"Vaguely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opened her eyes. They had once been what are vaguely known as fine eyes; now they looked like ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... a girl of seventeen may not be feeling out into the spiritual dark,—may not be stretching helpless hands, vaguely, toward the Hands that help? Desire Ledwith laid the book down again, with a great swelling breath coming up slowly out of her bosom, and with a warmth of tears in her earnest little eyes. And Uncle Titus Oldways sat there among his papers, and never moved, or seemed to look, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him from ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... other choice hotels at Interlaken, the Hotel Jungfrau, kept by Meyer, is situated on the Hoeheweg, a wide promenade between double rows of chestnut-trees that vaguely reminded Tar-tarin of the beloved Tour de Ville of his native town, minus the sun, the grasshoppers, and the dust; for during his week's sojourn at Interlaken the rain ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the door and entered. He was a medium-sized, plump young man. "Oh, I say!" he protested. "Is it as bad as that?" Bill nodded vaguely, meanwhile carefully measuring the physical proportions of the interloper. The latter ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling of the ponderous chermadion, the figure is correct and expressive.' And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer, as one, qui nil molitur inepte, who never speaks vaguely, never wants a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here, then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... hunted man kept himself far from the other servants, regarding the meaner folk with undiminished scorn. He thought seldom, and only vaguely of Katuti's daughter, for love had quite given place to hatred, and only one thing now seemed to him worth living for—the hope of working with others to cause his enemies' downfall, and of being the instrument of their death; so he offered himself to the widow a willing and welcome tool, and the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Builders? No living man may answer. Their history—strange, weird, mysterious—stretches backward into the dim twilight before tradition, its sole remaining record graven upon the surface of the earth, vaguely guessed at by those who study graves; their pathetic ending has long been pictured in our country's story as occurring amid the shadows of that dreadful midnight upon the banks of the Ocatahoola, when ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... protect her life, and in the pocket of her dress she put the little loaded revolver which she had bought a few days previously. The hours went by, the hours struck, and every sound was hushed in the house. Only the cabs, continued to rumble through the streets, but their noise was only heard vaguely through the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... father was still emotionally young and had love affairs of his own gave him feelings of repugnance and irritation—he could have endured the conventionally paternal praise or blame, but he was vaguely outraged by the queer basis of equality from which Sir Harry dealt with his experiences. But now the truth was out. What would they say, these two?—The old rake who refused to turn his back on youth and love, and the triple-vowed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... looked around vaguely, her mind thrown out of gear by this unexpected delay. Another freak ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... woman with the pulpy conscience and the artificial emotions, selfish and a coward, was merely vaguely stirred by his revelation, not spurred by the extent of his sacrifice in ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... that the Spaniards took the Rio Paragua, or Parava, which falls into the Carony, for a lake, because the word parava signifies sea, lake, river. Parima seems also to denote vaguely great water; for the root par is found in the Carib words that designate rivers, pools, lakes, and the ocean.* (* In Persian the root water (ab) is found also in lake (abdan). For other etymologies of the words Parima and Manoa see Gili volume 1 pages 81 and 141; and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... fooling," Charlie said, vaguely understanding that you could somehow make things happen on this world ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... eyelash, Miantowona Nursed her old father, Oldest of Hurons, Soothed his complainings, Smiled when he chid her Vaguely for nothing,— He was so weak now, Like a shrunk cedar White with the hoar-frost Sometimes she gently Linked arms with maidens, Joined in their dances: Not with her people, Not in the wigwam, Wept ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... difficulty by saying that it existed as an infinite Spirit, partly from a desire to magnify what they felt must be so vast and powerful, and partly because they had as yet only a vague conception of what they were aiming at, and must, therefore, best express it vaguely. ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... then what I had but vaguely understood before, that there is a hunger that is worse than that which starves the body and gets into the newspapers. All children love beauty and beautiful things. It is the spark of the divine nature that ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly and gray, A vague, unravelling, final tune, Like a long unwinding silk cocoon; Sang as though for the soul of him Who ironed away in that bower dim:— "I have forgotten Your dragons great, Merry and mad and friendly and bold. Dim is your proud lost palace-gate. I vaguely know There were heroes of old, Troubles more than the heart could hold, There were wolves in the woods Yet lambs in the fold, Nests in the top of the almond tree.... The evergreen tree ... and the mulberry tree ... Life and hurry and joy forgotten, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... lurking shadows, dim and mute, Fall vaguely on the dusky river; Vexed breezes play a phantom lute, Athwart the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... gossip could, gather was that she had unexpectedly descended from a passing vessel with her effects and entered directly the abandoned house. When questioned as to the scene of her earlier life, she vaguely gave answer that she had disported herself largely in 'Philadelphy;' but as no 'Philadelphy' woman that ever walked through a doorway was or is able to compound a chowder or bake a clam pie worthy of the name, and as Madame Rose understood how to prepare both these ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of propriety,—and the lawless young Madigans had very strict ideas as to the conventions for adults,—the ardor of the struggle, the uncertainty of the issue, seized upon Sissy. She heard a swift call from Irene, some distance below, and was vaguely aware that the company, skirted and otherwise, was beating a retreat. But the smaller of the two contestants, on the other side of the knot-hole, had just come within the field of Sissy's rude lens. It was pitiable to see the haggard look on the German woman's plump ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... relates the dialogues between Oisin and Patrick, the tales of Finn and his heroes which Oisin told to the Saint, the fierce answers with which the old warrior met the Gospel arguments—all this was only vaguely familiar to him. I was looking for a man who had it ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Palsy has been vaguely employed by medical writers in general. By some it has been used to designate ordinary cases of Palsy, in which some slight tremblings have occurred; whilst by others it has been applied to certain anomalous affections, not ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... between the beautiful big dais in the coach-house, all dry, and sweet, and clean, and her fragrant, carpeted great bed in "th'old parish room." Lying there at her ease, with one eye on the Master's shoulder, where it showed round the side of his high-topped writing-table, Tara wondered vaguely why she had troubled to dig that hole in the wet earth. But the Master knew all about it, though he could not claim to have fifteen hundred years of Wolfhound ancestry behind him, and ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... smiled in amusement, and Tabitha wondered vaguely where she had seen him before, for he certainly looked familiar. "I happen to be staying at Silver Bow just at present, so I know where to go," he answered genially, removing his hat to fan himself, and exposing to view a head of wavy red-brown hair streaked liberally with gray. "I was going to ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Edward Henry, "I understood London when we were chatting over there." With his elbow he indicated the music-hall, somewhere vaguely outside the room. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... school; thus gratitude, unpalatable though it were, prevented unguarded censure. She abstained from much; and as there was no quick intuition in the family, even Jessie, the most in her confidence, only vaguely knew that mamma thought Aunt Caroline too clever and fly-away; but mamma was grave and wise, and it was very nice to have an aunt who was young and lively, and always had pleasant things going on in her house. Jessie always had her full share, not indeed appreciating ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the child herself was vaguely, and in childish fashion, wondering that very thing. She was in the carriage room of the barn belonging to the Hall estate—if the few acres of land and the buildings owned by the late Marcellus may be called an estate—curled ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... on the promenade-deck began vaguely to understand that the first man was disabled in some way, and that the other was trying to lift him. While she looked, the engine-room bells jangled and the wheels began to turn. The mate forgot her and swore out of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... a difficult question, and yet when science and imagination unite, as Tyndall said they should unite, to throw a searchlight into the unknown, they may produce a beam sufficient to outline vaguely what will become clearer with the future advance of our race. Science has demonstrated that while ether pervades everything the ether which is actually in a body is different from the ether outside it. "Bound" ether is the name given to this, ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... business, and that probably enough he had been eye-witness to the little fact,—fact credible perhaps without much proving. One rather regretted there was no date to it, no detail to give it whereabout and fixity in our conception; that the poor little Anecdote, though indubitable, had to hang vaguely in the air. Now, however, the above dated LETTER does, by accident, date Suhm's Anecdote too; date "July 8" as good as certain for it; the Siege itself having ended (July 18) in ten days more. Herr von ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... noticed on one of your horses picks, shovels and other mining implements, and I thought you might combine gold hunting with sight seeing. I'm something of a gold hunter myself and it occurred to me that we could combine forces. I've heard vaguely about a huge gold lead much farther west, and we four might make a strong party, able to reach ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... he would have criticised in another man, he flung himself out of the room in which he had been for so many hours confined, and coming face to face with the landlady standing in unexpected watch before the door, found it a strain on his nerves to instantly assume the sullen, vaguely abused air with which he had decided to leave the house. Nevertheless, he made the attempt, and if he did not succeed to his own satisfaction, he evidently did to hers, for she made no effort to stop him as he stumbled out, and in her final look, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a swift glance at her, and forgot to read his letter as he studied the fresh roundness and beauty of her face. He vaguely felt that there was a ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... much at the remark, though it was extremely absurd, for Charles Stuart hated all girls, as at his uncomfortable subdued manner, which she now began to notice. She felt vaguely sorry for him. Charles Stuart never acted like that unless his father had been giving him a scolding. Her sympathy made ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... met across the table. Seated between them, Mr Birdsey looked from one to the other, vaguely disturbed. Something was happening, a drama was going on, and he had not the key ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the effects of the drugs which she had been compelled to take in her heroic attempt to get at the dope joint, was endeavouring to quiet the girl from the Montmartre, who, now vaguely recollecting us, seemed to realize that something had gone wrong and was trembling and ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... had fled. His mother, stately in her silks and a serenely unapproachable manner, which seemed always to say to her son that she was preoccupied with her own affairs, and that her affairs were vastly more important than his youthful interests and problems, swam vaguely before his consciousness, veiled by the swift passing of events and the abrupt change from city to ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... soon assured de Spain that both were asleep. The horses were quiet, and the night gave no sound save that vaguely through the darkness came the faint brawl of tiny cataracts tumbling down far mountain heights. De Spain, lying on his side, his head resting on his elbow, and his hands clasped at the back of his neck, meditated first on how he should capture Sassoon at daybreak, and then on Nan ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, Why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... hour after hour, as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down in their vaults the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely.... ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... name, so that her occupation was verily gone? He had as much as charged her with this in saying to her, many months before, that she even then knew something she was keeping from him. It was a point he had never since ventured to press, vaguely fearing as he did that it might become a difference, perhaps a disagreement, between them. He had in this later time turned nervous, which was what he in all the other years had never been; and the oddity was that his nervousness should have waited till he had begun ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... accompaniment of much light-hearted chatter on the parts of Violet and Max Wyndham. Colonel Campion sat in heavy silence, and Olga instinctively held aloof. There was something in Max's attitude that puzzled her, but it was something so intangible that she could not even vaguely define it to herself. All his careless banter notwithstanding, she was fully convinced in her own mind that he was not in the smallest degree dazzled or so much as attracted by the brilliant beauty ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... II., or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people was Vater Fritz—Father Fred. A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king; in a Spartan simplicity of vesture. In 1786 his speakings and his workings came to finis in this world of time. Editors vaguely account this man the creator of the Prussian monarchy, which has since grown so large in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... most of it had come under her observation in one way or other, and being shrewd by nature, she could guess the rest, for she who was companionless had much time for reflection and for guessing. She sympathised with her father in his ideas, understanding vaguely that there was something large and noble about them, but in the main, body and mind, she was her mother's child. Already she showed her mother's dreamy beauty, to which were added her father's straight features and clear ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... that name, stretching south to the Liffey, and north to Armagh. It was the mensal demesne, or "board of the king's table:" it was exempt from all taxes, except those of the Ard-Righ, and its relations to the other Provinces may be vaguely compared to those of the District of Columbia to the several States of the North American Union. ULSTER might then be defined by a line drawn from Sligo Harbour to the mouth of the Boyne, the line ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... long, as John Watson worked, there was a wish in his honest heart, so earnest a wish that it formed a prayer, that he might be able to give his children many of the things that had been denied him; and it came to him, vaguely at first, but growing ever clearer that in Pearlie, Teddy and the rest of them, and his desire to do better for them, than he had done for himself, he ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... I can remember what followed. Vaguely I can recall how I rushed into the chamber of death, how I seized Duroc by one limp hand and dragged him down the hall, the woman keeping pace with me and pulling at the other arm. Out of the gateway we rushed, and on down the snow-covered path until we were on the fringe of the ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a tremendous self-sacrifice, when all appears lost and her future looks colorless and hopeless, she fears that the years of her life are "like the floating leaves drifting down Lost Creek, valueless, purposeless, and vaguely vanishing in the mountains." All of the stories are by no means so tragically sad as this one, but all are overshadowed by the mountains. Among the best of the novels, Down the Ravine and The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain may be ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... just before dropping off, thinking the storm must be increasing rather than otherwise, and vaguely wondering whether the wind could possibly capsize the boat up here in the top of its runners. However, my sleepiness was evidently greater than my fears on this point, and I dropped off, leaving the question to ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... recollections was that of sitting on his father's knees in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the Tale of Troy, with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in the fireplace; with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment—from the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness, her hour of darkness and solitude and music"—of a wild Gaelic lament, with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning his ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... three steps. And then it seemed to Jenny as if Paradise burst upon her. She had never before seen such a room as this cabin. It was a room such as she had dreamed about in those ambitious imaginings of a wondrous future which had always been so vaguely irritating to Emmy. It seemed, partly because the ceiling was low, to be very spacious; the walls and ceiling were of a kind of dusky amber hue; a golden brown was everywhere the prevailing tint. The tiny ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... who were boys in Portsmouth at the period of which I write but will remember Wibird Penhallow and his sky-blue wheelbarrow. I find it difficult to describe him other than vaguely, possibly because Wilbird had no expression whatever in his countenance. With his vacant white face lifted to the clouds, seemingly oblivious of everything, yet going with a sort of heaven-given instinct straight to his destination, he trundled that rattling ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... He looked vaguely round the floor, it was crumpled in his hand. A side door shut, and I stood alone. Pinching my cheeks and wiping my lips to force the color back, I returned to the parlor. Mr. Somers came to me with a glass of wine. It was full, and some ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... From his purely scientific or rather artistic investigation of the girl's face, he started suddenly to find that those eyes were viewing him with an unmistakably humorous disdain. But only for a second. Then as though some mental picture had been vaguely limned in her mind, she looked at him again, quickly, this time with a curious expression, as of a person trying to remember, not quite certain whether she should bow. She did n't. Instead, she turned to her mother, who was advancing toward the porter, voicing her disapproval of ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the xth century. Muratori (Dissert. v.) discovers, in the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... this first visit to Sydney proved to be one of the most vital periods in the young surgeon's career. From boyhood up, vaguely conscious of unrest, of great powers within him working to find expression, he had yet been to a certain extent driven in upon himself. He had been somewhat isolated from those of his own age by his eagerness for problems about which they cared nothing; and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... he writes. "When one says chair, one thinks vaguely of an average chair. But collect individual instances, think of armchairs and reading-chairs, and dining-room chairs and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become settees, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... still recognize vaguely that they are discussing a rumor. Being lawyers they still remember some of the forms of evidence. But as red-blooded men they already experience all the indignation which is appropriate to the fact that American marines have been ordered into ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... some detail. It is my hope that in this way they may more surely come into the hands of young people, youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to my thoughts in all the studies I have written of sex because I was myself of that age when I first vaguely planned them. I would prefer to leave to their judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable to be placed in the hands of older people. It might only give them pain. It is in youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if they ever are to be settled, and unless ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... merits and to take this woman for my own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the pliant thickness of her hair and the sweet scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues must die, so that this ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the Church; but here, one of his alleged successors, upwards of seventy years after his death, is set forth as the real framer of the hierarchy. [553:1] The facts already adduced prove that this obscure announcement rests upon a sound historical foundation, and that it vaguely indicates the alterations now introduced into the ecclesiastical constitution. If Hilary and Jerome be employed as its interpreters, the truth may be easily eliminated. At a synod held in Rome, Hyginus brought under the notice of the meeting the confusion and scandal ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... vaguely wishing Jack would loosen his hold, and that the hard iron something in their mouths would snap in two and relieve them, they were enjoying their own speed, taking in great draughts of fine air, keeping their eyes open and their ears ready for any startling thing that might leap ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... bath; and they conjure classic visions of the pudency of the Goddess irate or unsighted. The semi-mythological state of mind, built of old images and favouring haunts, was known to Dacier. The name of Diana, playing vaguely on his consciousness, helped to it. He had no definite thought of the mortal woman when the highest grass-roll near the rock gave him view of a bowered source and of a pool under a chain of cascades, bounded by polished ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was vaguely understood by the masses is now quite certain. The Boxer movement of 1900, like the great proletarian risings which occurred in Italy in the pre-Christian era as a result of the impoverishment and moral disorder brought about by Roman misgovernment, was simply ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... as he was, the excitement of the encounter had not yet subsided, and he was only vaguely conscious of his hurts, whilst he was very much in earnest in his desire to get away from this ill-omened spot before others of the band should return in search of their missing comrades, and take a terrible vengeance upon those who ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... conveyed to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades of meaning.[9] During this process of acquiring the fruits of his community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt to regard them as obvious, and to assume ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... British Artists and its Future—An Interview with the New President"—a most appalling volley of figures was fired off at brule-pour-point distance. Under this deafening detonation I, having no habit, sat for days incapable—dreaming vaguely that when a President should see fit to wash his people's linen in the open, there must be indeed crime at least on the part of the offender at whose instigation such official sacrifice of dignity could come ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... again, and his great hand descended heavily on Gerrard's shoulder, and Gerrard, thrilled through by the glance Honour had turned upon him, and with all his preconceived ideas shattered and clashing under the impact of a wholly new thought, must perforce allow himself to be hurried away, vaguely aware that Mrs Jardine, baulked of her expected sensation, was apostrophizing the acting-Resident as a "naughty man!" At the foot of the steps he turned suddenly. One word with Honour, even in Mrs Jardine's hearing, and his doubts would be resolved for ever. But ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... not, and finis, limit) signifies without bounds or limits in any way, and may be applied to space, time, quantity, or number. Countless, innumerable, and numberless, which should be the same as infinite, are in common usage vaguely employed to denote what it is difficult or practically impossible to count or number, tho perhaps falling far short of infinite; as, countless leaves, the countless sands on the seashore, numberless ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... which had at one time been concentrated in the lines through which the procession had to pass, was now streaming out in all directions in pursuit of a new object. Such intervals of a Festa are precisely the moments when the vaguely active animal spirits of a crowd are likely to be the most petulant and most ready to sacrifice a stray individual to the greater happiness of the greater number. As Tito entered the neighbourhood of San Martino, he found the throng rather denser; and near the hostelry ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and then the weeks and at last the Widow, with a sigh of vexation, put up her gun and retired within. Now that the episode was over she felt vaguely regretful that he had failed, after all, in his purpose. If he had procured his option, under cover of her blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least have had the satisfaction of obtaining her own terms—and she would have the twenty thousand ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... such a nice pair of eyes. He would make a woman very happy." A faint sigh fluttered from her lips. She was beginning to be physically tired, and was not yet quite aware of it. If she had not been physically tired, she would not even vaguely have had, at this moment, recalled to her mind the fact that she was not of the women to whom "things" are said and ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... after that. It was not easy for either of them to talk, each being constrained with his own crowded thoughts. Chester listened to the rhythmic beat of the machinery, and wondered vaguely how long it would continue thus, and what would happen if ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... something expected of her, at any rate. She should have felt elated at being again appealed to, but she only looked vaguely from Faith to Irene and back again. "Neither do I," ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... heir and Sir Robert Pye, in which Sir Robert himself would advise and assist. Then, as the smaller Wheatley property was also really worth more than the 40l. a year at which it was rated, and as, besides other chances only vaguely hinted, the family had immediate claims for 500l. on account of goods left at Forest-hill, 400l. on account of timber, and l00l. in miscellaneous debts, why, on the whole, with patience and good management, should there not be ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... following evening, and that the chance of his seeing the garment was exceedingly small, and he had invented the fiction of the low collar in order to get the coat back on Monday morning when he would, of course, substitute the baum marten and return the sable to its safe. But now he felt vaguely uneasy. ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... came to her that she and all her fellow passengers were really at the mercy of the engineer. Who was he, and did he stand at his throttle keen and vigilant, thinking of the lives intrusted to him? Such thoughts vaguely annoyed Carley, and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... no ... take my advice," he said, "don't go down to Eden." There was something so vaguely deprecatory in his voice that it brought from me the question—"why not? isn't ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... disadvantages in his early training, and his oaths were weak and monotonous. 'Damn!' he repeated, vaguely conscious of the incompleteness and vainly struggling for a more virile term. It is a clever woman who can fill out the many weak places in an inefficient man, by her own indomitability, re-enforce his vacillating ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... as impossible to trace the beginnings of any chain of events as it is to find the mystery of the growth of a seed. Whatever Arthur Fenton's faults, he certainly believed himself to be one who could not betray a friend. The ideal which he vaguely called honor, and which served him as that ultimate ethical standard which in one shape or another is necessary to every human being, forbade his taking advantage of any one whose friendship he admitted. His instinct of self- indulgence had, however, made him so expert a ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of the unknown the criminal attorney plays whenever possible. It is his strongest asset, his stock in trade. The civil lawyer, vaguely believing that there must be a criminal law to cover every obvious wrong, retains him to put the screws on the evil-doer and bring him to terms. The man who has done a dirty business trick—in reality a hundred miles from being a crime— engages the shyster ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... hair forever suggesting to him how her lovely neck and shoulders would be buried by it if its long light waves were but loosened. To have a woman sitting by his table with her sewing—it turned his room into something vaguely dreamed of heretofore: a home. She finished a sock for Major Falconer and began on one of his shirts. He counted the stitches as they went into a sleeve. They made him angry. And her face!—over it had come a look of settled weariness; for perhaps if there ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... into her arms and clasped him close, as if his presence brought comfort for much immediate pain. And the boy, feeling the hot tears from her eyes fall upon his face, laid his arms about her neck, and yielded himself to a grief and a terror that he understood vaguely, but could not as ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... characteristic of his whole method that from the very beginning the cloister was too strait for him; he had the passion for seeing things, people, the life of the city, of strange cities too, for we hear of him vaguely in Naples, but soon in Florence again, where he painted in S. Ambrogio for the nuns the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the Accademia. It was this picture which Cosimo came upon, and, finding the painter, took him ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. "I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his invariable but good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge—who was also his captor—for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... If, then, escape is to be open to us, it is not to come to us somehow, vaguely. We are not to hope for anything startling or mysterious. It is a definite opening along certain lines which are definitely marked by God, which begin at the Cross of Christ, and lead direct to Him. Natural Law, Degeneration, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... and of the comparatively conservative Avenue. The Avenue still had pretensions, as Miss Staverton said, to decency; the old people had mostly gone, the old names were unknown, and here and there an old association seemed to stray, all vaguely, like some very aged person, out too late, whom you might meet and feel the impulse to watch or follow, in kindness, for safe restoration ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... vanish clean away, leaving behind them absolutely nothing but mounds, such as those now lying all about thee, and fragments of recollections, and half-forgotten names, like the dreams of the night which morning obliterates and drives away, vaguely hanging in its memory like wreaths of mist curling and twisting on the black still surface of a pool in some dark valley screened from the early sun by ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... silently permeated modern society, but they who contribute to spread them, refuse with indignation to acknowledge the source whence they have drawn them. Intellectual movement no longer appertains exclusively to the higher classes, to the ecclesiastics, or to the members of the Parliaments; vaguely as yet, and retarded by apathy in the government as well as by disorder in affairs, it propagates and extends itself imperceptibly pending that signal and terrible explosion of good and evil which is to characterize the close of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... no doubt that the person alluded to was my patron. No new light was thrown upon his character; unless something were deducible from the charge vaguely made, that his wealth was the fruit of illicit practices. He was opulent, and the sources of his wealth were unknown, if not to the rest of the community, at least to Thetford. But here had a plot been laid. The fortune of Thetford's brother was to rise from ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... real musical reunion of the goldfinch tribe, apparently a whole township, many hundreds of them, filling scores of the tree-tops along the road and in the groves with a fine, sibilant chorus which the ear refers vaguely to the surrounding tree-tops, but which the eye fails adequately to account for. It comes from everywhere, but from nowhere in particular. The birds sit singly here and there amid the branches, and it is difficult ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... thanking the Sun for his goodness to me. I was speaking for the thing that is in my heart, that is life of my life," she added, vaguely. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... parish, lest the true place of them might ever be lost through neglect of so inexpensive a mordant for the memory. From this practice the older school of critics would seem to have taken a hint for keeping fixed the limits of good taste, and what was somewhat vaguely called classical English. To mark these limits in poetry, they set up as Hermae the images they had made to them of Dryden, of Pope, and later of Goldsmith. Here they solemnly castigated every new aspirant in verse, who in turn performed the same function for the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and lofty room in which the young baronet found himself. The carpet was so soft and thick that his feet made no sound as he walked across it. The two gas jets were turned only half-way up, and the dim light with the faint aromatic smell which filled the air had a vaguely religious suggestion. He sat down in a shining leather armchair by the smouldering fire and looked gloomily about him. Two sides of the room were taken up with books, fat and sombre, with broad gold lettering upon their backs. Beside ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... took up his gun, looked vaguely out of the door into the misty evening, bright with the spiritual brilliance of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... the hated "little lady" passed unnoticed. When her mother had finished telling her some of the details about the wedding, which was to be a quiet one at Marian's home, she went off to school in a maze of wonderment. She had never seen a wedding. She knew vaguely that people always got new clothes for such occasions and that the minister always seemed ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the disappearance of the moon Blyth was able, or fancied he was able, still to distinguish the canvas of the chase looming up vaguely like a dark shapeless shadow upon the horizon; but either the sky grew darker in that quarter or the weather thickened, for he was soon obliged to admit that he could see it no longer. But that circumstance gave him not the least concern; ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... Mamie scraping her Strad while the German who was supposed to teach her possessed his soul in patience. She put on her black silk dress. It was a guinea robe bought at a sale in Oxford Street the year before, a reach-me-down garment for women to sneer at and men to describe vaguely as something dark, and ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... perceived it several days running, and were so disturbed at it, that Marechal (who related all this curious anecdote to me) made bold to speak to the King upon this sadness, fearing for his health. The King avowed to him that he felt infinite trouble, and threw himself vaguely upon the state of affairs. Eight or ten days. after (during which he continued to feel the same melancholy), the King regained his usual calmness, and called Marechal to explain the cause of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... silhouette, and the star-filled heavens usurped all space, crowding the world down. Against the sky the outlines stood significant in what they suggested and concealed—slumbering roof-tops, the satiated mill glowing vaguely somewhere from her banked fires, the blackness and mass of silent lumber yards, the mysterious, hushing fingers of the ships' masts, and then low and vague, like a narrow strip of velvet dividing these men's affairs from the star-strewn infinite, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... fruit, and bade him good-by with a hundred benedictions. Over forty years after, Irving made a detour, on his way from Madrid to Paris, to visit Tonneins, drawn thither solely by the recollection of this incident, vaguely hoping perhaps to apologize to the tender-hearted villagers for the imposition. His conscience, had always pricked him for it; "It was a shame," he said, "to leave them with such painful impressions." The quilting party had dispersed by that time. "I believe I recognized the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the manager makes his romance as young as he can. Youth will indeed be served, and its profound instinct is to be not only scornfully amused but vaguely angered by middle-age romance. So, standing beside his mother, George was disturbed by a sudden impression, coming upon him out of nowhere, so far as he could detect, that her eyes were brilliant, that she was graceful and youthful—in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... furnishes a beautiful illustration of this principle. It is a detailed narrative of the unimportant Kirbit expedition, which is ascribed to the governor Nur ekalli umu. Cylinder E gives a briefer account and Cylinder F one still shorter. Both vaguely ascribe it to the "governors" but do not attempt to claim it for the king. It remained for Cylinder B, a score of years later, to take the final step, and to inform us that the king in person conducted the expedition. Further, the formal conclusion, which immediately follows the Kirbit expedition ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead
... here, as the subterfuge was distinctively a patrician one, and the commons had nothing to gain and all to lose by it. If Livy means that the commons provoked war by giving cause for the patricians to seek refuge in it, he certainly puts it very vaguely.—D. O.] ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... fort. The very boldness of the act made it successful. The convict on guard no doubt thought the figure one of his companions, needlessly exposing himself to a bullet from the hut, and only wondered vaguely at his taking needless risks and perhaps speculated dully as to what was the nature of the large object ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been minutes later, or hours, that the voice of the Texan brought her jerkily erect. Vaguely she realized that she could see him dimly, and that his arm seemed to be pointing at something. With a sense of great physical effort, she managed to follow the direction of the pointing arm, and then he was speaking again: "It's breakin' daylight! ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... looked down on the prostrate figure of the big lithe Harpeth Jaguar while Billy struggled with a man a little way off in the darkness and Nickols shut off the light and went to his aid. I didn't know exactly where the words that rose so suddenly from my heart to my lips had come from, and I only vaguely understood them, but I seemed to be saying them without my ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of Cassiodorus. Evidently all this part of the 'Variae' has been severely edited by its author, who has expunged all that seemed to reflect too great discredit on the Sovereign whom he had once served, and has preserved only some letters written to Justinian and Theodora by Theodahad and his wife, vaguely praising peace, and beseeching the Imperial pair to restore it to Italy; letters which, as it seems to me, may be applied with about equal fitness to any movement of the busy shuttle of diplomacy backwards and forwards between ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... played. Of course, in this I have to be a little artificial. Actual games of the kind I am illustrating here have been played by us, many and many a time, with joy and happy invention and no thought of publication. They have gone now, those games, into that vaguely luminous and iridescent into which happiness have tried out again points in world of memories all love-engendering must go. But we our best to set them and recall the good ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... the fear upon the face of the captive girl, as she thinks of this special privilege accorded to the cacique, of which she has been made aware. It must be he who is drawing near, and with him a danger she has long vaguely apprehended. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... "I imagine His Serene Highness has little to fear from any American," he said quietly. "He has been taught to love and respect the men of his father's land. He loves America quite as dearly as he loves Graustark." Despite the seeming sincerity of the remark, Truxton was vaguely conscious that a peculiar harshness had crept into the other's voice. He glanced sharply at the old man's face. For the first time he noticed something sinister—yes, evil—in the leathery countenance; a stealthiness in the hard smile that seemed to transform it at once ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to get calm again, and realised what had happened and what my godfather's words meant. Most decidedly I did not want to marry this man. Since I had been at the Conservatoire I had learnt a few things vaguely, very vaguely, for I was never alone, but I understood enough to make me not want to marry without being in love. I was, however, destined to be attacked in a quarter from which I should not have expected it. Madame Guerard asked me to go up to her room to see the embroidery she was ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... up here and there, bearing some trace of having been shaped with a tool and painted or whitewashed, and apparently placed in their position for a definite object. Sometimes the stones stand alone, sometimes they are grouped in twos or threes or more. The traveller, vaguely mindful that the worship of stones is common amongst Hindus, concludes that these have been put there ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... a heavily built, powerful man on the outskirts, but some distance away, singing in a deep rolling voice, but something vaguely familiar in the figure drew his glance again. He looked long and well and then began to edge quietly toward the singer, who was clothed in the faded butternut uniform that so many ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle. But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me; I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the result of that interview been different,—had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,—I should have gone from him with ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sea," replied Carder. "There is what they call the mountain, though, over yonder." He jerked his head vaguely. "Pretty good-sized hill. Makes a water-shed ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... unusual one, and Mrs. Aliston was very weary. No sound disturbed the quiet of the elegant guest chamber where she lay; and so it happened that a brisk rapping at her door; at ten o'clock in the morning, awoke her from heavy, dreamless slumber, and set her wandering wits to wondering vaguely what all this strangeness meant. Then suddenly recalling the events of the previous night, she sat up ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... would be honorably used and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that other thing: if her ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... grasp it; I seem to feel that in just another instant I can see it all plainly, as the archangels see it all the time, as the great minds of the world, the great philosophers, have seen it once or twice, vaguely—a glimpse here and there, after years of patient study. Seeing thus I should be the equal of the gods. But it is not meant to be. There is a sacrilege in it. I almost seem to understand why it is kept from us. But the very reason of this withholding is in itself ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... spot found that Uncle Ben had already disappeared. Whether the appearance of the children was too inconsistent with his ghostly mission, or whether his heart failed him at the last moment, the master could not determine. Yet, distasteful as the impending interview promised to be, the master was vaguely and irritatingly disappointed. ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... children of earth fret their brief hour and pass into oblivion. The note which echoes through the drama is struck in the opening scene—a tangled brake deep in the heart of the great stillness, peopled by nymphs and fauns whose voices float vaguely through the twilight. Every scene in the drama is tinged with the same mysterious influence, until at the close the spirit-voices chant their primeval hymn over the bodies of the lovers in the gathering night. Miss Smyth's music has the same mastering unity. The voice of the forest is the keynote ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... beneath the keel. Strong arms hoisted him to the deck and then it was that the crew of the Vanator learned of the heroism of their jed and his end. How far they had traveled since his loss they could only vaguely guess, nor could they return in search of him in the disabled condition of the ship. It was a saddened company that drifted onward through the air toward whatever destination Fate was ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Dimly he recognized a language with which he once had been familiar. "I know what you mean," he agreed. "Bind 'em over to keep the peace. And a good job, too! But who?" he demanded vaguely. "That's what I say! Who?" From the confusion into which Everett's appeal to forgotten memories had thrown it, his mind suddenly emerged. "But what's the use!" he demanded. "Don't you see," he explained triumphantly, "if those two ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... has been vaguely made against the North. It is attempted here to put the North on trial. I have listened with grave attention to the gentleman from Virginia to-day, but I have heard no specification of these charges. Massachusetts hesitated I say; she has her own opinions of the Government ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... doubt the memories of his early infancy returned to him vaguely. He tried to recall them. He was ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... got in," Henley answered. He could not have explained the fact, not being given to self-analysis, but he had vaguely determined that he would make every possible effort to avoid the storekeeper. In spite of his good intentions to aid Dixie in the contemplated alliance, he had come to regard it as altogether too incongruous an affair to be ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and resumed my customary seat at the table. But I sat only to ruminate upon things and thoughts which, following the track of memory, diverted my sight as well as my mind, from all present objects. I saw nothing before me, except vaguely, and in a sort of shadow. I had a hazy outline of books against the wall; and a glimmering show of papers and bundles upon the table. I sat thus for some time, lost in painful and humiliating revery. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of a packet on the table, which ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... large handful of papers as he spoke, glanced at them disdainfully, and, pointing vaguely across the inlet, continued, "Is not an hour's contemplation of such a prospect better than many ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... himself all the heavy risk of the position in which Cornelius had then been—the long and wearisome delays of judgment, which were possible; the danger and wretchedness of a long journey in this manner; possibly the danger of death. He had delivered his brother, after the manner he had sometimes vaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his destiny; though indeed always with wistful calculation as to what it might cost him: and in the first moment after the thing was actually done, he felt only ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... his father, his thin legs wide apart, holding in both his hands the satchel he had been permitted to carry. He looked about him continually, rolling his big eyes vaguely, watching now the repair-gang, now a huge white cat dozing on ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... this great question, the wise solution of which, we are every day assured, is essential to the permanence of the Union, Mr. Bell has no opinion at all, Mr. Douglas says it is of no consequence which opinion prevails, and Mr. Breckinridge tells us vaguely that "all sections have an equal right in the common Territories." The parties which support these candidates, however, all agree in affirming that the election of its special favorite is the one thing that can give back ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... think the wedding has taken place," St. George replied vaguely. "The servants would know if it had—they know everything—and Aunt Jemima would be the first to have told me. The house being lighted up is no evidence. They have been giving a series of entertainments this winter and there were ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the other "cat" were dancing back and forth around the soup-kettle. Well, what could he do for her? He was listening! And resignedly he waited for the tale of woe he was sure would come from that figure, so vaguely outlined in the darkness, and afraid, it seemed, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... nudge! Speech is seldom imperative, but understanding signals is as necessary to one's soul-happiness as air to the lungs. So Greece with one who has but a Baedeker knowledge of art, or Rome to one who remembers her history vaguely as something that she "took" at school, is simply maddening to one who forgets the technicalities of dates and formulas, and rapturously breathes it in, scarcely knowing whence came the love or knowledge of it, but realizing that one has at ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... general and pins in particular to have much energy or time left over to spare for thinking about other people. Already, the trail of Mrs. Brenton's reading ancestors had led her to the naming her child Walter Scott. Her sense of decorum caused her to wonder vaguely, after her husband died, whether it would not be proper to change the baby's name to Birge. Her wonderings, though, merely served to render her uneasy; they bore no fruit in action. The associations with the name were not of the sort she cared to emphasize, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... or evil, Rome is profoundly stirred. The pale monk, in all his filth and poverty, is the master of the best hearts in the capital. Every one in whom aspiration is still alive, who longs for some new light, and all who vaguely grope after a higher life, hear his voice and become ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... Even then he but vaguely understood, had not rightly guessed the verge upon which she was treading. It was not that she feared he might guess the secret in her heart. If, as she half believed, he loved her too, what real harm could ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... was dimly conscious of the rest, Vaguely remembered how he clasped the chain About her neck. She treated it in jest, And saw his face cloud over with sharp pain. Then suddenly she felt as though a strain Were put upon her, collared like a slave, Leashed in the meshes of this thing ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... at her with a touch of covert contempt; clever people could convince the intellect, but there were instincts of honour, of loyalty, and of fidelity which no arguments should be able to blunt or to turn. Here was the thing which, vaguely felt, had so puzzled him in regard to May Quisante; he had not doubted that she would see the thing as he had seen it—as Quisante had professed himself unable to ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... night, at the sloping desk, referred vaguely to a wish that, as she hastened to add, could never in any circumstances be gratified. Urged by Gertie, on the other side, to put the desire into words, Madame took off spectacles which she wore only when the rest of the staff had gone, and said wistfully that if she could but get a paragraph into ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... but soon began to find the valley of humiliation that wholesome place which all true pilgrims have ever declared it. Comparative retirement, some sense of lost labor, some suspicion of the worth of the ends for which he had spent his strength, a waking desire after the God in whom he had vaguely believed all the time he was letting the dust of paltry accident inflame his eyes, blistering and deadening his touch with the efflorescent crusts and agaric tumors upon the dry bones of theology, gilding the vane of his chapel ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald |
