal elements of good and mischief. If Emineh, his wife, was a model of virtue, his father-in-law, Capelan, was a composition of every vice—selfish, ambitious, turbulent, fierce. Confident in his courage, and further emboldened by his remoteness from the capital, the Pacha of Delvino gloried in setting law ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... no means the largest known in his own circle, to her seemed appalling. The Emperor could not have been more distant from her than this magnate, who, although he had been born in Como and was said to love his Como villas better than any of his other houses, yet had about him the awful remoteness of Rome. Of course she could never be admitted to his presence. She could only store up a few more coins each year and ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... loved the remoteness and seclusion of the great prairie, and many of their divisions have been known as the "prairie" tribes. They seem to have lived for the most part in separate, roving bands, which divided "according to the abundance or scarcity of game, or the emergencies of war." Encouraged by the English, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... will and inevitability gradually diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in relation to which we contemplate a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... is popularly written and pronounced, the Rose is a tract of land in the south-west of the Duchy of Cornwall, ten miles long and six at its greatest breadth, which on account of its remoteness from the railway, its unusual geological formation, and its peninsular shape possesses both in the character of its inhabitants and in the peculiar aspects of the natural scene all the limitations and advantages of an island. The main ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... measure of the remoteness. Stephen's Green was not then a place of square-set granite pavement, tram-rails and large swift-moving electric trams; it was a leisurely promenade where large slow-moving country gentlemen turned out in tall hats and frock-coats. We of Miss ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... had never had any but the most casual acquaintance with Mr. Linton—such an acquaintance as one has with one's host at a house where one has occasionally dined. He had dined at Mr. Linton's house more than once; but then he had been seated in such proximity to Mrs. Linton as necessitated his remoteness from Mr. Linton. Therefore he had never had a chance of becoming intimate with that gentleman. Why, then, should that gentleman desire an ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... his name in the newspaper—an incidental reference to him in connection with local politics. The other times were when men talking together in the drinking places frequented by both sexes spoke of him as a minor power in the organization. Each time she got a sense of her remoteness, of her security. Once she passed in Grand Street a detective she had often seen with him in Considine's at Broadway and Forty-second. The "bull" looked sharply at her. Her heart stood still. But he went on without recognizing her. The sharp glance had been ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... tyranny in Government, would be an insult to the reader's understanding. Happily for the Inhabitants of Westmoreland, as no dispositions existing among them could furnish a motive for this restrictive measure, so they will not be sorry that their remoteness from scenes of public confusion, has placed them where they will be slow to give an unqualified opinion upon its merits. Yet it will not escape their discernment, that, if doubts might have been ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... to the Basin of Mines, where he found a small but prosperous settlement. "It seems to me," he wrote to the minister, "that these people live like true republicans, acknowledging neither royal authority nor courts of law."[93] It was merely that their remoteness and isolation made them independent, of necessity, so far as concerned temporal government. When Brouillan reached Port Royal he found a different state of things. The fort and garrison were in bad condition; but the adjacent settlement, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... presently. It was soothing to find his mood understood and appreciated. And they passed on to talk of the mountain village, its isolation, its remoteness from worldly life, its peculiar fitness for meditation and worship, and for ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with during the day is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... growth of the Australian colonies, their remoteness from the mother country, and the vastness of the territory over which they are spread, naturally suggest the question whether they are destined to remain in a condition of dependence or are likely to follow the example of their American prototypes. On this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... time intimates that the severities of the residencia could be mitigated and no doubt such was the case in the Philippines. [60] By the end of the eighteenth century the residencia seems to have lost its efficacy. [61] The governorship was certainly a difficult post to fill and the remoteness from Europe, the isolation, and the vexations of the residencia made it no easy task to get good men for the place. An official of thirty years experience, lay and ecclesiastical, assures us in the early seventeenth century that he had known of only one governor ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... knowledge inescapable that it will look on with idle interest while he cuts your hair or covers your honest face with lather. Only the harmless necessary assistant will see you measured, and he, by long practise, has acquired an air of remoteness and indifference that makes him next thing to invisible. So complete indeed is this tactful abstraction that one might imagine him a man newly fallen ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... this temporary reluctance of the grocer is a good thing, or evidence of a good condition of poetic feeling in the grocery business as a whole. There certainly should be an ideal image of health and happiness in any trade, and its remoteness from the reality is not the only important question. No one supposes that the mass of traditional conceptions of duty and glory are always operative, for example, in the mind of a soldier or a doctor; that the Battle ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... little village, which lies so snugly hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... be fully aware of the extraordinary remoteness of that period of which our history treats. To attempt to define that period chronologically would be utterly futile. When we have stated that it is more ancient than almost any other period which we can discuss, we have expressed all that we are really entitled ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... resources in us: for we, the noblest sons of Britain, and therefore stationed in its last recesses, far from the view of servile shores, have preserved even our eyes unpolluted by the contact of subjection. We, at the furthest limits both of land and liberty, have been defended to this day by the remoteness of our situation and of our fame. The extremity of Britain is now disclosed; and whatever is unknown becomes an object of magnitude. But there is no nation beyond us; nothing but waves and rocks, and the still more hostile Romans, whose arrogance we cannot escape by obsequiousness and submission. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... mammals in relation to the remoteness of islands from continents, there is also a relation, to a certain extent independent of distance, between the depth of the sea separating an island from the neighbouring mainland, and the presence in both of the same ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Remoteness" :   farness, distance, unsociability, far cry, unsociableness, standoffishness, withdrawnness, remote, nearness, unapproachability



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