"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others to estimate the amount of claim, or to adjust the terms of compromise. There would, in either of these cases, be a tangible object for mediation. But where the difference was not external; where it arose from irritated feelings, from vague and perhaps exaggerated apprehensions, from charges not proved, nor perhaps capable of proof, on either side, in such cases each party felt that there was nothing definite and precise which either could submit ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... A vague fear of pursuit made him continue his course many hours without resting. The desert again became sandy, the heat increased. The breeze that plays about the wilderness, and in early spring is often scented with the wild fragrance of aromatic plants, sank away. A lurid ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... anchors there while the captain goes ashore to see whether shipwreck is imminent? That the majority of opera-goers cannot live near the sea is self-evident, and that few of them should ever have seen a shipwreck unavoidable; but surely anyone who has crossed the Channel must have a vague suspicion that to place this vessel against the rocks in a tempest is the last thing a seaman would dream of doing, and that, if he were driven there and managed to get ashore, he would call his men after him (if they needed calling), and trouble neither about ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... best. Our feeling for many of them doubtless owes something to childish associations; but how did they get their hold of our childhood? Why did they enter our souls at all? They are joyous, inarticulate children, come with vague messages from the father of all. If I confess that what they say to me sometimes makes me weep, how can I call my feeling for them anything but love? The eternal thing may have a thousand forms of which we ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and garments fantastically and extraordinarily fashioned. But poor Geoffrey Hudson's laces, embroideries, and the rest of his finery, were sorely worn and tarnished by the time which he had spent in jail, under the vague and malicious accusation that he was somehow or other an accomplice in this all-involving, all-devouring whirlpool of a Popish conspiracy—an impeachment which, if pronounced by a mouth the foulest and most malicious, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... before he recovers sufficient coolness to reflect—then only with vague comprehensiveness; nothing clear save the fact that he has completely lost himself, and his way. To go on were mere guesswork. True, the moon tells him the west, the direction of Coyote creek. But westward he will not go, dreading to again encounter that ghostly thing; ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... distress, probably heightened by his vague and unconscious sense of the squire's kindness, was depicted strongly on his countenance, and ended ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... about him that held her aloof. She had made up her mind to do her part unselfishly. She would find the best in him, like him for it, be strong to endure and to help. Yet she had no power to control her vague and strange perceptions. Why was it that she could not feel in him what she liked in Jim Montana or Lem or ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... flats in a vague way, and as we drew near the Metropolis the Little Woman bought papers of the train boy and began to read advertisements under the head of ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... what time they come to review me in public, all will be well." But curious to relate, those professional critics, for the most part, held their peace, concerning a work yet unpublished. And, with some generous exceptions, in their vague, learned way, betrayed such base, beggarly notions of authorship, that Lombardo could have wept, had tears been his. But in his very grief, he ground his teeth. Muttered he, "They are fools. In their eyes, bindings not brains make books. They criticise my tattered cloak, not my ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... vont devant elles et qui se deroulent royalement dans l'immensite; c'etaient des houles courtes, brusques, furieuses. L'Ocean est a son aise, il tourne autour du monde; la Mediterranee est dans un vase et le vent la secoue, c'est ce qui lui donne cette vague haletante, breve et trapue. Le flot se ramasse et lutte. Il a autant de colere que la flot ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... embarrassed, and passed his hand across his forehead. "Two very little things," he said. "At least, one's very trivial and the other very vague. But such as they are, they don't fit in with Mr ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... With the vague instinct of abandoned children who seek to attach themselves to some one or some thing, Jeanne clung to Madame Desvarennes, who, ready to protect, and longing for maternity, took the child in her arms. The gardener's wife acted as guide during her visit over the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... some very fine compositions on love in Lord Byron's works, but there is not a single line among the thousand he wrote which shows a sexual sentiment. With him, all breathes the purest voluptuousness. All is vague as regards love, and without material passion, except in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... child. Yet—I am ashamed to say it—I always felt that I was not like them, that there was a subtle difference between us. They were contented in prosperity, resigned in misfortune; I was ever restless, and filled with vague ambitions. They were good, but dull. They loved me, but they never said so. I feel that there is warmer, richer blood coursing in my veins than the placid stream that ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Grinselhof, near a little lamp, with his elbows on the table. The apartment was dark and dreary, for the feeble rushlight illuminated but a single spot and cast the distant and lofty ceiling into vague obscurity. The flickering flame threw long and sombre shadows over the wall, while a line of old portraits in the panels seemed to fix their stern and immovable eyes on the table. Amid the gloom nothing came out with distinctness but the calm and noble face of the poor old gentleman, who ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... one comes to consider it, that the impression of absolute perfection, free from all limitations of race or country or epoch or individual character—and yet not a vague abstraction but a true living Person—has been printed upon the minds and hearts of the world by these four little pamphlets which we call gospels! I do not think that there is anything in the whole history of literature to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... with growing interest, and no doubt having some vague expectation of a tale of the Camorra. To him Naples had always seemed of all cities the most elusive and incomprehensible, a laughing, thieving, begging, mandolin-playing, music-and-murder haunted metropolis, about ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... one dancer watches Her mirrored, morbid grace; Before the mirror, face to face, Alone she watches Her morbid, vague, ambiguous grace. ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... departs, and Agatha, opening her window and letting the moonlight flood the room, sings the famous scena and prayer, "Leise, leise, fromme Weise," beginning, after a few bars of recitative, with a melody full of prayer and hope and tender longings, shaded with vague presentiment. It is an adagio of exquisite beauty, closing with an ecstatic outburst of rapture ("Alle meine Pulse schlagen") as she beholds her lover coming. The melody has already been heard in the overture, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... next day. The monkey house at the Zoo. One spot of clear gray light falls on the front of one cage so that the interior can be seen. The other cages are vague, shrouded in shadow from which chatterings pitched in a conversational tone can be heard. On the one cage a sign from which the word "gorilla" stands out. The gigantic animal himself is seen squatting on his haunches on a bench in much the same attitude as Rodin's ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... heard anything. It was the custom of the Countess, when out for an airing in her carriage, to be constantly asking such questions as "Who was that person that met us just now? What is the name of this bridge? What is written on that sign-board?" On this occasion, however, Lizaveta returned such vague and absurd answers, that the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... weary beyond endurance and yet sleep would not come to her, as happens often to the overtired. Before her closed eyes a vague panorama of past events unrolled ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... a yet later notice. In the Preface, which, as its whole language implies, was written last, Saxo speaks of Waldemar II having "encompassed ('complexus') the ebbing and flowing waves of Elbe." This language, though a little vague, can hardly refer to anything but an expedition of Waldemar to Bremen in 1208. The whole History was in that case probably finished by about 1208. As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction was to write a history of Absalon's own doings. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Bruce had been familiar with the scent of German soldiers, so different from that of the army in which he toiled. And he had learned to hate it, even as a dog hates the vague "crushed cucumber" smell of a pitviper. But while every dog dreads the viper-smell as much as he loathes it, Bruce had no fear at all of the boche odor. Instead, it always awoke in him a blood-lust, as fierce as any that had burned ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... fact,—that some days previous I had been told by the woman who kept the house I was in, that the parties over my head (two men and a woman I believe she said) were giving her some trouble, but that they paid well and therefore she did not like to turn them out,—it aroused a vague suspicion in my mind, and led to my walking back to the door I had endeavored to open in my abstraction, and carefully looking ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... in the preceding pages occurred. A new generation has come and grown into middle life, while the second generation is now budding forth into manhood and womanhood. How many of these are conversant with the history of their own country? Beyond a very vague knowledge of what has been taught to them in a superficial manner in our schools and colleges, and the fragmentary reminiscences that may have been recounted to them by their sires and grandsires who passed through these troublous times, it is doubtful whether even ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... his Essay relates to the ends of government. The conception on this subject, he tells us, which exists in the minds of most men is vague and undistinguishing. He first assumes, justly enough, that the end of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from each other." He then proceeds to show, with great form, that "the greatest ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... devil!" murmured d'Artagnan; "all this is vague enough. From whom have you learned of the abduction of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... long-hushed voices; and faces sweet Were thronging the shadowy side of the street As far as the eye could see; Dreaming again, in anticipation, The same old dreams of our boyhood's days That never come true, from the vague sensation Of walking asleep in the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform, and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... red as fire, my head humming with a chaos of ideas all disordered and vague, yet whirling along in a single, resistless current. I had come to the congress prepared to deliver a monograph on the great auk; but now the subject went overboard as the birds themselves had, and I found myself pleading with the committee ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... who have no plan but that of a senseless and reckless determination to show in every way their hostility to the British Government and English race. Their ultimate designs and hopes are equally unintelligible. Some vague expectation of absolute independence still seems to delude them. The national vanity, which is a remarkable ingredient in their character, induces many to flatter themselves with the idea of a Canadian Republic; the sounder information of others has led them to perceive that a separation from ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... exact statements, but felt a little uneasy as he walked home, for fear he might possibly have influenced his particular audience against the rich as a class. He had not intended anything of the kind, but had a vague idea that possibly he ought to have guarded some ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... the army, which leads to the chaos of praetorianism, it must rely on 'panem et circenses.' Hence it has some of the worst faults of democracy, without its advantages. As Mr. Graham Wallas says: 'When a Tsar or a bureaucracy finds itself forced to govern in opposition to a vague national feeling which may at any moment create an overwhelming national purpose, the autocrat becomes the most unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial or religious or social hatred, or ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... me to form an opinion, these paintings seemed very accurate in design and very rich in colouring, showing a perfect knowledge of perspective, but their details not arranged according to the rules of composition acknowledged by our artists—wanting, as it were, a centre; so that the effect was vague, scattered, confused, bewildering—they were like heterogeneous fragments ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... happy in the establishment of an honourable peace, advantageous to both nations, in their desire for which they were solely actuated by motives of humanity, and not by any dread of the Spanish power. Don Garcia, though much disappointed by these vague offers, replied in the same general terms respecting peace; and, after regaling the ambassador in a magnificent manner, he ordered some of his officers to conduct him over the whole encampment, in expectation of intimidating him by displaying the immense military preparations ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... thumbs, for smoking had not been introduced into the world at that period—and thumb-twirling would seem to have served the ancient world for leisurely pastime quite as well, if not better—at least we are led to infer so from the fact that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of History," we think, almost proves ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... in this worn and care-encumbered world, scarred with its frequent traces of a primeval curse, are spots so quiet and beautiful as to make the fall of man seem incredible, and awaken in the breast of the weary traveler who comes suddenly upon them, a vague and dear delusion that ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Stane who suffered no doubt at all. "It is Ainley, unquestionably," said Stane, answering the question in his eyes. "The description is his, though it is a trifle vague ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... that a crime "be in some way declared by the legislative power"; it "cannot be constructed by the courts from any supposed intention of the legislature which the statute fails to state."[43] A criminal statute which is so vague that it leaves the standard of guilt to the "variant views of the different courts and juries which may be called on to enforce it"[44] cannot be squared with this provision. Thus it was held, in the United States v. Cohen ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... struggling with her hat-pins, felt her dress brushed by various lean hands of the bazaar, and observed herself the central figure in yet another situation. When she was in a condition to see, she saw Arnold soothing the ponies; Amiruddin, before the possibility of vague police complication, having slipped away. Stephen had believed the gharry empty. The sight of her, in her disordered draperies, was a ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... philosophy,—that theory of the sole Divine Substance, the All-One, which Goethe in early life found so pacifying to his troubled spirit, and which, vague and barren as it proves on nearer acquaintance, induces at first, above all other systems, a sense of repose in illimitable vastness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... enough and thick enough, in all conscience. The main road was a black, wet void, through which gleams from lighted windows were but vague, yellow blotches. The umbrella was useful in the same way that a blind man's cane is useful, in feeling the way. The two or three stragglers who met the minister carried lanterns. One of these stragglers was Mr. Pepper. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... laird, turning and descending with his wife and child, with some vague thoughts that he might be likely to find Mrs Moss in her favourite ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... very familiar with from the Fram's second expedition; Stubberud was to reduce the weight of the sledge cases to a minimum, besides doing a lot of other things. There was nothing he could not turn his hand to, so the programme of his winter work was left rather vague. I knew he would manage a great deal more than the sledge cases, though it must be said that it was a tiresome job he had. Bjaaland was allotted the task which we all regarded with intense interest — the alteration ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... for example—what had a man like Sir Philip Ashley to do with a steam-laundry? And yet he was establishing one in the old city, and actually assuring people that it would "pay." He had been exerting himself about the drainage of the place and the dwellings of the poor. Margaret was sorry in a vague way for the poor, and supposed that drainage had to be "seen to" from time to time, but she did not want to hear anything about it. She liked the pretty little cottages in the village of Helmsley, and she did not ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... vague idea as to what he was to get or to do, Mr. Hastings left the room just as it was entered by Eugenia, to whom Ella detailed her grievances. "Her head ached dreadfully, Howard was cross, and her nurse gone. Oh, Eugenia!" ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... returned wanderer. Poor man! The changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. The people he met on the street were more ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attained. Here was no aimless dreaming or fruitless wishing. The old lady's face was sorely weather-beaten, but calm as a ship in harbour. Charity was homely, but comfortable. Madge and Lois were blooming in strength and activity, and as innocent apparently of any vague, unfulfilled longings as a new-blown rose. Only when Mr. Dillwyn's eye met Mrs. Barclay's he was sensible of a different record. He half sighed. The calm and the rest ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... work is partly critical as well as biographic, there too I had no reason or right to expect deference to my opinions. Criticism, I doubt, has no very certain rule to go by; in matters of taste it is a still more vague and arbitrary science. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and the soldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong to hopes vast and vague, ill-restricted ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... wanted from the fo'c'sle, and after a good deal of work managed to "bend" a mainsail and staysail. Being without compass or chart, however, I knew not where I was, nor could I decide what course to take in order to reach land. I had a vague idea that the seas in those regions were studded with innumerable little islands and sandbanks known only to the pearl-fishers, and it seemed inevitable that I must run aground somewhere or get stranded upon a coral reef after ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... which he seems entitled in the province of the arts. But honour and fame are chiefly dispensed by poets and literary men; and it is impossible not to feel that, generally speaking, the musician is treated by men of letters as an alien from their own lineage. Music may be praised in vague and evasive terms; but the individual composer is not deemed deserving of mention. All the great masters of the pencil have been cordially commended in immortal verse; but of the great composers' names scarce a notice is to be found. It is not wonderful that the poet should prize ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Our earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize." The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. "But those fondly cherished dreams," I went on, "may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy—that is, a contented and harmonious life with Mr.—er—Dodd—if in other ways than romantic recollections he seems to—er—fill ...
— Options • O. Henry
... two days the three girls bent their efforts toward discovering the plot on foot against Elfreda, but to little purpose. So far, Grace had refrained from imparting her vague knowledge of what impended to Mabel and Frances. Her naturally self-reliant nature would not allow her to depend on others. She preferred to solve her own problems and fight her own battles if necessary. Whatever the two sophomores had planned was a secret indeed. By neither ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... regrets this chronology, i.e. from the creation of the world, which he thinks preferable to the vulgar mode from the Christian aera. But how vague and uncertain the scale which depends on a point so remote and undetermined as the precise time when the world was created. If we examine the chronometers of different writers we shall find a difference, between the maximum and ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... vague rustlings in the tall grass, and looked carefully about. In the dim light she saw pale-green lights moving about, and knew that the wolves had smelled blood, and were gathering. But she was not afraid. She knew that she could keep them away with the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... handed to Hubert de Burgh a sealed letter, which the latter eagerly broke open and read. As he read, his face clouded. It was a long letter, and couched in vague terms, but its substance was this. That whereas the peace of England and of King John's possessions in France was constantly being disturbed by the partisans of the young Prince Arthur, desiring to see him king ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... point of propaganda—as we should say commercially, a good talking proposition. Deeper, it represented the urge of nationalism, which is one of the extraordinary phenomena of this remarkable war. The American, vague in his feeling of nationalism, refuses to take quite seriously agitation for the "unredeemed." Why, he asks with naivete, go to war for a few thousands of Italians ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... kill us and steal the knife on account of the fortune encrusted on its sheath, without a doubt. Luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together. There was a dim night-light burning. I was asleep, but Luigi was awake, and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. He slipped the knife out of the sheath and was ready and unembarrassed by hampering bedclothes, for the weather was hot and we hadn't any. Suddenly that native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of many great bond robberies, and it struck the popular fancy; but if it stirred Wall street greatly, who shall describe the frenzy of excitement that broke out at 300 Mulberry street—Police Headquarters—when the first vague rumors of a gigantic robbery were fully confirmed, and it became known that Hod Ennis and his gang had a million ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... opinion that Billy did come. Not that he saw Billy come, but he had a vague suspicion, from a feeling of numbness some two feet from the base of the brain, that William had arrived in that immediate vicinity, and while he was recalling his scattered thoughts and feeling for any pieces ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... apparently of much merit. Vague bits of information regarding it have reached the department at Washington from time to time since June, 1926, when Greening Bros., of Monroe, stated to the writer that Mr. Everett Wiard, a fruit grower near the eastern outskirts of Ypsilanti, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... that the bulwark of honesty in education is exact knowledge with the scientific habit of mind, and, furthermore, that the greatest hindrance to these things is the training which does not, with all the sanctions at its command, distinguish the real, with its infallible tests, from the shadowy and vague, but which contents itself with the throw of the intellectual dice box. Any study which tends to make the difference between truth and error pass with the throwing of a die, and which leads the student to ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... as yet, but little of his friend's stability. To him the world was all before him where to choose; but he was sadly in want of something that should guide his choice. He had a high, but at the same time a vague ambition. The law, the church, letters, art, and politics all enticed him; but he could not decide of which mistress the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... across the grass-lands in the daytime, cohort after cohort, hurrying to the call of the unseen trumpets? In the woods, have you never heard strange sounds, when you put your ear to the ground—sounds untraceable to any animate life? Have you never heard vague voices in the trees? Have you not heard distant, mysterious noises in the forest, whose cause you could never learn, seek no matter how you might? These were the voices of the shadows, the people who live there. Who else should ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... little point of Colias spread an open sandy beach. The night waves lapped softly. The wind had sunk to warm puffs from the southward. They heard the rattle of anchor-chains and tackle-blocks, but from far away. Beyond the vague promontory of Peiraeus rose dark mountains and headlands, at their foot lay a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... not take long to carry out this programme—only several weeks. We of the Revolution caught vague rumors of the state of affairs, but had nothing definite enough for an understanding. In fact, we thought it was a spontaneous spirit of revolt that would require careful curbing on our part, and never dreamed that it was deliberately manufactured—and it had been manufactured so secretly, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... a point that was not quite clear to Chicken Little herself. To tell the truth she and Johnny had not been on very good terms since the candy episode. She thought it best to be a little vague with Grace. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... and he was improving the opportunity to make love to her. Her reluctant and remorseful yielding was evident in every line of her figure as she allowed the painter to steal his arm around her waist and bend his lips toward hers. Wynne looked at the picture with vague disquiet. Here was the struggle of the natural human impulse against the constraint of ascetic vows; the irresistible yielding to nature and to the call of a passion interwoven with the very fibres of humanity. The sombre Boston parlor ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... about vukuart.* It's vague, but there's something in the air. You'll notice the Turkish muleteers are having nothing whatever to say to our Zeitoonli, although they've accepted the same service. Moslems are keeping together, and Armenians are getting the silence cure. Armenians are even shy of speaking to one another. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... purposes—from the statement "This, anyhow, is literature"—which means something quite specific, namely, that this is a work of art. The very word would become less offensive if we could be a little less vague about it, if we could make up our minds what it is that it does mean or that we wish it to mean. We all of us distinguish between good and bad in literature, even if we regard our own judgments as fallible. We are all ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... performance, which in pure and sustained sublimity is perhaps unrivalled in the literature of the world, we lose sight entirely of the cheerful Hellenic worship; and yet it is in vain that the learned attempt to trace its vague and mysterious metaphysics to any old symbolical religion of the East. More probably, whatever theological system it shadows forth, was rather the gigantic conception of the poet himself, than the imperfect revival of any forgotten creed, or the poetical disguise of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there hovered behind all this transcendental haze a certain presence of old northern paganism; he really had some sympathy with the vast vague gods of that moody but not unmanly Nature-worship which seems to have filled the darkness of the North before the coming of the Roman Eagle or the Christian Cross. This he combined, allowing for certain sceptical omissions, with the grisly Old Testament God he had heard about in ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... "As the lower animals do not appear to have personality or individual existence, I cannot see that any particular one's life can be very important," &c. The word "personality" is very vague: I don't know what you mean by it. If you were to ask yourself, "What test should I use in distinguishing what has, from what has not, personality?" you might perhaps be able to express your meaning more clearly. The phrase "individual existence" is clear enough, and is in direct logical contradiction ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... the subject where it was before—an additional piece of mystification. In a letter to Henry Bright he admitted that he had no very definite scheme in his mind in regard to Miriam's previous history, and this is probably the reason why his readers feel this vague sense of dissatisfaction with the plot. I have myself often tried to think out a prelude to the story, but without any definite result. Miriam's persecuting model was evidently a husband who had been forced upon her by her parents, and would not that be sufficient ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Retaining populi convicio, and explaining populus to have the general meaning of the crowd, including senators and spectators. Cicero uses populus in this vague way elsewhere.] ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... any has used themes more saccharine and characterless than those of the last movement of the Third Symphony, or the adagio of the Fourth. Once in a while, no doubt, a vague personal tone, a flavor of the Bohemian countryside where Mahler was born, does manage to distinguish itself from the great inchoate masses of his symphonies. The strolling musician plays on his clarinet; ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... tumultuously, expecting to hear a flattering tribute paid to the young men who had behaved so well. But the aspect of the governor as, surrounded by his officers, he stood in one of the batteries on the mole, excited a vague feeling of astonishment ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... advisable at this date to send him to the penitentiary. Upon being told that he would have to remain at the hospital, patient again became morose, hypochondriacal, refused nourishment, and commenced to hold himself aloof from the other patients. His suspiciousness and vague persecutory ideas with reference to the personnel of the hospital became more pronounced, and he could see no other reason for being kept here than that the officials are continuing in their persecutions of him. I am ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... helpless, the lowly. And Joan's eyes shone with the light of a great sympathy, as she turned her bright gaze from one face to the other, till Raymond felt himself falling beneath a spell the like of which he had never known before, and which suddenly gave a new impulse to all his vague yearnings and imaginings, and a zest to this adventure which was greater than any that ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... went in only to see that little Agnes had crept into the corner of the room where the harp stood, and was striking the strings with a copper spoon, highly pleased with her actions. Gertrude was seized with a vague, nameless terror. She took the harp into the kitchen, removed the strings from the frame, rolled them up, put them in a drawer, and carried the stringless frame up to ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... cooling draughts of bitter floated in procession through sizzling clouds of vapour smelling of invisible kitchens. As he fumbled with his putties the rumble of waggons came out of darkness from a road hard by, mingled with the sharper rattle that tells of the gunners already on the move. The vague rumours of last night, he felt, were going to shape into the actuality of fight; but what an hour to go out fighting! Why should they be hauled out to fight in the dark? Why could not men wait for light? ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... confession, or was she speaking of the Barbarians? And he added a few vague words upon the public embarrassments which he hoped by his sole ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... began to come to herself she had no knowledge of where she had been, or for how long her mind had been astray; all was irretrievable confusion, crossed with cloud-like trails of blotted dreams, and vague survivals of gratitude for bread and pieces of money. Everything she became aware of surprised her, except the child in her arms. Her story had been plain to every one she met, and she had received thousands ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... above alluded to, seen fit to precipitate himself, head-foremost, into a washing-tub 267 of nearly scalding water, whence his mamma, with great presence of mind and much professional dexterity, extricated him, wrung him out, and set him on the mangle to dry, where he remained sobbing, from a vague sense of humid misery, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... houses became larger, newer, more flamboyant; richly dressed, handsome women were coming and going between them and their broughams. When Sommers turned to look back, the boulevard disappeared in the vague, murky region of mephitic cloud, beneath which the husbands of those women were toiling, striving, creating. He walked on and on, enjoying his leisure, speculating idly about the people and the houses. At last, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... looking at Tito; her eyes were bent with a vague gaze towards the ground, and she had no distinct consciousness that the words she ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... training, our captive would trot, gallop, obey the sound of our voice, feed from our hand; and, in fact, showed himself perfectly docile. Now our ingenuity was taxed to the utmost. How were we to saddle and bridle a bird? First, for a bit for his beak. Vague ideas passed through my mind, but every one I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... raised up in her heart and conscience. Not only is she compelled to reveal the positive acts, gestures, and words, containing the least element of culpability or blame against the chastity and purity of her habits, but even the most vague and inevitable thoughts,—those against which woman recoils with indignation, and which she would even blush and refuse to give an account of to herself,—have all to be expressed and uttered by her lips without the least palliation or disguise. It is a fact generally admitted in ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... The vague hope of meeting the countess at Moncloa, of walking with her a whole afternoon, unmolested by that circle of insufferable people who surrounded her with their drooling worship, kept him excited ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I said, and the natural fierceness of my own disposition, deepened by vague and strong suspicions of some treachery designed against me, spoke in the tones ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... careworn to the last degree. The eyes were almost feverish, the black curl on the brow was unkempt, and there was a streak or two of gray easily visible against the intense sable. What change had come over him? Why this new-born interest in Esther? Raphael felt a vague unreasoning resentment rising in him, mingled with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... startled, puzzled. She bowed slightly and gave him a smile which seemed to him timid, shrinking, and amusingly deferential; but she showed no disposition to pause, or even to slacken her pace. "She doesn't know, after all," he thought; "she is imagining some vague horror or other that is too dreadful to be ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... send me another the next day, and I passed the rest of this day, in an ebb and flow of feelings; the man and the Christian struggling against the man and the courtier, and in the midst of a crowd of vague fancies catching glimpses of the future, painted in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... on our way, I pondered much over this new discovery, and the singular appearance of these birds, of which Jack could only give us a very slight and vague account; and I began to long to commence to our boat, in order that we might go and inspect them more narrowly. But by degrees these thoughts left me, and I began to be much taken up again with the interesting peculiarities of the country which we ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... in previous lessons, and not analytically discussed as it should be, being so important a feature as it is, in the practical operations of tuning. The average tuner hears and considers the beats with a vague and indefinite comprehension, guessing at causes and effects, and arriving at uncertain results. Having now become familiar with vibration numbers and ratios, the student may, at this juncture, more readily understand the phenomenon, the more scientific discussion of which it ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... repeated delays for the purpose of procuring a crowd of friendly witnesses, and, finally, to cover his guilty conduct, by the additional guilt of fraud and forgery. About the same time, the restorer of Britain and Africa, on a vague suspicion that his name and services were superior to the rank of a subject, was ignominiously beheaded at Carthage. Valentinian no longer reigned; and the death of Theodosius, as well as the impunity of Romanus, may justly be imputed to the arts of the ministers, who abused the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... paper on Darwin and Bergson.[39] I have read nothing of Bergson's, and although he evidently has much in common with my own views, yet all vague ideas—like "an internal development force"—seem to me of no real value as an explanation ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Captain Cuttle's gaze, or rather glare, which was full of vague suspicions, threatenings, and denunciations. Taking the proffered packet from his hand, the Captain opened it and read as follows:— 'My dear Ned Cuttle. Enclosed is my will!' The Captain turned it over, with a doubtful look—'and Testament—Where's the Testament?' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... harps on it at agreeable intervals. But in the course of time, it had to be sent to the wash-tub, and then, behold, all the little lovely harps followed the example of the harp that "once through Tara's hall the soul of music shed," and disappeared! Only vague, dirty, yellow reminders of their beauty remained, not to decorate, but to ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... said General Forsyth; 'why can't the fellow tell his business instead of being so vague ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... of the 'Vita Mathildis' (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Partridgite abruptly, and the world had thought no more of it until an interview in the Sunday Chronicle, that store-house of information about interesting people, announced that Willie was carrying on his father's experiments at the point where he had left off. Since then there had been vague rumours of possible sensational developments, which Willie had neither denied nor confirmed. He preserved the mysterious silence which went ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... from his laboratory, was in wildest disarray, and his eyes were still a little vague, as he followed Brenton up the stairs to the nursery. Across the threshold of the nursery, however, the vagueness vanished; the eyes grew keen as sharp-pointed bits of steel, yet strangely gentle, while ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... had some vague thoughts of telling Sara all about my new happiness, for it was so great I wanted to talk it over with somebody, but I couldn't after that. Oh, I wish I had a mother! She could understand. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Derby's explanation of his views with regard to the Budget,[33] and will be glad to see him on Wednesday at three o'clock. She had been alarmed by vague rumours that it was the intention of the Government to propose great changes in the present financial system, which, with an adverse majority in the House of Commons and at the eve of a Dissolution, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria |
