"Indefiniteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... settlement." Others have thought, however, that the first was but a draught deed of the indenture, the L4 the earnest money, and the "final concord" for L40 the conclusion of the whole. This is supported by the absolute indefiniteness of the first as to part or parts in two messuages, and by the apparent definiteness of the second. But the peculiar wording has further puzzled many writers. In referring to Robert Arden's settlements, we find that one tenement is settled upon three ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Spirit, or the logic of reason. The first, therefore, was taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There, also, it was taught by symbols. The vagueness of symbolism, capable of many interpretations, reached what the palpable and conventional creed could not. Its indefiniteness acknowledged the abstruseness of the subject: it treated that mysterious subject mystically: it endeavored to illustrate what it could not explain; to excite an appropriate feeling, if it could not develop an adequate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... native hills; and who usually got cheated in every bargain he made. Perhaps it is because I see myself in him that Hiram always seemed nearer to me than any of the rest. I have at times his vagueness, his indefiniteness, his irresolution, and his want of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... with it by the ingenuity of the commentators, the story of the coincidence would, of course, be every where spread abroad, becoming more striking and more exact at each repetition. Where there was a failure, it would not be direct and absolute, on account of the vagueness and indefiniteness of the response, and there would therefore be no interest felt in hearing or in circulating the story. The cases, thus, which would tend to establish the truth of the oracle, would be universally known and remembered, while those of a contrary bearing ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hesitation, doubt, dubiousness, dubiety, incertitude; irresolution, variableness, inconstancy, capriciousness; ambiguity, indefiniteness; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Indefiniteness of Opinion on this Subject. Every Person needs some Recreation. General Rules. How much Time to be given. What Amusements proper. Those should always be avoided, which cause Pain, or injure the Health, or endanger ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... personal interest, the life of the world we live in. It is herein that he excels! His knowledge is wide, his sympathies are many-sided, his power of exposition is unsurpassed. No one has set before us the mind of our time, with its half-lights, its shadowy vistas, its indefiniteness, its haze on the horizon, so vividly ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the indefiniteness of Indian nomenclature: The aborigines were at the time of discovery, and indeed most of them remain today, in the prescriptorial stage of culture, i.e., the stage in which ideas are crystallized, ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... Corners." The second of these, being the territory most under scrutiny in Part III, might again be divided into the territory "up by the Meeting House," and that "down by Mizzen-Top." The difficulty one experiences in naming these groupings of houses is a token of the indefiniteness of these divisions. They are accentuated by events occurring in the more recent history of the Hill. The older history which shapes the consciousness of the community does not know these neighborhood ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... had to reconcile herself to her disappointment and the indefiniteness of her father's return, in the thought that if her meeting with him was deferred, why, so was her ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... them. I've spread the stuff around—as you told me. That's all they've heard. They're here on a forlorn hope. The boom they are looking for, seems, from present conditions, to be lurking somewhere in the future, shadowed by an indefiniteness that to them is vaguely connected with somebody's promise of a dam, agricultural activity to follow, and factories. They haven't been able to trace the rumors, but they're here, and they'll make things hum if ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... present. But he does not wish to shut the door altogether. He gives a sop to his conscience to stop its barking, and he probably deceives himself as to the gravity of his present decision by the lightly given promise and its well-guarded indefiniteness, 'When I have a convenient season I will send for thee.' The thing he really means is—Not now, at all events; the thing he hoodwinks himself with is— By and by. Now that is what I know that some of you are doing; and my purpose and earnest prayer are to bring you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... on board, our voyage up these wide straits, after entering them at Point de Tour, had, in point of indefiniteness, been something like searching after the locality of the north pole. We wound about among groups of islands and through passages which looked so perfectly in the state of nature that, but for a few ruinous stone chimneys on St. Joseph's, it could not be told that the foot of man ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... also characterizes their methods of speech. In later chapters on the alleged Japanese impersonality we shall consider the remarkable deficiency of personal pronouns in the language, and the wide use of "honorifics." This substitution of the personal pronouns by honorifics makes possible an indefiniteness of speech that is exceedingly difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to appreciate. Fancy the amount of implication in the statement, "Ikenai koto-we shimashita" which, strictly translated, means "Can't go thing have done." Who ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwards they all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; but again the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And this indefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, for example, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging' of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whether Edgar is mad ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... life, can never well be depicted save by him whose words suggest more than they reveal. Cooper was not a writer of this kind. He belonged to that class of literary artists who convey their precise meaning by exactness and fullness of (p. 051) detail. The vagueness and indefiniteness with which this story abounds is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible and absurd. In all of Cooper's ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... "God in History," is written from his most advanced and religious stand-point, and seems to us the best fruit, thus far, of his studies. It is compact, consistent, and not marred by his usual defect,—a certain mysticism or indefiniteness of thought,—but is clear and philosophical to the close. It is not to be looked upon as a complete philosophical history, but rather as a suggestive and introductory treatise on that grandest of all themes, the Progress of the Instinct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... each of a number of prominent citizens in your community to define socialism. Compare the definitions secured with that given in section 122. What do you conclude as to the indefiniteness of the term "socialism"? ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... of course, a necessity in laying out the first scheme for lettering. The softer the pencil the more felicitous will the composition seem; but the beginner should guard against being too easily pleased with the effect thus obtained, as it is often due to the deceptive indefiniteness of line and pleasant gray tone. When inked-in, in uncompromising black against the white paper, the draughtsman is apt to find that his sketch has developed many an imperfection, both in composition and in individual letter shapes, that the vague pencil ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown |
