"Definiteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Is this work you have outlined of sufficient definiteness to get results? That is the important thing. We farmers sometimes discover a plan accidentally that will outclass anything we can get in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... continued vocational service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... they did not write a note to each word, they took care not to have long roulades (divisions) on unimportant words, but to derive the accent of the music from that of the poem. This showed mainly two tendencies: first, one towards expression of poetic feeling and towards definiteness of that expression, the other towards the entirely new technique which was to supersede the contrapuntal technique of Byrde and Palestrina. In making a mass or an anthem or secular composition, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... uncivil," said Father Payne. "He did not deride my absence of definiteness, he only deplored it. But I really got more out of the subsequent talk. We adjourned to a sort of portico, a pretty place looking on to a formal garden: it was really very charmingly done—a clever fake of an, old ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... man had planned carefully. He had meant that only the good and beautiful should have place in David's youth. It was not that he intended that evil, unhappiness, and death should lack definition, only definiteness, in the boy's mind. It should be a case where the good and the beautiful should so fill the thoughts that there would be no room for anything else. This had been his plan. And thus far he had succeeded—succeeded so wonderfully that he began now, in the face of his own ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... the body recedes to its greatest distance from the sun, by which time the velocity has abated to the value from which we supposed it to commence. We thus observe that the nearer the planet is to the sun the quicker it moves. We can, however, give numerical definiteness to the principle according to which the velocity of the planet varies. The adjoining figure (Fig. 39) shows a planetary orbit, with, of course, the sun at the focus S. We have taken two portions, A B and C D, round the ellipse, and joined ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... teacher's ills. The larger portion of the twelve pages is devoted to this object, although the explicit statement is made, on the third page, that "psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help." But so little space is given to this declaration that, in spite of its definiteness and positive character, the class as a whole reached the conclusion that he was advising teachers not to study psychology at all. In other words, they had failed to balance up one part of the chapter against ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... companies and bodies of men, with railroads, cities, and agricultural products, and with many other topics which suggest excellent practical problems in arithmetic for these grades. All such careful arithmetical computations add clearness and definiteness to historical and geographical ideas. The natural sciences have been so little systematically taught in our common schools, that we are scarcely able to realize what connection may be made between them and arithmetic. We know that in the advanced study and applications of some of ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... struggle of 1840 marked with great definiteness the real position which the Ottoman Empire was henceforth to occupy in its relations to the western world. Rescued by Europe at large from the alternatives of destruction at the hands of Ibrahim or complete vassalage under Russia, the Porte entered upon the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... tread where the lesser men rushed in. But though he records the evidence brought forward by those who believed in Shakespeare's knowledge of the Ancients, he does not fail to convey the impression that he belongs to the other party. And, indeed, in another passage of the Preface he says with definiteness, inconsistent with his other statements, that Shakespeare was "without assistance or advice from the learned, as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among them, without that knowledge of the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... it may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the varied ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... my first duty was to make a careful study of the publications of the parent society in England, with a view of learning their discoveries. The result was far from hopeful. I found that the phenomena brought out lacked that coherence and definiteness which is characteristic of scientific truths. Remarkable effects had been witnessed; but it was impossible to say, Do so and so, and you will get such an effect. The best that could be said was, perhaps you will get an effect, but more ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... a mouth that curved in a smile; and the brief moment in which he was able to refresh his memory, when he found her in the lane with Reggie Byng and the broken-down car, had not been enough to add definiteness. The consequence was that Maud came upon him now with the stunning effect of beauty seen for the first time. He gasped. In that dazzling ball-dress, with the flush of dancing on her cheeks and the light of dancing ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a community producing chiefly in this manner are poverty, or at least only a moderate prosperity, but, to offset this, a certain definiteness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... city, the symbols of the Apocalypse are terminated. What follows are the words of Christ. The import of these is guarded by his declaration that they are "true and faithful." There is a reality and definiteness in them, which will not admit of their being added to, or taken from. So that any attempt to fritter away their meaning, will be followed by the curses written in the book, and a loss of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the case of foreign children, in a tale of repetition, such as The Cat and the Mouse, Teeny Tiny, or The Old Woman and Her Pig, will the repetitive passages be an aid to verbal expression. The child learns to follow the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order. He catches the note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his thinking. He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world, and which is one of the biggest things he will ever ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... completely disproved by experiments in which unilateral castration has been carried out without any effect on the antlers at all. In birds, however, a few cases have been recorded by competent observers with a definiteness of detail which leaves no possibility of doubt. One of the more recent of these is that of a pheasant of the white-ringed Formosan variety, P. torquatus, of the Chinese pheasant. [Footnote: C. J. Bond, 'Unilateral Development of Secondary Male Characters in a Pheasant,' Journ. of Genetics, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to pass,—affrighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her brother,—stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and obliterated all definiteness of thought,—she yielded without a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had found it in the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a problem any hesitation or lack of definiteness in making plans might cause failure even with victory within our grasp. Moreover, plans as great as our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... to me an interesting woman. She has opinions of her own, which she expresses clearly and firmly. I like her," responded Morgan with a definiteness of manner which suggested that he was not to be debarred by fear of banter from admitting that he ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... consider a change of persons in the management of a new institution is not desirable. In intellectual movements in particular the leaders of them are especially recommended to keep themselves conservative as regards their people. The public requires definiteness before all else—and just this is endangered by a change of persons. The substitute for B., whom you mention to me (his name also begins with B.), is certainly highly to be recommended in all that concerns talent, position, and I think also worthy character; none the less do I vote very ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Lord's time believed in a waiting life of departed souls before the Judgment. Owing to vagueness and contradictions in the Rabbinical teaching it is impossible to state their notions about it with definiteness. But in the main it may be said that when they speak of that life as a whole without distinguishing between the states of the good and the evil they call this whole by the general name of HADES, i. e., "the Unseen" ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the mental life and development of children reveals at the same time the unity and the diversity of the process involved. For the sake of definiteness and clearness, the authors have differentiated between types of mental activity and the corresponding types of classroom exercises. They have, at the same time, sought to make clear the interdependence of the various aspects of teaching ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer be regarded as the "life". ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... went over them with the Ainos of a remote village on Volcano Bay, and found the differences in pronunciation very slight, except that the definiteness of the sound which I have represented by Tsch was more strongly marked. I afterwards went over them with Mr. Dening, and with Mr. Von Siebold at Tokiyo, who have made a larger collection of words than I have, and it is satisfactory to find that we have represented ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... It yields large fruitage in the development of the power of concentration and intellectual keenness. Yes, but better than that. All mathematical subjects, in that they require absolute accuracy and definiteness in their operations, are particularly helpful in developing those fine moral qualities of honesty, integrity, and upright dealing. Again, history is taught in the schools as an intellectual subject. In intellectual development alone it is worth all it costs. But over ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... moment her hand continued to grasp his, before, as if taking in the ambiguous comfort of his final definiteness, it relaxed and she drew ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "leit-motiv" in modern music. Here too a particular idea, if not a particular set of words, is associated with a particular musical phrase; the intention of the practice being clearly the same as that which is indicated in the passage just quoted, namely to add precision and definiteness to the vague ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... happily for us and for their own fame, the intention of the writers as men is often at complete variance with the genius of the same men as poets. To the force of their intention we owe their mythological ornaments, and the greater definiteness of their imagery; and their passion for the beautiful, the voluptuous, and the artificial, we must in part attribute to the same intention, but in part likewise to their natural dispositions and tastes. For the same climate and many of the same circumstances were acting ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... cheek was not pale, as she had thought at first, but brown, obviously burnt by the sun of Africa. But she felt that underneath the sunburn there was pallor. She fancied he might be a painter, and was noting all the extraordinary colour effects with the definiteness of a man who meant, perhaps, to reproduce them ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... so balanced and sure, he made such a confident presence. He was a great rider, so there was about him some of a horseman's sureness and habitual definiteness of decision, also some of the horseman's animal darkness. Yet his soul was only the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a set of habitual actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable quick of the man was inaccessible. She knew nothing of it. She could ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... own. Although it has vaguely personified in darkest ages other diseases, like the Plague, the Pestilence, and Maya (the Smallpox), these have rapidly faded away in even the earliest light of civilization, and have never approached in concreteness and definiteness the malevolent personality of Cancer. Its sudden appearance, the utter absence of any discoverable cause, the twinges of agonizing pain that shoot out from it in all directions, its stone-like hardness ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... function of which the gradual recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by the listener or by the action and accessories of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... definiteness to trace roughly a course of blood-spots from the fireplace to a point near the door of the living-room. But beyond the door, in the ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the Canadian Government and in which the bulk of the gold has been found, has a total area, approximately, of 192,000 square miles, of which 150,768 square miles are included in the watershed of the Yukon. Illustrating this, so that it may appeal with definiteness to the reader, it may be said that this territory is greater by 71,100 square miles than the area of Great Britain, and is nearly three times that of all the New England ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... be indeed proud to represent Kansas in the new National Woman Suffrage Association, whose formation meets my hearty approval. Definiteness of purpose is always conducive to success, and I think it would be well now to concentrate all our efforts upon the one idea of "Suffrage for Women." You may rely upon me to do whatever lies within my power and ability to further ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the synod instead of purifying the Romish Church from its corruptions had only reduced the latter to greater definiteness and precision, and invested them with the sanction of authority. All the subtilties of its teaching, all the arts and usurpations of the Roman See, which had hitherto rested more on arbitrary usage, were now passed into laws and raised ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a vague sense of change struck him. The roads were better. There was an odd little building near the yellow house. It was the new school, but of that Northrup had not heard. From the distance the chapel bell sounded. It did not have that lost, weird note that used to mark it—there was definiteness about it that suggested a human hand sending ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... impression at times of being arrogant about this special fund of knowledge. But he nowhere cares to make his modesty conspicuous to the reader, and his cocksureness is only the obverse of his best literary virtue. It comes from the very crispness and definiteness with which he sees things. There are no clouds about the edges of his perceptions. They are all clear and nette, Things observed by such a man dogmatise to the mind, and it is natural that he should dogmatise as to what he sees with ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... indictment, and contained the extended argument of a stump speech. Its one pervading thought, emphasized in resonant phrase, iterating and reiterating, "that reform is necessary," was an additional proof of its origin. But with all its effusiveness of expression, it lacked definiteness in the enunciation of principles. Only two or three propositions upon pending issues were explicitly set forth. It accepted the Constitutional Amendments; denounced "the present tariff levied upon ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... perhaps to be explained here that the definiteness of outline which distinguishes the Kamarupa from the astral body is of an entirely different character from that definiteness which was described as a sign of progress in the astral of the man before ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... undergraduate leave in the middle of the term. "The college could have wished for a more definite message," he said. "Too late for what, Mr. Warrender?" "Too late to see my father alive, sir!" cried the young man; and as this had all the definiteness that the college required he was allowed to go. This was how his studies were broken up just as they approached their conclusion, although, as he had been so capricious and self-willed, nobody expected that in any circumstances it could have been ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... commonplaces, on such wordy vapourings as degeneration and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the past. Every accusation, even if it is uttered in ladies' society, ought to be formulated with all possible definiteness, or it is not an accusation, but idle disparagement, unworthy ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... summarize the history of these dark African peoples, because so little is known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, by avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions of definition, we may trace a great human movement with considerable definiteness. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... the armed Rebels themselves, had a tendency to disquiet the public mind with apprehensions as to the result of the Proclamation, and whether, indeed, Mr. Lincoln himself would be able to resist the pressure, and stand up to his promise of that Supplemental Proclamation which would give definiteness and practical effect to the preliminary one, the masses of the people of the Loyal States ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... are there any that are valid within single geographical divisions? On what principle can we divide the earth into sections for economic purposes? These are some of the questions which must be answered if a theory of distribution is to have any definiteness of meaning, and they arise whenever we try to establish a static standard of any kind. If we talk about natural wages, we must know in how much of the world they are natural. The questions become even more urgent when we try to ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... knew with an absolute definiteness as we crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with which the lightnings filled the blue globe—that the Metal ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... did not know it would have been hard to say, as, added to a certain secretiveness which in different ways both Phoebe and Ishmael possessed, there was in him a strain of elusiveness; you could not coerce him to a definiteness he did not wish any more than you could catch a butterfly by stabbing at it in air with ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all 'the apostles of the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; but any one ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... that charming and graceful writer who has lately deserted the turmoil of literature for the peace of the House of Commons, I mean the author of Obiter Dicta. In point of fact, there is no such thing as Shakespeare's Hamlet. If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a work of art, he has also all the obscurity that belongs to life. There are as many Hamlets as there ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... forms reflect the various climatic, economic, and general cultural conditions of clans, tribes, and nations. They acquire consistency with the organization of society; they tend to become more and more elaborate, just as in other points social intercourse tends to produce formal definiteness; they grow decrepit and have to be artificially strengthened and revived; they lose their original meanings and must be constantly reinterpreted to bring them into accord with new ideas, social, moral, and religious. Their history, in a word, is ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... remorseless logic as that of logarithms. It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you. The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning. Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—you, the devotee ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... when it corresponds to a certain associated complex, and false when it does not. Assuming, for the sake of definiteness, that the objects of the belief are two terms and a relation, the terms being put in a certain order by the 'sense' of the believing, then if the two terms in that order are united by the relation into a complex, the belief is true; if not, it is false. ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... mountains and sea were his God! She walked aghast, forgetful of a hundred things she had heard him say that might have settled the point. She had, during the last day or two, been reading an article in which PANTHEISM was once and again referred to with more horror than definiteness. Recovering herself a little, she ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... rash conclusions that might be drawn from it, and to remark that it by no means follows that education is unnecessary to the common run of men, because a genius is in advance of his times. It is well also to note that even in him this flash of insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the definiteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. However accurate, it is but a glimmer,—not ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began to live ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... of definiteness which is at present so general in color nomenclature, is due in large measure to the failure to appreciate the fundamental characteristics on which color differences depend. For the physicist, the expression of the wave length ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... their special work is the very same as that of the treading of the holy city, "a thousand two hundred and three score days,"—1260 years. In attempting to fix the beginning of this period, Daniel and John must be compared; both treat of the same events and dates, and this gives definiteness to the interpretation. Daniel fixes these events to the fourth monarchy after it had been broken in pieces, and the ten horns had arisen: (ch. vii. 23-25;) so that we have both the geography and chronology determined by the prophets themselves. Hence it follows that we must date the beginning ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field, with any definiteness. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... any data at hand are little better than rough guesses. Long before the definite estimates were undertaken, geologists had proved that the earth is very, very old, and it can hardly be said that the attempted computations have added much of definiteness to that proposition. They have, indeed, proved that the period of time to be drawn upon is not infinite; but the nebular hypothesis, to say nothing of common-sense, carried us as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... of The Blessed Damozel was a definiteness of sensible imagery, which seemed almost grotesque to some, and was strange, above all, in a theme so profoundly visionary. The gold bar of heaven from which she leaned, her hair yellow like ripe corn, are but examples of a general ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of what others do, and vague ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But Lentulus was at once so unreceptive, and so little gifted with the power of displaying his miscellaneous deficiency of information, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... leisure to express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... majority of the people know nothing, it is more respected by the people. But the reason for such a change will not be valid if the change is brought about merely to add to the power of the chief executive without the question of succession being definitely settled. For the definiteness about succession is the most prominent point of superiority of the monarchical system ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... depends, and then to estimate the comparative value of these ratios. Now I think there can be no doubt that the value of any probability in this its last analysis is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown; and, consequently, that in all cases where the sum of the unknown relations is larger, or more important, or more indefinite than ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... a piece is not assimilated nor learned until it is memorized. When they have selected the composition they wish to learn, they begin at once to memorize from the start. The student does not always bring to his work this definiteness of aim; if he did, much precious time would be saved. The ability to memorize ideas expressed in notes grows with use, just as any other aptitude grows with ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the music that teases us out of thought as ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... shall refer in a moment—had thrown new light on the question of atmospheric pressure. Still later the celebrated Huygens hit upon the idea of using the melting and the boiling point of water as fixed points in a scale of measurements, which first gave definiteness to thermometric tests. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of apparently inevitable starvation. General Pollock had arrived in Peshawur, and was making energetic efforts to get his force in order for the accomplishment of the relief of Jellalabad. But he foresaw serious delays, and so late as the middle of March was still unable to specify with any definiteness the probable date of his arrival at that place. The European troops in Jellalabad would be out of meat rations early in April, and Havelock's calculation was that the grain, on which mainly subsisted the native soldiers, who had been on half rations since the new year, would be exhausted before ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... certain crisp definiteness about those two words which carried conviction with them. Mabane and I were a little staggered. Our position was such a strong one, our request so reasonable, that I think that we had never realized ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... others, an attribute so essential for a proper concourse with man. Thrown finally upon their own resources, when they had to rely for their existence upon some industrial pursuit, we find them lacking the most essential prerequisite for the efficient struggle for existence—definiteness of purpose, and continuity and persistence of effort. We find them leading a harum-scarum existence, drifting from place to place, and from occupation to occupation, never able to remain at any one undertaking for ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... argument, and all rushed for the doors. I hastily changed slippers for boots and ran out. The barn hid the "Phalanstery" from sight. Passing to the other side of it I saw the flames pouring out of the front, surmounted by a heavy cloud of black smoke. Without definiteness of purpose we all started for the building, and all saw that there was no chance of saving it. Ere long the flames were chasing one another in mad riot over the structure; running across the long corridors and up and down the supporting columns of wood, until the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... they had expected to find within that mysterious room, they could not perhaps have explained with any definiteness. Once they stood within the threshold, however, they became slowly conscious of a vague disappointment. Here was nothing so very strange, after all! The room appeared to be in considerable disorder, and articles of clothing, books, and boyish belongings were tossed ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... singularly reckless; singularly careless of consequences and of what people thought. It was difficult to influence him, but when influenced he was almost painfully open in his acknowledgment of the power that had reached him. As a rule, however, despite his apparent definiteness, his decisive violence, there seemed to be something fluid in his character, something that divided and flowed away from anything which sought to grasp and hold it. He had impetus but not balance; swiftness, but a swiftness that was uncontrolled. He resembled ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Judas Iscariot An Old-Fashioned Home The Swelling of Jordan A Call to Judgment A Changed Life The Lost Opportunity A Great Victory Paul a Pattern of Prayer A Startling Statement The Grace of God Conversion Five Kings in a Cave Definiteness of Purpose in Christian Work The Morning Breaketh An Obscured Vision The Compassion of Jesus Sanctification An Unheeded Warning The Approval of the Spirit A Reasonable Service The ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... her innuendoes to all who would listen to her, till it was pretty generally understood throughout the mill that Katie Robertson was a thief, who appeared in unbecoming finery bought with ill-gotten gains. The rumor never took sufficient definiteness of shape to reach the girl so that she could confute it and explain its origin. Of course, she was not likely to tell any one in the mill about the finding of the fifty-dollar bill and what had passed between Mr. James Mountjoy and herself, since it was largely to her own credit, nor had he ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... replied the Reverend Murdo, "Mr. McGinnis is right in asking for definiteness. My answer is that we must trust this committee to do what is wise and reasonable, and we must accept their decision ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... moral with other kinds of truth, is not open to the charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may teach, as has been said, what the poet never dreamed ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... Arabic, too, according to Lane, bara means properly, though not always, to create out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was all in all, asserted, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... world whose letters and diaries are so full of cries of anguish and hopelessness. He was crushed under the sense of the world's immensity; his own observation was so microscopic, his desire to perceive and know so strong, his appetite for definiteness so profound, that I feel that Carlyle's terror was like that of a mite in an enormous cheese, longing to explore it all, lost in the high-flavoured dusk, and conscious of a scale of mystery so vast that it humiliated a brain that wanted to know the truth ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... individual in any community to do what he pleases, is incompatible with the best interests of the whole. Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty. Experience has shown the importance of definiteness in the law; and in this country, where customs are so slightly established and the published manuals of parliamentary practice so conflicting, no society should attempt to conduct business without having adopted some ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... first free day of her married life; and she was bent upon keeping to her plan. He must be told at once, and yet as she held the pen above a sheet of plain paper she was stunned by the extraordinary difficulty of the composition. Only then, for the first time, did she grasp the definiteness of the step she had taken. She would never see Toby again. Never? Never—never—never. Sally's eyes filled with tears. A thick, painful sob forced ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has more definiteness and roundness of general conception than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer. His thoughts ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... social customs seem all to assume a definiteness of preference, a singleness and a limitation of love, which is not psychologically justifiable. People do not, I think, fall naturally into agreement with these assumptions; they train themselves to agreement. They take refuge from ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... expressed at a man in the position of a teacher of languages knowing all this with such definiteness. A novelist says this and that of his personages, and if only he knows how to say it earnestly enough he may not be questioned upon the inventions of his brain in which his own belief is made sufficiently manifest by a telling phrase, a poetic ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... among the impedimenta of the childless. He brought this out, refurbished it, and applied it to Jane. At first he thought his wife had not overrated the quality of the child's mind. Jane seemed extraordinarily intelligent. Her precocious definiteness of mind was encouraging to her inexperienced preceptor. She had no difficulty in fixing her attention, and he felt that every fact he imparted was being etched in metal. He helped his wife to engage the best teachers, and for a while continued to take an ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of human life, these vast antinomies of the spirit, has arisen man's belief in a Saviour-God. Sublime and awful are the sanctions upon which it rests. Out of the extremity and definiteness of our need we know that He must be and we know what He must be like. He is the One to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, from whom no secrets are hid. Who could state the mingling of desire and dread with which men strive after, and hide from, such a God? ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... long black hours of the night of her return to Friars' Holm—Gillian had merely laughed the notion aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness, she ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... consciousness, gradually became less vague,—became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered,—something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of real modesty lingers about an unmarried man; he feels far more confident in his own opinion if he knows it is Smith's opinion too, and his conception of life acquires all its definiteness from its being shared with half a dozen fairly reasonable fellows. It is no slight triumph that woman should not only have succeeded in enforcing the dissolution of this social tie as the first condition of married ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... opposite valuations. As imagination, it half-creates and half-discovers the atmospheric climate, so to speak, of this valuation. As intuition, it feels itself to be in possession of a super-terrestrial, super-human authority which gives objective definiteness and security to this valuation. As instinct, it feels its way by an innate clairvoyance into the organic or biological ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... which he made of this gift to the influence of his Italian studies—more especially to those which led him to Dante, whose multitudinous characters and scenes impress themselves with so singular and immediate a definiteness upon the imagination. At the same time, Chaucer's resources seem inexhaustible for filling up or rounding off his narratives with the aid of chivalrous love or religious legend, by the introduction of samples of scholastic discourse ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for DeBary and Rostafinski to introduce a new factor into the description of species, and by spore-measurement and the delineation of microscopic detail to supply an element of definiteness which has no parallel in the work of any earlier student of this group. Under these conditions the revision undertaken by Rostafinski was of a most heroic sort. His work was almost a new beginning; and while in nomenclature he was inclined to follow the Paris Code, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... clearness and interest a reporter must remember that one of his greatest assets is concreteness of expression. Of all forms of composition newspaper writing possesses probably the greatest opportunity for definiteness. Facts and events are its one concern; theories and abstractions are beyond its range. Hence the more definite and concrete its presentation of facts, the better will be its effect. The reporter should never generalize or present his statements ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... all the spirit and meaning of a religious family. It objectifies the inner life. It makes definite, tangible, and easily remembered the general impressions of religion. It precipitates the atmosphere of religion into definiteness. In the chemical laboratory of a university there is usually a decided atmosphere of chemistry, but no one expects to become a chemical engineer by absorbing that atmosphere, nor even to attain a simple working knowledge by merely general ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... definiteness and simplicity about this description of poetry which may well make us wonder why this precious thing (producible, apparently, as easily as Pope's imitators supposed, although by means different from theirs) is not offered to us by more ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the source, thus chosen, presented itself to the translator's conception. His references to it are generally vague or confused, often positively misleading. Yet to designate with any definiteness a French or Latin text was no easy matter. When one considers the labor that, of later years, has gone to the classification and identification of old manuscripts, the awkward elaboration of nomenclature ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... discontinued because it became evident that an impossible task had been set for the mouse. Day by day as the tests were in progress I noticed that the animal became increasingly afraid of the entrances to the small boxes; it seemed absolutely helpless in the face of the situation. Partly because of the definiteness of the negative results obtained with No. 4 and partly because of the cruelty of subjecting an animal to disagreeable conditions which it is unable to avoid, the experiment was not repeated with other individuals. I have never conducted an experiment which gave me as much discomfort ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken with the others to a house where a French general with a white mustache sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he had been, with what object, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... life of the individual. If I could find any such passage as the one I have just quoted, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's, Mr. Lewes's, or Mr. Romanes' works, I should be only too glad to quote it, but I know of nothing comparable to it for definiteness of idea, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... imitating cornea and iris, were inserted. [Footnote: Marble statues also sometimes had inserted eyes] Finally, the whole was gone over with appropriate tools, the hair, for example, being furrowed with a sharp graver and thus receiving a peculiar, metallic definiteness of texture. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... in describing the taking of a city are once more specified, so as to fulfill all the demands of definiteness ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... processes of a higher education, and of the subjective conditions of mental growth and training, comparatively few, either of the students or their parents, appeared to have any definite idea. There was no lack of definiteness of choice. Tastes and inclinations were usually positive; reasons were not so plentiful. That the young lady 'liked' this study or 'disliked' that, was the reason perhaps most frequently assigned. If its force was not at once ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Liberals. They represented a new idea, which was but gradually learning to recognize itself, to ascertain its characteristics and external relations, and to exert an influence upon the University. The party grew, all the time that I was in Oxford, even in numbers, certainly in breadth and definiteness of doctrine, and in power. And, what was a far higher consideration, by the accession of Dr. Arnold's pupils, it was invested with an elevation of character which claimed the respect even of its ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... that we have, many of us, very vague notions of the meaning of terms which we use, and I see that I must be prepared (I speak for myself) to expect that a clergyman may not with impunity use a language wanting in definiteness and precision. It is possible that men do too passively receive hereditary and conventional opinions which never have a living reality to them. But this, you know, I do not confound with the humble submission to authoritative teaching, given upon authority, to supersede the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ermanaric, and Attila throws out the figures in strong relief. The mere extent of the stage and the number of the supernumeraries required for the action of most of the French stories appear to have told against the definiteness of their characters; as, on the other hand, the personages in Beowulf, without much individual character of their own, seem to gain in precision and strength from the smallness of the scene in which they act. There is less strict economy in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... and goes with a rush, and, even while the skipper had been speaking, the object which had first revealed itself to me, a minute earlier, as a mere wan, ghostly suggestion had assumed solidity and definiteness of form, and now stood out against the sky behind her as a full-rigged ship of some seven hundred and fifty tons burthen, her hull painted bright green, and coppered to the water-line. She was lying ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood |
