"Indefinite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Navy was the principle of which the act of April 29th, 1816, was the first development. It was the introduction of a system to act upon the character and history of our country for an indefinite series of ages. It was a declaration of that Congress to their constituents and to posterity that it was the destiny and the duty of these confederated States to become in regular process of time and by no petty advances ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... allow me to protest against the practice of naming the quantity of manure applied to a given space, as so many loads, as altogether too indefinite. The bushel or cord is a definite quantity, which all ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... could hardly be held with justice. If a man has thought out a plan which a woman is to execute, its fundamental lines are wiped out and the woman permits the productive aspect of the matter to disappear, or to become so indefinite that any sure conclusion ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... will illustrate all this better than I could explain it. When we reached the Narossara River we left the wagon and pushed on afoot. We were to be gone an indefinite time, and we left N'gombe Brown and his outfit very well fixed. Along the Narossara ran a pleasant shady strip of high jungle; the country about was clear and open; but most important of all, a white man of education and personal charm occupied a trading boma, or enclosure, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... by the absence of news during the night, for Larcher's discouraged face when he appeared at the flat in the morning. Miss Kenby seemed already to have fortified her mind for an indefinite season of anxiety. She maintained an outward calm, but it was the forced calm of a resolution to bear torture heroically. She had her lapses, her moments of weakness and outcry, her periods of despair, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the National Council of the Judiciary for an indefinite period); Constitutional Tribunal (judges are chosen by the Sejm for ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... science that else would have stifled him. Accepting fact, he found nothing in its outward relations by which a man can live, any more than by bread; but this poetic nature, illuminating it as with the polarized ray, revealed therein more life and richer hope. All this was as yet however as indefinite as it was operative in him, and I am telling of him what he could not have ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to notice. He did not look at her for several minutes after sitting down. He was apparently busy ordering lunch, consulting with a waiter, and speaking to his old companion, whose coal-black wig made a rather strange contrast with her lined white cheeks and curiously indefinite eyes. But presently, with a sort of strong deliberation, his gaze was turned on Lady Sellingworth, and she knew at once that he had seen her when he came in. She met his gaze for an instant, and this time seemed to be definitely aware of some mysterious ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... answered. "It's altogether too indefinite. I shouldn't tell you anything which would sound like common sense except this,—that I am exceedingly curious, for several reasons, to know what those two men who came up in that car have ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Job Worth landed in New York City, and, guided by an advertisement in the newspaper, he found a select boarding house on Clinton Place and engaged a convenient room with board for an indefinite term. Job represented himself as a gentleman traveling for pleasure—and information, he might have added, for his quest for the latter certainly took him nearly everywhere. Thus he visited the theatres, ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... now came to a turn where the road began to slope down into the depths of a valley that ran across it. When I looked forward into the bottom of it, all was darkness impenetrable, for the moon-beams were thrown off by the height of the mountains that rose on each side of it. I felt an indefinite sensation of fear, because at that moment I recollected that it had been, in my younger days, notorious as the scene of an apparition, where the spirit of a murdered pedlar had never been known to permit a solitary traveler to pass without ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... liked to have been in such places, nor reluctantly compelled to go there would he in all likelihood have had much to say about them beyond that they were damp. For the poetry—such as Shelley's—which worked by means of impalpable and indefinite suggestion, he would, one may conceive, have cared even less. New modes of poetry asked of critics new sympathies and a new way of approach. But it is time to ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... of inferior rank, and lay himself down to sleep by the side of a rock, or on the banks of a rivulet. He did few things without a motive, but his motives were rather eccentric: and the useful and expedient were terms which he held to be very indefinite, and which therefore he did not always apply to the sense in which ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... "Always the medicine first, then the candy." And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling himself for indefinite silence. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... couple next door resigned themselves to the indefinite absence of Chuff. "Mrs. Mac" herself came up to see her guests, who called themselves Mr. and Mrs. Stahl. The landlady talked of Mr. Cheffinsky as her "star boarder," and said that she was used to his "queer ways." Often he stopped away from home a day or two, but she ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have done some work on budding chestnuts but it hasn't been successful. We have had indefinite results. As Mr. Stoke says, grafting is so much more simple. We realize more work should be done on budding. We simply do our propagating the way it is easiest. Until the time comes that we have got more information on budding we will go along ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... were the staple of conversation on deck and in the steerage among the crew; and some of the better boys heard certain indefinite remarks about "the first step" and "the second step," used by "our fellows;" but no real friend of law and order discovered anything which threw any new light upon the two misfortunes that had overtaken the senior professor, though there was a suspicion that these were the first and ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... What a fool is she. The first Folio reads 'What 'foole is she,' doubtless to indicate an ellipsis of the indefinite article, which, for the sake of the metre, was to be slurred over in pronunciation. As we have not followed the Folio in reading th' or th for the before a consonant, so we have thought it best to insert here the omitted letter a, ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... was sympathy between them, and it grew stronger day by day, but it was a sympathy akin to that of the solitudes, none the less eloquent because it was wordless. Sothern informed Drennen once, out of the customary silence about the evening camp fire, that he was taking an indefinite vacation; that there was a man in his place with the Northwestern who was amply qualified to remain there permanently if Sothern did not ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... promptly, "for a council of war. Quick, now's the time! The top of the hill is cover for us." So saying, he put his horse to the bank, cleared it, and galloped over the field to the trees which loomed grey and indefinite before them. ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... certainly had a most beneficial effect upon the weather, and the evening was most delightful. Mr. Weston would have me to take his arm; he said little during our passage through the crowded streets, but walked very fast, and appeared grave and abstracted. I wondered what was the matter, and felt an indefinite dread that something unpleasant was on his mind; and vague surmises, concerning what it might be, troubled me not a little, and made me grave and silent enough. But these fantasies vanished upon reaching ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... proposal, that immediate and indefinite re-election to the tribunate should be permitted, was not recommended on the same grounds of precedent or reason. The analogies of the Roman constitution were opposed to it, and the rules against the perpetuity of office ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... little head of wavy black hair lay in the crook of his elbow. The loosened strands breeze-blown against his cheek seemed light as the sheen of a spider's craft. These waved to the rhythm of beauty above a low white forehead veined in an indefinite tint of blue. The eyebrows were fine and daintily arched. Black lashes long and up-curling swept the unexplainable curve of her cheek, at the present time apparently masking eyes too rare for the vision of man. The nose, thin and ever so slightly ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... cannot distinguish tunes would listen to music. He feels the agreeable sensation which their forms and aspects produce; but, like one who thinks without adequate language for his thoughts, his ideas are vague and indefinite. The Beech is particularly worthy of study, as in many points it differs characteristically from most other trees. I am acquainted with no tree in the forest that equals it, when disrobed of its foliage, in the gracefulness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... too indefinite and abstract for me," said Bearwarden. "I like something tangible and concrete. The utilitarianism of the twentieth century, by which I live, paradoxical though it may seem, would be out of place in space, unless we ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is shown in order to get at the truth. Swedenborg tells us that he got his facts from four husbands and four wives in the Spirit Land, and so his statements are authentic. Emerson disposes of Swedenborg's ideal marriage as it exists in heaven, as "merely an indefinite bridal-chamber," and intimates that it is the dream of one who had never been disillusioned ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... me a syllable, a word, a touch! Gone, for an indefinite period, without even a cold 'good-by, Salome!' You call yourself a Christian, Dr. Grey, and yet you are cruel, now and then, and make me writhe like a worm on a fish-hook! He told Stanley he would return in two or three weeks, perhaps sooner,—but I know better. I have a dull ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... instance developments proved its wisdom. Unjust fears were overcome while yet he was undistracted by society of his kind. Having no other company, he sought ours in frank and friendly manner. Occasionally he would accompany me on indefinite excursions in the bush, and would oft tempt me to play. With the fable of the frogs and the boys in mind, I had to decline participation in his sportful moods, for what would have proved pure frolic to him might have been fraught with ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hover, like queer mis-shaped ministering angels, over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself, or herself as she might have been, bearing their children out of wedlock. Yet they faced their indefinite futures impassively, content in relief from pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace and security. She could ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... characteristics go hand in hand,—sincerity, feeling, depth of thought, and simplicity of style. The union of these four qualities causes his great poems to continue to yield pleasure after an indefinite number of readings. In his garden of poetry, the daffodil blossoms all the year for the "inward eye," and the "wandering voice of the cuckoo" never ceases to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... father, and some vague presentiment of coming trouble seemed to shadow all the brightness of life. Now and then Michael's face with its great, true eyes, and pleading expression came between her and Carter's face, and seemed to blur its handsome lines; and then indefinite questions haunted her. What if those terrible things Michael had said were true? Was she sure, sure? And at times like that she fancied she saw a weakness in the lines about Carter's eyes ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... not forgotten you, Miss Lovel, nor would it have been natural for me to forget you. I am very glad to meet you again under such agreeable auspices. You are going to stay at the Castle a long time, I hope. I am booked for an indefinite visit." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... few experience the deep appeal of the fine arts. Surely the symphony of light cannot be justly condemned because of a lack of appreciation and understanding of it, for it has not been introduced to the public. Furthermore, the expressiveness of music is still indefinite at best despite the many centuries of experimenting on the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... have acquired are supreme in this field. Ray Cummings and Captain Meek need no introduction. And Harl Vincent is a notable addition whose stories of "Indefinite Extension" and interplanetary travel are well ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... hearth in their honor at its close. When one went abroad he prayed to the Penates for a safe return, and when he came back, he hung his armor and his staff beside their images, and gave them thanks. In every sorrow and in every joy the indefinite divinities that went under these names were called ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... have heard the subject of the possibility of lizards snakes, frogs, and other cheerful reptiles having resided for indefinite periods in the stomachs of human subjects, discussed in the presence of the microscopic man. A lady of the party was skeptical on the subject, dwelling especially upon the impossibility of any person swallowing ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... one could be either cocked up or depressed to any extent. He had cut notches, too, in the perpendicular stick, so that, by the aid of the small prop, the cross one could be kept in any position for an indefinite time. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... May, Harry came, much excited, to my office. Deacon Joe was about to move to his island, a mile or so off shore. He was going to take Marie with him for an indefinite period. No boat would be permitted to land there except his own and the Reverend Robert's. Marie would be a sort of prisoner. That day she had told him of the plan of her grandfather. In Harry's ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... uniformity in parsing, it is, I think, expedient to apply the foregoing rule not only to those pronouns which have obvious antecedents expressed, but also to such as are not accompanied by the nouns for which they stand. Even those which are put for persons or things unknown or indefinite, may be said to agree with whatever is meant by them; that is, with such nouns as their own properties indicate. For the reader will naturally understand something by every pronoun, unless it be a mere expletive, and without any antecedent. For example: "It would depend upon who the forty ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... centre of a narrow and almost opaque horizon. The room soon darkened with the gloom of twilight, and the faces of the inmates faded into shadowy outlines. The mountains, half wrapped in vapor, loomed vast and indefinite in the obscurity. Every moment the storm grew nearer, and its centre was marked by an ominous blackness which the momentary flashes left all the more intense. The young girl grew deeply absorbed in the scene, and to Webb the strong, pure profile of her awed face, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... very acute comprehension to understand that the Stockade at which we were gazing was likely to be our abiding place for some indefinite period in the future. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Barker's mother at Willoughby Pastures, but he postponed it; perhaps it would alarm her if Barker were not there; Sewell had many other cares and duties; Lemuel became more and more a good intention of the indefinite future. After all, he had always shown the ability to take care of himself, and except that he had mysteriously disappeared there was no reason ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Spiders in this condition," he observes, "to determine the point in question, and their behaviour always impressed me as being a genuine feigning of death, and therefore entirely within their volition. The evidence is of such indefinite nature that one can hardly venture to give it visible expression, but my conviction is none the less decided. I may say, however, that my observations indicate that the Spiders remained in this condition as long as there seemed to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... falsehood worse than an occasional lapse in church-attendance. The poor girls were tutored to report in Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher said. An edifying consequence ensued. Something—an unseen, an indefinite, a nameless—something stole between myself and these my best pupils: the bouquets continued to be offered, but conversation thenceforth became impracticable. As I paced the alleys or sat in the berceau, a girl never came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by magic, appeared at my left. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... interest, but again in the interest of the public, not merely through prudence, but also through equity, all should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same manual labour, to the same indefinite ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... of the deceased, there are no rules to be observed which do not equally relate to other compositions. The praise ought not to be general, because the mind is lost in the extent of any indefinite idea, and cannot be affected with what it cannot comprehend. When we hear only of a good or great man, we know not in what class to place him, nor have any notion of his character, distinct from that of a thousand others; his example can have no effect upon our conduct, as we have nothing remarkable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... whatever one thinks of, a pain, a fear, draws the thought another way. It was so with Egremont. The two mysterious callers and the annoying scene at the railway station plagued him successively, and for background to them all was a shadow of indefinite apprehension. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... whom had prospered at all like himself, the help is not unneeded in most cases. That all of these legatees were of the other sex is explained by the fact that, having been always a bachelor, he had an intense, although only a general admiration for the sex. Very many others will, over an indefinite future, have reason to bless the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... has been taken to observation," he said without warning. "So has the crew of the Endore. I—ah—believe you may take an indefinite leave from the office until further notice. With ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... for the escape of water. The receptacles are non-porous and may be placed on tables and columns, or they can be employed in halls and corridors without the slightest risk of injury. The fibre is perfectly clean to handle, odourless, and remains sweet for an indefinite period. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... life down at the steamboat landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence." The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. "Back east—" the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture "back east at my ancestral home—" Mahaffy snorted harshly. "You don't believe I had an ancestral home?—well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... walked out of the office the possessor of the first position he had ever held. On the morrow he was to return for further instructions, though General Rochere had made it quite plain that Tarzan might prepare to leave Paris for an almost indefinite period, ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... centuries. These changes seemed definitely to have run their course; with the convulsions which accompanied them, their uprootings and terrors, they were gone; and the world had become accustomed to their results. The nation still had before it great events, great issues, great perils, great and indefinite prospects of adventure and achievement. The old quarrels and animosities of Europe had altered in character: from being wars between princes, and disputes of personal ambition, they had attracted into them all that interests and divides mankind, from high to low. Their animating principle ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of the flaw I had discovered in my own theory, before I proceeded with the attempt I had suggested when I believed in its complete soundness. I had not settled the question when I took the letter up again. Re-reading its opening sentence, I was caught by the word "something." It was a very indefinite one, yet was capable of covering a large field. It must cover a large field, or it could not have produced such a change in the minds of these men, conservative from principle and in this instance from discretion. I would be satisfied with that word something and quit further thinking. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... that they could get five thousand dollars for a vote as easily as one thousand, they held their decision in abeyance until the consideration was increased fourfold. This not once, nor twice; not by one man, but by the indefinite many, until it was current talk that certain men had received one, five, ten, even fifteen thousand dollars for their votes. Why should legislators talk of "their duty," or "the principle of the thing," when a lifetime of ordinary business methods and dealings would bring ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... part of the cod-catch is exported. Tropical countries buy much of the product. In such countries it is more wholesome than meat; it is cheaper; moreover, the salted cod will keep for an indefinite length of time. A large part of the catch is sold to the Catholic states of Europe and America, where during certain times the eating of the flesh of animals is forbidden. Gloucester, Mass., London, England, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... was that it adjusted nothing, improved nothing, left everything to drift on toward an indefinite end. If Lester had married Jennie and accepted the comparatively meager income of ten thousand a year he would have maintained the same attitude to the end. It would have led him to a stolid indifference to the social world of ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... they are their own masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were unquestionably ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... was not appeased. She had half glimpsed that indefinite irresponsibility of these strangers which treated youth as a toy, an experiment. . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Still there is another factor that controls the low cost of cereals and grains and keeps them within the means of all classes of people, and that is their excellent keeping quality. They require very little care and will keep for an indefinite period of time. Because of their unperishable nature, they may be stored in large quantities and distributed to consumers as they are needed and at a price ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... fault to find with your [methods of] reception ["Spartacus" writes to "Cato"], except that they are too quick.... You should proceed gradually in a roundabout way by means of suspense and expectations, so as first to arouse indefinite, vague curiosity, and then when the candidate declares himself, present the object, which he will then seize with ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... multitudes would follow—some to whom a kind Providence has given liberty of action? It is far from our intention to excite rebellion in families, or tempt away from the manifest calls of duty; but can not some one begin what others will continue? And we must not be indefinite: begin what? continue what? A system which, in this Protestant land, would give to the poor outcast, the little criminal, the child of the State, a mother as well as a father; that would give to the wretched of all ages a sister ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... decided, Lee was once more mounted, and captive and captors set about retracing their steps, while the sleigh carried the squire and Janice, under guard, on to Trenton, Mr. Meredith having elected to make the short trip to that town rather than await the indefinite return of Grant. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... this is commoner, because, while they are but obscurely conscious of it, they are influenced thereby in the choice of a profession, without having any definite intention to make use of the children under their care in the gratification of their sexual desires. It is an indefinite impulse towards children which is here operative, and sometimes determines the choice of occupation. I have seen cases in which there seemed to be a sort of mania for giving education and instruction, but in which on closer examination it appeared that the interest in the children was a sexual ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... seemed to thrill him with a novel and delicious sense of responsibility. He heard her door close; he stood there in the stone corridor a moment before entering his room, experiencing an odd, indefinite pleasure in the words this girl had uttered—words which seemed to reinstate him among his kind, words which no woman would utter except to a man in whom ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Miss Birdseye's, and his glimpse, repeated on the morrow, of the strange, beautiful, ridiculous, red-haired young improvisatrice, unrolled itself in his memory like a page of interesting fiction. The page seemed to fade, however, when he heard that the two girls had gone, for an indefinite time, to unknown lands; this carried them out of his range, spoiled the perspective, diminished their actuality; so that for several months past, with his increase of anxiety about his own affairs, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... constellate with investigation; at one time obfuscated in the abysm-born vapours of doubt; at another, radiant with the sun-fires of faith made perfect by fruition; it can amaze no considerative fraction of humanity, that the explorer of the indefinite, the searcher into the not-to-be-defined, should, at dreary intervals, invent dim, plastic riddles of his own identity, and hesitate at the awful shrine of that dread interrogatory alternative—reality, or dream? This deeply pondering, let the eager beginner in the at once linear and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... anything like precision in the language employed in such verses frequently causes confusion. The word atma as used in the first line is very indefinite. The commentator thinks it implies achetanabuddhi, i.e., the perishable understanding. I prefer, however, to take it as employed in the sense of Chit as modified by birth. It comes, I think, to the same thing in the end. The 'inner Soul' is, perhaps, the Soul or Chit ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... For a future less confusing than this inscrutable present? At least, they could not be even glanced at now. He wrote Charlotte and Jerry, his caretakers on the place at Wake Hill, that he was coming for an indefinite stay. He instructed his housekeeper in Boston that the house was to be kept open; possibly Mr. Richard would be there a good deal. Then he sat down to write his sister. That was the problem: what should he say to her who would presently be receiving his unfortunate ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... plenty of water in its casks or tanks in its hold, it does not matter whether it is sailing through fresh water or salt. And if you and I have that union with Jesus Christ of which my text speaks, then we shall be, not wholly, but with indefinite increase of approximation towards the ideal, independent of circumstances and masters of our temperaments. And so it is possible, if not absolutely to reach this fair achievement of an unbroken continuity of gladness, at least to bring the lucent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... religion. The transformation of the Christian faith into dogma is indeed no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the Christian religion, which at all times will feel the need of a scientific apologetic.[10] But the question here is not as to something indefinite and general, but as to the definite dogma formed in the first ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... death-in-life paradox and this melancholy-breeding puzzle reside, Carlyle expresses the result in that chapter of his immortal 'Sartor Resartus' entitled 'The Everlasting No.' "I lived," writes poor Teufelsdroeckh, "in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... the attraction it experiences towards this or that object," answered the count. "Before Maurice last returned to the university, nine months ago, his admiration for Madeleine was unmistakable. Now that he is shortly to come home, and for an indefinite period,—now that our plans must ripen, I have come to the conclusion that Madeleine must be removed, or they will never attain fruition; she must not be allowed to cast the spell of her dangerous fascination over him; something ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... just stated further warns us against accepting an indefinite interpretation which, while it acknowledges the truth of the general conclusion, still virtually, if not in so many words, allows that the details ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... old criminal law have been abrogated. Debtors are no longer indiscriminately punished by indefinite imprisonment. The iniquity of the slave trade has been acknowledged, and put an end to, so far as the power of this country extends; and although slavery is still tolerated, and must be so for awhile, measures have been taken for alleviating it while it continues, and preparing the way ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... love, George robs the till, and mingles in the world which he is destined to ornament. He outdoes all the dandies, all the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age—an indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and George II.—dines with Curll at St. John's Gate, pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind Montague House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Chevalier St. George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead, and likewise ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a man, I take it. And after all, bravery is nothing but a sort of over-confidence. But I don't believe that you would kill me; I believe that it would be the other way, and it is not out of fear that I propose a setting aside of our indefinite agreement to meet each other. But be that as it may, we will call it off unless you insist, and if you do, why, as a gentleman I shall be compelled to meet you. I am brave enough to confess that I can't help but admire you morally and physically. In a small way, I was once a demonstrator ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... in a worse condition, on the same area, while progress in cheapness of goods has come almost entirely from the side of the chemical and the mechanical industries. It does not give the promise of an indefinite amelioration of the lot of an indefinitely multiplying population. But to a population slowly increasing, a new and ever newer agriculture, utilizing constantly the achievements of the natural sciences and the mechanic arts, ensures the possibility of a steady betterment of the popular ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... kind of a man! Stout as a buffalo an' as to looks I'd call him, as ye might say, real copasetic." Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion solemnly and with a slight cough. Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite depth of meaning. She added by way of drawing the curtain of history: "I'll bet he didn't dilly dally long when he made up his mind. I reckon ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... substitutes the conception of the slow, continuous progress of the human Ego throughout an indefinite series of existences, for the idea of an impossible perfection to be achieved in the course of one brief existence; it presents an absolutely, new view of the mission of man upon earth, and puts an end to the antagonism between earth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... especial fondness for her but from the habit of propriety—was that his wife would learn of the affair. He was certain that she knew nothing specific about Tanis, but he was also certain that she suspected something indefinite. For years she had been bored by anything more affectionate than a farewell kiss, yet she was hurt by any slackening in his irritable periodic interest, and now he had no interest; rather, a revulsion. He was completely faithful—to Tanis. He was distressed by ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... failure neither in this existence nor in death, but beyond the grave. Now, however, that the exterior obstacles to a happier scheme were apparently removed, the more formidable opposition of his own secret ideals stirred ominously in his conscience. Men's designs are never so indefinite and confused as when they meet with no outward resistance. A close attack has proved the salvation of most human wills and roused the energy of many drooping convictions. It is seldom good that one should enter into any vocation very easily, sweetly, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... hypothesis of progressive modification must be compatible with persistence without progression, through indefinite periods. And should such an hypothesis eventually be proved to be true, in the only way in which it can be demonstrated, viz. by observation and experiment upon the existing forms of life, the conclusion will inevitably present itself, that ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... whatever, I am very miserable. I loathe domestic hearths. I yearn to be a vagabond. Why can't I marry Mary?[38] Why have I seven children—not engaged at sixpence a-night apiece, and dismissable for ever, if they tumble down, not taken on for an indefinite time at a vast expense, and never,—no never, never,—wearing lighted candles round their heads.[39] I am deeply miserable. A real house like this is insupportable, after that canvas farm wherein I was so happy. What is a humdrum dinner at half-past five, with nobody (but John) to see me eat it, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... vague and indefinite on national suffrage. The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by Congress. It precisely said, "We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... The term yasuna, translated here as "year," is of rather indefinite significance; it sometimes means thirteen moons and in other instances ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... It is a small thing to cling to amid the wrack of a man's universe; yet it holds until the appearance of a new phase in which he is to find escape from the prison-house. He has begun to realise that fear—a nameless fear of he knows not what—has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous." Fear affects men in widely different ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies" obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleared itself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. But Teufelsdroeckh is prouder ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... the foundation to the top, riveted together by plates and may be extended to an indefinite height. In fact there is no engineering limit to ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... attacks since that time have been made upon the crown-rights of our Redeemer (notwithstanding some saint acts then made to the contrary) as witness the civil magistrate's still retaining his old usurped power, in calling and dissolving the supreme judicatories of the church, yea, sometimes to an indefinite time.—Likewise appointing diets of fasting and thanksgiving to be observed, under fines and other civil pains annexed; imposing oaths, acts and statutes upon church-men, under pain of ecclesiastic censure, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... sleeping on the couch within, my sleep was troubled. Many dreams I had, indefinite and broken. I recall none of their images, except I feel a dim sensation 'twas my lot to live in brighter days than now rise on our race. Suddenly I stood upon a mountain tall and grey, and gazed upon the stars. ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... reported to have discovered a process by which milk may be preserved for an indefinite period. Fresh milk is evaporated by a very gentle heat till it is reduced to a dry powder, which is to be kept perfectly dry in a bottle. When required for use it need only be diluted with a sufficient quantity of water. Mr. James Jones, who keeps a red cow—over his door—claims the original ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... friends, represent him as "eager, enthusiastic, and sensitive, but humorous, reasonable, and free from vanity, affectionate, a good brother and friend, sweet-tempered, and helpful." In his political views he was liberal, in his religious, indefinite. Though in his life-time subjected to much harsh and unappreciative criticism, his place among English poets is now assured. His chief characteristics are intense, sensuous imagination, and love of beauty, rich and picturesque descriptive ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... descriptions, the purity of the psychological analysis, the depth of the thoughts and the reflections of which the novel is full, and among its faults a certain disproportion between the different parts of the book and an ending which is too vague, indefinite and unexpected. But its literary qualities seem to me to be of secondary importance to the profound and incontrovertible idea that forms the kernel of the book. Here in Europe we are accustomed to say that modern civilization develops itself in America more freely ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of the whole inquiry, with the essence and core of the subject untouched and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct! This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements. But of the component ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... definite of the two rather indefinite girls, with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few weeks ago, had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond young man, Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold him by a charm she suspected she did not possess for him, and at the same time to give her mother ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... 288): 'Mendelism provides no fresh clue to the problem of adaptation except in so far as it is easier to believe that a definite integral change in attributes can make a perceptible difference to the prospect of success, than that an indefinite and impalpable change should entail such consequences.' Here the distinction between adaptive and non-adaptive characters is recognised, but both are emphatically attributed ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... two fundamental assumptions the theory is built; of which that of the indefinite accumulation of small profitable variations is outrageously impossible and absurd; and the other, of the improvement of breeds by starvation and hardships, is contrary to all observation and experience! Take away these two assumptions, and the whole theory of the gradual ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and sometimes outrageous possibility, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the wind. The startled congregation in the smithy scrambled to their feet. Another scream, nearer apparently than the first, and then a loud wailing, broken every few seconds by a strange slight laugh, of which the distance seemed quite indefinite. Was it close by, or beyond ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... articles of confederation had never contemplated an occasion for such a peculiar assertion of sovereignty. "A great and independent fund of revenue," said Madison, "is passing into the hands of a single body of men, who can raise troops to an indefinite number, and appropriate money to their support for an indefinite period of time.... Yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm has been sounded," even by men most zealous for state rights and most suspicious of Congress. Within a few months ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... protecting spirits of the ancestors of the family; the Lemures were evil spirits, spectres, or bad ghosts. But the notions were somewhat indefinite. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... that their engagement was so indefinite, that they had hardly any hope of being married for at least two years, perhaps added a little to the gene of these meetings. The instant they were separated he began to long to see her alone again. Daphne felt sure she must be really in love because ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... rung us up from there upon the telephone to request that necessaries for an indefinite stay be despatched to her. She is visiting ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... with so much ability as his reputation might lead us to expect. He seems to have been dismayed at the dangers that threatened him, and hopeless of a fair trial, bowed before the storm. An attempted alibi was feebly supported, although Oates was so indefinite in regard to time that to attempt to convict him of falsehood was of little avail. The chief points of his defence were the improbability of the whole story, and the fact that Oates on his examination before the council had said that he did not know him. Oates ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... almost say, the one authority—for the life of Hood, is the Memorials published by his son and daughter. Any point which is not clearly brought out in that affectionate and interesting record will naturally be equally or more indefinite in my brief summary, founded as ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but toward the front—(pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that). Here and there a countenance sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people,—happy, but not always very attentive. Boys in the back-ground, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, there,—in how many places! I don't say dull people, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... difficult to find a foolisher thing to do,' replied his son. But then the conversation turned. It had given Miss Betty something to think of. She drew her own conclusions without asking anybody. And in some indefinite, inscrutable way it stimulated and confirmed her desire for the game Mrs. Dallas had begged her to play. Human hearts are certainly strange things. What were the Gainsboroughs to Miss Betty Frere? Nothing in the world, half an hour before; now? Now there was a vague suspicion ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Meredydd ab Rhys is very indefinite, but deserves notice on account of its early date. He "flourished," says W. Owen, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... its death-blow that afternoon. Already, that evening, it began to revive a little. It was very much enfeebled; it was very indefinite and diffident; but it was not dead. It amounted, perhaps, to nothing more than a vague kind of feeling that he would not, on the whole, make his departure for England quite so precipitate as, in the first heat of his anger, the first chill of his despair, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment he dared not move. A cold, indefinite sensation stole over him that he was being watched; that some dim, evil presence was behind him biding its time, patient and stealthy, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where he stood. But, watch and wait ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... once—viz., in the convent, and in the churches of Sainte-Croix, Saint-Pierre du Martroy, and Notre-Dame du Chateau. Very little of importance took place, however, on the first two occasions, the 15th and 16th of April; for the declarations of the doctors were most vague and indefinite, merely saying that the things they had seen were supernatural, surpassing their knowledge and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... old body! She was very much laughed at on account of her boasted ancestor, the "Duke of England." Yet her mistake was not so great as it seemed, for it was only the slight mistake of using the definite article "the" for the indefinite article "a," nor were her claims quite so ridiculous as they appeared to be, as ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... had before us water and grass in abundance, to a distance as unlimited and indefinite, as our hopes of discovery. I intended to set out early each morning, and travel only four or five miles, that the jaded animals, exhausted by want of water and hard work, might have time to feed and refresh. One old cause of delay, however, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... disk variable in form, attachment disk clearly defined and constant. The stalk is very contractile and elastic, constantly changing in shape. When detached from the host the animal moves with a very irregular and indefinite motion. When attached it moves freely over the surface on its pedal disk. The latter is bordered by four membranes composed of cilia. A distinct axial fiber extends from the pedal disc to the peristome and gives off a number of branches. This fiber is analogous to the myonemes ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... Mrs. Caley. He held Lettice with her face hidden against his shoulder. The valley was refulgent with early summer, the wheat was swelling greenly, the meadows, threaded by shining streams were sown with flowers, grazed by herds of cattle with hides like satin, the pellucid air was filled with indefinite birdsong. The buggy lurched over a hillock of grass, his wife shuddered in his arms, and an unaccustomed, vicarious pain contracted his heart. Where the fields gave upon the road the buggy dropped sharply; Lettice cried out uncontrollably. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... resulting from his inability to see his way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had only five hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling as if he could stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite period. Sitting around the house, he decided to wear some old clothes he had. This came first with the bad days. Only once he apologised ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... tendency is peculiarly marked, of course, in artists possessing the "diffluent" type of imagination, and Romantic poets and critics have had much to say about it. The imagination, said Wordsworth, "recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, the indefinite." [Footnote: Preface to 1815 edition of his Poems.] "Shakespeare, too," says Carlye, [Footnote: Essay on Goethe's Works.] "does not look at a thing, but into it, through it; so that he constructively comprehends it, can take it asunder and put it together ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... admitted that. And yet—for an instant the gray stone building in the distance, bathed in the golden radiance of the setting sun, grew misty and blurred. She saw another sunset, all pink and green and soft, indefinite violet, and above the deep, sweet, ceaseless sound of a wondrously opalescent sea she heard a man's voice ring clear and true with a love as eternal as that same changeless sea. She felt again that strange, sweet, unearthly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... pastoral organization, such as that of the German tribes described by Caesar and Tacitus (see especially Germania, 26). The discovery of the uses of the bare fallow and of manure, by making it possible to raise crops from the same area for an indefinite period, marks a stage of progress. This "intensive'' culture in a more or less developed form was practised by the great nations of antiquity, and little decided advance was made till after the middle ages. The introduction of new plants, which made ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... involving many trial trips; moreover, the selected wagons, one of which had belonged to Pereira, must be mended with very insufficient tools and without the help of a forge. Indeed, had it not chanced that Hans, the Hottentot, had worked for a wagon-maker at some indefinite period of his career, I do not think that we could have managed the ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it. The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued ad infinitum, either from before or behind, on which account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants, and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two ends are withdrawn ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... of the mountain, follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night balm. Then he ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... mean by a poison? The law has not defined a poison, although it requires at times a definition. The popular definition of a poison is "a drug which destroys life rapidly when taken in small quantity." The terms "small quantity" as regards amount, and "rapidly" as regards time, are as indefinite as Hodge's "piece of chalk" as regards size. The professor defined a poison as "any substance which otherwise than by the agency of heat or electricity is capable of destroying life, either by chemical action on the tissues of the living ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... free field. If she had so few interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions and from wanderings often rather ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... sheets of felt without getting any relief from it whatever. Reading between the lines, you know, it's pretty clear that the Times considers that it is useless to mince matters, and that something (indefinite of course) has to be done at once. Otherwise still more undesirable consequences—Times English, you know, for more wasps ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... a certain point on Staten Island, and wait until six o'clock day after tomorrow morning. If you do not come aboard by that time, they are to go to one of the South American ports and remain until further orders. By this means your absence for an indefinite period will be explained. You will go to Nina San Croix in the disguise which you have always used, and from her to the yacht, and by this means step out of your real status and back into it without leaving traces. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... repeated to minds which do not think or reflect, without awakening attention; per contra, the least degree of thought in a vast majority of cases forms a nucleus, or beginning, which may easily be increased to an indefinite extent. A very little exercise of the Will suffices in most cases to fix the attention on a subject, and how this can be done will be shown in another chapter. But in many cases Attention is attracted with little or ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... divisions was reversed, this is practically just what Clerk of Eldin had recommended and what actually happened in the battle. It is a clear advance upon the original idea as explained to Keats, in which the third squadron was to be used on the primitive and indefinite plan of De Chaves and Lord Lisle as a general reserve. It also explains Nelson's covering letter to Collingwood, in which he seems to convey to his colleague that the pith of his plan was an attack in two divisions, and, within the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and fantastic reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its paintings, its statues and its silence, the light—itself silent and indefinite—awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts and guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear swept over ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... man comes into a neighbourhood, as you are doing now, he is to a large extent an unknown quantity; and it is very touching to observe the exaggeration with which we are generally looked on at first, people attributing to us a sort of indefinite largeness. But it is marvellous how soon the measure of a man is taken, how he finds his level in the community, and people know whether he is a large or a petty man, whether he is a thinker or not, whether he is a deeply religious man or not. The glamour of romance passes off, and everything ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... be a confused mixing of church and kingdom, but always with the church the big thing, and the kingdom a sort of vague, indefinite—folks don't seem to know just what—an ideal, a spiritual conception, or something like that. The church is supposed to have taken the place of the kingdom. Its mission seems to be supposed to be the doing ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... migration of tens of thousands of North Koreans escaping famine, economic privation, and political oppression; North Korea and China dispute the sovereignty of certain islands in Yalu and Tumen rivers and a section of boundary around Paektu-san (mountain) is indefinite; Military Demarcation Line within the 4-km wide Demilitarized Zone has separated North from South Korea since 1953; periodic maritime disputes with South over the Northern Limit Line; North Korea supports South Korea ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... contracts as it cools, and the pressure of the external air drives the solid piece of rubber down into the neck of the bottle, and forces together the lips of the slit (Fig. 102, b). Thus sealed, the bottle will preserve its contents sterile for an indefinite period without ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... examined. (Hear, hear.) Some individuals swore against the prisoners, and though others tendered their evidence, the jury refused to hear them. (Hear, hear.) Besides, the punishments inflicted are monstrous; thirty-nine lashes are inflicted for the vague, indefinite—because incapable to be defined—offence of insolence. Thirty-nine lashes for the grave and the more definite, I admit, offence of an attempt to carry a small knife. Three months imprisonment, or fifty lashes for the equally ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "That is rather indefinite, midshipman," added Paul, with a smile. "You can't always tell what a steamer is by looking at her, especially in the night; and a walking-beam is not a novelty on a steamer upon this river. You may send that shot through ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... situated. We were going well in the fresh morning breeze, and were just about to round the last headland, when all at once a gale sprang up again, the bare and uninviting coast was hidden in heavy rain, and we had the choice of waiting for an indefinite time or continuing our voyage. Without much hesitation we chose the latter alternative. It might be tempting enough to come in contact with other men, especially as they were fellow-countrymen, but it was ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... with physic special and metaphysic, which is mathematic; but I think it more agreeable to the nature of things, and to the light of order, to place it as a branch of metaphysic. For the subject of it being quantity, not quantity indefinite, which is but a relative, and belongeth to philosophia prima (as hath been said), but quantity determined or proportionable, it appeareth to be one of the essential forms of things, as that that is causative in Nature of a number of effects; insomuch ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... on very fiercely in Mr. Masters' house in Dillsborough, to the misery of all within it; but the conviction gained ground with every one there that Mary was to be sent to Cheltenham for some indefinite time. Dolly and Kate seemed to think that she was to go, never to return. Six months, which had been vaguely mentioned as the proposed period of her sojourn, was to them almost as indefinite as eternity. The two girls had been intensely ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... is into Universal, Particular, Indefinite, and Singular. A proposition whose subject is an individual name, even if not a proper name, is singular, e.g. The founder of Rome was killed. In particular propositions, if the part of the class meant by the some were ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... done with an air of gusto, though no one ever yet enjoyed the act of writing. Even a man with a specific gift for writing, with much to express, with perfect freedom in choice of subject and manner of expression, with indefinite leisure, does not write with real gusto. But in him the pretence is justified: he has enjoyed thinking out his subject, he will delight in his work when it is done. Very different is the pretence of one who writes at top-speed, on a set subject, what he thinks ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and therefore were masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, majesty,—of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed by defined forms and thoughts; the moderns revere the infinite, and affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite; hence their passions, their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the unknown, their grander moral feelings, their more august conception of man as man, their future rather than their past,—in a word, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... it stubbornly, slinging their carbines on their backs, and climbing up hand over hand in places where they had lost the trail. Their guides were evidently somewhat of a puzzle to them, as the Montese idea of distance is indefinite. "When I have finished this cigar we will be there," they say; and "poco distancia" with them means often ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... their heights on the door again, which showed Eric that in the last year he had grown two inches, a fact which he pointed out to Vernon with no little exultation. And then they went to bed, and to a sleep over which brooded the indefinite sensation of a great unknown joy;—that rare heavenly sleep which only comes once or twice or thrice in life, on occasions such ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... meant only that, as a philosopher, he had an intuitive certainty of eternal and infinite Being. So have all of us humbler mortals, though we should not have been able to express it for ourselves. No one supposes that for an indefinite space of time or eternity there was nothing, and then suddenly there was something. But, if not, then everyone recognises with Spinoza the fact of eternal Being, though, of course, he saw what this recognition meant, as the many do not. But when it comes to the facts of mortal ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... parts of your constitution that seem general and somewhat indefinite, and that admit, therefore, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... their nature to exercise some architectural craft, they have not to learn it. But man comes into the world with the capabilities, rather than the means and appliances, of life. He begins with a small capital, but one which admits of indefinite improvement. He is, in his very idea, a creature of progress. He starts, the inferior of the brute animals, but he surpasses them in the long run; he subjects them to himself, and he goes forward on a career, which at least hitherto has not ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... of all social and religious progress.... The criterions of art were changed. There was a pagan art and a Christian art, whose highest expression was sought in the Gothic, in the glooms, the mysteries, the vague, the indefinite, in a beyond which was called the ideal, in an aspiration towards the infinite, incapable of fruition and therefore melancholy.... To Voltaire and Rousseau succeeded Chateaubriand, De Stael, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Lamennais. And in 1815 appeared ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... from a lamp with smoky chimney which the old hag carried, and at the raising and lowering of her hand the flame jumped and died in the throat of the chimney and set the hall awash with shadows. Falling away to a point of yellow, the lamp allowed the hall to assume a certain indefinite dignity of height and breadth and calm proportions; but when the flame rose Donnegan could see the broken balusters of the balustrade, the carpet, faded past any design and worn to rattiness, wall paper which ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... summer our city-girls go into the country, perhaps to the mountains: this is good. When in town, they skate or walk or visit the riding-school: all good. But still they are stooping and weak. The father, conscious that their bodies, like their minds, are susceptible of indefinite development, in his anxiety takes them to the gymnasium. They find a large room furnished with bars, ladders, and swings. They witness the wonderful performances of accomplished gymnasts and acrobates, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... autonomy. The separate states of Greece lived, as it were, in the presence of each other, and at the same time resisted all influences and all efforts towards a coalescence with each other, until the time of Alexander. Their country, a word of indefinite meaning to the Asiatic, conveyed to them as definite an idea as that of their own homes. Its whole landscape, with all its historic associations, its glorious monuments of heroic deeds, were perpetually present to their eyes. Thus their patriotism, concentrated within ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... few people know what they want, but those few are the ones who manage to "get there." If you ask a dozen of your friends what their plan of life is, what they are working for, what they really want, not one of them probably could tell you with any degree of exactness. Most people go along in an indefinite way, working from day to day, more or less dissatisfied, and with absolutely no feeling of certainty as to what the future holds ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... never felt the inward assurance of genius, nor the foretaste of celebrity, nor of happiness, nor even the prospect of being husband, father, or respected citizen. This indifference to the future is itself a sign; my dreams are vague, indefinite; I must not now live, because I am now hardly capable of living. Let me control myself; let me leave life to the living, and betake myself to my ideas; let me write the testament of my thoughts and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent, would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... course," he added, "the great thing I got from Lind and Sontag was the indefinite, not the definite, thing. For an impressionable boy, their inspiration was incalculable. They gave me my first feeling for the Italian style—but I could never say how much they gave me. At that age, such influences are ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the neutral tint of fluid white of egg. Under its fine translucid skin there is nothing coloured, save the long digestive pouch, which is swollen a deep purple by the pulp of the consumed Crickets. But against this indefinite, vitreous background the opaque white uric cells stand out distinctly in their myriads; and the effect of this stippling is a sketchy but by no means inelegant costume. It is skimpy in the extreme, but at ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... lasted from the middle of October till near December, with scarcely a break. There were six weeks of Indian summer, all gold by day, and, when the moon came, all silver by night. The river was so smooth at times as to be almost invisible, and in its place was the indefinite continuation of the opposite shore down toward the nether world. One seemed to be in an enchanted land, and to breathe all day the atmosphere of fable and romance. Not a smoke, but a kind of shining nimbus ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... much softer than mine, but in a hollow that for me was impracticable. I hastily recovered my hold, which I marvel now that I had the temerity to let go; but to have at my side my dear little faithful Diane was a comfort which no one not planted, and for a term that seemed indefinite, in so unknown-a solitude, can conceive. What cries of joy the poor little thing uttered when thus safely lodged! and with what tenderness I sought to make her sensible of my gratitude for her ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... deeply about their position; and as he thought, the dread that the captain's words had inspired, endorsed as they were by Daygo's, began to fade away, till he found himself half contemptuously saying to himself that he should like to catch the skipper at it—it meaning something indefinite that might mean something worse, but in all probability keeping them prisoners till he had got away all his ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... in the singular, denotes an age, a period of indefinite, but limited, duration, which may be either long or short. In the plural, the word denotes ages, or periods, that may be extended, and even vast, but still ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... sinking in the west, and our small but only house, the ship. How strange, how sublime the scene was! so lonely, so magnificent, so solemn! At last the sun set, gilding the clouds, and looking, to my tearful eyes, as if that too said farewell! Then the moon appeared; and the long, indefinite line of light from where her rays first touched the waters to our ship, and the dancing of the waves as they crossed it, catching the light as they passed, were so beautiful that I was unwilling to leave the deck when the hour for ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen |
