"Defining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Nanking Provisional Constitution until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all previous conceptions. President Li Yuan-hung's policy, in the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... no part of the Murchison policy to draw against future balances: they might believe everything, they would express nothing; and I doubt whether Lorne himself had any map of the country he meant to travel over in that vague future, already defining in local approbation, and law business coming freely in with a special eye on the junior partner. But the tract was there, subconscious, plain in the wider glance, the alerter manner; plain even in the grasp and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... without indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal. The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy, Washington himself attacked. The utmost that Hamilton in his powerful "Letters of Camillus" could show was that the treaty seemed ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, by which slavery was forever abolished and black men transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with this definition: In order to be a citizen one must be a voter. Associate-Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said: "They include all such privileges as are fundamental in their nature; and among them is the right to exercise the elective franchise, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... regarded them as an unnecessary interference of Parliament with the authority of the Sovereign in his Council. The Sovereign might undoubtedly have created a Committee of the judicial members of the Privy Council: but the Bill went further, and by extending and defining the power of the Judicial Committee as a Court of Appeal it undoubtedly proved a very useful ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... with the question of slavery Mr. Buchanan was wholly without a conscience. The thought seems never to have dawned upon him that the slave was a man, and therefore entitled to his natural rights. In a public speech on the ninth of July, 1860, defining his position, and referring to the Dred Scott decision, he says: "It is to me the most extraordinary thing in the world that this country should now be distracted and divided because certain persons at the North will not agree that their brethren at the South should have the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... explained; defining the duties he sought to undertake, as those of general superintendent, or manager, or overlooker, or man ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... when to spring. His frame trembled. His lip quivered with the struggling rage. All his feeling of self-superiority vanished when he listened to language of so unequivocal a character—language which so truly denounced, without defining, his villany. He felt, that if the instinct of the other was indeed so keen and quick, then was the combat necessary, and the death of the rustic essential, perhaps, to his own safety. William Hinkley met his glance with a like ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... about 18 miles in diameter, on the N.E. side of the Sinus Iridum, surrounded by the lofty mountains defining the border of the bay. Its walls, which are prominently terraced within, rise about 7000 feet on the E., and about 8000 feet on the W. above the floor, which includes a prominent ridge and a conspicuous central mountain. There is a distinct crater ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and die.' Though, at the time when the Seventy translated the Old Testament, Hebrew could hardly be called a dead language, yet there were then many of its words the original meaning of which even the most learned rabbi would have had great difficulty in defining with real accuracy. The meaning of words changes imperceptibly and irresistibly. Even where there is a literature, and a printed literature like that of modern Europe, four or five centuries work such a change that few even of the most learned divines in England would find it easy to read ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... legislation upon the tariff, the terms Free-trade and Protection are used in their ordinary acceptation in this country,—not as accurately defining the difference in revenue theories, but as indicating the rival policies which have so long divided political parties. Strictly speaking, there has never been a proposition by any party in the United States for the adoption of free-trade. To be entirely free, trade must encounter no obstruction ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... particularly true of investigations into the history of marriage and sexual relationships. It seems desirable therefore to clear the way by classifying the ideas with which we have to deal, and by defining ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... perceived that this artist, in place of giving body to his phantasy in porphyry and marble, or defining his thoughts by the creation of massive caryatides, rather effaced the contour of his works, and, had it been necessary, could have elevated his architecture itself from the soil, to suspend it, like the floating palaces of the Fata Morgana, in the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... of its own in that, next to itself, it loves to think about something which it can think about forever. For that reason the life of the cultured and thinking man is a constant study and meditation on the beautiful riddle of his destiny. He is always defining it in a new way, for just that is his entire destiny, to be defined and to define. Only in the search itself does the human mind discover ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... counsel for the defence closed, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with benign and imposing 441:1 presence, comprehending and defining all law and evi- dence, explained from his statute-book, the 441:3 Bible, that any so-called law, which under- takes to punish aught but sin, is ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the conversation; she had only introduced the argument for the purpose of defining her point of view and accustoming Yeovil to it, as one leads a nervous horse up to an unfamiliar barrier that he is required eventually ...
— When William Came • Saki
... line of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New York Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extending from the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern elbow of the lower Delaware, defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of northern New Jersey and the inner margin of the smooth coastal plain, has been from savage days such a natural thoroughfare. Here ran the trail of the Lenni-Lenapi Indians; a little later, the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... to the discussion of metaphysical questions, on which his knowledge was simply nil, and a favourite pursuit of his was defining beauty in the abstract, and when he was on this topic the nonsense ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in the red sunshine, that line of ice, resembling a coast of marble defining the liquid junction of the swelling folds of sapphire below and the moist violet of the eastern sky beyond and over it, crowned at points with delicate imitations of princely habitations, would have offered a noble and magnificent spectacle ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... consisting of carefully enumerated and cautiously guarded grants of specific powers, would have been useless, if not delusive. It would be impossible in that view to escape from the conclusion that these were inserted only to mislead for the present, and, instead of enlightening and defining the pathway of the future, to involve its action in the mazes of doubtful construction. Such a conclusion the character of the men who framed that sacred instrument will never permit us to form. Indeed, to suppose it susceptible of any other construction would be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... given to man in order to enable him to disguise his thoughts? Indian politicians are no Talleyrands, but they sometimes seem to have framed their vocabulary on purpose to disguise political conceptions which most of them for various reasons shrink from defining at present with decision. We have already seen how elastic is the word Swaraj, self-government, or rather self-rule. In the mouth of the "moderates" of the Indian National Congress it means, we are assured, only a pious aspiration towards the same position which our self-governing ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... over by a line drawn from the planet to the sun are proportional to the times. These constitute what are now known as the first and second laws of Kepler. Eight years subsequently, he was rewarded by the discovery of a third law, defining the relation between the mean distances of the planets from the sun and the times of their revolutions; "the squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the distances." In "An Epitome of the Copernican System," ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the preceding Lecture, (and I choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and things (in old English also of persons), and that indifferently of either, except after a preposition, where only who [whom] or which can stand. Some recent authorities teach that only that should be used when the relative clause is limiting or defining: as, the man that runs fastest wins the race; but who or which when it is descriptive or co-ordinating: as, this man, who ran fastest, won the race; but, though present usage is perhaps tending in the direction of such a distinction, it neither has been nor is a rule of English speech, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... main foundations being so deceivable, it is no wonder, that all the succeeding works which we build upon them, of arguing, concluding, defining, judging, and all the other degrees of Reason, are lyable to the same imperfection, being, at best, either vain, or uncertain: So that the errors of the understanding are answerable to the two other, being defective ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... he dare not articulate. It was a synthetic word which brought into a collected whole facts and ideas; it was the summing up of his presentiments, of his conclusions, of his fears; the word which said all without defining anything, but permitted everything to be inferred: that ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the fight is all over in two hours—three at the outside—the battle really won or lost in the first ten minutes, if you only knew it: when you get in your first strokes, really defining your composition and planting your big high light and your big dark. It is all right after that. You can taper off on the little lights and darks, saving your wind, so to speak, sparring for your next supplementary ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... few who can so wield it as to make their meaning clear without prolixity—and among these few none who has not been well-grounded in Latin. By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry. But foreigners don't much want to say beautiful haunting things to us; they want to be told what limits there are, if any, to the power of the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... welcome, the widening of that dismal watery level, the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defining blackness of objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must be out on the fields; those were the tops of hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie? Looking behind her, she saw the lines of black trees; looking before her, there were none; then the river lay ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... it would have been encouraging to her; and in the revery which followed upon his conditional desire he had a long imaginary conversation with her, and discussed all her other plans for the revels of the week. These had not the trouble of defining themselves very distinctly in the conversation in order to win his applause, and their consideration did not carry him with Miss Shirley beyond the strictly professional ground on which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... insist on imposing its own will upon any other portion, except in matters which are vitally connected with the maintenance of the social union. The question where this vital connection begins is open to much discussion. The line defining the sphere of legitimate interference may be drawn variously, whether at self-regarding acts, or in some other condition and element of conduct. Wherever this line may be best taken, not only abstract speculation, but the practical and ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... reflector of Earl Rosse at Parsonstown was the successful means by which nebulae of this form were discovered. This powerful telescope was capable of defining with greater accuracy the structural formation of those objects than any other instrument in use. It was ascertained that spiral coils and convoluted whorls enter into the structure of most nebulae, indicating a similarity in the process of change which may be going on in these vast ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... quibbling will not always face it out,—nay, will not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which Aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have thought his theory would have fitted most neatly; for defining "temperance" as a mean, and intemperance as one relative extreme, not being able to find an opposite extreme, he escapes with the apology that the kind of person who sins in the other extreme "has no precise name; because, on the whole, he does ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... are many words to express that by so many different forms which we call by the single word evil. You are defining pain, instead of removing it, when you say, it is disagreeable, unnatural, scarcely possible to be endured or borne, nor are you wrong in saying so: but the man who vaunts himself in such a manner ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... north, which henceforth continued to be their western boundary (Num. xxi. 24; Deut. ii. 37, iii. 16). The other limits of the Ammonitis, or country of the Ammonites ('Lmmanitis chora, 2 Mac. iv. 26), there are no means of exactly defining. On the south it probably adjoined the land of Moab; on the north it may have met that of the king of Geshur (Josh. xii. 5); and on the east it probably melted away into the desert peopled by Amalekites ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the definition of Happiness as a state of mind under certain conditions, it follows that it can be realized to a great degree, and in all cases to some degree, firstly by forethought or carefully defining what it is or what we desire, and secondly by making a fixed idea by simple, well-nigh mechanical means, without any resource to les grands moyens. According to the old and now rapidly vanishing philosophy, this was to be effected ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the corner had put out the blazing glory of his oranges and lemons, and Brett Place was all darkness, interspersed with the misty halos of the few lamps defining its triangular shape, with a cluster of three lights on one stand in the middle. The dark forms of the man and woman glided slowly arm in arm along the walls with a loverlike and homeless ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... dependent on the Legislature for provision to meet its excess; and I cannot but {139} think that the sooner the Legislature succeeds, if they are to succeed, in carrying the point, the more generous they may possibly be in the use of their victory."[12] Bagot was already defining the policy which was to be peculiarly his own. He had a singularly clear eye for facts, even when they contradicted his preconceived ideas; and, being a man of the world, he saw that compromise with the opposition was as natural in Canada as in ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Constitutional ends, any method which it shall think for the public interest, exercising this power in a liberal way, and remembering in doing so that it is a Constitution— the vital power of a free people,—we are defining and limiting, and not an ordinary ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Christian, then, beholds the humility and majesty of Christ in defining His and our relation to the law that regulates daily life. The Gospel of the blessed God and the law conjointly elevates and spiritualizes humanity. The law is our school-master to lead us to Christ, hence Paul ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Roman. It is all admirable, from that grand sentence, Nec vero terroe ferre omnes omnia possunt—that is to say, that not every soil is suited to every tree, Senor Don Jose—to the exhaustive treatise on bees, in which the poet describes the habits of those wise little animals, defining the drone ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... which have no direct spatial relation and yet belong to the same perspective. We cannot define a perspective as all the data of one percipient at one time, because we wish to allow the possibility of perspectives which are not perceived by any one. There will be need, therefore, in defining a perspective, of some principle derived neither from psychology nor ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... ourselves against the tendencies to enthusiastic devotion for the living life preserver, because the very name is a provocative. Were two such words ever before combined to form a name?—the one expressing the natural quality of the bearer of it, and the other defining what her deeds have made her in the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... proposed this choice to his visitors. He had a theory—which not even he with all his lucidity could make intelligible—that a man could support both him and conscription at the same time. There is an attempt at defining this policy in a curious letter to Wm. Martin, then premier of Saskatchewan, which is quoted by Skelton. Sir Wilfrid in these conversations—as in his letters of that period, many of which appear in Skelton's Life—never failed to stress conditions in Quebec as compelling ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... rods — defined as unit lengths — the marble slab is no longer a Euclidean continuum, and we are also no longer in the position of defining Cartesian co-ordinates directly with their aid, since the above construction can no longer be carried out. But since there are other things which are not influenced in a similar manner to the little rods (or perhaps not at all) by the temperature of the table, ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... the baroness the question old Greifenstein had asked long ago, in other words, to renew the formal proposition of marriage. As a man of honour it was indispensable that he should clearly define his position without further delay, and he could see no other way of defining it, satisfactory to himself and to the exigencies of his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our thoughts? Does it not follow that by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously we train our minds to clarify their thought? Does it not follow that some practice in the deft use of words, with its correspondent defining of thought, may well be ancillary even to the study of Natural ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... fairly dated from the time when the earth no longer receives and radiates heat enough to melt the snow which falls upon it. When the land is once covered with this substance, so little calculated to favour the absorption of heat, the frigorific process seems to be carried on with increased vigour, defining very clearly the change from summer to winter, with little or no immediate interval to which the name of autumn ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... an official announcement from the Sublime Porte was issued defining in the first place many constitutional reforms, and in particular abolishing the capitulation, that is, the concessions made by law to foreigners, allowing them participation in the administration of justice, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... February of this year, under the direction of Mr Lucas, a computer who had been engaged on the Lunar Reductions.—In this year I came to a final agreement with the South Eastern Railway Company about defining the terms of our connection with them for the passage of Time Signals. I was authorized by the Admiralty to sign the 'protocol' or Memorandum of Agreement, and it was signed by the South Eastern ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... last week has duly blazoned forth the names of the successful candidates, and great must have been the rejoicings of their friends in the country at the event. But we have to quarrel with these journals for not more explicitly defining the questions proposed for the examinations—the answers to which were to be considered the tests of proficiency. By means of the ubiquity which Punch is allowed to possess, we were stationed in the examination room, at the same time that our double was delighting a crowded and highly respectable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... these foundational times is not the Catholic Church asserting and defining a thing and then, some time after, the heresiarch denying this definition; no heresy comes within a hundred miles of such a procedure. What happens in the early Church is that some doctrine not yet fully ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... decision; and then the two girls stood for a moment looking down at the delicate little face, where, since the food and broth Dora had administered, a bright color showed itself upon the cheeks and lips; while the short, thick curls, carefully brushed, clustered around the white forehead, defining its classic shape, and ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... and mature deliberation, there appeared an imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men; but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every Jew ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... with a quiet smile of triumph, and she knew that he loved her. There is no defining love, nor telling when ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... most candid foreign critics convinced that the system is one of unmixed evil. The subjoined moderate and sensible estimate of the effects of caste, upon the character and habits of the people is from the Bishops' letter quoted above. "In India, Caste has been the bond of Society, defining the relations between man and man, and though essentially at variance with all that is best and noblest in human nature, has held vast communities together, and established a system of order and discipline under which ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... water's movement by the sound. All seemed right at the bridge, but far up the ditch he was aware of a new demonstration. He listened awhile, and then walked on with long, light steps and gained upon the sound, which persisted, defining itself as a muffled churning at marked intervals, with now and then a wait between. The prodding was of some tool at work under water, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, showy, sinewy, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... occasioned my profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically together—to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled," should surely at this hour be too primitive—too Opic—to bring anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the very fact that such a definition can still ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... of the United States recognized two distinct powers, in presence of each other, represented in a judicial point of view by two distinct classes of courts of justice, the utmost care which could be taken in defining their separate jurisdictions would have been insufficient to prevent frequent collisions between those tribunals. The question then arose, to whom the right of deciding the competency of each ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... is in defining the word 'developments,' General," said he. "If we said there were developments it would naturally convey the impression that we had something definite to report. I think perhaps the best way to put it would be that we believe we are getting on the right scent, by the simple process of putting ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... in defining what is meant by a cross; but this is by no means easy in regard to "breeding in and in" or "too close interbreeding," because, as we shall see, different species of animals are differently affected by the same degree of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... individual so singularly labelled. Appraising him covertly, he saw a man whose stature was quite as much shorter than the normal as his own was longer, but hardly less thin. Indeed, Staff was in the habit of defining his own style of architecture as Gothic, and with reasonable excuse; but reviewing the physical geography of Mr. Iff, the word emaciation bobbed to the surface of the literary mentality: Iff was really astonishingly slight of build. Otherwise he was rather round-shouldered; his head was ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... within the colors, involved a certain order of processes. The principal conditions were: first, that the outline should be completed on the panel before the painting, properly so called, was begun. The object, in thus defining the forms, was to avoid alterations and repaintings, which might ultimately render the ground useless without supplying its place. Another condition was to avoid loading the opaque colors. This limitation was not essential with regard to the transparent ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in favor of an arrangement whereby war would be prevented. Most of the other powers looked upon an International Court as visionary, and so far as the ostensible purpose is concerned, the conference was a failure. Still, it bore fruit in defining and adding strength to international law. Among its most important results is the clause that "When a conflict seems imminent, one or several powers shall have the right to offer mediation, and its exercise shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act." A permanent Court of Arbitration ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... distances from London, Richmond, Kingston, and Box Hill suit well.[293] But the most probable supposition of all is that the author purposely avoided identifying it with any one village, while sufficiently defining its position in the county ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... need of defining these statements in so far as they apply to Aileen. It would scarcely be fair to describe her nature as being definitely sensual at this time. It was too rudimentary. Any harvest is of long growth. The confessional, dim on Friday and Saturday evenings, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... committees of their selection. The danger of general control by the magnates was that a large assembly, more skilled in opposition than in constructive work, was almost sure to become infected by faction. By strictly limiting and defining who the new rulers of England were to be, the barons approached a combination of aristocratic control with the stability and continuity resulting from limited numbers and defined functions. It is likely, however, that in bestowing such extensive powers on their nominees, they were influenced by the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Mars and Jupiter. HERSCHEL gave the name Asteroids to these bodies. As the appropriateness of this term had been violently assailed, the discovery of Juno, in 1804, the third one of the group, led to a careful experimental study of the defining power of the telescope used, and of the laws governing ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... multitude. (2) This will be recognized by all who give any thought to the subject, for they will see that a person who accepted promiscuously everything in Scripture as being the universal and absolute teaching of God, without accurately defining what was adapted to the popular intelligence, would find it impossible to escape confounding the opinions of the masses with the Divine doctrines, praising the judgments and comments of man as the teaching of God, and making a wrong use of Scriptural authority. (3) Who, I say, does ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... do more than refer to the changed attitude of scientific authorities with regard to Butler and his theories, since Professor Marcus Hartog has most kindly consented to contribute an introduction to the present edition of "Unconscious Memory," summarising Butler's views upon biology, and defining his position in the world of science. A word must be said as to the controversy between Butler and Darwin, with which Chapter IV is concerned. I have been told that in reissuing the book at all I am committing a grievous error of taste, that the world ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... a letter to me in August confirming his very optimistic views of the situation, and defining Germany's views regarding Belgium. The phrase, "as I understand it," above alluded to in his approval of the resolution, was explained in his letter, at any rate, as to the Belgium question: "As Germany wishes to reserve to herself the right to exercise a far-reaching military and economic ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... British view the immediate danger to its commercial interests lay in this announced maritime war, and it felt the necessity of defining its neutral position with speed. The underlying fact of the fixity of Southern determination to maintain secession had in the last few weeks become ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... long poem,' he says, with more truth than most people are quite willing to see, 'is a paradox.' 'I hold,' he says elsewhere, 'that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.' And, after defining his ideal, 'a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour,' he says, very justly, that 'within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist.' In another essay ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... when, deprived by death of her sole relative, she had only her own unaided exertions to rely on. Frances went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, and she came out a model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black stuff dress, so accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, with her spotless white collar turned back from a fair and shapely neck, with her plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her temples, and in a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had none—neither brooch, ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... how much I have written without having yet said a word of what I began this letter on purpose to say. I have taken so much space in "defining my position," to borrow the politicians' phrase, that I begin to fear you will be out of patience before you come to the part of my letter I care most ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ecclesiastical authority, is qualified by Canon 1418 which prescribes that benefices should be erected by a legitimate document defining the place of the benefice, its endowment and the duties and rights of the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... spite of all, music presents man's spirit to itself through form. The domain of the spirit over which music reigns, is emotion—not defined emotion, not feeling even so defined as jealousy or anger—but those broad bases of man's being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves through action into this or that set type of feeling. Architecture, we have noticed, is so connected with specific modes of human existence, that from its main examples we can reconstruct the life of men who used it. Sculpture and painting, by limiting their presentation to the imitation ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... taken to add a few explanatory words on the Academical designations which so frequently occur in the footnotes to this volume. There is likewise considerable difficulty in defining such titles; and the following explanations may require to be modified. The three Universities in Scotland founded during the course of the 15th century, were formed on the model of those of Paris and Bologna. The general name applied to students of all ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... defend at all hazards: and in general, strategic points, strategic lines, strategic positions, &c. As these terms are very generally used in military books, it may be well to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with their import. After defining these terms and explaining their meaning and application, it is deemed best to illustrate their use by reference to well-known and striking ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... through guile and cruelty, had he not enabled her to accomplish more than in all her life before? To what might he not have led her, if she had put her hand frankly and truthfully in his? There are times when to those most bewildered in mazes of error light breaks, clear and unmistakable, defining right and wrong with terrible distinctness. Such an hour was this to Christine. The law of God written on her heart asserted itself, and she trembled at the guilty thing she saw herself to be. But there seemed ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... "Musher," signifying a prospector who is not afraid to explore the unknown. This word is of Canadian origin, and probably a corruption of the French "Marcheur." Various passengers on board the Hannah were said to be returning to their homes with "Cold feet," also a new term, defining the disappointed gold-seeker who is leaving the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... shutter-hole grew paler and became blotchy with ill-defined shapes, as if a new universe was being evolved out of sombre chaos. Then outlines came out, defining forms without any details, indicating here a tree, there a bush; a black belt of forest far off; the straight lines of a house, the ridge of a high roof near by. Inside the hut, Babalatchi, who lately had been only a persuasive voice, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... imperious claim of a Kingdom upon its members is not peculiar to Christianity. It is the law in all departments of Nature that every organism must live for its Kingdom. And in defining living FOR the higher Kingdom as the condition of living in it, Christ enunciates a principle which all Nature has prepared us to expect. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... of my specific against getting stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted narrowness. In aesthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... a kind of finesse: it is a flavour, and all the ingredients of the dish may be named without defining it. The thing is Parisian, but that is only to say that it unites nervous force with a wicked ease and mastery of charm. It speaks to the senses through the brain, as much as to the brain through the senses. It is the feminine equivalent of intellect. It "magnetises our poor vertebrae," ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... defining his position, said: "I am not a Republican; I was a Whig and a Union man, and belong to the Union party, and I am sorry to say that the Union party and the Republican party are not ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... stress on the priesthood of all believers had made both clergy and laity less sure about the role of the clergy, even to the point, figuratively speaking, of seeming to unordain the ordained, and without clearly defining the ministry of ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... alliteration, whilst finding definition of time in reference to the position of the speaker, much more agreeable to their ears, from their being accustomed to native historians who wrote in the vernacular so defining time in all passages of the kind spontaneously, without art or affectation, and not, as the ancient Romans, stiffly adopting the harsh, unnatural fashion of defining it in reference to the position of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and expedient.' The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject, farther than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute in place of a recommendation of particular ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... a bold one, so far as he himself is concerned," returned Anton, significantly; "and there is something in it, baron, which does not satisfy me on your account, though I should find a difficulty in defining it." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to be hereinafter called the Transvaal State, will embrace the land lying between the following boundaries, to wit: [here follow three pages in print defining boundaries.] ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... that now all, in defining Virtue, add on the "state" [mentioning also to what standard it has reference, namely that] "which is accordant with Right Reason:" now "right" means in accordance with Practical Wisdom. So then all seem to have an instinctive notion ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... religion? Wright in the American Journal of Theology, Volume XVI, page 385, quotes Leuba as defining religion as a belief in a psychic superhuman power. Wright has objections to this definition on the ground of its narrowness. He attempts to add breadth to the definition in: "Religion is the endeavor to secure the conservation of socially recognized ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... colour, and finally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The new analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or less fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them as they are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Local colour' in light or shade becomes different not only in tone ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... headstones, or their headstones fallen and lying prone in the light flaky earth above the smoldering corpses of the dead. Here and there tight bunches of flowers were placed upon the graves. Gaunt shadows from old cypresses fell over some of them, defining the sunlight. Below was the narrowing sea, the shallow north-west arm of the Golden Horn, which stretches to Kiathareh, where are the sweet waters of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Deity begins to make His system, He finds ready to His hand this material—this infinite mass of tiny bubbles which can be built up into various kinds of matter as we know it. He commences by defining the limit of His field of activity, a vast sphere whose circumference is far larger than the orbit of the outermost of His future planets. Within the limit of that sphere He sets up a kind of gigantic vortex—a ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... striding rapidly along the road to Planche-au-Vacher. There she lost sight of him—the underwood was too thick. But, after a few minutes, the gaze of the inquisitive woman was rewarded by the appearance of a dark object emerging from the copse, and defining itself on the bright pasture land beyond. "Monsieur le Cure is going to La Thuiliere," thought she, and with this half-satisfaction she descended to ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... said territory, to be herein-after called the Transvaal State, will embrace the land lying between the following boundaries, to wit: [Here follow three pages in print defining boundaries]. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the boundary between what is prohibited and what is permitted, and that the act is not within the prohibited class. The Constitution has fixed no such boundary, therefore they can pretend to no power over the press, without claiming the right of defining what is freedom and what is licentiousness, and that would be to claim a right which would defeat the Constitution; for every Congress would have the same right, and the freedom of the press would fluctuate ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... paternity, and secondly on account of the clash of freedoms that may otherwise arise. The Utopian State will effectually interfere with and prescribe conditions for all sorts of contract, and for this sort of contract in particular it will be in agreement with almost every earthly State, in defining in the completest fashion what things a man or woman may be bound to do, and what they cannot be bound to do. From the point of view of a statesman, marriage is the union of a man and woman in a manner so intimate ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... credit to herself for everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the duties of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... feeling (as they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a phrase in the very Ordinance defining the duties of ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... argument that he had been generous, even philanthropic, in his days of prosperity was invariably met by the quaint contention that while the Good Book teaches charity, the dictionary makes a point of defining it, and "you can't spell charity, my friend, with the letters that are allotted to generosity. So don't quote ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... upon the royal platform, leaned against the arm of the throne, and with the charming blush of consciousness turned to him with the quickness of a guilty conscience, eager to hear his praise but fearful lest he secretly condemned her conceit. His eyes were burning with the admiration that knows no defining, and his breath came quick and sharp through parted lips. He involuntarily placed a foot upon the bottom step as if to spring to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... best piece of work done by the committee was the amendment they made to the rules governing the umpire, wherein, in defining the powers of an umpire to impose a fine of not less than $5 nor more than $25 for abusive, threatening or improper language to the umpire, an ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... of the new movement shall not be discovered talking with the doctors, or defining art in the schools, nor shall he be seen at first by peerers in books. The passer-by shall see him, perhaps, through the door of a foundry at night, a lurid figure there, bent with labor, and humbled with labor, but ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,—by no means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... critics There was a fascination for that critic in its not being, this ripe physiognomy, the face that, under observation at least, he had originally carried away from Woollett. Strether found a certain freedom on his own side in defining it as that of a man of the world—a formula that indeed seemed to come now in some degree to his relief; that of a man to whom things had happened and were variously known. In gleams, in glances, the past did perhaps peep out ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... all the nation. In fine, the word is applied to all persons doing service to others—to magistrates, to all governmental officers, to tributaries, to all the subjects of governments, to younger sons—defining their relation to the first born, who is called Lord and ruler—to prophets, to kings, to the Messiah, and in respectful addresses not less than fifty times in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... teaching was scholastic and pedantic, an endless citing of precedents and discussion of trifles. To all this Jesus presented a refreshing contrast. In commending truth to the people, he was content with a simple "verily," and in defining duty he rested on his unsupported "I say unto you," even when his dictum stood opposed to that which had been said to them of ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... up a Quaker and his attitude coincided with that of many others who manifested sympathy for the American cause, yet hesitated at complete independence. In defining high treason to the April Grand Jury of 1776, the last held under the Crown, he stated that "an opposition by force of arms to the lawful authority of the King or his Ministry is high treason, but in the moment when the King, or his Ministers, shall exceed the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... title to the northwest. The Indians, however, had possession, and how was their title to be disposed of? A treaty was made at Fort Harmar, and plans were adopted to get possession of the Indian land. The Indians always claimed they were cheated in the treaty, defining the boundary line between them and the white men. Therefore, Indian wars came on. St. Clair was defeated by the British and Indians combined. The British were always at the back of every hostile movement that has been made in the history ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... British mind to yield occasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy, provided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or ignored. So in this case British idealists, in the act of defining knowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own phenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a self-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they continued scrupulously ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Some authors, in defining the primary races of mankind, have separated these Indians into two classes; but this is certainly incorrect. Among the young women or chinas, some deserve to be called even beautiful. Their hair was coarse, but bright and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... discover many differences between the two that can hardly be covered by any single phrase. Dr. Hedge himself enumerates several qualities of romantic art which it would be difficult to bring under his essential and defining category of wonder or aspiration. Thus he announces that "the peculiarity of the classic style is reserve, self-suppression of the writer"; while "the romantic is self-reflecting." "Clear, unimpassioned, impartial presentation of the subject ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... family, has always been a matter of uncertainty to heraldic writers: it has been variously blazoned as a clarion, clavicord, organ-rest, lance-rest, and sufflue. The majority of heralds, ancient and modern, term it a clarion without quite defining what a clarion is: that it is meant for a musical instrument (probably a kind of hand-organ), I have very little doubt; for, in the woodcut Mrs. Jameson gives in her Legends of the Madonna (p. 19.) of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... useless, for the understanding of this trifling, but very important scene, to remark that a surcoat was, as the name implies (sur cotte), a species of close-fitting spencer which women wore over their bodies and down to their thighs, defining the figure. This garment protected the back, chest, and throat from cold. These surcoats were lined with fur, a band of which, wide or narrow as the case might be, bordered the outer material. Mary Stuart, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac |
