"Indefiniteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same master. Both are of that class of things which mark eras in a mind's history, and open a new door which no man can shut. Of the two, I think Niagara is the most impressive, perhaps because those aerial elements of foam and spray give that vague and dreamy indefiniteness of outline which seems essential in the sublime. For this reason, while Niagara is equally impressive in the distance, it does not lose on the nearest approach—it is always mysterious, and, therefore, stimulating. Those varying spray wreaths, rising ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... therefore, was taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There, also, it was taught by symbols. The vagueness of symbolism, capable of many interpretations, reached what the palpable and conventional creed could not. Its indefiniteness acknowledged the abstruseness of the subject: it treated that mysterious subject mystically: it endeavored to illustrate what it could not explain; to excite an appropriate feeling, if it could not develop an adequate idea; and to make the image a mere subordinate conveyance for the conception, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Hill Proper," and "Wing's Corners." The second of these, being the territory most under scrutiny in Part III, might again be divided into the territory "up by the Meeting House," and that "down by Mizzen-Top." The difficulty one experiences in naming these groupings of houses is a token of the indefiniteness of these divisions. They are accentuated by events occurring in the more recent history of the Hill. The older history which shapes the consciousness of the community does not know these neighborhood divisions. Yet the change of ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... feeling are indefinite, and must depend, to some extent, on the subjective interpretation of the individual. All that we can do is to avail ourselves of the most adequate and intelligible terms that we can find. But, admitting the necessary indefiniteness of the terms, it may be asked whether it can really be meant, as a general proposition, that the praise of others and our approbation of ourselves, on reflexion, attach to acts in which we subordinate our own good to the greater good ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... ask my readers, as often I have asked myself, a question: Have these modern girls not lost much of the tender, waiting, indefiniteness of youth? I have seen so many among them who, to me at least, appear at odds with the world, and their passionate, unbalanced and over-excited natures. Their faces at sixteen, fifteen, and even at fourteen years, already ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... people was not well adapted for the particular task. If the only question to-day were whether we always rendered ourselves intelligible to her, she might say with some show of reason that we did not. She might have grumbled, as Bismarck used to do, over our apparent indefiniteness. But that indefiniteness in policy was only apparent. Its form was due to the habit of mind which was, what it always has been and probably always will be, the habit of mind of the people of these ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... detail which flashed more incisively than others on the inward eye, some influence, or feature, or characteristic of the great mother. The various epithets of Demeter, the local variations of her story, its incompatible incidents, bear witness to the manner of its generation. They illustrate that indefiniteness which is characteristic of Greek mythology, a theology with no central authority, no link on historic time, liable from the first to an unobserved transformation. They indicate the various, far-distant ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of thirty divisions should be sent abroad before the end of that year. Throughout 1917 this plan remained rather a hope than a definite programme and it was not until early in 1918 that it was officially approved. It was thus of an emergency character and this fact combined with the indefiniteness prevalent during the autumn of 1917 to produce extreme confusion. In July, 1918, an eighty-division programme was adopted and more confusion resulted. Furthermore the entire problem was complicated by the question as to whether or not ships could be found for ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... admirable description which Plotinus gives us of matter (lib. vi., Ennead 3), and of which the following is a paraphrase: "Since matter," says he, "is neither soul, nor intellect, nor life, nor form, nor reason, nor bound, but a certain indefiniteness; nor yet capacity, for what can it produce? Since it is foreign from all these, it cannot merit the appellation of being, but is deservedly called non-entity. Nor yet is it non-entity in the manner ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... of courtesy with you, yes," said he, "but only when it does not interfere with serious things. In this matter there must be no indefiniteness, no chance for misunderstanding. Politeness, between the sexes, means both. I will repeat: in this you must leave me free ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all. The elliptical form of this composition is seen again in "Death Crowning Innocence" and "The Dweller in the Innermost," and the same expressive indefiniteness and lowness of the colour tones. In the latter effort we have the figure of Conscience, winged, dumb-faced and pensive, seated within a glow of light. On her forehead is the shining star, and in her lap ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after life." * Like nine out of ten men who look back on college he could make no definite estimate of the actual gains from those four years; but it is precisely the indefiniteness, the elusiveness of the college experience which marks its worth. This is not to be reckoned financially by an increase in dollars and cents, or intellectually, by so many added foot-pounds of knowledge. Harvard College was of inestimable ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... little at that; the indefiniteness of the animal's fate had alarmed some of them, and pocket money was scanty. They even cracked a feeble joke or two, in a half-hearted way, but the steady splash and spatter of the rain chilled the fun all out of it, and wet as they were, they huddled together among ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... upon that glitter of the vast surface which is only a reflection of his own glances full of fire. There is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward. What we get—well, we won't talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality—in no other ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... persons on board, our voyage up these wide straits, after entering them at Point de Tour, had, in point of indefiniteness, been something like searching after the locality of the north pole. We wound about among groups of islands and through passages which looked so perfectly in the state of nature that, but for a few ruinous stone ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the Act and the date contemplated and provided preparation. Though the letter was of unusual length it was almost exclusively devoted to these financial questions, and only briefly referred to civil service reform at the conclusion. On that subject his utterances had the same defect of indefiniteness. He described recognized evils, without indicating any practical remedy. Mr. Hayes had been more specific. He had positively declared against the use of official patronage in elections and removed himself ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... which is clinging to the limb of a tree, and if, as the man circles the tree, the squirrel also circles the tree so that he constantly faces the man, when the man has gone completely around the tree, has he gone around the squirrel? Here the indefiniteness lies in the meaning of to "go around." With this indefiniteness remedied, there is no longer any possibility of difference ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... it this title until the period of its final organization by Nicholas V. in 1447. It is difficult to speak with certainty concerning the libraries, whether public or private, supposed to have existed previous to the fifteenth century, both on account of the doubtful authority and indefiniteness of the passages in which they are mentioned, and the custom which so readily obtained in those dark ages of dignifying with the name of library every petty collection of insignificant codices. But ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... transferred to time—succession is conceived as extension. (We remark that Plato does away with the above and below in space, as he has done away with the absolute existence of past and future.) The course of time, unless regularly marked by divisions of number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No one saw that this ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... to acknowledge or deny, he was ready to meet the consequences. This Colonel Burr deemed a sort of defiance, and would have felt justified in making it the basis of an immediate message; but, as the communication contained something concerning the indefiniteness of the request; as he believed it rather the offspring of false pride than of reflection; and as he felt the utmost reluctance to proceed to extremities while any other hope remained, his request was repeated in terms more ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people who formerly lived throughout the Mississippi Valley and raised the mounds of that region. It should also be clearly understood that by its use ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... appear to smile good omen through light of gold! And those first winning relations with men, while you are still a stranger, and only the better and the brighter side of their nature is turned to you!... All is yet a delightful, luminous indefiniteness—sensation of streets and of men,—like some beautifully tinted photograph slightly out ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... unpopularity, a rebellion was organized, including almost the whole of the baronage of England, guided by the counsels of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and supported by the citizens of London. The indefiniteness of feudal relations was a constant temptation to kings and other lords to carry their exactions and demands upon their tenants to an unreasonable and oppressive length. Henry I, on his accession in ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Directly the press of to-day passes from that sort of thing to some specific proposal, some implication of principles and beliefs, directly it chooses and selects, then it passes from the miscellaneous to the sectarian, and out of touch with the grey indefiniteness of the general mind. It gives offence here, it perplexes and bores there; no more than the boss politician can the paper of great circulation afford to work consistently for any ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... bed, I touched Auber on the shoulder. He did not move. An intuition, growing till it all but became an idea, and then remaining short of expressibility, unable to perceive even its own indefiniteness—a film for impressions where there is no light—such was the vagueness of my guess concerning the metamorphosis that was taking place. Yet I began to understand that Auber Hurn, the real man, was not there, not on the bed, not in my house at all. It was as if the Person were ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... This indefiniteness of statement and relationship is probably only the opening phase of the new faith. Christianity also began with an extreme neglect of definition. It was not at first anything more than a sect of Judaism. It was only after ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... it is true, but its indefiniteness is the chief element in the value of it. A definite and precise answer, even if one of that character were ready at hand, would be utterly ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... in form by Senators Conkling and Williams and myself. We were a select committee on Tennessee. The propositions were not ours, but we gave form to the amendment. The part relating to "privileges and immunities" came from Mr. Bingham of Ohio. Its euphony and indefiniteness of meaning were a charm to him. When the measure came before the Senate Mr. Sumner opposed its passage and alleged that we proposed to barter the right of the negroes to vote for diminished representation on the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... morning I made a discovery—a small sheet of water, glittering in the sunshine, and I long gazed admiringly on the countless insects and plants about its edges. It was confessedly neither broad nor deep, and a certain tag-rag indefiniteness of outline gave occasion afterwards to envious anti-Prahraners all about to make it out as only a swamp. The little thing had much badgering to endure in this way in Prahran's early progress. Later on, I saw it as a sort of central reserve of the ever-rising Prahran. ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... are present in the highest degree the mystery, indefiniteness, and strangeness which are the marks of romantic art. The period is not strictly mediaeval, for mariners in the Middle Ages did not sail to the south polar regions or lie becalmed in the equatorial ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... genus of Americans abroad comes together with the other genus—with the people who think the most wretched daub that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ——," better far than the most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists—and a discussion arises, as it is sure to do, on the relative merits of Europe and America, then indeed does Greek meet Greek, and, both ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... at the same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content with which nature is satisfied, but something else—I mean to say, what we need, nature ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... upon delusion, because there is no definiteness, no homogeneity, no stability, only different stages somewhere between them and indefiniteness, heterogeneity, and instability. There are no chemical elements. It seems acceptable that Ramsay and others have settled that. The chemical elements are only another disappointment in the quest for the positive, as the definite, the homogeneous, and the stable. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... which both colour and design are indefinite, the kind which gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background. The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colours, or ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of a number of prominent citizens in your community to define socialism. Compare the definitions secured with that given in section 122. What do you conclude as to the indefiniteness of the term "socialism"? ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... smiled. "You state your case eloquently, Schumann," he said, "but my feelings revolt against darkness and indefiniteness." ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... fixed by state and national governments. Locally, there are school districts. The boundaries which separate one nation from another are determined by agreement, or treaty, between the nations concerned. Uncertainty or indefiniteness in regard to national boundary lines has been the cause of much international strife, and was an important factor in the European war begun by Germany ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn |
