"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... All those other Katherines, in short, whom she might have been, and who had seemed to drop away from her, vanishing phantom-like before the uncompromising realities of her husband's death and her child's birth, crowded about her, importuning her with vague desires, vague regrets. The confines of Brockhurst grew narrow, while all that which lay beyond them called to her. She craved, almost unconsciously, a wider sphere of action. She longed to obtain, and to lend a hand in the shaping of events ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... vague prognostics of old times are not sufficient for the guidance of the skilful and provident farmer of our day. The barometer, the thermometer, and even the hygrometer, should be his companions and guides, or occasional counsellors. To the description and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Bolton was unable to share the relaxation of mind and body his companion so absolutely enjoyed. Twice he paused, food suspended, his mouth open, to listen intently for a moment, then to finish carrying his hand to his mouth with the groping of vague perplexity. Once he arose to another of his purposeless circles through the woods. Dick paid no attention to these things. In the face of danger his faculties would be as keenly on the stretch as his comrade's; but now, the question one merely of difficult ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... rather roadstead) on the coast, had been annexed to Cape Colony; but though it was generally understood both in the Colony and in England, that the whole of the west coast up to the Portuguese boundary was in some vague way subject to British influence, nothing had been done to claim any distinct right, much less to perfect that right by occupation. The Colony had always declined or omitted to vote money for the purpose, and the home government had not ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... hypothetical and vague; but nothing could be more definite than the reward which he demanded. For it appeared that what this forlorn adventurer required for himself was to be admiral of the Atlantic, ranking with the constable of Castile, Viceroy with power of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... had occurred since the truce established on the 19th. [Footnote: Id., p. 250.] Mr. Davis had remained at Charlotte in the interval between the two conventions, but when the separate surrender of Johnston's army was determined, he started southward with a vague purpose of joining some of the smaller organized armies released from the armistice by our administration's rejection of the terms of Sherman's first convention. He tells us that he still hoped that he might cross the Mississippi ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... if the zeal of Cyprian was supported by the sincere conviction of the truth of those doctrines which he preached, the crown of martyrdom must have appeared to him as an object of desire rather than of terror. It is not easy to extract any distinct ideas from the vague though eloquent declamations of the Fathers, or to ascertain the degree of immortal glory and happiness which they confidently promised to those who were so fortunate as to shed their blood in the cause of religion. [90] They inculcated with becoming ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... "raw," by the by, is vague, and needs definition. Every tint is raw which is perfectly opaque, and has not all the three primitive colors in its composition. Thus, black is always raw, because it has no color; white never, because it has all colors. No tint can be raw which is not ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... charming, and that probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim rejoiced within me. "Why not," it said, "buy the petticoat, find out the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry her ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... I remember much about them," he responded at last. "I think they'll come plainer, though, the more I think about them. I just get the barest, vague ideas." ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... from the vague reports you have heard," commented Gran'pa Jim. "But, whatever her antecedents may have been, there is no reason why Ingua may not be rescued from her dreadful environments and be made to become a quite proper young lady, if not a model one. But that can only result ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness."[83] And we find M. Comte himself complaining, somewhat bitterly, that his quondam friend, the celebrated St. Simon, had exhibited, as he advanced in years (cette tendance banale vers une vague religiosite), a tendency towards something like Religion.[84] Cases of this kind are utterly fatal to his supposed law of individual development, and they must be equally fatal to his theory of the progress of the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... That's what they told themselves—they did not say even this much to each other. But far, far away, out of sight, out of all actual knowledge, was the fear which neither of them would have dared to realise, a vague horror, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... clients of Wiesdorf sanatorium considerable anxiety. The note to Servia, the letters they received from their homes, the clatter of arms which was beginning to be heard throughout Europe, all began to point to a vague danger which could not, of course, affect their sacred persons, but might possibly hinder them from peacefully cultivating the sufferings which ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... for him, he has himself told us, to write with severity, than with forbearance; and indeed, where is the expert swordsman, who does not delight in the flourish of his weapon? Neither could this self-complacent feeling be much allayed, by the vague and abusive ribaldry with which his satire was repaid. This was natural to the controversy, was no more than he expected and was easily retorted with terrible interest. "As for knave," says he, "and sycophant and rascal, and impudent, and devil, and old serpent, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... colonies. A hundred frauds would be committed by these, which we could not detect. He did not mean by this, that the evil was to go on for ever. Had a wise plan been proposed at first, it might have been half-cured by this time. The present resolution would do no good. It was vague, indefinite, and unintelligible. Such resolutions were only the slave-merchants' harvests. They would go for more slaves than usual in the interim. He should have advised a system of duties on fresh importations of slaves, progressively increasing ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... furniture. Risler watched them at work with an indifferent air, as if he were in a stranger's house. That magnificence which had once made him so happy and proud inspired in him now an insurmountable disgust. But, when he entered his wife's bedroom, he was conscious of a vague emotion. