"Define" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we do not attempt to define the female figure below the waist, at least; but although we may safely veil or even conceal Nature, we cannot misrepresent or outrage her, except at the cost of utter loss of beauty. The lines of drapery, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... this lovely morning, I did not, I acknowledge it, regret the absence of my excellent though boisterous companions; for there was something which I cannot define in the deep stillness, in the sweet harmonious quiet of the whole scene before me, that disposed my spirit to meditation far more than to mirth; the very smoke which rose from the low chimneys of the Teachmans' colony—not ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... most important reason why "there is no room in the inn" for truth of the higher realm, is the prevailing materialism. Our western civilization prides itself upon its practicality; but externality would better define it. We forget that immaterial forces rule not only the invisible but the visible universe. Things to look real to us must be cognizant to the physical senses. Matter, whether in the vegetable, animal, or human organism, is moulded, shaped, and its quality ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... rulers of the Indo-European world. I use this term "tribe" in no formal sense, not in the sense of its Roman derivation and use, which shows it quite as a secondary institution, but as the most convenient term to define that grouping of men with wives, families, and descendants, and all the essentials of independent life, which is found as a primal unit of European society in a state of unsettlement as regards land or country. The tie which bound all together was personal not ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... carry the thing off in a manner adequate? He lacked confidence. He desired the moment of her arrival, and yet he feared it. His heart and his brain were all confused together in a turmoil of emotion which he could not analyse nor define. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... respective countries," and proceeds in its thirty articles to lay out a careful and comprehensive system for the commercial relations of our people with China. The main substance of all the provisions of this treaty is to define and secure the rights of our people in respect of access to, residence and protection in, and trade with China. The actual provisions in our favor in these respects were framed to be, and have been ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... of a scientific treatment of the anaemic condition is carefully to define its extent. For this purpose the symptoms above mentioned are little suited, however great, in their proper place, their practical ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... it, but certainly neither German nor English,) from the perusal of which they carry away nothing but some very obscure terms, on which they themselves have superinduced a very vague meaning. These terms you in vain implore them to define; or, if they define them, they define them in terms which as much need definition. Heartily do we wish that Socrates would reappear amongst us, to exercise his accoucheur's art on these hapless Theaetetuses and Menos of our day! Many such youths might no doubt reply at first to ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... to define the expression of rapidly changing emotions which passed over the sick man's face, which made his breast heave, and his great heart quiver and tremble painfully. Displeasure and pity, sympathy and contempt, anger and grief, all were expressed in the short, sharp, bitter laugh, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Muslims could be held, it would appear that the former regarded image-worship (not idolatry) [Footnote: Idols and images are not the same thing; the image is, or should be, symbolic. So, at least, I venture to define it.] simply as a provisional concession to the ignorant masses, who will not perhaps always remain so ignorant. So, then, Image-worship and its attendant Mythology have naturally become intertwined with high and holy associations. Thus that delicate poetess Mrs. Naidu ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... in very truth it is only melting faster and faster. At last he is over the border of moderation before he conceives that he had so much as approached it. Then, alas! the word "moderation" stands for an unknown quantity, easy to use but hard to define, since one man's moderation may be another man's excess, and to-day's moderation may be an excess ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Hall. I say my eyes. It is hard perhaps for you to realize what an organ can be in a creature, so apparently, as we are, little more than gaseous condensations. The physiology and morphology of a spirit is not an easy thing to grasp or define. I am yet ignorant upon many points. But dimly, at least, I may make your natural senses cognizant ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... or that of such particular legislature should be again negatived by a specified number of members of each branch. Eighthly, To establish a national judiciary, the members of which should hold office during good behavior; and to define their duties, powers, privileges, and emoluments. Ninthly, To provide for the admission of new states into the Union. Tenthly, To guaranty a republican form of government to each state and territory. Eleventhly, To provide for a continuation of a Congress with its delegated powers, until ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... back in his seat with a contented grin, while his colleague manipulated the unwieldy whip. The tract ran parallel to the Rand for some distance, and we got a splendid view of Johannesburg and the row of chimney-shafts that so clearly define ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... tongue, or any other member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces. But our definition is less broad. We all rest alike on Sunday—by secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that is the surest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up for a part of each year. But it is a palette of brilliant colors; it will be difficult to name a tint or shade which is not vividly represented in this gaudy floor and in the strata of the cliffs which define its northern and eastern limits. Above and beyond these cliffs lies that other amazing desert, the Navajo country, the land of the Rainbow Bridge and the Canyon ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... value thereof, and fix the standard of weights and measures; establish post-offices and post-roads; promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations; declare war; grant letters of marque and reprisal; make rules concerning captures on land and water; raise and support ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... ideas with the richness of detail to which he was accustomed.[3] Such complaints are only confessions of weakness on the part of an author. One has only to study the first five pages of any comedy of the brothers Quintero to see how a genuine theatrical talent can make each character define itself perfectly with its first few speeches. To such an art as this Galds brought a fertile imagination, the habit of the broad canvas, a love of multiplying secondary figures, and of studying the minutiae of their psychology. Only by sheer genius and power of ideas could he ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... found him. They would say that, after the common fashion of men, he had been conquered by a lovely face and form and a brave deed of devotion. But it was not so. Something beyond the flesh and its works and attributes drew him towards this woman, something that he could neither understand nor define (unless, indeed, the vision of Issachar defined it), but of which he had been conscious since first he set eyes upon her face. It was possible, it was even probable, that before another hour had gone by she would have passed beyond his reach, into ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... interior of Guinea, from the Cameroon in the north, to Angola in the south, and about 100 miles inland, and called by the geographers Crystal Mountains. The limit to which this animal extends, either north or south, I am unable to define. But that limit is doubtless some distance north of this river [Gaboon]. I was able to certify myself of this fact in a late excursion to the head-waters of the Mooney (Danger) River, which comes into the ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... moral honour," it has been said, "belongs to founders of states, as Bacon has declared, then Mason deserved it. To seize on a tract of the American wilderness, to define its limits, to give it a name, to plant it with an English colony, and to die giving it his last thoughts among worldly concerns, are acts as lofty and noble as any recorded in ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him, she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define, but of which she had ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... must first define its domain, produce and collect its materials: before system, facts; before the age of art, the age of learning. The economic science, subject like every other to the law of time and the conditions of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... position in which the trial left him. It was apparent to all the world that he had attempted to defraud Mrs. Wittleworth out of the block of stores, and ten years' income upon it; but the banker was not a man to bend before the storm of popular opinion. He took the trouble to define his position, and to explain away what was dark and unsatisfactory. He did not believe his child was dead. He was satisfied that Marguerite Poulebah was Marguerite Checkynshaw, though he could not find her. The director of the hospital said the Sisters had taken her, and he ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... conceited young man must feel of ever finding such a one made the definition seem a little unserviceable. Or, if you prefer, since we seem to be dealing with impossibles, we might turn about and more truly define her as The Woman of Whom We are Worthy, for who dare say that she exists? If, again, she were defined as the Woman our More Fortunate Friend Marries, her unapproachableness would rob the definition of any practical value. Other generalisations proving ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... debate, the Public Attorney is in the presence of a difficulty which he cannot ignore. It cannot be put even in the nature of a condemnation, since offenses to public morals and to religion are somewhat vague and elastic expressions which it would be necessary to define precisely. Nevertheless, when we speak to right-minded, practical men we are sure of being sufficiently understood to distinguish whether a certain page of a book carries an attack against religion ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... place, this definition transgresses the first and most essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result directly from our personal consciousness. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... additions.[525] It certainly received a great deal from Persia: the number of manuscripts in different Iranian languages puts this beyond doubt. Equally undoubted is its debt to India, but it would be of even greater interest to determine whether Indian Buddhism owes a debt to Central Asia and to define that debt. For Tibet the relation was mutual. The Tibetans occupied the Tarim basin during a century and according to their traditions monks went ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... set forth not only the fact that God is righteous and just, but also define these attributes. Here we are told that God, in His government of the world, does always that which is ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... point in discussing this question of fast and fugitive dyes is to define the meaning of these terms "fast" and "fugitive." Unfortunately, as frequently employed, they have no very definite signification. The great variety of textile fabrics to which coloring matters are applied, the different stages of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... season of penance to the mother, but this is not invariably the case; and, as so much must depend upon the natural strength of the stomach, and its power of assimilating all kinds of food into healthy chyle, it is impossible to define exceptions. Where a woman feels she can eat any kind of food, without inconvenience or detriment, she should live during her suckling as she did before; but, as a general rule, we are bound to advise all mothers to abstain from such articles ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... exquisite. It's like looking at a work of art—a bit of delicate china, or a picture by Francia or Guido. Something holy and serene about her—something that sets her apart from the ordinary world. I can't define it: but it's there. I feel myself made of a coarse, common clay in her presence: I want to go down on my knees and serve her like a queen. That's ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... well enough, if national policy required. Great Britain then was scarcely in a position to object seriously to retaliation by a nation thinking itself injured; but to define such a measure as not hostile was an insult to her common-sense. It was certainly hostile in nature, it was believed to be hostile in motive, and it intensified feelings already none too friendly. In France, although ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... inexhaustible fund of arguments, and comparative illustrations. For as Antonius had an admirable turn for suggesting apposite hints, and either suppressing or exciting the suspicions of the hearer; so no man could explain and define, or discuss a point of equity, with a more copious facility than Crassus; as sufficiently appeared upon many other occasions, but particularly in the cause of M. Curius, which was tried before the Centum Viri. For he urged a great variety of arguments in the defence of right and equity, against ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... necessity why a vivid power to conceive ideas, should NOT be combined with a dialectic skill in expressing them. Degerando, an admirable French writer, in one of his Treatises, has some profound observations on this subject; and does not hesitate to define poetry itself as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of awe and of wonder I may never well define,— For the thoughts that come in the shadows Never come in ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... she neither loves, nor fears. Nor hunts she after popular applause, Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws The garland that she wears, their hands must twine, Who can both censure, understand, define What merit is: then cast those piercing rays, Round as a crown, instead of honour'd bays, About his poesy; which, he knows, affords Words, above ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... Phebes garlond shining new, In which all pure perfection one may see. But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone Of earthly things, to judge of things divine: Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define. Why then do I, base shepheard, bold and blind, Presume the things so sacred to prophane? More fit it is t' adore, with humble mind, The image of the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... fruit, and also of vegetables, owe their great value to the fact that they possess powerful anti-scorbutic properties. It will be best and simplest to define the word "anti-scorbutic" as "good against the scurvy." This latter disease is notably dependent on a want of fresh fruit and vegetables in the dietary, and consequently is more often observed amongst sailors; and though accessory conditions, such ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... vastly more. The trouble is these men talk about the attributes of God, and confound these with the being and personality of the Great Parent. I may describe the scent of the rose, but that does not define the rose itself. I cannot separate the rose from its color or form or odor, any more than I can divorce music from the instrument. These vague and incomplete definitions have had much to do with the unbelief in the world. Tom Paine wrote a book which he called ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... of shorts was, of course, taken verbatim, despite the fact that Oley couldn't define half the words and probably ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond
... ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exist during the lifetime of its adherents, contemporaneously with the new influence created by Schleiermacher. (See Lect. VI.) The discussion was not a verbal one only, but was intimately connected with facts. The rationalist theologians wished to define clearly their own position, as opposed on the one hand to deists and naturalists, and on the other to supernaturalists. The result of the discussion seemed to show the following parties: (1) two kinds of Supernaturalists, ({GREEK SMALL LETTER ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... waves of popular applause [331]. About thirteen years after the brief prohibition of comedy appeared that wonderful genius, the elements and attributes of whose works it will be a pleasing, if arduous task, in due season, to analyze and define; matchless alike in delicacy and strength, in powers the most gigantic, in purpose the most daring—with the invention of Shakspeare—the playfulness of Rabelais—the malignity of Swift—need I add the name ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... struck her as weird: something which she could not then define; but she was quite sure that it was not merely the unusual chilliness of that rainy summer's day, which had caused her to tremble so, when—in the vestry—her husband had taken her hand ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... even his own analytical mind could not define, the Secretary sought Lucia Catherwood. He admired her height, her strength and resolved beauty—knew that she was of a type as admirable as it was rare, and wondered once or twice why he did not love her instead of Helen Harley. Here was a woman with a mind akin to his own—bold, keen and penetrating. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... philosopher has followed him in this opinion. The denial of place is by no means necessarily the denial of being. So, too, with consciousness. It is conceivable that there is a being superior to all the modes of consciousness now known to us. We are, indeed, unable to define this, yet it may be. The profoundest analysis shows that consciousness consists of co ordinated changes.45 "Consciousness is a succession of changes combined and arranged in special ways." Now, in contrast to the Occidental thinker, who covets alternation because in his cold climate ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Now, to define precisely, whether it be always better done, to help one or two souls efficaciously, than to yield a little comfort to a great many, is a question I leave for you to exercise your wits in. I could fancy it to be your best course to do both; that is, sometimes ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... a later period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran's book free-thinking concealed under dogmatic forms. "In case of heresy any Christian may become judge," said Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, should be commissioned to define heresy? So M. de St. Cyran ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... entailed the necessity of cleaning; hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed; to note the entrances of water, to count the gratings and the vents, to lay out in detail the branches, to indicate the currents at the point where they parted, to define the respective bounds of the divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal sewer, to measure the height under the key-stone of each drain, and the width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the bottom, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the blushing dawn threw her golden drapery over the eastern sky, as if to cheer the general on his journey, Mr. Tickler, panting for breath, and evidently alarmed at something he could not clearly define, made his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Egyptians have the innate taste and ability of all Orientals for harmonizing colour. Their universal use of black to outline and define most of the designs produces a beautiful harmony between otherwise clashing hues. With nearly as many shades at their disposal in cloth as a painter has in paint, they are quite ambitious in their attempts to produce realistic scenes. On some of the best specimens of modern ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... interested American life, so far as that is controlled or directed by national legislation. Some of the laws passed were simply readjustments—new statutes on old matters. Other laws were new, embodying the first attempt to define the attitude which the courts should hold towards new questions which had grown suddenly into great importance. The decade which had favored the springing-up and amazing expansion of the Big Interests, had to be followed by the decade which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... between Whigs and Peelites, and have not succeeded, and now Lord Stanley throws up the game a second time! The Queen would be happy to consult you and hear your advice in this dilemma. Possibly to-night's Debate may define the position of Parties more clearly, and give a clue to what may be best to be done under the circumstances. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... impossible to man, for whatever transcends geometry transcends us [in natural science, as he explains elsewhere]. This is the method of defining everything and proving everything. . . A fine method, but impossible; since it is evident that the first terms that we wish to define, suppose precedent terms necessary for their explanation—and that the first propositions that we wish to prove, suppose others which precede them; and so it is clear we can never arrive at absolutely ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... with pencil and paper. The leader has a dictionary which she opens at any place and selects a word which the rest are to define. ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... define Modesty, I would call it The Reflection of an Ingenuous Mind, either when a Man has committed an Action for which he censures himself, or fancies that he is exposed to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... GOD, died in good hope of salvation, surely trusting that their sins had been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, and that, however imperfect and blemished with sin their lives had been, there was an assured forgiveness for them and a good hope of eternal mercy. We will not define the exact limits of this reasonable hope, nor attempt to show who are within or beyond those limits. We will only, in general terms, speak of those who have entered upon the Intermediate Life in a condition such as would make them capable of perfect purification. ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... in Ruth herself. She was conscious of it though she could not define it, and did not dwell upon it. Life had become significant and full of duty to her. She delighted in the exercise of her intellectual powers, and liked the idea of the infinite amount of which she was ignorant; for it was a grand pleasure to learn—to crave, and be ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he eat." American public sentiment is distinctly ahead of ours in recognising that a life of idleness is wrong in itself, and that the possibility of leading such a life acts most prejudicially on character. The American answer to the Englishman trying to define what he meant by "gentlemen of leisure" "Ah, we call them tramps in America"—is not merely a jest, but enshrines a deep ethnical and ethical principle. Most Americans would, I think, agree strongly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... almost anything that he can move serves, one time or another, for a plaything. But the surest stimulus is a new toy, the element of novelty and variety being important in arousing manipulation as it is in arousing exploration. However, to define a toy simply as something moveable, and also new if possible, fails to satisfy the spirit of inquiry, and about the only way to progress further is to make a long list of toys, and classify them from the psychological point of view. Thus we get ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... annoying not so much because most of the "dandy plots" that he or she tells are hoary with age, or even because most writers don't start with a 'plot' at all, and couldn't define a plot if they had to; but rather because a writer, however humble, has to feel the idea for a story come glowing up over the horizon of his brain out of the east of his own subconsciousness, or it is never ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of our own countrymen and our feelings about them have slowly and unconsciously grown out of innumerable facts which are full of contradictions and subject to incessant change. They have the elusive mystery and fluidity of life. We cannot define to ourselves what we are as a whole, because we know too much; because our knowledge is more than knowledge. It is an immediate consciousness of personality, any evaluation of which carries some emotion, joy or sorrow, shame or exaltation. But ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... peculiar presence, the original tone or accent, of John Webster. If the epithet unique had not such a tang of German affectation in it, it would be perhaps the aptest of all adjectives to denote the genius or define the manner of this great poet. But in this tragedy, though whatever is said is well said and whatever is done well done, we miss that sense of positive and inevitable conviction, that instant and profound perception or impression as ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the extent and variety of information which a librarian is supposed to possess, I have been asked, almost at the same time, to refer a reader to the origin of Candlemas day, to define the Pragmatic Sanction, to give, out of hand, the aggregate wealth of Great Britain, compared with that of half-a-dozen other nations, to define the limits of neutrality or belligerent rights, to explain what is meant ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... two,' resumed Mrs Skewton, 'with the Heart you possess in common, and the excessively charming bond of feeling that there is between you, must be slight and unimportant? What words could better define the fact? None. Therefore I am glad to take this slight occasion—this trifling occasion, that is so replete with Nature, and your individual characters, and all that—so truly calculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes—to say that I attach no importance ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the 12th instant, in the last sheet (not the half sheet), last page, omit the sentence which (defining, or attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) begins, 'I should say at least in life that most military men have it, and few naval; that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers,' &c. &c. I say, omit the whole of that sentence, because, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... round; they stand apart from the shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and the banks beneath, there boils up from below a ceaseless ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... appeared in the doorway to say that supper was ready. And it was not until Herbert was actually engaged in carving a cold chicken that he followed up his advantage. 'Mr. Lawford, Grisel,' he said, 'has just enriched our jaded language with a new verb—to Sabathier. And if I may venture to define it in the presence of the distinguished neologist himself, it means, "To deal with histrionically"; or, rather, that's what it will mean a couple of hundred years hence. For the moment it means, "To act under the influence of subliminalization; ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... paramount necessity of an external authoritative Law to guide all her members;—Creeds to define the foundation of their Faith,—a Catechism to teach them the necessary elements of Christian Doctrine,—the several forms of Prayer contained in the Prayer Book to instruct them further in Religion, as well as to prescribe their exact mode ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... something penetrating her consciousness, something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she could not define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving peculiarly about the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the country, and to define the powers and duties of the Federal Diet; but as many changes have been made in the government and in the states, it is not necessary to transcribe his remarks to these pages. He promised, as occasion might offer on their travels, to give the students ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... justify this assumption a very extended definition of number must be made use of. A one-to-one correspondence is then set up between points in the plane and pairs of numbers, and also between points in space and sets of three numbers. A single constant will serve to define the position of a point on a line; two, a point in the plane; three, a point in space; etc. In the same theory a one-to-one correspondence is set up between loci in the plane and equations in two variables; between surfaces in space and equations in ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... me to define a flirt? That is a little more difficult, but I will try what I can do. 'One who practises the art of flirting,' the dictionary would tell us, with its usual admirable candour, but that doesn't seem to give much enlightenment. A flirt, I should say, is the antithesis of a friend, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thick nor braid?" King Jamie said, "I'll eat my gude hat-band If arra line as ye define Be ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspired this sense of affinity; and his sister Mary and his brothers seemed to him merely people whom he had known always—not more than that; whereas Eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which he could not define, that had decided ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... moral man, to the philosopher or the business man, to any one who is a cog in the wheel of some republic, all these things exist for the sake of something else. He must explain or make use of them, or define his relation to them. He spends the whole agony of his existence in an endeavor to docket them and deal with them. Hampered as he is by all that has been said and done before, he yet feels himself driven ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... messengers had lodging for the night; Dozen serjeants served after them aright. Darkling they lie till comes the clear daylight. That Emperour does with the morning rise; Matins and Mass are said then in his sight. Forth goes that King, and stays beneath a pine; Barons he calls, good counsel to define, For with his Franks he's ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... better to forget it and wait for another; but this other comes to me so confused and misshapen that my poor being cannot contain it. It presses and tortures me, until it has taken realizable proportions, when comes the other pain, of bringing forth, a truly physical suffering that I cannot define. And that is how my life is spent when I let myself be dominated by this artistic monster in me. It is much better, then, that I should live as I have imagined living, that I go to all kinds of excess, and that I kill this never-dying ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... sterner footing. The people are there for information. The lecture is organised not by idle, amiable, charming women, but by a body called, with variations, the Philosophical Society. From experience I should define an English Philosophical Society as all the people in town who don't know anything about philosophy. The academic and university classes are never there. The audience is only of plainer folk. In the United States and Canada at any evening lecture a large ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... which consists merely in perception or in liking? For instance, we find people differ much as to what is the best style of English composition. Some think Swift's the best; others prefer a fuller and grander way of writing.