"Indefinite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proportion to its size than the pure woolen yarn. This feature, combined with its lustrous quality, gives it a pre-eminent position in the manufacture of fine coatings, dress goods, etc. The method of arranging the fibers in the formation of a woolen yarn is such as to produce a strand with a somewhat indefinite and fibrous surface, which destroys to a large degree the clearness of the pattern effect in the woven piece. In the construction of worsted yarn the fibers are arranged in a parallel relationship ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... George is away and nothing definite can be done. I asked 'em when the conference would be called and they said that was indefinite. Then I said where? And they thought somewhere in Ottawa. Why, all that fellow Foster made was a speech. That's all. A speech! Now what the h—— good will a speech do to help me and help the rest of us manufacturers ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... I inquired the particulars of this remarkable dream. He said it was in my department—it related to the water; that he seemed to be in a singular and indescribable vessel, but always the same, and that he was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore; that he had had this singular dream preceding the firing on Sumter, the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, Stone River, Vicksburg, Wilmington, etc. General Grant remarked, with some emphasis ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... gratification, and yet in its radical sense it was thoroughly so. He delighted in it because of the benefit it brought himself. He had long felt a void within his heart, a want or craving for something, something indefinite, intangible certainly—something that no sensual indulgence could appease, that no light pleasure could distract, and now all at once it seemed to him that long-felt vacuum was filling up. A something, just as ethereal as his craving had been, was creeping into his heart. It felt ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night, In one black mystery two void mysteries blends; The stray stars, whose innumerable light Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends; The stream of time, known by birth-bursting ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... I don't know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But it's something quite indefinite—hard to think, hard to comprehend. I'd like to howl with laughter and I don't know why ... to shriek, and I ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence." The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. "Back east—" the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture "back east at my ancestral home—" Mahaffy snorted harshly. "You don't believe I had an ancestral home?—well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... directly the marriage was accomplished. Domini, who had a native hatred of everything that savoured of ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedition, and would gladly have gone out into the desert with but one tent, Batouch and a servant to do the cooking. But the journey was to be long and indefinite, an aimless wandering through the land of liberty towards the south, without fixed purpose or time of returning. She knew nothing of what was necessary for such a journey, and tired of ceaseless argument, and too much occupied with joy to burden herself with detail, at ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... leaves one party protesting and complaining. He always speaks of "right" and "rights." He is forced to acquiesce. The result is right in the only sense which is real and true. It is more to the purpose to note that an indefinite series of consequences follow, and that they create or condition rights which are real and just. Many persons now argue against property that it began in force and therefore has no existence in right and justice. They might say the same of marriage or religion. Some do say ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the most powerful telescopes and in the most favoring circumstances, the features of Venus's surface are difficult to see, and generally extremely difficult. They consist of faint shadowy markings, indefinite in outline, and so close to the limit of visibility that great uncertainty exists not only as to their shape and their precise location upon the planet, but even as to their actual existence. No two observers have represented them exactly alike in drawings ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... also used to denote an action that happened sometime in the past; as, I finished my work. As no definite time is specified, this is called the /perfect indefinite. It corresponds to the ordinary use of the English ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... transparent colourless bodies of indefinite and changing shape, and having a central brighter portion, the nucleus with a still brighter dot therein the nucleolus— the ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... into the hundreds have been negotiated between individual nations, but almost all contain that fatal reservation of questions of "honor and vital interests." Honor and vital interests—could any words be more vague and indefinite? Are these not the very cases which interested nations are least competent to decide? A complete answer to that silly reservation is found in our hundred years' peace with Great Britain. As John W. Foster, that keen student of our diplomatic history, has said, "The United States ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... had gone abroad to Berlin, where Thornton proposed to work for an indefinite time. It seemed to him that he should accomplish more than one object, by carrying on his work in Europe; he could insensibly divide himself and his wife from the Ellwell connection. All went sweetly for his first months; he had begun to regard his marriage as an idyl slipped in between pages of ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... that we are not obliged to grant to our author an indefinite lapse of ages for the sake of bringing all his higher principles into action. One of the latest events in the geological history of the earth was a great submersion of the land, by which "terrestrial animal life was extensively, if not universally, destroyed"; ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... have no wish to forget those who have any claim upon me, and shall be glad of the good wishes of R——when he can express them in person, which it seems will be at some very indefinite date. I shall perhaps essay a speech or two in the House when I return, but I am not ambitious of a parliamentary career, which is of all things the most degrading and unthankful. If I could by my own efforts inculcate ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... rich in minerals, and of considerable fertility. At no time did the whole of this vast tract—a thousand miles long by eight or nine hundred broad—form a single state or monarchy. Rather, for the most part, was it divided up among an indefinite number of states, or rather of tribes, some of them herdsmen, others hunters or fishermen, very jealous of their independence, and frequently at war one with another. Among the various tribes there was a certain community of race, a resemblance of physical ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... jogged, the other three men presently came to the conclusion that the Russian was right; and starting afresh, upon this assumption, they instituted a further and still closer search for their own spoor, eventually finding certain faint and indefinite indentations in the carpet of withered leaves which they agreed must be their own footprints. Following these faint indications as well as they could, they now pushed forward eagerly; for Sir Reginald had by this time become ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... up my freedom for an indefinite time," she thought, "in order that William may see Cassandra here at his ease. He's not the courage to manage it without my help—he's too much of a coward to tell me openly what he wants. He hates the notion of a public breach. He wants to ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... affection may appear as a lameness in one limb, from indefinite cause, succeeding to some sudden exertion and attended by a dusky-brown color of the membranes of the eye and nose and some wincing when the last ribs are struck. The severe forms come on after one or two days of rest on a full ration, when the animal has been taken ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... education was obtained at a village school house. When he was in his thirteenth year his parents removed to Ohio, and the lad remained with them until his eighteenth year, when he left home with a somewhat indefinite idea of doing something for himself, although possessing neither money nor friends to aid him in his start in life. Until the year 1864, he wandered from place to place, turning his hand to various employments, but was dissatisfied with them all, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... fulfils neither your own wishes nor the demands of your relations, for mine is an uncertain existence, without home, hearth or possessions. But if you think you can persuade your Grandmother, we will be betrothed, and I will remain here until—for an indefinite time. A separation now would be like a bad comedy, in which the unprofitable role is yours, at which Raisky, when he hears of it, will be the first to laugh. I warn you again now, as I did before. Send your reply to the address ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... could become great and strong by individual effort alone, and without the guiding and sustaining hands of statecraft and financial genius gripping the rudder of the ship of state. They will not listen to the voice of experience; they cannot be intimidated; they cannot be deceived for an indefinite number of years; if the established order seems to them unfair, unjust or illiberal, they have little respect for tradition ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... question to be asked by a bride of ten weeks' standing! She had hardly been above a month with her husband in her new house, and she was now asking permission to leave it, and to leave him also, for an indefinite number of months—perhaps for ever. But she showed no excitement as she made her request. There was neither sorrow, nor regret, nor hope in her face. She had not put on half the animation which she had once assumed in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the young man. She gazed wistfully at his flushed, excited features, in which pain at being so unexpectedly torn from the bosom of a family he had always deemed his own, was fearfully struggling with a wild and indefinite delight at finding himself suddenly relieved from a load he had long found so grievous to be borne. Interpreting the latter expression with jealous affection, she bent her face to her bosom, and retreated in silence among her companions ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the existence of God may be attempted in three ways: we may argue the existence of a supreme cause either by starting from a definite experience (the special constitution and order of the sense-world, that is, its purposiveness), or from an indefinite experience (any existence whatever), or, finally, abstracting from all experience, from mere concepts a priori. But neither the empirical nor the transcendent nor the intermediate line of thought ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... purpose are not pierced with the usual holes for the escape of water. The receptacles are non-porous and may be placed on tables and columns, or they can be employed in halls and corridors without the slightest risk of injury. The fibre is perfectly clean to handle, odourless, and remains sweet for an indefinite period. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... find, on experiment, that they have gold buried in their soil, if they will but dig deep enough to obtain it. The law gives a man the ownership of the soil for an indefinite distance from the surface, but few seem to realize that there is another farm below the one they are cultivating, which is quite as valuable as the one on the surface, if ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... done very wrong in permitting such a thing. I know just how it will be. Mr. Thorn and Mr. Stackpole will make indefinite voyages of discovery round Mrs. Decatur's rooms, and then, having a glimmering perception that the light of Miss Ringgan's eyes is in another direction, they will sheer off; and you will presently see them come sailing blandly in, one after the other, and cast anchor for the evening; ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... therefore, devolve upon the powers who signed the Paris treaty of 1856 to discuss and define those sentences which were left open and indefinite there, and to come to an agreement with Russia, if this is possible, as I hope ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... by men of science. The improved treatment of the insane has been one consequence of its reception. The husbanding of mental power, through a bodily regime, is a no less important application. Instead of supposing that mind is something indefinite, elastic, inexhaustible,—a sort of perpetual motion, or magician's bottle, all expenditure, and no supply,—we now find that every single throb of pleasure, every smart of pain, every purpose, thought, argument, imagination, must have ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... But still all is indefinite. Yet, from the persistent assaults of the enemy it may be inferred that Grant is inspired with the conviction that it is necessary for him to capture Vicksburg immediately, and before Johnston collects an army in his rear. A few days ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... have acquired are supreme in this field. Ray Cummings and Captain Meek need no introduction. And Harl Vincent is a notable addition whose stories of "Indefinite Extension" and interplanetary travel are well ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Gwendolen, having taken a rapid observation of Grandcourt, made a brief graphic description of him to an indefinite hearer.) ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... considered, for instance, that the surest sign of our progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to capital punishments. He believed, not in the ultimate perfection of mankind, but in their progressive perfectibility. He thought that improvement was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under Republican than under Monarchical forms. "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what hands ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. That "eaten by a bear" is intolerable. It is grotesque. And then I thought what an inadequate language the English is for compact expression. It would not answer to put upon the stone simply "eaten"; for that is indefinite, and requires explanation: it might mean eaten by a cannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. How simple the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Doctrine of indefinite perfectibility Ideologues Men were only to be governed by fear and interest Moliere's—"I pardon you, but you shall pay me for this!" Police, catch only fools Trifles often decide the greatest events Two levers for moving men,—interest and fear Well-bred ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... delusion. "I am none the less convinced," he added, "that you will soon reach a crisis, will overcome all obstacles and attain the nowadays almost giant's goal that you have set before you." This goal, for that matter, was very indefinite, and was to the general effect that I intended to make myself strongly felt, and bring about great changes in the intellectual world; of what ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... with the tendency of nature; then preceding knowledge will lend interest to objects of ever-increasing complexity and of lofty significance. The culture thus created ensures the possibility of an indefinite continuation in the successive evolution of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... loneliness. Of the interest popularly believed to be indispensable to a barrister he could command none, and, with more than the average amount of ability, the opportunity for displaying it was denied him; so that when he was suddenly called upon to leave England for an indefinite time, he was able to abandon prospects that were not brilliant without any ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... been of such inestimable value to me in this business. Claudia, but that I had him with me in Havana, I should not now be by your side. But that I had him with me, I should have plunged myself headlong into two law cases that would have detained me in Havana for an indefinite time. But that I had him with me to restrain, to warn, and to counsel I should have prosecuted the smugglers for their share in the abduction of the negroes, and I should have sued the owners for the recovery of them. But I yielded ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY OF STANDARDS.—Cooeperation in collecting and comparing the results of motion study and time study everywhere will do much to assist toward more ultimate determination of elements. At the present time the problems that management submits to psychology are too indefinite and cover too large a field to be attacked successfully. Cooeperation ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... is so indefinite!" Pauline broke in. "And I can't see—Father is Uncle Paul's only brother! If I were rich, and Hilary were not and needed things, I would want ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... view of evolution, which we find in some recent and reputable works (such as Professor Geddes and Thomson's "Evolution," 1911), calls for consideration. In the ordinary Darwinian view the variations of the young from their parents are indefinite, and spread in all directions. They may continue to occur for ages without any of them proving an advantage to their possessors. Then the environment may change, and a certain variation may prove an advantage, and be continuously and increasingly selected. Thus ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... creature, that she had been in the days of Good Mrs Brown. In a word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about Florence at all, was to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he could do no better than preserve her image in his mind as something precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite—indefinite in all but its power of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an angel's hand from ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of great things by little experiences. The history of ages is but an indefinite repetition of the history of hours. The record of a soul is but a multiple of the story of a moment. The Recording Angel writes in the Great Book in no rainbow tints; his pen is dipped in no colours ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... For a long time it has been the "spook science" per se, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity sui generis, as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses," constituting indeed ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... it, my heart would have made a choice worthy alike of my family and of myself. They were eager to impose the Marquis de Montespan upon me as a husband; and albeit he was far from possessing those mental perfections and that cultured charm which alone make an indefinite period of companionship endurable, I was not slow to reconcile myself to a temperament which, fortunately, was very variable, and which thus served to console me on the morrow for what had ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... has been forbidden in some territories, it has been permitted in others. Slave territory and free territory have alike been acquired by treaty, and Slave States and Free States alike admitted to the Union. The action of Congress is therefore no precedent for absolute slavery prohibition or indefinite slavery extension. Having never been exercised but by way of compromise it commits the government to neither extreme and is not a conclusive precedent for the constitutional power of Congress over ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... to make arrangements beforehand to gain access to the old customers. They know him and they are always glad to see him. But if there is a chance that the customer may be out of town, or if it is during a busy season, he telephones ahead to make sure. He prefers indefinite to definite appointments, especially if he has to see two or three people during the course of a morning or an afternoon; that is, he would rather have an appointment to come some time between ten and eleven or between three and four than to have one for exactly half past ten or a quarter of ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... is another source of contamination; this is a very indefinite term, to which formerly many false and exaggerated properties of causing specific diseases were attributed. It is now, however, recognized to mean simply the air of sewers, generally not differing very greatly from common air, containing a certain proportion of marsh gas, carbonic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... engagement was so indefinite, that they had hardly any hope of being married for at least two years, perhaps added a little to the gene of these meetings. The instant they were separated he began to long to see her alone again. Daphne felt sure she must be really in love because she took comparatively little interest in anything ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... are soluble, like sugar in water, shows that the molecules of sugar find a lodging place in the spaces or pores between the molecules of water, in much the same way that pebbles find lodgment in the chinks of the coal in a coal scuttle. An indefinite quantity of sugar cannot be dissolved in a given quantity of liquid, because after a certain amount of sugar has been dissolved all the pores become filled, and there is no available molecular space. The remainder of the sugar settles ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... this process cannot be kept up indefinitely. After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to the task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process is not dependent upon the prolongation of the existence of any one individual. Reproduction of other forms of life goes on in continuous sequence. And though, as the geological record shows, not merely individuals but also species die out, the life ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... more satisfactory theory is a doubtful question. While men like Lydgate, Bokenam, and Caxton generally profess to have reproduced the content of their sources and make some mention of the original writers, their comment is confused and indefinite; they do not recognize any compelling necessity for faithfulness; and one sometimes suspects that they excelled their predecessors only in articulateness. As compared with Layamon and Orm they show a development scarcely worthy of a lapse of more than two centuries. There is perhaps, as time ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... usually dislike science. Now, as the churches maintain themselves chiefly by the influence and support of women, may they not continue to maintain themselves indefinitely in this way? Is it not possible, to mention a special case, that the Roman Catholic Church may exist for an indefinite length of time simply as a provider of the kind of authority and the kind of emotion that women desire, and that they cannot obtain from science? Mr.——, a friend of mine, considers religion absolutely necessary to women, and to many men, not that he at all considers ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... tomb of the royal friend of Solomon had evidently been to provide for the journey; and that he took precious stones in preference to gold and silver signified a journey indefinite ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... what not, before he started for Macedonia, B.C. 49,[170] and the disinclination which moved him at once to proclaim himself a tyrant. Dictator was the title which he first assumed, as being temporary, Roman, and in a certain degree usual. He was Dictator for an indefinite period, annually, for ten years, and, when he died, had been designated Dictator for life. He had already been, for the last two years, named "Imperator" for life; but that title—which I think to have had a military sound in men's ears, though it may, as Mommsen says, imply ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... all this better than I could explain it. When we reached the Narossara River we left the wagon and pushed on afoot. We were to be gone an indefinite time, and we left N'gombe Brown and his outfit very well fixed. Along the Narossara ran a pleasant shady strip of high jungle; the country about was clear and open; but most important of all, a white man of education and personal ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... such cases is that it marks out, more clearly than the pluperfect would, the fact that the action of the principal verb and the action of the dependent verb are practically contemporaneous. In our passage if quaesitum esset had been written it would have indicated merely that at some quite indefinite time after the question was put the answer was given. Cf. N.D. 1, 60 auctore ... obscurior. — CUR ... VITA: a hint at suicide, which the ancients thought a justifiable mode of escape from troubles, particularly those of ill health or old age. See n. on 73 vetat ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... is to say, he recalled clearly all that had led up to that vicious blow from out of the darkness which had found his jaw with such surprising accuracy; and he was visited by one or two rather indefinite memories of subsequent events. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... as he wrote down the titles of the books in his catalogue, to M. Destange's dictation, "this is all more or less indefinite; but it is a good step forward. I am bound to discover the solution of one at least of these exciting problems: is M. Destange an accomplice of Arsene Lupin's? Does he see him now? Are there any papers relating to the building of the three houses? ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... a disguised hand, and although, owing to the fact of his being a millionnaire, he was in the habit of receiving anonymous communications, sometimes abusive, but generally begging him for money, this particular letter filled him with an indefinite presentiment of evil. A cold chill ran through his heart, and ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Bat made an indefinite sort of noise down in his throat; perhaps the burglar fancied it indicated interest; at any rate ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... to analyze her feelings toward Casey Dunne, but the result was indefinite. She enjoyed his companionship, looked forward to it, remembered his words, his tricks of manner and speech. But these things, she told ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... respect of inward experience, and to this class belongs the better part of the evidence: the testimony may be truthful, yet the testifier utterly self-deceived! How am I to know the thing as he says he knows it? How am I to judge of it? There is king David:—Poetry!—old poetry!—and in the most indefinite language in the world! Doubtless he is little versed in the utterance of the human soul, who does not recognize in many of the psalms a cry as true as ever came from depth of pain or height of deliverance; ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... corn-stacks were big and golden as they went by, an army of white geese marched aside in braggart protest. Ursula was light as a white ball of down. Skrebensky drifted beside her, indefinite, his old from loosened, and another self, grey, vague, drifting out as from a bud. They ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... prowling about the docks, chiefly at dusk; 'who make strange motions to you, and beckon you to one side, as if they had some state secret to disclose, intimately connected with the weal of the commonwealth. They nudge you with an elbow full of indefinite hints and intimations; they glitter upon you an eye like a Jew's or a pawnbroker's; they dog you like Italian assassins. But if the blue coat of a policeman chances to approach, how quickly they strive to look ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... State the judge can not say what he thinks about the case. In other words, the charge must be indefinite. In England and the Federal courts in this country, the judge may legally express his opinion as to how the case should be decided, but that is as far as he can go. The distinction is a relic of the old days of the jury system when the judges would imprison the jury ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... occur to the Middle Ages; therefore, as soon as men came into existence that were not serfs and were not nobles, they had to struggle for status by organizing themselves into associations that should come to be acknowledged members of the great feudal hierarchy; for indefinite and negative freedom was not allowed to any person in those days; if you had not status you did not exist except ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has just published a very neat little volume of poems, we feel the necessity of employing the indefinite rather than the definite article. He is a, and by no means the, William Ellery Channing. He is only the son* of the great essayist deceased. . . It may be said in his favor that nobody ever heard of him. Like an honest woman, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... operation, instead of the shorter and easier way of Lake Champlain, was meant, no doubt, to prevent the French army from escaping up the Lakes to Detroit and the other wilderness posts, where it might have protracted the war for an indefinite time; while the plan adopted, if successful, would make its capture certain. The plan was a critical one. Three armies advancing from three different points, hundreds of miles apart, by routes full of difficulty, and with no possibility of intercommunication, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... disturbed and modified in innumerable minor ways. Changed conditions or habits tend to produce a general "plasticity" of type, the "indefinite variability" thus caused being apparently irrelevant to the change, if any, in the individual.[14] A vast number of variations of structure have certainly arisen independently of similar parental modification as the preliminary. Whatever first caused these ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... the employees of private capitalism. Unemployment in fact is at least as old as the days of Queen Elizabeth, when the great Poor Law of 1601 was passed to cope with it. Whilst labour was scattered and the artisan still frequently his own master, unemployment was indefinite and relatively imperceptible. When masses of men and women came to be employed in factories, the closing of the factory made unemployment obvious to those on the spot. But two generations ago Lancashire and Yorkshire were far away from London, and the nation ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... were not yet over. The first day's voyage was delightful, the lake calm, the scenery lovely. At times the mountains on the west coast were not discernible, and the lake appeared of indefinite width. Sometimes they passed directly under precipitous cliffs of fifteen hundred feet in height, rising abruptly out of the water, while from the deep clefts in the rocks evergreens of every tint appeared, and wherever a rivulet burst forth it was ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... indefinite, because it cannot be determined through the existence itself of the existing thing, or by its efficient cause, which necessarily gives the existence of the thing, but ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... weight of oil-cake, or to twelve pounds weight of hay; yet, it is a fact that a horse would speedily die if confined to a purely albuminous diet, whereas hay is capable of supporting the animal's life for an indefinite period. ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... heart ever fresh and ever warm. We don't care if the whole human race, from the Ascidians to Darwin himself, assail us and fiercely thrust us once more into short jackets and knickerbockers, provided they allow an indefinite vacation in a daisy field. The joy of childhood is said to be vague. It was all satisfying to us once, and we do not intend to allow it to waste in unconscious effervescence among the gaudier though less gratifying delights ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... vague and the general cf. Ribot: "Evolution of General Ideas," Open Court Co., 1899, p. 32: "The sole permissible formula is this: Intelligence progresses from the indefinite to the definite. If 'indefinite' is taken as synonymous with general, it may be said that the particular does not appear at the outset, but neither does the general in any exact sense: the vague would be more appropriate. In other words, no sooner has the intellect ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... rising to 1,640 millions of years for archaean and 1,200 millions for Algonkian time. Becker, applying the same method, obtained results rising to quite incredible periods: from 1,671 to 11,470 millions of years. Becker maintained that original lead rendered the determinations indefinite. The more recent results of Mr. A. Holmes support the conclusion that "original" lead may be present and may completely ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... at several distant observatories. Disturbances on the registers of Zikawei (China), Mauritius, Utrecht, and Greenwich have been attributed to the Japanese earthquake, but the times at which they commenced are too indefinite to allow of any determination of the surface-velocity of the earth-waves to ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... of indefiniteness on the part of such reasoning is merely a practical outcome of the theoretical considerations adduced in Chapter V. For as we there saw that the ratio between the known and the unknown is in this case wholly indefinite, it follows that any symbols derived from the region of the known—even though such symbols be the highest generalities which the latter region affords—must be wholly indefinite when projected into the region ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... been marvellously prospered, and if not rich they were powerful, and were spreading toward the indefinite and unexplored West. The Seven Years' War had developed their military capacity. It was New England troops which had taken Louisburg. The charm of British invincibility had been broken by Braddock's defeat. The Americans had learned self-reliance in their wars with the Indians, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... girls, who throng into the dancing room, with faces beaming with the desire, and forms bounding with the anticipation of pleasure. In France, you must conceive the room to be superbly lighted up, and the walls covered with large mirrors, which, in their indefinite multiplication, suffer nothing, however ludicrous, to escape them. The folding doors slowly open, and there begins to hobble in, (as quick as their advanced years will permit them,) unnumbered forms of aged ladies and gentlemen, intermixed with some possessing ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... A point is not included in the definition of a line in general: for it is manifest that in a line of indefinite length, and in a circular line, there is no point, save potentially. Euclid defines a finite straight line: and therefore he mentions a point in the definition, as the limit in the definition of that which is limited. Unity is the measure of number: wherefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... born within a stone's throw of the Paris fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to find it at all. Folly's original name had been—but why give it away? She was one of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt—unless one is bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red stags. Lady Blemley's house-party was not bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... immeasurably remote—lastly how loud, how solemn is the call upon all those who hear and who can obey it, to labour more and more in the spirit of these principles, to give themselves, if it may be, clearly and wholly to that work. It is dangerous to put indefinite thoughts, instincts, longings, into language which is necessarily determinate. I cannot trace the line of my own future life, but I hope and pray it may not always be where it is.... Ireland, Ireland! that cloud in the west, that coming storm, the minister ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to the planet. It was not only a peculiar but a delicious sensation, and but for strict orders which were issued that the electrical ships should be immediately prepared for departure, our entire company might have remained for an indefinite period enjoying this new kind of athletic exercise in a world where gravitation had become so humble that it could be ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... its parts, is the resultant of innumerable motions, a composition of forces. As such, each obeys the first law of motion, to wit, indefinite continuance of action until interfered with. This is a modification of Newton's "law of continuance," which, with the other primary laws of motion, must be taken as the foundation of biology as well ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... adopted in sober earnest methods forecasted at rare intervals in the past by adventurous explorers, and employ musical notes not as elements in any harmonic scheme but purely as points of colour, exactly as if the definite notes were mere clangs of indefinite instruments like cymbals or triangles. Wordless vocal tone, moreover, of several different types, is pressed into the same service. Varied tonal and harmonic colour, and structural freedom: those are the two battle-cries of the young generation. Little by little the old tonalities, based as they ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... matters of choice immediately concerning the scholars. In the following summer—we are still in '48—a day-school was held in the room, to which the younger boys who were wanted in the factory at uncertain times and for indefinite periods, were sent when not employed—drafted from school to work, and from work to school, as the necessities of the factory required. The annual cost of this day-school is L.130; the total ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... one thinks of, a pain, a fear, draws the thought another way. It was so with Egremont. The two mysterious callers and the annoying scene at the railway station plagued him successively, and for background to them all was a shadow of indefinite apprehension. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... covenant. The terms of the covenant must, therefore, define the designed extent of the objects of his death. If all mankind are included in the covenant,—if the Surety of the covenant represented, in this eternal transaction, the whole human race, then the atonement of Christ must have been indefinite. But if the children of the covenant, as is admitted, are only a given specified number of the human family, then must the atonement of the Mediator be restricted to them. There seems no evading this inference. To give ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... tinged, rarely deep pink, solitary, 3 to 8 in. across, deliciously fragrant, floating. Calyx of 4 sepals, green outside; petals of indefinite number, overlapping in many rows, and gradually passing into an indefinite number of stamens; outer row of stamens with petaloid filaments and short anthers, the inner yellow stamens with slender filaments and elongated anthers; carpels of indefinite ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... to divine a compliment in this indefinite speech. She said: "Well, I don't see myself ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... will go through without complaint,—were it not for the uncertainty, or worse than uncertainty, which hung over the nature and length of our voyage. Here we were, in a little vessel, with a small crew, on a half-civilized coast, at the ends of the earth, and with a prospect of remaining an indefinite period, two or three years at the least. When we left Boston we supposed that it was to be a voyage of eighteen months, or two years, at most; but upon arriving on the coast, we learned something more of the trade, and found that in the scarcity ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... indefinite locality in Africa east by south," I replied. "I can't place it to within three ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... his brain, man-trained by his long battle against a man, drank in the lessons of the wild country with astonishing rapidity. Had it not been for intervention from the Great Enemy, he might have continued for an indefinite period ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of thought was taking shape in his brain, as yet rather indefinite and undeveloped, but quite engaging as a matter ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Freedmen's Bureau was abolished, General Howard resigned from the presidency of the University to enter the army. Not desiring to accept his resignation immediately, however, the trustees granted him an indefinite leave of absence.[517] At the same meeting it was decided to revive the office of Vice-President, which had been discontinued and John M. Langston, then Dean of the Howard Law School, was elected to that position. "It had been hoped," says one, "that the experiment of placing an able colored man ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... the states for ratification. The articles of confederation had never contemplated an occasion for such a peculiar assertion of sovereignty. "A great and independent fund of revenue," said Madison, "is passing into the hands of a single body of men, who can raise troops to an indefinite number, and appropriate money to their support for an indefinite period of time.... Yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm has been sounded," even by men most zealous for state rights and most suspicious of Congress. Within a few months this argument was ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... with a gardener in the neighbourhood, who, two or three times a week, supplements the penury of my acre and a half of stony ground, providing me with vegetables raised in a better soil. I explain to him my urgent need of Moles, an indefinite number of moles. Battling daily with trap and spade against the importunate excavator who uproots his crops, he is in a better position than any one else to procure for me that which I regard for the moment as more precious ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... hoped, in case of the success of Mr. Lincoln in the canvass then pending, to be able to establish in the War Department a Bureau of Militia, which would prove a most valuable auxiliary to his work. His ideas were never vague or indefinite. Means always presented themselves to him, when he contemplated ends. The following were the duties of the proposed bureau, which may serve as a guide to some future reformer: I copy from his own exquisitely neat and clear memorandum, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... you do go, although but slowly; and in both cases we must take the foul wind with the fair. If a ship were to furl her sails until the wind again was favourable, her voyage would be protracted to an indefinite time; and, if an author were to wait until he again felt in a humour, it would take a ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wrong," continued Dashall; "it is a Corporation, which was founded in the year 1515 by Henry VIII. and consists of a Master, four Wardens, eighteen Elder Brothers, in whom is vested the direction of the Company, and an indefinite number of younger Brothers; for any sea-faring man may be admitted into the Society by that name, but without any part of the controul of its concerns. The elder Brethren are usually selected from the most experienced commanders in the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... vibrant with excitement. "Spokesmen of the Gens, make sure that every individual member of your Gens is fully equipped with flying clothing including belts and ovoids—prepared for an indefinite stay outside on the roof of the world! Get your people out swiftly, keeping them in formation! Keep about you those people of Dalis whom I sent you, and understand before you break contact with your Beryls, that instructions received from these people come from me! In turn, after you have quitted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... and another, flanking it, with glass cases, containing cigars, pipes, and tobacco, while the centre of the room was given up to four or five small restaurant tables. The staff of Jovita was no longer limited to Sanchicha, but had been augmented by a little old man of indefinite antiquity who resembled an Aztec idol, and an equally old Mexican, who looked not unlike a brown-tinted and veined tobacco leaf himself, and might have stood for a sign. But the genius of the place, its omnipresent and all-pervading goddess, was Jovita! Smiling, joyous, indefatigable in suavity ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... migrations of the last half-century we have in the United States the greatest variety of social types ever brought so closely together. An opportunity is offered either for the perpetuation of each racial type by inbreeding, with the prospect of an indefinite stratification of society, or for the amalgamation of all cultural and racial elements into a homogeneous whole, and the development of a race more versatile and adaptable than any the world has yet known. The general tendency will undoubtedly ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... to go to the hotel; once more that vague, indefinite fear assailed me and again I knocked. And now my fear was becoming a panic. I had my latch-key in my pocket, so very quietly ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... dark that a black or blue cannot tell firmly in the midst of them; with the total absence of all harshness, from the outlines of objects melting into their adjacent grounds, or assuming an importance after emerging from a mass of indefinite corresponding hues. As he has a mass of shadow with a mass of light, so he has an accumulation of warm colours in opposition to a congregation of cold—every combination introduced conducing to the great principles of breadth. When such is the plan upon which a ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... suffixes seem to be commonly used by the Bontoc Igorot in verbal formations. The tense of a verb standing alone seems always indefinite; the context alone tells whether the present, past, or ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... and perpetuation of slavery. The North passively, defensively stood ready to protect her free territory, but not to interfere with slavery. And there was no day during the first two years of the war when the North would not have cheerfully granted the slave institution an indefinite lease of legal existence upon the condition ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... an inner one, namely, that the child train himself to observe; that he be led to make comparisons between objects, to form judgments, to reason and to decide; and it is in the indefinite repetition of this exercise of attention and of intelligence that ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... upon his back; yea, of God was made, that is, reputed, sin for us (Isa 53; 2 Cor 5:21). Were we under the curse of the law by reason of sin? Christ was made under the law, and bare the curse thereof to redeem (Gal 4:4, 3:13; Rom 3:24). Had sin set us at an indefinite distance from God? Christ has become, by the price of his redeeming blood, a reconciler of man to God again (Col 1:20). Were we by sin subject to death? Christ died the death to set us free therefrom (Rom 6:23). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... existed in the past and as it still exists in many places; it will also discuss the rural school as it ought to be. It is assumed that, although consolidation is spreading rapidly, the one-room rural school as an institution will continue to exist for an indefinite time. Under favorable conditions it probably should continue to exist; for, as we shall see, it has many excellent features which are ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... consist. Tho this principle does not run through all the powers delegated to the Union; yet it pervades and governs those on which the efficacy of the rest depends: except as to the rule of apportionment, the United States have an indefinite discretion to make requisitions for men and money; but they have no authority to raise either by regulations extending to the individual citizens of America. The consequence of this is that, tho in theory their resolutions concerning those objects are laws constitutionally binding on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... elements of the mental constitution—are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentiality and range of action. It is different with the lower animals. They are there comparatively definite in their power and restricted in their application. The reader is familiar with what are called instincts in some of the humbler species, that is, an uniform and unprompted tendency ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... French soil, and Michel Chrestien died for other doctrines than his own. His Federation scheme was more dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the Republican propaganda; it was more feasible and less extravagant than the hideous doctrines of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young madcaps who assume the character of heirs of the Convention. All who knew the noble plebeian wept for him; there is not one of them but remembers, and often remembers, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... place, and the conversation merged into those indefinite channels necessitated by the presence of servants. The dinner, simple though it was, was perfect,—iced consomme, a lobster mayonnaise, cold cutlets and asparagus. Presently the little movable sideboard, with its dainty collection of cold dishes ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it acts on grains of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as to distribute them in geometrical figures that are always the same, according to the pitch,—quite regular when the combination is a true chord, and indefinite when the sounds are dissonant,—I say that music is an art conceived in ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... this sole speech remained: "That maiden mine!" - Debarred from due description then did I Perceive the indefinite phrase could yet define. ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... precisely original in this inquiry; but, put by another, and in so bald a form, it undoubtedly came upon a man somewhat stark and hard. The two men stood talking on a street corner, where they had met by chance, and their conversation here came to an end. V.V.'s reply to Sam's question was indefinite, to say the least of it. He merely observed that he must be getting on back to the office; adding that he didn't like to be absent for any length of time just now. But he didn't say at all, by that annoying habit of reserve he had, whether or not he would agree to write the articles! That ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... determinate being. Since, then, the Divine Being is undetermined, and contains in Himself the full perfection of being, it cannot be that He acts by a necessity of His nature, unless He were to cause something undetermined and indefinite in being: and that this is impossible has been already shown (Q. 7, A. 2). He does not, therefore, act by a necessity of His nature, but determined effects proceed from His own infinite perfection according to the determination of His will ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... asked Catrina. She was unaware of the thought of murder that was in her own heart. Nevertheless, the desire—indefinite, shapeless—was there to kill this woman, who was tall and beautiful, whom Paul ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman |
