"Distinctness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature of my fever, which was indeed only half fatigue and illness, and the rest the disorder of passionate youth, that Nettie, a strangely distorted Nettie, should come through the brief dreams that marked the exhaustions of that vigil, to dominate my misery. I was sensible, with an exaggerated distinctness, of the intensity of her physical charm for me, of her every grace and beauty; she took to herself the whole gamut of desire in me and the whole gamut of pride. She, bodily, was my lost honor. It was not only loss ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... joined with an entire insensibility to those finer perceptions which would have interfered with plain speaking, where plain speaking was desirable; he had a broad, not ungenial humour, which showed him things and persons in their genuine light, and enabled him to picture them for us with a distinctness for which we owe him ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... promises of the other. All appears to aid our union—but are we yet together? I know not why, lovely Mary, but a chill penetrates my breast, amid the warm fountains of future bliss, and the idea of our meeting has lost its distinctness. But all this will pass away, all will change into happiness, when I press your hand to my lips, your heart to mine. The rainbow shines yet brighter on the dark field of the cloud, and the happiest moments of life are but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... have said, we were not at church in the afternoon; and when I do not go, we have the evening service read to us, as it is at church; which Mr. Adams performed now, with his usual distinctness and fervour. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... obstructed the sun's rays, they no longer presented the appearance of being charged with electricity. Thus our prognostications ended in disappointment; the clouds, which in the early morning had been marked by the distinctness of their outline, had melted one into another and assumed an uniform dull gray tint; in fact, we were enveloped in an ordinary fog. But was it not still possible that this ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... light within. In her present beholder's mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... friends looked for it only in the Greek Calends,—say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if you would modernize the phrase. I recall also one or two exceptional and infrequent visitors with perfect distinctness: cheerful Elijah Kellogg, a lively missionary from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much hopeful talk about Sock Bason and his tribe; also poor old Poor-house-Parson Isaac Smith, his head going like a China mandarin, as he discussed the possibilities of the escape of that distinguished captive ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the glow of a hemisphere on fire. The triangle, slightly spherical, measured at its base 22 degrees to 24 degrees and rose to within 6" of Jupiter. The reflection in the water was perfect and lit up with startling distinctness ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice, artificial, eighteenth-century sentiment. There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black avenues and white statues leapt out every minute into short-lived distinctness. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... to ourselves some idea from our artless national airs, and more especially from our church-tunes, had no other instrumental accompaniment than a single flute, which was such as not in the slightest degree to impair the distinctness of the words. Otherwise it must hare increased the difficulty of the choruses and lyrical songs, which, in general, are the part which we find it the hardest to understand of the ancient tragedy, and as it must also have been for contemporary auditors. They abound in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had I in my youth, and things refuse to fix themselves in my brain when I try to learn them anew. No, I am not skilled in letter-writing, Barbara, and, without being told so, or any one laughing at me for it, I know that, whenever I try to describe anything with more than ordinary distinctness, I fall into the mistake of talking sheer rubbish. . . . I saw you at your window today—yes, I saw you as you were drawing down the blind! Good-bye, goodbye, little Barbara, and may God keep you! Good-bye, my ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light, like the room of some saint ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... rang out with uncanny distinctness, for the German guns with one accord had ceased firing. For a full two minutes there was absolute silence, while the bayonets in the opposite trenches twinkled ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... were over; and the skater was still displaying himself. He was doing very difficult figures now, and I ran round to where the bank was covered with people watching him. In the minute that followed I remember three things with curious distinctness. First, that I saw Mr. Wood coming back, only one field off, and beckoned to him to be quick, because the lad was beginning to cut a double three backwards, and I wanted the school-master to see it. Secondly, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 'He is made one with nature,' by Wordsworth in the lines on Tintern Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel in his noble poems of Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by all who have recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the fermentation of the change is felt, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... moon's last rim formed a golden sickle behind a blunt shoulder of rock; while over the eastward levels the topaz-yellow of an Indian dawn rushed at one stride to the zenith of heaven. In the clear light the girl's beauty took on a new distinctness, a new living charm. The upward-sweeping mass of her hair showed the softness of bronze, save where the sun burnished it to copper. Breadth of brow, and the strong moulding of her nose and chin, suggested powers rather befitting a man than a woman. But in ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Joline with a laugh, and started home with a song—then stopped. She foresaw the musty room to which she was going, the slatternly incubus of a man. Saw—with just such distinctness as had once dangled the stiff, gray scrub-rag before her eyes—Schwirtz's every detail: bushy chin, stained and collarless shirt, trousers like old chair-covers. Probably he would always be like this. Probably he would never have another job. But she couldn't cast ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... before the first dim birches rose up against the sky, and the white wilderness was very still and the frost intense when they floundered into the gloom of the bluff at the hour that man's vitality sinks to its lowest. Every crackle of a brittle branch rang with horrible distinctness, and now and then a man turned in his saddle and glanced at his neighbour when from the shadowy hollow beneath them rose the sound of rending ice. The stream ran fast just there, and there had been but a few ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... voice spoke again, this time with unmistakable distinctness, and now I opened my eyes and ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... began to reappear; at first the vanished trail came back as a vividly whitening streak before them; then the larches and pines that ascended from it like buttresses against the hillsides glimmered in ghostly distinctness, until at last the two slopes curved out of the darkness as if hewn in marble. For the sudden storm, which extended scarcely two miles, had left no trace upon the steep granite face of the high cliffs above; the snow, slipping silently from them, left them still hidden in the obscurity ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... sluggish, lurid tarn of Usher; the pale, gigantic water lilies, nodding their ghastly, everlasting heads over the dreary Zaire; the shrouding shadow of Helusion; the ashen skies, and sere, crisped leaves in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir, hard by the dim lake of Auber—all lay with grim distinctness before her; and from the red bars of the grate the wild, lustrous, appalling eyes of Ligeia looked out at her, while the unearthly tones of Morella whispered from every corner of the room. She rose and replaced the book on ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... completely was his ear the fool of his imagination, that he thought I was speaking Arabic, and made a faint attempt to get out the only word or two of that language which he knew. I then repeated, with as much distinctness as I could command: "Did—you—leave—Jaffa—to-day?" He stammered mechanically, through his chattering teeth, "Y-y-yes!" and we immediately dashed off at a gallop through the bushes. When we last saw him, he was ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... that gospel of great joy which is by and by to be realized by toiling Humanity, and he announced ethical principles fit for the time that is coming. The great originality of his teaching, and the feature that has chiefly given it power in the world, lay in the distinctness with which he conceived a state of society from which every vestige of strife, and the modes of behaviour adapted to ages of strife, shall be utterly and forever swept away. Through misery that has seemed unendurable and turmoil that has seemed endless, men have thought on that gracious life ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... called on a dozen houses, more or less, and was pleasantly met everywhere; I remember that; but I don't recall the name of a single one of them! You can see by this, from the distinctness with which I recall everything connected with my visit to Mr. Wiebusch, what a relief to me his ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... of sight, and yet to be able to look at the little white-beavered fairy, for whom my fancy was in no way abated. But her keen-eyed sister saw me still, and her next remark rang out with uncompromising distinctness— ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... anything that I can say. He remarks ('Oriental and Linguistic Studies,' 1873, p. 297), in speaking of Bleek's views: "Because on the grand scale language is the necessary auxiliary of thought, indispensable to the development of the power of thinking, to the distinctness and variety and complexity of cognitions to the full mastery of consciousness; therefore he would fain make thought absolutely impossible without speech, identifying the faculty with its instrument. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the following may be read with great advantage, for the purpose of acquiring distinctness and precision ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... this speech was uttered with that thrilling distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in the voice. But Cesarini did not appear to understand its import. He seized Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face with a wild and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and their expectation to formulate a charge, they began to pour forth many vehement accusations; out of which at length three emerged with some distinctness—first, that He was perverting the nation; second, that He forbade to pay the imperial tribute; and third, that He set ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... be a gentleman," said Daniel, with firm distinctness, "and go to school, if that is what a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... manifestation of it which Anaxagoras describes, is Motion. It originated a rotatory movement in the mass (a movement far exceeding the most rapid in the world as we know it), which, arising in one corner or point, gradually extended till it gave distinctness and reality to the aggregates of like parts. But even after it has done its best, the original intermixture of things is not wholly overcome. No one thing in the world is ever abruptly separated, as by the blow of an axe, from the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... watched her flit away through the gloom of the cedars into the sunlight beyond; then turned and went swiftly and noiselessly across the strip of field to the tall, dark, windowless tobacco house. As she neared it, there came to her a low and undistinguishable murmur of voices which rose into distinctness as she entered ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. "That the sun will not rise to-morrow" is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmative that "it will rise." We should in vain, therefore, attempt ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... they look: with an expression of whimpering rebellion, as though the superior person had unhuman qualities, not to be reckoned on—as though there were danger in his presence. An incident of a few years ago, very trumpery in itself, displayed to me in the sharpest distinctness the contrast between the two orders of boys in this respect. In the hedge which parts my garden from the lane there is a nut-tree, too tempting to all boys when the nuts are ripe. At that season one hears whispered and exclamatory ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... beauty. He finds in this the following elements:—-(1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye "a wanton kind of chase''; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of Fiesco we have to admire not only the energetic animation which the author has infused into all his characters, but the distinctness with which he has discriminated, without aggravating them; and the vividness with which he has contrived to depict the scene where they act and move. The political and personal relations of the Genoese nobility; the luxurious splendour, the intrigues, the feuds, and jarring interests, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... is a great pity, and a sad instance of mistaken judgment, that they fixed upon him for their agent. I imagine him to have been such a man as may often be met with, who, from his narrowness of mind and distinctness of prejudice, is supposed to be high- principled and direct in his dealings; and whose untried reputation has great favour with many people: until, placed in power some day, he shows that to rule ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... that time [remarks Fontana] could no longer suffice him, he aimed higher, and felt himself impelled towards an ideal which, at first vague, before long grew into greater distinctness. It was then that, in trying his strength, he acquired that touch and style, so different from those of his predecessors, and that he succeeded in creating at last that execution which since then has been the admiration of the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Hamblin feels very badly about this matter. At the time of it, he believed he was right, for he knows less about a vessel than even the chaplain of the ship. He acknowledges now that he was in error. Our rules did not before apply with sufficient distinctness to your particular case, as captain of the vessel, responsible for her proper navigation. Mr. Hamblin did not overstep the letter of his duty in refusing you permission to go on deck, and I only blame him for his want of judgment. By this order, which corrects the ship's rules, ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... of thought lay open to the terrific invasion of things. His dreams refused to stand out with sufficient distinctness from a background of coloured bindings, plate glass and mahogany. They were liable at any moment to be broken by the violent contours of customers. A sight of Helen in Leuce could be obtained only by dint ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... ordinary physical generalisations. Thus, that we see a property of geometrical forms to be true, without inspection of the material forms, is fully explained by the capacity of geometrical forms of being painted in the imagination with a distinctness equal to reality, and by the fact that experience has informed us of that capacity; so that a conclusion on the faith of the imaginary forms is really an induction from observation. Then, again, there is nothing ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... way; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... learning," he set up as a preacher without ordination, and styled himself "professor of the mysteries of Christ." He seems to have cherished that doctrine of private inspiration which the Puritans especially abhorred. It is not likely that he had any distinct comprehension of his own views, for distinctness was just what they lacked. [14] But they were such as in the seventeenth century could not fail to arouse fierce antagonism, and if it was true that wherever there was a government Gorton was against it, perhaps that only shows that wherever ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... of the young girl stood out in beautiful distinctness in the pale light; behind her the soft evening swept the sea, effacing with azure the brown sails of the fishing-boats; in front of her the dresses of the girls flitted white through the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... web, Dr. Nesbit knew the truth—and the truth was wormwood in his mouth—that he had been only an errand boy between greed in the bank and self-interest in the stores. In a flash, a merciless, cynical flash, he looked into his life in the capital, and there he saw with sickening distinctness that with all his power as a boss, with his control over Senators and Governors and courts and legislatures, he was still the errand boy—that he reigned as boss only because he could be trusted by those who controlled the great aggregations of capital in the state—the railroads, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... thousands. As he gave out the words of the pledge to abstain, with the Divine assistance, from all intoxicating liquors, he laid great emphasis on the word "liquors," pronouncing the last syllable of the word with almost exaggerated distinctness. After this he would go round the ring of those kneeling to take the pledge, and put round the neck of each the ribbon with the ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon. There was not a breath of wind. From the engine-rooms the thud of the piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness. The arc of cloud had risen halfway to the meridian. There were streaks in it—streaks of yellow on black. Far away to the north, at the point of contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar from sea to cloud. Dwellers ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... even across the valley of Toluca. How strangely diminished now are all familiar objects that are visible! The pureness of the medium through which things are seen presents distant objects with great distinctness, but it will not present them in their natural size, for it can not change the angle of vision. The villages upon the table-land were apparently pigmy villages, inhabited by pigmy men and pigmy women, surrounded with pigmy cattle, and garrisoned ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... but, in the first flush of joy, she had forgotten it. She had spent lonely nights struggling for rudiments; she had sought and fought to refashion herself, so that, if he came, he need not be ashamed of her. And now he had come, and, with a terrible clarity and distinctness, she realized how pitifully little she had been able to accomplish. Would she pass muster? She stood there before him, frightened, self-conscious and palpitating, then her voice came in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... dawn was breaking over that deluged world, a whiter light than moonshine giving increasing distinctness to every object. This hint of day gave rest to the tired ringers in church tower and convent belfry. The bells died away, and stillness brooded on the water plain. Hoarse roaring of the yellow current became ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... open the manager's door frightened the manager's stenographer into an unwilling admission that Mr. Graemer had just left for Brooklyn. And a dazed taxi starter, who decided that somebody's life must be at stake, remembered with much distinctness that the address, which Mr. Graemer had given some half hour before was Montrose Place, Brooklyn. He remembered it because they'd had to look it ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... behaved in some experiments as though it contained alumina, but it did not exhibit with sufficient distinctness the red of the latter. Its dead color brightens considerably under the molecular impact, but I am now convinced it does not phosphoresce. Still, the tests with the powder are not conclusive, because powdered carborundum ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... story. He speaks of a clear idea of substance; but he has not proved that such an idea is within the compass of the mind. A man's own notion that he sees clearly, is no proof that he really sees clearly; and the distinctness of a definition in itself is no evidence that it corresponds adequately with the object of it. No doubt a man who professes to have an idea of substance as an existing thing, cannot doubt, as long as he has ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... this increase in the distinctness of the dark ring was to be expected, from the mere fact that the ring was discovered under relatively unfavourable conditions, yet the fact that Saturn was thus found to have an appendage of a remarkable ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to give as distinct an account as I can of all the particulars relating thereto, both as it is a matter in which I conceive the public to be in some degree interested, and as I flatter myself, that from the materials which have fallen into my hands, I am enabled to describe it with more distinctness than has hitherto been done, at least in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... young and inexperienced though he was, he went to her as a natural ruler, the son of a conquering race. And this last thought begot in him not only exultation but an unwonted seriousness. While, as he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic—that, namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... have glasses can see what is passing with any distinctness. For the day is not a bright one, a haze over the sea hindering observation. It has arisen since the fall of the wind, perhaps caused by the calm; and, though but a mere film, at such far distance interferes with the view through their telescopes. Those using them can ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... and they moved cautiously forward. The ground was fortunately clear, and their footsteps made little noise, though now and then tufts of dry grass which Harding trod upon rustled with what seemed to him alarming distinctness. Still, nobody challenged them, and creeping up to the center of the village they stopped again. The nearest of the tepees was only thirty or forty yards away, though others ran back into the mist. As Harding stood listening, with tingling ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... infinitely more awful than the heaviest gale, every sound on board, the voices of the men, even the creaking of the bulkheads, was heard with startling distinctness; and the water—logged brig, having no wind to steady her, laboured so heavily in the trough of the sea, that we expected her masts to go ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... pine wood high up in the lonely grandeur of the everlasting hills, the first flush of dawn reddening the snow on peak after peak, changing the pure white to pink, the cold blue to purple, the tumbled sea of mountain summits gradually growing in distinctness, the soft mist rising from the valleys, and the group of wild figures standing within the shade of the pines. Hayward takes one long look on all this loveliness, and turns towards his executioners—men say ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... the two walked, Fred slightly in advance, was marked with such distinctness by the hoofs of the six horses that had passed along it in Indian file but a short time before that it was no trouble for the boys to recognize it, nor were they likely to have any difficulty in keeping to it throughout ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... of the totem, where such a custom exists, involves a certain identity of nature of totem and clan god, but the two are regarded as distinct—their distinctness is, indeed, a necessary condition of the sacrificial efficacy of the totem as a means of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... beautiful Lake are struck with the extraordinary transparency of the water. At a depth of 15 to 20 meters (49.21 to 65.62 feet), every object on the bottom—on a calm sunny day—is seen with the greatest distinctness. On the 6th of September, 1873, the writer executed a series of experiments with the view of testing the transparency of the water. A number of other experiments were made August 28 and 29, under less favorable conditions. By securing a white object of considerable size—a horizontally ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Vandyke there is certainly affinity beyond that of colouring, though in colouring to a limited degree. Between Rubens and Teniers there is surely a gap of many classes. If there be any characteristic mark common to both, it must lie in the silvery lightness of colouring, distinctness and freedom of touch, as if both had used the same vehicle, and in the same manner, allowance being made for the size and subjects of their pictures. We are not disposed to detract from the reputation of Rubens as a colourist; no painter perhaps better ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... even now they scarcely believe that what seems to them so true should appear and really be false to others. The intellectual effects of such habits are equally injurious with the moral ones. All natural clearness and distinctness of intellect becomes gradually obscured; the memory becomes perplexed; the very style of writing acquires the taint of the perverted mind. Truth is impressed upon every line of Dr. Arnold's vigorous diction, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... man of small learning but great insight. Originating almost nothing, he set forth the ideas of others with incisive distinctness, often modifying them to their hurt, but giving to the form in which he wrote them an air of seductive practicability and reality which alone threw them into the sphere of action. Examining Europe at large, he found its social and political institutions so hardened and so unresponsive that he declared ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the night darkened and the clamor of the conflicting elements grew more sustained and violent, a sudden sweet sound floated softly through the turbulent air—the slow, measured tolling of a bell. To and fro, to and fro, the silvery chime swung with mild distinctness—it was the vesper-bell ringing in the Monastery of Lars far up among the crags crowning the ravine. There the wind roared and blustered its loudest; it whirled round and round the quaint castellated building, battering the gates ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Besides distinctness and accuracy in the language which we use, besides care to produce but few ideas or terms that are new in our first lessons, we must exercise attention only during very short periods. In the beginning of every science ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... aware that she would never forget what had happened to her on New Year's Eve. That strange and fearful experience had obliterated some of her clearest mental landmarks. She wished to think, she tried very hard to think, that in some mysterious way the vision she had seen with such terrible distinctness had been a projection from Bubbles' brain—Bubbles' uncanny gift working, perchance, on Lionel Varick's mind and memory. She could not doubt that the two wraiths she had seen so clearly purported to be a survival of the human personalities ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... proceeded for four-tenths of an inch outwards, and then extended downwards, as far as the lower margin of the outer surface of the hemisphere. The imperfect definition of this fissure in the majority of human brains, as compared with its remarkable distinctness in the brain of most Quadrumana, is owing to the presence, in the former, of certain superficial, well marked, secondary convolutions which bridge it over and connect the parietal with the occipital lobe. The closer the first of these bridging gyri lies to the longitudinal ...
— Note on the Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the Development of Brain in Man and the Apes • Thomas Henry Huxley
... leisurely cropping the new pasture grass. Occasionally, she lifted her head toward the red roofs of the University buildings as though she expected somebody. The chimney sent up a stripe of black against patches of cloud and sky, and the even hum of the shops came across the pasture with a distinctness born of the motionless Spring air. Bonita, putting her pointed ears forward, could catch the upper notes of the chorus, rehearsing in ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... of the darkness, we could see the land about a mile and a half, or even less, from us, while the roar of the surf as it broke on the shore could be heard with distinctness. Suddenly, as I was standing on the deck, I felt one side of my cheek grow colder than the other. I wetted my finger and held up my hand. There was a sensible difference in the temperature. In another minute I had no doubt about it. A breeze was springing up. The sails gave two or three ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... aspect of a marking. It is advisable, therefore, to confine the attention mainly to the middle of the disk. As time passes, clearly defined markings on or between the cloudy belts will be seen to approach the western edge of the disk, gradually losing their distinctness and altering their appearance, while from the region of indistinct definition near the eastern edge other markings slowly emerge and advance toward the center, becoming sharper in outline and more clearly defined in color as they ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... person on the other side of the window and looking straight in. One step into the room had sufficed; my vision was instantaneous; it was all there. The person looking straight in was the person who had already appeared to me. He appeared thus again with I won't say greater distinctness, for that was impossible, but with a nearness that represented a forward stride in our intercourse and made me, as I met him, catch my breath and turn cold. He was the same—he was the same, and seen, this time, as he had been seen before, from the waist up, the window, though ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... won't want to see another," replied the mariner, shading his eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboard had lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almost ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... single bone—enabled him to overleap all the difficulties which beset the path of ordinary linguists, and to attain, almost by intuition, at least so much of the required language as enabled him to interchange thought with sufficient freedom and distinctness for the purposes of this religious observance, which is so important in the eyes of Catholics. And he used to tell, that it was in this way he acquired more than one of his varied store of languages. For it will hardly be believed, that this prodigy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... then by Maggie, but with most painful distinctness they recurred to her in the after time, when, humbled in the very dust, she had no hope that the highborn, haughty Carrollton would stoop to a child of Hagar Warren! But no shadow of the dark future was over her now, and very eagerly she drank in every ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... of the world," she continued, speaking slowly, yet with extraordinary distinctness, "that its greatest honors are often conferred. The name of my successor has been balloted for, secretly. It is you, Peter ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... awful distinctness that if I kept on I'd be in a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far better model of married life for me to contemplate just this moment than you, dear Judy. I think that such a spectacle as you and Jervis is a ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Republic and myself, while the later period, with your own most distressing and undeserved misfortune, has made me reluctant to write. Since, however, a sufficiently long period has now elapsed, and I have recalled with greater distinctness your high character and lofty courage, I thought it not inconsistent with my purposes to write this to you. For my part, my dear P. Sittius, I defended you originally, when an attempt was made in your absence to bring you into odium and under a criminal charge; and when ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... spirits. On to Rome! was the watchword. It was a glorious day; the sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky; the air was pure, and brilliant, and genial, and it also had such a wonderful transparency that distant objects seemed much nearer from the distinctness with which their outlines were revealed. The road was a magnificent one,—broad, well paved, well graded,—and though for some miles it was steadily ascending, yet the ascent was made by such an easy slope, that it was really imperceptible; and they bowled along as easily ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... replied, in a faltering voice; for at that moment the thorn-crowned head of Jesus Christ—his sorrowful face stained with drops of blood, until its divinely beautiful lineaments were almost covered—was visioned in her soul with such distinctness, that she almost shrieked; then it faded ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, "Our Father, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... again, as it drove out and flung back Brother Paul." But the result of his solitude was specious and deceitful. As pictures seem to float before the eyes after the eyelids are closed, so his past life, now that it was over, seemed to rise up before him with awful distinctness. Sitting alone in his cell, every event of his life with Glory passed before him in review, and harassed him with pitiless condemnation. Why had he failed to realize the essential difference of temperament ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... to Lubbock a long screed stating my views [Referring to the relations between the South Kensington department and the City and Guilds Committee on Technical Education.] with unmistakable distinctness as politeful as may be, and asking him, if he thought well, to send them on to whomsoever it may concern. As old Gutzlaff used to say when he wanted to get evidence from a Chinee—"Gif him four dozen, someting vill transpire." At any ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... that are here clustered together—a tomb, a fortress, and a church—and affords a curious illustration of the bizarre condition of society at the time. An extraordinary echo repeats here every sound entrusted to it with the utmost distinctness. It doubtless multiplied the wailings of the mourners who brought to this spot two thousand years ago the ashes of the dead; it sent back the rude sounds of warfare which disturbed the peace of the tomb in the middle ages; and now it haunts the spot like the voice of the past, "informing the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... working, transporting, and burying the same, and keeping it a profound secret, I still had my suspicions. But the first look at the statue dispels from the mind every thought of that nature. It has the marks of the ages stamped upon every limb and feature, in a manner and with a distinctness which no art can imitate. I have not seen the first person who entertained any doubt of its great antiquity, after looking at that most wonderful and inexplicable figure. The time spent in manufacturing and retailing the ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... shown from 5,000 to 42,000, but higher numbers can be engraved by the cutting diamond. The author has designed an ingenious mechanical arrangement for keeping the photographic plates in focus. In this way photographs of great distinctness can be obtained. Prof. Rowland exhibited some 10 inches long, which showed the E line doubled, and the large B group very clearly. Lines are divided by this method which have never been divided before, and the work ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... be the pioneer in modern maritime exploration. Without geographical or racial separation from the rest of the Iberian peninsula, the national distinctness of Portugal was largely a matter of sentiment gathering around the sovereign. The nationality of Portugal had been created in the first place by the policy of its rulers, and preserved by them until the growth of separate material interests, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... student can then compare his own solution of it with the one that has come down to him, thus receiving correction and guidance in his work from the hand of the master. It is plain that the special excellencies of the original monument are likely to reveal themselves with fresh distinctness, and to find special sympathy and appreciation in the mind of one who has striven, however unsuccessfully, to solve ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 11, November, 1895 - The Country Houses of Normandy • Various
... respecting the right use of words. In practice, grammar is so interwoven with all else that is known, believed, learned, or spoken of among men, that to determine its own peculiar principles with due distinctness, seems to be one of the most difficult points ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveler on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass alone, the one to be gratified, hence the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... revolution, however, the division of sentiment was not marked with sufficient distinctness, nor the passions of the people agitated with sufficient violence, for any powerful effect to be produced on the two parties in America. But when the monarchy was completely overthrown, and a republic decreed,[67] the people of the United States seemed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Trinity College, Dublin, "a very ingenious man and great philosopher," whom Swift determined to favour as much as he could. Mrs. Masham, the Duchess of Somerset, the Duchess of Shrewsbury, the Duchess of Hamilton, Lady Betty Germaine, and many other ladies appear with more or less distinctness; besides a host of people of less note, of whom we often know little but what ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... goods, the fortune hoarded up through a life-time of cunning and privation? Who knows? Forth he chants his prayers, loudly yelling, or muttering low, as the ghastly scene before him vanishes in smoke and darkness, or glows out again in fearful distinctness. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... her contemporary, Mrs Alfred Shaw is, nevertheless, the most pure, polished, and cultivated English singer we ever heard on the boards of our national theatre. The finish and refinement of her style, and the clear distinctness of her enunciation, make her the worthy model for the imitation of all who are desirous to excel. Were our future debutanti trained on the system which has thus developed the powers and capabilities of these eminent artists, less frequently would be observed the musical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... upon the sandy surface, indicated that the traveller had continued his route on foot; but the footmarks showed also, that he must have tottered rather than walked. They were unequally distant from each other, and wanted that distinctness of shape, that would have been exhibited by the footsteps of a man ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Catherine de Bourgh! And is not the sycophant clergyman hit off to the life in Mr. Collins! Looking to the stories as a group, are not her heroines, with Anne Eliot perhaps at their head, wonderful for quiet attraction and truth, for distinctness, charm and variety? Her personages are all observed; she had the admirable good sense not to go beyond her last. She had every opportunity to see the county squire, the baronet puffed up with a sense of his own ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the word "deification" sounds not only strange, but arrogant and shocking. The Western consciousness has always tended to emphasise the distinctness of individuality, and has been suspicious of anything that looks like juggling with the rights of persons, human or Divine. This is especially true of thought in the Latin countries. Deus has never been a fluid concept like [Greek: theos]. St. Augustine no ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... inked plate; then, transferring the thumb to one of the cards, which he directed me to hold steady on the table, he repeated the pressure, when there was left on the card a beautifully sharp and clear impression of the bulb of the thumb, the tiny papillary ridges being shown with microscopic distinctness, and even the mouths of the sweat glands, which appeared as rows of little white dots on the black lines of the ridges. This manoeuvre was repeated a dozen times on two of the cards, each of which ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... military qualities that made Bismarck great seem to me to stand out with particular distinctness: his readiness to take the most tremendous responsibilities, if he could justify his action by the worth of the cause for which he made himself responsible; his moderation after success was assured; his unflinching submission to the dictates of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... some day and see a white-haired, bent old woman, with a face as sweet as dawn, coming up the bank of Singing Water, that will be my mother's friend, Granny Moreland, who joins us on the north over there. She is frank and brusque, so she says what she thinks with unmistakable distinctness, but her heart is big and tender and her philosophy keeps her sweet and kindly despite the ache of rheumatism and the weight of ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... disappeared, and, with them, the waiting crowds and the mounted constables. The ordinary traffic of vans, omnibuses, and cabs was proceeding as though it had never been interrupted—the clank and jingle of harness chains, the cries and whip-crackings of drivers, rose with curious distinctness above the incessant trampling roar which is the ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... and with peculiar distinctness, "the rain has caught you, too, without overcoat or umbrella! Stand in this ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... impatiently, their blood atingle. And in a very few moments there was, seeming absurd and impossible, a repetition of the vision which had so startled them: a black form at the head of the cliffs, the field of star-strewn sky back of it limning it into vivid distinctness—the ebon bulk of a steer moving straight out from the top of the precipice, straight out a half-dozen feet into nothingness of empty space, then slowly descending through the air, gone silently in the deeper shadows ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... and still more than that,—cannot you guess yet why I have summoned you here?" continued Angelique, rising and laying her left hand firmly upon the shoulder of La Corriveau, as she bent her head and whispered with terrible distinctness in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... He had completely forgotten Howard's presence in the room. On the threshold of a terrible deed, his thoughts were leagues away. Like a man who is drowning, and close to death, he saw with surprising distinctness a kaleidoscopic view of his past life. He saw himself an innocent, impulsive school boy, the pride of a devoted mother, the happy home where he spent his childhood. Then came the association with bad companions, the first step in wrongdoing, stealing out of a comrade's pocket in school, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... answer this time, but buried his face in his hands once more, as though trying to shut out the sight of her from his aching eyes. The tones of Hilda's voice rose and fell faintly, as if they reached him through some thick substance that dulled their distinctness. At first he scarcely knew what she was saying, and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford |
