"Vaguely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the meadow flowers she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous ravines and chasms breathing vapour from the pit of Hades. What were the Cyclops—that race of one-eyed giants—but the many minor cones of Etna? Observed from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken of by the natives, who had reason to dread their rage, these hillocks became lawless and devouring giants, each with one round burning eye. Afterwards the tales of Titans who had warred with Zeus were realised in this spot. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... with as little disturbance to the shrubbery as possible. They were very polite to us, and when, after that misadventure with the cigarettes (I had put our young leader up to throwing the box, merely supplying the corpus delicti myself), I wandered vaguely towards a Gatling gun planted on an earthen platform where the laurel and the dogroses had been cut away for it, the man in charge explained with a smile of apology that I must not pass a certain ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mysterious voice; it brought the tears into the sculptor's eyes, with remembrances and forebodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or apprehended; it made Donatello sob, as chiming in with the anguish that he found unutterable, and giving it the expression which he vaguely sought. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half a dozen heavy lines had been pencilled, and these in turn checked through with little vertical dashes; below were the sketchily-drawn supports, which indicated a bridge, and upon this bridge a procession of people vaguely outlined as to body, but elaborated as to face to such a degree of artistic cleverness that Dave ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... would have rested content with this, but Margery had had too many dealings with the other sex to put undue confidence in any concession so vaguely expressed, so grudgingly admitted. It was rather a hard thing to do—she knew beforehand Willie Jones would hate her for it—but a nickel is a nickel, and now or never, she realized, was the moment to demand a ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... for certain purposes in nature, and fail to recognize that they were the effect and the expression of mind. Darwin looked at the Duke very hard, and said, "Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times"—here he shook his head vaguely—"it seems ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Cornish personage, and that he clung to high places on the tors and rocks because he had to fight and subdue the Prince of the Air, whom he always destroyed at last on some pointed pinnacle. And now that he came to think of it, Eustace vaguely recollected he had always seen St. Michael, in pictures or stained glass windows, delineated just so —with drawn sword and warrior's mien—in the act of triumphing over his dragon-like enemy on the airy summit of some tall jagged ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... a fierce throb of pain: "He was all the time saying he 'couldn't afford' things; that was so he could give her money, I suppose?" Then blank listlessness again. She did not suffer very much. She was too stunned to suffer. She merely said to herself, vaguely, "I'll leave him." It may have been on the third day that, when she said, "I will leave him; he has been false to me," her mind whispered back, very faintly, like an echo, "He has been false to himself." For just a moment she loved him enough to think that he had sinned. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Her incipient sense of revolt had died down for the time; she was young enough to live in the present, if the present was agreeable enough, as it was with this mild, unwonted, holiday stir about her. She only felt, vaguely, a little sorry ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... laid it gently down, then tearfully shovelled back the sand till it was hidden. So Gregorio found a tomb. Nor did it remain unconsecrated, for beside it Madam Marx knelt and spoke with faltering lips the remnants of the prayers she had learned when a child. As she prayed she watched vaguely a steamer disappear behind ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... near to the still formless sketch in which a group of two animals could be vaguely distinguished, one of them, a greyhound, flying over the ground at a truly ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... a world of thick, ropy stalks of grass, and in the distance were trees that reminded him vaguely of similar structures on his native Arcturian world except that their lowest branches were high above what he would consider ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... the means by which the soul learns in a direct manner the will and the teaching and the mind of Christ, and it is by this means she gains such wisdom as it is God's will she shall have. The soul seeks this telepathy during the second stage, vaguely, not knowing or understanding the mode of it, receiving it ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... vaguely mindful she was adding to her burden of ill-doing, but finally again started slowly toward the village, hurrying as she approached the hotel, where she encountered the soldier on the veranda. Her distressed countenance and haste proclaimed ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... This head is vaguely suggestive of a young eagle, the proportions of the bill of which, until of some age, are considerably distorted. The position of the nostrils, however, and the contour of the mandibles, together with the position of the eyes, show clearly enough that it is a likeness ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... Any one, upon reflection, will perceive that in the common use of these and numberless other words, there is often a signal lack of clearness and precision, and will hardly fail to notice that the error proceeds from a want of due attention to the nice and peculiar meanings of words which are vaguely presumed to have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... spoke very quickly, almost breathlessly, and Sylvia felt vaguely uncomfortable. There was, of course, only one person to whom she was likely to mention the fact, and that was ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... that my waking thoughts could be called valuable, for my habit is to lie in bed and wonder vaguely what time it is, and if you start the day in that way and write it solemnly on paper you may just as well keep a diary of what you had for luncheon and where you had tea and all that kind of twaddle, which people write because blotting paper ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... that Cartoner yielded, for it was unlike him. He was so much stronger than Martin—so determined, so unyielding. And yet she felt no surprise when he turned and came towards her with Martin's hand still within his arm. She knew that it was written that he must come; divined vaguely that he had something to say to her which it was safer to say than to leave to be silently understood and perhaps misunderstood. She gave an impatient sigh. She had always ruled her father and brother and the Palace Bukaty, and this sense of ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... carouse—the cause and her hopes ennobled all. It was much—may she be forgiven!—if, in the first enthusiasm of the morning, she gave a single thought to the misguided kinsman whose opposition had hurried him into trouble, and exposed him to dangers at which she vaguely guessed. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... time known that he was assiduously engaged in collecting materials, and preparing from them a history of the famous Conquest of Mexico; an event which, although of a very splendid and romantic character, was still but vaguely known, even in accomplished and well-informed literary circles. The facts relating to it were nowhere recorded in an authentic and connected form; for it has not been until within the last fifty years that the attention of historians and general scholars has been turned in this direction. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... us in class in a loud tone of voice and without halt for inflection or the taking of breath—of the Turk who at midnight in his guarded tent was dreaming of the hour when Greece her knees in suppliance bent would tremble at his power. I remember how vaguely I used to wonder who it was that was going to grease her knees and why she should feel called upon to have them greased at all. Also, I shall pass over the instance of Abou Ben Adhem, whose name led all the rest in the golden book in which the angel was writing. Why shouldn't it have led ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... gatherings, and were enjoyed by all participators. In an evil hour, a long-lost brother of Flipfield's came to light in foreign parts. Where he had been hidden, or what he had been doing, I don't know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that he had turned up 'on the banks of the Ganges'—speaking of him as if he had been washed ashore. The Long-lost was coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, based on the well-known regularity of the P. and O. Steamers, that matters might ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the rough and still formless model out of which there was beginning to issue vaguely a group of two animals, one a greyhound which was scampering at full speed with a rush ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... his Med ship out of overdrive near that sector's planet Weald, he was vaguely aware of the risks. But the crisis came home to him with a crash the moment he radioed ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any semblance of life, passionless in all ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... been a dreamer, but Hadrian had never seen him so listless, so vaguely brooding as in these days. When he tried to rouse him and spur him to greater energy his favorite would look at him beseechingly, and though he made every effort to be of use to him and to show him a cheerful countenance it was always with but brief success. Even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the first time she saw who sat there—a tall, handsome, beautifully gowned girl whom she had noticed several times during the evening, and to whom everybody seemed to defer. She had heard vaguely that this was Elizabeth's cousin, and wondered if it was for her that Elizabeth had ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... still recognize vaguely that they are discussing a rumor. Being lawyers they still remember some of the forms of evidence. But as red-blooded men they already experience all the indignation which is appropriate to the fact that American marines have been ordered into war by a foreign ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of this vaguely desired government, the country obtained the feeble and irresolute Directory, composed for the moment of the voluptuous Barres, the intriguing Sieyes, the brave Moulins, the insignificant Roger Ducos, and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... can be induced to help man and does not want to thwart him. And here they were perfectly right. We are at last learning the way by which this may be done, and now see clearly what the Hindus only vaguely felt, that the heart of the river is right enough—that once it is tamed and trained it can bring ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... were they but the necessary though unforeseen fruits of mere man-made laws and institutions the existing generation had inherited from a by-gone and ignorant past? Such were the questions which vaguely and indistinctly may have passed, and, as we shall see, did pass, through the active, original, philosophic and deeply religious mind of Winstanley in the quiet solitude ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... mould and health, was capable of extravagant and overpowering emotion; a rapturous exaltation that filled her and took possession of her whole being. She tried to turn her thoughts to Sir Julian, and wondered vaguely why he had not come to London. He had intended leaving the castle before this; and why had he not found her? He might know she would like to inquire of those at home,—the Duke of Ellswold and the others that were ill. The thought seemed ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the Tatler do not occupy a very prominent place in the development of the work. Isaac Bickerstaff himself, an old man of sixty-four, "a philosopher, an humourist, an astrologer, and a censor," is rather vaguely sketched, and his familiar, Pacolet, is made use of chiefly in the earlier numbers. The occasional references to Bickerstaff's half-sister, Jenny Distaff,[13] and her husband, Tanquillus, and to his three nephews and their conduct in the presence of a "beautiful woman of honour,"[14] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... said; and after he had drawn forward a chair he repeated the word vaguely and comprehensively—"Thanks"—as if to cover as many demands for gratitude as she ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Dudley happens to be an honest man?" said Rossiter, in a manner so strange that the smile froze on the face of the other man. The unhappy barrister caught the quick glance that passed between them, and was vaguely convinced that they had been discussing him while he slept. Something whispered to him that they had guessed the ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... equality before the law would have disappeared, or they would have hurried on the Social Revolution, the Armageddon of Labor and Capital, the merciless conflict of class with class, which many persons already vaguely dreaded, or thought they saw looming like an ominous cloud on the horizon. It seems astounding that any one should have questioned the necessity of setting up regulations. And will not posterity wonder, when it learns ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Gerrard's shoulder, and Gerrard, thrilled through by the glance Honour had turned upon him, and with all his preconceived ideas shattered and clashing under the impact of a wholly new thought, must perforce allow himself to be hurried away, vaguely aware that Mrs Jardine, baulked of her expected sensation, was apostrophizing the acting-Resident as a "naughty man!" At the foot of the steps he turned suddenly. One word with Honour, even in Mrs Jardine's hearing, and his doubts would be ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... whip-poor-will, who, perched on some lone tree, wearied the ear of night with his incessant moanings. The mind, soothed into a hallowed melancholy, listened with pensive stillness to catch and distinguish each sound that vaguely echoed from the shore—now and then startled, perchance, by the whoop of some straggling savage, or by the dreary howl of a wolf, stealing forth upon his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... we're going to like this?" Ricky waved her hand vaguely in a gesture which included a dilapidated hot-dog stand and a stretch of road white-hot under the steady baking of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... leisurely, fresh dressing all caressed my nerves delightfully. In the plunge a pleasant enough fellow had accosted me and we had splashed together contentedly. I expected to recall his name every moment, for his face was vaguely familiar, but I could not, and when we met in the hall and went down the steps together, it still escaped me. We hesitated a bit on the pavement, and then before I realised it we were hailing a hansom and bound for ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... not counted on an interview with the women of Doddridge Knapp's family. I had, to be sure, vaguely foreseen the danger to come from meeting them, but I had been confident that it would be easy to avoid them. And now, in the face of the emergency, my resources had failed me, and I was walking into Mrs. Knapp's reception-room without ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... troubling himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of color, nor of anything but that one of composition. It may be a scheme of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of color to the painter, and everything bends to that. When this has been decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough to think of other things. ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... that are passing upon earth see not so far, nor from such a height, the chances and consequences of their acts; the Franks and Arabs, leaders and followers, did not regard themselves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to decide, near Poitiers, such future question; but vaguely, instinctively they felt the grandeur of the part they were playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter between valiant warriors. At length, at the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by Mr. Blackadder and Mr. Welsh, were held near Dumfries on the Saturday, but at these the place of meeting on the Sabbath was only vaguely announced as "a hillside in Irongray," so anxious were they to escape being disturbed by their enemies, and the secret was kept so well that when the Sabbath arrived a congregation of above three ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... arranged to go off to Gloucestershire, as soon as possible, to look for a house. We both realise that we must learn to retrench at once. We shall have less than half our former income, counting in what we hope to get from the old house. I am not at all afraid of that. I always vaguely disliked living as comfortably as we did—but it will not be agreeable to have to calculate all our expenses—that may perhaps mend itself, if I can but begin ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... splendid regiment on a useless expedition through the deadly fever country just to the south of Delagoa Bay, between the Lebomba Mountains and the sea, and of his now having to go with the effective remnant of his veterans on a quest for copper to a hypothetical spot only vaguely rumoured of. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... agreed in the end that someone named Hugo did not wear a moustache, though someone named Hermann did. She was vaguely shocked and interested. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... vaguely alludes to a certain event which changed his view of things in general; "ever since," "since that November," "for now nearly five years I have felt." These and similar phrases constantly occur in his diary. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... limitations of her age and sex, and, forgetting her strange position, listened to the Duke of Durazzo with the liveliest interest and the kindliest attention. He then hazarded allusions to the dangers that beset a young queen, spoke vaguely of the difficulty in distinguishing between true devotion and cowardly complaisance or interested attachment; he spoke of the ingratitude of many who had been loaded with benefits, and had been most completely trusted. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... expressive of an importance about which its owner was undecided, imposed above a fullish waistcoat a chin which was now tending toward the slopes of middle age. The eyes were mild and vaguely speculative, the lips full and loosely formed, and when they smiled they began tentatively in a tremulous lift showing only the two upper front teeth—the smile of a woman rather than of a man. This smile—when it made, as it so often had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... criticism of the measures proposed. The writer has apparently small know]edge of biology, for he expresses astonishment that the miserably poor "increase prodigiously" in Russia and elsewhere. "Who shall solve these mysteries or dogmatize upon them?" he says, and speculates further, in a vaguely awe-stricken manner, on the subject, quoting from the vigorous Mr. Roosevelt and the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... over his tired eyelids, in the same way as he might have wiped his eyeglass, and would cease altogether to think. There emerged, however, from this unexplored tract, certain occupations which reappeared from time to time, vaguely connected by Odette with some obligation towards distant relatives or old friends who, inasmuch as they were the only people whom she was in the habit of mentioning as preventing her from seeing him, seemed to Swann to compose the necessary, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of my purchase seems to have preceded me, for when, one day, I produced the pendant to show them, I found that they knew all about it. Raggerton had heard the story from a naval man, and I gathered vaguely that he had heard something that I had not, and that he did not care to tell me; for when my cousin and he talked about the pearl, which they did pretty often, certain significant looks passed between ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... venerable preacher intimately in the past; but his eyes, wandering vaguely over the congregation, and resting curiously upon me, betrayed no recognition. Age, which had whitened his hair and enfeebled his voice, seemed also to have given him the privilege of ignoring everything but the grave and the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... had been up at the hut all the afternoon. He had pulled out an old chest, the sea-chest of a long dead Raven who had been marked with sea longing, as it sometimes happens to those bred in the hills, and had run away and become mate and captain. Raven had always been vaguely proud of him, and so, perhaps, had other Ravens, for Old Crow, when he moved up here, had brought the sea-chest with him, and his own books also were stowed away in it. Old Captain Raven's were entirely consistent with his ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... about her or beyond her. It was as if she were floating up to him out of the cold mists of the sea. And she stopped only a step away from him, when she saw more clearly what was in his face. It must have been something that startled her. Vaguely he realized this and made ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... who were glad to show themselves on a public platform without being the puppets or the opponents of their bishops, Irish Protestants, who were irritated at the desertion of the Irish Church, a number of well-meaning people who were attracted by the opportunity of talking eloquently and vaguely about nothing in particular. This Academic scheme of Home Rule found an admirable exponent in Mr. Butt, an able lawyer of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of a humdrum kind. What we vaguely had in mind Was some new sensation or Thrill we ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... term in prison. Very likely you would say to yourself, "I suppose he is a mighty tough character, but I believe there is something in him that isn't altogether bad." Your intuition would tell you he possessed undefined traits that you like. In your own liking for these characteristics that you vaguely discerned in him when you saw him, is the key to the interest ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... are miserably moth-eaten compared to our own arrogant princes of Wall Street or even compared to the dazed dukes and earls of England, who are looking out at the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds about them. One feels vaguely that these Italian nobles are passing through a rather mean stage of decay. For a time during the latter part of the last century and during the first decade of this century, the Italian noblemen tried to edge into business. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... discourse learnedly about that region, extolling its natural beauties and healthy climate, reminding him that it was the birthplace of a man celebrated in antiquity (was it Diodorus Siculus?) and hinting, none too vaguely, that he would doubtless live up to the traditions of so celebrated a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... be adequate and proper, must begin, like charity, at home, and unlike charity should end there too. Rebecca looked about the room vaguely as she sat by the window. She must give up something, and truth to tell she possessed little to give, hardly anything but—yes, that would do, the beloved pink parasol. She could not hide it in the attic, for in some moment of weakness she would be sure to take ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I lay there in the darkness I cannot tell. All I remember is my suddenly opening my eyes on intense blackness, and vaguely wondering where I was. My head felt strangely clear and alive, but for a moment I could remember nothing. I was conscious only of a strong earthy smell, and my eyes felt so keen that, as the phrase goes, they seemed to make darkness visible. They seemed, too, to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Tristan, and during that time I could not help feeling that most probably other objections, besides those of political captiousness, would be raised against the spread of this work. I therefore continued my work vaguely ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... a beautifully shrill humor; running, not unnaturally, into confused exaggerations and distortions of all kinds. Not mendaciously written anywhere, yet erroneously everywhere. Wilhelmina had no knowledge of the magical machinery that was at work: she vaguely suspects Grumkow and Seckendorf; but does not guess, in the mad explosions of Papa, that two devils have got into Papa, and are doing the mischief. Trusting to memory alone, she misdates, mistakes, misplaces; jumbles all things topsy-turvy;—giving, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... seeking a spring, knowing full well that a draft must kill him. He stood alone outside the companionway, wondering at the absence of people, at the absence of Dolores. A solitary man stood at the wheel; and, looking around for others, Tomlin noticed vaguely that the black storm was broken, that watery stars were winking down, and that almost in the zenith a gibbous moon leaned like a brimming dipper of quicksilver, ready to drop from the inky cloud that had ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... was forced to go away with this assurance. He returned home, but not to sleep. He wondered vaguely if he had been wise to lean upon so frail a reed as Fogerty seemed to be; and above all he wondered where poor Louise was, and if terror and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... loud, indistinct cries into some sort of connected order. Yes, that was it—"Horrible Murder! Murder at St. Pancras!" Bunting remembered vaguely another murder which had been committed near St. Pancras—that of an old lady by her servant-maid. It had happened a great many years ago, but was still vividly remembered, as of special and natural interest, among the class to ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... unmistakable. I started from my seat, looked round, amazed to discover no one,—no living thing! The windows were closed, the night was still. That sigh was not the wail of the wind. But there, in the darker angle of the room, what was that? A silvery whiteness, vaguely shaped as a human form, receding, fading, gone! Why, I know not—for no face was visible, no form, if form it were, more distinct than the colourless outline,—why, I know not, but I cried aloud, "Lilian! Lilian!" My voice came strangely ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 1884, was compelled to take into his calculations the inclusion of territories and peoples outside Europe. Neither of them, therefore, made any effective intellectual preparation for those problems which have been raised in our time by 'the scramble for the world.' Mazzini seems, indeed, to have vaguely expected that nationality would spread from Europe into Asia and Africa, and that the 'pact of humanity' would ultimately be 'signed' by homogeneous and independent 'nations,' who would cover the whole land surface of the globe. But he never indicated the political forces by which that result ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... early childhood is the one in which the home may act with least interference as the child's teacher. Later, whether she will or no, the mother must share the work of training with the school, the church, and that indefinite influence we class vaguely as society. During these few early years, then, the mother must use her opportunity well. It will ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... that worthy ate his dinner with his new companions. He wondered vaguely what his mother would say if she knew ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wondered vaguely if some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers. Nevertheless, his mind did not for an instant confuse himself with those brothers nor his sister with theirs. After the mother had, with great difficulty, suppressed ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... of burrowing marsupials, family Vombatidae, which vaguely resemble small bears; (colloquial) ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... He waved a hand vaguely behind him. Rogerson, Whatmough, and Owen came up. It was getting dark and a mist was rising. So we left the three at the corner to mark where it was and went back. For a long time we stumbled in the darkness, shouting, but no horses could we find. At last we decided ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... could feel that her part of it was sustained merely for the sake of keeping me from treading upon more dangerous ground. Yet despite this nervous anxiety of hers, I could see—or I flattered myself—that she was vaguely surprised and piqued that I should be willing to discuss so trifling a subject during the fleeting moments before Lady Tressidy might be ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... in this manner, yet somehow today the circumstance worried Owen considerably. He wondered uneasily what it meant, and began to feel vaguely apprehensive. Hunter's silence seemed more menacing ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... different fashion, each according to the measure of his sensitiveness and powers of resistance. I translated it vaguely into a personification of the mightily disturbed elements, investing them with the horror of a deliberate and malefic purpose, resentful of our audacious intrusion into their breeding-place; whereas my friend threw it into the unoriginal form at first of a trespass ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... I had supposed that she was going to some house; indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... one my companions, obeying a command, passed out through the door at the back, vanishing out of my life forever. None of them returned. I was vaguely wondering whether Doctor Z buried his dead on the premises or had them removed by a secret passageway in the rear, when a young woman in a nurse's costume tapped me ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... as the Ambersons had passed, and though some of them might do better than the Major and leave the letters that spelled a name on a hospital or a street, it would be only a word and it would not stay forever. Nothing stays or holds or keeps where there is growth, he somehow perceived vaguely but truly. Great Caesar dead and turned to clay stopped no hole to keep the wind away dead Caesar was nothing but a tiresome bit of print in a book that schoolboys study for awhile and then forget. The Ambersons had passed, and the new people would pass, and the new people that came ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... at each other, doubting how much they should say. Finally James said vaguely, "We think it won't be ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... twilight was short, night fell with its myriad stars. Pere Lastique took the oars, and they saw that the sea was phosphorescent. Jeanne and the vicomte, side by side, watched the fitful gleams in the wake of the boat. They were hardly thinking, but simply gazing vaguely, breathing in the beauty of the evening in a state of delicious contentment; Jeanne had one hand on the seat and her neighbor's finger touched it as if by accident; she did not move; she was surprised, happy, though embarrassed at this ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... have indicated as existing can, in the present state of our knowledge, be only vaguely described as a poisoned state of the blood-stream. This, as clinical evidence teaches us, may result from a ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... this genus and of the Marsupial order. Thus we see that the Mammalia of Celebes are no less individual and remarkable than the birds, since three of the largest and most interesting species have no near allies in surrounding countries, but seem vaguely to indicate a relation to the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... passages, and the Scotch soldier of fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. But the book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and skilful pastiche. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell a moral allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly understand what it is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is not the fairyland of Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; but they are escaped from a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no business here. The book ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... some of the most noteworthy features of Milton's style. By the measured roll of his verse, and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice character of his diction, and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets; by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations that he imposes ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... that year, the latter end of March. On the Monday in Passion-week there arrived a telegram for Lord Hartledon sent apparently by the butler, Hedges. It was vaguely worded; spoke of a railway accident and somebody dying. Who he could not make out, except that it was a Kirton: and it prayed him to hasten down immediately. All his goodness of heart aroused, Val lost not a moment. He had been engaged to spend Easter with some people ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... deadly silent. It was completely empty except for a calico cat moving purposefully toward Manhattan. The structure needed a coat of paint, Johnson thought vaguely, but of course it would never get one. Still, even uncared for, the bridges should outlast him—there would be no heavy traffic to weaken them. Just in case of unforeseeable catastrophe, however—he didn't ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... ale-houses were not provided with newspapers; it was an expense never thought of; the men went to drink their beer and talk over the news of the vicinity, and if there was a disturbance in any other portion of the United Kingdom, the fact was only gained by rumour, and that vaguely and long after it had taken place. But when the pedlar Byres made his appearance, which he at last did, weekly or oftener, as it might happen, there was a great change; he was the party who supplied information, and, in consequence, he was always welcome, and looked upon as an ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... furniture to match. A generous litter of toys was the last proof needed to establish the house as Shaver's true domicile. Indeed, there was every indication that Shaver was the central figure of this home of whose charm and atmosphere The Hopper was vaguely sensible. A frieze of dancing children and watercolor sketches of Shaver's head, dabbed here and there in the most unlooked-for places, hinted at an artistic household. This impression was strengthened when The Hopper, bewildered and baffled, returned to the ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... of an enraged man may be attributed in part to the undirected flow of nerve-force, and in part to the effects of habit, for these actions often vaguely represent the act of striking. They thus pass into gestures included under our first principle; as when an indignant man unconsciously throws himself into a fitting attitude for attacking his opponent, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... not answer. I wrote to Valerian Harassan and was honored with a prompt reply—his friend Mr. Henderson had returned to San Francisco and he had forwarded my letter there. "But you had as well try to correspond with the will-o'-the-wisp," he wrote. "When last I talked with him, he spoke rather vaguely of going to China and making a trip afoot to Lhasa." Nevertheless, I wrote again, and it was a year later when both of my letters came back to me bearing the post-marks of many cities from coast to coast, to be opened at last by ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... told the story of his life, they not only told the story of his community in a very interesting manner, but they got straight to some of those faults which they were apt to be impressed by if they gazed vaguely at the community. Dr. Hume Brown had written an admirable summary of the history of Scotland, but he had contributed to the history of Scotland in another way by his two biographies of Buchanan and Knox, and especially ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... while she was wondering why Peter Nichols was doing this for her and what the outcome of it all was to be. He spoke little of the future except to hint vaguely at lessons elsewhere when he had taught her all that he knew. The present it seemed was sufficient for them both. His moods of soberness, of joy, of enthusiasm, were all catching and she followed him blindly, aware of this great new element in her life which was to make the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... square; lips with a triple fold of skin on each side; tragus vaguely developed and wavily emarginate; of a uniform light-brown colour, with maroon tips to the hairs of the upper ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... extended its wings eastward. The Persian King took these settlements from us one after the other, and he is now in Thrace. Since we cannot go farther eastward, we must go westward, towards the sunset. You have heard more or less vaguely of the Roman Republic, which is growing and growing. Our countrymen have long ago taken possession of that part of the Italian peninsula which is called Tarentum, and we have thereby become close neighbours of Rome. And the finest of the islands, opulent Sicily, became ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... folded arms, looking idly through the window at the chaotic prospect. Suddenly he was aware that the door of his compartment had been opened. A man had entered and was taking the seat opposite to him, a man whose appearance struck Maraton at once as being vaguely familiar, a man who smiled at him almost with the air ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... repeated, vaguely, saying in the next breath, "then they are not already married," muttering the words more to herself than to the man. "Where does this girl, Dorothy live?" she ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... crowd of people has assembled, vaguely seen through the trees. Music of wind-instruments is heard far away behind the ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... barbarism and culture. Our Christian civilization is passing through catastrophic changes, and it is again a matter of opinion whether it is in its death-throes or in the pangs of a new birth. But we feel vaguely, yet insistently, that civilization is a state of the soul; it is the gentle life towards which we aspire. It is based on the gradual substitution of moral and spiritual forces for simple brute force. What is the exact relation of religion to civilization? The answer has been as variable ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the assiduous hammering and sawing on the Schloss-Platz, amid crowds of gay loungers, giving cheerful note of preparation, in those latter days of August, 1750. And, on WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 25th AUGUST, look and see,—for the due moments only, and vaguely enough (as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... that Marechal (who related all this curious anecdote to me) made bold to speak to the King upon this sadness, fearing for his health. The King avowed to him that he felt infinite trouble, and threw himself vaguely upon the state of affairs. Eight or ten days. after (during which he continued to feel the same melancholy), the King regained his usual calmness, and called Marechal to explain the cause of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in itself, and the higher up they rose the easier and swifter it seemed to become. The hall was lighted from the roof—at least the light seemed to come down from among the arches so high up that their form was only vaguely seen. But whether it was daylight or what, the children did not know, and perhaps it did not occur to them to think. They just flew softly on, till suddenly Dudu veered to one side and stopped them in front of a low carved door with a step before it just large enough for them to stand on. They ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... there was a strange, new sensation in this companionship, so close and yet so distant. He was so near to Eve that the slight fragrant scent from her clothes might almost have belonged to his own. The impression was confusing yet vaguely delightful. It was years since he had been so close to a woman of his own class—his own caste. He acknowledged the thought with a curious sense of pleasure. Involuntarily he ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... figures in the corner of the scenes in which she distinguishes herself, separated from her by something like the gulf that separated Caliban from Ariel. He has his hands in his pockets, his head poked forward; what is going on is quite beyond his comprehension. He vaguely wonders what his wife will do next; her manoeuvres quite transcend him. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns always succeeds. She is never at fault; she is as quick as the instinct of self-preservation. She is the little London lady who is determined ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... Robert Hagburn departing at the same time, this little knot of three was dissolved, and Septimius went along the wayside wall, thoughtfully, as was his wont, to his own dwelling. He had stopped for some moments on the threshold, vaguely enjoying, it is probable, the light and warmth of the new spring day and the sweet air, which was somewhat unwonted to the young man, because he was accustomed to spend much of his day in thought and study within doors, and, indeed, like most studious young men, was overfond ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
