"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was used to Viola's casual behaviour; and the monstrous improbability of the thing she had done this time was her cover. Who in the world would have dreamed that she would go off with Jevons? I don't really know that I dreamed it myself at the moment. I may be mixing up with my first vague dread the certainty that came later. But sometimes I wonder why Reggie didn't suspect me. I suppose my rectitude that had dished me with Viola saved me with ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... to something vague that can be construed two ways, like the Delphic Oracle or Old ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... study; in August, 1800, as a step toward the solution of this problem, Kleist returned to Berlin and secured a modest appointment in the customs department. He found no more satisfaction in the civil than in his former military service, and all manner of vague plans, artistic, literary and academic, occupied his mind. Intensive study of Kant's philosophy brought on an intellectual crisis, in which the ardent student found himself bereft of his fond hope of attaining to absolute truth. Meanwhile ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that period—and thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better—at least we are led to infer so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of History," ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... abbe and Jessica were making their way swiftly towards the manor-house. They scarcely spoke as they went, but in Jessica's mind was a vague horror. Lights sparkled on the crescent shore of Beauport, and the torches of fishermen flared upon the St. Charles. She looked back once towards the heights of Quebec and saw the fires of many homes—they scorched her eyes. She asked no questions. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague—after you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... so marked as to give family life distinctness and precision, and to make a home education and a home discipline probable and possible. While descent is traced only through the mother, and while the family is therefore a vague entity, no progress to a high polity is possible. Secondly, that polity would seem to have been created very gradually; by the aggregation of families into clans or GENTES, and of clans into nations, and then again by the ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... until long after the discovery of gold in California had set us all to thinking that I was reminded of the strange story of the old German, Von Rittenhofen, of finding some pieces of gold while on one of his hunts for butterflies. I followed out his vague directions as best I might. We found gold enough to make us rich without our land. That claim is staked legally. Half of it awaits an owner who ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... is eighty years of age, white-haired, wrinkled, but there is force yet left in his arm, and he is as courageous as ever. He has no fear of any Indian that walks the earth, and the vague rumors and whisperings of an uprising are as idle as the wind to him. He lies down to sleep. The lights in all the houses are extinguished. No sentinel walks the street. In the darkness dusky forms glide noiselessly through the town. The doors of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... stopped suddenly and listened. A vague, confused sound was heard in front of them, and Jethro quitted the road and took his course over the fields. Amuba heard the sound increase, and was presently conscious that a crowd of people were passing ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... to the returned wanderer. Poor man! The changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... on either side. When he turned to look at either of the clouds, the one looked at disappeared. It was not condensed enough to be visible to direct vision, yet he was aware of it from the corner of his eye. Shapeless and threatening, the gloomy thickness of the air floated beside him like the vague monster of a dream. Sometimes he fancied that he saw an arm or a limb among the folds of the cloud, or an approach to a face; the instant he looked it vanished. Marching at each hand these vapours bore him ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... captive would trot, gallop, obey the sound of our voice, feed from our hand; and, in fact, showed himself perfectly docile. Now our ingenuity was taxed to the utmost. How were we to saddle and bridle a bird? First, for a bit for his beak. Vague ideas passed through my mind, but every one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the room beside him; so they stand awe-struck in the "wind of the going" of a majestic and unseen Being. This feeling differs from mysticism, inasmuch as it is connected with a reality, while the mystic dreams a vague and unsupported dream, and the poetry it produces is simply the irresistible cry springing from the perception of this wondrous Some One who is actually near them. The feeling is connected, in general, with a lofty moral and religious nature; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the gravelled flat of each enclosure, and perpendicularly down steps cut in the sandstone or let into the walls. I counted 800 houses from the river, and there must be many more: the inhabitants are Bengalees and Khasias, and perhaps amount to 3000 or 4000; but this is a very vague estimate. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... holds her sucking child; opening out her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her wasted dying look, keen and yet vague—her ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those delightful, well-remembered evenings of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... before but could not remember where. The young man in his neat, well fitting clothes, his country tan given place to the pallor of study and late hours, was a very different person from the boy in shirt sleeves and overalls of the ranch yard. But his voice increased Mayer's vague sense of former encounter and with it came a faint feeling of disquiet. Memory connected this fellow with something unpleasant. As Mark turned to him it grew into uneasiness. Where before had he met those eyes, dark blue, looking with an inquiring ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... les pieds comme les mains d'un petit enfant, et une assez longue queue, semblable a celle des gros verdereaux (lezards verts). Nos Arabes et notre trucheman nous dirent qu'elle etoit fort dangereuse. [Footnote: D'apres la description vague que donne ici la Brocquiere, il paroit que l'animal dont il parle est le grand lezard appele monitor, parce qu'on pretend qu'il avertit da l'approche du crocodile. Quant a la terreur qu'en avoient les Arabes, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Luna had vague ideas of this powerful weapon; but it had never seemed so real before. He was growing suspicious. He recalled Firmstone's words, "I've told you a good deal, but not all by a good long measure." They had seemed simple and straightforward ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... he does not sustain the visionary and primeval dignity of these incarnated abstractions; nor, on the other hand, has he so elaborated their characters in detail as to give them the substantiality of persons. There is therefore something vague and hollow in both figures. Yet in the subordinate passages of the poem, the true mythopoeic faculty—the faculty of finding concrete forms for thought, and of investing emotion with personality—shines forth with extraordinary force and clearness. We feel ourselves ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... is heard for a different training from that now given in the public schools. Many are trying to find it. Almost every large town has its experiment—and many smaller places have theirs. Nobody seems to know just what is best. Even the words which express the want are vague. Bright and thoughtful people differ as to what might, can, and should be done. A society has been formed in New York to bring together the needed data. The Slater trustees, charged with the care of a large fund for the training of freedmen, have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... A vague gesture, and she lifted her head, with a tremor of her shoulders, as though shaking off care as a young girl drops a scarf of lace ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... acknowledge that her mother was only a memory. She hardly realized it, indeed. Only, conscious of that vague, strange discomfort, she had an impulse to get away from it. She put ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... "stage" which took the party to the "Spaniard" at Hampstead started! Sometimes I am drawn to the shop, crowded with books; but one's thoughts stray away from the books into speculations as to which house it was. But the indications are most vague, though the eye settles on a decent range of shabby-looking faded tenements—two storeys high only—and which look like lodging houses. Some ingenious commentators have indeed ventured to identify the house itself, arguing from the very general ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... institutions,—alterations in national habits,—may and ought to be earnestly considered: but this is a problem not easily solved. The evils, as you point them out, are great, real, and most obvious; the remedy is obscure and vague; yet for such difficulties as spring from over-competition, emigration must be good; the new life in a new country must give a new lease of hope; the wider field, less thickly peopled, must open a new path for endeavour. But I always think great physical ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... passed, the day came, and Henry awakened his comrades. Long Jim was still missing and their alarm was justified. Whatever trail lie might have struck, he would have returned in the night unless something had happened to him. Henry had vague theories, but nothing definite, and he kept them to himself. Yet they must make a change in their plans. To go on and leave Long Jim to whatever fate might be his was unthinkable. No task could interfere with the duty of the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a single word, Bucks." As he spoke, Scott opened the hall door and whistled into the darkness. For an instant there was no response. Then a small and vague object outlined itself in the gloom, but halted questioningly on the threshold. Wagging his abbreviated tail very gently and carrying his drooping ears very low, Scuffy at length walked slowly into the room. Bucks hailed him with delight, and Scuffy bounding ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Pickwick, who had been writhing in silence for some time, gave a violent start, as if some vague idea of assaulting Serjeant Buzfuz, in the august presence of justice and law, suggested itself to his mind. An admonitory gesture from Perker restrained him, and he listened to the learned gentleman's continuation with a look of indignation, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... for any trace of the sanctuary of the most celebrated of the Sibyls. Her tomb is pointed out as a vague ruin a short distance from the Necropolis, among the tombs which line the Via Domitiana; and Justin Martyr and Pausanias both describe a round cinerary urn found in this spot which was said to have contained her ashes. The tufa rock of the Acropolis is pierced with numerous dark caverns and labyrinthine ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge, and said, at ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... of the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... published, and at the end of this month, laid aside by sickness of the vague kind called locally "a decline," she took to her bed, rising only to lay a few sticks upon the fire from her store gathered in the autumn, or to brew herself a cup of tea. She waited for the tokens of her book's conquests in the great world of thought and men. She had waited so long ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... Mornington had arrived at Madras. He then received a letter containing a tissue of the most palpable lies concerning Tippoo's dealings with the French. Two or three more letters passed, but as Tippoo's answers were all vague and evasive, the governor general issued a manifesto, on the 22nd of February, 1799, recapitulating all the grievances against Mysore, and declaring that, though the allies were prepared to repel any attack, they were equally anxious to ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... it's time for me to be off,' said Mark, dreading further revelations, and too nervous to see that they could do him no possible harm. But the fact was, Caffyn's presence filled him with a vague alarm which he could ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the water,—bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to command, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dogma. The dogma took up into itself a legend of the childhood of the world. It elaborated that which in Genesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as a sacred philosophy of history. It postulated an original revelation. It affirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. To the framers of the dogma, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... refreshment to me; there is such a breezy, unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells "kow" with a large "K." Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. The sanitar then seemed to slip away leaving him alone with a vague sense of disaster. The sun had set, but there was a moon, full and high, and now by its light he could see that his wagon was standing outside the gate of the house at M——. There was the yard, the bandaging-room, the long faded wall of the house, the barn, but where? ... where?... ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... was inclined to patronize held him in contempt and for cause. The lieutenant listened for a time to all Harry had to say with apparent indifference, then suddenly interrupting him, he said: "Oh, I say, old chap, I wouldn't rub it in if I were you. I have a more or less vague remembrance of having rather indulged in heroics. One can't keep his head with poker and unlimited brandy-and-sodas; they don't go together. It's a thing I almost never do; never in a big game, but the thing got interesting ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a contraction at his heart, a fear and dread of Jonah swept through Paasch, the vague, primeval distrust and suspicion of the deformed that lurks in the normal man, a survival of the ancient hostility that in olden times consigned them to the stake as servants of the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the quiet rooms, And all the paths around, With thy perpetual song resound, As thou didst sit, on woman's work intent, Abundantly content With the vague future, floating on thy mind! Thy custom thus to spend the day In that sweet time of youth ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... the ploughshare rust, While the sword grows bright with its fatal labour, And blackens between each man and neighbour The perilous cloud of a vague distrust! ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... with a vague gesture of distaste. "Oh, thank you," he replied; "but, do you know, I don't think I like deans, Mrs. Dewsbury." Mrs. Dewsbury's smile was recondite and diplomatic. "Then you'll exactly suit one another," she answered with gay wisdom. "For, to tell you the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... baroness wandered about the house in a vague, restless way, unable to settle to anything, and trying to amuse herself by consulting with the nurse as to how they should go and fetch the baby back when they discovered where it was. She ate little or nothing, and after another ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... cured five out of six patients by copious bleedings. I relate here the reasons for an opinion without pretending to a discovery. Something like this doctrine may be found in certain modern publications, but it is delivered in that vague and diffuse style, which I trust your example will banish ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... interested in ships arriving from southern ports in the Caribbean, or from southern Europe. That, he figured, would give them only the ships that might have been standing off Seaford in the early hours before dawn on the critical dates. He had a vague idea that he might find some sort of similarity in the ships that had been off Seaford on the critical dates. The registry might be the same, ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... well-filled bags into Tom's hands, and received 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 ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... with a vague apprehension that the task imposed upon her might not be a pleasant one if ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the future—a perfectly vague, indefinite future that terrified her. Every moment of her life had been sheltered and happy and, by reason of that very shelter, her fears had grown upon her. He remembered one evening when they had been present at some party and she had been radiant, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... this Act, notwithstanding any custom of the country or any contract or agreement, the tenant may follow any system of cropping, and dispose of any of his produce as he pleases, but after so doing he must make suitable and adequate provision to protect the farm from injury thereby: a proviso vague and difficult to enforce, and not sufficient to prevent an unscrupulous tenant greatly ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... the length and breadth of our nation a sense,—vague and obscure as yet,—of weariness with the old organisations, of desire for this transformation, works and grows. In the House of Commons the old organisations must inevitably be most enduring and strongest, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... happens when things rot? Have other garden books confused you with vague meanings for words like "stabilized humus?" This book won't. Are you afraid that compost making is a nasty, unpleasant, or difficult process? ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... to the bill, on grounds seriously affecting the class of persons to whom it is designed to bring relief. It will tend to keep the mind of the freedman in a state of uncertain expectation and restlessness, while to those among whom he lives it will be a source of constant and vague apprehension. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... portion here alluded to is not to be taken in the vague sense we attach to the term. The word mahar denotes a present made to, or a portion settled on, the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... a searching examination, could at first render no account of how she came to be mixed up in the affair. Then little by little a vague remembrance returned to her, and she began dimly to ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the vague language of Columbus, the great discoverer, the New World is called the Indies, slightly distinguished, in grammatical number only, from India in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Christianity and of commerce with Europe enabled Japan, which had previously been almost unheard of, except through the vague accounts of Marco Polo and the semi-mythical stories by way of China, to leave a conspicuous mark, first upon the countries of southern Europe, and later upon Holland and England. As in European literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... de Bossuet, who had been charged to preach the sermon of investiture, showed a good deal of wit by exhibiting none at all. The King must have felt indebted to him for such reserve. Into his discourse he had put mere vague commonplaces, which neither touch nor wound any one; honeyed anathemas such as these ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... have always lived in Bordeaux and they are connected by marriage with everybody—from the blacksmith up to the Mayor's notary. Once a Tessier was Mayor himself. Years and years ago Madame's great-uncle Jean had emigrated to America, and from time to time vague rumors of the wealth he had achieved in the new country reached the ears of his relatives—but ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... into sight, the fourth Fuzzy struggling under one arm and a little kitten, black with a white face, peeping over the crook of his other elbow. He was too stunned with disappointment to look at it with more than vague curiosity. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... dream of mine,— lines which were apparently mathematically designed to meet in reciprocal unity. The lines on this occasion between us five human beings were an almost visible tangle. I found my best refuge in silence,—and I listened in vague wonderment to the flow of senseless small talk poured out by Dr. Brayle, apparently for the amusement of Catherine, who on her part seemed suddenly possessed by a spirit of wilfulness and enforced gaiety which moved her to utter a great many foolish things, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... things—only sitting very still, and thinking long, long thoughts. And whatever it was they thought of, it put no gladness into their eyes. Any one who could have peered into their faces in the pale moonlight must have been struck by the similarity in the expression of their eyes, the vague, staring misery of those who search the horizon vainly for something that will never be theirs, some lost city from which they are for ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and realised that its wearer would probably be pretty and young and generally 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 ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in charters, and claimed by Alphonso VI. and the Battler, the title ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into the binnacle was preparing to go down the bridge steps when a cry from the Look-out made him wheel round. Suddenly, and as if evolved by magic from the blackness, the vague spectre of a vast ship shewed up ahead on the port bow making to cross their course. Thundering along under full canvas without lights and seemingly blind, she seemed only ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... apparent short-sightedness of the policy may surprise us; but Cecil was too reticent and self-controlled a man to let his reasons appear, and his words, in answer to his cousin's applications for his assistance, were always kind, encouraging, and vague. But we must judge by the event, and that makes it clear that Cecil did not care to see Bacon in high position. Nothing can account for Bacon's strange failure for so long a time to reach his due place in the public service but the secret hostility, whatever may have ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... own despatch, which is singularly literal and straightforward, that he had no wish, and did not even conceive it necessary, to excuse his disaster. But here again the estimate helps us little, owing to the vague use of the terms battalion and squadron. For the same reason we can but guess at the strength of the royal force. In the writings of the time Claverhouse's command is indiscriminately styled a regiment and a troop. It is certain that he was the responsible officer, ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the striking contrast formed by these different methods of proceeding would convince all Europe, that one court was guided by motives of jealousy, ambition, and avarice, and that the conduct of the other was founded on principles of honour, justice, and moderation; that the vague imputations contained in the king of England's declaration, had in reality no foundation; and the very manner in which they were set forth would prove their futility and falsehood; that the mention made of the works at Dunkirk, and the troop assembled on the coasts of the ocean, implied the most ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... riding toward home just when the shadows were beginning to grow long behind him, wondered if Jean would be back by the time he reached the ranch. He hoped so, with a vague distaste at finding the place empty of her cheerful presence. Be looked at his watch; it was nearly four o'clock. She ought to be home by half-past four or five, anyway. He glanced sidelong at Jim and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... with, and image the show Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know! Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... nature of Rameses was averse to every kind of dreaminess or self-absorption, and no one had ever seen him, even in hours of extreme weariness, give himself up to vague and melancholy brooding; but now he would often sit gazing at the ground in wrapt meditation, and start like an awakened sleeper when his reverie was disturbed by the requirements of the outer world around him. A hundred times before he had looked death ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dirt, so that the victim is impelled continually to wash the hands, fear of disease—especially such as syphilis—and a host of other fears, all of which are recognized as unreasonable, against which the victim struggles but vainly. Sometimes the fear is nameless, vague, undifferentiated, and comes on like a cloud with rapid heartbeat, faint feelings, and a sense of impending death. Sometimes the fear is related to something that has actually happened, as, fear of anything ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... now?" continued Folliot. He gave Glassdale a look which seemed to denote and imply several things. "It might be to your advantage to explain a bit, you know," he added. "One has to be a little—vague, eh?" ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... over his craft, In the vague white light of dawn, With God's calm will for his burning will, While ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... Aurelius's account of his Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it is that, in spite of the vices and foibles of individual Graeculi, the education of the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be overrated. The vague and colorless praise of history leaves on the mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius: it is only from the private memoranda of his nephew that we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, virtuous man he was; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind less than his immortal ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a carcel lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held in his hands. As I entered, he started ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... that. Max Mainz was stirring unhappily now. These officers were talking above his head, even as they ignored him. He had a vague feeling that he was being defended by Captain Mauser, but he ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... thing" was he never said—perhaps he had but a vague idea himself. Bart had injured Lucy and should have made reparation, but in what way except by marriage—he, perhaps, never formulated ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Christ?" "I will teach them to pray," was the answer. And surely this is the great distinction between the Christian and the heathen—the one has communion with his Father in heaven, an all-powerful, wise, and loving Friend; the other may cherish some vague belief and worship of an unknown God, but has neither love nor trust to carry him above ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... had engaged heretofore he had endeavoured to propitiate and turn away the malice of the evil spirit, rather than to worship the Good Spirit, in whom all Indians believe, but about whom he had very vague ideas until his visit to the Christian hunter's wigwam. Now, however, even before he skinned the bear, as the result of that visit, he prayed to that Good Spirit, the giver of all his blessings, and was grateful for his deliverance. ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... my head in my hands. Then I got up and walked the floor. I found that I was determined to see Mr. Thorold, and to see him as soon as possible. Yet I had no certain means of communicating with him. My determination was a vague determination, but it sprung from the necessity of the case. I must see Mr. Thorold. Both of us in Washington for a little while now, no foresight could tell when again we might be near each other. It might well be never. I would ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of great gratitude, from a sister of Fanny Morne." I suppose, by the way, this is one source of the satisfaction that some real mourners find in wearing mourning, as they say, "for the dead,"—a vague longing, like mine, after they have passed beyond human care, to do or sacrifice still something more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... converted into an inanimate mass of clay, when you left me alone on this inanimate theatre of death, my feelings underwent a sudden revolution; this moment seemed to age me a half a century, and without lessening my hatred, only left me a confused perception of it, with a vague memory full of disenchantment ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... was 'ware her looks beheld him Out of the mirror white; And at the window yearning arms she held him, Out of the vague and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... keen, Alfred Vargrave seem'd able To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind. A vigorous, various, versatile mind; A character wavering, fitful, uncertain, As the shadow that shakes o'er a luminous curtain, Vague, flitting, but on it forever impressing The shape of some substance at which you stand guessing: When you said, "All is worthless and weak here," behold! Into sight on a sudden there seem'd to unfold Great outlines of ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... personify mountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all our feelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividly declares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued with life—however dim and vague the conception may be—and feel their character in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of all that is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. But while we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... sky. Three hundred paces away the Gave rolls between marshaled banks, which it has covered with sand; in the midst of the waters may be seen the moss-grown piles of a ruined bridge. One is at ease here, and yet at the bottom of the heart a vague unrest is felt; the soul is softened and loses itself in melancholy and tender revery. Suddenly the clock strikes, and one is forced to go and prepare himself to eat his ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... vague and incomplete, others evince maturity of thought, and are of singular beauty. We are quite charmed with the 'Songs of Seven.' It is highly original and tender. The rhythms vary with the chimes of the different ages, always in tune with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the world, but know Their ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... North Russia and gain their most loyal service in the expedition. Truth, not silence with its suspected acquiescence with British propaganda and methods of dealing with Russians; truth not rumors, truth, was needed; not vague ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... have vague charcoal sketches of Senator Hanway and John Harley; you may note as wide a difference between the two as lies between warclubs and poisons. And yet they fitted with each other like the halves of a shell. Also they were masters of intrigue; only ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... engraving that represents Queen Victoria in a flowing habit and the Prince in a double-breasted frock coat and a stock, on horseback, hung over the mantelpiece in his drawing-room. If the outer patriotism was a little vague, the inner had vigour enough. Canada was a great place. Mr Milburn had been born in the country, and had never "gone over" to England; Canada was good enough for him. He was born, one might say, in the manufacturing interest, and inherited the complacent and Conservative ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... whose descriptions are too vague; too general—little more than bald assertions. A letter from a vacuum cleaner manufacturing company trying to interest agents is filled with such statements as: "This is the best hand power machine ever manufactured," ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... its accuracy. You will meet with similar stories, implicitly believed, in every society you go into, varying in their circumstances—a ghost being sometimes put in the place of a dream, and sometimes a vague but strong mental impression, a foreboding only. But the common point exists in all, that all intimation of the death of an absent acquaintance has been in one or another way insinuated into the mind of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... was over; but a vague alarm had been created, which answered the purpose of the optimates. Caesar was at their mercy any day. They had sworn to maintain all his acts. They had sworn, after Cicero's speech, individually and collectively to defend his life. Caesar, whether he believed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Although he were a "woodcock," the thing must go on in its own natural course. If misfortunes did come, why misfortunes must come. It was the same thing with any soldier or any sailor. If she were to fall in love with some officer,—for the supposition in its vague, undefined form was admissible even to poor Ada's imagination,—she would not be debarred from marrying him merely by the fact that he would have to go to the wars. Of course, as regarded Captain Yorke Clayton, this was merely a speculation. He might be engaged to some other ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... supposed epoch of this alleged immigration must carry us back to the earliest ages; for, that the Incas were (as the greater number of inquirers into Peruvian history pretend) of Asiatic origin, is a mere vague hypothesis, unsupported by anything approximating to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the Iroquois arrived—false on one hand, and on the other vague. Soon after the captain and consul began their investigation they stumbled upon the vessel's papers, concealed in a manner which had hitherto baffled careful search. These showed that she was the missing Cayalti, which on the previous January 18th had cleared ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... not be allowed to be come merely a high-sounding phrase, a vague generality, a pious hope, to which everyone can give lip-service. They must be made to have real meaning in terms of the daily thoughts and acts of every man, woman and child in our land during the coming year and during the years that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... In a vague kind of way she entertained a belief that somewhere in the world there was a fortune awaiting her; that little girl of fifteen summers, who sat there in Hyde Park, in her old washed linen dress and faded ribbons, with such a keen sense of pain in her heart for the mother who bore ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... trying to express vague thoughts which yet were most real to her, "everything seems to ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... some such feeling as that of which you speak, vague, but very strong, impels me to say what I am about to say ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... time, waiting for him to conclude his vague phrase, she watched him in an expectant silence. But the man was diffident to a degree—At length, somewhat unconsciously, "I think not," she answered. "No; there will be no danger awaiting me at Mrs. Hallam's. You need not fear for me ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... In three strides he was standing over Antony Ferrara, fists clenched and his sinewy body tense in every fibre. His face was pale, as was apparent even in that vague light, and ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... they are for me, too—for what she considers my good. But all the same it makes an embarrassment. Happily Second Sight cannot speak as clearly as it sees, or, rather, as it understands. For the translation of the vague beliefs which it inculcates is both nebulous and uncertain—a sort of Delphic oracle which always says things which no one can make out at the time, but which can be afterwards read in any one of several ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... 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
... indulged in and even the thoughts were fought against until the time mentioned above when other sex ideas were implanted. Janet's mother had neither given nor received confidences on this subject, and indeed never throughout the daughter's life has there been anything except vague warnings on the part of the mother about the general dangers ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... visitor to the island disposed of! There were no traces of other violence about it. It looked as though it had been suddenly snatched up and killed; and as I stared at the little furry body came the difficulty of how the thing had been done. The vague dread that had been in my mind since I had seen the inhuman face of the man at the stream grew distincter as I stood there. I began to realise the hardihood of my expedition among these unknown people. The thicket about ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... skylights it was impossible to see anything save a faint, ghostly white radiance representing the phosphorescent surface of the foaming sea, in the midst of which the hull of the yacht stood out black, vague, and shapeless, it being impossible to see the whole length of her because of the dense clouds ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... follow it. Then came a breeze from the river, to sing drearily through the trees. In the intervals, when the breeze was still, its absence seemed in some way, to stimulate the watchers' power of hearing, so that they could detect vague sounds which proceeded from the river. The creak of oars told of a late rower on the stream—a voice was wafted up to them, to be drowned in the sighing of the leaves set swaying by the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... hopes; in common souls 65 Hope is but vague and undefined, Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... music in her hand. The page was upside down—and she had placed herself in a position which concealed her face. Slow as Mrs. Linley was to doubt any person (more especially a person who interested her), she left the room with a vague fear of something wrong, and with a conviction that she would do ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... of five hundred yards, and stationing his infantry in the roads leading from the grove wherein their tents were pitched. The State troops were taken completely by surprise; for, although there had been vague reports current in camp of an intended attack from the arsenal, the cry of the visitors at the grove, 'They're coming!' 'They're coming!' raised just as the first column appeared in sight, found them strolling leisurely under the trees, chatting with their friends from the city, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a comparatively short time ago, I think it was after you were here the last time. There were some vague rumors afloat as to the credit of the bank, and your father, who did not believe them, took a few shares as a proof of his confidence in it, thinking, he said, that the fact that he did so might allay any ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to the officers who conveyed this intimation was distinctly unfavorable and even hostile. The two boats sent ashore found that the entrance to the river was effectually barred by a row of iron stakes and by an inner boom, and that a large and excited crowd forbade them to land. A vague promise was given that an opening would be made in the obstructions to admit the passage of the English ships; but on the boats repeating their visit on the succeeding day they found that the small passages had been more effectually secured, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... his opponents it had fallen upon unheeding ears and incredulous minds. But now, at last, the country was beginning to wake up to the gravity of the crisis, and when he pointed to the 'irrepressible conflict' he was formulating, in clear words, a vague and unwilling belief that was creeping over every ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... intelligence, who proposed the flesh-soil for manure for turnips. The old Vicar, whose age reaches halfway back to the day of the Battle, stood tottering over the verge of the trench. Carlyle has shewn great sagacity in guessing at the localities from the vague descriptions of contemporaries: and his short pasticcio of the battle is the best I have seen. {137} But he will spoil all by making a demi- god of Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise that he brought about the very thing he fought to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and Lancashire men had to hoof it across the sun-baked desert. The troops were divided into three columns, each striking for a different point. They were bent on a combined scheme in which the "General Idea," "Special Idea," and other vague military ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... aeronauts were being hurried on at a speed of 70 miles a second, this vague aspect of the earth soon developed itself into definite outlines. Mountains and plains were no longer confused, the distinction between sea and shore was more plainly identified, and instead of being, as it were, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... old, too; but I hope God will spare me to see them before I die. My soldiers are nothing compared to a disciplined army, where thousands obey the command of one man." Evidently he still entertained some vague hope that the coming event might turn to his advantage, as on another occasion he said to Mr. Waldmeier, "We have a prophecy in our country that a European king will meet an Abyssinian one, and that afterwards a king will reign in Abyssinia ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... a man more or less astray in his wits, he wandered out either late or early, with the vague, aimless step of a dreamer, and stood about, staring vacantly. Leh Shin's shop attracted him, and he would squat on the ground either just outside the narrow entrance, or just within, and, with flaccid, dropping mouth, stare at the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought. But here will be another disappointment; for we can attempt no more than merely to associate in one fraternity all who are afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistake in life is the chief condition of admittance into this class. Here are members of the learned professions, whom Providence endowed with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or for the routine of unintellectual business. We will assign to ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of other experiments which your committee has learned about which are here passed in silence. The accounts of them are vague, or the promised results of such slight importance as not to warrant cumbering with them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... be the reason of this barrenness, dryness, coldness, this complete inability to feel the influence of true music, and, in its presence, to forget any little vexation, any small jealous distress, or any mistaken personal notion? Could Mozart's astonishing gift for arithmetic serve us for a vague explanation? On the one hand, it seems that with him—whose nervous system was so excessively sensitive to any disturbing sound, whose heart beat with such overflowing sympathy—the ideal elements of music met and united to form a wondrous whole. ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... me a sense of freedom, fearless and infinite. What was there to be afraid of anywhere? Even we little children could see the open door of our Father's house. We were playing around its threshold now, and we need never wander out of sight of it. The feeling was a vague one, but it was like a remembrance. The spacious mansions were not far away. They were my home. I had known them, and should return to ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Whenever you have had time to read through some of it, enough to judge by, I shall be very curious to hear your judgment. I have been able to read a page or two here and there, and have been interested and instructed by parts. But my vague impression is that too much space is given to methodical details, and I can find hardly any facts or detailed new views. The number of new words, to a man like myself, weak in his Greek, is something dreadful. He seems to have a passion for defining, I daresay very well, and for coining ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... ravines and gorges among them. It is certain that nothing approaching an accurate map can ever have been made of the mountains, and I should say that in most cases the indications that may have been given are very vague. They would no doubt have been sufficient for those who lived soon after the money was hidden, and were natives of that part of the country and thoroughly acquainted with all the surroundings, but when the information came to ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... got to his feet again, and went to the door to see what promise the night gave of being cloudless and to note the moon already pushing up above the jagged skyline where the trees stood upon the hill tops, she watched him with an interest that was not tinged with the vague suspicion of an hour ago. She saw that as he stood lounging in the doorway, his hands upon his hips, one shoulder against the rude door jamb, he had to stoop his head a little, and knew that he was a taller, bigger man than she had realized ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Lone?" she exclaimed, when she neared the vague figure of a man unsaddling a horse. "You didn't see Frank coming anywhere, did you? Dad won't have his supper until Frank comes with the things I sent ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... very little to me—the answers he gave were the most vague. I naturally inquired concerning his health first, he really looked so wretchedly broken down; and he said there was nothing the matter that he had been a little out of sorts lately, that was all. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... from command of the post and overshadowed by vague sense of official condemnation, was now, in hopeful imitation of the Homeric Achilles, sulking in his tent. Invited by Colonel Stone to appear at the office and give his counsel as to the matter, Captain Devers had replied ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... time confined myself to this vague plan, because it was sufficient to fill my imagination with agreeable objects, and my heart with sentiments in which it delighted. These fictions, by frequently presenting themselves, at length gained a consistence, and took in my mind a determined form. I then had an inclination ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the white-haired dame leads us to the Japanese Room. Had gentle-looking Princess Amalia some vague foreshadowing of the future in her mind when she planned these two rooms leading into one another? The Japanese decorations are more grotesque, the designs less cheerfully comical than those of cousin Chinaman. These monstrous, mis-shapen ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... complaint that the vague and scanty memorials of the times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... nor geese appeared to engage him; his eyes were fixed upon me. The horse swerved so near that its long mane almost brushed against me. By an irresistible impulse I laid my ungloved hand upon it, but did not look at the rider. Carriage and horseman passed on, and William resumed his pace. A vague idea took possession of me that I had seen the horseman before on my various drives. I had a vision of a man galloping on a black horse out of the fog, and into it again. I was very sure, however, that ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... of popular demands for the control of corporations by the Government. Though the Republican leaders were much averse to providing such control, they found inaction so dangerous that on January 14, 1890, Senator John Sherman reported from the Finance Committee a vague but peremptory statute to make trade competition compulsory. This was the origin of the AntiTrust Law which has since gone by his name, although the law actually passed was framed by the Senate judiciary committee. The first section ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... expiration of a quarter of an hour he threw down the book, exclaiming, "How can any one read such silly stuffy. It is insipid and vapid; there is nothing in it. These are the dreams of a visionary! What is nature? The thing is vague and unmeaning. Men and passions are the subjects to write about—there is something there for study. These fellows are good for nothing under any government. I will, however, give them pensions, because I ought to do so, as Head of the State. They occupy and amuse the idle. I will make ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... goes through; only the victims know what that is. My ghost - the ghost of the Whampo Reach - the ghost of those sultry and miasmal nights, had no shape, no vaporous form; it was nothing but a presence, a vague amorphous dread. It may have floated with the swollen and putrid corpses which hourly came bobbing down the stream, but it never appeared; for there was nothing to appear. Still it might appear. I expected every instant through the night to see it in some inconceivable form. I ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... voyage for Kendric, and both to startle him and set him puzzling. He was out on deck in a steamer chair which he had had the lazy forethought to bring, his feet cocked up on the rail, his eyes on the vague expanse about him. There was no moon; the sky was starlit. Barlow had said "Good night" half an hour before; Philippine Charlie was muttering over the wheel; Nigger Ben's voice was crooning from the galley where he was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... is a science. That is the second thing to grasp. Yoga is a science, and not a vague, dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury, compose the romantic type which the delineator figures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the hotel is a street. But during my first delusion, of course, I assumed that he uncovered in this tiny temple merely because he was in church. There is something about the very word elevator that expresses a great deal of his vague but idealistic religion. Perhaps that flying chapel will eventually be ritualistically decorated like a chapel; possibly with a symbolic scheme of wings. Perhaps a brief religious service will be held in the elevator as it ascends; in a few well-chosen words touching the Utmost for ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it's what I would certainly have made it," answered Svidrigailov, with a vague smile. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hearkening thus, they both became aware Of distant bells that throbbed upon the air, A faint, insistent sound that rose and fell, A clamour vague that ominous did swell. As thus they stood, well hidden from the road, Footsteps they heard of feet that briskly strode. And, through the leaves, a small man they espied, Who came apace, a great sword by his side. Large bascinet upon his head he ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... was entertained splendidly; presents were made to him, which, being considerably in debt, he gladly accepted; but as regards his mission he was put off with evasions and blandishments, and he returned home with a reply from the king containing some vague promises of reform in financial and other matters, but an absolute refusal to modify the decrees against heresy. Rather would he sacrifice a hundred thousand lives, if he had them, than concede liberty of worship in any form. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... for a few minutes. There was a loud twittering of birds. A rabbit who had stolen carefully through the undergrowth scurried away. A car had come through the wood and swept past them, bringing with it some vague sense of disturbance. It was some little time before she settled down again to ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nowhere doth benignity, which comes In human form from heaven, so quickly gain An empire o'er the heart, as where a race, Gloomy and savage, full of life and power, Without external guidance, and oppress'd With vague forebodings, ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the Muse, to speak in the style of the last century. Even his intimates were ignorant of the fact that he had a skeleton in his cupboard, his Kasdah or distichs. He confided to me his secret when we last met in Western IndiaI am purposely vague in specifying the place. When so doing he held in hand the long and hoary honours of his chin with the points toward me, as if to say ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... company had not obtained as much money as had been hoped for in the last subscription, it anticipated great success in its trade, until vague rumors began to circulate that Admiral DeRuyter had been sent to Africa to undo the conquest made by Captain Holmes. In the last part of December, 1664, these rumors were confirmed. In a petition to the king of January 2, 1665[43], the company ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... one, particularly if war, or some such incident, intervenes to clarify the atmosphere and strengthen the understanding. Thus, in 1850, Free Joe represented not only a problem of large concern, but, in the watchful eyes of Hillsborough, he was the embodiment of that vague and mysterious danger that seemed to be forever lurking on the outskirts of slavery, ready to sound a shrill and ghostly signal in the impenetrable swamps, and steal forth under the midnight stars to murder, rapine, and pillage—a danger always threatening, ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... direction of her finger. He saw that she was staring at the black heart of the amber block; but when he looked he could see nothing but the vague, irregular ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... observe, much too vague in their specific differences, which are almost universally constituted by one or two particular marks, the rest of the description running in general terms. But our countryman, the excellent Mr. Ray, is the only describer ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... good in a situation of that sort, never any good at all. I ought to have assumed blank ignorance, but the man's eyes pleaded; it seemed a tremendous matter to him. I tried to be non-committal, and said: "Of course I haven't any right." But I had a vague, stupid sense that loyalty to Churchill demanded that I should back up a man he was backing. As a matter of fact, nothing so direct was a-gate, it couldn't have been. It was something about shares in one of de Mersch's other enterprises. Polehampton was going to pick them up for nothing, and ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... proposed to keep in Boston as small a garrison, supported by as small a fleet, as could safely be left, and to send the rest of the troops and ships to harry the coast. This proposition, if by the vague term of chastisement he meant the burning of defenceless towns, was unworthy of Burgoyne; but when later he proposed with this detached force to occupy Rhode Island, doubtless using Newport as a base, he outlined a plan which, if ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a dyke around the invision from within. And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being built up, girder by girder, around the vague spirit. Space, the physical space of savage shyness, is now on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... inserted a separate leaf, being the title of a distinct work, having the signature of "M. Jo. Knox," in 1581, probably the nephew of the Reformer, who became Minister of Melrose. It has no connexion with the volume in which it is preserved; but it led to some vague conjectures that the writer of the History itself may have been "the younger Mr. Knox, seeing the former died in the year 1572, and the other was alive nine years after;" or else, "that the latter Mr. Knox had perfected the work, pursuant to the order ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... of respect and attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." This is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... State may not promise to pay a dollar, yet, wherever such paper money carries any purchasing power with it (which has very seldom happened, and then only for short periods), it will be found that there is a vague popular understanding that the State intends, at some time or other, to redeem the notes with value in coin to some amount. In the early cases of irredeemable money in our colonies, the income ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... when I shall be in urgent need of all the assistance which my officers can give me. I will say no more at present—except that I hope you will take the utmost care of yourself, and get quite well again as quickly as possible—for at present my information is too vague to permit me to make a definite statement. Meanwhile,"—putting his hand into his breast pocket and producing a long, official-looking document—"it affords me the utmost pleasure to hand you this, which is your appointment to the command ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... engraving after Landseer, showing a lonely stag paddling into a lake. The stag at eve had drunk or was about to drink his fill, and Cyril was copying him. He had already indicated a flight of birds in the middle distance; vague birds on the wing being easier than detailed stags, he ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... crime that once estranges from the virtues Doth make the memory of their features daily More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit Can have the passport to our confidence Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd, Who prize and seek the honest man but as A safer lock ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... forms of industrial grievance and of poverty has forced upon us a large mass of legislation which is sometimes called by the name of Socialistic Legislation. It is necessary to enter on a brief examination of the character of the various enactments included under this vague term, in order to ascertain the real nature of the remedy they seek ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... know how it is," said GORST, curiously regarding DON'T-KEIR HARDIE, and his eruption of correspondence, "but our friend, for whom I shall certainly vote, somehow reminds me of Mrs. Jellaby. The same earnestness of vague purpose, the same self-devotion to public questions, and the same large correspondence. I wouldn't be surprised, if you had the opportunity of examining our friend's hands, if you found them rather inked than horny. Still, I shall vote for him, and say something, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various |
