"Indistinctness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more allowable and better drawn than the page, true to history, and consistent; but Finella is sometimes handsome enough to make duke and king ready to be in love with her, and sometimes an odious little fury, clenching her hands, and to be lifted up or down stairs out of the hero's way. The indistinctness about her is not that indistinctness which belongs to the sublime, but that which arises from unsteadiness in the painter's hand when he sketched the figure. He touched and retouched at different times, without having, as it seems, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... And then, there is no end to the infinite variety of the olive-yards themselves. Even the colour is indeterminate, and continually shifting: now you would say it was green, now grey, now blue; now tree stands above tree, like 'cloud on cloud,' massed in filmy indistinctness; and now, at the wind's will, the whole sea of foliage is shaken and broken up with little momentary ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cried, "why, the indistinctness must be in your own eyes. It was clear even to that light-headed lassie, my niece, at the first glance. Here on this very Kaim of Kinprunes was fought out the final conflict between Agricola and the Caledonians! The record says—let me remind you—'in sight of the Grampian Hills.' Yonder they are! ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the moon was just sufficient to expose the natural wildness of the adjacent scenery. The glen itself lay in the shadow of the hill, and seemed to the eye so dark that nothing but the huge outlines of the projecting crags, whose shapes appeared in the indistinctness like gigantic spectres, could been seen; while all around, and where the pale light of! the moon fell, nothing was visible but the muddy gleams of the yellow flood as it rushed, with its hoarse and incessant roar, through a flat country on whose features the storm ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... of belated rollers may be seen feeding their young. Before the beginning of the month nearly all the young crows and koels have emerged from the egg, and the great majority of them have left the nest. Young house-crows are distinguished from adults by the indistinctness of the grey on the neck. They continually open their great red ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... smaller ones. Some evergreen shrubs in boxes stood around, and there were wooden arm-chairs, beside some settees. It was rather chilly, though the day had been very pleasant. And oh, how splendid the lights of Broadway looked to them, two long rows stretching up and up until lost in indistinctness. The stores were all open and lighted as brilliantly as one could with gas. No one thought of Saturday half-holidays then. It was very grand. But what would they have said to the Columbian nights ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... to correspond across the valley, the snow line distinctly visible, though the nearer ranges did their best to cut it off. Norikura, the Saddle, especially, showed a fine bit of its ten thousand feet, wrapped in the indistinctness of the spring haze. The heavy air gave a look of slumber to the peaks, as if those summits, waked before the rest of the world, had already grown drowsy. We had not yet ceased gazing at them when a turn of the road ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... mingling reminiscences, held in solution by the mind, and colouring its fancy with the iridescence of variable hues, go to make up the sentiments which music or which mountains stir! It is the very vagueness, changefulness, and dreamlike indistinctness of these feelings which cause their charm; they harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and seem to make our very doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious that unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy habits of clear thinking, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... smooth and deep, and large enough, and then the signs are clearly marked and lasting, and do not get confused. But in the 'hairy heart,' as the all-wise poet sings, when the wax is muddy or hard or moist, there is a corresponding confusion and want of retentiveness; in the muddy and impure there is indistinctness, and still more in the hard, for there the impressions have no depth of wax, and in the moist they are too soon effaced. Yet greater is the indistinctness when they are all jolted together in a little soul, which is narrow and has no room. These are the sort of natures which have ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... more positive and specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he save himself caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course. Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and their hands ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it. I am prepared to maintain that there is a knowledge worth possessing for what it is, and not merely for what it does; and what minutes remain to me to-day I shall devote to the removal of some portion of the indistinctness and confusion with which the subject may ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... if by a watery finger on the wall of mist. An idea had taken shape stealthily behind him and flung its shadow there. The idea was Lucia Harden. The fog hung in her hair in drops like rain; it made her grey dress cling close about her straight, fine limbs; it gave its own grandeur and indistinctness to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... routes of the march, botanical notes, and carefully made drawings. But in the mean time the middle portion of the book was filling up with calculations, private memoranda, words intended for vocabularies, and extracts from books, whilst here and there the stain of a pressed flower causes indistinctness; yet the thread of the narrative runs throughout. Noting but his invariable habit of constantly repeating the month and year obviates hopeless confusion. Nor is this all; for pocket-books gave out at ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... in no wise interwoven with the national recollections, as was the case in so many ways with those of Greece. The ideal of a genuine Roman Tragedy floats before me dimly indeed, and in the background of ages, and with all the indistinctness which must surround an entity, which never issued out of the womb of possibility into reality. It would be altogether different in form and significance from that of the Greeks, and, in the old Roman sense, religious and patriotic. All truly creative poetry must ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... heard a long-drawn "Oh!" of pleased surprise as she discovered Cardo hovering about the door, and he considerately entered into conversation with Shoni, endeavouring to express himself in his mother-tongue, but with that hesitation and indistinctness common to the dwellers in the counties bordering upon England, and to the "would-be genteel" of too many other parts of Wales, who, perfectly unconscious of the beauty of their own language, and ignorant of its literature, affect English manners and customs, and often pretend that English ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... comforts and the opportunity of cutting a figure. On the other hand, I remember once being told by a communicative young trooper with whom I had some conversation that the desire to "see life" had been his own motive for enlisting. He appeared to be seeing it with some indistinctness: he was a little tipsy at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... to us standing and facing Sunbury, the remoter being a grey indistinctness towards the evening star, away ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... opponents, full of life and force, a witty scorn on the lip, a brow at once bright and weighty with satisfying reason: the other looking at the something instead of that which had been confuted, maimed, noseless, and weather-bitten into a sort of visionary confusion and indistinctness. [14] It looks like this—aye and very like that—but how like it is, too, such ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... throbbing roar the engine awoke to life and the propeller spun around, a blur of indistinctness. The motor was working sweetly. Toni throttled down, assured himself that everything was working well, and then, with a wave of his hand toward Jack, began to taxi across the field, to head up into the wind. All aeroplanes ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... was still progressing and the noise of the machinery still reached her ears, with buzzing, humming, monotonous indistinctness. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... conception. The head alone is finished, or nearly so; and has a most extatic expression. The globe of the earth seems to sink from beneath the floating figure, which is just sketched upon the canvass, and has a shadowy indistinctness which to my fancy added to its effect. Guercino's chef-d'oeuvre, the Resurrection of Saint Petronilla, (a saint, I believe, of very hypothetical fame,) is also here; and has been copied in mosaic for St. Peters. A magnificent Rubens, the She Wolf ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... my picture[712], and walked a considerable way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed, and in a short time waked and sat up, as has been long my custom, when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which lasted, I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed, and prayed God, that however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding. This prayer, that I might try the integrity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... turns to ribald mirth, As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond— Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time And bitter feelings swallowed up in jests. Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain By indistinctness made more terrible, And incubi mock at me with fierce eyes Upon my couch: and visions, crude and dire, Of planets, suns, millions of miles, infinity, Space, time, thought, being, blank nonentity, Things incorporeal, fancies of the brain, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... power, for instance, between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government,—or between the United States government and those of the separate States,—belong to the class I mean. Many women of great intelligence show a hazy indistinctness of views when the question arises whether it is the business of the general government to preserve order at the voting-places at a congressional election, for instance, as the Republicans hold; or whether it should be left absolutely in the hands of the state officials, as the Democrats ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the land in a northwestern direction on a bright day you can see South Mountain, "forerunner of the sierrated Alleghanies," looming up between the town and Cumberland Valley. Back of it the serried ranks of the Alleghanies rise in hazy indistinctness and blend imperceptibly with the blue along ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the sensible world. Now take a line divided into two equal segments to represent these two regions, and again divide each segment in the same ratio—both that of the visible and that of the intelligible species. The parts of each segment are to represent differences of clearness and indistinctness. In the visible world the parts are things and images. By images I mean shadows,[530] reflections in water and in polished bodies, and all such like representations; and by things I mean that of which images are resemblances, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... on the distant estates appeared to twinkle like objects seen through a thin smoke, whilst each of the tall stems of the cocoa—nut trees on the beach, when looked at steadfastly, seemed to be turning round with a small spiral motion, like so many endless screws. There was a dreamy indistinctness about the outlines of the hills, even in the immediate vicinity, which increased as they receded, until the Blue Mountains in the horizon melted into sky. The crew were listlessly spinning oakum, and mending sails, under the shade of the awning; the only exceptions ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Master Nat Hodges were surrounded by a clamorous mob, shouting both sides of the case, as if the loudest and longest-winded were sure to wrest a favourable judgement from those two infallible authorities on the laws of cricket, the noble game was certainly in a state of indistinctness. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gradually into shadow in the distance. To the south, too, they beheld a deep-shaded amphitheatre of heather and bracken; the course of the Esk, near Penicuik, winding about at the foot of its gorge; the broad, brown expanse of Maw Moss; and, fading into blue indistinctness in the south, the wild heath-clad Peeblesshire hills. In sooth, that scene was fair, and many a yearning glance was cast over that peaceful evening scene from the spot where the rebels awaited their defeat; and when the fight was over, many a noble fellow lifted his head from the blood-stained heather ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentlemen in black, with huge periwigs, and crowns round their hats, and a couple of melancholy pages in yellow and red. But pages and wigs and Grand Masters have almost faded out of the canvas, and are vanishing into Hades with a most melancholy indistinctness. The names of most of these gentlemen, however, live as yet in the forts of the place, which all seem to have been eager to build and christen: so that it seems as if, in the Malta mythology, they ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long journey, re-crossing the treacherous Way of the Thousand Steps without a single mishap, and ascended to the lofty plateau of Omar's kingdom until, high up in the grey morning mist, we saw looming before us with almost spectral indistinctness the gigantic battlements and domes of the City in the Clouds. On ascending the rope steps at the Gate of Mo a few days previously we had ascertained that the expedition to the Hombori Mountains had been entirely successful, for the enemy had been met in the pass ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... morning, and had not expected to return for several days. It was for this reason that I had been able that evening to sit much later than usual with Madeline on the moonlit porch. The figure was certainly that of John Hinckman in his ordinary dress, but there was a vagueness and indistinctness about it which presently assured me that it was a ghost. Had the good old man been murdered? and had his spirit come to tell me of the deed, and to confide to me the protection of his dear—? My heart fluttered at what I was about to think, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... occasion my conceptions were in a state of the greatest indistinctness and confusion after leaving the mattress. For a long time I found it nearly impossible to connect any ideas; but, by very slow degrees, my thinking faculties returned, and I again called to memory the several incidents of my condition. For the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging from within, appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly white, indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctness of the passageway, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone. Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery, coinciding with the emotions ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been suddenly brought several miles nearer, and yet, instead of being more distinct, was actually more obscure. Even Ile Haute, though so near, did not escape. Four miles of distance were not sufficient to give it that grand indistinctness which was now flung over the Nova Scotia coast; yet much of the mysterious effect of the haze had gathered about the island; its lofty cliffs seemed to tower on high more majestically, and to lean over more frowningly; its fringe of black sea-weed below seemed blacker, while the general hue of ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... snatching into his hand his horrid sea-sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through the darkness and indistinctness which prevailed, the billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that contended together in their ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... away from Beynac. We very nearly met one night, both being out with the same object in view. I, however, had very little of his zeal for the sport, and was less interested by the crayfish than by the fantastic indistinctness of trees and shrubs and flowers, which, in the light of the stars and the lantern, seemed to belong to a world with which I was but vaguely familiar, although I had travelled all over ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a great deal in nature, physical and moral, that had as well not be ascertained. It is better to take things on trust, with something of distance and indistinctness. What we gain in knowledge by scrutiny is sometimes paid for in a ghastly sort of disgust. It is marvellous in a small constituency of 300 average souls, what a queer moral result one of these business-like ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... fires illume, And cheerful tapers shine around the room, Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white, With shutters clos'd, peer faintly thro' the gloom, That slow recedes; while yon grey spires assume, Rising from their dark pile, an added height By indistinctness given.—Then to decree The grateful thoughts to GOD, ere they unfold To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee Wisdom's rich page!—O, hours! more worth than gold, By whose blest use we lengthen Life, and free From drear decays of Age, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... have pointed out a similar indistinctness in the human actors, no less than in the landscape features of "Fingal" and "Temora." They have no dramatic individuality, but are all alike, and all extremely shadowy. "Poor, moaning, monotonous MacPherson" is Carlyle's alliterative description of the translator ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... low, as if doubtful whether they could be taken in good part, and they came with something that was like music. Was it the voice or some inexplicable feeling? I turned in wonder. Her head was raised, and in the indistinctness I caught that sweet look of hers which besought me, and which I answered without ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... that indistinctness of vision which has been ascribed to the smallness of the optic pencil. Phil. Trans., ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... of a piece of important news—a battle won or lost, the outbreak of a revolution, the overthrow of a throne—even for a few hours before it became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard lines, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... in proportion to the development of public and private education. The moral standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty, service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling motive, or at least the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had sketched for their departure. It had been determined between them that the Old World, with its crowds and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... undistinguishable at a distance, but still more by the transmission through it of glimpses of the most beautiful colours, which change with every movement, however slight, in the position of the eye, and whose very indistinctness and transitory character contributes not a little to the effect which they tend ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... such thoughts as these in his heart, Trafford was silent a long time. The sun set, and shadows began to steal over the sea, gradually and softly wrapping its farther distances in hazy indistinctness. Hagar's voice, from the kitchen-door, where she was calling her chickens to their supper, floated around to his ears and awoke him from his long and sorrowful reverie. He started up, surprised to see how fast the light had flitted from sky and earth. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... no broken glass, there are no painful bottoms of bottles to disturb my ruminant quiet. The air bites a little, but I am warmly clad, and young. Bobby sits beside me, whistling and kicking the bricks with his heels. There is the indistinctness of fine weather over the chain of low round hills that bound our horizon, giving them a dignity that, on clearer days, they lack. As I sit, many small and pleasant noises visit my ears, sometimes distinct, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... must reason; he must dwell on some future good, when the present good was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk—and talk lamely, as necessity drove him—of what was to be. Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the trident of his power, he smote the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through the darkness and indistinctness which prevailed; the billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that contended together in ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... now began to add to the solemnity of the scene, by the indistinctness that was gradually enveloping the more distant objects; and, alone, we almost dreaded to break, with our own whispers, the silence which reigned around. In the midst of this "stillness audible," the fine bell of the cathedral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... presented a fearful but sublime spectacle. One spot appeared to glow with the red-white heat of a furnace, and to form the centre of a fiery cupola, from which the flame was flung in redder and grosser masses, that darkened away into wild and dusky indistinctness, in a manner that corresponded with the same light, as it danced in red and frightful mirth upon the earth. As they looked, the cause of this awful phenomenon soon became visible. From behind the hill was seen a thick shower of burning particles ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Susan had joined Virginia on the sidewalk, and the liquid honey of Mrs. Pendleton's voice dropped softly into indistinctness. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Titian; in the Sala delle quattro Porte. To be observed with care, as one of the most striking examples of Titian's want of feeling and coarseness of conception. (See above, Vol. I. p. 12.) As a work of mere art, it is, however, of great value. The traveller who has been accustomed to deride Turner's indistinctness of touch, ought to examine carefully the mode of painting the Venice in the distance at the bottom ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... with her intricate labyrinths; each step presents unlooked-for vistas, and closes upon us our backward path. Our onward road is strange, obscure, and infinite. We are bewildered in a shadow, lost in a dream. Our perceptions have the brightness and indistinctness of a trance. Our continuity of consciousness is broken, crumbles, and falls to pieces. We go on learning and forgetting every hour. Our feelings are chaotic, confused, strange to each other and ourselves.' But in time we learn by rote the lessons ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... on the foundation of a grammar-school as yet unvisited by commissioners, where two or three boys could have, all to themselves, the advantages of a large and lofty building, together with a head-master, toothless, dim-eyed and deaf, whose erudite indistinctness and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate of three hundred pounds a-head,—a ripe scholar, doubtless, when first appointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed the aspect ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... instances it is even repeated in the same sentence, because, in its introductory sense, it is always unemphatical; as, "Because there was pasture there for their flocks."—1 Chron., iv, 41. "If there be indistinctness or disorder there, we can have no success."—Blair's Rhet., p. 271. "There, there are schools adapted to every age."—Woodbridge, Lit. Conv., p. 78. The import of the word is more definite, when emphasis ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... dressed before daylight to peep out of window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... hazy-looking, ill-defined object swam into the field of the instrument. The object was about one point before the weather beam, and was so far away that the rarefaction of the air imparted to it a wavering indistinctness of aspect that rendered it quite unrecognisable. The fact, however, that it was visible at all in the slightly hazy atmosphere led me to estimate its distance from the brig as about ten miles, while, from its apparent size, it might be either a boat, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... upon the trunk of a felled tree, motioned to his companion to be seated. Holden obeyed, waiting for what should follow. Presently he saw two figures, a male and female, approaching. The latter was veiled, and although the face of the man was exposed, it swam in such a hazy indistinctness that it was impossible to make out the features. Still it seemed to him that they were not entirely unknown, and he tormented himself with ineffectual attempts to determine where he had seen them. He turned to his guide to ask who they were, but before he could speak the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... quite clear that what hinders a true understanding of anything is vagueness; and it is by this process of asking questions that vagueness is to be dispelled: for, in the first place, it removes one great vagueness, or indistinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of many; namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a thing or no; and much more, the not seeing what it is that they do understand, and what it is which they do not. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... retired to rest, all night long I dreamed of the unhappy descendant of the Inca who was beneath our roof. Some of the incidents of which I had read in Peruvian history were strongly mixed up in my mind with the reality, with the indistinctness which ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and full. I am able to recall even the undertow of my thoughts while he was speaking. I remember my pity and affection for him in his misery growing and stirring within me, my realisation that at any risk I must help him. But then comes indistinctness again. I was beginning to act. I know I persuaded him to put himself in my hands, and began at once to plan and do. I think that when we act most we remember least, that just in the measure that the impulse of our impressions translates itself into schemes and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of what she went on to say. Her mind and body both seemed to have floated into another region of quick-sailing clouds rapidly passing across each other and enveloping everything in a vaporous indistinctness. Meanwhile he remained conscious of his own concentrated desire, his impotence to bring about anything he wished, and his increasing agony ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... together.—Let us then say that Brahman, which is homogeneous being, intelligence, bliss, has its nature obscured by avidya, and hence is seen indistinctly as it were.—But how, we ask, are we to conceive the distinctness or indistinctness of that whose nature is pure light? When an object of light which has parts and distinguishing attributes appears in its totality, we say that it appears distinctly; while we say that its appearance is indistinct ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... contemplative imagination is based on the indistinctness of the image. It suggests, too, the relation between cause and effect, which reason afterwards proves; and therefore it is a direct aid to science. In the tales there are expressed facts of truth symbolically clothed which science since then has discovered. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... merit of being, at least, perfectly clear and definite. In some particular cases, the principle may be difficult of application; but in the principle itself, as defined in this passage, there is not the slightest uncertainty or indistinctness. The author is very careful, however, to except from its operation all persons who are not in the maturity of their faculties, as well as all those backward nations who are not capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. The condition of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... feel, is ill exprest The indistinctness of the suffering breast; Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one, 1810 Which seeks from all the refuge found in none; No words suffice the secret soul to show, For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe. On Conrad's stricken soul Exhaustion prest, And Stupor almost lulled it into ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... on the steps of her lover—still let that name be his! She could not bear to lose him for a moment: a vague indistinctness of fear seized her if she saw him not. Again and again, in the slumbers of the night, she stretched forth her arms to feel that he was near; all her pride, her coldness seemed gone, as by a spell; she loved as the softest, the fondest, love. Are ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... opportunities, finally told on my eyes. One day, while working hard on the view of Neuchatel, I felt something snap behind my eyes, and in a few minutes I could no longer see my drawing; the slightest attempt to fix my vision on anything caused such indistinctness that I could see neither my work nor the landscape, and I was obliged to suspend work altogether. In a few days we went to Basle, and, after a rest, my vision came back partially, and we went to Laufenburg, where Turner had ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because it gives such wide scope for intense passion, startling situation, and successful stage effect, and proceeds to seek for similar ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the infliction, when I fell asleep and dreamed this dream. Observe that throughout I was as real, animated, and full of passion as Macready (God bless him!) in the last scene of Macbeth. In an indistinct place, which was quite sublime in its indistinctness, I was visited by a Spirit. I could not make out the face, nor do I recollect that I desired to do so. It wore a blue drapery, as the Madonna might in a picture by Raphael; and bore no resemblance to any one I have known except ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... The indistinctness of her vision was not due to any defect in her sight. The wet fog was rising like a shapeless evil genius out of the sluggish sea, rolling heavily across the little bay to the lovers' beach, with its swollen arms full of blight and mildew. Margaret shivered at the sight of it, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the valley there was a low-spreading mist over the gray sage, which lent a warmth to the raw morning wind. There was a sense of indistinctness through the mist which was an ally to Chadron. Ten rods away, even in the growing morning, it would have been impossible to tell a ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... his minor characteristics; but intellectual criticism has never grappled with Shakespearian art, in its entireness and grandeur, and probably it never will. We know not now wherein his greatness consists. We cannot demonstrate it. There is less indistinctness in the merit of less eminent authors. Those things which are not doubts to our consciousness, are yet mysteries to our mind. And if this is true of literary art, which is so much within the sphere of reflection, it may be expected ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... stretched great stains of black herbage. Every object is magnified and changed to the eye. The heat and the swinging motion of the camel produce a slight dizziness, and the outer world assumes a hazy indistinctness of outline—something like dream-landscapes. There is a desert-intoxication which must ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... late. His squat figure and red face suddenly loomed into a gigantic indistinctness in the girl's eyes. She would have fallen to the deck had not the captain's strong hands clutched ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... your sublime highness, we consider him a remarkably good reader, an animal of excellent parts, and a pupil who does us great credit. It is true, as your sublime highness's discrimination has observed, that his enunciation, even to those who know the language, may have some appearance of indistinctness, because he is defective in the vowel-points; but we cannot help it, for all our books are unpointed. In this, which, indeed, we consider a matter of little importance, we do not pretend to compete with the Jews, who teach theirs from pointed books. If your sublime highness ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... fills our mental view as we read, and by the fervour, the poetry of his language, he burns the impression of himself upon our memory. It is not by what they do that we remember Marlowe's heroes or villains. Their deeds probably fade into indistinctness. Few of us quite remember what were Tamburlaine's conquests, or Faustus's wonder-workings, or Barabas's crimes. But we know that if we would recall a mighty conqueror our recollections will revive the image of the Scythian shepherd; if we would picture a soul delivered over to the torments ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... eye of the restive coursers, then so strikingly exhibited, are scarcely any longer distinguishable; while the dark curvilinear outline of their bodies, and the towering forms of "the great Twin Brethren" at their heads, gain not only in stature, but in grandeur too, by this very indistinctness,—the obscure being a well-known element of the sublime,—and the eye becomes more and more conscious of their vast proportions the less it is enabled to enter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the ink thicker or thinner, failed,—the fainter lines either disappearing altogether, or printing as dark as thick ones. In every attempt made to use this ink as a wash, the result was still more disastrous, producing only one dirty mass of indistinctness, amid which the original drawing was scarcely to be traced. For twenty years did Mr. Hullmandel labour to attain some mode of printing drawings, made by a series of washes, with a brush, on stone, feeling this to be the great desideratum in the art. Lithographers in Germany, in ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... stream. Along the river meadows he could hear the cows munching and see their dusky forms moving through a thin mist. The air was amethyst and gold, and the beautiful earth shone through it, ennobled by the large indistinctness, the quiet ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at obtuse angles, but they can be curved lines, if desired, provided they cross each other so as to leave diamond shaped spaces. After the lines are in rub a piece of clean cotton over them all, using pressure enough to subdue them to the degree of indistinctness desired; then finish with the large eraser and crayon point No. 2, putting in the cloud effect. Such lines as show too prominently you subdue with the nigrivorine eraser. If there are any light places, make ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... myself now, as a profane fact, that I did stand by that river (Methley gathered some seeds from the bushes that grew there), but since that I am away from his banks, “divine Scamander” has recovered the proper mystery belonging to him as an unseen deity; a kind of indistinctness, like that which belongs to far antiquity, has spread itself over my memory, of the winding stream that I saw with these very eyes. One’s mind regains in absence that dominion over earthly things which has been shaken by their rude contact. ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... going to sail away in the Biscayan urca pressed on the hour of departure all the same. They formed a busy and confused group, in rapid movement on the shore. To distinguish one from another was difficult; impossible to tell whether they were old or young. The indistinctness of evening intermixed and blurred them; the mask of shadow was over their faces. They were sketches in the night. There were eight of them, and there were seemingly among them one or two women, hard to recognize under the rags and tatters in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the planet with one eye through the telescope and the moon with the unaided eye, in such a manner that the two discs may coincide, and thus their relative apparent dimensions be at once recognised. Nor should the indistinctness and incompleteness of the view be attributed to imperfection of the telescope; they are partly due to the nature of the observation and the low power employed, and partly to the inexperience ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... time previous, his mind had been confused, wavering doubtfully between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to come. There had been feverish turns, which tossed him from side to side, and wore away what little strength he had. But in his most convulsive struggles, and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought retained its ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... lips together, and folded her hands with a gesture of despair; "but I know that it must be, for Mr. Trinder has told me everything. It is no use shutting our eyes and struggling on any longer; for we are ruined—ruined!" her voice sinking into indistinctness. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... don't keep any hens," said the voice, and all the children jumped and screamed, and looked about for the owner of it. He loomed up among some bushes at their right. He was so dazzling white himself, and had such an indistinctness of outline, that they had taken him for an oak-tree. But it was the real Snow Man. They knew him in a moment, he looked so much like his effigies that they used to make ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... moodily, from the depth of an absurd jealousy. The man whose voice was coming to them with a certain deep indistinctness from the bay-window was ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... lovely corner of it must needs be set apart as a place of banishment for the monsters that civilization had brought forth and bred! She cast her eyes around, and all beauty seemed blotted out from the scene before her. The graceful foliage melting into indistinctness in the gathering twilight, appeared to her horrible and treacherous. The river seemed to flow sluggishly, as though thickened with blood and tears. The shadow of the trees seemed to hold lurking shapes of cruelty and danger. Even the whispering breeze bore with it sighs, and threats, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... great thickness and indistinctness of utterance, but with an immovable gravity of countenance. I never saw a Man who was manifestly so Drunk speak so sensibly, and behave himself in such a proper manner ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... blurred mist came over his eyes, and, half buried in the scarlet sand, appeared a large circle of dazzlingly white pillars. For some minutes they flickered to and fro between distinctness and indistinctness, like an object being focused. Then they faded out ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... important principles in piano playing are: full, round, exact tone; distinct phrasing. The most common fault is indistinctness—slurring over or leaving out notes. Clearness in piano playing is absolutely essential. If an actor essays the role of Hamlet, he must first of all speak distinctly and make himself clearly understood; otherwise all his study and characterization are in ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... effort I shook out the words, "Speak louder!" The face grew more intent, the voice louder and more emphatic. Was there something amiss in my own hearing, then, that I could distinguish no word amidst these deeply emphasized tones? Slowly and deliberately the figure vanished, through the same stages of indistinctness, back to the globular, lamp-like whiteness, till it faded into nothingness. Before it had quite faded away, the face of a woman arose, indistinct and calm. The same emphatic hum, though in a subdued note, indistinct and dim. The same paralysis of voice and ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... and the total absence of wind, soon caused a body of smoke to collect in front of the rock, while the English brought on with them another, trailing along the water, the effect of their own fire. The two shrouds soon united, and then there was a minute when the boats could only be seen with indistinctness. This was Ithuel's moment. Perceiving that the ten or twelve men who remained to him were engrossed with their muskets, he pointed the two carronades himself, and primed them from the horns which he had never quitted. For the felucca ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... is a mistake, however, to suppose that the articulation was by any means perfect, and expectancy no doubt had a great deal to do with my recognition of the sentence; still, the articulation was there, and I recognized the fact that the indistinctness was entirely due to the imperfection of the instrument. I will not trouble you by detailing the various stages through which the apparatus passed, but shall merely say that after a time I produced the form of instrument shown in Fig. 9, which served very well ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... a much louder noise than he could make inaudible to the dozing passengers. And now the engineer pulled out the throttle-valve to make up for lost time, and the clatter of the train faded into a distant roar and its lights began to twinkle into indistinctness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... man, we must not study him in the folio Life of Des Maizeaux, whose laborious pencil, without colour and without expression, loses, in its indistinctness, the individualising strokes of the portrait. Look for Bayle in his "Letters," those true chronicles of a literary man, when they record his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... is Edinburgh Castle, from the Grass Market, in which the fine old fortress is seen towering in all its picturesqueness and romantic beauty. Here and there it has some of the indistinctness of hoar antiquity: its fadings away are beautifully characteristic. The houses in the Grass Market are boldly contrasted with the Castle, and the "spirit" inscriptions on the Stablers are as distinct as the most panting soul could wish them. The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... The indistinctness with which people who introduce often pronounce a name is not infrequently the cause of awkwardness. The failure to hear is no fault on the part of those introduced, but rather a mishap chargeable to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... lines lower, the more serious misprint of your change for the charge. I presume that the abbreviated form of the y^e was taken for for y^r, and the r in charge mistaken for n; and in the former case of am for are, indistinctness in old writing, and especially in such a hand as, it appears from his autograph, our great poet wrote, would readily lead to such mistakes. That the correction was left to the printer of the first folio, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... respects very admirable) picture of Death on the Pale Horse, it is observed, that "In poetry the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of description, touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy. Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... whispered against the tiny gravel beach at the end. I noted a practicable way from it to the top of the cliff, and from the cliff down again to the sand beach. Everything was perfect. The water was a beautiful light green, like semi-opaque glass, and from the indistinctness of its depths waved and beckoned, rose and disappeared with indescribable grace and deliberation long feathery sea growths. In a moment the bottom abruptly shallowed. The motion of the boat toward the beach permitted us to catch a hasty glimpse of little fish darting, of big fish turning, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams |
