"Define" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expectation of romance. If the Millsborough Herald had taught her to despise the "low moral tone" of those who ride in carriages and know not hardship, the Penny Pansy, in its own inimitable manner, had compelled her to believe that they possessed a distinction which she could not define. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... applied itself lustily to the pipe, and sent forth such abundant volleys of tobacco smoke that the small cottage kitchen became all vaporous. The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and could but imperfectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... explanation, she was nearly certain that he had lied to her about the combination knife-and-fork. Yet his account of his own position in regard to Mr. Saffron had sounded remarkably candid, and the more so because he made no pretensions to an exalted attitude. It had been left to her to define the standard of sensitive honor; his had been rather that of safety or, at the best, that of what the world would think, or even of what the hated cousins might attempt to prove. But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... softest strains, Stole through my little breast;— 'Twas something I could not define, Nor could it ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome. Rocks have always been called "living" in ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... true, and gave too much blame or credit—whichever you will—to Bess; but Richard made no objections, and permitted Bess to define her position as ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Eleventh Calvary, entered the ward, accompanied by a member of the household of Captain Cranston, declared the treatment of the patient unjustifiable and ordered him, the attendant, out of the room. On Paine's attempting to define his orders he was abruptly silenced and again ordered to leave. Being on duty under the instructions of superior authority, Trooper Paine again strove to explain his orders, and this time was curtly told that he should pay no heed to such instructions, and was ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the right solution of the problem. Jochanan Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of ignorance confirmed by knowledge; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The child's soul in him has reconciled the differing ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... populations, but that is altogether a different thing. The word "community" implies an association of people having common interests and common possessions, bound together by laws and regulations which express these common interests and ideals, and define the relation of the individual to the community. Our rural populations are no more closely connected, for the most part, than the shifting sands on the seashore. Their life is almost entirely individualistic. There are personal friendships, of course, but few economic or social partnerships. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... of an element is a unit, while that of a compound must have at least two units in it. He suggested the name molecule for the least particle of a compound which can exist, retaining the name atom for the smallest particle of an element. In accordance with this distinction, we may define the atom and the molecule as follows: An atom is the smallest particle of an element which can exist. A molecule is the smallest particle of a compound which can exist. It will be shown in a subsequent chapter that sometimes ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... Strauss he will immediately detect the germ of the whole of Nietzsche's subsequent attitude towards too hasty contentment and the foolish beatitude of the "easily pleased"; in the paper on Wagner he will recognise Nietzsche the indefatigable borer, miner and underminer, seeking to define his ideals, striving after self-knowledge above all, and availing himself of any contemporary approximation to his ideal man, in order to press it forward as the incarnation of his thoughts. Wagner the reformer of mankind! Wagner the dithyrambic dramatist!—The ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... outside those paltry limits, far away over all the spires and chimney-tops, where the sky was so bright and blue, life, real life, unfolded itself under many a varied aspect, and with this suspicion, sprung up a lingering dissatisfaction, a longing for something which no words of mine could define. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... gave a faint blue outline of the Wicklow mountains, and assured him that he had actually and really before him, "The Holy Hills of Ireland." Nearer and nearer he comes, and Howth at one side and Wicklow Head at the other define what he, not unjustly, regards as the Bay. And surely on a bright clear morning, with just enough of sunlight, it is as fair a scene as mortal eye can rest on. The Dublin and Wicklow hills, which at ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... supposition." He took the arm gracefully and proceeded to slip the pearl buttons through their holes. (Have you ever buttoned the gloves of a handsome woman? I have. And there is a subtile thrill about the proceeding which I can not quite define. Perhaps it is the nearness of physical beauty; perhaps it is the delicate scent of flowers; perhaps it is the touch of the cool, firm flesh; perhaps it is just romance.) The gaze which she bent upon his dark head was emotional; yet there was not the slightest tremor ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... through the town, a stroll never omitted by us at that hour in Oban, a delightful and essential sedative after the fatigues or excitements of the day,—strolls the charm of which I could never quite define, and the impression from which is incommunicable. There would seem to be little that was pleasant or memorable in our perambulations of the main street of a little fishing-town,—the Bailie, with his stump of a pipe for company, always choosing the esplanade, while Christie and I as frequently idled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... dourness. There are times when we go skimming along the trail with the crystal-cool evening air in our faces and the sun dipping down toward the rim of the world when I want to thank Somebody I can't see for Something-or-other I can't define. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the human body. There must have been, and must be a central god in the machine of each animate corpus. The little soul of the beetle makes the beetle toddle. The little soul of the homo sapiens sets him on his two feet. Don't ask me to define the soul. You might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so whimsically and so god-like pedals her way along the highroad. A young lady skeltering off on her bicycle to meet her young man—why, what could the bicycle make of such a mystery, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... indeed, that's twice a captive! heart And body both in bonds. But that's the chain, Which balance cannot weigh, rule measure, touch Define the texture of, or eye detect, That's forged by the subtle craft of love! No need to tell you that he wears it. Such The cunning of the hand that plied the loom, You've but to mark the straining of his eye, To feel ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... kind, sir, as to define exactly what your intentions are as to your son's future. Time is very valuable here, and every fraction squandered has to be made up ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... I can scarcely define withheld me. At first I thought I was dreaming, and that the dream would be broken if I spoke or moved. Then I felt sure Madeleine was there, but that she believed herself unrecognized, and if I showed that I knew her she would leave me,—leave me when ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... invited them to do so. They came in great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden in this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with my word." Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between Clairvaux and its ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... wretched day for Dic. What it was to Rita you may easily surmise. Early after supper Dic walked over to see Sukey, and his coming filled that young lady's ardent little soul with delight. His reasons for going would be hard to define. Perhaps his chief motive was the hope of running away from himself, and the possibility of hearing another budget of unwelcome news concerning Rita and Williams. He dreaded to hear it; but he longed to know all there was to be known, and he felt sure Sukey had exhaustive ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... of course, and gave her their friendship. There was, really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for food—and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them. Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar—which had been her real reason for entering ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Eleanor moved and spoke. Others noticed it, but Mr. Carlisle drew comparisons; and found to his mystification that her six months on a cheese-farm had returned Eleanor with an added charm of eye and manner, for which he could not account; which he could not immediately define. She was not expecting to see him this time, for she started a little when he presented himself. He came with the same pleasant expression that ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... pianists, many styles and all are correct if they are poetically musical, logical and individually sincere. Of his rubato I treat in the chapter devoted to the Mazurkas, making also an attempt to define the "zal" of his ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... hard to define what was wanting in his manner. He lamented his unavoidable delay, and entertained her with all the political and parliamentary gossip he had brought home, and which she always much enjoyed as a tribute to her wisdom, so much that it had been ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at least here, to forget that I am an Empress." As she had not a thought concealed from Madame de Remusat except some domestic vexations, of which probably I was the only confidant, we conversed with the same freedom as if alone, and it is easy to define that the subject of our discourse ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... than he remembered. It was as if the five thousand or so moles in view were all listening—for what? But there was something else that had changed about them—a change that he couldn't for a moment define, or unconsciously didn't want to. Clothing style? No ... My God, they weren't all wearing identical monster masks? No ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... in Peru, and there are undoubtedly as many, or more, in Brazil. The most common are Mamelucos (offspring of white with Indian), Mulattoes (from white and Negro), Cafuzos or Zambos (from Indian and Negro), Curibocos (from Cafuzo and Indian); and Xibaros (from Cafuzo and Negro). "To define their characteristics correctly," says Von Tschudi, "would be impossible, for their minds partake of the mixture of their blood. As a general rule, it may be said that they unite in themselves all the faults without any of the virtues ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... come to details I wish to make a few general introductory remarks, and in particular to define some of the terms which I shall have occasion to use in the lectures. I have defined natural theology as that reasoned knowledge of a God or gods which man may be supposed, whether rightly or wrongly, capable of attaining to by the exercise of his natural faculties alone. Whether ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... to Austria, she was actuated, not by any lust of territorial aggrandizement, but by a conviction of her just and inalienable rights. She was prepared, not only to assert, but to defend them; and she took this opportunity to define the lines of her frontier, for the reason that Poland was in a state of internal warfare, the end of which no man could foresee." [Footnote: Ferrand, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... something odd about him which I cannot well define, but, take him altogether, he can be a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... And, indeed, it is very improbable, that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any Being, not so much as of our own, should be able to find out by them, that supreme nature, which we cannot otherwise define than by saying it is infinite; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a subject for our narrow understanding. They who would prove religion by reason, do but weaken the cause which they endeavour to support: it is to take away the pillars from our faith, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... with the grave countenance, the new soul divined beneath a beauty that pleases me, will she at long last teach me how much is possible and realisable in the vague ideal to which I pay homage, without as yet being able to define it? ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... did not. Meanwhile separation and silence had clothed him in my mind with something of the mistiness of a half-remembered dream. Yet the instant Washington Flagg mentioned his name the boyish features began rapidly to define themselves behind the maturer mask, until he stood before me in the crude form in which my ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the remarks made in IV:Def.vi. of this part it follows that, if objects are separated from the present by a longer period than we can define in conception, though their dates of occurrence be widely separated one from the other, they all affect us ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Negative! how vainly would the wise Inquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise, Didst thou not stand to point their dull ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ask you to define an abolitionist, for I call these men as radical abolitionists as we have in ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... it darkly whispered that he was something of a vagabond. But the term is so loosely applied, and it seems so difficult, after all, to define what a vagabond is, or to strike the right moral balance between the vagabond work which is boldly published, and the vagabond work which is reserved for private circulation only, that I did not feel justified in holding aloof from my former friend. Accordingly, I renewed ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the Standard; and in 1174 it defeated and captured William the Lion at Alnwick. So valuable, indeed, did it prove to be that Henry II resolved to place it upon a permanent footing and clearly to define its position. With that view he issued in 1181 ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... home of a dependent. Nothing could have been more dignified, more gracious, more gracefully condescending than her poise. She dramatised not only her role, but the whole of her surroundings. The interior of the little cottage seemed to define itself with almost visible distinctness the moment she set foot upon ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... being in my Line, As Nonsense modern Fiction I define; But of the sort that one would care for, I Can find but ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed— in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them—conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... sing the heroes of old Aesop's line, Whose tale, though false when strictly we define, Containeth truths it were not ill to teach. With me all natures use the gift of speech; Yea, in my work, the very fishes preach, And to our human selves their sermons suit. 'Tis thus, to come at man, I use ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... power of the unconscious or imaginative being, I am going to show how this self, hitherto considered indomitable, can be as easily controlled as a torrent or an unbroken horse. But before going any further it is necessary to define carefully two words that are often used without being properly understood. These are ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... native squabbles. A few yards further placed us in an exceedingly rich bottom, honeycombed by native workers. Hard by it appeared the central shaft, lying between two hills, the Ingotro-buka and the Nanwa-buka, which define the course of the rivulet. The distance from Nanwa village may have been three miles, but we had spent more than three hours ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to look at the rows of expectant faces behind her, giving a smiling nod to Mrs. Macdonald, who, duly impressed with the gravity of the occasion, sat by the side of her John with her hands clasping a clean pocket-handkerchief as if she were at church. Paul tried to define the cause of his annoyance as he looked ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... the tuberculous process we are not, as you are aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications; malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be done ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... here a man of such heroic size that it is no easy matter to define him. Along with the clearest vision of the lines of demarcation between the old and the new in the greatest crisis of human history and an unfaltering championship of principle when real issues were involved, we see in him the most genial superiority to mere formal ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... evangelists and Peter each define two different and distinct baptisms following closely after each other. First John's baptism of water, then Christ's baptism of the Holy Spirit. Our Saviour also testified to these two independent baptisms but to no other baptism as the result or successor of these two. He speaks of one as past ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... did indeed ask him straight across the table what he thought about the final breaking of the Hindenburg line. But he asked it with that same fierce look from under his bushy eyebrows with which he used to ask Tom to define the path of a tangent, and Tom was rattled at once. He answered something about being afraid that he was not well posted, owing to there being so little chance over ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... the Church and the Order are there to define the true signification of the Rule, he appeals to common sense, and to that interior certitude which is given by ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... divided, the very names of which are scarcely known to them. Nevertheless it is easy to perceive that almost all the inhabitants of the United States conduct their understanding in the same manner, and govern it by the same rules; that is to say, that without ever having taken the trouble to define the rules of a philosophical method, they are in possession of one, common to the whole people. To evade the bondage of system and habit, of family maxims, class opinions, and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to accept tradition only as a means of information, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... simple question, ain't it? and anyone that reads this book when you publish it, will say, "Why, everybody knows what natur is," and any schoolboy can answer that question. But I'll take a bet of twenty dollars, not one in a hundred will define that tarm right off the reel, without stopping. It fairly stumpt me, and I ain't easily brought to a hack about common things. I could a told her what natur was circumbendibusly, and no mistake, though that takes time. But to define it briefly and quickly, as Minister used to say, if ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... general silence, or side talks, would paralyze me. I should feel coarse and misplaced, were I to harangue over-much. In former instances, I have been able to make it easy and even pleasant, to twenty-five out of thirty, to bear their part, to question, to define, to state, and examine opinions. If I could not do as much now, I should consider myself as unsuccessful, and should withdraw. But I shall expect communication to be effected by degrees, and to do a great deal myself at the first meetings. My method ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... true man— exalted perhaps too quickly, considering the limited opportunities for distinguishing himself which fortune had thrown in his way; but now belief in McClellan seemed to be slipping away. One felt that it was so from day to day, though it was impossible to define how or whence the feeling came. And then the character of the ministry fared still worse in public estimation. That Lincoln, the President, was honest, and that Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, was able, was the only good that one heard spoken. At this time two Jonahs were ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... back in his seat with a contented grin, while his colleague manipulated the unwieldy whip. The tract ran parallel to the Rand for some distance, and we got a splendid view of Johannesburg and the row of chimney-shafts that so clearly define the reef. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the gallant and tireless spirit whose indefatigable efforts had pulled the Warburton Expedition out of the fire took charge of an expedition equipped by Sir Thomas Elder to define the many affluents of Lake Eyre. Starting from the overland line, Lewis skirted Lake Eyre to the north, penetrated to Eyre's Creek, traced that stream and the Diamantina into Lake Eyre, and confirmed the opinion that the waters of Cooper's Creek as well as the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Paris is so complex and unstable that one feels it is presumptuous to try to define it. It is a city so highly-strung, so ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer accurate by the time it is published. And then, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... industries contribute to air pollution; acid rain, resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, is damaging forests; pollution in the Baltic Sea from raw sewage and industrial effluents from rivers in eastern Germany; hazardous waste disposal; government currently attempting to define mechanism for ending the use of nuclear power; government working to meet EU commitment to identify nature preservation areas in line with the EU's Flora, Fauna, and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... him; but who can say at what precise moment it did so? Thus we find that we are rooted into outside things and melt away into them, nor can any man say he consists absolutely in this or that, nor define himself so certainly as to include neither more nor less than himself; many undoubted parts of his personality being more separable from it, and changing it less when so separated, both to his own senses and those of other people, than other parts which ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... ardent blood were there, but the machinery were dry. He was robustly made, well proportioned, and had handsome features. Many would have perceived that some surface change in him would have set them more at their ease with him, without being able to define what change. If his lips could have been made much thicker, and his neck much thinner, they would ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a common mark of all these transactions the care taken to fix and define ownership. The transfer is "from" A to B. In early times the property is usually first stated to belong to A. Then he is often said in Assyrian times to be the belu of it, its full and legitimate owner. The new owner had to be satisfied that A was ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... poetical about a forge I am not singular in this opinion: various individuals have assured me that they can never pass by one, even in the midst of a crowded town, without experiencing sensations which they can scarcely define, but which are highly pleasurable. I have a decided penchant for forges, especially rural ones, placed in some quaint, quiet spot—a dingle for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four roads, which is ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... misshapen that my poor being cannot contain it. It presses and tortures me, until it has taken realizable proportions, when comes the other pain, of bringing forth, a truly physical suffering that I cannot define. And that is how my life is spent when I let myself be dominated by this artistic monster in me. It is much better, then, that I should live as I have imagined living, that I go to all kinds of excess, and that I kill this never-dying worm that people like me modestly term their inspiration, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the muscles or the intellectual processes. Like the general-in-chief, its place is everywhere in the field of action. It is the least like an instrument of any of our faculties; the farthest removed from our conceptions of mechanism and matter, as we commonly define them." Holmes was correct in his idea, but faulty in his details. The Will does not change its seat, which is always in the center of the Ego, but the Will forces the mind to all parts, and in all directions, and it directs the Prana or vital force likewise. The Will is indeed the general-in-chief, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger—ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... that a portion of the walls of this latter was actually left in existence. Taken, however, as a whole, the castle is evidently a building of different aeras; and it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define the parts ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... end my explanations, it may be well to define a day's work, and to correct a mistake prevalent among landsmen about a sailor's life. Nothing is more common than to hear people say, "Are not sailors very idle at sea? What can they find to do?'' This is a natural mistake, and, being frequently made, is one which every sailor ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... demonstration, some margin must of necessity be left for variations of individual opinion. And, if he bears this consideration in mind, I feel sure that he cannot properly complain of my not having done my utmost in this case to define as sharply as possible the character and the limits ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... German nor English,) from the perusal of which they carry away nothing but some very obscure terms, on which they themselves have superinduced a very vague meaning. These terms you in vain implore them to define; or, if they define them, they define them in terms which as much need definition. Heartily do we wish that Socrates would reappear amongst us, to exercise his accoucheur's art on these hapless Theaetetuses and Menos of our day! Many such youths might no doubt ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the most extraordinary persons of the age,' he says of him, on but a slight and partial acquaintance), or by Wordsworth when the Lyrical Ballads are confusing all judgments, and he can pick out at sight 'She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways' as 'the best piece in it,' and can define precisely the defect of much of the book, in one of those incomparable letters of escape, to Manning: 'It is full of original thought, but it does not often make you laugh or cry. It too artfully aims at simplicity of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... too cautious in suspecting that France might contemplate this policy. She could not define beforehand the limits which she would observe in defending Russia's cause. But she knew, as we now know, that a war with Russia meant, to German statesmen, only a pretext for a new attack on France, even more deadly in intention than that of 1870. France could not do without ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... of actual interference with the local administrators it may be necessary to retain, for the due enforcement of the laws, is a question of detail into which it would be useless to enter. The laws themselves will naturally define the penalties, and fix the mode of their enforcement. It may be requisite, to meet extreme cases, that the power of the central authority should extend to dissolving the local representative council or dismissing the local executive, but not to making ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... observed a perceptible change in the young girl, just what he could not define, but to him it seemed mostly to lie in her eyes where something that baffled him looked out and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... responsive to thought from every quarter; a something, vague here, clear there, here diffused, there concentrated. It demands the closest attention from Socialists this something, this something which is so hard to define and so impossible to deny—civilized feeling, the thought of our age, the mind of the world. It has organs, it has media, yet it is as hard to locate as the soul of a man. We know that somewhere in the brain and body of a man lives his Self; that you ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... me money, certainly. Whether you'd define it as a large or small sum would be a matter of relative ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... it educates by Written Law. To be sure, laws are passed to define and protect human rights, in person, purse, family, or good name. People sometimes think that is all they do. But consider. These laws on the Statute Book are the Nation's deliberate convictions, so far, on right and wrong, a real code of morals, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... numbers will a screw define, A screwing motion, six; For four will give the axial line, One more the pitch will fix; And hence we always can contrive One screw reciprocal ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... with pencil and paper. The leader has a dictionary which she opens at any place and selects a word which the rest are to define. ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... gives us a picture of it in Injury and Insult: "As soon as it grew dusk I gradually fell into that state of mind which so often overmasters me at night since I've been ill, and which I shall call mystic fear. It is a crushing anxiety about something which I can neither define nor even conceive, which does not actually exist, but which perhaps is about to be realised, at this very moment, to appear and rise up before me like an inexorable, horrible misshapen fact." This "frenzied anguish" is a familiar stigma of epilepsy. Its presence denotes ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... are only well begun on special days not easy to define; essays are only written on days when we have determined to be idle,—and this, after the opening flirtation with indolence, must be a busy day,—and it is not every day that one can begin a novel. He might ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... feel, but cannot define; we group them round types, in short. Thus if you ask an ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, he will probably say, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. Ask him to define a beast from a reptile, and he cannot do it; but he says, things like a cow or a horse are beasts, and things like a frog or a lizard are reptiles. You see he does class by type, and not by definition. But how does this classification differ from that of the scientific Zoologist? ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... adopted as a general vehicle, a common carrier for the thoughtless damnation of the Philistine. The time has come to formulate, authoritatively, the precise scope of intellect which such distinctions suggest and to define the shorthand of conversation which their use has made practicable. The rapid spread of the theory, traveling from Sulphite to Sulphite, like the spark of a pyrotechnic set-piece, till the thinking ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... transmitted . . . were confided to the learned Professor [Owen] for determination; and these materials, scanty as they were, enabled him to define the generic characters of Dinornis, as afforded by the bones ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... one may postpone the question, sooner or later it is necessary to consider the quality of Lady Dorothy Nevill's wit, since all things converge in her to that. But her wit is so difficult to define that it is not surprising that one avoids, as long as possible, coming actually to grips with it. We may lay the foundation of a formula, perhaps, by saying that it was a compound of solid good sense and an almost reckless whimsicality ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... farther apart from Manicheism than some of his radical phrases imply, appears from his "Gnowthi seauton, De Essentia Originalis Institutiae," of 1568. After admitting that Augustine, Luther, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are correct when they define original sin as an inordinate disposition, a disorder (ataxia), perversion, and confusion of the parts of man, Flacius proceeds: "The substantial form of a certain thing for the most part, consists in the right position and disposition of the parts; as, for example, if a human body ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... another invasion unaided, at least so long as they were engaged with Russia. And, on the other hand, if the Serbians lost now, the whole country was lost. The climax was at hand. For this reason it may be well to define again the position and the strength of the two ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... resignation; it was too bad, he said, to talk of him to his face so dismally. Bessie Fairfax was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and fancying she saw a change; he was certainly not so brown as he used to be, nor so buoyant, nor so animated. But it would have perplexed her to define what the change she fancied was. Conscious of her observation, Harry dissembled a minute, then pushed back his chair, and invited her to come away to the old sitting-room, where the evening sun shone. No one offered to follow them; they ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to the aid of Wigfall in the debate, but fared badly at the hands of Douglas. He asked Douglas to define what should be done in this crisis in regard to Fort Sumter. "If the senator from Virginia," said Douglas, "had voted right in the last Presidential election, I should have been, perhaps, in a position to-day to tell him authoritatively what ought to be done. Not occupying ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... touching the jurisdictional treaty rights of the United States in Turkey. An earnest effort will be made to define those rights to the satisfaction ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... nothing to dispel the darkness of the mind; that there are strict limits to the power of prosperity to supply man's wants or satisfy his aspirations. This is a great part of Carlyle's teaching. It is impossible, were it desirable, accurately to define his religious, social, or political creed. He swallows formulae with the voracity of Mirabeau, and like Proteus escapes analysis. No printed labels will stick to him: when we seek to corner him by argument he thunders ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... if we reflect, the abstract and impersonal thing which engineers define as the ratio between energy expended and result obtained has no moral quality in itself. Whatever of morality or lack of morality the word "efficiency" calls forth is given to it by the manner in which the terms of the ratio are defined. It is for ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... cases we can point to hundreds who are going right through eating just enough and not too much. I am prepared, on the other hand, to admit the danger of a continued semi-starvation diet; our difficulty is to define in each individual case what exactly would be a semi-starvation, and what a sufficient diet. It is impossible to have a fixed standard for everybody. After all, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"; often it is a matter of experimenting for some ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... was, of course, taken verbatim, despite the fact that Oley couldn't define half the words and probably couldn't ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond
... the sins of the human brutes who had trained him. Then they had looked for concealment, finding none in the mill—the floors were bare, except for the great barrels, half-full of a brown liquid that they could not define. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... know—it's awfully hard to define it—but something strong and immediate. There's something strange in Maurice's presence—indefinable—but I couldn't do without it. I agree that it seems to put one's mind to sleep. But when we're alone I miss nothing; it seems awfully rich, almost ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... bit of ivory belongs to something which we do not know and which its owner will at once make it his business to conceal. In order to trace the owner, we should at least be able to define the nature ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... that he was too long. She was, however, patient by nature, and willing to bear much, if only some little might come to her in return. What of social comfort she had expected to obtain from her churchgoings I cannot quite define; but I think that she had unconsciously expected something from them in that direction, and that she ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... which this exhibition created in me, and Lord Gower laughed, and said, "You perhaps do not know who it is?" Indeed I did not. Je define seulement que sa figure n'est pas laide. His chevelure was like that which I see in a picture of the grand Conde. If there is anything of that hid under this disguise je lui passerai cette singularity and yet, if ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue |
