"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was a vague impression in the Newt family—Boniface had already mentioned it to his son Abel—that there was something that Uncle Lawrence never talked about—many things indeed, of course, but still something in particular. Outside the family nothing was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... very vague term," said he smiling again more quietly. "But you have had an opportunity of knowing it much better of late than I—to which class of bright faces would you refer this one? Where ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... every nerve to bind still further with the sentiment of confidence the unity of the Confederation. (Applause.) Where is now the old talk which we used to hear from a few of the faint-hearted of a change in destiny or of annexation? (Cheers.) It does not exist. To be sure, here I have heard some vague terror expressed, but it is a terror which I have heard expressed among our friends on the American Pacific Slope also, and it is to the effect that annexation must soon take place to the Celestial Empire. (Great laughter.) Well, gentlemen, I fully sympathise with this fear. None of us like to ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... MENANDER of India, EUTHYDEMUS, and PERSIA, Ancient History.) Of the details of their history and extent of their dominion in different reigns we know almost nothing, and conjecture is often dependent on such vague data as are afforded by the collation of the localities in which the coins of independent princes have been found. But their power extended certainly over the Kabul basin, and probably, at times, over the whole of Afghanistan. The ancient ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... did take; when Anthony was eleven they went abroad, to England and Switzerland, and there in the best hotel in Lucerne his father died with much sweating and grunting and crying aloud for air. In a panic of despair and terror Anthony was brought back to America, wedded to a vague melancholy that was to stay beside him through the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... on the deck, and the young Jewish brain and the old Jewish brain mingled and digested a course of conduct to meet every imaginable contingency; for the facts they at present possessed were only general and vague. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... early ideas of the church, its doctrines, and of the teachings of Christ as revealed in the New Testament, were rather general and vague. As is usual, it was chiefly a matter of hereditary traditions. After I found my way back to Christ and to belief in the Word of God, the question naturally arose, which church shall I join, if any? Sectarian divisions had a hand in driving me into infidelity ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... have charmed him when he first came to the prairie with romantic hopes and vague ambitions. He had been fastidious then, and the image of a very different girl occupied his heart. Even now he knew the other stood for all that was best in life; for tender romances, and sweetness, and high purpose. Helen had gracious qualities he had once half-reverently admired. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... promise from Adeline that some time, when it was convenient, and if she was not too busy, and if nobody else wanted the boat, she would let her realize her ambition, but so far this promise had remained an empty one, a vague invitation that meant nothing. Diana, catching Adeline in the garden one afternoon, made a desperate effort to obtain ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... longer, i.e. till June 22, was agreed to by the Lords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of the late generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing was inevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, not content with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's services thus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant- general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which day a letter was ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... on the twelfth. I am not aware whether he had any intelligence at that time of the Meerut outbreak. The telegrams, when they did arrive, were vague; but he indubitably kept on his guard immediately on receiving them. The Cavalry were piqueted between the cantonments and the Residency, and the Infantry and Artillery were kept prepared for movement. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... this world ignorant, yet full of presentiments and questions. I learn my first vague lesson about myself and God. I naturally ask: For what purpose has God put me here? What does He wish me to do? The Catechism answers: To do His will, to keep His commandments. Here they are, and this is what they mean. I study them, and the more I study them, the more ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... May 5. We had slept half an hour. It was four o'clock, and a vague light heralding the ruddy dawn rose up above the eastern horizon. Kasim looked dreadfully ill; his tongue was swollen, white and dry, his lips bluish. He complained of a spasmodic hiccough that shook his whole body, a sign of the approach of death. The thick blood flowed sluggishly in his ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... had been followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The struggle thus approached. Military movements began at many points, like those distant flashes of lightning and vague mutterings which herald the tempest. Early in February Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected President of the Confederate States, at Montgomery. On the 13th of April Fort Sumter surrendered to General Beauregard, and on the next day, April 14, 1861, President Lincoln issued his ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fascination. The outer world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms of my comrades. Our array and our step connect us. We move as one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... have crumbled, may delight us with a more admirable representation than our own minds could have furnished of some one whose name we have long known, and of whose personal bearing, and habits, and daily thoughts, we had but a vague and misty idea; and acknowledging the fidelity of the portrait we may adopt it; and then this historical person becomes to us what the imagination of genius, not what history, has made him, and yet the portrait is probably one in which no contemporary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... make disclosures, which though, as I said, vague and imperfect, still promise to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... steals from underground, And to the spirit's ear there comes the sound, The whisper vague, and rustle delicate, Of myriad atoms stirring in their trance That for the lifted hand of Order wait, Taking their stations in the cosmic dance, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mona, "I never knew you to be so hopelessly vague. Now, for instance, how would it be if we gave a lovely motor ride to some poor shop girl, or somebody that never gets into ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Miss Grant exchanged a few syllables. Glenarvan was restless; he went in and out, while the Major was impassive. John Mangles, followed by Robert, went on the poop from time to time, to look at the weather. Paganel sat in his corner, muttering vague and incoherent words. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... but a memory, and glory is known for a delusion. Of all these delicate and short-lived emotions, none so resemble love as the passion of a young artist for his art, as he is about to enter on the blissful martyrdom of his career of glory and disaster, of vague ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... I know about Mother Guendolen? Some faint, vague, misty memories seemed to awake within me—an odd, incongruous mixture like a dream—dark eyes like Margaret's, which told a tale, but this seemed a tale of terror; and an enamelled cross, which had somewhat to do with a battle ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... lights under superincumbent bushels. Whatever was hers was everybody's, for she dispensed her favours with a liberal hand. She would never have permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fondle and kiss! Then the idea of a child reminded her of her own mother. She thought of the deep love one must feel for a child. And the image of the mistress, sad and alone, in the large house of the Rue Saint-Dominique, came to her mind. A vague remorse seized her heart. She felt she had behaved badly. She said to herself: "If, to punish me, Heaven will not grant me a child!" She wept, and soon her grief and trouble vanished with her tears. Sleep overpowered her, and ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... again in 483, the tribune proposed agrarian laws but what their nature was, Livy, who records them, does not tell us. From some vague assertions which he makes we may conclude that the point of the law was well known, and was but a repetition of that of Cassius.[1] The consul Caeso Fabius, in 484, and his brother Marcus in the following year, secured the opposition of the ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... Father Hecker's life that we first meet with a positive interference of an extraordinary kind in the plans and purposes of his life. Many men who have outlived them, and settled down into respectable but in nowise notable members of society, have felt vague longings and indefinite aspirations toward a good beyond nature during the "Storm and Stress" period of their youth. The record of their mental struggles gets into literature with comparative frequency, and sometimes becomes famous. It has always a certain value, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the window and looked out; but there was nobody there. She closed the window again and sat just beside it; the time went on, and she wondered whether he would come, asking herself whether he had been thinking of her as she of him; gradually her thoughts grew vague, and a kind of mist came over them. She nodded. Suddenly she roused herself with a start, fancying she had heard something; she listened again, and in a moment the sound was repeated, three or four gentle taps on the window. She opened it ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... them. There was a vague idea that a sort of convalescent or children's hospital might be established for the training of women intending to study medicine or nursing, chiefly at Miss Arthuret's expense, and Dolores was anxious to consider the possibility of placing it in the sweet mountain ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a Marcius or a Quinctius! It is quite unnecessary to comment on the silliness and bad taste of passages of this kind, but it is interesting to note that the facts of history are too strong even for Mr. Mahaffy. In spite of his sneers at the provinciality of national feeling and his vague panegyrics on cosmopolitan culture, he is compelled to admit that 'however patriotism may be superseded in stray individuals by larger benevolence, bodies of men who abandon it will only replace it by meaner motives,' and cannot ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... evening to reach the buoys, get the cable on board, test the first half, speak to Lowestoft, make the splice, and start. H- had not finished his work at Norderney, so I was alone on board for Reuter. Moreover the buoys to guide us in our course were not placed, and the captain had very vague ideas about keeping his course; so I had to do a good deal, and only lay down as I was for two hours in the night. I managed to run the course perfectly. Everything went well, and we found Norderney ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of her; and peering through the draperies saw their pursuing motor car at pause, not at the curb, but in the middle of the street before the house. The man's arm still rested on the sill of the window; the pale oval of the face above it was still vague. Abruptly both disappeared, a door slammed on the far side of the car, and the car itself, after a moment's wait, gathered way with whining gears and vanished, leaving nothing human visible ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... modest elevation; and to see, between yourself and them, many farm-houses and many little cottages dotted here and there. There, under your eye, how much of life, and of the interests of life, is going on! Looking at such things, you muse, in a vague, desultory way. I wonder whether when ordinary folk profess to be thinking, musing, or meditating, they are really thinking connectedly or to any purpose. I daresay the truth is they have (so to speak) given ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and Harriett on their confirmation morning had met the vicar in the Upper Richmond Road, having gone out, contrary to the desire expressed by him at his last preparation class, and how he had stopped and greeted them. She had tried to look vague and sad and to murmur something in spite of the bull's-eye in her cheek and had suddenly noticed as they stood grouped that Harriett's little sugar-loaf hat was askew and her brown eye underneath it was glaring fixedly at the vicar above the ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... discomfort she could not laugh at; there was something that braced her in mind and body in the mountain air; and Clarence no longer held a leading place in her memory. She realized now that the thought of him had hitherto occasioned her a vague uneasiness. Indeed, she was almost glad that he was far away; liberty was unexpectedly sweet, and though she had a few misgivings, she meant to ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... his usually smiling countenance growing sober for once, while his companions felt a vague uneasiness. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt. But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead. If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies. What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I left my bed and slipped out of my room on to the open terrace. Beyond our garden wall are fields of ripening rice. Through the gaps in the village groves to the North, glimpses of the river are seen. The whole scene slept in the darkness like the vague ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... as, with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise Yet scramble for no less, And read of public scandal, private fraud, Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud, Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, And all the unwholesome mess The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to lose Kathleen. The man had been somewhat vague about it, but the situation was clear to them, even though it was not so to him. Their claim to the child—the one they loved best of all—was no longer undivided. A real father had turned up to assert his rights. They might dispute his claim and make the affair so awkward and so unpleasant ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... all at once, to dally with the child. The maid was a sweet maid, an amiably irritating maid, well enough, in her way, to idle with; but the building of the ship was a substantial delight, subject to the mastery of a man with hands and a will, the end a sure achievement—no vague, elusive thing, sought in madness, vanishing in the grasp. I would be about this man's-work. Never was such a ship as this ship should be! And to the work went Judith and I. But presently, as never happened before, I was in some strange way conscious of Judith's ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... on the new-comer. Her features contracted with lines of pain. She drew the child aside, as if to hide it from sight. Then her face twitched, and she staggered back into the arms of the constable behind her. She was now insensible. Through the dense folds of the fog the vague faces of the spectators showed an ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... bribed," she answered, but with a rather heightened colour upon her cheek. And then she lifted up her face; but, as Percival perceived with a vague feeling of irritation, she merely suffered him to kiss her, and did not ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... late afternoon faded into evening. Gray twilight stole swiftly down. For a while the white fields of snow outside reflected a vague dimness; then night came with a noiseless rush, closing up the entrance to the cave with a ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... that Joseph Smith was severely wounded before he ran to the window, "and half leaped, half fell into the jail yard below. With his last dying energies he gathered himself up, and leaned in a sitting posture against the rude stone well curb. His stricken condition, his vague wandering glances, excited no pity in the mob thirsting for his life. A squad of Missourians, who were standing by the fence, leveled their pieces at him, and, before they could see him again for the smoke they made, Joe Smith was dead:" This is not ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to her feet, alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her and the door, she took up ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... no man seems to have had discoveries more at heart than he had. Besides this, this was the ultimate object of his Voyage.* (* It is conjectured that what Quiros saw was Tahiti, but his track on this voyage is very vague. There are certainly no islands in the latitude given except Pitcairn.) If Quiros was in the Latitude of 26 degrees and Longitude 146 degrees West, then I am certain that no part of the Southern Continent can no where extend so far to the Northward as the above mentioned Latitude. But the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... competitors the individual has been compelled to bring into being organs to fulfil a purpose. It is not the case that the organ was first created and then a use found for it, or use made of it. What actually happens is that first there is a vague but insistent reaching out towards an end, towards the fulfilment of some inner want or need—the need for food or to propagate, or whatever it may be—and that to achieve that end, or fulfil that need, the individual is driven to create a special organisation—as an Air Ministry ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... quarter of this century is the sense of unrest. The long period of European peace which began in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of those engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those Governments which still represented the system ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... little elves dance gently on each taper, Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shrouded corners— And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners, Great shadows sway like wind-blown sheets ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... possession of her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in the spring. What was the winter to her now! ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Indians, testy old cavaliers flourishing whiskers and sovereignty, or perhaps an idyllic peasantry la Jean Jacques, assailed by the prospect of smoky industrialism, and fighting for the Rights of Man. What does the word "Japan" evoke? Is it a vague horde of slant-eyed yellow men, surrounded by Yellow Perils, picture brides, fans, Samurai, banzais, art, and cherry blossoms? Or the word "alien"? According to a group of New England college students, writing in the year 1920, an alien was the following: [Footnote: The New Republic: ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... thereon, opened at those beautiful verses of "The Iris of the Deep," which he loved so well to hear her read. What could it mean? Calmly her breath came and went; but for that she appeared like a beautiful piece of statuary, her eyes turned upward, as if seeking for strength to meet the vague sense of desolation which was creeping into her heart. Upon the table were two notes, one addressed to her mother, the other to herself, in his hand-writing. With nerveless hand she broke the seal; no emotion was visible, save the delicate glow upon her cheek, which came ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... every question with which he dealt was accompanied by so complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or inaccurate statements were intolerable to him; but I think the patience with which he sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in the discipline of working under him. One felt it a crime ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... apprehensions, because he had been assured by Nicholas that Mistress Nutter would be removed to a place of perfect security, and because he was disposed, with the squire, to regard the prisoner's threats as mere ravings of impotent malice. Still he could not help feeling great uneasiness. Vague fears, too, beset him, which he found it in vain to shake off, but he did not communicate them to his sister, as he knew the terrifying effect they would have upon her timid nature; and he, therefore, kept the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he put in every tone), "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport, Violence—trade? Too true! I trust no vague report. Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear. What has she heard!—which, heard shall never be again. Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the—wain ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... exact nor eloquent. The thoughts are not precise; the expressions are vague; and, of consequence, the reasonings of no value. The attempts at rich displays of imaginative power are contrasted with a want of invention; and illustrative stories, of feeble execution, are lavished abundantly in lieu of physiological facts. The volumes are too insipid to cheat an idle hour ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the cross to earth, and break the King And all his Table.' Then they reached a glade, Where under one long lane of cloudless air Before another wood, the royal crown Sparkled, and swaying upon a restless elm Drew the vague glance of Vivien, and her Squire; Amazed were these; 'Lo there' she cried—'a crown— Borne by some high lord-prince of Arthur's hall, And there a horse! the rider? where is he? See, yonder lies one dead within the wood. Not dead; he ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... before us. Therefore more than one moiety of the Trojan horse has already got within the citadel—it has been there for twenty-five years, and yet what has proceeded from its bowels has only tended to augment the rate of increase in the progress of your shipping. Therefore, let us not be alarmed by vague and dreamy ratiocinations of evil, which had never been wanting on any occasion, and which never will be wanting so long as this is a free State, wherein every man can find full vent and scope for the expression, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... under which you and Baker were successively nominated and elected to Congress; and because the Whigs of the district are well acquainted with the system, and, so far as I know or believe, are well satisfied with it. If the old system be thought to be vague, as to all the delegates of the county voting the same way, or as to instructions to them as to whom they are to vote for, or as to filling vacancies, I am willing to join in a provision to make these ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... chemical tension, and thus prepared for future use. With this prevision, as shall subsequently be shown, the existence of the human race itself is inseparably connected. It is to be observed that Mayer's utterances are far from being anticipated by vague statements regarding the 'stimulus' of light, or regarding coal as 'bottled sunlight.' He first saw the full meaning of De Saussure's observation as to the reducing power of the solar rays, and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... It was the vague, half-formed fear that all the girls had felt, yet none had dared express, and the silence that followed was ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been compelled to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I ought to have been shamed by the contrast in our recollections—his, so clear and systematical—mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual American travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature, animate and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... yet my heart was not discouraged. The more I prayed, the more assured I was that the Lord would give the means. Yea, as fully assured was I that the Lord would do so, as if I had already seen the new premises actually before me. This assurance arose not from some vague, enthusiastical feeling, the mere excitement of the moment, but, 1. From the reasons already related, and especially from the commandment contained in Philip. iv. 5. For I saw that I should not act according to the mind of our Lord Jesus if I did not, as soon as I could, remove the orphans ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... that, but something else had died before him. She wondered if it were this same heart of hers; and then she noticed her baby's hood was crooked, and stopped at the next lamp-post to put it straight, and felt a vague sort of pity for it, when she saw its face was pinched and blue with cold, and pressed it closer to her, though she rather hoped to find it dead ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... solicitude, sympathy and pity; and, as a brother might bend over a sleeping sister, he bent over Selene and kissed her forehead. She moved, opened her eyes, gazed into his face—but her glance was so full of horror, so vague, glassy and bewildered, that he drew back with a shudder, and with hands uplifted could only stammer out: "Oh! Selene, Selene! do you not know me?" and as he spoke he looked anxiously in the face of the rescued girl; but she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of Colias spread an open sandy beach. The night waves lapped softly. The wind had sunk to warm puffs from the southward. They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiraeus rose dark mountains and headlands, at their foot lay a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... regard to Seneca's alleged prediction of the discovery of America, it was exceedingly vague; and was wholly based on the undoubted knowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato, Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, and Plutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... ideas which have prevailed regarding the late war, this is, perhaps, the most preposterous. It is difficult to understand how, even the people whose ideas of military operations are derived from a vague rendition of the newspaper phrases of "bagging" armies, "dispositions made to capture," "deriving material advantages," when the derivers were running like scared deer, it is hard to comprehend how even such people, if they ever look upon maps, or reflect for a moment ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... otherwise, seeing that he had nothing to do but give orders for a few rope's ends to be dropped over the side to them. Then, although she had given no sign of it, his manner toward her had been such as to fill her with vague fear; while his behaviour toward Leslie, when that individual had unavailingly attempted to convince him of the presence of another survivor upon the floating wreckage, was scarcely of a kind to inspire a woman with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... His blue camlet cloak was a local antiquity, like the church-spire. His place in the parlour at the George, his absence from church, his old, crapulous, disreputable vices, were all things of course in Debenham. He had some vague Radical opinions and some fleeting infidelities, which he would now and again set forth and emphasise with tottering slaps upon the table. He drank rum—five glasses regularly every evening; and for the greater portion of his nightly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... engagements, and at the appointed hour found himself wandering through the corridor back of the first tier boxes at the Metropolitan. Its bare convolutions were as resonant as a sea shell. Vast and vague murmurs of music, presages of melodies, undulated through the passages, palpitated like the living breath of Euterpe, suppressed excitement lurked in every turn, there was throb and glow in each pulsating ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Mr Disney with savage conviction. "I'll talk to you about what I came to say another day, Cousin Sylvia. Really to-day——!" With a vague awkward wave of his arm he started for ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... importance whether true or not. For all his gravity and Colonelship, it would appear the old spirit of frolic has not quitted him. Here are two small incidents, pointing that way; which stand on record; credible enough, though vague and without importance otherwise. Incident FIRST is to the following feeble effect; indisputable though extremely unmomentous: Regiment Goltz, it appears, used to have gold trimmings; the Colonel Crown-Prince ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he were a young ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... by the earnestness of Janet, and by her own vague terror as to her mother's mysterious sorrow, that could claim from one usually so calm, sympathy so intense and painful. Then she sat down again to listen and to wait. How long the time seemed! The ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... fanciful origins have been invented by scholars, ancient or modern. It is necessary to return to the pedestrian facts, if merely in order to demonstrate the futility of the fancies. The result is in no way discreditable to Greece. Beginning, like other peoples, with the vague unrealised conception of the Corn Mother (an idea which could not occur before the agricultural stage of civilisation), the Greeks refined and elevated the idea into the Demeter of the Hymn, and of the Cnidian statue. To do this was ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... leave to change their mind, without prejudice, whenever they want to. Travel has no longer, any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to see except heaven and hell, and I have only a vague curiosity as concerns one ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a new existence. But of that she could not yet think. She only lay, motionless as a corpse, with hands folded, and eyes firmly closed. Sometimes, with a strange wandering of fancy, she seemed to see herself thus, looking down, as a spirit might do upon its own olden self, with a vague compassion. Once she even muttered, in a sort of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... feared; there were no facts told, unless the vague date of 'London' might be something to learn. Even that much might have been found out by the post-mark, only she had been too much taken by surprise ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... meanwhile, on her own side, no separate recognitions: her face of almost anxious attention was directed altogether to her young friend's so vivid felicity; it suggested that she took for granted, at the most, certain vague recent enhancements of that state. If the Princess now, more than before, was going and going, she was prompt to publish that she beheld her go, that she had always known she WOULD, sooner or later, and that any appeal for participation must more or less ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Diana replied mournfully,—"vague and foolish; wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since I cannot give you a whole heart, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was a saleswoman in a large store selling gentlemen's gloves and ties. She suffered from time to time by attacks of vague anxiety in which her heart showed vehement palpitation. There were paleness and perspiration and at the height a nervous trembling together with a feeling of despair. These attacks were not frequent, separated sometimes by weeks, sometimes by months, but troubling her exceedingly. She had been ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... wealthy neighbours, that young Altham was disgracing himself again—that at the public gaming-tables at Toplitz he had been a loser of thirty thousand pounds—the cunning parvenu listened with an air of as vague indifference as if he were not waiting with breathless anxiety the gradual dissipation of the funds, secured to the young spendthrift by the transfer of his estate, to grasp at the small remaining portion of his property. Unconsciously, when the tale of Sir Laurence's profligacy met his ear, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... lying on the bed, moaning and trying not to cry, with the painfully swollen wrist, laid out on a pillow. Twenty minutes' later the doctor was there with splints and bandages, and Kat, looking into his eyes with a vague alarm, asked, after he had examined it: "How long ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the ends, and so vast that the roof was vague. On the walls were slabs of different colors, marble spotted like the skin of serpents, and onyx flecked with violet. On two sides were galleries supported by columns of sandstone. A third gallery formed a semicircle. Opposite, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... interpreter rendered it "the fruit country," another "the place where canoes are drawn out." Cusick, the historian, translates it "a mountain rising from the water." Mr. Morgan was told that it meant "the mucky land." We can only infer that the interpreters were seeking, by vague resemblances, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... darkness and dawn. 504:21 Here we have the explanation of another passage of Scripture, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years." The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into 504:24 the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... gentleman up to the seventh heaven. It seemed well worth all the hunters in Leicestershire, all the diamonds in Golconda! He did the honours of his step-mother's house, and thanked his own friends for coming, but all with the vague consciousness of a man in a dream. Presently the "round" dance came to an end, much to the relief of the ugly man, who cared, indeed, for ladies as little as ladies cared for him; and Dick hastened to secure Miss Bruce as a partner for the approaching ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... that Charles, who had seen so many instances of the jealousy of the commons, who had himself so much roused that jealousy by his frequent evasive messages during this session, could imagine that they would rest satisfied with an answer so vague and undeterminate. It was evident, that the unusual form alone of the answer must excite their attention; that the disappointment must inflame their anger; and that therefore it was necessary, as the petition seemed to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... salute of nineteen guns, which formed a virtual recognition on the part of Piedmont of his assumption of the dictatorship. Cavour had ordered Persano to act on his own responsibility as the exigencies of the hour demanded, and the admiral knew that these vague instructions assigned him a more vigorous policy than the other ministers would have agreed to officially. His bold initiative was therefore justified. As some severe words will have to be said of Persano ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... In a vague sort of way it became known that although he lived in simple style, like any freshman whose parents were not wealthy, he had a fortune in his own right and had traveled extensively in various ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... children was to keep them entirely ignorant of the affairs of their elders. To secure this end, she adopted a vague, misty style of language, of which she fondly imagined that Clare did not understand a word. The result was unfortunate, as it usually is. Clare understood detached bits of her nurse's conversation, over which she brooded silently in her own little mind, until she evolved ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... had vague dreams of renunciation. She saw herself cloistered in some quiet spot, withdrawn from the world; a place where there were long vistas of pillars and Gothic arches, after a photograph in the living room at home, and a great organ ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Columbus was put off. Having no longer confidence in the vague promises which had hitherto been made, he turned his back on Seville, resolved to offer to the King of France the honour of carrying out ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... Applications for office are in their very nature confidential, and if the reasons assigned for such applications or the names of the applicants were communicated, not only would such implied confidence be wantonly violated, but, in addition, it is quite obvious that a mass of vague, incoherent, and personal matter would be made public at a vast consumption of time, money, and trouble without accomplishing or tending in any manner to accomplish, as it appears to me, any useful object connected with a sound and constitutional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... thus perished the bloody Chaka. His brother Dingaam is now on the Zoolu throne, and appears inclined to be quiet. There is another great warrior chief, named Moselekatsee, who revolted from Chaka, and who is much such another character; but our accounts of these people are vague at present, and require time to corroborate their correctness. You will have to act and decide when you arrive there, and must be guided by circumstances. With the caravan you propose to travel with, I think there will not be much danger; and ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the evil, would suffer for their mal-administration. In reply, Lord North indignantly denied that any treachery was resorted to by ministers, and called upon the opposition to stand forth like men, and make good such vague accusations. Laws, he said, existed for the protection of the innocent; and if his accusers adhered to the laws, he had nothing to fear. Lord North, also, defended with considerable ingenuity the management of the war; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... though immediately occasioned, probably, by some fresh invasion, by which it was sought to tear from the "common man" yet another shred of his surviving rights, always had in the background the ideal, vague though it may have been, of his ancient freedom. Such, undoubtedly, was the meaning of the Jacquerie in France, with its wild and apparently senseless vengeance; of the Wat Tyler revolt in England, with its systematic attempt to envisage the vague tradition of the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... was strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... mode in which they are conveyed into the body of a previously healthy patient is ascertained. But until the past year we knew neither the parasitic germ which causes typhus fever nor the mode by which it passes from one individual to another. A vague idea that it was spread through the air prevailed. Typhus is remarkable for the frequency with which the nurses and doctors attending a case become infected. About 20 per cent. of those attacked by it die, but in persons above forty-five years of age the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the East. It is probable that the Magians here mentioned came from Arabia. Now to employ a term for specifying one sect, which may with equal propriety be applied to fifty, of totally different, or even contrary opinions, is surely a vague way of translating. It is also, in the present acceptation of the word, improper. Formerly the term wise men denoted philosophers, or men of science and erudition: it is hardly ever used so now, unless in burlesque. Some say Magi; but Magians is better, as having more the form of an ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... we seek for any chronicle of the long line of monarchs who must have swayed the sceptre of the once powerful empire of Maha Naghkon. Only a vague tradition has come down, of a celestial prince to whom the fame of founding the great temple is supposed to belong; and of an Egyptian king, who, for his sacrilege, was changed into a leper. An interesting statue, representing ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... exhaustion and despair. She felt herself wholly unable to bear any great disaster should it fall upon her, and she was grateful to her husband, and prayed, if she prayed at all, that both might die peacefully during those days. She even had a vague belief that Heaven would not really bring about that hideous catastrophe that haunted her dreams, and that forced her to dream of it when she was waking. Had she not been a faithful wife to the stern, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... himself in John Canty's abode, with the door closed against the outsiders. By the vague light of a tallow candle which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the loathsome den, and also the occupants of it. Two frowsy girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... after an accented syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, and most assuredly is not cut ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... roved restlessly about the hard packed earth of the pen. The noise of the battle in the adjoining enclosure had aroused them from slumber and awakened in their half formed brains vague questionings and fears. At sight of von Horn several of them rushed for him with menacing growls, but a swift crack of the bull whip brought them to a sudden realization of the identity of the intruder, so that they slunk away, muttering and whining ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she should do next. And, thus considering, the desire to visit and inspect her East Wellmouth property grew and strengthened. She thought more and more concerning it. It was hers, she could do what she pleased with it, and she began to formulate vague ideas as to what she might like to do. She kept these ideas to herself, but she spoke to Emily Howes concerning the possibilities of ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the vague recollections of concepts, ideas, rules. Within a few hours, their phlegmatic blandness had begun to pass. They were becoming men now. Individuals. Out of a dazed and superficial conformity, sharp differences began to emerge. Character reasserted itself, ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... too much experience to waste labor upon a case so decidedly hopeless. He knew that no art within his compass could cure so thorough a case of heart-blindness, and he gave her up; but he did not give up Julia. He whispered words of consolation into her ears, which, though vague, were yet far ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... time before Alan overcame his pride enough to follow, and then he plodded rather sulkily through the slush. Passing by the ruined summer-house he paused to look at it, the vague mystery making it always an object of interest. He wished Peet had been a more genial man: it might then have been possible to get him to show the inside of that gloomy place. But he was very surly, and the secret must be found out ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... not all. The occasion which called forth the paragraph in the paper which I have honor to conduct, was one which I shall just allude to. Some time ago there was inserted in the True Blue a short article headed 'Susanna and the Elder,' in which certain vague and idle reports, fabricated by some person who bears enmity to a most respectable Christian gentleman, who honors us ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was the best way to induce reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed, were the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new symbol? how had the Arians drawn up their Creeds? was it not on the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic sense, but which, when worked out on the long run, would prove to be heterodox? Accordingly, there was great antecedent probability, that, fierce as the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... paper, but people did sometimes throw treys at backgammon, and that which not rarely happened with two dice of six faces might happen if they had sixty or six hundred faces. On the whole, he did not see that there was any ground, so far, for anything more than a vague suspicion. He thought it not unlikely that Mr. Bradshaw was a little smitten with the young lady up at The Poplars, and that he had made some diplomatic overtures to the duenna, after the approved method of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... yet later notice. In the Preface, which, as its whole language implies, was written last, Saxo speaks of Waldemar II having "encompassed ('complexus') the ebbing and flowing waves of Elbe." This language, though a little vague, can hardly refer to anything but an expedition of Waldemar to Bremen in 1208. The whole History was in that case probably finished by about 1208. As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... communication with the United States was cut off; and the road was in possession of parties of the enemy. For many days after full intelligence of it should have been in all parts of this country, nothing certain concerning it was known, while vague and painful rumors were afloat, that a great battle had been fought, and that General Taylor and his whole force had been annihilated. At length the truth came, with its thrilling details of victory and blood,—of glory and grief. A bright and glowing page was added to ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... incident that laid hold upon me; you forgot it, perhaps, in a week or less, but I shall never forget it; and this incident it was that gathered up the fruits of those moments beside my father's body and set me to write this book. It had the effect of a little bright light held up against the vague dark immensities of thought and feeling that filled my mind because ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... his clients absorbed in mirth, murmured something vague about 'business,' and spirited Miss Blossom away to the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the liberty to ask the candidate whether he was prepared with any one to propose and second his nomination; to which he gave me a vague and unmeaning answer, apparently as if he did not understand what I meant by a person to propose and second him. I then appealed to Mr. Cornish, the worthy attorney, who answered me in a similar manner; and he evidently appeared not to be in the secret any more than myself. I next ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... a curious hybrid thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which was part of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office, and included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns of the 'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague suzerainty, the limits of which no one has ever been able to define. Altogether, in its provisions and in its omissions, the Convention of Pretoria appears to prove that our political affairs were as badly conducted as our military in ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... entering the room, before we see the pictures, we know that they are good. For a pleasant soft colour, delicate and insinuating as an odour of flowers, pervades the room. So we are glad to loiter in this vague sensation of delicate colour, and we talk to our friends, avoiding the pictures, until gradually a pale-faced woman with arched eyebrows draws our eyes and fixes our thoughts. It is a portrait ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... no use turning back now," said Benita, who was almost weeping with doubt and vexation. "I will not be frightened by his vague talk. What can he know of the future more than any of the rest of us? Besides, all he says is that we shall come back again, and if that does happen, at least we shall have been free for a little while. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... three powerful impressions were forced upon Lane, never to be effaced. First he found that the change in him was vast and incalculable and vague. He could divine but not understand. Secondly, the men of the service, disabled or not, were old stories to New Yorkers. Lane saw soldiers begging from pedestrians. He muttered to himself: "By God, I'll starve to death before I ever do that!" He could not detect ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a vague suspicion forced itself upon Rose, who, however, obeyed the summons and continued to approach the party, who now watched him with fixed attention. As he came closer to the group, the brave but unfortunate soldier saw that he ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... comes the sunrise, with the tender glory of its rosy light and blushing heavens, and the heavy eyes are closed to it all. Here and there some lighter sleeper, with thinner eyelids or face turned to the sun, is half conscious of a vague brightness, and feels the light, though he sees not the colours of the sky nor the forms of the filmy clouds. Such souls are our saints and prophets, but most of us sleep on unconscious. To us all the moment comes when we shall wake and see ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that Olive was waiting in anxious expectation to hear, she knew already. The best and the worst had been revealed to her; her own course was clear before her. So she ate her dinner with composure, and bore a large share in the table talk that, but for her, would have been rather vague ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... perhaps, the most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for. In passing through the woods, most persons have a vague consciousness of slight chirping, semi-musical sounds in the trees overhead. In most cases these sounds proceed from the warblers. Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... renewed scrutiny of her knitting; and, having satisfied herself by a personal visit to Dick's room that he was not alarmingly ill, set herself to find out what was really the matter with the young people; for there was no doubt that Cecily was in some vague way as disturbed and preoccupied as Dick. He rode out again early the next morning, returning to his studies in the library directly after breakfast; and Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to Aunt Viney's perplexity, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... no English, and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to assure him of the contrary; she has never conversed with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow; but it goes no farther, to mamma's disappointment. He is always with the beau-frere, a rather untidy, fat, bearded man, decorated, too, always smoking and looking at the feet of the ladies, whom ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... accommodate itself to all the folds and curves of his elaborate programs, to find equivalents for individual traits. It is not simply "a man," or even "an amatory hero" that is portrayed in "Don Juan." It is no vague symbol for the poet of the sort created by "Orpheus" or "Tasso" or "Mazeppa." It is Lenau's hero himself, the particular being Don Juan Tenorio. The vibrant, brilliant music of the up-surging, light-treading strings, of the resonant, palpitating brass, springs ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Vague blue haze obscured the lost depths, hiding details, giving a bottomless distance out of which, like the breath of wind, floated up a faint treble, vibrating upon the senses, yet ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... mentioning Heucking. Gave it in, 27th September; by which time Heucking's also was in, and had made a strong impression on his Majesty. Presumably an honest, intelligible report; though, by ill-luck for the curious, it is now lost; among the barrow-loads of vague wigged stuff, this one Piece, probably human, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... productive, and a positive addition to knowledge; but reasoning such as that in 'Supernatural Religion' is vitiated at the outset, because it starts with the assumption that we know perfectly well the meaning of a term of which our actual conception is vague and indeterminate in the extreme—Divine Revelation. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... for themselves already, here in England," said William, with a sneer at the fancied morals of the English monks and clergy. [Footnote: The alleged profligacy and sensuality of the English Church before the Conquest rests merely on a few violent and vague expressions of the Norman monks who displaced them. No facts, as far as I can find, have ever been alleged. And without facts on the other side, an impartial man will hold by the one fact which is certain, that the Church of England, popish as it was, was, unfortunately for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... whom the mention of such an example served as an apology for their own extreme dissipation; (392) and by those who envied him for the affluence and dignity which he had acquired. The charge, however, is supported only by vague assertion, and is discredited by every consideration which ought to have weight in determining the reality of human characters. It seems totally inconsistent with his habits of literary industry, with the virtuous sentiments which he every where ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... But I do not know exactly where it is. He is always vague regarding his address. His letters he receives in several names at a newspaper shop in Hammersmith and at the ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of thirty,—no,—she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck and arranged elaborately ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague respect and without the wish for further information. Life anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the desert, pious people crowding ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... which happened back on Earth and a long time ago. It seemed to Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell again to find out if he was right. And Sattell went into ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... families, detesting the new ways of life now thrust upon them, and seeing no way of retrieving their fortunes in the country which had borne them, broke away entirely from old associations and started on in the strange, vague American fashion of that day, in a hope of finding a newer and perhaps a better country. They moved by rail, by boat, by wagon, in such way as they could. The old Mountain Road from Virginia was trodden by many a disheartened family who found Kentucky also smitten, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... David meditatively; "I don't know that I can tell you much about him. His position is like that of a good many others of my acquaintance—rather vague and intangible, to use the word you employed just now. He is not well off; he is a gentleman by birth, with some small means of his own, and he 'lives, sir, lives.' That is about all I can say of him—from a worldly point ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... him not. What she did see was a picture out of an old book of Indian war days which she had read when a child, a smoking cabin, with mangled forms of women and children lying in the blackened embers. By degrees, slow, painful, but relentlessly progressive, certain impressions, at first vague and passionately resisted, were wrought into convictions in her soul. First, the Inspector, in spite of his light talk, was undeniably anxious, and in this anxiety her husband shared. Then, the Force was clearly inadequate to the duty required of it. At this her indignation ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... seems to prevail that movements for the elevation of woman arise, not from the legitimate wants of society, but from the vague restlessness of unquiet spirits; not from the serene dictates of wisdom, but from the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... off his knapsack and sat down. He had had a hard and tiring day. He fell asleep for a little. Then the cool wind that blew inside the cave woke him up. He sat for a few minutes without moving, absent-minded, vague-eyed. He tried to reflect, to recapture his still torpid thoughts. And, as he recovered his consciousness, he was on the point of rising, when he received the impression that his eyes, suddenly fixed, suddenly ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... chorus of invisible spirits, the voice of the slave as he recited the gospels. His words flowed gently in the darkness, which they filled with zeal, mercy, and hope; and the neophyte, her hand in that of Ahmes, lulled by the monotonous sounds, and the vague visions in her mind, slept calm and smiling, amid the harmonies of the dark night and the holy mysteries, gazed down on by a star, which twinkled between the ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows of upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, gliding slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electric lights came on again, and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... of finding one who was willing to exchange ideas with her, rather than only to impart ideas to her. Was it any wonder if Osmund Derwent began to form a nucleus in her thoughts, round which gathered a floating island of fair fancies and golden visions, all the more beautiful because they were vague? ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Vague idea!" cried the artist "Why, I told you all about it, and growled for five or six hours one evening here because I ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing |
