"Define" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miles from the island, and having run in until after dark, they had hove-to till the next morning. Krantz was on deck; he leant over the side, and as the sails flapped to the masts, he attempted to define the line of the horizon. It was very dark, but as he watched, he thought that he perceived a light for a moment, and which then disappeared. Fixing his eyes on the spot, he soon made out a vessel, hove-to, and not ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... is meant by courage, though it is not easy to define it. It is the determination to hold our own, to face danger without flinching, to go straight on our way against opposing forces, neither turning to the right hand nor ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... define. One feels everywhere among people who know each other, even in the family, that the relations are not the same. One is never sure of anything any more; in the morning one says to oneself: What is it I am going to experience ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... is not the same thing as style. I have something to say in my next lecture as to what I think style means, but it is certain that a building may have style and yet want character, and it may have a good deal of character and yet be faulty or contradictory in style. We cannot define "character," but when we feel that it is present we may rely upon it that it is because the designer took interest and pleasure in his work, was not doing it merely scholastically—in short, he put something of his own character ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... separation and silence had clothed him in my mind with something of the mistiness of a half-remembered dream. Yet the instant Washington Flagg mentioned his name the boyish features began rapidly to define themselves behind the maturer mask, until he stood before me in the crude form in which my ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... financial panic had just swept over the land, and though he had lost nothing by it, it caused him more anguish than thousands who had lost their all. He was afraid of banks, afraid of men, afraid even of good mortgages on productive real estate. He dreaded some calamity he could not define, which would wrest from him every dollar he had ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... invariably alluded to the odd little house where her many avocations were carried on as her "establishment," and spoke habitually of "the business." It would have been hard to define the precise nature of this business. There was a bakery attached to it, over which Pat Rooney presided, driving round the country each afternoon with the results of his labours. Juliana and Henrietta McNally sold groceries at one counter, and Matilda and Maria sold calico and flannel and ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... The Indians, the Persians, and the Arabians, were all famous for their fables. Amongst the ancient Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian tales, but they have now perished, and, from every account we hear of them, appear to have been loose and indelicate." Similarly, the classical dictionaries define "Milesiae fabulae" to be "licentious themes," "stories of an amatory or mirthful nature," or "ludicrous and indecent plays." M. Deriege seems indeed to confound them with the "Moeurs du Temps" illustrated with artistic gouaches, when he says, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... who as what," I said. "And even then it isn't so easy to define. I've heard men call it beauty and mystery, and things like that; but just now it seemed to me that what I wanted most was a universal miracle—some really inexplicable happening that would upset every law the physicists have ever stated. I was thinking, for instance, how thrilling ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... a restless sigh began to pace the little room. "I see a tangle—something not understood—some stumbling-block laid by laws beyond our vision. We cannot even define it, cannot even find its edges. We do not know its nature. Things happen so sometimes in this strange world. I do not think that Richard himself understands how the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... definitions of civilization. Civilization is a complexity of countless aspects, and may be validly defined in a great number of relationships. A reader of James Harvey Robinson's MIND IN THE MAKING will find it very reasonable to define a civilization as a system of society-making ideas at issue with reality. Just so far as the system of ideas meets the needs and conditions of survival or is able to adapt itself to the needs and conditions of survival of the society it dominates, so far will ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... impressions. Although he liked good food and wine and cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and painting and books. His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer to him than the lady of the ivory frame. Who was the lady of the ivory frame? Gaston would have been happy to define with the leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and Philippa Cleve. Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire. If he continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... were not perhaps quite so definitely bogie. I used a wrong qualification there. Definite is exactly what Miss FOX'S bogies are not, and in this they show their own good sense, and hers. She knows quite well that to define a supernatural element is to lessen enormously its flesh-creeping capabilities. Your flesh will creep all right over Ape's Face several times; though perhaps you may agree with me at the end that the book is really an enlarged Christmas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... a tall fair woman, whose height just saved her from redundancy. Her rosy blondness had survived some forty years of futile activity without showing much trace of ill-usage except in a diminished play of feature. It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a crowd. The collective nature of her interests exempted her from the ordinary rivalries of her sex, and she knew no more personal ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... it,' returned Daisy, with dignified decision, that gave her father his first approach to a laugh on that day; but nobody was in spirits to desire Miss Daisy to define from what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the bon mot of her belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula—which was perhaps not a formula; it was the reductio ad absurdum ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of the District represent that the laws regulating the sale of liquor and granting licenses therefor should be at once amended, and that legislation is needed to consolidate, define, and enlarge the scope and powers of charitable and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... give you any answer to that," said I, "I must ask you to explicitly define and accurately set forth the nature of the assistance that you ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... so dismally. Bessie Fairfax was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and fancying she saw a change; he was certainly not so brown as he used to be, nor so buoyant, nor so animated. But it would have perplexed her to define what the change she fancied was. Conscious of her observation, Harry dissembled a minute, then pushed back his chair, and invited her to come away to the old sitting-room, where the evening sun shone. No one offered to follow them; they ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... I cannot define what it was about Mary that made her little speeches, half argumentative, all-pleading, so wonderfully persuasive. Her facts were mere fancies, and her logic was not even good sophistry. As to real argument and reasoning, there was nothing of either in them. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... beyond the scope of my present purpose. It suffices if science permits me to postulate (a concession by science which I much doubt if it could make) that matter, as we know it, has the semblance of being what we call a substance, charged with a something which we define as energy, but which at all events simulates a vital principle resembling heat, seeking to escape into space, where it cools. Thus the stars, having blazed until their vital principle is absorbed in space, sink into relative torpor, or, as the astronomers say, die. The trees ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... and beliefs were originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. The priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct. But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was carried ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... However, some salts and compounds are practically insoluble in water under any circumstances. We now arrive at the important result known to chemists as the precipitation of insoluble compounds from solutions. In order to define this result, however, we must, of course, first consider the circumstances of causation of the result. Let us take a simple case of chemical decomposition resulting in the deposition or precipitation of a substance from solution in the insoluble state. We will take a salt you are probably ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the court the instant afterwards, enquired of one of the officials the way of egress for discharged prisoners, and betook myself there without delay. What my object was I cannot now, as I could not then, define. I certainly did not intend to accost the poor fellow, or to commit myself in any way with him, for the present, at all events. Yet there I was, and I could not move from the spot, however useless or absurd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... most glorious campaigns of the Emperor, and had occasion to renew my observations on this point during the long sojourn which we made at Schoenbrunn with the army. Military tone in the army is a most difficult thing to define, and differs according to rank, time of service, and kind of service; and there are no genuine soldiers except those who form part of the line, or who command it. In the soldiers' opinion, the Prince de Neuchatel ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... about friendship and what it implies. I should define a friend as one who believes in me, who expects much of me, who encourages me to do the best that is in me, who will tell me of my faults, who recognizes my virtues, who ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... repeating to myself. "I must not be an added burden to Mr. Erminstoun. I have already profited by my sister's union with his son, by having gratefully received instruction in various branches of learning, and can I not do something for myself?" What this something was to be, I could not define. My lameness precluded active employment, and I was too young to become a "companion." I confided my thoughts and wishes to Mr. Dacre, who often visited us, speaking words of balm and consolation to the afflicted. Gabrielle listened to his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... defend her independence. She has kept her word. The other powers had agreed to protect and to respect Belgium's neutrality. Germany has broken her word, England has been faithful to it. These are the facts. I consider it an obligation of my pastoral charge to define to you your conscientious duties toward the power which has invaded our soil, and which for the moment occupies the greater part of it. This power has no authority, and, therefore, in the depth of your heart, you should render it neither esteem, nor attachment, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... opposed to merely picturesque effect, had worked upon the same line. Donatello revelled in the rhythmic dance and stationary grace of children. Luca Signorelli initiated the plan of treating complex ornament by means of the mere human body; and for this reason, in order to define the position of Michelangelo in Italian art-history, I shall devote the next section of this chapter to Luca's work at Orvieto. But Buonarroti in the Sistine carried their suggestions to completion. The result is a mapped-out chart of living figures—a vast pattern, each detail of which is a masterpiece ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... found again, here, in the gray robe of a Sister of Charity, content to endure real, bitter hardships, and to witness daily sights from which womanhood, with all its bravery, must needs recoil. The motives that had urged her to such a step would be hard indeed to define. The same weariness and impatience of inaction that have been alluded to in the case of Royston Keene may have had much to do with it; to this, perhaps, was added a feeling of wild remorse, seeking to vent itself in self-torturing ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Miss Ray(353) by a divine. In my own opinion we are growing more fit for Bedlam, than for Mahomet's paradise. The poor criminal in question, I am persuaded, is mad—and the misfortune is, the law does not know how to define the shades of madness; and thus there -are twenty outpensioners of Bedlam, for the one that is confined. You, dear Sir, have chosen a wiser path to happiness by depending on yourself for amusement. Books and past ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... new word, it may be well to define it at the beginning of this paper. Webster says "It is the transmission of mental or physical characteristics or qualities from parent to offspring, the tendency of an organism to reproduce the characteristics of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the 12th instant, in the last sheet (not the half sheet), last page, omit the sentence which (defining, or attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) begins, 'I should say at least in life that most military men have it, and few naval; that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers,' &c. &c. I say, omit the whole of that sentence, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... and as attorney for rural places filed a demurrer against six of the seven trunks. He endeavored to define, picture, elucidate, set forth and describe a farm. His own words sounded strange in his ears. He had not realized how thoroughly urbsidized he ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent.' Let us define this word omniscient. In a common sense way, 'omni' means all, and 'scientia' means science, then it would be proper to say, 'God is all science, and science is perfect intelligence,' for the scientific reality concerning anything, is the perfect intelligence pertaining ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... and full. It is only in modelling that we really draw,—in other words, that we detach things from their surroundings and put them in their due relief. The proper distribution of light can alone reveal the whole body. For this reason I do not sharply define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a haze of warm, light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a finger on the exact spot where the parts join the groundwork of the picture. If seen near by this sort of work has a woolly effect, and is wanting in nicety and precision; ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... defect that I have remarked in all maps of Scotland that have fallen in my way is a want of a coloured line, or stroke, that shall exactly define the just limits of that district called the Highlands. Moreover, all the great avenues to that mountainous and romantic country want to be well distinguished. The military roads formed by General Wade are so great and Roman-like ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... know a more filling moment, exclusive of the wine, than he can enjoy there, with those cascades before him and those temples beside him; for Mr. Gray has mentioned only one of the two, I do not know why, that exist on this enchanted spot, and that define their sharp, black shadows as with an inky line just beyond the restaurant tables. One is round and the other oblong, and the round one has been called the Sibyls', though now it is getting itself called Vesta's—the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... at my not having called this "beauty." Of course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... specimen, to represent some animal feature. The lateral sections are occupied by eye-like figures that stand for the markings of the body of the creature symbolized. They really occupy the spaces left by a continuous waved body or life line, which they serve to define. Devices of this class are most frequently met with in connection with representations of the alligator. They may, however, symbolize the serpent, as occasionally seen in the alligator group. Decorative conceptions so remarkable as these could arise only through one channel: the channel ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... to no house in the school in the matter of tone. The listening eleven, and the other prefects who, though not members of the victorious eleven, had been invited to the feast, cheered vigorously. They understood what tone meant though Mr. Dupre did not define it. They knew that it was mainly owing to the determined attitude of Mannix that young Latimer, who collected beetles and kept tame white mice, had been induced to wash himself properly and to use a clothes brush on the legs of his trousers. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... England, not only finding his way through a crowded city to the banks of the river, but also finding the ship he wanted in that river, and in which he evidently thought he should discover his lost master. It is an instance of sense of so peculiar a kind that it is difficult to define it, or the faculty which enables animals to find their way to a place over ground which ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... enquire how it stands related to religion. But the view we take of that relation will necessarily be coloured by the idea which we have formed of the nature of religion itself; hence a writer may reasonably be expected to define his conception of religion before he proceeds to investigate its relation to magic. There is probably no subject in the world about which opinions differ so much as the nature of religion, and to frame a definition of it which would satisfy every one must obviously ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... advantages and defects as an artist; these he has in common with others, and they are to be measured by a recognized standard; but there is something in his genius that is incalculable. It would be hard to define the causes of the difference of impression made upon us respectively by two such men as Aeschylus and Euripides, but we feel profoundly that the latter, though in some respects a better dramatist, was an infinitely lighter ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... through heightened psychical activity, advances in the form of a continually increasing differentiation of the individuals (this is akin to the Spencerian formula). This process, evolving psychical freedom from psychical constraint, exhibits a series of psychical phenomena which define successive periods of civilisation. The process depends on two simple principles, that no idea can disappear without leaving behind it an effect or influence, and that all psychical life, whether in a person or a society, means change, the acquisition ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... define the special characteristic of the central Christian rite, should we not state it as being a Sacred meal of Communion in which the worshipper, not merely symbolically, but actually, partakes of, and becomes one with, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... passing through gradual stages of cooling until their light dies out altogether. Very recently Professor Lockyer has been enabled, through utilization of the multiform records accumulated during years of study, to define the various typical stages of the sidereal evolution; and not merely to define them but to illustrate them practically by citing stars which belong to each of these stages, and to give them yet clearer definition by naming the various elements which the spectroscope ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... has been left over, or of survival, made familiar by the genius of Edward B. Tylor. In these lingering notions we have opinions respecting relations of cause and effect which have resulted as a necessary consequence from past intellectual conditions. A superstition, accordingly, I should define as a belief respecting causal sequence, depending on reasoning proper to an outgrown culture. According to this view, with adequate information it would be possible to trace the mental process in virtue of which arise ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... other professions or trades know nothing of it. It is only this calling whose primary appeal lies in the suggestion of restless adventure which holds out that deep sensation to those who embrace it. It is difficult to define, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate. Somebody ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... Courts.—It is difficult in brief space to define minutely the province of each court The following accounts, therefore, give only a ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... and evil, just and unjust, wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, etc. He incessantly applied himself, relates Aristotle—and therein he was as much a true professor of rhetoric as of morality—thoroughly to define and carefully to specify the meaning of words in order not to be put off with vague terms which are illusions of thought, and in order to discipline his mind rigorously so as to make it an organ for the ascertainment ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... was in her cousin's manners and exterior, however, was much more difficult to define by Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits, herself—the simple nature and unpretendingness of his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure at seeing him again—but ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... to define the difference between the only two parties with definite principles. The real contest was, not between Lincoln and Douglas, or between Cox and me, but between Breckenridge and Lincoln, between free institutions and slave institutions, between union and disunion. I refer to this ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... surveyor Lewis, the gallant and tireless spirit whose indefatigable efforts had pulled the Warburton Expedition out of the fire took charge of an expedition equipped by Sir Thomas Elder to define the many affluents of Lake Eyre. Starting from the overland line, Lewis skirted Lake Eyre to the north, penetrated to Eyre's Creek, traced that stream and the Diamantina into Lake Eyre, and confirmed the opinion that the waters of Cooper's Creek as well as ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation. The term "variety" is almost equally difficult to define; but here community of descent is almost universally implied, though it can rarely be proved. We have also what are called monstrosities; but they graduate into varieties. By a monstrosity I presume is meant some considerable deviation of structure in one part, either injurious to or not ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... screw define, A screwing motion, six; For four will give the axial line, One more the pitch will fix; And hence we always can contrive One ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... have been the merits of this examination we are unable to state; probably there was a good deal of leniency shown by the meeting towards Abe. If he was deficient on some points, he compensated in others; if he could not define and defend all the articles of our faith, he could believe them as fully as any one else; be that as it may, there was no serious objection taken to him on the ground of his examination, but the affair of the trial sermon was not so soon got over, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... population was probably not sound social policy. Upon the whites the effects were first to cause at least a formal realization of race solidarity, and secondly, to intensify class lines within the ranks, although not to define the "poor whites" as rigidly as in certain of the sister slave States. On the whole, Professor Wright believes that the free Negro was an asset to the State, but one laden with many of the characteristics of a liability. "The managers of the corporate body to which he (the Negro) ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... bearing, from the small hill, over the watering place of Balunrueh, was 77 deg.. The reef extends to 104 deg., and stretches to the southward beside: near Liang Liang it is narrow. Its limits I could not define. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... The interesting complications which might arise, if Grover should mistake one Daughter of the Rhine for the other, stimulated her romantic fancy and made her eager as a girl to have the plot carried into effect. What was to be accomplished by it, she did not trouble herself to define; it only gave her a kind of confused satisfaction to think that she was mystifying somebody who had for a long time been mystifying her. Roeschen was exactly of Miss Jones's height and their figures closely resembled each other. So when ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... define man to be a reasoning animal, for we do not dispute that idiots are men; to say nothing of that very numerous description of persons who consider themselves reasoning animals, and are so denominated by the ironical courtesy ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... effort to compress the scope and capability of terrorist organizations, isolate them regionally, and destroy them within state borders, the United States and its friends and allies will secure a world in which our children can live free from fear and where the threat of terrorist attacks does not define ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... members of the sewing circle. Duly appreciating all these difficulties, Brother Spyke chose a mission to Antioch, where the field of his labors would be wide, and the gates not open to restraints. And though he could not define the exact character of his mission to Antioch, he so worked upon the sympathies of the credulous old lady, as to well-nigh create in her mind a resolve to give the amount she had struggled to get and set apart for the benefit of those ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... find one for myself;" and Percival stood before her, looking, to her girlish fancy, more of a hero than ever in the evening-dress which became him well. The perfectly-fitting gloves, the flower in his coat, a dozen little things which she could not define, made her feel uncouth and anxious, fascinated and frightened, all at once. Had he greeted her in the patronizing way in which he had talked to her of old, she would have been deeply wounded, but he asked her for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... be well first to define "British interests" and to show that these are not necessarily synonymous with European interests. British interests are: first, the control of all the seas of all the world—in full military and commercial control. If this be not challenged peace is permitted: to dispute ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... introductory words show? 2. Of what do the words "I am" remind us? 3. What is the meaning of the Hebrew word translated "Lord"? 4. What do the words "thy God" express? 5. From what bondage has God delivered us? 6. Name and define God's attributes? 7. Why should we ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... however, or the negro steward, who was directly in his way, but was too dumfoundered to prevent him, he made one leap over the table and rushed out of the cabin, with the same set look of terror, or some unearthly expression which they could not absolutely define, on his face, the blood streaming down from under the bandage across his forehead, making his appearance ghastly and uncanny, as the Scotch say, in the extreme. He resembled, more a galvanised corpse ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... occupied by a young and sprightly cavalier, who pursued her like a shadow, pouring tender tales in a not unwilling ear. Group by group the guests retired from the festive scene, and the brother and sister, scarcely able to define the new feelings which sprung up in the heart of each, quitted the magnificent palace to seek their forlorn abode. A pavilion, nearly in ruins, was the sole shelter which the proud lord of Alberoni afforded to the only surviving branches of his family, when returning to their native ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... something, I scarcely knew what, had gone wrong, so terribly wrong! I told myself that I was now married, and had a duty both to my wife and society, and I tried hard to ignore the ache, on the one hand, and not to permit myself to define and analyse it on the other. But a man does not have to understand anatomy in order to break his heart, and so my longing defined itself even by itself. The old fire, built on a virgin hearth, was far from out. Society had heaped a mouthful of conventional ashes ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... no need to bid her hold her tongue. She regarded the secret with dread and horror, and a sense of something amiss which she could not quite define, though she told herself she was only acting in obedience to her husband, and indeed her judgment ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the merchants is more difficult to define; but you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as opposed to the military ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... he questioned the rule of right in all his principles, and while they were held in abeyance, his good habits, and good natural disposition held fast and stood him in stead; while Lady Davenant, by slow degrees, brought him to define his terms, and presently to see that he had been merely saying old things in new words, and that the systems which had dazzled him as novelties were old to older eyes; in short, that he was merely a resurrectionist of obsolete heresies, which had been gone over and over again at ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... tide turned, and he began to lose; not small, but large sums. But, as if that made him more determined than ever, he played on and on, always the first to enter and the last to leave, while I watched him with a dread foreboding at my heart which I could not define. Oh, how rashly he played and what heavy sums he staked! His fortune was not large, nor was mine then what it is now; but we had planned together to buy a lovely place we knew of on the Isle of Wight, and had furnished ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... a word as question-begging as 'artistic,' and he would be a rash man who should try to define either. But so much as this will readily be admitted, that humour is a habit of mind essentially complex, involving always a double vision—a reference from the public or normal standard of proportion to one ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... among the islands, some of which were seen, and others known to exist, off the Arctic coast opposite the mouth of the Greygoose River. Moreover, a faint hope, that he would have found it difficult to define, was aroused by the fact that the kidnapper of his child had formerly been the rescuer of ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the ?a???, or beautiful, were not always to be defined, nor indeed such as the world would always assent to, though we could define them. A blush, a phrase of affability to an inferior, a tear at a moving tale, were to him, like the Cestus of Cytherea, unequalled in conferring beauty. For all these Miss Walton was remarkable; but as these, like ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... a hopeless one. So reason said. Romance and youth, and the longing that he could not define, rose to confute this sober argument, flushed and eager, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... barbarism, rejected every species of political aristocracy, and represented the English constitution as essentially antagonistic to the American, not as its type. I have accepted universal suffrage in principle, and defended American democracy, which I define to be territorial democracy, and carefully distinguish from pure individualism on the one hand, and from pure socialism or ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... or that he is deceiving himself and means the author's general temperament—not the author's verbal style, but a peculiar quality which runs through all the matter written by the author. Just as one may like a man for something which is always coming out of him, which one cannot define, and which is of the very essence ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... into the minds of its first teachers—when it had gained full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few—it might be—and to the Protestant, the rationa Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was—left to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling Providence. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, was dexterously eluded, or speciously conceded by Gibbon; his plan enabled ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of expectant faces behind her, giving a smiling nod to Mrs. Macdonald, who, duly impressed with the gravity of the occasion, sat by the side of her John with her hands clasping a clean pocket-handkerchief as if she were at church. Paul tried to define the cause of his annoyance as he ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... FRENCH ACADEMY.—The taste for literature, which had become so generally diffused, rendered the men whose province it was to define its laws the chiefs of a brilliant empire. Scholars, therefore, frequently met together for critical discussion. About the year 1629 a certain number of men of letters agreed to assemble one day in each week. It was a union of friendship, a companionship ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... partnership between three retail tradesmen. But, lest a layman's judgment might be considered insufficient, the treatise was submitted by the writer to one of the most learned of our theological experts,—the same who once informed a church dignitary, who had been attempting to define his theological position, that he was a Eutychian,—a fact which he seems to have been no more aware of than M. Jourdain was conscious that he had been speaking prose all his life. The treatise appeared to this professor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deals with the latter of these two classes. 'Presumptuous sins' does not, perhaps, convey to an ordinary reader the whole significance of the phrase, for it may be taken to define a single class of sins—namely, those of pride or insolence. What is really meant is just the opposite of 'secret sins'—all sorts of evil which, whatever may be their motives and other qualities, have this ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... took proper place as only accessory to that of the face, where her vivacity reached its climax; and it was unfortunate that an ungifted young man, new in the town, should have attempted to define the effect upon him of all this generosity of emphasis. He said that "the way she used her cute hazel eyes and the wonderful glow of her facial expression gave her a mighty spiritual quality." His actual rendition of the word was "spirichul"; but it was not his pronunciation ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... for the poor, the unfortunate and orphan being one of the first duties of a civilized and Christian State, the General Assembly shall, at its first session, appoint and define the duties of a Board of Public Charities, to whom shall be entrusted the supervision of all charitable and penal State institutions, and who shall annually report to the Governor upon their condition, with suggestions ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... was not until some time later that I tried to define them thus approximately by retrospective analysis. At that moment, being altogether incapable of such an effort, I could only establish in my own mind the idea of extreme decrepitude and horrible old age, which they produced in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with a wrinkle between his eyebrows. For the moment he looked as if he were short-sighted, as if he were trying to define an image somewhat blurred, conscious that the image itself was clear enough, that the fault lay in the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... define the expression, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." "It just means," responded a little fellow, "that the evil committed at the present day is quite sufficient ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... or imaginative being, I am going to show how this self, hitherto considered indomitable, can be as easily controlled as a torrent or an unbroken horse. But before going any further it is necessary to define carefully two words that are often used without being properly understood. These are ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... lovely face and form and a brave deed of devotion. But it was not so. Something beyond the flesh and its works and attributes drew him towards this woman, something that he could neither understand nor define (unless, indeed, the vision of Issachar defined it), but of which he had been conscious since first he set eyes upon her face. It was possible, it was even probable, that before another hour had gone by she would have passed beyond his reach, into the deeps of death, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... words, there will foe some faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments. It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better expressed indirectly; thus Plato's weak point is exactly that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa; and so, too, Kant is deficient just where ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... some amusement. "On the contrary, I should define the highest type of courage as self-control in the presence of danger—not necessarily absence of fear. The latter is really no more credit to you than eating your dinner when ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... is the subject," said she, "for I have sometimes incurred great displeasure from members of your brotherhood by being too obtuse to puzzle out the purport of their productions. It is so difficult, you know, to compress and define a character or story, and make it patent at a glance, within the narrow scope attainable by sculpture! Indeed, I fancy it is still the ordinary habit with sculptors, first to finish their group of statuary,—in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "I cannot define them all clearly on the spur of the moment; but I must have leave to go and see my daughter whenever I choose, and she must have the right to spend one day in the ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... "But you could not define it. If a man be well educated, and can keep a good house over his head, perhaps you may call him a gentleman. But there are many such with whom your father would not wish to be so closely connected as ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in a glass mirror, when it had worn the pure, sunny hue of childhood, as she lazily surveyed it, stretched in her easy-chair with a book upon her knees. That morning love had first awoke—a scarcely perceptible feeling that she had been unable to define, and against which she had believed herself strongly armed. To-day she was in the same place, but devoured by overpowering passion, while before her eyes the dying sun illumined the city with flame. It seemed to her that one day had sufficed ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... been in operation for a number of months before endeavoring to increase their scope, because only operation will show with exactness their merits and their shortcomings and thus give opportunity to define what further remedial legislation is needed. Yet in my judgment it will in the end be advisable in connection with the packing house inspection law to provide for putting a date on the label and for charging the cost of inspection to the packers. All these laws have already justified their enactment. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... drift into discussion on the matter of love, Alan asked the priestess to define her "soul," whence it came and whither she ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... at a loss to define the beauty, by which his passion was suddenly and irresistibly determined to a particular object; but this could never happen, if it depended upon any known rule of proportion, upon the shape and disposition of the features, or the colour ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... bad-weather and fair-weather clouds must be more carefully carried out in the sub-species, before we can reason of it farther: and before we begin talk either of the sub-genera and sub-species, or super-genera and super-species of cloud, perhaps we had better define what every cloud is, and ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications; malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be done to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of His presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know: and gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who "maketh the clouds His chariot," we define and explain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature. All errors of this kind—and ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... science, the pride in the new Germany, the more than kind and friendly interest in three strange children—all these manifestations of the German character and of German family life made a subconscious impression upon me which I did not in the least define at the time, but which is very ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... clearly necessary now that Mr. Dockwrath himself should take his own part, and fight his own battle. "Sir," said he, turning to Mr. Moulder, "I think you'll find it extremely difficult to define that word;—extremely difficult. In this enterprising country all men are ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... have been the attempts to define the qualities, nature, and residence of the soul. The sinful body is the sepulchre in which it is entombed, until Christ giveth it life. The only safe guide, in such inquiries, is to follow Bunyan, and ascertain 'what saith the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... attempt to define the female figure below the waist, at least; but although we may safely veil or even conceal Nature, we cannot misrepresent or outrage her, except at the cost of utter loss of beauty. The lines of drapery, or of any article of dress, must conform to those of that part ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon line, and a certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... books of history. For it is the true office of history to represent the events themselves together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment. But mixtures are things irregular, whereof no man can define. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... lower all his conceptions of government. Even where the conclusions of his policy were correct they seemed to have been reached by some unworthy process. Like Germany at large, Prussia breathed uneasily under an oppression which was everywhere felt and yet was hard to define. Its best elements were those which suffered the most: its highest intellectual and political aims were those which most excited the suspicion of the Government. Its King had lost whatever was stimulating or ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... illustrious rank were confined to the moderate profit of 4 per cent. 6 was pronounced to be the ordinary and legal standard of interest; 8 was allowed for the convenience of manufacturers and merchants; 12 was granted to nautical insurance, which the wiser ancients had not attempted to define; but, except in this perilous adventure, the practice of exorbitant usury was severely restrained.[33] The most simple interest was condemned by the clergy of the East and West; but the sense of mutual benefit, which had triumphed over the laws of the republic, had resisted with equal firmness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... us the nature of Pity, which we may define as pain arising from another's hurt. What term we can use for pleasure arising from another's gain, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... both for mathematics and religious philosophy, sprang. Next came the question of the possibility of a universally applicable scientific method of criticism, regarded as intellectual optics. If one were to define the critic's task as that of understanding, through the discovery and elucidation of the dependent and conditional contingencies that occur in the intellectual world, then there was a danger that he might approve everything, not only every form and tendency of art that had arisen historically, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... all the changes that are going on, actual wages and interest are continually tending. How nearly in practice the earnings of labor and capital approximate the ideal rates which perfect competition would establish is a question which it is not necessary at this point to raise. We have to define the standard rates and show that fundamental forces impel the actual rates toward them. The waters of a pond have an ideal level toward which they tend under the action of gravity; and though a gale ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... '10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The most common are Mamelucos (offspring of white with Indian), Mulattoes (from white and Negro), Cafuzos or Zambos (from Indian and Negro), Curibocos (from Cafuzo and Indian); and Xibaros (from Cafuzo and Negro). "To define their characteristics correctly," says Von Tschudi, "would be impossible, for their minds partake of the mixture of their blood. As a general rule, it may be said that they unite in themselves all ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... system of the science itself. But, at the same time, it marks out and defines both the external boundaries and the internal structure of this science. For pure speculative reason has this peculiarity, that, in choosing the various objects of thought, it is able to define the limits of its own faculties, and even to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of proposing problems to itself, and thus to sketch out the entire system of metaphysics. For, on the one hand, in cognition a priori, nothing must be attributed ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... measure of 1867. Fitzjames considered himself to be a Liberal, but the Liberals of those days were divided into various sections, not fully conscious of the differences which divided them. In one of his 'Cornhill' articles[98] Fitzjames had attempted to define what he meant by liberalism. It meant, he said, hostility to antiquated and narrow-minded institutions. It ought also to mean 'generous and high-minded sentiments upon political subjects guided by a highly instructed, large-minded and impartial intellect, briefly the opposite ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... there mingled no expediency. He spoke the truth as he saw it, and let consequences take care of themselves. For a generation, the Unitarian ministers had denied the doctrine of the Trinity, but they held the founder of Christianity in such reverence that they would scarcely define his divine or semi-divine nature. Parker spoke frankly of Jesus as a man, and a man liable to imperfections and mistakes, while he honored him as the greatest leader of humanity. The Unitarians,—their intellectual radicalism kept well in check by the conservatism ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines, amplifies, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and buzzed in the slanting beams of the sunset; the whole air gently undulated in a rhythmic wave that disposed the soul to revery and prayer. The young woman felt this influence, without, of course, being able to define it, and yielding to its sway, she wandered farther than she had intended, or than her bodily strength justified, from the hut of her father. It was so delightful to revisit all these scenes which she had learned to love so much, and to see them again ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... be the accomplishments necessary to render one capable of reaching the highest platform of social eminence, and it is not easy to define clearly what they are, there is one thing, and one alone, which will enable any man to retain his station there; and that is, GOOD BREEDING. Without it, we believe that literature, wealth, and even blood, will be unsuccessful. By it, if ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... it, to the neglect of other things. But it was soon found that Schiaparelli's lines—to which he gave the name "canals," merely on account of their shape and appearance, and without any intention to define their real nature—were excessively difficult telescopic objects. Eight or nine years elapsed before any other observer corroborated Schiaparelli's observations, and notwithstanding the "sensation" which the discovery of the canals produced they were for many years ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... large enough to require an appreciable time in crossing the boundary which defines the shadow, so that the observation of an eclipse cannot be sufficiently precise to form the basis of an important and accurate measurement.[23] Still greater difficulties accompany the attempt to define the true moment of the occurrence of the eclipse as it would be seen by an observer in the vicinity of the satellite. For this we should require a far more perfect theory of the movements of Jupiter's satellites than is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball |
