"Definable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence, or directly attributed to his hand, possess at least this psychological interest, that about their religiousness there can be no question. Their work is to be looked for mainly in and about the two sub-alpine towns of Brescia and Bergamo; in the former of which it becomes definable as a school—the school of Moretto, in whom the perfected art of the later Renaissance is to be seen in union with a catholicism as convinced, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, as that ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the royal breast were during the perusal of this extraordinary dialogue of birds, which has come to him through St. Mary Axe—? Manifold probably: manifold, questionable; but not tragical, or not immediately so. Certainly it is definable as the paltriest babble; no treason visible in it, nor constructive treason; but it painfully indicates, were his Majesty candid, That his Majesty is subject to spies in his own House; nay that certain ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... take the bad with the good, for whether you get the good or not you are sure of the bad, but only very exceptionally are you sure of the bad only. It was a pleasure not easily definable to find our hotel managed by a mother and two daughters, who gave the orders obeyed by the men-servants, and did not rebuke them for joining in the assurance that when we got used to going so abruptly from the dining-room into our bedrooms ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... each other but, more than this, what made us such intimate friends were, tastes in common, similarity of views, especially concerning railway affairs, a mutual liking for literary matters, and—well, other less definable things that form the foundation of all true friendships. Throughout our long intimacy we often took counsel together on subjects of mutual interest, but it was I who sought his advice and help much oftener than ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... insisting that it differs in origin and hence in kind from similar expressions of the human spirit. It hesitates to rely on the normal and the intelligible sources of ministerial power, to confess the relatively definable origin and understandable methods of our work. It fears to trust to ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... activity, etcetera, smooths out. Some blocking on various sense lines. Then, normal sleep until about five minutes before you woke up. At that point there may have been another minute touch of the same pattern. Too brief to be actually definable. A few seconds at most. The point is that this is a ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... acting on species A give rise to a new species, B; the difference between the two species is a certain definable amount which may be called A-B. Now I know of no evidence to show that the interval between the two species must NECESSARILY be bridged over by a series of forms, each of which shall occupy, as it ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... because the nature of the track compelled them to advance in single file, and partly because each was in the worst possible humour of which his nature was capable, while each felt indignant at the other, although neither could have said that his friend had been guilty of any definable sin. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... the free realm of the mind, correspond of course to nothing that is humanly feasible. The shackles of the flesh are upon us and there is no way to get rid of them. It is only an ideal, a poet's dream. Nevertheless the subject has a practical aspect which is definable in plain prose. It is found in the following ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... often felt the ecstasy of being swept out on the yearning demand for a new experience. Generally because of something suggestive in "reading" or in heavenly colour combinations or in sad music at twilight; but, now, for no definable reason at all, she felt her soul welling up and up in vague but poignant craving. She asked permission to get a drink of water. But instead of quenching her thirst, she wandered to the entry of the room occupied by Mathematics III A—Missy's own ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... these two senses, or aspects, of "species"—the one as morphological, the other as physiological. Regarded from the former point of view, a species is nothing more than a kind of animal or plant, which is distinctly definable from all others, by certain constant, and not merely sexual, morphological peculiarities. Thus horses form a species, because the group of animals to which that name is applied is distinguished from all others in the world by the following constantly associated characters. They ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... suddenly, and happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance—the appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was like a ghost—the in—definable impossibility of separating him from the place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in—the lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our people talked about it, and other people came ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... are really strange; of a complexity intricate with all the new width of the ever-widening world; times here of half-frantic velocity of impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness and paralysis; times definable as showing two qualities, Dilettantism and Mammonism;—most intricate obstructed times! Nay, if there were not a Heaven's radiance of Justice, prophetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible behind all these confused world-wide entanglements, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... with others for the mutual respect of rights; and for this purpose he instituted a government to maintain his rights within the community and to guard the community from assault from without. It followed that the function of government was limited and definable. It was to maintain the natural rights of man as accurately as the conditions of society allowed, and to do naught beside. Any further action employing the compulsory power of the State was of the nature of an infringement of the understanding on which government ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... termed the complement of the angle, and between an angle and two right angles the supplement of the angle. The generalized view of angles and their measurement is treated in the article TRIGONOMETRY. A solid angle is definable as the space contained by three or more planes intersecting in a common point; it is familiarly represented by a corner. The angle between two planes is termed dihedral, between three trihedral, between any number more than ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... the Police Power.—Because the police power of a State is the least limitable of the exercises of government, such limitations as are applicable thereto are not readily definable. Being neither susceptible of circumstantial precision, nor discoverable by any formula, these limitations can be determined only through appropriate regard to the subject matter of the exercise of that power.[105] "It is settled [however] that neither the 'contract' ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Lord Keith of Gowanbrae was best described by the said young kinsman's words "a long-backed Scotchman." He was so intensely Scottish that he made his brother look and sound the same, whereas ordinarily neither air nor accent would have shown the colonel's nation, and there was no definable likeness between them, except, perhaps, the baldness of the forehead, but the remains of Lord Keith's hair were silvered red, whereas Colin's thick beard and scanty locks were dark brown, and with a far larger admixture of hoar-frost, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of their uncle's equanimity synchronized with an apparent change in the attitude of their new friends on the floor below. This change was, indeed, more apparent than definable. The ladies were, to the nicest scrutiny, as kindly and affable as ever, but the sense of comradeship had somehow vanished. Insensibly, the two parties had ceased to have impulses and tastes in common. There were no more trips together—no ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... feeling of dread, but also a specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill, brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... is indeed a gradual change of opinions; but it is no mere change of opinions. It is not a perpetual leaping from one position to another like that of Mr. George Moore. It is a quite continuous advance along a quite solid road in a quite definable direction. But the chief proof that it is not a piece of fickleness and vanity is the fact that it has been upon the whole in advance from more startling opinions to more humdrum opinions. It has been even in some sense an advance from unconventional opinions to conventional opinions. This fact ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... western half of the State; the Tamaulipas Biotic Province, in the northeastern part of the State; and the Sierra Madre Oriental Biotic Province, in the southeastern part of the State. Merriam (1898) noted that definable portions of the Lower Sonoran Life-zone, the Upper Sonoran Life-zone, the Transition Life-zone, and the Canadian Life-zone can be distinguished in Coahuila. In my study of the distribution of the avifauna of Coahuila, I found that the three biotic provinces listed by Goldman ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... his hand to his head, Leslie Wrandall found himself staring at the face of this stranger among them; not with any definable interest, but because she happened to be in his line of vision and her face was so singularly white that it stood out in cameo-like relief against all ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... influenced the idiosyncrasies of each as hardly any other writer's influence has done in other times; while his technical shortcomings had unquestionably a fatal effect on the weaker members of the school. But there is also noticeable in them a separate and hardly definable influence which circumscribes their class even more distinctly. They were, as I take it, the last set of poets anywhere in Europe to exhibit, in that most fertile department of poetry which seeks its inspiration in the love of man for woman, the frank ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... more than common pleasure. The epigrammatic quality, the power of rapid analysis and brilliant presentation are there, and added to these a less definable quality, only to be described as charm.... 'The Herb Moon' is as clever as most of its ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... any degree, I should keep myself quiet.' JOHNSON. 'Sir you must consider that we have perfect and imperfect obligations. Perfect obligations, which are generally not to do something, are clear and positive; as, 'thou shalt not kill.' But charity, for instance, is not definable by limits. It is a duty to give to the poor; but no man can say how much another should give to the poor, or when a man has given too little to save his soul. In the same manner it is a duty to instruct the ignorant, and of consequence to convert infidels to Christianity; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... of Chopin's playingare not so easily defined as the technical ones. Indeed, if they are definable at all they are so only by one who, like Liszt, is a poet as well as a great pianist. I shall, therefore, transcribe from his book some of the most important remarks bearing ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... divide, and arrange the exact arithmetical proportions of the dinner bill. After a short cessation of hostilities, during which our commercial friends despatched their London letters, and Bob and the English Spy, to escape the suspicion of not having any definable pursuit, emigrated to the High Street; we returned to our quarters, and found the whole party debating upon a proposition of the bon vivants, to have another bottle, and make a night of it by going to the theatre at half price; a question that was immediately carried, nemine contradicente. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... for indistinctness the effect of avidy, or for its cessation. If it does not previously exist, then Release discloses itself as something to be effected, and therefore non- eternal.—And that such non-knowledge is impossible because there is no definable substrate for it we have shown above.—He, moreover, who holds the theory of error resting on a non-real defect, will find it difficult to prove the impossibility of error being without any substrate; for, if the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... eye met hers the suspicion vanished, and not the suspicion only, but all her intimidation. The miracle was produced by something in the gaze of Mr. Gilman as it rested on her, something wistful—not more definable than that, something which she had noticed in Mr. Gilman's gaze on other occasions. It perfectly restored her. It gave her the positive assurance of a fact which marvellously enheartens young girls of about Audrey's years—to wit, that they have a mysterious power surpassing the power of age, knowledge, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... It may be that I have mistaken the flight of a sea-gull or night-bird for something superhuman, but on several occasions I have been warned of approaching danger by something outside myself; not tangible to the touch, nor definable to the eye, but still noticeable to the ear and to the mind. Put it down a bird, as your opinion, reader, and enjoy that opinion, and let me enjoy my warning watchers, whether fowl or spirit. Perhaps during my narrative I may have more to say ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... I don't. I think I'd rather hold him in my mind as he is here: a happy eremite; no, a restrained pagan. Oh, it's foolish to seek definitions for him. He isn't definable. He's Ban...." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... authorities must be different in every nation at different times, and ought to be so, according to their circumstances and character; and all that I assert with confidence is the necessity, within afterwards definable limits, of some such authorities as these; that ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... the acquisition of a workable formula by which to connect temperature with radiation. Stefan's rule of a fourth-power relation, if not actually a law of nature, is a colourable imitation of one; and its employment has afforded a practical certainty that the sun's temperature, so far as it is definable, neither exceeds 12,000 deg. C., nor falls short ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... "Nothing in sight," to what seemed a very real toy soldier with a very real toy flag, on a green toy mound in the midst of the work (the magazine), he wigwagged in reply, and across the river a mere speck of real humanity did the same from a barely definable parapet. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... in fact, in battle usually throw two together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were the then admirable Fine Arts of the North; in all which Tryggveson appears to have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism, in such rude guise and environment; a high, true, and great human soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him, withal; a bright, airy, wise way of speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved exceedingly ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... better known. Thus the science of sound, which previously stood in the lowest rank of merely experimental science, became deductive when it was proved by experiment that every variety of sound was consequent on, and therefore a mark of, a distinct and definable variety of oscillatory motion among the particles of the transmitting medium. When this was ascertained, it followed that every relation of succession or co-existence which obtained between phenomena of the more known class, obtained also ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... cared, and Roscoe that shunned. It perplexed me that there seemed to be behind Mrs. Falchion's present regard for Roscoe some weird expression of vengeance, as though somehow she had been wronged, and it was her duty to punish. In no other way was the position definable. That Roscoe would never marry her was certain to my mind. That he could not marry her now was also certain—to me; I had the means to prevent it. That she wished to marry him I was not sure, though she undoubtedly cared for him. Remained, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden conversion when it has occurred? Not in the least, as Professor Coe well says; for "the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological, nothing definable in terms of HOW IT HAPPENS, but something ethical, definable only in terms of WHAT ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... night, next to the party from the yacht, was a small table laid for one. It was unoccupied until they had half finished dinner; then heads began suddenly to turn toward the door; people whispered, there was a perceptible, though scarcely definable thrill of interest, and a tall woman in sequined black tulle, glittering with diamonds, came slowly up the room. She must have known that all eyes were upon her, yet she appeared unconscious. Her lashes were ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... was hastily opened; someone seemed with swift steps to ascend the stairs, by the head of which she had yet to pass before she could gain the gallery. She had no power to move. With a feeling of terror not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the staircase, and in a few moments it gave Henry to her view. "Mr. Tilney!" she exclaimed in a voice of more than common astonishment. He looked astonished too. "Good God!" she continued, not attending to his address. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "good" labor union ought to conform are more easily definable than the conditions to which a "good" trust ought to conform. In the first place the union should have the right to demand a minimum wage and a minimum working day. This minimum would vary, of course, in different trades, in different branches of the same trade, and in different parts of the country; ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... south in SCHWABEN (Suabia), on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp Country; no great way north from Constance and its Lake; but well aloft, near the springs of the Danube; its back leaning on the Black Forest; it is perhaps definable as the southern summit of that same huge old Hercynian Wood, which is still called the SCHWARZWALD (Black Forest), though now comparatively bare of trees. ["There are still considerable spottings of wood (pine mainly, and 'black' enough); HOLZ-HANDEL (timber-trade) still a considerable ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... definable difference between those two great branches, prose and poetry. For prose may have rhythm. All that can be said is that verse will scan, while prose will not. The difference is purely formal. Very few poets have succeeded in being so poetical as Isaiah, ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... hopelessness to be found along some more heavily populated and industrialized American rivers, and on the Potomac its spread is already being slowed. Water shortages loom, but have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built to ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... trouble myself to prove that all terms are not definable, from that progress IN INFINITUM, which it will visibly lead us into, if we should allow that all names could be defined. For, if the terms of one definition were still to be defined by another, where at last should ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the world certainly lies in intelligence. Certainly, there is no hope anywhere else. I cannot look to anything so remotely definable as God for aid, nor do I ever regret not ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... in the vague. In fact, they will go jumbling hither and thither for about three years to come, before making up their minds to a resolution: so intricate is the affair to the English Nation and them! Intricate indeed; and even imaginary,—definable mainly as a bottomless abyss of nightmare dreams to the English Nation and them! Productive of strong somnambulisms, as my friend ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... save himself from slipping and turned a curious eye on the scene before him. Really there wasn't very much for him to see. Bradby had fallen into a miniature valley so small that it looked like the creation of a child. The place was heavily timbered, and almost all definable features were masked beneath the trees. Abel saw even in the first glance that here was just that ideal hiding-place for which they had been searching. Softly and cautiously he commenced to descend. The slope was ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... such an interest in that you anticipate its revival, and realize that its mere absence is no proof of its non-existence. You recognize it as having its roots in your organism, and its opportunity for exercise in certain definable and predictable circumstances. This is what you mean when you acknowledge that you will desire to go to the play {59} to-morrow. But the evidence of the existence of still another interest, in this case mine, is no less convincing. Like your own latent ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... did not consider things definable, or in modern language abstract ideas, as the only universals, but prior to these he established those principles productive of science which essentially reside in the soul, as is evident from his Phaedrus and Phaedo. In the 10th book of the Republic too, he venerates those separate forms ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... by people of more gravity than understanding, that genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only what Mr. Locke would have called a mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of doing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... On whatever lines the world may be framed, there must be distinction, difference, a higher and a lower; and the lower, relatively to the higher, must always be an evil. The scale upon which the higher and lower both are makes no difference. The supremest bliss would not be bliss if it were not definable bliss—that is to say, in the sense that it has limits, marking it out from something else not so supreme. Perfectly uninterrupted, infinite light, without shadow, is a physical absurdity. I see a thing because it is lighted, but also because of the differences ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... just as much as his eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and tall in frame, had thin lips, where his thick moustache showed them at all, and a quantity of dry hair, of no definable colour, in its shaggy state, but shot with red. The hand with which he held the grating (seamed all over the back with ugly scratches newly healed), was unusually small and plump; would have been unusually white but for the prison grime. The other man was lying on the stone floor, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... our holy and Apostolical Church is not thus lax and indiscriminate. It rests not upon scepticism, but upon sound and definable principles. It does not proceed on the assumption that all creeds are equally good, but that men of all creeds have a political right to follow the dictates of conscience, whether enlightened or erroneous, in matters purely spiritual, and that they are responsible only to God for ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... not made till I was finished, so I couldn't." We cannot recall whence we came, nor tell how we began to be. We know approximately how far back we can remember, but have no idea how far back we may not have forgotten. Certainly we knew once much that we have forgotten now. My own earliest definable memory is of a great funeral of one of the Dukes of Gordon, when I was between two and three years of age. Surely my first knowledge was not of death. I must have known much and many things before, although that seems my earliest memory. As in what we foolishly call maturity, so ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... to saying that if a certain character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it or follow it. The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the extent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to the accuracy with which they are definable. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... it is "a cross between the song of the chewink and that of dickcissel," and I shall stand by that assertion until I find good reason to disown it—should that time ever come. The opening syllabication is like dickcissel's; then follows a trill of no specially definable character. There are times when he sings with more than his wonted force, and it is then that his tune bears the strongest likeness to the eastern towhee's. But his alarm-call! It is no "chewink" at all, but almost as close a reproduction of a cat's mew as is the catbird's well-known call. Such ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... discussions with which they had begun,—on such safer topics as the problem of the social work of modern churches. Her aromatic presence, and in this setting, continually disturbed him: nature's perfumes, more definable, —exhalations of the sea and spruce,—mingled with hers, anaesthetics compelling lethargy. He felt himself drowning, even wished to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... apprehended that a great increase of intelligence among the people would destroy their deference and respectful deportment toward their superiors, the ground of this apprehension should be honestly assigned. If the claim to this respect be definable, and capable of being enforced upon good reasons, it is obvious that improved sense in the people will better appreciate them. Especially, if the claim is to owe any part of its validity to higher mental qualifications in the claimants, it will so far be incomparably ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the Xanthochroi are not, at present, strictly definable. The Scandinavians are certainly long-headed; but many Germans, the Swiss so far as they are Germanized, the Slavonians, the Fins, and the Turks, are short-headed. What were the cranial characters of the ancient "U-suns" and "Ting-lings" of the valley ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sorry," I murmured. "Forgive me;" and my heart sank suddenly with a vague, in definable sense of apprehension as ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... increased in volume until even the shouting voices could no longer be heard. Then the crisscrossing lights struck metal, glancing off the gleaming body of a descending object. Larger and larger the object grew, until it assumed the definable shape of a squat silver funnel, falling in a perfect straight line towards the center of the light-ringed area. When it hit, a dust ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar |
