"Definite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Cervantes in Don Quixote—humorous dialogue independent of any definite comic plot and mixed up with all sorts of other business. Might not Falstaff himself be taken into comparison too? Scott's humorous characters are nowhere and never characters in a comedy—and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... main-topsail. This circumstance made them conclude that it must be one of our squadron, which had probably suffered as severely in her sails and rigging as we had done. They were prevented, however, from forming more definite conjectures concerning her; for, after viewing her a short time, the weather grew thick and hazy, and she was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Rev. Andrew Clark's invaluable Register of the University of Oxford (published by the Oxford Historical Society). My obligations to these two books will be patent to all who know them; it has not, however, seemed necessary to give definite references either to these or to Anstey's Munimenta Academica (Rolls Series), which also ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... Zoroaster's primitive faith. Many of the passages as translated by him are as clear as daylight, and carry conviction by their very clearness. Others, however, are obscure, hazy, meaningless. We feel that they must have been intended for something else, something more definite and forcible, though we cannot tell what to do with the words as they stand. Sense, after all, is the great test of translation. We must feel convinced that there was good sense in these ancient poems, otherwise mankind would not have taken the trouble to preserve them; ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... entreating, inspiring; the life beset with trials, lured with pleasures, hesitating, doubting, questioning; its purpose at length grows more certain and fixed, the bell tolling becomes a prolonged undertone, the flow of a definite life; the music goes on, twining round it, now one sweet instrument and now many, in strife or accord, all the influences of earth and heaven and the base underworld meeting and warring over the aspiring soul; the struggle becomes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... scale. For it has been shown by more than one sociologist (see, for example, the statement in The Family and the Nation) that no stock can maintain itself with an average of less than about four children per marriage, and from all available data (it has not been found possible to obtain definite figures for most of the Western and Southern States) we must see that the average fertility of each marriage in this section of the American people falls far short of the requisite four children. Judging by all the figures at hand, the modern Anglo-Saxon ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... it remained as a considerable irritation in the background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with dignity, after perhaps ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... clearly known. Balcarres says Dundee told the Duke of the design for Stirling, and once more prayed him to stand firm. But it seems clear that Dundee had by that time abandoned all hopes of a fresh Convention, and it is doubtful whether he had any definite plan in his mind. Dalrymple's report of the conversation seems more likely to be the true one. According to him Dundee pressed the Duke to come north with him, leaving the castle to the charge of the Lieutenant-Governor, Winram, ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... think very clearly, while there had been something definite to think about, but her brain refused this problem of an extra five minutes, which might mean success or failure. She couldn't stop where she was; she couldn't hang about in the street, lest the real Kit had given the false Kit away to the "gang"; yet to dawdle in the corridor, or on the stairs ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had considerable experience. If the sheet is folded into four leaves, the book is called a "quarto," or "4to"; if into eight, it is an "octavo," or "8vo"; if into twelve, a "duodecimo," or "12mo." Books are sometimes advertised in these terms; but they are not definite, because the sheets of the different varieties of paper vary in size. Of late years, publishers have often given the length and width of their books ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... authorship of our story, it has no doubt gone through the stages which mark the growth of the Sagas in general, that is, it was for long handed about from mouth to mouth until it took a definite shape in men's minds; and after it had held that position for a certain time, and had received all the necessary polish for an enjoyable saga, was committed to writing as it flowed ready made from the tongue of the people. Its style, in common ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... sir; lots o' times, now that I comes to think of it," answered the boatswain. "But nothin' what you might call definite, you understand. I s'pose he pretty soon saw that Chips and Sails and me weren't likely to have any truck wi' such an idee as mutiny and seizin' the ship, so he soon knocked off talkin' to us about it. I reckon that he used to report to Bainbridge ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the credit of the holy crown: they failed in the performance of their contract; and a rich Venetian, Nicholas Querini, undertook to satisfy their impatient creditors, on condition that the relic should be lodged at Venice, to become his absolute property, if it were not redeemed within a short and definite term. The barons apprised their sovereign of the hard treaty and impending loss and as the empire could not afford a ransom of seven thousand pounds sterling, Baldwin was anxious to snatch the prize from the Venetians, and to vest it with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... something of the kind would occur when I was last at home, and spoke to her on the subject, but she evaded giving me any definite answer; I think she was afraid to tell me—she has written, asking ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... La Jara for Joaquin and Manuelita Flores," she answered. "When they come, I shall be able to tell something definite ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... over 'Wuthering Heights,' and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people—to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... had to explain what she meant by the words, "After all that has happened," she could have told nothing definite, and yet she undoubtedly knew that not only had he given her cause to hope, but he had almost made his promise—not in so many words, but by his glances, his smiles, his innuendos, his silence. She considered him her own, and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of guilt. The foreboding was not as definite, but it was always with him; he could not shake it off. All his life he had dealt truthfully with the world, had not lied, or evaded, or compromised. Now he had permitted himself to become a silent partner ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... give her, but insinuating no hint of an appeal for more than they might choose to give. She probably took for granted what was the truth of the situation, that it rested with Imogen to make it a definite one. She did not treat him as an accepted lover, nor yet as a rejected one; she discriminated with the nicest delicacy. What she allowed herself to see, the ground she went upon, was his deep interest, his deep attachment. In that light ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... feel that it was only playing the game to please him in any way she could. And she recognised that to a man of Roger's ideas, the fact that his wife and mother were on good terms with one another would be a source of very definite satisfaction. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... I thought; I had a dim notion of escaping from the disgrace of being nameless. It was the mad clutch of the engulfed at anything.... Not with any definite view—partly from fright, partly I think for the sake of those who had been kind to a—a foundling; some senseless idea that it was my duty to relieve them of a squalid burden—" She shook her head vaguely: "I don't know ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... until I find the mine, then I will mail it at once. Now that I have definite grounds to work on, my enthusiasm is equal to carry me through any ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... preparing to go and seek the cabaretier himself, to force him to a definite explanation, when the door of the court in which he was with Raoul, a door which communicated with the garden situated at the back, opened, and a man dressed as a cavalier, with his sword in the sheath, but not at ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... areas of special sovereignty, and governments included in this publication are not independent, and others are not officially recognized by the US Government. "Independent state" refers to a people politically organized into a sovereign state with a definite territory. "Dependencies" and "areas of special sovereignty" refer to a broad category of political entities that are associated in some way with an independent state. "Country" names used in the table of contents or for page headings are usually the short-form names ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... solved his problem; Samuel learned from that to think of life as made by honest labor, and to find a thrill of romance in the making of useful things. And then there was the story of Christian, and of his pilgrimage; the very book for a Seeker—with visions of glory not too definite, leaving danger ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... the framers of the new commonwealth would be too crafty to base it on any avowed and ostensible principle of exclusion, but on the contrary would in all probability ostentatiously inaugurate the novel constitution by virtue of some abstract plea about as definite and as prodigal of practical effects as the rights of man or the sovereignty of the people, nevertheless I should be astonished were we not to find that the great mass of the nation, as far as any share in the conduct of public affairs ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... his mind to any definite course of action. Now, calm and judicial, I hear him discussing matters with ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... elastic term. Finding Sir Charles attracted, he took him aside and besought him to do something for Therese. Exactly what the Baron had in mind may have been shadowy; but what Sir Charles did was definite. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... very definite orders in the alert confident manner so well known to all his officers ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... tenses are made definite or emphatic by various means. La, sign of the past, when added to lah, sign of the potential, has the sense of the pluperfect, e.g. nga la lah long, I had been. Yn abbreviated into 'n emphasizes the future, the particle ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... music has given dignity also to the bass drum, which, though definite pitch is denied to it, is now manipulated in a variety of ways productive of striking effects. Rolls are played on it with the sticks of the kettle-drums, and it has been emancipated measurably from the cymbals, which in vulgar brass-band music are ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... up. All India probably was up. His own men, set by himself to watch with one definite idea, had confirmed his worst fears. And he was under orders to stay with the bulk of his command in Bholat! Corked up in cantonments, with three thousand first-class fighting-men squealing for trouble, and red rebellion running ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... representations of the grand Apocalypse of John. "Judaism was not given as a perfect religion. Whatever may have been its superiority over surrounding forms of worship, it was, notwithstanding, a provisional form only. The consciousness that it was a preparatory, and not a definite dispensation, is evident throughout. It points to an end beyond itself, suggests a grander thought than any in itself; its glory precisely consists in its constant looking forward to a glorious future destined ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... war there appears to descend on all who have a share in it, whether active or passive, a kind of numbed indifference as to danger; a kind of callousness as to consequences, which I find it difficult to define in words, but which, nevertheless, impresses itself on the observer's mind as a definite and tangible fact. The soldier gets it, and it enables him to endure his own discomforts and sufferings, and the discomforts and sufferings of his comrades, without visible mental strain. The civic populace get it, and, as soon ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... to loadstone as first discovered in Magnesia, a town in Asia Minor; also to a piece of iron, nickel, or cobalt having similar properties, notably the power of setting itself in a definite direction; also a coil of wire carrying an electric current, because such a coil really possesses the properties characteristic of an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... else, and these early impressions have survived in the ceremonial uses of light and fire even to the present time. The origin of fire as represented in any of the myths of the superstitious beings of early ages is as suitable as any other, inasmuch as definite knowledge is unavailable. Active volcanoes, spontaneous combustion, friction, accidental focusing of the sun's image, and other means may have introduced primitive beings to fire. A study of savage tribes of the present age ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... were generally subject to the greater share of feudal obligations formerly imposed on serfs; these were particularly to work for a certain time for their lord without receiving any wages, or else to pay him the tax when it was due, on certain definite occasions, as for example, when he married, when he gave a dower to his daughter, when he was taken prisoner of war, when he went to the Holy Land, &c., &c. What particularly characterized the condition of mortmains was, that the lords ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... afterthought, or an imagination, or a remembrance of the achievement of some younger child. I know better. It is an actual little fragment of my own experience, and nothing which ever befell me in my whole lifetime is more precise or definite. I do not know who held my petticoats bunched up behind to steady me for the start, nor who held out a roughened finger to entice me. But I remember the grip, and the feel of the finger when I reached ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it." The chance was unique, for a successful thrust would have spared two admirals the necessity of admitting a disaster caused by over-security. The retreating Tyler was sighted first, and gave definite information of what the firing that had been heard meant, and the Arkansas soon followed. She fought her way boldly through, passing between the vessels of war and the transports, firing and receiving the fire of each as she went by, most of ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Committee of the Loyal League of Women, with a number of ladies who take an interest in the formation of such a society, met yesterday afternoon in the Lecture-Room of the Church of the Puritans, for the purpose of agreeing upon some definite platform, and of determining the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... four trumpets, the Eastern nearly ruined under the fifth; and under the sixth it was finally subverted. The numbers which the Turks brought into the field are here said to be "two hundred thousand thousand,"—a definite for an indefinite number as usual, a vast army. And historians tell us that they were, in fact, from four to seven hundred thousand, and a large proportion ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... back again; and there she was, with the foil arched over her head as before. La Hire had been hit, but all that the spectator saw of it was a something like a thin flash of light in the air, but nothing distinct, nothing definite. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has at stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, he was employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin. Next he took out a double handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... her head well balanced, with a straight back, and well-formed though not slender waist. She was sharp about the shoulders and elbows, as girls are—or should be—at that age; and her face was not formed into any definite shape of beauty, or its reverse. But her eyes were bright—as were those of all the Mackenzies—and her mouth was not the mouth of a fool. If her cheek-bones were a little high, and the lower part of her face somewhat angular, those peculiarities were probably not distasteful ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... four I was fit to drop from fatigue. Farm work was new to me, and I was soft as soft. I had, however, got the general lay of the land, and could, by the help of the plan, talk of its future subdivisions by numerals,—an arrangement that afterward proved definite and convenient. We adjourned to the shade of the big black oak on the knoll, and discussed the work ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... not twenty-five when he arrived at the Fort. He was a man of definite personality and was consumed with an abundance of determination and resource. His inclination to stoutness was even then pronounced. But above all stood out his profound, concentrated understanding of American commercial methods, and ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the latter was theorizing about the probable construction of what was hitherto inaccessible, and about the probable position of certain channels through which water flowed, or might be expected to flow. He would also have gathered that Malipieri could reach no definite conclusion unless he could break through one of two walls in the cellar, or descend through an opening in the floor above, which would be by far the easiest way. He might even have wondered why Malipieri did not at once adopt the latter expedient. It is not a serious matter to make an aperture ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... accordingly prepared a proposition, which I as President of the Conference was to submit, and which I was assured would be supported by the Plenipotentiaries of France and Sweden, and as far as possible by the Russian Plenipotentiary, though he had not then received definite instructions. What we proposed was that the King of Denmark should yield to Germany the Duchy of Holstein and the Southern portion of the Duchy of Schleswig—that the boundary should be drawn as far as the Schlei, and should go along by the Dannewerke: ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... was the original word, which the author, discovering it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but less proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definite image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it, and neither genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the lady herself for a few more details, so we can have something definite to go on," says I. "Excuse us, Mrs. Shaw, for this little side debate; but we ain't quite made up our minds about you yet. Let's see—you was tellin' me about bringin' a breach of promise suit against ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... that Justinian lives for all history, and his name stands out among all Byzantine sovereigns with a lustre of its own. I have therefore first quoted the most definite words of the great legislator, spontaneously acknowledging the right of St. Peter's successor to know and to judge of all that concerns the Church's doctrine and practice. The acknowledgment of this right is the more to be marked ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... of the kind that looks taller than she really is; a woman with a long, straight, clever nose that indexed her character, as did everything about her, from her crisp, vigorous, abundant hair to the way she came down hard on her heels in walking. She was what might be called a very definite person. But first you remarked her eyes. Will you concede that eyes can be piercing, yet velvety? Their piercingness was a mental quality, I suppose, and the velvety softness a physical one. One could only think, somehow, of wild pansies—the brown kind. If Winnebago had taken ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... judged. And only through such seeing and judging can the individual perception attain to anything of power or originality. Just as a certain amount of received ideas is necessary to sane development, so is a definite opportunity for first-hand ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... we could not ascertain who had started the fight or what it was about. Some said that a husband had surprised his wife; others, that the women had started the row and that the owner of the house had tried to kill them in order to make them stop. But no one knew anything definite. M. le commissaire was greatly perplexed and the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... woods stood out in clear green; and separated from these by the sharpest line, rose this ridge of enchanted forest. You will incline to think that one might have seen through this illusion by trying hard enough. But never were the colors in a paint-pot more definite and determined. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... his eyes wandered. Beyond her presence the room was empty. He saw a door, and observed that it opened into another room, which in turn could be entered through the platform door behind him. With his old exactness for detail he leaped to definite conclusion. These were Meleese's apartments at the post, separated from all others—and Meleese was preparing to retire for the night. If the outer door was not locked, and he entered, what danger could there be of interruption? It was late. The post was asleep. ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... for Norway, Leif returned from his visit to Herjulf's Cape, and made public his intention to take Biorn's barren beginning and carry it out to a definite finish. He brought with him three of the men of Biorn's old crew, and also the same stanch little trading-vessel in which Herjulfsson had made his journey. The ship-sheds upon the shore became at once the ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... simplicity of the church awed him; had there been a multiplicity of furnishings, of strange objects whose use he could not comprehend, he would have felt he had something definite to watch and fear. His impulse was to flee out into the sunshine, and he turned towards the door. Then he remembered his object in coming and stood ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... equal, but several of the English ships were in bad condition. There was no manoeuvring; both sides went at it in the old fashion, fighting ship with ship all along the line. Both squadrons were desperately hammered, and at last parted without definite result. The Dutch loss in men was heavy; one of their best ships was sunk and two others totally ruined. They became little more than spectators of the war, and their possessions in the East, Sumatra, Negapatam, and Trincomali, fell into the hands ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... sooner the better. I can see no object in delaying our movements, now that we have determined upon a definite plan." ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... in firing at you and who paid them to do it. This is monstrous. If we could get but a shadow of proof against your enemies I would lay a formal complaint before the king. Marquis or no marquis, I am not going to have my officers assassinated with impunity. However, till we have something definite to go upon, we can do nothing, and until then, Leslie, you had best keep your suspicion to yourself. It were best to say nothing of what you think; in this country it is dangerous even to whisper against a king's favourite. Let it be supposed ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... with the contempt it deserved. Had the word "jailer" really been pronounced? A strange word for the mate to even imagine he had heard. A senseless, unlikely word. But this word being the only clear and definite statement in these grotesque and dismal ravings was comparatively restful to his mind. Powell's mind rested on it still when he came up at eight o'clock to take charge of the deck. It was a moonless night, thick with stars above, very dark on the water. A steady ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the soul, by its own act of will, is, I admit, great for any one occasion or for a definite time, yea, it is marvellous. But of such exertions and such an even frame of spirit, as Baxter's were, under such unremitting and almost unheard-of bodily derangements and pains as his, and during so long a life, 1 do not believe a human soul capable, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... boy or girl, adult or juvenile, they have their destination marked upon them in all the colours of the rainbow. Some complain of this, and call it vulgar. No doubt it often is so. But a gift-book is produced for a definite purpose, and the public would be surprised, and probably annoyed, if it were not as gorgeous in gold and colours as it was expected to be. Gold and colours are what are wanted, and the publishers ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... Edwin. On that Friday afternoon of the breaking-up he was, in the local phrase, at a loose end. That is, he had no task, no programme, and no definite desires. Not knowing, when he started out in the morning, whether school would formally end before or after the dinner-hour, he had taken his dinner with him, as usual, and had eaten it at Oldcastle. Thus, though ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... are of opinion that the historical realities at the root of Christianity, lie beyond the jurisdiction of science, need not be considered. Those who are convinced that the evidence is, and must always remain, insufficient to support any definite conclusion, are justified in ignoring the subject. They must be content to put up with that reproach of being mere destroyers, of which Strauss speaks. They may say that there are so many problems which are and must remain insoluble, that the "burden of the mystery" "of all ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... has been extended to the sphere of moral relations. It has been demonstrated to these young men that the resources of the country may be indefinitely increased by the continuous application of trained intelligence to definite ends. The old Malthusian doctrine has given way before applied science. The population may be doubled and the standard of living increased at the same time, if we plan intelligently. The expert ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Jack. "I have feared for some time that your hair was getting too thick for the finer ideas of this household to penetrate to your brain. Allow me to apply a little of this ointment to the parting, which in your case is more definite than with Eleanor; and as our lightest actions should proceed from principles, I may mention that the principle on which I propose to apply the Leather-softener to your scalp is that on which the blacksmith's wife gave your cholera medicine to the second ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in Od. xi., but is modified by Pythagorean ideas (vi. 748-751, metempsychosis), Stoic ideas (vi. 724 sqq., pantheism, cf. Georg. iv. 219-227) and Platonic myths (e.g. in the Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic), and rendered more definite by the introduction of heroes of the Republic. Note that Virgil emphasizes its mythical nature by dismissing Aeneas through the ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... eliminating as far as possible every element of chance. The unlikely things which might happen were considered, and provided for. Only two persons had any part in the scheme, Jacques Sabatier and Mathon, the jailer; each had his own particular work in it, had received definite and minute instructions, yet neither of them knew the whole plot. Latour did not take them entirely into his confidence; he did not ask their advice, he only told them how ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... press too strongly on the earliest attention of the Legislature the importance of the reorganization of the staff establishment with a view to render more distinct and definite the relations and responsibilities of its several departments. That there is room for improvements which will materially promote both economy and success in what appertains to the Army and the war ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his wife as to the wisest course to be pursued, but no definite line of action was arranged. The two old muskets were in the bedroom, loaded, not having been discharged since they were fired off on leaving Fort Frederick. The Captain's wife ran to the room and brought out ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... vague discontent for any number of years, while yet they do no more than complain and wish they were more comfortable. So, for example, the farmers have been doing. But, so long as they go no further, there is no definite "cause" either to uphold or oppose. But, when they call a national convention and construct a platform, announcing definite aims and methods, then there is something to talk about. Now, a man is either for or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... from the Portuguese settled among them. They neither imitated Catholic rites nor adapted their own; they prayed not, nor sacrificed to the 'new' Nyankupon. Only his name and the idea of his nature are universally diffused in West African belief. He lives in no definite home, or hill, but 'in Nyankupon's country.' Nyankupon, at the present day, is 'ignored rather than worshipped,' while Bobowissi has priests ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... will be the same to-morrow. The whole science of psychology is based on the observed and recorded actions of the human organism under the influence of certain external stimuli or forces, and starts from the assumption that this organism has definite and permanent characteristics. If this is not so—if the behavior of men in the past has not been governed by actual laws which will also govern their behavior in the future—then our laws of government are built ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... its spokesman on this occasion, could not venture to resist the principle of these resolutions, but was contented to elude them for the time by objections taken to some of the details; and Grattan gave notice of another motion to bring the question to a more definite decision, which he fixed for the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Brahmanism are these,—that holding to eternity, it omits time, and so loses history. It therefore is incapable of progress, for progress takes place in time. Believing in spirit, or infinite unlimited substance, it loses person, or definite substance, whether infinite or finite. The Christian God is the infinite, definite substance, self-limited or defined by his essential nature. He is good and not bad, righteous and not the opposite, perfect love, not perfect self-love. Christianity, therefore, gives us God as a person, and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... and labored unceasingly, yet it was not too late. He felt how his whole dream-world shivered beneath the convulsions of his awakening energies. The vague, futile, uneasy longings of his immaturity took definite shape. His shackled abilities awaited only the signal to throw off their fetters and in freedom to create good for ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... emotion which complicates the personal equation with radicals and quadratics, and life which proceeds upon predestined lines soon becomes monotonous and loses its charm. The involved x in the equation continually postpones the definite result, which may often be ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... the war until 1876, was the period of uncertain groping and temporary relief. There were army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedmen's Bureau in chaotic disarrangement seeking system and co-operation. Then followed ten years of constructive definite effort toward the building of complete school systems in the South. Normal schools and colleges were founded for the freedmen, and teachers trained there to man the public schools. There was the inevitable tendency of war to underestimate the prejudices of the master ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Peters, it's all perfectly clear except a reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing. Something to show—something to make a story about—a thing that would connect up with this ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... merchants; also perhaps in some degree by a disinclination to send an army across the Atlantic, and by the awkward difficulty suggested by Franklin when he said that if troops should be sent they would find no rebellion, no definite form of resistance, against which they could act. The repeal, therefore, though carried by a large majority, was by no means to be construed as an acknowledgment of error in an asserted principle, but only as an unavoidable ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... unusual, oppressive feeling of idleness; it was the first time since he had left the little Ohio college, where he had spent his undergraduate years, that he had known this emptiness of purpose. There was nothing for him to do now, except to dine at the Hitchcocks' to-night. There would be little definite occupation probably for weeks, months, until he found some practice. Always hitherto, there had been a succession of duties, tasks, ends that he set himself one on the heels of another, occupying his mind, relieving ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the city, the castle of San Juan d'Ulloa, and their dependencies, to belong to the United States; but the armament of the same (not injured or destroyed in the further prosecution of the actual war) may be considered as liable to be restored to Mexico by a definite ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... amphibians and reptiles collected in southern British Guiana by William A. Bentley in January, 1962, and deposited in the Museum of Natural History at The University of Kansas (KU). Four additional specimens (females) are in the American Museum of Natural History; only one of the latter has definite ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch
... cauchemar!" Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgement, so as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate; nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future state they should become suddenly exempt from that subordination. The philosopher is unable ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and that was his determination to stay with these two of the Sawtooth until he had some definite information; until he saw Lorraine or knew that she was safe from them. Like a weight pressing harder and harder until one is crushed beneath it, their talk of Lorraine's insanity forced fear into ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... God Himself, and among them that of drawing the whole world, and therefore the ancient pagan State itself, into the Church. In that way (that is, with a view to the future) it is not the Church that should seek a definite position in the State, like 'every social organization,' or as 'an organization of men for religious purposes' (as my opponent calls the Church), but, on the contrary, every earthly State should be, in the end, completely transformed into the Church and should become nothing else but a Church, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Rochester; yet, at the same time, he chose to be obscure on that point, and I took my cue from him. I always thought it was one of his most artistic pieces of work; the vague, dreamy description of the Cathedral in the opening chapter of the book. So definite in one ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... business with her when pressed for funds, but it knew little definite about the Duchess except that she was shriveled and bent and almost wordless and was seemingly without emotions. But of course there were rumors. She was so old, and had been so long in the drab little street, that she was as much a legend as a real person. No one knew ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... When Peters, at my urgent solicitation, attempted to describe it, he simply gurgled away into one of his spells of delirium. It was no use to try—though I did, again and again, try to draw from the old man something definite. It seems that she was so rounded and so proportioned as to meet every artistic demand, and to divert even from her beautiful face the glance of her enraptured beholders. If we are to gain an approximate idea of a figure ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... their bans should be published to the congregations, and the registries of their marriages entered on the rolls of the local court. Similar decrees had been issued concerning baptisms and burials. Hitherto Protestantism had been struck right and left with all kinds of weapons, without any very definite method: these decrees seemed to indicate a definite plan; that is, the suppression of external worship, with a certain tolerance, at least provisionally, for conscience, and a kind of civil state separately constituted for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... prince who hides his identity and his person in a remote Kentish village, and a girl with a highly imaginative temperament like Lady Sue! here was surely a more definite, a more important rival to the pretensions of homely country youths like Sir Timothy Harrison or Squire Pyncheon, than even the student of humble origin whose brother was a blacksmith, whose aunt was a Quakeress, and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... unity. Thus age is linked on to age, as we are moving forward, with an horizon for ever expanding and advancing. And if this is true, the magnitude of any human phenomenon is a criterion of its importance, and definite forms of thought working through long historic periods imply an effect of one of these vast laws. —imply a distinct step in human progress; something previously unrealized is being lived out, and rooted into the heart of mankind. Nature never half does her ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as I don't hold to'; ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and Buddhists, although we know, for instance, that Buddhism was driven out about the fifth century of our era by the Brahmans from its original home in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula, and afterwards spread over the whole of Asia; yet we have, so far as I know, no definite information of any deeds of violence, of wars and cruelties by which this was brought about. This may, most certainly, be ascribed to the obscurity in which the history of those countries is veiled; but the extremely mild character ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that certain phases of the study of child life have a high worth without giving definite scientific results. Peculiarly significant among these is the study of the autobiographies of childhood. The door to the great universe is always to the personal world. Each of us appreciates child life through his own childhood, and though the children with whom it is ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... of public opinion is no less above the head of one than of the other. This power is less definite, less evident, and less sanctioned by the laws in France than in America, but in fact exists. In America it acts by elections and decrees; in France it proceeds by revolutions; but notwithstanding the different constitutions ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... banks; when left free they are continually changing their beds. Their courses at first sight seem to follow no rule, but, as it is termed, from a celebrated river of Asia Minor, to "meander" along without aim or object, though in fact they follow very definite laws. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... this point, I refer my hearers to the Section on the Sublime in Kant's Criticism of the Judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft), to the complete perfection of which nothing is wanting but a more definite idea of the tragedy of the ancients, with which he does not seem to have ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... some rent, the peasants under Louis XVI. believed to be just, for they did not claim absolute ownership, but they considered the services onerous and degrading. Their ideas on these subjects were not very definite, but of late years a general sense of wrong had been growing in their minds. The long-lived quarrels which ever exist in the country-side were envenomed by stronger suspicions of injustice. It ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Orthodox churches about this chapter is, that Jesus teaches here that no man can be a Christian or a good man unless he passes through some mysterious experience, usually sudden, of which he must be conscious, which gives him a certain definite series of very deep feelings. First, he must feel very deeply that he is a sinner; then that he cannot by any effort of his own become different; thirdly, that, unless God makes him different, he never can be saved; and, lastly, he must feel that God will change his heart, and save him. Having ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and ravines and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to north and south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... her about the child, and a long conversation took place, in which, however, nothing was settled. The carpenter's wife was artful and pretended to be very much affected, and Madame Tellier, who was holding the girl on her knee, would not pledge herself to anything definite, but merely gave vague promises—she would not forget her, there was plenty of time, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... November, 1786, mounted on a borrowed pony, Burns set out for Edinburgh. He seems to have arrived there without definite plans, for, after having found lodging with his old friend Richmond, he spent the first few days strolling about the city. At home Burns had been an enthusiastic freemason, and it was through a masonic friend, Mr. James ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... was enough for Helen. There was nothing tenuous, elusively subtle, or impenetrably mysterious any longer about the ghostly apparition. Little Glen had something very clear and definite in his mind when he ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... evidently highly suggestive of the mysterious transaction to which the same St. Paul says it contains a reference[539]; but certainly not the language of Moses. And we shall be reminded that this is not merely phraseology rescued from vagueness, and made definite; but it is the actual substitution of one thought for another. This is what will be said; and if it be followed up by the assertion that here, therefore, we have a clear example of Scriptural Accommodation, it might seem, at first sight, impossible ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following Note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration. See "Copyright Registration." Copyright is secured *automatically* when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. "Copies" are material ...
— Copyright Basics • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... have discovered in the delineations of Blithedale characters. There are personal traits alluded to suggestive of Dr. Ripley, of Georgiana Bruce, of Orestes Brownson and others, but these hints are not definite enough to identify them with the personages of the book. As to the assumption that Margaret Fuller served as a model for Zenobia, that seems to me so far fetched as to be ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... men He spoke with passion and conviction. He told again the thousand times repeated story of the wrongs which Ireland has suffered at the hands of the English in old, old days. He told of more recent happenings, of men arrested and imprisoned without trial, without even definite accusation, of intolerable infringements of the common rights. He spoke of the glorious hope of national liberty, of Ireland as a free Republic. The men he spoke too, young men all of them, listened with flashing eyes, with clenched teeth, and faces moist with emotion. They ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... the passion of love is traced; and with a brilliant satire on the effects of yielding to it the book closes. The Fifth Book examines the origin and formation of the solar system, which it treats not as eternal after the manner of the Stoics, but as having had a definite beginning, and as being destined to a natural and inevitable decay. He applies his principle of "Fortuitous Concurrence" to this part of his subject with signal power, but the faultiness of his method interferes with the effect of his argument. The finest part of the book, and perhaps of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Wilbur turned he became conscious of what the old mountaineer wanted to show him. Not a definite sign could he see, the ground was untrampled, the trees showed no blaze marks, yet somehow there was a consciousness that in a certain ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... right hand lower corner had apparently been wet, so that it resisted the action of the fire, and appeared to rise in judgment against the mail robber. The piece contained part of the last name of the superscription, with a portion of the town, county, and state, of the address. Without any definite purpose in doing so, I put the remains of the envelope in ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... say we now have definite news that there are THREE women's heads; it was difficult to get it out of the natives, who are all ashamed, and the women all in terror of reprisals. Nothing has been done to punish or disgrace these hateful innovators. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it; nor did he profess to utter it in the name of the Great Disposer of all events as the seal and authentication of a revelation of moral duty to man; and so it was of no value to those threatened by the calamity. But our Lord's predictions were so authoritative in their tone, and so definite in their details, that they enabled his disciples to escape the impending destruction at that time; and their fulfillment has furnished a decisive proof of his divine foresight ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... you would not go upstairs and into a strange room, to-night of all nights, without a very definite reason. I insist upon your telling me what you were doing. If it is nothing of which you are ashamed, you need ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... midnight, when they again met, Byrne could give him no definite information; he did not even tell him that he thought he had a slight clew which he intended ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... revision composed of two Frenchmen and two Mexicans, appointed as above and sitting in Paris, shall proceed to the definite settlement of the claims already admitted by the commission mentioned in the preceding article, and shall pass upon those the settlement of which ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having, for its object, an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... "No definite date has yet been fixed for the football match which is to take place here between an English and a French eleven, the latter consisting of pupils from the Lycee Janson de Sailly, but the preliminary negotiations are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... word realism is a vague term, and is constantly employed to express different ideas. As far as it applies to the novel, it usually signifies an author's fidelity to nature. But even with this definition, the term realism has no very definite meaning unless all persons agree as to what constitutes nature. There is a great difference in men according as they are looked at with the eye of a Raphael or of a Rembrandt. There has been a strong tendency among novelists of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... of the slate, he looked at it three several times before he could read it. Moreover, it was a question out of the common, relating to the species of a hawk and not to a Spirit, and required an intelligent and definite answer. The hastiness of his reading may be inferred by the frequency with which merely the initials of the Spirit friend are given in the answer. After reading the question, I noticed that Dr. Slade winks rapidly three or four times in a sort of mental abstraction, I suppose, while thinking ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... not form a course of study to be followed in regular order nor in set lessons coming at a definite time. They are, rather, a series of suggestions to be used wherever and whenever they will serve a worthy purpose. They are not to be regarded as a special subject, having little or no connection with ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs |