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... before, and she was conscious of a vague sense of thankfulness that she had been spared that ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... him, one saw that his brown eyes were frank and kindly, that his face was attractive when he smiled. Theodora liked him unreservedly; she even began to remember him a little, in a vague sort of way, and she hoped that Phebe would be in one of her ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... spirit such as he—all are not prepared to subscribe to the precise formulation of the mystery as given in an Athanasian creed, or a homily of a fourth century father. Beyond admitting in a general and rather vague way that Jesus is "Divine," many people are not prepared to go. They would shrink from saying that he was the Infinite and Eternal, from whom all things derive their being; they see no necessity for believing ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... majority of the French people would improve the first possible opportunity to re-establish the Empire; and consequently the conviction which he so confidently cherished, that he was destined to be the Emperor of France, was not a vague and baseless impression, but ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... its invention the barometer has been vaunted an indicator of impending weather, and now we are in possession of numberless rules for interpreting its indications, mostly of a vague and indefinite purport, few, if any, pretending to accuracy and certainty. As mankind are always desirous of attaining weather wisdom, these rules have tended to give the barometer its widely recognized reputation, rather than any really infallible principles, clearly formulated. With no other ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... pass over, as on so many previous occasions it had already done, and leave him again free to his old practices in the same region. A feeling of pride, which made him unwilling to take a suggestion of fear and flight from the course of others, had some share in this decision; and, if we add the vague hungering of his heart toward the lovely Edith, and possibly the influence of other pledges, and the imposing consideration of other duties, we shall not be greatly at a loss in understanding the injudicious indifference to the threatening ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Another Egyptian fish deity was the god Rem, whose name signifies "to weep"; he wept fertilizing tears, and corn was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be identical with Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile god, a developed attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity who symbolized the primordial deep. The connection between a fish god and a corn god is not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Government had been to discover proof of fresh crimes since Ralegh's liberation in 1616, and to try him for them. It had failed. Much of the testimony it had painfully collected was dubious, vague, biassed, interested, or plainly corrupt. Such as it was the Council either would not, or could not, rely upon it for a conviction. Ralegh's transactions with the Frenchmen were unwarrantable, if its view of them were correct. But they had resulted in nothing, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... away at the mysterious blue west. His eyes were big with great thoughts. If he had a ship and a crew,—if he could sail away exploring! Suppose kingdoms could be founded there! Suppose—his imaginings became as lofty as the drifting clouds, and as vague; so vague that he finally lost interest in them, and turned his attention to the approaching shore. They had come near enough now to see that the scattered islands had connected themselves into a peaked coast, a broken line of dazzling whiteness, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were babies together—he and her beloved old Katie—Were conducting her to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a loss to phrase what she wished to say, both because her ideas were rather vague and because she feared lest she might offend her lover by talking upon a subject which he had markedly avoided. He made now a fresh effort to divert the talk ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... time was Hilda? She, too, had witnessed the fight. She had seen the desperate struggle, the flag of France hauled down, the ships brought to an anchor, and a wounded officer lowered into the boat. A vague, yet overpowering dread had seized her. She attempted to go down that she might meet the boat at the landing-place, but her strength failed, and she sunk back in her chair near the window, whence she could watch the boat as it ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... so much a want of sufficient observation of known facts, as the want of a true method and of verification, which rendered the investigations of the earlier philosophers so vague and uncertain. And the same causes which necessarily prevented Aristotle, the greatest intellect perhaps that has ever illuminated the world, from attaining to the greater perfection of the modern philosophy, are applicable, in a greater degree, to the case of the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... and was taking a long sniff from a little gold-topped bottle. A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of injury, crept about Soames' heart. He had come to her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him. It was always like that! Nobody ever seemed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... black man in evening dress, who opened the door to him instead of the usual maid, sent a vague apprehension through his preoccupied mind, but it was not until he found himself in the room set apart for the masculine guests and saw everyone arrayed in "swallow-tails," as he thought of them, that he realized what he had done. The emotion of the moment was one that made a ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... busy itself with little men and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each other—economic changes and political revolutions, costumes, ideas, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... fell on them. The laughter and gay talk ceased. The sense of holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean's greatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rocks which hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling of this solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have been bred as children on ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... beheld all those pictures which the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw him leaping ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed to the pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets; he imagined the tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have caused in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf to all his appeals; ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... reading and the singing and the talk, a vague fear kept crossing the little girl's mind. What if the things so confidently expected from the village should not come? Their little store of food was diminishing rapidly. What if their father had ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... they were halted, to rest. Some went to sleep; others, like Pierre, set to work and with their bayonets dug little trenches and threw up a slight earthwork before them, behind which they could lie; for the skirmishers had been thrown out, looking vague and ghostly as they trotted forward in the dim twilight, and they supposed that the battle would be fought right there. By the time, however, that the trenches were dug, the line was advanced, and the regiment ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... not endure any historical scrutiny: to all who have fallen across it, it is one of the most incontestable facts in the world; but if you begin to ask what it was in other periods and countries, in Greece, for instance, the strangest doubts begin to spring up, and everything seems so vague and changing that a dream is logical in comparison. Jealousy, at any rate, is one of the consequences of love; you may like it or not, at pleasure; but there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... buried in clay and utter oblivion. And before the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and long centuries before Nineveh or Calah or Asshur, there had been mighty kingdoms in Babylonia, of which the world had quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,—only what was preserved in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost, buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; would they ever ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... loving desire to please God, a single-minded preference for His service over every service of man, a resolve to approach Him by the ways which He had appointed. It was no taking for granted that to follow one's own best opinion was all one with obeying His will; no easy persuasion that a vague, obscure sincerity in our conclusions about Him and our worship of Him was all that was required of us, whether those conclusions belonged to this school of doctrine or that. That is, he had deep within him that gift which St. Paul and St. John speak of, when they enlarge ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... years, had even dreamed, in his soberer moments, of coming back to her to play the rle of a prince, but nevertheless, he found himself philosophically accepting the possibility hinted at by Sucatash and even feeling a vague ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... kinds, as well as by an extraordinary development of muscular strength with apparent lucidity of mind. They may last from a few minutes to half an hour, after which the patient falls into a sound sleep and forgets everything that has happened, or else retains only a vague recollection. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... these recoveries he made some effort to fix his thoughts, and presently he found himself reading a passage which had a strangely familiar ring in it—he thought at first it was merely that passing impression of a vague sameness in things which would vanish on analysis—but, as he read on, the impression grew stronger at every line. He turned to the beginning of the article, a notice on a recent book, and read it from beginning to end with eager care. Was he dreaming still, or mad? or how ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... There he locked the door, and began to comfort her by making light of the little mishap. But Kitty cried so tragically, that he was at his wit's end, till the ludicrous side of the affair struck her, and she began to laugh hysterically. With a vague idea that vigorous treatment was best for that feminine ailment, Jack was about to empty the contents of an ice-pitcher over her, when she arrested ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... that of a modern cannon, so that the dim background can be filled in with the suggestion of a wholly modern machinery. This is a very true satire; for there are many scientific persons who seem to be quite reconciled to the crushing of humanity by a vague mechanical environment in which there are wheels within wheels. But the inner restraint of the artist is suggested in the treatment of the torment itself; which is suggested by a certain rending drag in the garments, while the limbs are limp and the head almost somnolent. She does not strive ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... turned within his solitary hall, And his high shadow shot along the wall: There were the painted forms of other times,[273] 'Twas all they left of virtues or of crimes, Save vague tradition; and the gloomy vaults That hid their dust, their foibles, and their faults; And half a column of the pompous page, That speeds the specious tale from age to age; Where History's pen its praise or blame supplies, And lies like Truth, and still most truly ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley's mind, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... what starts the secretion of milk we have only a vague idea; but we know that when the flow is once established its continuation depends primarily upon the sucking efforts of the infant. If nursing is discontinued the secretion dwindles and the breasts dry up. On the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... probably told to account for the name of the field. It has been noticed that the Latin Lives are less rich in details as to names of places and people than the Irish Life. This is an indication of a later tradition, when the recollection of names had become vague, or, rather, when names which had been of interest to their contemporaries had ceased ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... warships on Davis Island?" The name roused a vague memory. "Davis Island?" he repeated, staring in concentration at the black sea. "Of course!" It came to him suddenly. A newspaper article that he had read five years before, at about the time he had abandoned college in the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... was known to Penautier sooner than to his own family: then the papers about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined. D'Alibert's brother-in-law, who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an end ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... highest enjoyment? In the very prime and glory of all her faculties—wise in experience—strong from many a silent heart-struggle, what could she gain by a return of youth? Nothing! surely nothing! Yet she watched those two young persons with a vague feeling of sadness. They had life before them, a thousand dreamy delusions—a thousand alluring hopes evanescent as the apple blossoms of May, but as ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... excluded! I Had reached that age when the sensibilities are in all their bloom and freshness. Mine had been checked and chilled. They now burst forth with the suddenness of a retarded spring. My heart, hitherto unnaturally shrunk up, expanded into a riot of vague, but delicious emotions. The beauty of nature intoxicated, bewildered me. The song of the peasants; their cheerful looks; their happy avocations; the picturesque gayety of their dresses; their rustic music; their dances; all broke upon me like witchcraft. My soul responded to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... women did, and sit down and sew for it; the monotonous motion of the needle, which some people call so soothing, fairly distracted me; and, in spite of the low diet of Latin and mathematics on which I had been kept all winter, I entertained vague visions of myself, in cropped hair and army blue, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... soon occupied 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 ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... never looked forward beyond a year or two. Ambition, desires, he possessed in no common degree, but as a vague, unexamined impulse. He had dreamt of love, but timidly, tremulously; that was for the time to come. He had dreamt of distinction; that, also, must be patiently awaited. In the meantime, labour. He enjoyed intellectual effort; he gloried in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... 