"Finality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all vanished from the walls. The books were gone from the old book-case; the furniture itself was being carried away, the marble-topped table being the last piece left. The woman was washing the parlor floor, slopping on the soapy water with that air of finality that made Ellen Robinson realize that the old home was broken up at last. Grimly she walked into the dining-room, and saw immaculate empty closets and cleanly shining window-panes. As far as the work had progressed it had ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... him, then, for half a minute, with a starry twinkle, and then said, with a finality of conviction that made her dearer to ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... camp of the upright. Walking the paths of the clean and sane he would be more surely secure from detection than anywhere else on earth. That was what his past had done for him. The truth of this sank into the lonely man's soul with sickening finality. And as he realized it, and compared it with the fact of his youth, he groaned. What an infernal fool he had been! What fools all such fellows were who, like him, wasted everything in their determination to make the unreal, real. He did not now desire to be a drivelling ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... again; nothing ever did. And now with ironic conformity to law, his philosophy had turned on him, demonstrating beyond cavil that not only did the things one longed to be free of come to a sure finality but so did those one pined to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... talk, will you?" said Captain irritably. "Of course, one man can't haul an outfit that far, but two can, so I'm going to take Klusky with me." He spoke with finality, and the Jew started, gazing queerly. "We'll go light, and drive back a herd ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... and a sort of dependency. Man's Good is beyond himself; not so God's. The eternal act which produces the world's life is the eternal desire of good. The object of the Absolute Thought is the Absolute Good. Nature is all movement, and Thought all repose. In contemplating that absolute good, the Finality can contemplate only itself; and thus, all material interference being excluded, the distinction of subject and object vanishes in complete identification, and the Divine Thought is "the thinking of thought". The energy of mind is life, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the door. Annabelle, at his side, turns and blows Jimmy a kiss. Stonily, Jimmy watches them go out. Then he picks up his suitcase and goes, with an air of complete finality, into the other room. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... the picture which Hinduism has drawn of the finality of life to its followers? After the weary fugue of births and rebirths, with its interludes of many heavens and hells, the "self" passes on into final union with the Divine Soul. It loses all consciousness and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Capitan-General who led an army across this land," he remarked, "and mine must not be the task to judge of their infidelity to the Saints or to Christ the Son who has not yet spoken to them!" The words were uttered with an air of finality. Plainly he did not mean to encourage blood lust unless necessary to the work in hand. Don Diego sulkily made the sign of the cross at the Name, and Don Ruy noted that the good father was good on the parry—and if he could use a blade as he did words, he would be a rare ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... doctor for placing me in such a position before that man, but I couldn't quarrel with him in public; so I had ultimately to tell Mr. Bretland with finality and flatness, that Allegra was out of the question. Would he not ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... last he sniffed with an air of finality and raised his head, the first thing he saw was Lucy, sitting quite still ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... is a fine charity, and this is such a good place for a child to play. Isabel will take one for a week, if I will, and I said I would. There is just time, before I go away," Phebe said with an air of finality which would have ended the subject, had it not ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... and dropped hot and searing upon her hands. With Maurice's figure disappearing down the dark avenue, with the echo of his footsteps dying away in the distance, the last chapter of her first book of romance seemed to be closing with relentless finality. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to go. There was nothing more to be said. He knew Percy well enough by now to realise the finality of his pronouncements. His heart felt sore, but he was too proud to show his hurt again to a man who did not understand. All thoughts of disobedience he had put resolutely aside; he had never meant to break his ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... the feeling of self-orientation which was so necessary to him could only be depended upon, he felt that in time he would have pluck enough to bear anything. Indeed, total eclipse was less appalling, in its finality, than that miserable sword of Damocles which had been hanging over him for months—robbing him of his manhood—poisoning all the springs ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... thocht ye were an oot-an'-oot Leeberal—nane o' your finality Whigs that took ae bit step in the richt direction, and then durstna venture further. Ye maun vote for the five-pound vote if ye are to be oor man," ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... shoulders. The conversation had ceased to interest him. So, evidently, had his letters, for he thrust them from him with an air of finality as he rose to his feet and glanced at his watch. It was not yet very late, but with the waning of summer the days were growing perceptibly shorter and the light in the office where the two men were ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the greatest in the history of her sex, now impends, viz., arrest, complacency, and a sense of finality in the most perilous first stage of higher education for girls, when, after all, little has actually yet been won save only the right and opportunity to begin reconstructions, so that now, for the first time in history, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... with a note of finality, and Dr. David Moss stared at it gloomily. "I hope so," he said. But nobody ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... answered. "He stuck to the Islands. He had a life's work planned out, but he got cut-off in the Solomons before he had reached finality. I carried it on after that, came all the way from the Klondyke to take it up. I got through but it took every penny I had, and that's why this morning when I came across you I only had a boot and ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... were called, won the day; and the great reform which they effected was of incalculable service to mankind. But the Nemesis of all reformers is finality; and the reformers of education, like those of religion, fell into the profound, however common, error of mistaking the beginning for the end of the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... forgotten to say that the particular volume before me is called The War Lord of Mars (METHUEN). I may add that it closes with the heroic Carter hailed as Jeddak of Jeddaks, which sounds eminently satisfactory, though without conveying any definite promise of finality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... which is highest in an inferior nature approaches to that which is lowest in the higher nature, as is made clear by Dionysius (Div. Nom. vii). Therefore, of these three powers, the generative has the greater finality, nobility, and perfection, as the Philosopher says (De Anima ii, 4), for it belongs to a thing which is already perfect to "produce another like unto itself." And the generative power is served by the augmentative and nutritive powers; and the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... more than a fortnight since Sturk's mishap in the Butcher's Wood, and he was still alive, but still under the spell of coma. He was sinking, but very slowly; yet it was enough to indicate the finality of that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of course, mean a complete victory for bureaucratic state-socialism, and the defeat of democracy and trade-union syndicalism. Such a change, which few would just now welcome, will occur if no other form of state is able to survive; and this is what we may live to see. But there is no finality about any experiments in government. A period of internationalism may follow the intense nationalism which historical critics foresee for the twentieth century. Or perhaps the international labour-organisations may be too strong for the centralising forces. It is just possible ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... evolution is characterized by finality; it proceeds according to a definite plan, and ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... reigning grand duke desired peace of mind; and moving determinedly toward this end, he declared in public that his niece, the young and tender Princess Hildegarde, should wed the Prince of Doppelkinn, whose vineyards gave him a fine income. This was finality; the avuncular guardian had waited long enough for his wilful ward to make up her mind as to the selection of a suitable husband; now he determined to take a hand in the matter. And you shall see ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man, the evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... have been a dream, monsieur," she said with sad finality. "It is folly to encumber one's life ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... duck: Roman equivalent, the letter Z. In the motion pictures this bird, a somewhat z-shaped animal, suggests the finality of Arcadian peace. It is the last and fittest ornament of the mill-pond. Nothing very terrible can happen with a duck in the foreground. There is no use turning it over. It would take Maeterlinck or Swedenborg to find the mystic meaning ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... is as easy to imagine the finality as it is to go half-way there," returned the Idiot. "Finally he will tackle some elementary principle of nature, and he'll ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... I repeat, intended as a finality. If any Staff Officer into whose hand this book may come, or may be brought into knowledge of the working of the Regulations contained in it, can suggest any improvement, let him do so. If he can show any plan ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... among the Supplementary Laws despite the temptation to set these among the statutes of Table X, of which all but one item come from Cicero's discussion of Sacred Law in his De Legibus, II. 23. 58-24. 61, in the concluding portion of which Cicero seems to speak with some finality that he has given all the regulations regarding religion found in the Twelve Tables. Moreover these two rules come from Gaius, who flourished more than two centuries after Cicero. But if every Supplementary Law ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... with crashing finality, where he was and what had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane. Or he would have, if he could ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Hindoo, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist live together there, protected and in peace, with their worship and houses of worship; nor is there any shutting of mouths, because controversy long since attained finality amongst them; or perhaps it were better saying, because opinions there have now their recognized grooves, and run in them from generation to generation—opinions to which men are born as to their property, only without right of change or modification; neither can they ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... His descriptions of nature, in his poems, as well as in his prose works, have an original vigor and a pungent tang of their own; but the twisted violence of their introduction, full of queer jolts and jerks, prevents their impressing one with any sense of calm or finality. They are too aphoristic, these passages. They are too clever. They smell too much of the lamp. The same fault may be remarked in the rounding off of the Meredithian plots where one is so seldom conscious of the presence of the "inevitable" and so teased ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... years. So many things seem to culminate toward the close of the century—good fortune for some, evil fortune for others; hopes dashed at the seeming moment of realization, as if all the forces in nature were aiding to make an end of the century's efforts in any way that would bring finality. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... raiment of the dead; and the droop of his limbs has a regal finality; but look up! Stark naked, and in abandoned weakness, the liberated soul shudders itself into the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... or dancing or play-acting or physical transport of love, or vengeance or cruelty, or whether it is work or sorrow or religion, the issue is always the same at last, into the radiant negation of eternity. Hence the beauty and completeness, the finality of the highland peasant. His figure, his limbs, his face, his motion, it is all formed in beauty, and it is all completed. There is no flux nor hope nor becoming, all is, once and for all. The issue is eternal, timeless, and changeless. All being and all passing ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the story of Kit Raynham! And he had ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... back with an air of some finality, and with some little difficulty extracted a biggish square envelope from the left inner pocket of the accurately-fitting frock-coat. He lightly placed the envelope upon the blotter before Saxham; reached out and took the shiny top-hat ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to hear his explanation as she stood there gazing at him, her mind leaping lightning-like from point to point. "It was that which made you behave so strangely in the garden," she said, and she spoke each phrase with a kind of breathless finality. "You thought that I—I was like those—those other women in the camp." As he tried to take her hand she drew farther away, and stood looking at him out of eyes that were like purple shadows in her white face. It was with a little movement of anger that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... something, something that would never leave you again the same. "Nothing is shiny in Nature," says Mr. Ben-Gunn as though rather depressed, surveying a canvas in this respect unhappily divorced from the truth. "Nature," he adds with Brahminic finality, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... should tell John the story of her flight. Her manner, indeed—for one who could have understood it—proved a curious thing; that never, throughout their separation, had she ceased to believe that she should see her husband again. There had been no finality in her action. In her eyes the play had been always going ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a gross and vicious god. But your gossips traduce Wilkinson. He is a brave man and a fine officer," said Burr with an emphasis of finality. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of finality in her tone that struck dismay to Alan's heart. He prepared to entreat and argue, but before he could utter a word, the boughs behind them parted and Captain Anthony stepped ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... you myself," he announced, in a tone of finality, "and go on to the Mess for Mackay afterwards. The worst is over now, and you'll only let yourself in for a demonstration if your men find out that any harm has come to you." The diplomatic suggestion had the desired effect; and they rode ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... because it is only "the outward show," and does not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt, but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part. Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of beauty is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... stammered Feather and she stammered because even her lack of perception saw something in the woman's face which was new to her. It was a sort of finality. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... decree of parliament, but by this decision of the Court of Common Pleas. However there was no appeal from this Court, except to parliament, and from this time forward the character of the agitation changed. The year 1868 ended with a legal decision which seemed crushing in its finality, while the same year had given the most conclusive proof that women wished to vote, and would do so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... there is no other salient feature in the Democratic platform. Resolutions in the usual form were adopted on several other political topics; but the main discussion, and the absorbing interest of the convention, was on the question of accepting as a finality the series of Republican measures which is generally regarded as the natural and legitimate result of the overthrow of the rebellion, and which is embodied in the last three amendments ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... with such finality—she did not feel inclined to dispute the point. She submitted with a confused murmur ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... can show me that the woman has any legal claim upon the estate, I will consider the question, but not otherwise," said Mrs. de Tracy with such an air of finality that Lavendar was inclined to let the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Moon because you've got light hair," replied Nyoda in a tone of finality. "You'll just have to manage so the stool doesn't turn, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the election, and finally launched upon a long diatribe after the Platonic fashion, with the professor as a sympathetic interlocutor. His daughter refrained from combatting him openly, but he divined and resented her unexpressed opposition. Her attitude was one of finality; her silence indicated an indifference to his opinions more exasperating than words. It was the young astronomer, he reflected, who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... propinquity!" was a thrust she had once parried by saying that, in that case, he hadn't—to which his unspoken rejoinder that she had caught her tone from the peevish young women at the Central seemed to him (if not perhaps in the last, certainly in the last but one, analysis) to lack finality. With Eva, he had found, it was always safest to "ring off." It was with a certain sense of his rashness in the matter, therefore, that he now, with an air of feverishly "holding the line," said "Oh, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... and, on many of them, scholars have had again and again to reverse their conclusions. We are still only en route, and are learning more and more to possess our souls in patience, and to wait awhile for anything in the nature of finality. Meanwhile, the living substance is ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... completion of unity in accordance with general laws, operate to the destruction of its influence, but it hinders reason from attaining its proper aim, that is, the proof, upon natural grounds, of the existence of a supreme intelligent cause. For, if we cannot presuppose supreme finality in nature a priori, that is, as essentially belonging to nature, how can we be directed to endeavour to discover this unity and, rising gradually through its different degrees, to approach the supreme perfection of an author of all—a perfection which ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... first definitely felt. Taking for theme the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,—compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,—Browning makes of it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to the universe; the tragedy of its failure, and the greater tragedy of its discovery of the barrenness of the effort, and the omission from its scheme of life of an element without ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... finality in his tone, and she knew that it was no moment for discussion. With a short sigh she yielded to the inevitable, and suffered ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... from some invisible source, Anthony groped his way inside. He was thinking that for the first time in more than three years he was to remain longer than a night away from Gloria. The finality of it appealed to him drearily. It was his clean and lovely girl ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... tangled than ever. Finality had not been reached either in regard to his relations towards his wife, towards Elaine, or towards Larssen; in regard to the Hudson Bay scheme, or in his regard to his future freedom for work on the lines he so earnestly ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... topic she had broached. There was a certain finality about her deliverance of the statement, a decisiveness that afforded no hint that she would consider any compromise or reconsideration. His face was very grave. "I have a little business—a few loose ends to take up with the Senator. Once more ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... administration. Lord John Russell had attempted to procure a factitious support in the country by stimulating a fresh demand for parliamentary reform. A year or two before, he had provoked the dissatisfaction of the "Advanced Liberals," as they called themselves, by insisting on the finality of the Reform Bill of 1832, and by advising his followers "to rest and be thankful" for what had been then obtained. But now he began to advance an opinion that that act required "some amendments to carry into more complete effect the principles on which it ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... escape. He imagined himself dead, and the disgrace, the shame going on. Or, rather, properly speaking, he could not imagine himself dead. He was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own existence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... received in his own time? The evolution of humanity is not yet at an end; men still struggle to see clearly, and fall short of the ideal; it must be a good thing to be freed from the dogmatic assumption of finality natural to the man of limited outlook. In studying the history of philosophy sympathetically we are not merely calling to our aid critics who possess the advantage of seeing things from a different point of view, but we are reminding ourselves that we, too, ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end" of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter, drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly evident that the rest ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... doesn't talk about sacrifice for the theatre," retorted the teacher, and she added with crushing finality, "I don't believe there is a particle of sense in it. If he is going to write, why on earth doesn't he sit straight down and do it? Why, when little Miss Amanda Sheppard was left at sixty without a roof over her head, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... act of 1832 possessed none of the elements of finality. Its authors were in general content, but with the lapse of time it was made increasingly manifest that the nation was not. Political power was still confined to the magnates of the kingdom, the townsfolk who were able to pay a L10 annual ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... not enough for Maria Clemm. She folded her sewing and laid it away with an air of finality which plainly said that she had found other and more pressing work to do. The sewing must wait a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... in gardens," said Albert with great finality, "but bulb work seems to me like fancy work. And then too, bulbs ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... induce me ever to let Windles," she said with finality, and rose significantly. Sam, perceiving that the audience was at an end—and glad of it—also ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Great European War form a period of transition in which the commercial type of aeroplane was gradually evolved from the fighting machine which was perfected in the four preceding years. There was about this period no sense of finality, but it was as experimental, in its own way, as were the years of progressing design which preceded the war period. Such commercial schemes as were inaugurated call for no more note than has been given here; they have been experimental, and, with the possible exception of the United States Government ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... clerk having compromised on fifty words, Lois took a blank and wrote her telegram. And there were no overtones to the finality ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Kesiah had meant to show in it that she considered Molly's position changed since the evening before; and it was this very suggestion that the girl had tossed lightly aside—tossed without rudeness or malice, but with a firmness, a finality, which appeared to settle the question forever. The acknowledged daughter of Mr. Jonathan Gay was determined that she should continue to be known merely as the granddaughter of his overseer. Kesiah's overtures, had been—well, not exactly ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... he will do no such thing." The girl spoke with finality. I could imagine the storm of jealous rage that was swaying her. "There is nothing else for Mr. Graham to do but to stay with you." Her tone added, "You have compelled him to do ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... such thing as finality in army reform. There will be reformers in the future, as there have been in the past. There will, without doubt, be vested interests and conservative instincts to be overcome in the future, as there were at the time when Lord Wolseley so ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... in the year 1919, any intelligent and educated man would be inclined to maintain that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted with the nineteenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me in these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of the finality of my conclusions. I posit, as a fact not to be controverted, that our universe is an expression of an universal law, which the nineteenth century ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... The burntwood photograph frame for Hedwig was his delight. And yesterday, as a punishment for the escapade of the day before, it had been put away with an alarming air of finality. He had traced the design himself, from a Christmas card, and it had originally consisted of a ring and small Cupids, alternating with hearts. He liked it very much. The Cupids were engagingly fat. However, Miss Braithwaite had not approved of their state of nature, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... our many discussions it had often happened that after overruling me with great finality she would end by yielding to my point of view. I hoped this would be the case in ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... was cordial and in its cadence rang so disconcerting a finality that try as he might Carl could not repress a conviction that in spite of his suave promises his new-found friend did not really expect ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... a finality to this that was uncanny. Janice became sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen. The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed Arlo Junior's ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... a yellow tinge as she faced him. She must have sensed the finality of his tone, the well-bred insolence that ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... regularity of things and their obscene necessity." The very persons who talk so glibly about the "fluidity" and "evasiveness" of life are persons in whose own flesh the wedge-like granite of fate has lodged itself with crushing finality. Life has indeed been too rigid and too stark for them; and in place of seizing it in an embrace as formidable as its own, they go aside muttering, "life is evasive; life is fluid; ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... of finality, but she did not leave him. It was impossible to guess what she had in her mind. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... with the minor events which lead up to it, is scarcely less remarkable as exhibiting in the original author, whoever he was, a sense of art, a sense of finality, the absence of which is the great blot on Romance at large, owing to the natural, the human, but the very inartistic, craving for sequels. As is well known, it was the most difficult thing in the world for a mediaeval romancer to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... tone, by which I knew that she had not—as some women would have done—set the blame upon me for our temporary outburst of emotion. And yet there was a subtle difference from her previous manner of writing that only emphasised the finality ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... The most general answer is divine intervention by beings above and beyond mankind. Whether such intervention has taken place or is taking place, human beings are unable to say with finality, but several thousand years of recorded history, plus our own daily experience provides convincing proof that the political, economic, ideological and sociological constructs which have appeared and disappeared in the course of social history are, at least in large part, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... There is no finality for a Christian patriot until his country be organised on Christian principles, and so from being merely a 'kingdom of the world' become 'a Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.' To help forward that consummation, by however ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of the Potter is followed by a metrical Oracle which has all the marks of Jeremiah's style and repeats the finality of the doom, to which the nation's forgetfulness of God and idolatry have brought it. Once more the poet contrasts the constancy of nature with his people's inconstancy. Neither the metre nor the sense of the text is so ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... short by saying, with an air of finality: "Well, anyhow I've got to have the bucks. Can't go out till ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... yet been evolved: they are seeking new ways of carrying on their work and experimenting with new methods at the same time as they are guiding others along paths already familiar to themselves. This absence of finality, characteristic of the teaching profession as a whole, and constituting one of its chief attractions, is especially noticeable in all work connected with the training ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular solution of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... latter hypothesis is the true one for the reasons about to be given; and if so, the finality of the process of domestication must be accepted as one of the most striking instances of the inflexibility of natural disposition, and of the limitations thereby imposed upon the [15] choice of careers for animals, and by ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... changed. It took on a tang of anger, and also a curious ring of finality—as if, suddenly, a last resolution had been reached. "Good night," she said abruptly, and the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... seldom cried. Then he seemed to forget, and usually when he wanted anything he kept on till he got it. The dog watched closely while Steve Earle lifted him out of the mother's lap and placed him on the bed. Then he made his way to the foot of the bed and lay down firmly and with an air of quiet finality. He would stay here ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... dense that a man could barely squeeze through. The land here was higher and dry, and black muck of the same depth as on the drowned land to the south. Payne paddled back to Deer Hammock in silence. Just as they were about to land he drove his paddle into the bottom with a gesture of finality. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... further Enjoyment of Life, and so always keeping on repeating the one Creative Process at an ever-rising level; and since these are the sole working conditions, the progress is one which logically admits of no finality. And this is where the importance of realizing the Singleness of the Originating Power comes in, for with a Duality each member would limit the other; in fact, Duality as the Originating Power is inconceivable, for, once more to quote ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... we have indicated as the characteristic result of the Greek religion contained none of the conditions of completeness or finality. For on the one hand there were elements which it was never able to include; and on the other, its hold even over those which it embraced was temporary and precarious. The eating of the tree of knowledge drove the Greeks from their paradise; but the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... did not see so much of Vivie as before. Her warrior husband spent a good deal of 1912 at home as he had a Hounslow command. He had come to realize—some spiteful person had told him—who Vivie's mother had been, and told Honoria in accents of finality that the "Aunt Vivie" nonsense must be dropped and Vivie must not come to the house. At the most, if she must meet her friend of college days—oh, he was quite willing to believe in her personal propriety, though there were odd stories in circulation ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... apart from Paula while Doctor Robinson made his examination. When he arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his question. Robinson ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... more potent than the first. It is because of their finality that exit speeches are emphatic. It has become customary in the theatre to applaud a prominent actor nearly every time he leaves the stage; and this custom has made it necessary for the dramatist to precede an exit with some speech or action important enough to justify the interruption. ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... just that when Hiram said it. There was now in Tweet's question a tone of finality. Hiram felt that his reply would end the matter. Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled on "No." He could not bring himself to part with this semblance of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... unprepared splinters of stone in the precise manner they now come before us, seems to me to involve premeditated deception, for it is difficult to believe that such uncompleted designs could have any other finality of purpose. ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... flash acknowledged, and the mother patting the child into conformities unspeakable. Maisie could already feel how little it was Sir Claude and she who were caught. She had the positive sense of their catching their relative, catching her in the act of getting rid of her burden with a finality that showed her as unprecedentedly relaxed. Oh yes, the fear had dropped, and she had never been so irrevocably parted with as in the pressure of possession now supremely exerted by Ida's long-gloved and much-bangled arm. "I went to the Regent's Park"—this was presently her ladyship's ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... something else; which is altogether another pair of shoes. They do not create revolution; what they do create is anarchy; and the difference between these is not a question of violence, but a question of fruitfulness and finality. Revolution of its nature produces government; anarchy only produces more anarchy. Men may have what opinions they please about the beheading of King Charles or King Louis, but they cannot deny that Bradshaw and Cromwell ruled, that Carnot and Napoleon governed. Someone conquered; something ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... said Paige, with an accent of finality. "That is," he added, with the air of one who observes a courteous form, "unless some of the grand jurors wish ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... soul. Yes, it is a message which tells of a land of "rest," near and open, fairer far than the Canaan on which Caleb reported and from which he and his fellows brought the great clusters of its golden vines. Passage after passage of the old Scriptures (iv. 3-9) shows that that Canaan was no finality, no true terminus of the purpose of God; another "rest," another "day" of entrance and blessing, was intimated all along. Unbelief forfeited the true fruition of even the old Canaan for the old Israel. ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... charged by all the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the regiment to make swift report of the absent darlings. Kate was besieged in the grand house with tearful watchers, waiting in agonizing impatience for the fatal finality. Olympia, to spare her mother the distress of the vague responses her telegrams brought from Washington, spent most of the time at the Boones', where, thanks to the father's high standing with the Administration, the earliest, most accurate ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... as a sort of bearded lady, and Mr. Wyndham as a sort of beardless one. But about Honore' de Balzac he knew much. Balzac he understood. Balzac's work, Balzac's soul, in that great rugged figure aspiring and indeflexible, he gave us with a finality that could have been achieved through no other ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Tom was much younger than the majority of her father's guests—a man not made but still early in the making, the glamour of promise rather than the stark light of finality upon him. This affected her; for at eighteen, a career, be it never so distinguished, which has reached its zenith, in other words reached the end of its tether, must needs have a touch of melancholy about it. With the heat of going on in your ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... her existence itself wasn't true; it was only her brain now, sick like her soul, that conjured up these ugly phantoms with horrible, plausible ingenuity. And then an inner voice seemed to answer her with a calmness that was hideous in its finality. It was true. All of it was true. Those words of Danglar, and their bald meaning, were true. Men did such things; men made in the image of their Maker did such things. They were going to kill a man to-night—an innocent man whom they had ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... recommend it; for there can be no possible amusement in hearing somebody else read out "but," "bat," "bet," "bin," "ben," and so forth, riot even if you spend half an hour discussing whether "ben" is really a word. On the other hand your game, however amusing, ought to have some finality about it; a game is not really a game unless somebody can win it. For this reason I cannot wholly approve "telegrams." To concoct a telegram whose words begin with certain selected letters of the alphabet, say the first ten, is to amuse yourself anyhow and possibly ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... up from her seat, lighted her candles, and began to make her modest toilet for dinner with an air of satisfied finality. It was characteristic of her that she was never satisfied with half-measures, and was always supremely confident of her ability to carry out new resolutions. The determination to become a perfect character was taken as easily as ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... in the drawer with a gesture of finality, drew forth a number of collars and ties, then went to a closet, opened the door and studied his two suit-cases thoughtfully. He knew not which to take. One was an ordinary, russet-leather case; the other was a thin-steel box, veneered with leather, but of special construction, ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... with an air of finality, and began lazily to refill his pipe. From the open mud fireplace he picked a coal. Outside, the rain, faithful to the prophecy of the wide-ringed sun, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... such thing as human infallibility. There is no finality in human knowledge and human progress. Fixed authority in matters of knowledge or belief is an insult ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... little breath between her teeth. Her thoughts flashed back to a recent dinner party. The Prince was once more at her side. Almost she could hear his voice—low, clear, and yet with that note of inexpressible, convincing finality. She heard him speak of his country reverently, almost prayerfully; of the sacrifices which true patriotism must always demand. What had been in his mind, she wondered, at the back of his inscrutable eyes, gazing, even at that moment, past the banks of flowers, across the crowded room with ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of tautology. This is the error of the classical creed, to imagine that in a fleeting world, where the quickest eye can never see the same thing twice, and a deed once done can never be repeated, language alone should be capable of fixity and finality. Nature avenges herself on those who would thus make her prisoner, their truths degenerate to truisms, and feeling dies in the ice-palaces that they build to house it. In their search for permanence they become unreal, abstract, didactic, lovers ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... manners as unlovely as is that moment in the year when winter is gone and spring not come, and the face of Nature is ugly. I shall not dwell upon it here. Those who have seen it know well what I mean. Such transition was inevitable. Let us give thanks that it is but a transition, and not a finality. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... objection," he replied quietly enough but with that inflexible intonation which automatically arouses antagonism, since it puts into its "I want's" and its "I don't want's" a tyrannical finality, "to this young gentleman visiting us. I extended him hospitality. I even liked him. But it has come rather too much, for my liking, to a thing that can be summed up in your words of a minute ago—'Stuart and I.' It's time to bring it to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck |
