"Indistinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed, their desire is to conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at all to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, to say what they do not say. If a man has some real communication to make, which will he choose—an indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that things which are said by a highly educated man are often easier to understand and much clearer; and that the less educated a man is, the more obscurely ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... criticisms which apply to this last experiment apply to that with the dumb-bell and have already been answered. There is one however which, while applying to that other, more particularly applies here. It would be, that these after-images are too brief and indistinct to be carefully observed, so that judgments as to their shape, size, and color are not valid evidence. This is a perfectly sensible criticism, and a person thoroughly convinced of its force should repeat the experiments and decide for himself ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... of this name fell on Olive's wandering thoughts like balm, turning her mind from the horror she had passed through. Besides, from her state of exhaustion, everything was growing dim and indistinct to her mind. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... coach or of a gun-carriage (as in the pictures by Wouwerman) are represented by artists, not with the twelve or fourteen spokes which we know to be there—and would be photographed as separate things in an exposure of the fortieth of a second—but as a blurred haze of some fifty or more indistinct "spokes." In this case it undoubtedly results that the observer of the picture is satisfied and receives the mental impression or illusion of a rapid rotation of the wheel. I have tried the experiment ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been opened, that you could not have said what it was. There were three or four cabinets—one of them old Japanese; and on a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... present experience. It is the yearning for full redemption. It is the last which is answered. But there lies in it a not indistinct prophecy of that great and blessed time when we shall be like Him, and delivered from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... introduced; and they being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... and eternal seem, to the carnal man, distant and indistinct, while what is seen and temporal is vivid and real. Practically, any object in nature that can be seen or felt is thus more real and actual to most men than the Living God. Every man who walks with God, and finds Him a present Help in every time of ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the lake, however, there was an opening in the forest of considerable extent; and one that had been so thoroughly made as to leave few or no trees. From this point we were distant several miles, and that distance necessarily rendered objects indistinct; though we had little difficulty in perceiving the ruins of extensive fortifications. A thousand white specks, we now ascertained to be tents, for the works were all that remained of Fort William Henry, and there lay ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of the surrounding hills. It densified to a ruddy fog as it caught the glow of the evening sun, and finally settled upon the valley. And with each passing moment the hills seemed to recede, their outlines to grow more indistinct and ghostly. And gradually the whole prospect took on the depressing aspect of a day ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... The indistinct memory of his loves, wars, and adventures is growing rapidly fainter, until even the story-teller himself is confused as to the relation between event and locality. It has therefore seemed wise to link indissolubly scene and incident, ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... something like nothing they had ever beheld. Far in the distance was a line of moving objects, gliding through the waves in stately fashion, approaching one behind the other at equal distances. Just what was approaching the two scouts could not at first determine, so indistinct in outline were the moving bulks. But presently, as the oncoming objects drew nearer, the watchers saw that they were great ships. But they looked unlike any ships they had ever seen or heard of. They seemed to be of no color and of every color. They ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... those deep, burning eyes, though the face had changed. The thin red lips still remained its one touch of colour; but the unhealthy whiteness of the skin had given place to a delicate pallor; and the features that had been indistinct had shaped themselves in fine, firm lines. It was a beautiful, arresting face, marred only by the sullen callousness of ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... confuse. At first, memory seemed all a blank beyond the period of his schoolboy days; but gradually one image after another rose out of the void, and one called up another as they came. Still they were clouded and indistinct, like the vague phantoms of a dream. It was with great difficulty that he recollected any names, and could not at all tell in what land it was, that some of the brightest of his memories lay. It was all unconnected, too, with the present, and from it Wilton could derive no clue in regard to the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... but the fire-light in the room, and it threw about great shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot behind father's, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature is frightened in the dark at what you don't see, and so, though my soul was unconscious, my body felt that there was danger ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... air, and drowsy, dark clouds followed the moonlike heavy wisps of black cotton-wool, drowning the light from time to time and then clearing off again; and all over the grass, glimmering groups of men in white clothes and women in trailing skirts filled the air with an indistinct murmur of sound. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... melted by thunderbolts, among other images one of Jupiter, set upon a pillar, and a likeness of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, mounted on a pedestal, fell down; also the letters of the tablets on which the laws were inscribed ran together and became indistinct. Accordingly, on the advice of the soothsayers, they offered many expiatory sacrifices and voted that a larger statue of Jupiter should be set up, looking toward the east and the Forum, in order that the conspiracies by which they were ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... still Her own inviolable laws, and droop With silent shades over one half the globe; And slowly moving on her dewy feet, She blends the varied colors infinite, And with the border of her mighty garments Blots everything; the sister she of Death Leaves but one aspect indistinct, one guise To fields and trees, to flowers, to birds and beasts, And to the great and to the lowly born, Confounding with the painted cheek of beauty The haggard face of want, and gold with tatters. Nor me will the blind air permit to see Which carriages ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... island they could perceive that everything known as festal pleasure was rife in Alexandria, and bore along in its mad revelry the court and the citizens. When the wind blew from the south, it brought single notes of inspiring music or indistinct sounds of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wood lice, ants, of which it is very fond, and of other insects which it finds upon the ground or upon trees. The female differs from the male in appearance, the black strips upon the sides of the throat being very indistinct or ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... case of many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as 'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen's Russia and Scandinavia, p. 8. Slovo is closely connected with ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of the group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The pines and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black amid the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to accentuate their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, As ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxon liberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not think that their own servitude was the just fruit of their victory. They had, however, but an indistinct view of the object at which they aimed; they rather felt their wrongs than understood the cause of them; and having no head nor council, they were more in a condition of distressing their king and disgracing their country by their disobedience than of applying any effectual remedy to their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 4-6 meters high, with drooping limbs; leaves long, very narrow, abruptly pinnate; many caducous leaflets, linear, elliptical. Flowers large, white, fragrant, in axillary racemes. Calyx bell-shaped with two indistinct lips. Corolla papilionaceous, white. Standard oval, a slight notch at the apex. Wings almost as large as the keel which is strongly arched. Stamens 10, diadelphous. Anthers uniform. Style and stamens equally long. Stigma a small head. Pod 1-2 long, linear, 4-sided, containing ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... indistinct on the top of the eminence was now visible. It was something like a great arm thrust straight out of the ground; at the upper extremity of the arm a sort of forefinger, supported from beneath, by the thumb, pointed ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Rossetti we owe the reconstruction of this fragmentary drama out of materials partly published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, partly recovered from manuscript by himself. The bracketed words are, presumably, supplied by Mr. Rossetti to fill actual lacunae in the manuscript; those queried represent indistinct writing. Mr. Rossetti's additions to the text are indicated in the footnotes. In one or two instances Mr. Forman and Dr. Garnett have restored the true reading. The list of Dramatis Personae ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O' God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation. His brain was filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures. Very far away, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that had happened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau. Even the memory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette's cabin and at Fort O' God. The pictures ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... it is described as one of three great enemies of our souls, and in the ordinary writings and conversation of Christians, I need hardly say, mention is made of it continually. Yet most of us, it would appear, have very indistinct notions what the world means. We know that the world is a something dangerous to our spiritual interests, and that it is in some way connected with human society—with men as a mixed multitude, contrasted with men one by one, in private and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... was gathering over us and the junks,—two were indistinct, though they were close aboard of us. Then, as the Teaser glided astern, I saw that the third was smoking, while crash, crash, the others struck our sides, and their crews grappled, hurled their stinkpots on board, and began ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for a human face. It may be caused be some odd arrangement of the leaves. Besides, it is very indistinct." ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... their being in great difficulties at home, the moment she perceived that there was no one present? Yet, whenever I went on to ask her a few questions about their usual way of living, her very eyes grew red, while she made some indistinct reply; but as for speaking out, she wouldn't. But when I consider the circumstances in which she is placed, for she has certainly had the misfortune of being left, from her very infancy, without father and mother, the very sight of her is too much for me, and my heart ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... her in his arms until he frightened himself for fear he had hurt her, and murmured an ecstasy of indistinct love words to her. Presently her feet touched the ground and ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... were gratified by an indistinct sight of some body of water, gleaming dimly through the trees from some point in front; and the walk of a few hundred yards more brought them out, as it luckily happened, directly to the camp of which they were in search. It was, however, tenantless; their companions had already departed; ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... abashed when she is looked at by him; under some pretext or other she shows her limbs to him; she looks secretly at him though he has gone away from her side; hangs down her head when she is asked some question by him, and answers in indistinct words and unfinished sentences, delights to be in his company for a long time, speaks to her attendants in a peculiar tone with the hope of attracting his attention towards her when she is at a ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... and feathered arrows; from the top of the chapel steeple a great cross of stone, seeming to stretch out its arms; here and there the whitish zinc, cutting the dark blue of the slates; in spots an indistinct glittering and flashes of pale light enveloped in opaque shadows, and then the tops of three or four large trees which extended beyond the eaves, as if prying into the secrets of the attic. By the glittering light of the stars, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... summit of the hill and remained seated, contemplating the river that washed the precipice under his feet, long after dusk had hid distant objects from his view. His thoughts were, perhaps, far distant from the surrounding scenery, when he was roused by an indistinct noise behind him, and on looking round, perceived that nine white wolves had ranged themselves in form of a crescent, and were advancing, apparently with the intention of driving him into the river. On his rising up they halted, and when he advanced they made ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... all Welsh singers, the critic condemns his habit of resorting to an emotional tremolo which frequently degenerates into a mere "wobble." The PREMIER, he continues, shows agility and spirit in florid passages, but his declamation lacks dignity and his articulation is often indistinct. As a pianist he is equally unsatisfactory; his repertory is extremely limited and he is quite unable to interpret the complex harmonies of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... possesses some advantages which must not be overlooked. It speaks directly to the eye, and is more full of meaning than the Phonetic method, though the meaning is necessarily more vague and indistinct, in some respects, while it is less so in others. For example, in an advertising newspaper, the simple figure of a house, or of a ship, or of a locomotive engine, at the head of an advertisement, is a sort of hieroglyphic, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and fall of voices, although punctuated by oaths, and indistinct in expression, seemed generally to signify assent. The faces of the men, as they pushed and crowded about us, remained angry and resentful. Clearly enough prompt action alone would carry ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the Mountain. "Yes," replied a voice, "but laws may be revoked; you cannot restore the life of a man." Malesherbes wished to speak, but could not. Sobs prevented his utterance; he could only articulate a few indistinct words of entreaty. His grief moved the assembly. The request for a reprieve was received by the Girondists as a last resource; but this also failed them, and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... vapor streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, halfway up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... He must either have called out his adversary, or have gone out himself. He preferred the latter, and took to the road; and in his new line he was eminently successful. Fortunately, he had no scruples to get over. Tom had what Sir Walter Scott happily denominates "an indistinct notion of meum and tuum," and became confirmed in the opinion that everything he could lay hands upon constituted lawful spoil. And then, even those he robbed, admitted that he was the most gentlemanlike highwayman ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... them may be a rare and a difficult attainment."(86) And he explains that the inconceivableness which, according to his theory, is the test of axioms, "depends entirely upon the clearness of the Ideas which the axioms involve. So long as those ideas are vague and indistinct, the contrary of an axiom may be assented to, though it can not be distinctly conceived. It may be assented to, not because it is possible, but because we do not see clearly what is possible. To a person who is only beginning to think geometrically, there may appear nothing absurd ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... it is a memory, it is so indistinct that it seems like a dream; and yet, how often at this hour does a vision come to my mind of a dark-eyed, soft-voiced woman, holding kneeling child against her bosom, to whom she taught a whispered prayer to the madonna! And the child seems me—and the lady, my mother; ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... am not for one moment denying that achievement is harder to enjoy than the hope of achievement. Undoubtedly the former lacks the glamour of the indistinct, "that sweet bloom of all that is far away." But our celebrated writer-friends overlook the fact that glamour and "sweet bloom" are so much pepsin to help weak stomachs digest strong joy. If you would have the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Molly, firmly. "I have always had indistinct recollections of a very different home from that wretched cellar in the Five Points, and of other parents than you and Mrs. Magee. I believe you stole me when I ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... over me, which was perhaps natural on starting suddenly from one's sleep in that wild lone place; I half imagined that someone was nigh the tent; the idea made me rather uncomfortable, and, to dissipate it, I lifted up the canvas of the door and peeped out, and, lo! I had an indistinct view of a tall figure standing by the tent. 'Who is that?' said I, whilst I felt my blood rush to my heart. 'It is I,' said the voice of Isopel Berners; 'you little expected me, I dare say; well, sleep on, I do not wish to disturb you.' 'But I was expecting you,' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... waiting for him to speak. He tried, with his eyes on her, to say something, but found no words. He knew it was awkward, it was offensive, to stand gazing at her; but he couldn't say what was suitable and mightn't say what he wished. Her face was indistinct in the dim light, but he felt her eyes fixed on him and wondered what they expressed. Did they warn him, did they plead, or did they confess to a sense of provocation? For an instant his head swam; he was sure it would ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... the whole extent of the crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols, before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words, "Arise and conquer," as one who hears and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... can rouse ourselves, and the eye has not yet lost all its power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... instinct turned together into a narrow trail, scarce wide enough for two, that diverged from the straight practical path before them. It was indeed a roundabout way home, so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on it seemed even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrono and willow; at one time stopping blindly before a fallen tree in the hollow, where they had quite lost it, and had to sit down to recall it; a rough way, often requiring the mutual help of each other's hands and eyes to tread together ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... necessary. When the sporidia are very delicate and hyaline, the septa cannot readily be seen if present; to aid in the examination, a drop of tincture of iodine will be of considerable advantage. In many cases sporidia, which are very indistinct in glycerine, are much more distinct ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... waves; but when they saw her reappear from each overwhelming billow, their hearts rose with a rebound, and loud prolonged huzzas cheered the lifeboat on her course. They became silent again, however, when distance and the intervening haze of spray and rain rendered her motions indistinct, and their feelings of anxiety became more and more intense as they saw her draw nearer and nearer to ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... must have got my common-sense, and the capacity of keeping the money which I make; also a certain natural coldness of disposition, which those who only know me as a public character do not dream of. All my earliest memories are very vague and indistinct. I remember tramping over France and Italy with a man and woman—they were Italian, I believe—who beat me, and a fiddle, which I loved passionately, and which I cannot remember having ever been without. They are very shadowy presences ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... talk. These two men—father and son—were friends and intimates, and had been so from Westholt's first memory of the time when his childish individuality began to detach itself from the background of misty and indistinct things. They had liked each other, and their liking and intimacy had increased with the onward moving and change of years. After sixty sane and decently spent active years of life, Lord Dunholm, in either country tweed or evening dress, was a well-built and handsome ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... slow, paralyzing horror. The Mormon's changing face grew huge and indistinct and awful in his sight. He was clutched and shaken in Joe's rude hands, yet scarcely felt them. Joe seemed to be bellowing at him, but the voice was far off. Then Shefford began to see, to hear through some cold and terrible deadness that had ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... had gone, Isbel and his men sat their horses and looked about them and spoke low. Their advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to the imminence of the impending battle. Inside Meeker's house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and the bustle incident to a ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... appearance, as the figures just presented indicate, the force, definition and persistency of the rhythmical impression do not continue uniform. At the lowest rates at which rhythm appears the integration of the successive groups is weak and their segregation indistinct. As the rate increases the definition of the rhythmic form grows more precise, group is separated from group by greater apparent intervals, and the accentuation of the groups becomes more pronounced. In subjective rhythmization of an undifferentiated series, likewise, the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... indistinct roar, a confusion of sounds, aroused the half-conscious sleeper. Brock sprang ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... growing shorter and shorter, was wound up while the shadows of the out-houses became deeper and the meadow lands appeared to recede in the distance. As he scanned the surrounding garden, the land baron's eye fell upon an indistinct figure stealing slowly across the sward in the partial darkness. This object was immediately followed by another and yet another. To the observer's surprise they wore ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... got herself out of the room as soon as she found an opening which allowed her to go. In making her farewell speech, she muttered some indistinct apology for the visit which she had been bold enough to make. "Not at all," said Lady Ongar. "You have been quite right; you are fighting your battle for the friend you love bravely; and were it not that the cause of the battle ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I have an indistinct remembrance of a dark night, and of being led over ground seamed with deep furrows, and made hideous with dead bodies. I had a fancy, too, that the sky was lit up with star shells, and that there was a continuous ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... fire began to tell, the accuracy and rapidity of that of the enemy depreciating considerably. At 4.18 p.m. the third enemy ship was seen to be on fire. The visibility to the north-eastward had become considerably reduced, and the outline of the ships very indistinct. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... it were.—But how, we ask, are we to conceive the distinctness or indistinctness of that whose nature is pure light? When an object of light which has parts and distinguishing attributes appears in its totality, we say that it appears distinctly; while we say that its appearance is indistinct when some of its attributes do not appear. Now in those aspects of the thing which do not appear, light (illumination) is absent altogether, and hence we cannot there speak of indistinctness of light; in ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... we were both in a cab, and rattling through the silent streets on our way to Charing Cross Station. The first faint winter's dawn was beginning to appear, and we could dimly see the occasional figure of an early workman as he passed us, blurred and indistinct in the opalescent London reek. Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for the air was most bitter, and neither of us had broken ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed. The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language. They at once started ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... was a fairly good hunter, and if she would but have left her alone would have carried the girl safely over such obstacles as they had to encounter. But Jim noticed with dismay that Sylla had some indistinct idea of assisting her at her fences, the result of which could only be inevitable grief. The exhilaration of the trio in front, as attested by the wild shout sent back by Lionel Beauchamp as they ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... reply that was indistinct, but which to the startled Figgins, sounded like the rumbling ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... to see the moonlight fading into dawn, over the canal, and the gentle, indistinct landscape, and I wished that Mr. van Buren could have been with us, as I am sure it was the kind of thing which would have appealed to his heart—especially if Freule Menela were not with him, to ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... trodden roads suffice Only those who will return again Seeking shelter in their homes from Paradise. Oh! let us find some solitary, green Forgotten garden, where the sunrays fall All blind and blurred and indistinct between Cypresses lofty as earth's boundary wall; Beneath whose shade shall glimmer forth half seen Your face through the soft ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... force. We doubt the man who doubts himself. On the other hand, if, in conversation, the ordinary look of awakened interest be prolonged, and the eyes are kept fixed for a longer period than usual, an embarrassed and somewhat painful feeling is the result; an indistinct impulse makes it difficult to avert the eye, and at the same time a consciousness of that impulse is an inducement to avert it. We lay no undue stress upon these phenomena; but they are phenomena, and fair subjects for scientific investigation. An explanation of mesmerism ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... moment, and it was time they should hasten back to the rocks, which were even now indistinct in the grey haze. Mr Bradshaw held a hand of each of his daughters, and Ruth walked alongside, the two strange gentlemen being on the outskirts ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... papa," she answered, in hasty apology for being found there. And Lord Hartledon, casting his eyes some considerable distance ahead, discerned the indistinct forms of two persons talking together. He understood the situation at once. Dr. Ashton and his daughter had been to the cottages; and the doctor had halted on their return to speak to a day-labourer going home from his ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... imagination is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the "Negro pew" in the "organ loft." If he secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the cause of the Negro were mentioned in the prayer or sermon, it was in the indistinct whisper of the moral coward who occupied the sacred desk. And when the fight was on at fever heat, when it was popular to plead the cause of the slave and demand the rights of the free Negro, the Church was the last ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Everett was so taken aback by the sight of her and the hissing, cross-eyed cat perched on her shoulder that he could not speak. A newly born superstition rose in his heart that the woman was a wraith. Yet an indistinct memory made her black eyes familiar. He did not move from the window, and Screech Owl ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... reading, sliding it down as you proceed, you will find that you can read almost as rapidly, and with much less injury to your eyes. A newspaper is the worst reading you can have, as the print is usually indistinct, and it is impossible to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things were dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these two men had seen her, while to me she was only being "presented," elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... was the gladness of a person who has known sorrow. Suddenly she started up, and said: "No, then! I do not dream. He is come back—he is here—all will be well again! Ha! it is his voice. Oh, bless him, it is his voice!" She paused, her finger on her lip, her face bent down. A low and indistinct sound of voices reached her straining ear through the thin door that divided her from Maltravers. She listened intently, but she could not overhear the import. Her heart beat violently. "He is not alone!" she murmured, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings and thumpings in the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... reader of taste, feeling, and judgment, does he, by a few artless words, render most impressive and sublime, what more elaborate description could only have made confused and unsatisfactory. Nothing can be more admirable than this brief and indistinct report of the perspective glass, it cannot offend the most fastidious taste, yet leaves scope for the exercise of the most ardent and aspiring imagination-(Bernard Barton). [234] Such mountains round about this house do stand. As one from thence may see the Holy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the outer hall, and she heard no more, except the indistinct murmur of a sudden brief dialogue between the visitor and the two girls, who must have come in from the garden. Then the front door banged heavily. He was gone. The vast and arid tedium of her life closed in upon her again; ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... one or of both of the united Coats, as I have just shown, being commonly rendered indistinct and uncertain by Dimidiation, that form of marshalling was generally superseded by IMPALEMENT in the course of the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This process, at once simple and effectual, marshals the whole of the husband's arms on the dexter half of a Shield divided per pale, as ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... more of late years I keep asking those questions at death-beds. I seem to myself constantly as if trying to hold back the curtain and look through. But the look through is all blurred and indistinct. ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... Sandy. The march had been distressful, bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds of powdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun. All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulating in the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinct seas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showed in black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart, coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire for just then. At the edge of the clay bluff, they dipped and poured down a corrugated ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the lake were almost lost in the vapors, only spots of forest green appearing now and then, a veil of silver being over the eastern waters. The island on which St. Luc lay encamped was growing indistinct, and the fires there shone through a ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... exists in the plate, the focal plane is disturbed, and the eyepiece must be moved out. If the plate is concave, it must be moved in to obtain a sharp image. Irregular errors in the plate or surface will produce a blurred or indistinct image, and, as in the first instance, no amount of focusing will help matters. These methods are both good, but are not satisfactory in the highest degree, and two or three important factors bar the way to the very best results. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... time the firelight had disappeared, and only the stars afforded a relief to the darkness, the wall of forest on either hand grew vague and indistinct. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... in the depths of the valley and its curved and sloping banks made a framework of foliage and flowers about its silver waves. It lay there clear and tranquil, and one could see the swaying of the indistinct green of its banks. ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... surface assumed a new and singular appearance. It no longer simply reflected the objects placed before it, but, as if it had self-contained scenery of its own, objects began to appear within it, at first in a disorderly, indistinct, and miscellaneous manner, like form arranging itself out of chaos; at length, in distinct and defined shape and symmetry. It was thus that, after some shifting of light and darkness over the face of the wonderful glass, a long perspective of arches and columns began to arrange itself ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... still maintained its ground, perhaps from not having the means of escaping, I saw a small gun glitter for a moment, then there was a sharp report, and a bullet had nearly sent Quesada to his long account, passing so near to the countenance of the general as to graze his hat. I had an indistinct view for a moment of a well- known foraging cap just about the spot from whence the gun had been discharged, then there was a rush of the crowd, and the shooter, whoever he was, escaped discovery amidst the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... said impotently—"Hannah—" His vision blurred so that he couldn't see her clearly; it was as if, indistinct before him, she were already fading from his life. "I never went to hurt you," he continued in a curious detachment from his suffering. "You ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... upturned and the depression deeper, so that eventually it is more or less broadly funnel-form. The color varies from white to flesh color, tinged with yellow sometimes in spots, and marked usually with faint zones of brighter yellow. The zones are sometimes very indistinct or entirely wanting. The gills are crowded, white then yellow, where bruised becoming yellowish, then dull reddish. The stem is equal or tapering below, hollow or stuffed, paler than the pileus, smooth (sometimes pitted as shown in the ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... a few moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Africa, laden with the children of her fruitful soil torn cruelly from their homes, struck on a coral-reef. A heavy sea dashed over the devoted vessel. Land was in sight, but yet far-off, blue and indistinct. The white crew had many boats. They launched them and pulled away with heartless indifference, leaving three hundred human beings, men, women, and helpless children, to almost certain destruction. Night came on. Oh, what a night of horrors! Many died, some from terror; many were ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... interminable ride in a closed vehicle of some sort, a dizzy panorama of moving buildings, bleak, wind-swept trees, frosty meadows, and land-locked lakes backed by what were either distant mountain ranges or apartment houses. This last, however, was all very blurred and indistinct. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of the town perfect in the water,—towers of churches, houses, with here and there a light gleaming near the shore above, and more faintly glimmering under water,—all perfect, but somewhat more hazy and indistinct than the reality. There were many clouds flitting about the sky; and the picture of each could be traced in the water,—the ghost of what was itself unsubstantial. The rattling of wheels heard long and far ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria! Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... himself, but stopped on the front platform and looked back as the train jolted across a rattling bridge. A wide, yellow river ran beneath it, and the tall factories and rows of dingy houses were fading in the rain and smoke on the other side. Dick watched them until they grew indistinct, and then his heart felt lighter. He had endured much in the grimy town; but all that was over. After confronting, with instinctive shrinking, industry's grimmest aspect, he was traveling toward the light and glamour ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... object that was quickly growing more and more indistinct in the dim moonlight, gazing with a strange heaviness in the region of his heart. He had to shut his teeth firmly together to conquer the momentary weakness that threatened to overpower him. But his resolution remained master ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... there was a heavy lurch as the fore-wheels struck the points; then Robertson laughed exultantly and wiped his greasy face. In front lay only the open prairie and flying snow, while the black shape of the freight-train grew indistinct behind. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim to the character of a ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... more stood towards her, so as to rake her as we passed under her stern. For a minute there was an entire cessation of firing; none of her guns could be brought to bear on us, and the pirates were reserving their fire to pour it into her with more deadly effect. Dim and indistinct, we could just make out her hull and shattered rigging amid the gloom; and the pirates, believing that she would quickly be in their power, were calculating on the rich booty which would soon be theirs, when bright flames darted ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters, serving as the back of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... side the bay window, giving it the appearance of a tent, open, and yet, to a certain degree, secluded, for a fall of lace swept from the cornice, hanging like a veil of woven frost-work before the glass, rendering every thing beyond indistinct, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... estimation were ranked perhaps above their real value—his tastes, which coincided so well with her own, his quiet yet manly bearing, his useful pursuits, his gait, appearance, and demeanour. All these were of a nature to win the heart of such a girl as Clara Desmond; and then, probably, in some indistinct way, she remembered the broad acres to which he was the heir, and comforted herself by reflecting that this at least was a match which none would think disgraceful for a daughter even ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... disturbed. Through it she listened to a vague undertone of sorrow; and she became aware that some one was suffering as she had suffered, some one whom she had loved—some one whom she would always love. Out of the darkness a voice was calling her to come back. Indistinct and far away at first, it became clear, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from which I could not rouse myself. I had vague perceptions of space traversed, of the rolling of a carriage, of a horrible dream in which my strength had become exhausted; but all this was so dark and so indistinct in my mind that these events seemed to belong to another life than mine, and yet mixed with mine in ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on a mighty wave he saw the boats together astern of the vessel, but not coming his way; and the gloom was thickening, the ship becoming indistinct, and all ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... you to offer," he said, speaking in a slow but indistinct tone, "that she is guilty of this, and that it isn't a plot you have ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... a vague and indistinct remembrance of hurried and anxious faces around my bed, of whispered words and sorrowful looks; but my own thoughts careered over the bold hills of the far west as I trod them in my boyhood, free and high of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... could see and copy them, if they wished. It was intended to have a few of the more important letters photographed for the James Lemen history; though it was said that some years before some one had a few of them photographed and they were so indistinct as to be worthless; but we hoped for better results. But it {p.57} finally developed that the reputed agent would expect us to pay him (contrary to our first impressions) quite a round sum of money for the restoration and use of the papers before he ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... many years there came a spring when the colors of the flowers seemed paler to the hermit than they used to be; and as summer drew on their shapes became indistinct, and he mistook one plant for another; and when autumn came, he told them by their various scents, and by their form, rather than by sight; and when the flowers were gone, and winter had come, the hermit was ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Steaming through the Golden Gate we were soon on the open Pacific commencing a voyage of nearly four thousand miles. We felt the motion of the waves and became fully aware that we were at sea. The shore grew indistinct and then disappeared; the last visible objects being the lights at the entrance of the bay. Gradually their rays grew dim, and when daylight came, there were only ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... a formula. If they are, then it is necessary to determine whether the radar targets were real or caused by the weather. This is the difficult job. In most cases the only answer is the appearance of the target on the radar-scope. Many times a weather target will be a fuzzy and indistinct spot on the scope while a real target, an airplane for example, will be bright and sharp. This question of whether a target looked real is the cause of the majority of the arguments about radar-detected UFO's because it is up to the judgment of the radar operator as to ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... she had called re-crossed the courtyard with eager steps. There was something strange in his gait and carriage, but the strong sunlight behind him made his image indistinct, and besides, Phoebe was accustomed to eccentricities on the part of this ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... bliss. He declared the cherubim to be dismissed and the flaming sword to be sheathed, which had been appointed at the fall, to keep from man "the way of the tree of life." Faint, before this period, had been the hope, indistinct the prospect, which even good men enjoyed of the heavenly kingdom. Life and immortality were now brought to light. From the hill of Calvary the first clear and certain view was given to the world of the everlasting mansions. Since that hour they have been the perpetual consolation ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... I do not regret the experience. The night humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of "Time!" rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a stifled ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... from the shadow of the distillery, an indistinct form stole behind them, and keeping just within sight, followed the two men as they wended their lonely way to ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... the boy neither saw nor heard the strife of the elements. He heard only the exquisite melody that came floating out to him from the warm, luxurious mansion, and which grew sweeter and richer every moment. The cold, hard street became more and more indistinct to him, and he sat very still with his hands clasped, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... fire with his pistols ready at hand in case any wild beasts should come near. The next morning he started in what he believed to be the right direction, keeping near the edge of the inundation. His memory of what happened afterwards was vague and indistinct. He remembered that for several days he kept on, sometimes plucking fruit as he went, and occasionally firing a gun three times. Rapidly his strength failed as he went on, he often stumbled and fell from exhaustion and hunger, and the power of ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... In the evening, indistinct sounds of a far off battle could be heard as the struggle moved on to another quarter. Nearer, we heard the trailing of heavy artillery down the mountain and against our will the thought formulated itself, "Will that wave of terror roll back to us?" Our ears ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... The monotonous forest of trees became indistinct; for half an hour the rain fell in sheets—ghostly white in the dusk. It became difficult now to evade the roots and holes. It grew colder, yet there was no breeze. Still the gaunt figure of the trapper ahead of them led on without pity. They followed him blindly—now ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... listened to him in a dreamy way, and, when he drew out the letter, it was only with a strong effort that I was able to conjecture what it might be. So much had passed since I had seen him, that our last conversation had become very dim and indistinct in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... became blurred and indistinct, prismatic colours began to come and go upon the curtain of vapour, and suddenly out flashed the image of a wide-stretching sun-lit plain, upon which were drawn up on parade, in illimitable perspective, a countless host of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and Ned stood anxiously watching the light of the lanthorn, which was made to run along the rope and the ground till it played only upon the two kegs, which looked dull and indistinct by the shadowy ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the figures to the prepared paper, on quite the same principle on which in vision the crystalline lens conveys them to the retina. In the centre of the field in both cases there is much distinctness, while all around its circumference the images are indistinct and dim. We have but to fix the eye on some object directly in front of us, and then attempt, without removing it, to ascertain the forms of objects at some distance on both sides, in order to convince ourselves that the field of distinct vision is a very limited ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... therefore, enough for us that we exercise our thoughts upon Christ in an indistinct and general way, but we must learn to know him in all his offices, and to know the nature of his offices also; our condition requires this, it requireth it, I say, as we are guilty of sin, as we have to do with God, and with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... placentae or anything indicating an abortive fruit. On closer examination the cuticle was found to consist of thick-walled cells, exactly like those of the tomato, while the spongy mass consisted of a similar tissue to the fleshy portion of the fruit, but with far less wrinkled walls, and more indistinct intercellular spaces. The most striking point, however, was the immense quantity of very irregular and unequal starch-grains with which they were gorged, which gave a peculiar sparkling appearance to them when seen en masse. I am inclined to regard the body rather as ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... partly derived from the necessity of punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no avenging power of this world could reach. The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent. (Republic.) To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books' (Republic), passing under the names of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions of ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... houses in the rear; the dome of the Louvre in front, the long gallery of wood at the right, and the waste plot of ground that ran unevenly as far as the sheds of the stall-keepers were, so to speak, steeped in the grey hues of the atmosphere, where indistinct murmurs seemed to mingle with the fog; while, at the opposite side of the square, a stiff light, falling through the parting of the clouds on the facade of the Tuileries, cut out all its windows into white patches. Near the Arc de Triomphe a dead horse lay on the ground. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight." ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested with a sort of sentimental interest. Perhaps her counsel had calculated on this. Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested herself ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... intermeddle in your affairs. They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good. Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about Popery. Poor souls, they are to be pitied, who think of nothing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of June the common began to attract me more and more. It was so extensive that, standing on its border, just beyond the last straggling cottages and orchards, the further side was seen only as a line of blue trees, indistinct in the distance. As I grew to know it better, adding each day to my list from its varied bird life, the woods and waterside were visited less and less frequently, and after the bird-scaring noises began in the village, its wildness ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this amber tint, sublimated and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... morning song. Out from the camp the bugles were calling the soldiers for the march; the baggage trains were rumbling over the bridge. But still below on the marge lingered the solitary figure; now walking, now motionless, now silent, now speaking in indistinct monologue. Drusus overheard only an occasional word, "Pompeius, poor tool of knaves! I pity him! I must show mercy to Cato if I can! Sulla is not to be imitated! The Republic is fallen; what I put in its place must not fall." Then, after a long pause, "So this was to be my end in life—to destroy ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Among the indistinct, but most pleasing recollections of the home of her early childhood, was one of a boy with curly black hair and smiling face, who brought her beautiful flowers, and made for her rabbits out of his handkerchief, and pretty little boats out of nut-shells. She remembered eagerly leaning over the ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins |