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, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... rate as yet, but little of his friend's stability. To him the world was all before him where to choose; but he was sadly in want of something that should guide his choice. He had a high, but at the same time a vague ambition. The law, the church, letters, art, and politics all enticed him; but he could not decide of which mistress the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature of his story—a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago—the poet seems to have been compelled to make a picture of human life too literal ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... you. Rupert came over last night and sat on my gallery making very roundabout inquiries concerning Jeems. I pried out of him the details of your swamp battle. But I want to know now just what Jeems has been doing. Your brother is so vague—" ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... speaker's voice, gathered nothing of the sense of the words; his brain was too full of thick-coming fancies. Fancies? What other name can you give to the alluring charms of an adventure that tempts the imagination and sets vague hopes springing up in the soul; to the sense of coming events and mysterious felicity and fear at hand, while as yet there is no substance of fact on which these phantoms of caprice can fix and feed? Over these fancies thought hovers, conceiving impossible ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... and whale fisheries, it is true; but on the whole my relations with all that portion of mankind who inhabit the islands of the Pacific, the northwest coast of America, and the northeast coast of the old continent, were rather loose, and generally in an unsettled and vague condition; and it appeared to me that I had been singularly favored in having a man so well adapted to their regeneration thrown as it were by Providence, and in a manner so unusual, directly in my way. I now frankly proposed, therefore, to fit out an expedition, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eight cents every day?" asked his wife, her eyes snapping. She was vague about the duties of a grand juror; maybe he had to earn his two dollars; but she had exact ideas about the trouble of walking "up-street." To get eight cents for that was being paid for doing nothing at all, and she was much astonished at ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... any one of these circumstances had been altered, what a different man you might have been! Probably many people, even of middle age, conscious that the manifold cares and worries of life forbid that it should be evenly joyous, do yet cherish at the bottom of their heart some vague, yet rooted fancy, that, if but one thing were given on which they have set their hearts, or one care removed forever, they would be perfectly happy, even here. Perhaps you overrate the effect which would have been produced on your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... national and internal issues, and it must result in a new national order. If this war has not been fought in vain, if we are to achieve the objects for which we entered it, if we are ultimately to crush German militarism, which is only a vague and confusing synonym for German reaction, then it inexorably follows that the war must end in a German revolution. The road to peace must indeed pass through Berlin, but that Berlin will have ceased to be the Berlin of the Junkers—it ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... or similar ones, spoken by General Lyman, Putnam returned a vague reply, intended for an apology, but having more the tone of a defiance. Discipline and military authority must stand aside when brave men were struggling with ruthless savages. Without waiting to hear the general's response to his apology, the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... putting before it always perfectly determinate forms, it is left here much too free to represent as it wishes these men and these angels, these divinities and demons, this paradise and this hell. We see quite well the vague outlines in which the understanding must be kept to conceive these personages; but we do not find the limit clearly traced in which the imagination must be enclosed to represent them. And what I say here ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... this manner, he readily looked into the face of the mirror, wherein he caught sight of lady Feng standing, nodding her head and beckoning to him. With one gush of joy, Chia Jui felt himself, in a vague and mysterious manner, transported into the mirror, where he held an affectionate tete-a-tete with lady Feng. Lady Feng escorted him out again. On his return to bed, he gave vent to an exclamation of "Ai yah!" and opening his eyes, he turned the glass ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it calling by the darkened river Where the moss lies smooth and deep, And the dark trees lean unmoving arms, Silent and vague in sleep, And the bright-heeled constellations pass In splendour through the gloom; Who is it calling o'er the darkened river In ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... of Angela. She was sitting perfectly still, her eyes on the floor, when he entered the room. He came in so softly that she did not hear him. He lifted her head and looked into her eyes. He noticed with certainty what had been so far only a vague, ill-defined dread. Her face was very, very pale and transparent. Her eyes were sunken and had a strange brilliancy. She was much slighter end far more ethereal than on that day when they stood the deck of the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... stillness in the dim room; the dashing rain and the muttering thunder were the only sounds in the world. The white dress was motionless in the chair, vague, impersonal—he could see only the blurred suggestion of a face above it; it got to be fantastic, a dream, a condensation of the summer lightning and the storm-clouds; unrealities seized the quick imagination of the man; into his fancy came the ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... relations of Rome with the somewhat more distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early times. There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere; Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have obtained great victories over the Latins, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... off at the lakes; some one had gone back and warned them of the very thing we've met. We must beat them to the lakes, for water is the only thing that will check them now. It's a good thing that they are strong, and five or six days without water will hardly kill any. It was no vague statement of the man who said if he owned hell and Texas, he'd rent Texas and live in hell, for if this isn't Billy hell, I'd like to ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... she repeated to herself with wrinkled brows. A vague depression hung over her spirits; she thought uneasily of her years, and wondered if she were growing old, unconscious of the fact that she had never yet ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... understood that they were Forcats, Galley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops;—also that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forcats and danger of plunder. (See Barbaroux, Memoires Note in p. 40, 41.) Forcats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendor as the Sea Facade. But no such sweeping measure of renovation had been contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... close that he saw their gray shadows in the gloom. But presently they wearied of yelping at him and went away. After that the silence, broken only by the wind as it roared and lulled, seemed beautiful to Slone. He lost completely that sense of vague regret which had remained with him, and he forgot the Stewarts. And suddenly he felt absolutely free, alone, with nothing behind to remember, with wild, thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... The lovely eyes were fixed upon the hand that was bringing forth the choicest morsels of the food prepared early that morning. As he laid the little feast before her, Truedale acknowledged that, in a vague way, he had been saving the morsels for Nella-Rose even while he had fed, earlier, upon ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... he got the whole village built, and lying in his bed that night could only remember with real distinction the commission house, the library, and one dwelling house, far down the main street. The rest was vague—houses—white houses—not high—not crowded, but all blurred and without detail, as if ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... is the great outer circle of non-christian people—they know. Many of them are poorly informed regarding the christian life; hungry for something they have not, and know not just what it is; with high ideals, though vague, of what a christian life should be. And they look eagerly to us for what they have thought we had, and are so often keenly disappointed that our ideals, our life, is so much like others who profess nothing. And when here and there they meet one whose acts are dominated by a pure, high spirit, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... had already acquired a working knowledge of numerous languages and dialects, but of his native tongue he had still to become a master. In 1826 his appreciation of the requirements of English Prosody was of a vague description, his sense of the rhythm of verse was crude, and the attention he paid to the exigencies of rhyme was inadequate. Hence the majority of his Ballads, beyond the fact that they were faithful reproductions of the originals from which they had been laboriously ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... numerous books written upon California, no doubt you will be able to find a most scientific description of the origin of these bars. I must acknowledge with shame that my ideas on the subject are distressingly vague. I could never appreciate the poetry or the humor of making one's wrists ache by knocking to pieces gloomy-looking stones, or in dirtying one's fingers by analyzing soils, in a vain attempt to fathom the osteology or anatomy of our ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... twenty-seven acres of meadow-land, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the house in which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a certain covenanted ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... when my own ideas were all vague and strange, as I sat there that night with this,"—he tapped his water-pipe—"and tried to hit on some plan; and somehow the horror passed away, and I felt no fear of the poor wretch lying there before me. I wondered at myself—that I could sit there so calmly ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... has composed a number of songs, all endowed with an unusual share of beauty. She writes her own words in almost all cases, as she is able while doing this to hear in a vague way the music which she afterward sets to them. Hers is a virile genius. "These women seem preoccupied, first of all," says one critic, "to make people forget that they are women.... Whatever Mlle. Holmes ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... own story Mr. Hansson informs us that it dealt with "a man who commits a forgery and then tells about it, doing both in a sort of somnambulistic state whereby everything is left vague and undefined." At that moment "Raskolnikov" was in the air, so to speak. And without wanting in any way to suggest imitation, I feel sure that the groundnote of the story was distinctly Dostoievskian. Strindberg himself had been reading Nietzsche and was—largely under the pressure ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... 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 ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... said, "I have had one object before me from my boyhood, and since you told me that I was to be your husband, that object has grown from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. Alice, I want to buy back the acres of my forefathers; I wish, I intend, that another Buckley shall be the master of Clere, and that ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... adventures, until they begin to speak of that day when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel. They both then become voluble. I rather gather—though I did not cross-examine them at all closely—that they had been a good deal bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... have seen our two children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 help expressing his regret that the better classes ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... which he was acquainted. She must for ever occupy a place of her own in his thoughts and in his estimation. It was a place very well defined, he told himself, and by no means within that inner circle of his brain and heart wherein lay the few things in life sweet and precious to him. The vague excitement of the early morning seemed to him now, as he moved calmly along the crowded, fashionable thoroughfare, a thing altogether unreal and unnatural. He had been in an emotional frame of mind, he told himself with a quiet smile, when the sight of those few lines in a handwriting ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... KITCHENER'S triumphant feat in transporting our army to France. We are not very far from Southampton, whence some of the troops must have sailed, but beyond the merest vague rumours we heard nothing. One lady, a fortnight ago, had word from some one that a Belgian padre had seen trucks full of British soldiers in Belgium. A gentleman had heard from a school friend of his daughter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... this book to trace the story of Japan from its beginnings to the establishment of constitutional government. Concerned as this story is with the period of vague and legendary antiquity as well as with the disorders of mediaeval time and with centuries of seclusion, it is plain that it is not an easy task to present a trustworthy and connected account of the momentous changes through which the empire has been called to pass. It ...
— Japan • David Murray
... corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense familiarity made me look again. But the man had turned and was walking rapidly away. There was something about the slope of the shoulders and the fringe of silver hair between coat collar and slouch hat that aroused vague memories. Instead of crossing the street, I hurried after the man. I quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts that formed unbidden in my brain. No, it was impossible. It could not be—not ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... that you have lived only half your life if you haven't heard the pansymphonicon. We gave him little satisfaction by asking no questions and yawning or asking what time it was every time he tried to whet our curiosity by vague references and half descriptions of it. Jimmie is a frightful liar, and would sacrifice his hope of heaven to torture us successfully for half a day. I don't believe one word of all he has said or hinted or drawn or sung ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... officers in their uniforms, many well-known citizens, young folks, the usual cluster of gas lights, the usual magnetism of so many people, cheerful with perfumes, music of violins and flutes—and over all, that saturating, that vast, vague wonder, Victory, the nation's victory, the triumph of the Union, filling the air, the thought, the sense, with exhilaration ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... made a vague gesture. "There's probably a crack between your studio and my wall, and the little rascal crept ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... Court of Burgundy. Bertha was astonished to learn that her maid had left the castle without receiving her dismissal from herself, her mistress; but she said nothing. Soon afterwards she had other fish to fry, for she became a prey to vague apprehensions, because her husband completely changed in his manner, commenced to notice the likeness of his first-born to himself, and could find nothing resembling his nose, or his forehead, his this, or his that, in the youngest ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the second stage. Judas, reassured that he has escaped detection for the moment, and perhaps doubting whether the Master had anything more than a vague suspicion of treachery, or knew who was the traitor, shapes his lying lips with loathsome audacity into the same question, but yet not quite the same, The others had said, 'Is it I, Lord?' he falters when he comes to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... both ill, at the Green Curtain, a kind of nursery or obscure playhouse somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell."[117] By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague and uncertain to warrant any ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... himself was certainly disappointed. Mrs. Thrale says that his complacency towards Thrale was not wholly devoid of interested motives; and she adds that his manner towards Reynolds and Dr. Taylor was also softened by the vague expectation of being named in their wills. One of her marginal notes is: "Johnson mentioned to Reynolds that he had been told by Taylor he was to be his heir. His fondness for Reynolds, ay, and for Thrale, had a dash of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his attention had been drawn away by the discussion between Sir Lothian Hume and the referee upon the question of time. For my own part, I had been so struck by the furious manner in which these belated travellers were approaching, that I had continued to watch them with all sorts of vague hopes within me, which I did not dare to put into words for fear of adding to my uncle's disappointments. I had just made out that the gig contained a man and a woman, when suddenly I saw it swerve off the road, and come with a galloping horse and bounding wheels right across the moor, crashing through ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... other hand, those in whom the interior faculties predominate too greatly vividly realize their psychic life, but have more vague and feeble conceptions of material objects, including their own bodies, and attach undue importance to the imaginary and subjective in preference to the objective. The materialists and the illusionists, however, are not entirely composed of these two classes of subjective ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... sanctuary we met. But I shall say a few blunt words, such as were frequent in the days of intimacy, and, if they are needless, you will let them fall to the ground. Youth is past, with its passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness, its vague desires. You have chosen your path, you have rounded out your lot, your duties are before you. Now beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dulness of fancy, its too external ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of literal application of texts to the living men and women in a congregation is not only in bad taste, but presumptuous and blasphemous. What right has a clergyman to sit in judgment on me, for instance? To give forced constructions to parables and vague generalities in Scripture, about the actual meaning of which divines in all ages have differed; and, pointing his finger to me or to you, say—'The case is yours, sir!' I cannot sit patiently under many more ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... curiosity and after from a sentiment of respectful devotion, Guy was impelled to study that delicate and sensitive nature, entirely swayed by love of Sulpice, that suffered at times a vague pressure as of some indefinable anguish at the throat, as if a vacuum—a choking vacuum—had been created about her by ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous Apologetical Narration of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to this question it would ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... conversation flowed, a salon rather than a shop, changed and ennobled its customs. The reign of coffee is that of temperance. Coffee, the beverage of sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which, unlike spirituous liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... whether the name "Medyen" be foreign or Arabic; and whether "Medyen" spoke Arabic. He considers the absurd enumeration of the alphabetical kings (El-Mas'di, quoted above) to be curious, as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of Midian. When these kings are said contemporaneously to have ruled over Meccah, Western Nejd, Yemen, "Medyen," Egypt, etc., it is extremely improbable that Midian ever penetrated into Yemen, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... a in Pegasus continued 45 deg. to the south points out the important star Fomalhaut in the mouth of the Southern Fish. To the right of this line, nearly half-way down, is the rather vague constellation of Aquarius, where a small equilateral triangle with a star in the centre may ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... when her brown eyes fell upon the pallid, dissipated, marred young face turned upward on her knees in the car—in that instant she had known for the first time a new and indefinable emotion—vague in her mind, vaguer ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... wonders of science and art must therefore have contributed somewhat to rid our people of the impression of being at every turn beset by occult powers, under the name perhaps of witchcraft, and to expel the notions of a vague and capricious agency interfering and sporting with events throughout the system around them. Their rationality thus obtained an improvement, which may be set against the injury undoubtedly done them through that diminished exercise of the understanding which accompanied ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Vague rumour assigns an earlier house to Cromwell on the same spot. The bank was established about 1712 by Mr. Andrew Drummond, a goldsmith. George III. transferred his account from Coutts' to Drummond's when he was displeased with ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... migrations to the eastward of a line passing through Repulse Bay, or about the meridian of 86° west, while in a northern direction we know that he travels as far as the seventy-sixth degree of latitude. In Greenland this animal is known only by vague and exaggerated report; on the western coast of Baffin’s Bay it has certainly been seen, though very rarely, by the present inhabitants; and the eldest person belonging to the Winter Island tribe had never seen one to the eastward of Eiwillik, where, as well as at Akkōōleĕ, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... awake till she heard twelve o'clock strike from St. Mary, Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone, perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young, and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs. Cardew heard the chimes, and over ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... their conditions it is well to make the change which England made nearly fifty years ago, and to adopt a system of which the success has been doubtful in its chosen field. In order to decide the question intelligently we must put aside all vague confusions about an exact science which will work the same results everywhere because it operates under an immutable law. Even if free trade had been a brilliant and conclusive success in England, of which there is no proof, does ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Goodwin, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his live cape filling about the stool. The air in firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fide gold ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... rests exclusively on that "breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality. All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:—The "materialists," must give up their last stronghold—we cannot even grant them a right to assume the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... it is sad, and in the picture of the poet we seem to see Shelley himself. Other long poems followed, poems which are both terrible and beautiful, but many years must pass before you try to read them. For Shelley's poetry is more vague, his meaning more elusive, than that of almost any other poet of whom we have spoken. It is rather for Shelley's shorter poems, his lyrics, that I would try to gain your love at present, for although he wrote The Cenci, the best tragedy of his time, a tragedy which by its terror ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Vague as the promise was it sufficed to raise Pomp's spirits, and he tugged well at his oar, while I watched the splashing of fish in the river, heard the low, floundering noise made by the alligators, and listened to the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... line of thought. And an unprejudiced observer will scarcely fail in this case to admit that what attracts many adherents of occult science—or occultism—is nothing but the fatal craving for what is unknown and mysterious, or even vague. And he will also be ready to own that there is much cogency in the reasons put forward against what is fantastic and visionary by serious opponents of the cause in question. In fact, one who studies occult science will ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Rocky Mountains, in a York boat, tarried at our camp, bringing word that the ice-jam was clear in Lesser Slave Lake, which was cheering, but that we need scarcely look for the expected assistance. They also gave a vague account of the murder of a squaw by her husband for cannibalism, which afterwards proved to be groundless, and, with this comforting ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... thunderous discharge on our side, there came a responsive "ping" from the valiant mauser-man on the other side. Then the whole battalion of Scots Guards was invited to fire volley after volley in the same delightfully vague fashion, till it seemed as though no pin point or pimple on the far side of the gorge could possibly have failed to receive its ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... matter from what source this belief in a "ghost" originated, it must be admitted that it is found among all peoples, and is apparently an universal idea. And, running along with it in the primitive peoples, we find that there is, and always has been, an idea, more or less vague and indistinct, that somehow, someway, sometime, this "ghost" of the person returns to earthly existence and takes upon itself a new fleshly garment—a new body. Here, then, is where the idea of Reincarnation begins—everywhere, at a certain stage of human mental development. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... that non-human independence. My conversational reticences about myself turn into garrulousness on paper—as the sea-lion plunges and swims the more energetically because his limbs are of a sort to make him shambling on land. The act of writing, in spite of past experience, brings with it the vague, delightful illusion of an audience nearer to my idiom than the Cherokees, and more numerous than the visionary One for whom many authors have declared themselves willing to go through the pleasing punishment of publication. My ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... clank of metal chains, the beat of hoofs upon the good road-bed, sounded smartly on the ear. The houses became larger, newer, more flamboyant; richly dressed, handsome women were coming and going between them and their broughams. When Sommers turned to look back, the boulevard disappeared in the vague, murky region of mephitic cloud, beneath which the husbands of those women were toiling, striving, creating. He walked on and on, enjoying his leisure, speculating idly about the people and the houses. At last, as he neared Fortieth Street, the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... passionate belief in his high and romantic birth was part of his being, and Miss Winwood's recognition was a splendid confirmation of his faith. It was rather the suppressio veri of which he was guilty than the propositio falsi. So between them his childhood was invested with a vague semblance of reality in which the fact of his isolation stood ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... vague unrest brooded over Washington, as though the city had been shadowed with a vast pall, or threatened with a plague. Then when it was again too late, General Scott—"the general," as the hero of Lundy's Lane and Mexico was universally ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... maxim, "once a priest always a priest," kept him in the pulpit, to which he had no irresistible call, and to which the accident of his career only had led him. Had the church to which he belonged been organized with an episcopal government, he had certainly been its primate; but in the vague and incoherent condition of the Congregational churches, to one of which he belonged, there was no career beyond that of the isolated pastorate of a single congregation. In this insufficiency of interest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... moonlight over the dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of sprites upon the sward. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... little vague, Mr. Blake; I hardly know what I am to understand by it. Do you mean evening dress for one dinner-party or a succession of dinner-parties? You know they are perpetual in Rutherford; every house invites every other ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... deem it commonplace. For my part, I cannot regard it in this light. I have never looked upon this primitive homestead of the pioneer without receiving from it an impression of romantic pleasure. Something seems to impart to it an air of vague and mystic grandeur. Perhaps I associate the picture with the frame in which it is set—the magnificent forest that surrounds it, every aisle of which is redolent of romance. Such a scene is suggestive of hunter lore and legend—of perils by flood and field, always pleasant ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of the common people of Israel began with certain vague hopes of a happier and nobler way of living for the descendants of Abraham. As the centuries passed these hopes were only very partially realized. But what was more important the Jews came more and more clearly to understand the meaning of their own hopes. Their great teachers ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... force of habit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took 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 ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Yea, heard the churl against the baron—yea, And did him justice; sat in mine own courts Judging my judges, that had found a King Who ranged confusions, made the twilight day, And struck a shape from out the vague, and law From madness. And the event—our fallows till'd, Much corn, repeopled towns, a realm again. So far my course, albeit not glassy-smooth, Had prosper'd in the main, but suddenly Jarr'd on this rock. A cleric violated The daughter of his host, and murder'd him. Bishops—York, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... good. We'd just say things we shouldn't. You said just now you doubted if you knew why I was here. I may not be sure of all my reasons, but one of them is, I wanted to get away from—there." My hand made motion in a vague direction ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... This was rather vague theorizing, however. Look and stare as much as he chose, he could detect nothing that resembled man or animal. He shrank to one side and waited several minutes, in the hope that the thing would explain itself. But it did not, and, after waiting some time, he resumed his journey along the ravine, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... vague reports which chief constables are in the habit of furnishing," he said, drily. "Apparently the owner is an American, an invalid, and is eccentric. More than this—and this will surprise you—he has been certified by competent medical ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the silver he offered in payment—three bright new dimes. At that moment she caught a glimpse of Ed Brown lurking in the area way of a house at the other end of the block. The sight filled her with a vague misgiving which she could not have explained. She glanced again at Tom; he was nervous ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. A garden ought to produce one everything,—just as a business ought to support a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a convention lately to resolve that the house should ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... brigade column had reached Gomiecourt when word was received that the enemy was attacking again, and there were vague reports that Behagnies had either been captured or was being hard pressed. It was considered inadvisable to continue the journey to Mory, and more important to hold up this possible enveloping movement. We were therefore deflected to the right, and ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... generally an excuse for idle dreaming; because the brain, after a certain time given to active exertion, felt exhausted, and could no longer be prompted to work with intellectual profit; that, in consequence, the effort grew weaker and weaker, till vague musings and indistinct shadows gradually replaced the powerful grasp and clear ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that had been piled together; but the other quieted her fears, and helped her to climb to the top, whence soon the happy mother beheld the vessel of her son. The fairy, her assistant, had disappeared. This story evidently bears a vague tradition of this tumulus having been raised by a woman, and of some maritime expedition made by him for whom it was probably destined. The name of fairy is attached in Brittany to everything—mountains, springs, grottoes, rocks; every accident in nature ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... look of pained surprise crept over their faces, and remained fixed there. Their feet stood rooted to the floor, and the hands which held the cutlasses and pistols stiffened and became rigid. Not one of them could move an eye-lash. Their outlines began to waver; their faces began to be dim and vague, as if covered with close white veils; from their outsides inward they slowly faded, melted, dissolved; nothing remained of any of them but a wraith, a vapor, a puff of smoke, remotely in the shape of a human being; and then ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen |
