"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this was a lie; he was very certain that he was about to be witness to a deed of the darkest treachery. A vague feeling of shrinking and horror froze his limbs, and made his tongue swell in his mouth. Yet he was perfectly powerless to warn; a sign or a word would have meant his ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... or copy of it in me;—when, in fine, I have within me an empty and fictitious consciousness only. I admit also that I know nothing of 'the Good per se,' or 'the True per se,' that I even have nothing but a vague notion of what such terms stand for. I declare that it revolts me when people seek to obtrude upon me the Will which wills nothing, this empty nut of independence and freedom in absolute indifference, and accuse me of atheism, the true ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... home, yet the four—young Hugh on crutches now—clung to each other, and on the last afternoon she and Brock were alone for an hour. They had sat just here after tennis, in the hazy October weather, and pink-brown leaves had floated down with a thin, pungent fragrance and lay on the stone steps in vague patterns. Scarlet geraniums bloomed back of Brock's head and made a satisfying harmony with the copper of his tanned face. They fell to silence after much talking, and finally she got out something which had been in her mind but which it had been ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... playhouse somewhere in the suburbs, I think towards Shoreditch or Clerkenwell."[117] By "at the Green Curtain" Aubrey means, of course, "at the sign of the Green Curtain"; but the evidence of Steevens and of Aubrey is too vague and uncertain ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Charter is one of the most famous documents in history. Regarded as the foundation of English civil liberty, it also stands as the historic prototype of later declarations of human freedom in various lands. In the Great Charter, as observed by Green, "the vague expressions of the older charters were exchanged for precise and elaborate provisions. The Great Charter marks the transition from the age of traditional rights to the age of written legislation, of parliaments and statutes, which was soon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... vague unrest brooded over Washington, as though the city had been shadowed with a vast pall, or threatened with a plague. Then when it was again too late, General Scott—"the general," as the hero of Lundy's Lane and Mexico was universally known—virtually went into the Cabinet, practically ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... felt the full importance of his errand, but it was vague in its nature. He was to follow his own judgment and discover what was going on between the Northern army and Washington, no very great distance. When he was well hidden within the forest he stopped and considered. He might meet Federal scouts on errands ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... burghers who have declared that they are opposed to the extension of the Franchise. Upon reference to the Report he will find that there are only 1564 opposed to the extension. Members appear afraid to touch upon the real question at issue, but try to discredit the memorials by vague statements that some of the signatures are not genuine, and the former member for Johannesburg, Mr. J. Meyer, seems just as anxious to discredit the people of Johannesburg as formerly he was ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... about replying to Sir George Templemore, or Mr. Effingham, than he would have hesitated about answering one of his own nearest associates. With him age and experience formed no particular claims to be heard, and, as to rank, it is true he had some vague ideas about there being such a thing in the militia, but as it was unsalaried rank, he attached no great importance to it. Sir George Templemore was inquiring concerning the recording of deeds, a regulation that had recently attracted attention in England; ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... made use of by any previous historical writer. At the same time he is not oppressed by his materials, but has sagacity to estimate their real value, and he has combined with scholarly power the facts which they contain. He has rescued the story of the Netherlands from the domain of vague and general narrative, and has labored, with much judgment and ability, to unfold the 'Belli causas, et vitia, et modos,' and to assign to every man and every event their own share in the contest, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... earnestness and fervour seemed to have gone out of them in somewise since she had come to womanhood. The names of the saints her lips invoked were dull and cold, and evolved no image of human or superhuman love and power. What need of intercessors whose personality was vague and dim, whose earthly histories were made up of truth so interwoven with fable that she scarce dared believe even that which might be true? In the One Crucified was help for all sinners, gospel and creed, the rule of life here, the promise of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the chance of evil, I have intimated that the Simbock Kunsi are to come here; and on the whole, they (of Sipang) have taken it more quietly than I expected. They are not in a state for war; but they have vague notions and intentions provided they can keep out opposition, to make this place subservient to them, as it would indeed be, provided they were allowed to strengthen themselves while the other parties ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies together—he and her beloved old Katy—were conducting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... preparations with much care, but still some vague rumours crept abroad. General Dueua, the commandant of Cairo, whom he had just left for the purpose of embarking, wrote to him on the 18th of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... leave London that night; she had a moral certainty that Selina had gone to the Continent. She had always done so whenever she had a chance, and what chance had ever been larger than the present? The Continent was fearfully vague, but she would deal sharply with Lionel—she would show him she had a right to knowledge. He would certainly be in town; he would be in a complacent bustle with his lawyers. She had told him that she didn't believe he had yet ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... had finished his story, and lay quietly enough, exhausted by having talked so long. He watched Robert Audley's face, fully expecting some reproof, some grave lecture; for he had a vague consciousness that he ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... journeys slowly down, Sun-following, till surfeited with change, Mid idle pastures pitched or fabled town, Subdued to climes and kings and customs strange, At length their very name should die away And all their remnant be a vague "Men say." ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... dry-goods counter. He was soft and effeminate, with no talent for "roughing it," and wholly unfitted for the hard work which he had undertaken. He was deeply disappointed in his first work at gold-hunting, having come out with the vague idea that he should pick up a big nugget within a short time that would make his fortune and enable him to go home a rich man. The practical side of gold-seeking—this washing particles of dust from the dirt of the river-bed—was ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... restraint which soon made headway and passed all bars. In the earlier portions of his career a buoyant humour bore him up; and amid thick-coming shapes of ill he bated no jot of heart or hope. He was cheered by vague stirrings of ambition, which he pathetically compares to the "blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave." Sent to school at Kirkoswald, he became, for his scant leisure, a great reader—eating at meal-times with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other,—and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the Science of History, a certain critic expressed an opinion which was meant to be, and was, a commonplace: "Generally speaking, treatises of this kind are of necessity both obscure and useless: obscure, because there is nothing more vague than their object; useless, because it is possible to be an historian without troubling oneself about the principles of historical methodology which they claim to exhibit."[5] The arguments used by these despisers of methodology are strong enough in all appearance. They reduce to the following. As ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... subterfuges to shake them off. When I stop they do likewise, and when I start again they deliberately follow, altogether too near to be comfortable. They are, all four, rough-looking peasants, and their object is quite unaccountable, unless they are doing it for "pure cussedness," or perhaps with some vague idea of provoking me into doing something that would offer them the excuse of attacking and robbing me. The road is sufficiently lonely to invite some such attention. If they are only following me to see what I do with the bicycle, they return but little enlightened, since they see nothing but ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... night! one of those warm still nights which seem full of vague and untold possibilities! A night with magic in the air, when elves and fairies dance within their grassy rings, or biding amid the shade of trees, peep out at one between the leaves; or again, some gallant knight on mighty ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... navigated by a captain, first and second mates, and a crew of six able-bodied sailors and one gaunt youth whose sole knowledge of navigation had been gained on an Atlantic City catboat. Her destination was vague—Panama perhaps, possibly a South American port, depending on the weather and the whim of ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I must have had a very vague idea of what that one small word meant, and was besides in an unusually contented and peaceful state of mind, or I should, undoubtedly, have raised one of his cut-glass decanters and smashed in his head with it. I know how I should receive ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... without her, but of course he doesn't realize it. He thinks he is in a constant feud with her and her sex. His ideas on the woman question are so terrific that I have always run from them, but I concluded that it would be a good thing for me to liquefy some of my vague humanitarianism, and help Aunt Augusta with him, while she wrestles with the City Council on the water question. Anyway, I have always had a guarded fondness ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the lower bunk were seen to heave and to be thrust back from the pale face of Merton Gill. An elbow came into play, and the head was raised. A gaze still vague with sleep travelled about the room in dull alarm. He was waking up in his little room at the Patterson house and he couldn't make it look right. He rubbed his eyes vigorously and pushed himself farther up. His mind resumed its broken threads. He ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... seven such persons on the stage, not counting himself, but Henry honestly thought that the eyes of the entire audience were directed upon him alone. The stage seemed very large, and he was cut off from the audience by a wall of blinding rays, and at first he could only distinguish vast vague semicircles and a floor of pale, featureless faces. However, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... belonged to a family of distinction and wealth. He had made mathematics, natural philosophy, and astrology (as it was then called) his special studies. His knowledge of history and literature, judging from his letters, appears to have been somewhat vague and ill-digested. He left Florence in 1492 without any special aim in view, and went to Spain, where he occupied himself at first in commercial pursuits. We hear of him in Seville acting as factor in the powerful trading house of his fellow countryman, Juanoto Berardi. As ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... established on his throne, the knights of the Round Table begin their wonderful career of adventure and gallantry. With them the reader roams over a vague and unreal land called Britain or Cornwall, in full armor, the ever ready lance in rest. At almost every turn a knight is met who offers combat, and each detail of the conflict—the rush of the horses, the breaking of lances, the final hand-to-hand with swords—is described with ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Vague reports had reached Jack before he had left on his trip, of the uprising of the people, and of the guerrilla warfare being carried on by the straggling armies of the North and South. Still he did not think he would be molested, ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... vague reports which chief constables are in the habit of furnishing," he said, drily. "Apparently the owner is an American, an invalid, and is eccentric. More than this—and this will surprise you—he has been certified by competent medical ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... window, "and half leaped, half fell into the jail yard below. With his last dying energies he gathered himself up, and leaned in a sitting posture against the rude stone well curb. His stricken condition, his vague wandering glances, excited no pity in the mob thirsting for his life. A squad of Missourians, who were standing by the fence, leveled their pieces at him, and, before they could see him again for the smoke they made, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... A vague, inexplicable, but horrible fear, contracted her heart. She felt that she was being slowly but surely drawn into a whirlpool of passion, rancor, vengeance, and crime, and a voice whispered that she would ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... little. He found himself thinking with fervor of the desirable things in life, never had the various tasks which he had set himself seemed so easy an accomplishment, his own powers more real and alive. And beneath it all he was conscious of a vague sense of excitement, a nervous dancing of the blood, as though even now the time were at hand when he might find himself in touch with some of the greater forces of life, all of which he intended some day to realize. It was delightful after all to be young and strong, ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seemed to falter for a moment. She looked speculatively at the indignant old face opposite, then made a vague little gesture toward her hair, and dropped her eyes. "No," she said softly. "Don't—please." She raised her eyes once more and looked straight into Mrs. Oglethorpe's. The two women stood staring at each other for several seconds. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth—one makes sounds. It's of little help—a little help perhaps—in housebreaking and so forth. Once you've caught me you could easily imprison ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... of the voto. The girl-queen listened with breathless eagerness to the strange revelations, often interrupting with passionate exclamations, for her short taste of Cyprian life had been so colored with the glamour of love and happiness and the excitement of her novel surroundings that the vague forebodings which were beginning to temper the brilliancy had suggested ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... I have noticed that; but I have a vague sort of feeling just now that things are not going to get better. I don't know whether it's this long-continued darkness, or the want of good food, but I feel more downcast than I ever was in my ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... standing idle in the stable, with only servants to use them; his father a plain man, his mother confined mostly to two or three rooms, and occasional visitors; supplies ordered lavishly, and wasted in a manner that seemed wicked even to him. He wondered in a vague way if the system was not radically wrong that brought such waste and carelessness in vogue, when hundreds had not the necessities of life. He remembered one talk his father had with Horace Eastman over ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to them, I thus began: 'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman; But tell me,—in the time of happy sighs, Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?" And she to me: "The mightiest of all woes Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed With bliss remembered,—this thy teacher knows. Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head, As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, So ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... trouble softened, it seemed to the young man still harder to bear. Honorable until then, and known as such, the old gentleman, ruined by an unforeseen disaster (the bankruptcy of a partner), had left for his son nothing but a few commonplace words of consolation, and no hope, except, perhaps, that vague hope without aim or reason which constitutes, it is said, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... on she flew, like a real thistledown, her fair curls streaming on the wind, her eyes big with a vague terror. As the Doctor sped farther and farther away from her, she ceased calling realizing that she must reach ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... the designs of Persia and Russia which the communications of our envoy in Persia had fostered in the Home Government, but it would appear that he was wholly undecided what line of action to pursue. 'Swayed,' says Durand, 'by the vague apprehensions of a remote danger entertained by others rather than himself,' he despatched to Afghanistan Captain Burnes on a nominally commercial mission, which, in fact, was one of political discovery, but without definite instructions. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... could trust; and she was so abhorred, and the reports against her so shocking where she resided, that she was glad to leave a place where every one, as she passed, would get out of her way, as if to avoid contamination. Yet these reports were vague, although hinting at some horrid and appalling crimes. No one knew what they exactly were, for the old woman had outlived her contemporaries, and the tradition was imperfect; but she had ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... of a problem not yet understood, with the sickening prospect of finding it unanswered on awakening. That seemed to be reason enough for many resentful recoils from the very portals of sleep; serving no end, as Maisie had been overcome without a contest, and lay still as an effigy on a tomb. A vague fear that she might die unwatched, looking so like Death already, may have touched Phoebe's mind. But fears and unsolved riddles alike melted away and vanished in the end; and when Ruth Thrale, an hour later, starting restless from her own couch near by, looked in to satisfy ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... then the papers about the conditions of partnership disappeared, no one knew how, and d'Alibert's wife and child were ruined. D'Alibert's brother-in-law, who was Sieur de la Magdelaine, felt certain vague suspicions concerning this death, and wished to get to the bottom of it; he accordingly began investigations, which were suddenly brought to an ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... things became a little more quiet, still no notice was taken of our hero save that his meals were sent to him from the Chief's hut. He wondered at this greatly, for nothing of the kind had ever happened before, and he began to entertain vague suspicions that such treatment might possibly be the prelude to evil of some kind befalling him. He questioned his guard several times, but that functionary told him that Big Chief had bidden him refuse to hold converse with ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... endurance and yet sleep would not come to her, as happens often to the overtired. Before her closed eyes a vague panorama of past events unrolled ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of Sakadwipa embodies some vague tradition current in ancient India of some republic in Eastern Asia or Oceanic Asia (further east in the Pacific). Accustomed as the Hindus were to kingly form of government, a government without a king, would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had been born and brought up in a New England country village, the type of the freest and most determinate local government; he had been educated at a democratic college; he had shouldered his musket in a war for the defense not of his State alone, but of his country, vague and ill defined though its organic form might be. When, therefore, the war was over, and the country was free and compelled to manage its own affairs, he was qualified to take part in that management, and his temper led him to look for fundamental ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... mourners, and then thrills of reverence went round the congregation. The social hierarchy was to some extent graduated by synagogal contributions, and whoever could afford only a little offering had it announced as a "gift"—a vague term which might equally be the covering ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... their altered relations and closer association in work would draw Alphonse out of the circles which Charles could not now endure, and unite them more closely. For he had conceived a vague dread of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... we continued on our way, I pondered much over this new discovery and the singular appearance of these birds, of which Jack could only give us a very slight and vague account; and I began to long to commence our boat, in order that we might go and inspect them more narrowly. But by degrees these thoughts left me, and I began to be much taken up again with the interesting peculiarities of the country which we were ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... to comprehend that, as in the fables of our childhood, the twelve strokes of the hour have rung, the cock has crowed, the apparition has vanished—never to haunt again this world which has been used to gaze at it with vague dread ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... nineteen-two something stirred in him, something watched and waited; with a subtle agitation, a vague and delicate excitement, it exulted and aspired. The sensation, or whatever it was, had as yet no separate existence of its own. So perfect, in this spring of nineteen-two, was the harmony of Ransome's being that the pulse of the unborn thing was one with all his other pulses; ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... regarding the deaf.[136] Being thrown intimately with them but seldom, people often come to form curious ideas respecting the deaf, but ideas which are more or less unhappy ones. There is frequently an attitude towards them combined of wonder, misgiving, fear, aversion—a vague feeling or belief that the deaf are more or less distinct in their thoughts and actions from other people, that they are somehow "unnatural" ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... supposed to have seen the unknown continent of Gamaland, was, no one knew. The Portuguese followed the myth blindly; and the other geographers followed the Portuguese. Texeira, court geographer in Portugal, in 1649 issued a map with a vague coast marked at latitude 45 degrees north, with the words "Land seen by John de Gama, Indian, going ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... gaze to that point in the shore, felt the undercurrent of vague meaning in his voice, guessed what was his cue, and said: "Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle Amour. I have had a long travel. I have found an open door. I will stay—if you please—hein? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... one after the other, in the room. The creatures are too stupid to feel pain, or if they do, to manifest any great panic. They set off crawling over the floor, at a pace which surprise and perhaps some vague terror made a trifle quicker than usual. Before long they started describing circles, not because it is, as Plato says, a perfect figure, but as a result of the instinct that always makes insects turn round and round, in their efforts to escape any unknown ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... pleasant fountains, full of beautiful things, full of the quality and promise of heart's desire. And there were many things and many people, some that still seem to stand out clearly and some that are a little vague, but all these people were beautiful and kind. In some way—I don't know how—it was conveyed to me that they all were kind to me, glad to have me there, and filling me with gladness by their gestures, by the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... been held as to whether we have any trace of a religious belief. Theoretically speaking, they had some sort of a religion, though doubtless very vague and indistinct; for we know of no nation as far advanced as they were destitute of it. It has been pointed out, that the bones of some animals, as the horse, were very rare, and their absence explained as the result of superstitious reasons. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... of breakfast at Lady Nottingham's was vague and shifting. Sometimes it all happened in the dining-room, sometimes, and rather oftener, little of it happened there, but took place, instead of on that continent, in the scattered islands of bedrooms. Gladys, however, was generally faithful to the continent, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... vague, prophetic gloom, As though by certain mark I knew the fore-appointed Tree, Within whose rugged bark This warm and living frame shall find Its narrow house ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... find their disciples chiefly amongst that not inconsiderable section of the public which has been aptly described as dominated by a "longing to combine a picturesque certainty devoid of moral discipline with unlimited transcendental speculations." All these cults combine a vague optimism with an extravagant subjectivity; all would have us believe that so far from things being what they are, they are whatever we may think them to be; all with one accord treat evil in its various manifestations as unreal, and maintain, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... while Estelle took up her book. It was "Les Vacances de Camille" she had got hold of; but she did not turn the pages quickly; there was something else in her mind. She was thinking of Nina. She was troubled about her, in a vague kind of way. She had never seen Nina look like that before, and she was puzzled ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... time probably you will be reading a Letter I hurried off for you by Dr. Russell in the last steamer; and your friendly anxieties will partly be set at rest. Had I kept silence so very long? I knew it was a long while; but my vague remorse had kept no date! It behoves me now to write again without delay; to certify with all distinctness that I have safely received your Letter of the 30th October, safely the Bill for L25 it contained;—that you are a brave, friendly man, of most serene, beneficient way ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... left lonely At the gates of the far West Wait, so still, for the moon's stiller Stealing from her nest, I am held by a low vesper Haunting afar the vague twilight, Then with my soul ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... the old story, thought Susan, listening sympathetically, and in utter disbelief, to these recitals. Mary Lou and Georgie were not alone in claiming vague and mythical love-affairs; Emily even carried them to the point of indicating old bundles of letters in her desk as "from Bob Brock—tell you all about that some time!" or alluding to some youth who had gone ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... which had been nourished within and outwardly shaped in manner by constant contact with the English classic authors, and especially with good prose, clear, simple, and direct, from which melodious cadence had not yet been eliminated. He was touched, also, by some vague literary ambition, not well defined, but predisposed to fiction; and he had a physically indolent habit, which kept him disengaged from practical affairs and led him more and more into meditative ways. He did not have any inspiration from ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... flute at the feet of the perpetually smiling shepherdess. Sometimes, when the wind blew behind these hanging pictures, it seemed to me that the figures themselves moved, and I watched to see them detach themselves from the wall, and take their places in the procession! But these impressions were vague and transitory. The feeling that predominated over every other was that of an overflowing yet quiet joy. In the midst of all the floating draperies, the scattered flowers, the voices of the maidens, and the gladness which, like a perfume, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... several languages—Swahili, Kikuyu, the language of flowers, American, Masai, and the sign language, none of which he was conversant with. Then we tried a relay system of dialects which established a vague, syncopated kind of intellectual contact. One of our porters spoke Kavirondo, so he held converse with the far from handsome stranger, translated it into Swahili, and this was retranslated into English ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... of Enderby's whaling captains, discovered the Balleny Islands within the Antarctic Circle, in the Australian Quadrant of Antarctica, and gave a vague description of an appearance of land to the westward. This has been charted on maps, without ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... him that he was lying helpless and still by falling water in a valley. The water soothed him, and he fell asleep. After a long time he waked, and dimly knew that a face, good to look at, was bending over him. In a vague, far-off way he saw that it was Elise Malboir; but even as he saw, his eyes closed, the world dropped away, and he sank to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to come, Hans?" I asked idly, for his naive summing up of the case interested me in a vague way. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the watery issuings of a fountain, it throws itself upward for a moment, then descends in a soft, glittering shower to the level whence it rose. Herein resides the chief defect of Bayly's songs; that they are too general and vague—a species of pattern songs—being embodiments of some general feeling, or reflection, but lacking that sufficient reference to some season or occurrence which would justify their appearing, and take away from them the aspect of pretension ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Scottish burgess and the Scottish peasant felt himself called to deal, individually and immediately, with Christianity and the divine; and everywhere the contact was ennobling. 'Common man' as he was, 'the vague, shoreless universe had become for him a firm city, and a dwelling-place which he knew. Such virtue was in belief: in these words well spoken, I believe.'[83] But being a common man in Scotland, his religion could not be isolated, or his faith for ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... end of the thirteenth century the Templars had become suspect, not only in the eyes of the clergy, but of the general public. "Amongst the common people," one of their latest apologists admits, "vague rumours circulated. They talked of the covetousness and want of scruple of the Knights, of their passion for aggrandizement and their rapacity. Their haughty insolence was proverbial. Drinking habits were attributed to them; the saying was already in ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... last four days work had been entirely suspended through the district; and the men of the other collieries, as well as those of the Vaughan who, belonging to the other shift, had escaped, hung about the pit yard, in the vague hope of being able in some ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... assailed us with their hellish odor. To our eyes, the base, denuded by the explosion, seemed to cover a space of between three and four square miles. This, however, can only be rough conjecture. Equally vague must be all present attempts to determine the volume of the disrupted matter. Yet, if we assume, as a very moderate calculation, that the mean depth of the debris covering a buried area of thirty square miles is ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... made her what her pretty eyes never could have done—the belle of the neighborhood. Non cuivis contingit adire Lutetiam, but to a village where no one has been at Paris the county-town is a shrine of fashion. Allen Golyer felt a vague sense of distrust chilling his heart as he saw Mr. Simmons' ribbons decking the pretty head in the village choir the Sunday after her return, and, spurred on by a nascent jealousy of the unknown, resolved to learn his fate without ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... a somewhat vague beginning. From the best information that can now be obtained, it may be said that it was set on foot in 1789, shortly after the close of the Revolution, by a sharper who was famous in that day. He was known as Thomas Washington, but his real name was ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... approach of the great phenomena of nature excites vague uneasiness in the heart of every sentient being, even in the most strong-minded. The whole party in the OMBU felt agitated and oppressed, and not one of them could close his eyes. The first peal of thunder ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... properly adjusted to show grace. But a charm more worthy of her was that of propriety, of candor, of goodness. A virtuous education and solitary studies had given to her all that culture can add to an excellent nature. In her, sentiment was perfect, but her thought was often confused and vague; instead of clearing her ideas, meditation disturbed them; in exaggerating them, she believed to enlarge them; in order to extend them, she wandered off into abstractions and hyperboles. She seemed to see certain objects only through a fog, which augmented their importance in her eyes; and then ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... words had been iron passing through his soul, and besides he felt as if everything was turning cold and slippery and gliding from his hand. He shivered with vague fears, and wished the sun would set at one o'clock and the sorrowful day come ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... to be influenced by vague dreams," adds the Shogun, "must, if he does not react powerfully, bid farewell to common sense and reason; for he will experience so great a charm in forgetting, even for one moment, the reality of life, that he will seek to ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... not usually busy itself with little men and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each other—economic changes and political ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... a ground of night Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there As in vague hope some alien lance of light Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight— The salt and bitter blood of her despair— Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair And grip toward God ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... issue from the strait. They were, however, too far off to accomplish this, and, by the time they arrived within striking distance, the Christian fleet had cleared the strait and was ready for them, "drawn up for battle," says Monsieur Daru, which is somewhat vague in describing the disposition of a fleet. What is certain, however, is that in advance of the galleys of Don John were six great galeasses, which were armed with guns of immensely superior power to anything which could be mounted in galleys. As the Turks advanced to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... even apart from the affairs of that enterprise, Wenna Rosewarne seemed to be everywhere throughout the village, to know everything, to be doing everything that prudent help and friendly counsel could do. Mrs. Trelyon grew to love the girl in her vague, wondering, simple fashion. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... delightful results. He has always seemed to be alive with the specific vitality of the person represented. He has never seemed a wooden puppet of the stage, bound in by formality and straining after a vague scholastic ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... words which have long come to carry the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private persons having the world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen items of flattering regard generally known in a genteel suburb? And words could hardly be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that made a hazy largeness about poor Gwendolen on the heights of her young self-exultation. Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of, and to have their lives blown hither and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... care to interrupt him. The stillness of the night, the light of the moon and stars, that gave the prairie lying before us the appearance of a silvery sea, the sombre forest on either side of the blockhouse, of which the edges only were lighted up by the moonbeams, the vague allusions our guide had made to some fearful scene of strife and slaughter that had been enacted in this now peaceful glade—all these circumstances combined, worked upon our imaginations, and we felt unwilling to break the stillness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... "it is true in a rather vague and general way. You see, Mr. Malone, any precise description of a psionic manifestation must wait until a metalanguage has grown up to encompass it; that is, until understanding and knowledge have reached the point where careful and ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... introduced us, that the newcomer was the "young George" of whom I had heard. He was a fresh, high-coloured boy, whose features showed even now a slight forecast of General Bolingbroke's awful redness. Before I looked: at him I got a vague impression that he was handsome; after I looked at him I began to wonder curiously why he was not? His hair was of a bright chestnut colour, very curly, and clipped unusually close, in order to hide the natural wave of which, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... 'these turrets and gables and things look all very well in pictures, but they would never do for our streets: we must build in some regular style, you know.' The same old error again, the same servile imitation of a vague something or other, which we call classic. Do you think the old German burghers built in any regular style? Not a bit of it. They built just what they wanted, in the most natural and plain-spoken manner. If they wanted a porch over the door, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Savine sat still as if he did not see her, his face contracted into a ghastly grin of pain. The attendant who came to them deftly aided Geoffrey to force a little cordial between the sufferer's teeth. Savine made no sign. Forgetting her indignation in her terror Helen glanced at Geoffrey in vague question, but he merely raised his hand with ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... into a state of semi-consciousness, my thoughts wandering away from my present condition and fixing themselves, with strange pertinacity, upon subjects of the most trifling import; now plunging into vague speculations, and anon indulging in all sorts of fantastic fancies, as lever began to assume its burning sway over ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... he hadn't no business to get about, and though he talked in a vague sort of way concerning his home in Exeter and a brother up to Salisbury, it was all rubbish as he afterwards admitted. He was a tramp, and nothing more, and the life at Little Sherberton and the good food and the warm lying at nights, evidently took his fancy. So he stuck ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... moonlight over the dark earth. This was followed by a wild, elfin passage in triple time—a sort of grotesque interlude, like the dance of spirits upon the lawn. Then came a swift agitato finale—a breathless, hurrying, trembling movement, descriptive of flight, and uncertainty, and vague impulsive terror, which carried us away on its rustling wings, and left us all in emotion ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... heart, for her as well as for Swain, but for Swain most of all, for he had done nothing to merit such misfortune, while she, at least, had chosen her road and was following it with open eyes. Small wonder that I thought of her with anger and resentment, yes, and with a vague distrust, for, at the very back of my mind was the suspicion that she had been a decoy to ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... a subscription book issued in the fall has a much larger sale than if issued at any other season of the year. It is funny when I reflect that when I originally wrote you and proposed to do from 6 to 9 articles for the magazine, the vague thought in my mind was that 6 might exhaust the material and 9 would be pretty sure to do it. Or rather it seems to me that that was my thought—can't tell at this distance. But in truth 9 chapters don't now seem to more than open up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had a foul and suffocating odor. In this respect the memory of infant tribes and nations seems to resemble that of individuals. There are characters and events which impress it so strongly, that they seem never to be forgotten, but live as traditions, sometimes mayhap very vague, and much modified by the inventions of an after time, but which, in floating downwards to late ages, always bear about them a certain strong impress of their pristine reality. They are shadows that have become ill defined from the vast distance of the objects that cast them,—like ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... she had drawn away with reluctance, should have burned him like pin-pricks of fire. The woman who wishes to allure may be as subtle as possible in her methods, but a sense of her purpose, however vague it may be, is generally communicated to her would be victim. Tavernake was becoming distinctly uneasy. He had no vanity. He knew from the first that this beautiful creature belonged to a world far removed from any of which he had any knowledge. The only solution of the situation ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vague consciousness of his misfortune faded slowly out of his mind, succeeded by a painful consciousness of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the dean's office that morning a vague feeling of apprehension rose within her. The dean, a stately, dark-haired woman with a rather forbidding expression, which disappeared the moment she smiled, glanced up with a flash of approval at the fine, resolute face of the gray-eyed girl who walked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... had been the very opposite of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to regard with ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... always had a vague idea that France is an immoral country. To the eye of a mere visitor France is the most moral of the four Great Powers—France, Russia, England, Germany; has the strongest family life and the most seemly streets. Young men and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... ungrateful age—the happy age—when a boy saunters dreamily through his days. He had a clear forehead, girlish eyes, deep and trustful, often with dark circles round them, a wide mouth with rather thick pouting lips, a rather crooked smile, vague, absent, taking: he wore his hair long so that it hung down almost to his eyes, and made a great bunch at the back of his neck, while one rebellious lock stuck up at the back: a neckerchief loosely ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... father, to believe that riches would secure the best reception in it; and his thoughts were continually turned towards the attainment of them; but, uninstructed in all the employments of life, what method could he take in the pursuit? Many vague and romantic schemes presented themselves to his mind, with which he would entertain his sister and cousin, and to which they listened with interest, but without the power of assisting ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... She was occupied with the phantom pages of her banker's book; with the shortcomings of a new housemaid; not a little with the vague sketch of a dress, to be worn at certain approaching gaieties, which should embody the majesty of the chaperon without entirely resigning all pretensions to youth. But for one remark, "that the coachman was driving very badly," ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville |