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you must first define what you mean by style, before you can judge who has a good taste in style, and who has a bad. The two classes of persons whom you have mentioned don't differ as to good and bad. They both agree that Swift has a good neat style[562]; but one loves a neat style, another loves a style ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... If we attempt to define in a single sentence the specific object of this agitation we may best describe it as based on the demands of woman the mother, and as directed to the end of securing for her the right to control and regulate the personal and social relations which ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... its splendour. Long and sharp was the controversy whether singing ought to be used in public worship; whether the seventh day of the week or the first was to be consecrated; whether ministers were to be paid for their services; and in this case, to define the privileges and duties of women as helpers in the gospel; and it is surprising that this question is almost as new now as it was then. It is thus stated—"Whether it is the duty of the women of the churches of Christ to separate themselves from their brethren, and, as so separate, to perform ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... said, "Come on with me, Anton, I have something to show you. Place yourself by the brook, with your face to the north. There the brook forms a straight line from west to east, the border of the wood a semicircle. Wood and brook together define the segment ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... state an intelligible case—but all that I know for certain is that it was not intelligible to the Fabians. It is probable enough that his program, as a program, was defective, for whilst it is perfectly easy to define a simple, definite, not widely inclusive policy of action, it is far harder to define that side of the life of a nation which belongs to temperament and instinct. This was what Mr. Wells had in mind; but the social reformers ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... house to look at it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... if souls are mortal, there can be no dispute about—I mean, that the destruction of them by death is so entire as to remove even the least suspicion of any sense remaining. When, therefore, this point is once well grounded and established, we must correctly define what the term to want means; that there may be no mistake in the word. To want, then, signifies this: to be without that which you would be glad to have; for inclination for a thing is implied in the word ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... wonderful 'charm' he is writing about?" I hear some sprightly maiden inquire as she reads these lines. My dear young lady, if you ask the question, you have judged yourself and been found wanting. But to satisfy you as far as I can, I will try and define it—not by telling you what it is; that is beyond my power—but by negatives, the only way in which ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... considerably shorter than the other. Her face was not in any way beautiful, yet there was a certain mysterious attraction about it. Something looked out of her eyes which Clarice studied without being able to define, but which disposed her to keep on looking. They were dark, pathetic eyes, of the kind with which Clarice had gifted her very imaginary Countess; but there ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... be hard to define exactly the office and duties of the District Visitor. Historically she is the direct result of the Evangelical movement which marked the beginning of this century; the descendant of the "devout women not a few" who played, like ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... later (about 370 A.D.) Ambrose, the Archbishop of Milan, strove to define this music more clearly, by fixing upon the modes that were to be allowed for these chants; for we must remember that all music was still based upon the Greek modes, the modern major and minor being as yet unknown. In the course of time the ancient ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... and that it cannot be both equal and unequal to it, and thus take for granted the principles of Contradiction and Excluded Middle; but the statement and elucidation of these Principles are left to Logic (chap. vi.). The Mathematics also classify and define magnitudes, as (in Geometry) triangles, squares, cubes, spheres; but the principles of classification and definition remain for ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... either party. You seem to have been fully aware that wherever the affections are concerned, the human mind is most tenacious of what one half of the philosophers in the world will not allow to exist, and the other half cannot define. Influenced as we all are every moment in our preferences and aversions, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes avowedly, by the most trifling and often the silliest causes, yet the wisest of us start, and back, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Blanc must have men made expressly for him: he does not flatter himself that he can act on any sort of temperaments. As for wages, M. Blanc promises that they shall be GOOD; that is easier than to define their measure. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... it may be well to define a day's work, and to correct a mistake prevalent among landsmen about a sailor's life. Nothing is more common than to hear people say, "Are not sailors very idle at sea? What can they find to do?'' This is a natural mistake, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... proceeded to define the difference between the only two parties with definite principles. The real contest was, not between Lincoln and Douglas, or between Cox and me, but between Breckenridge and Lincoln, between free institutions and slave ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... have whispered to them, flowers have looked up and rebuked them, brooks have called to them with laughter, rivers have smiled upon them in sunshine, the great sky has bent over them with infinite tenderness and fulness of beauty, and they have felt what they could not define. It was something very wrong, they supposed, and so they buttoned their straight jackets around them, turned their eyes away from beholding vanity, and thought they had done an excellent thing. I know that those young women, with their abominable clothing outside, and their crushed and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... which are formed in this way may be divided into three classes—physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with the first; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define a subject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance, identity, or analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conception which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of similar ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... Mrs. McCay an excellent, plain old lady, with neither airs nor pretentions, and very kind-hearted. Here she lives alone, with the exception of an orphan girl called Jane, whose position, half-menial, half-equal, it would be hard to define. Poor girl! the name of orphan alone was enough to make me sorry for her. She must be "Friday's child"! she is so "ready and willing." Eliza, who it seems stays a great deal with her grandmother, is one of the brightest little girls I have seen ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Mabel to her stand in the re-forming set. "I never knew Clara to succumb before to any type of syncope or asphyxia. She is a woman of remarkable nerve and courage. And, by the way, how preposterous is the common use of the word 'nervous.' The ablest lexicographers define it as 'strong, well-strung, full of nerve,' whereas, in ordinary parlance, it has come to signify the very opposite of these. When I speak of a nervous speaker or writer, for example, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... on earth more sacred or divine, That gods and men do equally adore, Than this same virtue that doth right define, For th' heavens themselves, whence mortal men implore, Right in their wrongs, are ruled by ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a pleasant impression. Without intention, he had treated young Van Ariens with that negative politeness which dashes a sensitive man and makes him resentfully conscious that he has been rendered incapable of doing himself justice. And Rem could neither define the sense of humiliation he felt, nor yet ruffle the courteous urbanity of Hyde; though he tried in various ways to introduce some conversation which would afford him the pleasure of contradiction. Equally he failed to consider that ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... words show? 2. Of what do the words "I am" remind us? 3. What is the meaning of the Hebrew word translated "Lord"? 4. What do the words "thy God" express? 5. From what bondage has God delivered us? 6. Name and define God's attributes? 7. Why should we fear ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... February a debate was there entered upon, in which the opposition urged that the expulsion of Wilkes had been determined by ministers in council, and a motion was also made to bring in a bill to regulate and define the consequences of expulsion from the house; but the ministers in each instance were victorious. The exertions of the opposition, however, were warmly supported by a large majority of the liverymen of London, who busied themselves ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... find no prototype of it in their memories. I am trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words "despotism" and "tyranny" are inappropriate: the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... else, tastes sharp and fine that seemed to cut into her own tastes and show her suddenly that she did not really like what she had thought she liked, or that she liked what she had hardly before been aware of. All that Helen could be brought to define was that she liked looking at things in the country: at birds, clouds, and flowers; but though striking Althea as a creature strangely untouched and unmoulded, she struck her yet more strongly as beautifully definite. She marvelled at her indifference to her own shortcomings, and she marvelled at ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... geography books still define an island as a body of land surrounded by water, it is," rejoined the man, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... of the utmost importance. It is impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes about. But you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. There is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be considered in ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... wicked and the rewarder of good deeds, is continually bringing to pass: would that she could always do so! She is a kind of sublime agent of the powerful Deity, dwelling, according to common belief, above the human circle; or, as others define her, she is a substantial protection, presiding over the particular destinies of individuals, and feigned by the ancient theologians to be the daughter of Justice, looking down from a certain inscrutable eternity upon ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... schools are a unit in believing in the existence and operation of such a law, no two of them agree upon a definition of it. Their theories concerning this all important law are as diametrically opposite as the poles. For instance, the Allopaths define it as "contraria contrariis curantur," which is simply the law of opposition. But the Homeopaths take a widely different view of the matter, their definition of it being "similia similibus curantur," which is, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... to use, once in a while, the hard-worked and generally inappropriate word "atmosphere." Like "temperament" and "individuality" and the rest of the writer-folk's old reliables, "atmosphere" is too often only a makeshift, a lazy way of expressing something you won't take the trouble to define more expressively. Dick says in "The Light That Failed" that an old device for an unskilful artist is to stick a superfluous bunch of flowers somewhere in a picture where it will cover up bad drawing. I'm ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Emerson, either, in the case of those whom the world has failed to recognise, and whom therefore it is the business of the critic to make known and to define. It is too soon to say in what particular niche among the teachers of the race posterity will place him; enough that in our own generation he has already been accepted as one of the wise masters, who, being called to high thinking for generous ends, did not fall below ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... aint a crooked stick, jest like—like ole (I swow, I dunno ez I know his name)—I'll go back to my plough. Wenever an Amerikin distinguished politishin Begins to try et wut they call definin' his posishin, Wal, I, fer one, feel sure he ain't gut nothin' to define; It's so nine cases out o' ten, but jest thet tenth is mine; 40 An' 'taint no more 'n proper 'n' right in sech a sitooation To hint the course you think'll be the savin' o' the nation; To funk right out o' p'lit'cal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... are seen living in intimate relation one with another. The two extreme classes—the whites and blacks—are as distinct in character as in color, and of either of those it is no difficult task to give an accurate portraiture. But it is different with the mixed races. To define their characteristics correctly would be impossible, for their minds partake of the mixture of their blood. As a general rule, it may fairly be said that they unite in themselves all the faults, without ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sage's answer; "but to be no more than the disturber. Her power is the whirlwind; for purposes which man may never be able fully to define, suffered, or sent forth, to sweep the Continent; perhaps, like the tempest, to punish, nay, perhaps in the end to purify; but the tempest is scarcely more transitory, or more different from the dew that invisibly descends and silently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... council, the eighteenth, held at Trent, and whose sittings, with sundry adjournments, extended from 13th December 1545 until 4th December 1563, the object of which was to define the position and creed of the Church of Rome in opposition to the doctrines and claims of the Churches ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of relief, on hearing this. But Lucian, who knew the girl better, began to fear her, and mentally resolved to define his own position as speedily as possible. One thing was evident; it was no part of her plan to betray him, at least ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... simply degenerate Trichiae, and show the vagaries usually to be noted in a passing type. They are difficult to define, and the species are indeed variable. Those here listed seem to offer constant ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... To define accurately the conditions of temperature which a plant requires to maintain it in a flourishing condition we must ascertain within what limits its period of vegetation, may vary, and what quantity of heat it requires. This ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... him, the judge used his right, and put several shrewd and unusual questions to him: asked him to define insanity. He said he could only do it by examples: and he abridged several intelligent madmen, their words and ways; and contrasted them with the five or six sane people he had fallen in with in asylums; showing his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... has a definition signifies via the signs that serve to define it; and the definitions point the way. Two signs cannot signify in the same manner if one is primitive and the other is defined by means of primitive signs. Names cannot be anatomized by means of definitions. (Nor can any sign that has a meaning ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... suppose matter to be simply a form of ether—plainly, that matter originated out of ether—was made from ether; so that, after all, the universe was created from nothing—that is, nothing if we correctly define matter. It was but a step for me, then, to the end: remove all radiant energy from a fixed gas—a gas without the property of condensation to another form of matter, i.e., to a fluid or a solid—and the thing, I said to myself, is done. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... "Define the word 'home,'" she was once asked when very young. "Where Mother is," was her ready reply. "Where Love is," would be her later ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... prominent authorities is Dr. H. Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal. In his book Life on Other Worlds, Dr. Jones points out that everything about us is the result of changing processes, begun millenniums ago and still going on. We cannot define life solely in our own terms; it ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... condemned already by the Church, general Councels, and most famous Vniuersities) to be an hereticke, and to haue an euil opinion of the fayth, and therefore to be condemned and punished, like as we condemne, and define hym to be punished, by this our sentence definitiue, depriuyng and sentencyng him, to be depriued of all dignities, honours, orders, offices, and benefices of the Church: and therfore do iudge and pronounce him to be deliuered ouer to the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... unstable. Yet these casual experiences, while they leave us so much in the dark as to their natural basis and environment, necessarily reveal each its ideal object, its specific essence; and we need only arrest our attention upon it, and define it to ourselves, for an eternal possibility, and some of its intrinsic characters, to have been ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... been away so long now that I don't ever feel homesick for any particular part of the country; but just the same I would like to see the lakes. And I do miss the prairies sometimes. Oh, I was reading something the other day—fellow was trying to define the different sorts of terrain—here it is, cut it out of the paper." He produced from among a bunch of pocket-worn envelopes and memorandums a clipping hacked from a newspaper with a nail-file, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... hollyhocks and thyme. As a matter of fact I don't think hollyhocks do smell. It is a small point; about such we do not trouble ourselves. In the case of the homely type of girl I don't see why we should not borrow Mr. Pickwick's expression, and define her by saying that in some subtle way she always contrived to suggest an odour of chops ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... which, however odd it might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the nostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the wool. Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner; in bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the windows with his hands in his pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... and within. The room itself was large and old, and its far extremities, mantled as they were with dusk and shadow, impressed upon the mind that involuntary and vague sensation, not altogether unmixed with awe, which the eye, resting upon a view that it can but dimly and confusedly define, so frequently communicates to the heart. There was a strange oppression at Mordaunt's breast with which he in vain endeavoured to contend. Ever and anon, an icy but passing chill, like the shivers of a fever, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Act entitled "An Act in relation to pandering; to define and prohibit the same; to provide for punishment thereof; for the competency of certain evidence at the trial thereof, and providing what shall be a defense," approved June 1, 1908; in force July 1, 1908, and also the title of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... it, Jack, when you had got the fumes of the wine out of your head. Poetry is a respectable art, though it wants the precision of the exact sciences, and the natural beneficence of the physical. Considered in reference to the wants of life, I should define poetry as an emollient, rather than as ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... manifestations which in the usual sense are not sexual or are at most called "sexual perversions." But this extension has a certain justification in view of the fact that these manifestations can be seen to be definitely related to the ordinary adult forms of sexuality. However we define it, we have to recognise that the child takes the same kind of pleasure in those functions which are natural to his age as the adult is capable of taking in localised sexual functions, that he may weave ideas around such functions, sometimes cultivate their exercise from love of luxury, make ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... in reproducing in my "History of France," in the year 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... a layman's judgment might be considered insufficient, the treatise was submitted by the writer to one of the most learned of our theological experts,—the same who once informed a church dignitary, who had been attempting to define his theological position, that he was a Eutychian,—a fact which he seems to have been no more aware of than M. Jourdain was conscious that he had been speaking prose all his life. The treatise appeared to this professor ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... does the use of symbols play in all magical operations that we may, I think, modify the definition of "magic" adopted at the outset, and define "magic" as "an attempt to employ the powers of the spiritual world for the production of marvellous results, BY THE AID OF SYMBOLS." It has, on the other hand, been questioned whether the appeal to the spirit-world is an essential element in magic. But a close examination of magical practices ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... State from corner to corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence, but not to submission. When hard-pressed, he revenged himself, in his turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was. The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... that destroys our plan of action there were ready always some better-succeeding plan, then might their conjunctive force seem more potent; as life goes, however, unhappily, they are not always so provided, and the English "but" takes on its Gallic significance, which leads the Frenchman to define it as ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... and the "reading" progressed favourably. On the tenth day of my solitude, a strange thing happened. I awoke after a good night's sleep to find myself possessed with a marked repugnance for my room. The air seemed to stifle me. The more I tried to define the cause of this dislike, the more unreasonable it appeared. There was something about the room that made me afraid. Absurd as it seems, this feeling clung to me obstinately while dressing, and more than once I caught ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... plurality of sources of the books of Samuel, or the twofold authorship of Isaiah, or that all after the ninth verse of the last chapter of St. Mark's Gospel is spurious; and, as regards the whole encyclical, the distinguished Jesuit dwelt significantly on the power of the papacy at any time to define out of existence any previous decisions which may be found inconvenient. More than that, Father Clarke himself, while standing as the champion of the most thorough orthodoxy, acknowledged that, in the Old Testament, "numbers must be expected to be used Orientally," and that "all these seventies and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... gives a side glance, begs a negro to supply his plate anew, and reckons he may soon make a new discovery in southern political economy. But he fears Mrs. Rosebrook's plan will make a mongrel, the specific nature of which it would be difficult to define in philosophy. Perhaps it will not be acceptable to the north as a thinking people, nor will it please the generosity ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to define the exact form of the work, though it is nearly always classed as a secular oratorio, principally because of the introduction of the narrator, after the style of the passion-music. In other respects it ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... lived such different lives. It's not merely an ordinary family likeness of feature, you know, but a sort of interchangeable individuality; the suggestion of the other man's personality in your face like an air transposed to another key. But I'm not attempting to define it; it's beyond me; something altogether unusual and a trifle—well, uncanny," she ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the moment one reflects that he is himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to reverence and what is not. Come, I hadn't thought of that before, but it is true, absolutely true. What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were you once? Could we but guess, We might perchance more boldly Define the patient weariness That sets your lips so coldly; You "lived," we know, for blame and fame; But sure, to friend or foeman, You bore some more distinctive name Than ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... period of union the action of the United States was that of a confederation in which some portion of the several sovereignties was understood to be surrendered to the whole. It was the business of the articles to define the precise nature and extent of this surrendered sovereignty which no state by itself ever exercised. In the mean time this sovereignty, undefined in nature and extent, was exercised, as well as circumstances permitted, by the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... We might define Fairy Splendor as furniture transfigured, for without transfiguration there is no spiritual motion of any kind. But the phrase "furniture-in-motion" serves a purpose. It gets us back to the earth for a reason. Furniture is architecture, and the fairy-tale picture should certainly be drawn ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... SENTENCE ELEMENTS. What are the four kinds of sentences? What are the different parts of speech? Define each. What is the difference between a clause and a phrase? What is the difference between a principal clause and a subordinate clause? Illustrate. Illustrate an adverbial clause. An adjective clause. Illustrate an adverbial phrase. An adjective ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... man thinketh in his heart, so is he!" No truer words were ever spoken, and yet men try to define themselves by houses and lands and manners and social position, but all to no avail. The old rule holds. It is your thought which determines what manner of man you are. The respectable man who keeps within the law and ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... had by no means surrendered her determination of going on the stage again, and was already with Saidie's assistance on the look-out for an engagement. It would be difficult to define her feelings towards her husband at this juncture. That there was still a veiled hostility John Chetwynd could not fail to see; but in his newly formed resolution to be patient and forbearing, he simply ignored it and diligently cultivated a kindly, gentle bearing, ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... Mohammedans are one because they have a common religion and a common law. The Christians are one, because at least one point of faith is common. But the Hindus have neither faith, nor practice, nor law to distinguish them from others. I should therefore define a Hindu to be one born in India, whose parents so far as people can remember were not foreigners, or did not profess a foreign religion like Mohammedanism or Christianity, and who himself has not ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... looking forth across miles of shadowy prairie, beheld a great white dome cut clear against a sapphire sky. On the train rushed, on and on, straight toward that snowy dome, and, as they drew nearer, other mountains began to define themselves on either side the central peak, and presently a town revealed itself, and they knew that it could be no other than Colorado Springs, sleeping there at the foot of the great range, all unconscious of ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... represent the events themselves together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment. But mixtures are things irregular, whereof no man can define. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... at work in the hearts of a man and a girl riding over the hard sand trail in the pleasant evening light. The man's youthful heart was thrilling with a hope he dared not attempt to define, and could not if he would. His every feeling was inspired by a joy he had no proper understanding of. The glance of his dark eyes bespoke his mood, and his buoyancy seemed to communicate itself to the great horse under him. All he knew was that the glory of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... impatient sight has the look of it. This may be true if we use that fatal word in an arbitrary and unreal sense, for the avoidable, the consequent without antecedent, or antecedent without consequent. If we consent to talk in this way, and only are careful to define terms so that there is no doubt as to their meaning, it is hardly deniable that evil is a mere word and not a reality, and whatever is is indeed right and best, because no better is within our reach. Voltaire, however, like the man of sense that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... him up with such a sharp turn was that this power had positively dwindled to nothing. He found it impossible to make up his mind. For, on this fifth day, he realised that he had stayed long enough in the town and that for reasons he could only vaguely define to himself it was wiser and safer that ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... signifies his barren shine, Of moral powers an' reason? His English style, an' gesture fine Are a' clean out o' season. Like Socrates or Antonine, Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, But ne'er a word o' faith in That's right ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... not be killed—except under necessity and by sanction of the whole tribe—nor injured; and all dealings with it must be fenced round with regulations. It is out of this taboo or system of taboos that, according to Reinach, religion arose. "I propose (he says) to define religion as: A SUM OF SCRUPLES (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves out of account ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... experiments before you, it is for the purpose of directing attention to their real meaning and significance, not to their obvious and superficial characteristics; in the same way that I might repeat the exceedingly familiar experiment of dropping a stone to the earth if we were going to define what ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... far less upon their sight than upon their hearing and sense of smell. Neither the fox nor the dog is capable of much discrimination with the eye; they seem to see things only in the mass; but with the nose they can analyze and define, and get at the most subtle shades of difference. The fox will not read a man from a stump or a rock, unless he gets his scent, and the dog does not know his master in a crowd until he ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs |
