"Confusedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as if the words were addressed to himself, and from the grave. But, as he rose on his knee, and tossing the wild hair from his eyes, looked confusedly round, he saw, at a short distance, and in the shadow of the wall, two forms; the one, an old man with grey hair, who was seated on a crumbling wooden tomb, facing the setting sun; the other, a man apparently yet in the vigour of life, who appeared bent as in humble supplication. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... elements will be mingled confusedly together, passing into one another by insensible gradations, scattered over the great urban regions and intervening areas our previous anticipations have sketched out. Moreover, they are developing, as it were ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... walk away after telling the servant that it was a mistake and that he had not been invited. At once, however, came realization of social outrage. He surrendered hat and coat and let himself be announced. The noise of thirty voices struck his ear as he entered the great drawing-room. He was confusedly aware of a glitter of jewels, and bare arms and shoulders and the black and white of men. But radiant in the middle of the room stood his Princess, with a tiara of diamonds on her head, and beside her stood a youngish man whose ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... you for your earnest and affectionate letter. It has given me the greatest pleasure, mixing the play in my mind confusedly and delightfully with Pisa, the Valetta, Naples, Herculanaeum—God knows ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... tender had left the landing a moment before the Adventurer's boat and now its occupants were heard shouting confusedly across the moonlit water. ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... knot of grass an intricacy of shade which the labor of years could never imitate, and which, if such labor could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. That which is nearness for the bank, is distance for its details; and however near it may be, the greater part of those details are still ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... "the poet and the musician know everything; the gods reveal hidden things to them; they express in their rhythm what the thought scarcely conceives and what the tongue confusedly stammers. But if my song saddens you, I can, by changing its mode, bring brighter ideas to your mind." And Satou struck the cords of her harp with joyous energy, and with a quick measure which the tympanum marked with ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... overlooks the present town in the north, a terraced mound could be distinguished, and from its sides luminous points twinkled in ruddy light. The thumping of drums, shrill flutes, and an undefined noise rhythmic in its character, in which human voices and numerous rattles were confusedly mingled, issued from a quarter above which a glow arose like that of a fire burning within. That irregular pile was the pueblo of Oga P' Hoge; it stood where Fort Marcy was subsequently erected by ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... emphasis, "Those two girls are fifty-fifty. I'd like a dozen of each brand." And a slim college boy with fresh, eager eyes kept darting quick looks from time to time at the older of the two, the blonde. He asked himself confusedly, "How'd I start in with a woman like her?" And exciting pictures rose in his mind. In the meantime an elderly lady, with a sharp, inquisitive air, had put down the ages of the girls at twenty-two ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... confusedly, feeling that he was beginning to tremble. He stood before her as she sat, moved irresolutely, as if to leave, and then, facing her with a powerful effort, heexclaimed, —"Martha, do you know what people say ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... hastily put his pipe back into his mouth and confusedly searched in his pockets for a match; but I knew I had struck down deep into a common experience. Here was this brisk and prosperous farmer having his dreams too—dreams that even ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Eveley rather confusedly, for the Mexican business was a terrible muddle to her. "I understand that your men must fight to save their country from the rebels and anarchists who would wreck and ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... and these were admirable stare-repellers; it was only necessary to direct them upon the curious crowd, and the most prominent individuals acknowledged their power by first looking shy and conscious, and then confusedly laughing and retreating to ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in her voice thrilled even the canoe-men, and their paddle strokes fell confusedly for an instant, though they did not understand; for both Wallulah and Snoqualmie had spoken in the royal tongue of the Willamettes. He sat abashed for an ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... She felt, confusedly, that there were many thing? she should have said and at the same time there was a strange surety that sometime she would see him again and say them. She walked absently to the window which opened on the vacant lot to the ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of the shanty was a low platform of hewn logs, which constituted the proprietor's couch when he slept; on another was the door, on the third were confusedly piled Buffle's culinary utensils, and on the fourth was a fireplace, whose defective draft had been the agent of the fine frescoing of soot perceptible on the ceiling. A single candle hung on a wire over the barrel, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... pleased to do that," returned Mr. Pembroke confusedly. "Deucedly glad to 'ave a chance to serve you, don't you know. Now, just what ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... say. She leaned on Victoire's arm as she went into the house, and by degrees recovering from the almost painful excess of pleasure, began to enjoy what she yet only confusedly felt. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... leaving her to a full consciousness of her desolation. Her father at length found it necessary to abridge the interview. Every moment of its protraction seemed still more to unsettle the understanding of his daughter. She spoke wildly and confusedly, and in that thought of separation which the doom of her lover perpetually forced upon her, she contemplated, in all its fearful extremities, her own. She was borne away half delirious—the feeling of wo something blunted, however, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... such a time. She forgot the lightning while she waited till he asked it for the third time. And then, straining her incredulous ears again, she heard the boy murmur something, and she saw him hurriedly and confusedly searching his ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... exciting. A conflict of this kind would always destroy the greatest number in the shortest time. The arena presented a scene of dire confusion. Five hundred armed men in the prime of life and strength all struggled confusedly together. Sometimes they would all be interlocked in one dense mass; at other times they would violently separate into widely scattered individuals, with a heap of dead upon the scene of the combat. But these would assail one another again with undiminished ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... said he, rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly. "But it HAS a meaning, maybe, if I could ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... odes of many poets,' said she, quickly and confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the invisible ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... struck the man as a little odd; he looked a little confusedly, and he conveyed that he would not like to be in anything that was not ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... down over the door step, and make her slow way into the little path before the house. A path of a few yards ran from the road to the house door, and it was bordered with a rough-looking array of flowers. Rough-looking, because they were set or had sprung up rather confusedly, and the path between had no care but was only worn by the feet of travellers and the hands and knees of the poor inhabitant of the place. Yet some sort of care was bestowed on the flowers themselves, for no weeds had been suffered to choke them; and even the encroaching grass ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... to work in clearing and loading the Hope for England, having hitherto taken in our goods confusedly and by hasty snatches, some into one ship, and some into others, not deeming it proper to hazard all in one bottom while exposed to so much danger from the Portuguese. I had resolved to send home the Hope, not that I esteemed her burden ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... the tinkle of the approaching bells. In truth, he did feel rather tired, and even a little heartsick. Now that the excitement called up by the conversation on fencing, and the recollection of his former doughty deeds in that line had subsided, a sense of dissatisfaction had come upon him, confusedly, as yet, and mingled with doubt and regret. After being on the stretch throughout the violent feverish incidents of the day, his nerves relaxed under the balmy influences of the spring night. Why should he, without any ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... on a sudden, and there arises confusedly from the Ground, Vasas, Fountains, and Statues. And a Troop of infernal Spirits (sent by Melissa) on both sides of the Scene, prevent ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... very little to say. She blushed rosily when Jack made fervent love to her; acquiesced confusedly when he told her she must give up the music-hall stage, and seemed to take happily to the idea of a quiet, uneventful life ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... than the rest, was soon reached. High sculptured panels, on which serpents, ghouls, and other strange figures seemed to disport themselves confusedly, covered its walls. Several long and narrow windows, like loopholes, shivered beneath the bursts of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... and the queen, with marvelous lightness of step and ogling glances, ambled up to a tall, raw-boned Methodist preacher, who had come with me, and invited him to dance with her. The poor parson seemed sadly embarrassed, as her manner was very pressing, but he awkwardly and confusedly declined, amid the titters of all present. It was a singular spectacle, that dance of the mad-women. The most striking figure on the floor was the queen. Her great size, her brilliant apparel, her astonishing agility, the perfect time she kept, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... any real darkness down there in that narrow valley, but there was dusk of a kind that made everything grey and uncertain. It was a vague, nebulous atmosphere in which objects merged into each other confusedly. Bushes came down to within a few feet of where we were working, dense-growing alder and birch that would have concealed a whole ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... an ambush to intercept some of my men that were sent on shore, and, on seeing an advantage, broke out upon them in great numbers, confusedly running towards my men and boats. They discharged their shot at us, and we at them, both such of my men as were on shore, and those also in my frigate,[341] which rowed close to the land. All my men retired in safety ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... she replied confusedly. The lawyer looked at her so sharply that she flinched under his gaze. A kidnapper, thought he, with the quick cunning of one who deals in stratagems. Instinctively he looked about as if to make sure that there were no unnecessary witnesses to share ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... represent the same universe, but each one represents it differently, that is, from its particular point of view—represents that which is near at hand distinctly, and that which is distant confusedly. Since they all reflect the same content or object, their difference consists only in the energy or degree of clearness in their representations. So far then, as their action consists in representation, distinct representation evidently coincides with complete, unhindered ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... he said, looking at her rather confusedly. "I thought I was at Medhurst, in the old library; oh, what a fool I am!" and there was almost a despairing ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the horse-hoofs; creaking waggons rattled swiftly. The wheels rumbled, the driver rode upon the winds, so that the chariots sounded like thunder. The earth hardly bore the throngs of men-at-arms, speeding on confusedly; they trod it, but it could not bear their weight. I thought that the air crashed and the earth was shaken, so mighty was the motion of the stranger army. For I saw fifteen standards flickering at once; each of them had a hundred lesser standards, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... inscriptional tablets of monuments, for which this seems to be the favourite material, nero antico is extremely scarce in modern Rome. The bigio antico is a grayish marble, composed of white and black, sometimes in distinct stripes or waves, and sometimes mingled confusedly together. It was the Marmor Batthium of the ancients, and two of the large columns in the principal portal of the Church of Santa Croce in Jerusalemme are remarkably fine specimens of it, probably taken ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... salt and inappropriately gay flags marked the boundaries of the area. Owing to our speed the salt billowed out behind us like powdery fumes, but beyond the evidence of this smoky trail we might merely have been a group of madmen confusedly searching for some object lost upon ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the Devil, resting against the roof of the cell and carrying under his wings—like a gigantic bat that is suckling its young—the Seven Deadly Sins, whose grinning heads disclose themselves confusedly. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's prophecies, 'there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and' dropping ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... distinct frown on his face. It was as though he read her deceit and despised her for it. Thyrza added, confusedly: ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... two-and-twenty beg. We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak, bare region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses; as if the earth had been plowed up by burning thunder-bolts. And now, we halt to see the sunset. The change that falls upon the dreary region and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on—and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... old man, confusedly, and bowing repeatedly, 'I always liked the old Union. I fit for it in the milish in the last war with the Britishers. Walk in, walk in,' continued he, pointing to the door ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the south it ran up to the pencil-line of the Hanover shore. Only to the west was its outline broken by any vestiges of the sea it had risen from. There it was astir with crawling white filaments, knotted confusedly at one spot in the north-west, whence came a sibilant murmur like the hissing of many snakes. Desert as I call it, it was not entirely featureless. Its colour varied from light fawn, where the highest levels had dried in the wind, to brown or deep violet, where it was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... nothing!—cruel, unjust," sighed he. "I could have done, would have done, anything to please her. Do nothing! nobody does anything now—things don't come in your way to be done as they used centuries ago, or we should do them just the same; it is their fault, not ours," argued his lordship, somewhat confusedly; then, leaning his brow upon the sofa, he wished to die. For, at that dark moment life seemed to this fortunate man an aching void; a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable tale; a faded flower; a ball-room after daylight has crept in, and music, motion ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... head of the bed rose and laid a cool hand upon his forehead. "How good that feels," he mumbled gratefully. "What nice hands you have, nurse," and he lifted his glance to her face. He stared wonderingly, confusedly. "I thought I was awake and almost well," he murmured. "And instead, I'm out of ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the city,' &c. I told you at the first that this city was the church of God that should be in the latter days; but yet not the church disorderly and confusedly scattered here and there, without all visible order and discipline, but the church brought into exact form and order, lying every way level and square with the rule and golden reed of the New Testament of Christ; wherefore he calleth it a city, a city under rule. Thus it was in the type; for when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though emerging by her mouth. But at the same time he flatly declined to give a certificate. He had failed to agree with his two confreres, who treated him coldly, as though they considered him a wild, adventurous young fellow. Pierre confusedly remembered some shreds of the discussion which had begun again in his presence, some little part of the diagnosis framed by Beauclair. First, a dislocation of the organ, with a slight laceration of the ligaments, resulting from the patient's fall from her ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... twenty-one volumes in 1821. It is the most valuable of all collective editions of Shakespeare's works, but the three volumes of preliminary essays on Shakespeare's biography and writings, and the illustrative notes brought together in the final volume, are confusedly arranged and are unindexed; many of the essays and notes break off abruptly at the point at which they were left at Malone's death. A new 'Variorum' edition, on an exhaustive scale, was undertaken by Mr. H. Howard Furness of Philadelphia, and eleven volumes have appeared ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... throbbing wildly at their discovery. There was a bewildering train of thoughts, too, running through their minds, as to how the poor fellow could have got there; and Saxe could only find bottom in one idea—that they had been confusedly wandering about, returning another way, till they had accidentally hit upon a further development of the great crevasse into which the guide ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... Tubbs's sprightly conversation and with a certain harshness of tone asked Captain Magnus if he had had good sport on the other side of the island. Captain Magnus, as usual, had seemed to feel that time consecrated to eating was wasted in conversation. At this point-blank question he started confusedly, stuttered, and finally explained that though he had taken a rifle he had carried along pistol cartridges, so had come home ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... to tell her about the last week's programme. She answered at random, very confusedly. The colour burned in her cheek. Yet she always answered him. The girl on the other side sat remotely, obviously silent. He ignored her. All his address was for his own girl, with her bright, shallow eyes and her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the communicator headphones, and until he heard his name called tried drearily to make ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... refers the angular form and large size of the fragments composing these breccias to the action of floating ice in the sea. These masses of angular rock, some of them weighing more than half a ton, and lying confusedly in a red, unstratified marl, like stones in boulder-drift, are in some cases polished, striated, and furrowed like erratic blocks in the moraine of a glacier. They can be shown in some cases to have travelled ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... disclosed, would utterly dismember the Government and put the nation itself in peril? Might he not already even have informed the King? With his little, swine-like eyes retreating under the crinkling fat of his lowering brows, Jost, hot and cold by turns, wandered confusedly out of the 'exclusive' set of persons connected with the 'Grand National Theatre' scheme, who were now gathered round the suspended foundation-stone to which the King was approaching. He pretended not to see the curious eyes that stared at him, or the sneering mouths ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... his lips to shout, "Then why not lead us out to die?" But he kept silence. He could have flung his kepi in the General's face; but he saluted. He went out again into the streets and among the lighted cafes and reeled like a drunken man, thinking confusedly of many things; that he had a mother in Paris who might hear of his desertion before she heard of its explanation; that it was right to claim obedience but lache to exact dishonour—but chiefly ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... persons that have not only counted all you now see, but thousands more, which are at present invisible to your eye." "How can that be?" inquired Tommy, "for there is neither beginning nor end; they are scattered so confusedly about the sky, that I should think it as impossible to number them, as the flakes of snow that fell to-day while ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... a period from one minute in length to five, his poor, pain-wrinkled forehead sank on his crutch, his eyes fell shut, and to outsiders he seemed asleep. But that which appeared sleep was internally to him only one stupendous succession of horrors which confusedly succeeded each other for apparent eternities of being, and ended with some nameless catastrophe of woe or wickedness, in a waking more fearful than the state volcanically ruptured by it. During the nights I sat by him these ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... at elevations of about 200 feet above the Thames, occur in the neighbourhood of London, as at Muswell Hill, near Highgate. In this drift, blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, Coal-measure sandstone with its fossils, and other Palaeozoic rocks, and the wreck of Chalk and Oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. The same glacial formation is also found capping some of the Essex hills farther to the east, and extending some way down their southern slopes towards the valley of the Thames. Although no fragments washed out of these older and upland ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... the road toward the summit she had so recently crossed, till the altitude forced her to stop with no breath in her body and a pounding redness before her eyes. She stamped her feet with vexation. She longed to cry. She remembered confusedly, but with a certain satisfaction, some of the things Thatcher had said to his team. An entire and sudden lenience toward the gentle art of swearing was born in her. She threw her columbine angrily away. She had come so far on her journey ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... he thought confusedly of the collapse of his expedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr. Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of his mind. Dr. Martineau ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... of this necessity, and something less than composed, Hilliard presently passed through the house into the large walled garden behind it. Here he was confusedly aware of a group of ladies, not one of whom, on drawing nearer, did he recognise. A succession of formalities discharged, he heard his friend's ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... changed her street dress for a tea-gown, and threw herself on a couch before the fire in the sitting-room. An overpowering fatigue weighed her down; the yellow firelight had become an anodyne to her nerves; and after a few minutes in which she thought confusedly of O'Hara and Cousin Jimmy, she let ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... is confusedly told in Bowring's life. The Panopticon Correspondence, in the eleventh volume, gives fragments from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George III.,' written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... contemplated the possibility of Bernard's descendants being—of their wiping out his disgrace,' she said at last confusedly. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... glad,' began Ethel, confusedly. Then rushing into her subject: 'Next week, I am to take Aubrey to the seaside; and we thought if Leonard would join us, the change might be good ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and over again "My God, my God!" and making a mighty effort not to hear, but lacking the courage to tear himself away from the dying man's embrace. And, in fact, he did not hear, nor would it have been easy to do so, for the words came so slowly, so brokenly, so confusedly. Still the parish priest did not appear, and Don Clemente did not return. Subdued voices and steps could be heard outside, and, sometimes a curious face peered in at the door, but no one entered. The dying man's words lost themselves in a confusion ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... confusedly, scarcely willing to commit himself again to the asthma. "I shall not mind the cold at all. I am accustomed to it. You must remember I come from the land of ice and snow. You have no idea what blizzards America is capable of getting up, and ought to hear how the wind can howl and the snow ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... his feet, confusedly inquires why he has been disturbed. Then Gaspar, coming close to them, so that he need not speak in a loud voice, gives an account of what he has discovered, with his own views relating ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... can then exert our attention on other objects. 5. Many catenations of motions go on together. 6. Some links of the catenations of motions may be left out without disuniting the chain. 7. Interrupted circles of motion continue confusedly till they come to the part of the circle, where they were disturbed. 8. Weaker catenations are dissevered by stronger. 9. Then new catenations take place. 10. Much effort prevents their reuniting. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... her that I entertained the idea of interesting the people in the establishment of a hospital for women. I hardly know what I told her, indeed; for I had no other plan of which to speak, and therefore talked confusedly, like an adventurer. I only know that I said that I would take the position of nurse, if I could enter one of the large hospitals, in order to learn the manner in which they were ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... start and stared confusedly about him. A ripple of low laughter came to his ears as he widened his pupils in the effort to accommodate his eyes to the murk. Then the moon broke out once more and the place became one of silver light and dark, soft shadow-blots. She ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... is more clearly understood from II:xvi.Coroll.ii. For imagination is an idea, which indicates rather the present disposition of the human body than the nature of the external body; not indeed distinctly, but confusedly; whence it comes to pass, that the mind is said to err. For instance, when we look at the sun, we conceive that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; in this judgment we err, so long as we are in ignorance of its ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Jerome admitted, confusedly. He loved his sister, and would have defended her against depreciation with his life, but he compared inwardly, with scorn, her sweet ways ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cheerful good day. At the sound of the words the Swiss spun on his heel, then gulped audibly and backed away, flinching almost as though a blow had been aimed at him. He muttered some meaningless something, confusedly: he stared at Mr. Stackpole with widened eyes like one who beholds an apparition in the broad of the day; he stepped on his own feet and got in his own way as he shrank to the outer edge of the narrow pavement. Mr. Stackpole was minded to fall into step ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... As all the old fortunes are diminishing in France, the majestic mansions of our ancestors are constantly being demolished and replaced by species of phalansteries, in which the peers of July occupy the third floor above some newly enriched empirics on the lower floors. A mixture of styles is confusedly employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility to give the tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never, on the other hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways of imitating the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more talent, ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions; "been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we did something." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... yet numbered more than twenty-four summers, he at one stride reached the topmost height of popularity. Everybody read his book. Everybody laughed over it. Everybody talked about it. Everybody felt, confusedly perhaps, but very surely, that a new and vital force ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Mrs. Temperley, while that lady was confusedly trying to disentangle hat and hair, hat-pin and head, without involving the entire system in a common ruin—"Valeria, we are not a remarkable people at Craddock Dene. We may be worthy, we may have ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... with the utmost resolution and drew off in good order. The strategic advantage, however, was wholly Confederate; for Pope, who thought Jackson must now be falling back to the Gap, at once began confusedly trying to concentrate for pursuit on the twenty-ninth—the very thing that suited ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... was to stab or shoot him; whether we were to go through the tedious processes of the duel; to undergo the fatigue of preliminaries, or to shorten them by sudden rencounter; these were topics which filled my thoughts confusedly; upon which I had no clear conviction; not because I did not attempt to fix upon a course, but from a sheer inability to think at all. My whole brain was on fire; a chaotic mass, such as rushes up from the unstopped vents of the volcano—fire, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... and elevate their hopes to the level of the great stake at issue, exhausted itself in balancing the routine details of cold and empty statistics. The curtain fell, and nothing remained but grotesque figures, withered garlands, broken panels and desolate dust, which mingled confusedly behind the scene, over the dark, deserted stage. The journals, of course, preserved, for a few days, very glittering reminiscences of the scene. With one accord, they pronounced it surpassing in interest and importance. Great results ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... with a lantern in the meadow, full of pale lights, dancing about, sometimes forming a wide circle, now dispersing in all directions, then mingling confusedly together." ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... trying in any way to disguise his feelings from consideration of the atmosphere surrounding him. Don Antolin listened to him in astonishment, fixing on him his cold glance. The others listened, feeling confusedly the marvel that such ideas should be enunciated in the cloister of a cathedral. Don Martin, the chaplain of the nuns, who stood behind his miserly protector, showed in his eyes the eager sympathy with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a friend of the family," he said confusedly. "People should not talk until they know. My ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... had afforded me many subjects for admiration and reflection. I smoked my cigar, and, at an early hour, retired to my bed, of which I had a choice, there being three in the room, although, at this time, exclusively appropriated to me. I soon was fast asleep, dreaming confusedly of Captain Smith, Pocahontas, Lord Cornwallis, Queen Elizabeth, Powhatan, Sir Walter Raleigh, and ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... bewildered—his heart and his eyes had wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sentinel drop the butt of his musket heavily against the earth, utter an exclamation and then run toward them. His shout had also been heard at the tavern, and the guests, bareheaded, began to pour out, and look about confusedly to see whence the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... being with Italy, and my business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked like playthings; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled together; or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling winds out in the winter-time; and broken bridges, which the impetuous torrents, suddenly released ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... surprise Nicholas Markovitch came in. He was in evening dress—rather quaint it seemed to me, with his pointed collar so high, his tail-coat so much too small, and his large-brimmed bowler hat. He explained to me confusedly that he wished to walk with me alone to the church... that he had things to tell me... that we should meet the others there. I saw at once two things, that he was very miserable, that he was a little drunk. His misery showed itself in his strange, pathetic, gleaming ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... morning Clarence was lounging over his breakfast, and glancing listlessly now at the pages of the newspapers, now at the various engagements for the week, which lay confusedly upon his table, when he received a note from Talbot, requesting to see him as soon ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... towards the hasp of the door. And as I did so—in all my career I cannot recall a nastier moment—as my hand went up, it encountered another. I felt the fingers closing on my wrist, and wrenched loose. For a moment our two hands wrestled confusedly; but while mine tugged at the latch the other found the key and twisted it round with a click. (I had oiled the lock three nights before.) With that I flung myself on him, but again my adversary ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... passed his hand confusedly over his face. These were his own words, the words he had used in speaking with Florida of the supposed skeptical priest. He grew very pale. "May I ask," he demanded in a hard, dry voice, "how she came ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... confusedly, crossed the room, and turned a picture that was upon the sofa. I had not noticed it before. I glanced up at the wall. The face was gone. The picture that be turned must have been that. He came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand With sword and fire, and ravages the land, In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, A thousand villages to ashes turn. To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat, And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. Their trembling lords the common shade partake, And cries of infants found in every brake. The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands, Loth to obey his leader's just commands. The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, To see his ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise and prayer. Turning to certain more indirect results of the ghost theory, we find that, distinguishing but confusedly between semblance and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing partakes of the properties of a thing. Hence the effigy of a dead man becomes a habitation for his ghost; and idols, because of the indwelling doubles of the dead, are propitiated. Identification of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... her hand). Ah, Eileen, sure it's a sight for sore eyes to see you again! (He bends down as if to kiss her, but, struck by a sudden fear, hesitates, straightens himself, and shamed by the understanding in Eileen's eyes, grows red and stammers confusedly.) How are you now? Sure it's the picture ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... Then, reassured, she leaned back once more. She had taken off her boots, and her feet, in black stockings gone a little white at the toes, were tilted up on the shoulder of the sofa. She fixed her eyes mechanically upon them while she began, all-confusedly, and with the blurred vagueness of the illiterate, to plan out a campaign. Not that she said that word to herself; she did not know its meaning. All that she knew was, that she wanted to put her back against the wall, or get into ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to Mollie's cheeks under the scrutiny of the sunken eyes, and, to her consternation, spread even higher and higher, until she was crimson to the roots of her hair. She tried in vain to answer with composure, but could only stammer confusedly— ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... one by one, reported them undefended: and the battalion, though perforce moving slowly, kept good order. Towards the summit, indeed, the front ranks appeared to straggle and extend themselves confusedly: but the disorder, no more than apparent, came from the skirmishers returning and falling back upon either flank as the column scrambled up the last five hundred yards and halted on the fringe of the clearing. Of the enemy John could see nothing: only a broad belt of sunlight ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... clutching at his heart-strings. What could she mean? he asked himself, confusedly. What did this foul mystery mean? He must know, or he would ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey |
