"Definiteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unlearned tendencies; what one psychologist calls a reflex or a series of reflexes, another will call an instinct. It seems better to consider them as of the same general character but differing from each other in simplicity, definiteness, uniformity of response, variableness among individuals, and modifiability. They range from movements such as the action of the blood vessels to those concerned in hunting and collecting; from the simple, definite, uniform knee-jerk, which is very similar in all ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... to what course of Latin, and what authors are read. In that case we know exactly how much is required and expected, and what the standard of scholarship. In the college of letters we know that they go from Livy to Cicero on Old Age, then to Horace and Tacitus. Similar definiteness would be encouraging in the female catalogue. Its absence gives us every reason to believe that the course does not amount to enough to add any reputation to the college by being known. Under the head of special information we are told that in addition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a Hollander, and therefore found firm and staunch friends in Harree, John o' the Bathhouse and the other Hollanders. In three days Pete discarded the immateriality which had constituted the exquisite definiteness of his advent, and donned the garb of flesh-and-blood. This change was due equally to La Soupe and the canteen, and to the finding of friends. For Pete had been in solitary confinement for three months and had had nothing to eat but bread and water during that time, having been ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... affirms a necessary relation between the facts of experience and the a priori ideas of the reason. The result of this involuntary and almost unconscious process of thought is that natural cognition of a God found, with greater or less clearness and definiteness, in all rational minds. The a posteriori, or empirical knowledge of the phenomena of the universe, in their relations to time and space, constitute the minor premise ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... according to Lane, bara means properly, though not always, to create out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as in the Sanskrit tvaksh or taksh, there is no trace of the meaning assigned to it by later scholars, of a creation out of nothing. That idea in its definiteness was a modern idea, most likely called forth by the contact between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria. It was probably in contradistinction to the Greek notion of matter as co-eternal with the Creator, that the Jews, to whom Jehovah was ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... took definite shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began to seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire. He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep watch on ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... theologian, Henry Bullinger, who exercised a special influence on the English divines of Edward and Elizabeth's time in the matter of sacramental doctrine.[21] You will find in him a full measure of holy reverence, and at the same time a luminous clearness and definiteness of exposition. The central idea of his teaching is the idea of the Covenant Seal, the "instrument" of ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... Practice, when half a score or more of such works are now extant, some having come out within a very short time. The demand arises, not from the want of Books, but from the defects of those that exist. There is in most of them, too little point and definiteness in the prescriptions, and a kind of vague doubting recommendation noticeable to all, which carries the impression at once to every reader, of a want of confidence by the author ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... social customs seem all to assume a definiteness of preference, a singleness and a limitation of love, which is not psychologically justifiable. People do not, I think, fall naturally into agreement with these assumptions; they train themselves to ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... practical needs; adopting a mode of expression familiar to psychologists, we may say that they have differentiated from a 'continuum' of spiritual powers a number of spiritual agents with very various degrees of definiteness. Of these the less important are very vaguely conceived, but are regarded as being able to bring harm to men, who must therefore avoid giving offence to them, and must propitiate them if they should by ill-change have been offended. The more ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... definiteness which suggested that Mrs Jardine's call had lasted long enough, but the visitor was by this time aware that she had been guided dexterously away from her main object, and was ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... concurrent authority of State and Federal Governments, for the enforcement of the policy it defines. A certain lack of definiteness, through division of responsibility is thus introduced. In order to bring about a full understanding of duties and responsibilities as thus distributed, I purpose to invite the governors of the States and Territories, at an early opportunity, to a conference with the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... answer to inquiries, he explained the position of the pope on the subject of lay investiture, declared that he must stand by that position, and that if Henry also would not obey the pope, he must leave England again. Here was a sharp issue, drawn with the greatest definiteness, and one which it was very difficult for the king to meet. He could not possibly afford to renew the quarrel with Anselm and to drive him into exile again at this moment, but it was equally impossible for him to abandon this right of the crown, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... responsibility,—full of horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to pass,—affrighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her brother,—stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and obliterated all definiteness of thought,—she yielded without a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... service outside the home. In the suggestive and encouraging book by Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, entitled Successful Family Life on the Moderate Income, this economic aspect of the problem is treated with definiteness. In addition to the general conclusion reached by many that a family income of from $2,500 to $3,000 must be reached before continual hired help can be economically justified, Mrs. Abel shows by tables at pre-war prices ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... because it embraces a number of cases. Between the Russians, the French, the English, the Germans there is a similarity of will, but not, it seems, an analogy of sentiment. I shall undertake to analyze the case of Germany. It has peculiar interest on account of its importance, of its definiteness, of the comparisons to which it leads, and the reflections which it suggests. Numerous facts easy to verify and in part recent permit us to throw some light upon it and offer us a ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... time in description unless you have the rare gift of being able to make your scene live before your hearers. Talk plainly and to the point. Naturalness should characterize each lesson. Boys hate cant[1] and apologies and lack of definiteness. Your best illustrations will be drawn from the life of the camp ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... at a man in the position of a teacher of languages knowing all this with such definiteness. A novelist says this and that of his personages, and if only he knows how to say it earnestly enough he may not be questioned upon the inventions of his brain in which his own belief is made sufficiently manifest by a telling phrase, a poetic image, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... might be drawn from it, and to remark that it by no means follows that education is unnecessary to the common run of men, because a genius is in advance of his times. It is well also to note that even in him this flash of insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the definiteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. However accurate, it is but a glimmer,—not ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... motive-force of opposite valuations. As imagination, it half-creates and half-discovers the atmospheric climate, so to speak, of this valuation. As intuition, it feels itself to be in possession of a super-terrestrial, super-human authority which gives objective definiteness and security to this valuation. As instinct, it feels its way by an innate clairvoyance into the organic or ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... or the extended time given to it could not be justified. It yields large fruitage in the development of the power of concentration and intellectual keenness. Yes, but better than that. All mathematical subjects, in that they require absolute accuracy and definiteness in their operations, are particularly helpful in developing those fine moral qualities of honesty, integrity, and upright dealing. Again, history is taught in the schools as an intellectual subject. In intellectual development alone it is worth all it costs. But over and above the value ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... expected to run high in the presence of such astounding triumphs, and it should, therefore, not be deemed surprising that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally left to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... contemporary judgments upon the alleged military defects of Patrick Henry, no reader can now fail to note an embarrassing lack of definiteness, and a tendency to infer that, because that great man was so great in civil life, as a matter of course, he could not be great, also, in military life,—a proposition that could be overthrown by numberless historical examples to the contrary. It would greatly aid us if ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... you mean that?" said Leslie, with a sort of abruptness, as of one who must have definiteness, but who hurried with her asking, lest after a minute she might not dare. "That He really knows, and thinks, of every special thing and person,—and cares? Or ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... argument, and all rushed for the doors. I hastily changed slippers for boots and ran out. The barn hid the "Phalanstery" from sight. Passing to the other side of it I saw the flames pouring out of the front, surmounted by a heavy cloud of black smoke. Without definiteness of purpose we all started for the building, and all saw that there was no chance of saving it. Ere long the flames were chasing one another in mad riot over the structure; running across the long corridors and up ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... United States Government. It was useless to discuss methods of controlling big business by the National Government until it was definitely settled that the National Government had the power to control it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that the National Government ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his nose, although of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than clearness of line or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness along with a definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had not yet begun to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least large enough not to contradict the promise of his face; his shoulders were square, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... he did and did not know it would have been hard to say, as, added to a certain secretiveness which in different ways both Phoebe and Ishmael possessed, there was in him a strain of elusiveness; you could not coerce him to a definiteness he did not wish any more than you could catch a butterfly by stabbing at it in air ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... deserted the turmoil of literature for the peace of the House of Commons, I mean the author of Obiter Dicta. In point of fact, there is no such thing as Shakespeare's Hamlet. If Hamlet has something of the definiteness of a work of art, he has also all the obscurity that belongs to life. There are as many Hamlets ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... dreamed with it. But her dreaming had a certain definiteness, a distinct thought sustained its diffused content. She was not self-consciously thinking of her lovers, not congratulating herself on their acquirement, but the consciousness that she had achieved them lay graciously round her heart, gave the soft ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... account of Hudson's great finding. I have quoted it in full partly because of the thrilling interest that it has for us; but more to show that the record of his explorations—the "Half Moon's" log being written throughout with the same definiteness and accuracy—gave what neither Gomez nor Verrazano gave: clear directions for finding with certainty the haven that he, and those earlier navigators, had found by chance. On that fact, and on the other fact that his directions promptly were utilized, rests his ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... bodies of men, with railroads, cities, and agricultural products, and with many other topics which suggest excellent practical problems in arithmetic for these grades. All such careful arithmetical computations add clearness and definiteness to historical and geographical ideas. The natural sciences have been so little systematically taught in our common schools, that we are scarcely able to realize what connection may be made between them and arithmetic. We know ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... merge, so to speak, into eye and mind, and turning one, for a little while, into part of the merely visible and audible. The frequent possibility of such views as I have tried to define, of such moments of fulness of life, has given, methinks, the quality of definiteness and harmony, of active, participated in, greatness, to the art ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... teacher on the taught, of his mind upon their minds, and the mutual sympathy which exists between them, which is his strength and influence when he addresses them. They hang upon his lips as they cannot hang upon the pages of his book. Definiteness is the life of preaching. A definite hearer, not the whole world; a definite topic, not the whole evangelical tradition; and, in like manner, a definite speaker. Nothing that is anonymous will preach; nothing that is dead and gone; nothing even which is of yesterday, however religious ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... rendering of casual impression, and the mechanical copyism of unimportant subject, which are too frequently visible in our modern school.[O] Their lightness and desultoriness of intention, their meaningless multiplication of unstudied composition, and their want of definiteness and loftiness of aim, bring discredit on their whole system of study, and encourage in the critic the unhappy prejudice that the field and the hill-side are less fit places of study than the gallery and the garret. Not every casual idea caught from the flight of a shower or the fall of a sunbeam, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... a marvellous directness and definiteness in the statements of the New Testament writers, in proclaiming the Christian faith, because they believe that they are dealing with the tremendous facts of life and destiny. God has manifested Himself and spoken in Jesus Christ as He has never manifested ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... go back between the bamboos and their shadows, from unreal reality into a definiteness of cot and pajamas and electric torch. But wild nature still keeps touch with me; for as I write these lines, curled up on the edge of the cot, two vampires hawk back and forth so close that the wind from their wings dries my ink. And the soundness ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... with any definiteness the "religious ideas of a Roman" of A.D. 64 would be an extremely difficult task. Those ideas would differ with the individual, being determined or varied by a number of considerations and influences—by locality, education, and temperament. Silius would not hold the views of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... not merely loyal, but also enlightened, loyalty, never losing the definiteness and the concreteness of its devotion to some near and directly fascinating cause, sees itself to be in actual spiritual unity with the common cause of all the loyal, whoever they are. The great cause for all the loyal is in reality the cause of the spread and the furtherance of the cause of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... that the value of the scientific training to the man of letters is illustrated, not only in furnishing noble and strong analogies, but in precision of observation and accuracy of statement. In Holmes's style, the definiteness of form and the clearness of expression are graces and virtues which are due to his exact scientific study, as well as to the daylight quality ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... desultoriness superinduced by alcohol. I do not need a bracer to get me going or a hooker to keep me under way. I find, now that I know the other side of it, that the chief mental effect of alcohol, taken as I took it, is to induce a certain scattering and casualness of mind. Also, it induces a lack of definiteness of view and a notable failure of intensive effort. A man evades and scatters and exaggerates and makes loose statements when ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... the footsore man from Boston developed an alacrity and definiteness of purpose that would have surprised the Desert Rat, had he been in condition to observe it. He seized the gad which the mozo had dropped, climbed upon the lightest laden burro and, driving the others before him, set off for Chuckwalla Tanks. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... restraints. But the matter had never been decided by competent authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in these two outstanding cases, however, put an end to the previous uncertainty. Chief Justice White, in his two opinions, laid it down with definiteness that in construing and applying the law recourse must be had to the "rule of reason." He made clear the conviction of the court that it was "undue" restraints of trade which the law forbade and not incidental or inconsiderable ones. This definitive interpretation ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... asking herself that question which brings tearful uncertainty, vague fears, disquieting speculations to the great majority of women—should she give herself, body and soul, into the hands of a definite man? It was the definiteness, the identification of the man, that caused all her difficulty. All women expect to be chosen by, and to choose, some man; but when he arrives in actual flesh and blood—that is quite another matter. Some, perhaps many, have no doubts. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... On the other hand he had a friend of real poetical genius, who was also an artist, but who could only produce the stiffest and hardest works of art, that had no quality about them except the quality of tiresome definiteness. This was a great mystery to Hugh; but it ended eventually, after a serious endeavour to appreciate what was approved by the general verdict to be of supreme artistic value, in making him resolve that he would just follow his own independent taste, and discern whatever quality ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gone in for all sorts of things since then. Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... eyes that shone and a mouth that curved in a smile; and the brief moment in which he was able to refresh his memory, when he found her in the lane with Reggie Byng and the broken-down car, had not been enough to add definiteness. The consequence was that Maud came upon him now with the stunning effect of beauty seen for the first time. He gasped. In that dazzling ball-dress, with the flush of dancing on her cheeks and the light of dancing in her eyes, she was ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... peculiarities of The Blessed Damozel was a definiteness of sensible imagery, which seemed almost grotesque to some, and was strange, above all, in a theme so profoundly visionary. The gold bar of heaven from which she leaned, her hair yellow like ripe corn, are but examples of a general ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Iceland, and Greenland is wonderful and will greatly assist in giving reality and definiteness to the stories. Materials for this study are not difficult of access. Foreign colored photographs of Norwegian landscape are becoming common in our art stores. There are good illustrations in the geographical works referred to in the book list. These could be copied upon the blackboard. There are ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... Through the very definiteness of this understanding of what constitutes naval strength, Great Britain's navy until recently has remained a great potential force, becoming dynamic for only a few hours at Jutland, after which it returned to that mysterious northern base whence it seems to dominate ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... voice. "Any paper may have a sensation every day, if it wishes; but what I want is accuracy, otherwise our sheet has no real influence. When an article appears in the Bugle, I want our readers to understand that that article is true from beginning to end. I want not only sensation, but definiteness and not only definiteness, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... definiteness and simplicity about this description of poetry which may well make us wonder why this precious thing (producible, apparently, as easily as Pope's imitators supposed, although by means different from theirs) is not offered to us by more persons, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... from the open book of chance. That this was such a moment he had no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon it greater definiteness and drew in closer. Oppressed with his own impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled about. His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at level, glistened in the pale light of ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... mainly picturesque, and requires an ample background and perspective for its characteristic effect. There the mind is drawn more to objects; here, more to relations. The former, therefore, naturally detaches things as much as possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and definiteness of view; while the latter associates and combines them in the largest possible variety consistent with unity of interest and impression, so as to produce the effect of indefiniteness and mystery. Thus a Shakespearian drama is like a Gothic ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook. Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination. The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... that all the greatest painters had begun with a hard and precise manner, from which they had only broken after several years of effort; and that in like manner all the early schools were founded upon definiteness of outline to the exclusion of truth of effect. This may be true; but in my brother's case there was something even more unpromising than this; there was a commonness, so to speak, of mental execution, from ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Beowulf, Ermanaric, and Attila throws out the figures in strong relief. The mere extent of the stage and the number of the supernumeraries required for the action of most of the French stories appear to have told against the definiteness of their characters; as, on the other hand, the personages in Beowulf, without much individual character of their own, seem to gain in precision and strength from the smallness of the scene in which they act. There is less strict economy ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... or Process of intellectual investigation, the Inductive is far inferior to the true Deductive Method or Process, in all the essentials of a Scientific guide. The Inductive can give us only a high degree of precision and definiteness, with only proximate certainty for the future as the result of a slow mode of procedure; while the true Deductive Method gives us perfect precision, exactitude, and complete certainty, as the result of a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... crowded into three small volumes. But the saving of space is not by the sacrifice of substance or of style. The broadest view of the facts and forces embraced by the subject is exhibited with a clearness of arrangement and a definiteness of application that render it perceptible to the simplest ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... exercises, Dr. Rush observes:—"When the elements are pronounced singly, they may receive a concentration of organic effort, which gives them a clearness of sound, and a definiteness of outline, if I may so speak, at their extremes, that make a fine preparation for a distinct and forcible pronunciation of the compounds of speech." By elementary sounds is here meant the forty-two sounds of the language which are represented by the twenty-six letters ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the discoveries of Kirchhoff. Much had been previously accomplished; this he mastered, and then by the force of individual genius went beyond it. He replaced uncertainty by certainty, vagueness by definiteness, confusion by order; and I do not think that Newton has a surer claim to the discoveries that have made his name immortal, than Kirchhoff has to the credit of gathering up the fragmentary knowledge of his ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Lawson, the whole country is familiar enough with legislative corruption, so there's nothing new in your charge that the Legislature of Massachusetts was bought up. But what will attract national notice is the definiteness of your accusation. You charge H.M. Whitney, brother of the late W. C. Whitney, and one of the foremost business men of your State, with having done the corrupting in order to get through a complete ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... fineness. There is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has more definiteness and roundness of general conception than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... paintings are, as he used to call them, "anthems," brought forth by the intuitive man, the musician. This was the fundamental Watts. Whatever unity there be, is due rather to unity of inspiration than to strength or definiteness of character and accomplishment, and this was sometimes referred to by Watts as a golden thread passing through his life—a thread of good intention—which he felt would guide him through the labyrinth of distractions, mistakes, irritations, ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which others are to travel,—precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity;—the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... imagination of any one that he was descended from the dawn? Given the extremest credulity, joined with the wildest fancy, it would still seem requisite that the ancestor should be conceived as an entity; and the dawn is entirely without that definiteness and comparative constancy which enter into the conception of an entity. But when we remember that "the Dawn" is a natural complimentary name for a beautiful girl opening into womanhood, the genesis of the idea becomes, on ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... particular idea, if not a particular set of words, is associated with a particular musical phrase; the intention of the practice being clearly the same as that which is indicated in the passage just quoted, namely to add precision and definiteness to the vague emotional content of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... now with definiteness and certainty to determine in what sense the apostle in such connections uses the word "brother." It describes a relation inconsistent with and opposite to the servile. It is "NOT" the relation of a "SERVANT." ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... as was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony. Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact that they were, for the present, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... marvel of foreign observers. It mattered little in 1812 on which side the United States took its stand; in 1914 such a decision Mould inevitably determine the issue. Of all European statesmen there was one man who saw this point with a definiteness which, in itself, gives him a clear title to fame. That was Sir Edward Grey. The time came when a section of the British public was prepared almost to stone the Foreign Secretary in the streets of London, because they believed that his ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... music in expressing those sides of human emotion which lie too deep for verbal utterance, a function of which the gradual recognition led on to the invention of opera, is one that cannot be slighted or ignored; in it lies a power of appeal to feeling that no words can reach, and a very wonderful definiteness in conveying exact shades of emotional sensation. Not that it can of itself suggest the direction in which the emotions are to be worked upon; but this direction once given from outside, whether by a 'programme' read by the listener or by the action and accessories of the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... had expected to find within that mysterious room, they could not perhaps have explained with any definiteness. Once they stood within the threshold, however, they became slowly conscious of a vague disappointment. Here was nothing so very strange, after all! The room appeared to be in considerable disorder, and articles of clothing, books, and boyish ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... forget the first morning of my waking in my new abode. At this very moment it is as if I saw how the day dawned in the chamber; how all the objects gradually assumed, as it seemed to me, an unaccustomed definiteness. From the near church ascended the morning hymn with its pleasant serious melody, which attuned the soul to harmonious peace. I rose early; I had to care for house and children. All was cheerful and festival-like in my soul; a sweet emotion penetrated me like the enlivening ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... majority of the people of the United States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they put into popular convictions that until then were vague and inarticulate—convictions which, as has been well said, "went on broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a force sufficient to sustain the North and enable ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... are a good judge of character. You have a full development of language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when excited—that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... his steak, Steve observed the brooding eye of Culvera upon him. Faint suspicions, recollections too vague as yet for definiteness, were beginning to stir in the mind of the man. He had taken on the look of wariness, masked by a surface smile, that his face had worn the night of ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... "pot-boilers", "nothings that do mar the artist's hand;" if, like Poe, he could have struck some one vein and worked it for all it was worth, — if, in a word, the varied activity of his life could have given way to a certain definiteness of purpose and concentration of effort, what might have been the difference! Music and poetry strove for the mastery of his soul. Swinburne, speaking of those who attempt success in two realms of art, says, "On ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... monsters, on the other hand, may well have been an actual belief. All men are prone to believe in such marvels; and it is quite possible, as Niebuhr supposes, that some discoveries of the remains of mammoths and other monstrous forms embedded in the crust of the earth, may have given definiteness and prominency to the Chaldaean notions ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... definiteness is necessary, the periphrastic forms in -urus sim and -urus essem are employed, especially in clauses of Result, Indirect Questions, and after non ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... Treat Hilyar driving in a leisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at her compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural order of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the situation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me an interesting woman. She has opinions of her own, which she expresses clearly and firmly. I like her," responded Morgan with a definiteness of manner which suggested that he was not to be debarred by fear of banter from admitting that ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... realize that a piece is not assimilated nor learned until it is memorized. When they have selected the composition they wish to learn, they begin at once to memorize from the start. The student does not always bring to his work this definiteness of aim; if he did, much precious time would be saved. The ability to memorize ideas expressed in notes grows with use, just as any other aptitude grows with ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... to do my part without any too great display of my own disturbance. The clearness of my remarkable client's instructions, the definiteness with which her mind was made up as to the disposal of every dollar of her vast property, made it easy for me to master each detail and make careful note of every wish. But this did not prevent the ebb ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... a book of ultimate definiteness or a book of exact science. There is no definite or exact rule that will apply, without exceptions, to any ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... By the modern founder of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested motives of action are included under the same term, although they are commonly opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. The word happiness has not the definiteness or the sacredness of 'truth' and 'right'; it does not equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the comforts and conveniences of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... that we only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... skulls—one with the skin tight on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, looking unutterably weary—but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit. Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman, waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and other leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they should overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became darkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in the ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Vedic literature, in the so-called Brahmanas, and more particularly in what is called the Upanishads, or the Vedanta portion, these thoughts advance to perfect clearness and definiteness. Here the development of religious thought, which took its beginning in the hymns, attains to its fulfilment. The circle becomes complete. Instead of comprehending the One by many names, the many names are now comprehended to be the One. The old names are openly ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... repetition, and there is an increase of the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its intrinsic ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... said this for herself, with her characteristic definiteness of speech, had she not been out of touch with her publishers and foolscap paper. She and the Professor are on their Parnassus, somewhere on the high roads, happily engrossed in the most godly diversion known to ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... that the borough of Vondervotteimittiss has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... other groan, 'Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs.' She was as far removed from the plangent reverie of Rousseau as from the savage truculence of Swift. Intellectual training had given her the spirit of order and proportion, of definiteness and measure, and this marks her alike from the great sentimentalists and the sweeping satirists. 'Pity and fairness,' as she beautifully says (iii. 317), 'are two little words which, carried out, would embrace the utmost delicacies of the moral life.' But hers is ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... to speak with any degree of definiteness on this question. It must be borne in mind that the Mafulu people have been very little in touch with white people, the missionaries, who have only been there since 1905, and on rare occasions a Government official or scientific traveller, being almost the only white ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years old, mortals are ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with his purpose. There was no turning to the right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. He always hit the bull's-eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He was like a great burning-glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... northern rivers emptying into the Gulf of Carpentaria, of which nothing was previously known but their outlets, taken from the charts of the Dutch Navigators. It has also made known, with tolerable definiteness, how much, or rather, how little, of the "York Peninsula" is adapted for pastoral occupation, whilst its success in taking the first stock overland, and forming a cattle station at Newcastle Bay, has insured to the Settlement at Somerset a necessary and welcome supply ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... door; but with careful look at the priming of my rifle, I stepped forth into the open, and started down the slight slope leading to the river. A fringe of low, straggling trees hid my movements from observation by possible watchers along the southern bank; nor could I perceive with any definiteness what was going on there. The fires had died down somewhat, and I thought the savage yelling and ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... no such standards having universal validity, are there any that are valid within single geographical divisions? On what principle can we divide the earth into sections for economic purposes? These are some of the questions which must be answered if a theory of distribution is to have any definiteness of meaning, and they arise whenever we try to establish a static standard of any kind. If we talk about natural wages, we must know in how much of the world they are natural. The questions become even more urgent when we try to solve dynamic problems. We shall have to determine ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... see the invisible, diverted his unsettled attention. A new perception of how much he liked them and enjoyed having them with him, took hold of his thoughts. It had not occurred to him before, with any definiteness, that he would be insupportably lonely when the time came to ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... industrial monopoly, the problem now before us, there is a good deal of vagueness and misunderstanding because of lack of definiteness in the use of words which have rapidly shifted in meaning. The word "trust" originally applied, and still in legal usage applies, to a particular form of organization, that of a board of trustees holding the stock, and thus unifying the control, of two or more formerly ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... which time the velocity has abated to the value from which we supposed it to commence. We thus observe that the nearer the planet is to the sun the quicker it moves. We can, however, give numerical definiteness to the principle according to which the velocity of the planet varies. The adjoining figure (Fig. 39) shows a planetary orbit, with, of course, the sun at the focus S. We have taken two portions, A B and C D, round the ellipse, and joined their extremities to the focus. Kepler's ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... (diaries or what not) that used to keep him up, he had broken the habit now, whereas Captain Puffin had not. She took her poppy-bordered skirt over her arm, and smiled her thankful way to bed. She could allow herself to wonder with a little more definiteness, now that the Major's lights were out and he was abed, what it could be which rendered Captain Puffin so oblivious to the passage of time, when he was investigating Roman roads. How glad she was that the Major was not with him.... "Benjamin Flint!" she ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... to realize how much of the effect of a work of art inheres in the medium itself. Painting may be an aid to literature in that it helps us to more vivid images; the literary interpretation of pictures or music gives to the works with which it deals an intellectual definiteness. But the functions peculiar to each art are not to be ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any way useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its disciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... grandeur, genuine and convincing, began to express itself through the humble domestic exterior of her everyday self; at first, as though some greater personage towered shadowy behind her, but presently with a growing definiteness that showed it to be herself and nothing separate. The two, if two ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... substance may be volcanic powder or snow, in the form of minute ice crystals. Mr. Elger remarks of this theory that the "confused network of streaks" around Copernicus seems to respond to it more happily than the rays of Tycho do, because of the lack of definiteness of direction so manifest in the case of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as I have said, lacked definiteness. Yet, such as they were, they were sufficient to make me very excited and I shoved the thing quickly back ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... with a real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began to ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Causates, in respect of their Nature, or of the Subsistences, Vessels, and openings assigned to them; whereby the Single and Infinite Essence, being inclosed or comprehended in these limits, bounds, or externalnesses, takes on Itself Definiteness of dimension, and becomes Itself manifold, by the manifoldness of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones—when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now—perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be a transcendental language in the most extravagant sense. Possibly the power of literally distinguishing these "shades of abstraction"—these attributes paralleled by "artistic intuitions" (call them what you will)-is ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... was Grandier vulnerable, and that their only chance of success was to attack him where he was weakest. Almost at once, therefore, the vague reports which had been floating about began to attain a certain definiteness: there were allusions made, though no name was mentioned, to a young girl in Loudun; who in spite of Grandier's frequent unfaithfulness yet remained his mistress-in-chief; then it began to be whispered that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by the context. His swaying figure of the "Prelude to Rheingold" is as plainly water as is the same figure used by Mendelssohn in his "Lovely Melusina." Not that Wagner plagiarized, but that he and Mendelssohn recognized the definiteness of musical suggestions; which is more than proved by their adopting the same musical ideas to indicate ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... presently—" She rose again, unfurling her lace sunshade, as if to give a touch of definiteness to her action. "It's not, after all," she added, with a sweet frankness, "a case for argument, and still less for persuasion. My reasons are excellent—I should insist on putting them to you myself if they were not! But they're so good that I can ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... indictment, and contained the extended argument of a stump speech. Its one pervading thought, emphasized in resonant phrase, iterating and reiterating, "that reform is necessary," was an additional proof of its origin. But with all its effusiveness of expression, it lacked definiteness in the enunciation of principles. Only two or three propositions upon pending issues were explicitly set forth. It accepted the Constitutional Amendments; denounced "the present tariff levied upon nearly four thousand articles as a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense;" demanded ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... consciousness, gradually became less vague,—became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered,—something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... veritable shadow-land where men have not the joys of life, but only the shadow of the joy. Hence, says the Tschwi proverb, "One day in this world is worth a year in Srahmandazi." The Tschwis, with their usual definiteness in this sort of detail, know all about their Srahmandazi. Its entrance is just east of the middle Volta, and the way down is difficult to follow, and when the sun sets on this world it rises on Srahmandazi. The Bantus ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... changed, though less changed very likely than any other country. A certain self-sufficiency that was very marked about French life will have sloughed away. I expect an opening of the doors, a toleration of other tastes and standards, a softening of the too narrow definiteness of ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... is still confused. Once "the West" described the whole region beyond the Alleghanies; but the term has hopelessly lost its definiteness. The rapidity of the spread of settlement has broken down old usage, and as yet no substitute has been generally accepted. The "Middle West" is a term variously used by the public, but for the purpose of ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Teeny Tiny, or The Old Woman and Her Pig, will the repetitive passages be an aid to verbal expression. The child learns to follow the sequence of a story and gains a sense of order. He catches the note of definiteness from the tale, which thereby clarifies his thinking. He gains the habit of reasoning to consequences, which is one form of a perception of that universal law which rules the world, and which is one of the biggest ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... being carried on by day and by night. No contracts were made for the delivery of work at certain times; everything was done under the direct supervision of the Syndicate and its subordinates, and the work went on with a definiteness and rapidity hitherto ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... problem which can be solved only by a study of the interests and capacities of the children. These interests vary so greatly and make their appearance at such diverse periods in different individuals and in the two sexes, that it is a difficult matter to say with any definiteness just what qualities of literature appeal to children at any particular age. Moreover, the children's environment and previous experiences have a great deal to do in determining these interests and capacities. There are, however, certain characteristics of different ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... OF INTELLIGENCE. Before we can interpret the results of an examination it is necessary to know how frequently an I Q of the size found occurs among unselected children. Our tests of 1000 unselected children enable us to answer this question with some degree of definiteness. A study of these 1000 I Q's shows ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... instead of purifying the Romish Church from its corruptions had only reduced the latter to greater definiteness and precision, and invested them with the sanction of authority. All the subtilties of its teaching, all the arts and usurpations of the Roman See, which had hitherto rested more on arbitrary usage, were now passed into laws and raised into a system. The uses and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... lay almost at her feet. And then someone took her by the arm—she thought it was Uncle Jepson—and she was led toward the door. At the threshold she paused, for Randerson's voice, cold and filled with deadly definiteness, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... develop on its own lines without the criticism of the other two. What a special providence gave the easy-going Englishman a northern neighbour to lecture him on German metaphysics in his own tongue and compel him to the definiteness which he instinctively detests. Without Scotland as a link, the connexion between English and German thought would hardly have been effective and continuous, and it was a Scotsman who aroused the greatest of German metaphysicians—himself of Scottish ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... crossroads a vague sense of change struck him. The roads were better. There was an odd little building near the yellow house. It was the new school, but of that Northrup had not heard. From the distance the chapel bell sounded. It did not have that lost, weird note that used to mark it—there was definiteness about it that suggested a human hand ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... other hand, Bright and Forster were to an exceptional degree responsible for the general trend of the Government policy. The dissolution and election had turned with more than usual definiteness on a clear issue—the proposal to conciliate Ireland by disestablishing the privileged Church of the minority; and behind this immediate proposal lay a less clearly defined scheme for giving security of tenure to Irish tenants. Ireland ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the mental life and development of children reveals at the same time the unity and the diversity of the process involved. For the sake of definiteness and clearness, the authors have differentiated between types of mental activity and the corresponding types of classroom exercises. They have, at the same time, sought to make clear the interdependence of the various aspects of teaching method and the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Biographic Sketches which she contributed to a London newspaper. They have since been collected in a single volume, now in its fourth edition. They are masterpieces in the style of the vignette. Their conciseness, their clearness in fact, their definiteness in judgment, and above all, the rightly graduated impression of the writer's own personality in the background, make them perfect in their kind. There is no fretting away of the portrait in over-multiplicity of lines and strokes. Here more than anywhere else ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... more definiteness of thought than ever before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little mother—Marguerite was an inch the taller—kept hid in that dear breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible heavings at the time of her father's death, and the later ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... in the strongest groups. We shall see, in the cases to be presented, that incest has a wider definition and a stricter compulsion in great tribes, and in prosperity or wealth, than in small groups and poverty. The definiteness of this taboo, and the strictness with which it is enforced, seem to be correlative with the energy of the tribal discipline in general and the vigor of the collective life of the group. Wives can be got abroad, either by capture or contract, only by those who command ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... mother of Ab, and such was the boy himself. His surroundings have not been indicated with all the definiteness desirable, because of the lack of certain data, but, in a general way, the degree of his birth, the manner of his rearing and the natural aspects of his estate have been described. That the young man had a promising future could not admit of doubt. He was the first-born of an important family ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... government, this theory is sufficiently familiar to everybody. It has been elaborated in endless detail, and has expressed itself in the constitutions of all modern democracies. What Karl Marx did, and did for the first time, was to invest this theory of the all-efficiency of the majority with a definiteness, in respect of distribution of wealth, similar to that with which it had been invested already in respect of the making of laws and the dictation of ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... the general sense of lacking strength or effectiveness, covers a wide range of meaning, signifying overcome with physical weakness or exhaustion, or lacking in purpose, courage, or energy, as said of persons; or lacking definiteness or distinctness of color or sound, as said of written characters, voices, or musical notes. A person may be faint when physically wearied, or when overcome with fear; he may be a faint adherent because naturally feeble or purposeless, or because half-hearted ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... natures would not have kindled with so sudden a flash. The torch is passed on to those only whose hands are outstretched to receive it. To read with the imagination, one must take time to let the figures reform in his own mind; he must see them with great distinctness and realise them with great definiteness. Benjamin Franklin tells us, in that Autobiography which was one of our earliest and remains one of our most genuine pieces of writing, that when he discovered his need of a larger vocabulary he took some of the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity—nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... little better than rough guesses. Long before the definite estimates were undertaken, geologists had proved that the earth is very, very old, and it can hardly be said that the attempted computations have added much of definiteness to that proposition. They have, indeed, proved that the period of time to be drawn upon is not infinite; but the nebular hypothesis, to say nothing of common-sense, carried us as far as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... been quite able to make up my mind with any degree of definiteness in regard to the sanity of my son Noah. In many respects he is a fine fellow. His moral character is beyond reproach, and I have never caught him in any kind of a wilful deception such as many parents bewail in their offspring, and I ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... have yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle had made the small Felicia recite them over and over until she ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... greatest and best of which he was capable, he needed a certain amount of time before his completely developed individuality, to which his poetic genius was indissolubly united, could reach that point of clearness and definiteness of expression which he demanded ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... priests and scribes, and be put to death, and rise again on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus. It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such definiteness his approaching death; nor is it very likely that he entertained any hope of being raised from the grave "on the third day." To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the lower ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... his going gave her a sharp pang of prospective loneliness. "I know you must return to your work," she said, slowly, "but I shall feel very helpless without you," and the voicing of her dependence upon him added definiteness and power ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... of his system is indeed what gives us our resultant impression of the philosopher, but it is on the resultant impression itself that we react. Expertness in philosophy is measured by the definiteness of our summarizing reactions, by the immediate perceptive epithet with which the expert hits such complex objects off. But great expertness is not necessary for the epithet to come. Few people have definitely articulated ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... perfectly remembered. We remember, indeed, the temperature of one day as distinguished from that of another; we remember the sound of a voice; we can conceive, in its absence, the odor or the taste of a particular object; but none of these ideas come to us with that definiteness and perfection which mark our recollections of what we have seen. It requires, for instance, but ordinary powers of attention and perception, for a person who has one good look at a house, to recall distinctly ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... animal life, that has in the end made him a warlike creature. Man does seem to be a creature of feelings rather than of instincts as far back as we find much account of him, and to be characterized rather by the weakness and variability of his instincts than by their definiteness. It is quite likely, too, that man never was at any stage a herd animal; in fact it seems certain that he was not, and that his instincts were formed long before he began to live in large groups at ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... on, John seemed to take a more personal delight in life than he had done before. He forgot his ancient prejudices if not his ancient ideals, and, as was characteristic of him, he avoided thinking with any definiteness on the nature of the new life into which he was to enter soon. His neighbours declared he was very much improved; and there were dinner parties at Thornby Place. One of his great pleasures was to start ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... question of self-government for Ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations.... When I look back to those declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when I look back to the increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the tone ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... uniforms, the directness, alertness, and definiteness of these officers who had been with a fleet ready for a year to go into battle on a minute's notice, was in keeping with their surroundings of decks cleared for action and the absence of anything which did not suggest that hitting a target was ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... it cannot be helped, for it is part of the restoration. Poland must have access to the sea by the shortest route, and everything else which that implies." None the less, the British Premier, whose attitude toward the claims of the Poles was marked by a degree of definiteness and persistency which could hardly be anticipated in one who had never even heard of Teschen before the year 1919, maintained his objections with emphasis and insistence, until Mr. Wilson ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... up at the corners. There was little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness of outline in the piquant features, not often found in ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... recently that these principles have begun to shape themselves with any definiteness; the children's department, as a fully equipped miniature library, and the children's librarian, as a specialist bringing natural fitness and special preparation to her work, are essentially the product of today; but they have ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... part carried on with people who don't know their own minds and apparently are least likely to take an eligible residence when they most profess satisfaction with it. Be that as it may, house agents' offices in general have a want of definiteness unknown to, say, banks or pawnbrokers'. There is no exact spot for you to stand or sit; you are unaware as to which of the clerks is going to attend to you, and the odds are heavy that the one you approach will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... ratiocination are at all alike. They are again distinguished by the combination subsisting among their constituent changes. The acts that make up digestion are mutually dependent; as are those which compose a train of reasoning. Once more, they differ in being characterised by definiteness. Assimilation, respiration, and circulation, are definitely interdependent. These characterisations not only mark off the vital from the non-vital, but also creatures of high vitality from those of low vitality. Hence our formula reads thus:—Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... ideal, which we cannot describe with greater definiteness, we are bound to recognise that GOODNESS is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our present puzzles ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... another half-step and laid her hand upon the gate-latch with a movement whose definiteness did not ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... is to survive throughout a Communist revolution, a number of conditions must be fulfilled which are not, at present, fulfilled anywhere. Consider, for the sake of definiteness, what would happen if a Communist revolution were to occur in England to-morrow. Immediately America would place an embargo on all trade with us. The cotton industry would collapse, leaving about five million of the most productive portion of the population idle. The food supply would ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... is interpreted in comparative terms, that is, with respect to the special traits of child and adult life, means the direction of power into special channels: the formation of habits involving executive skill, definiteness of interest, and specific objects of observation and thought. But the comparative view is not final. The child has specific powers; to ignore that fact is to stunt or distort the organs upon which his growth depends. The adult uses his powers to transform his environment, thereby ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... arranged for convenience of discussion. It goes to the root of conduct and character, and is the key to the present mood of our society. It is always a hardy thing to attempt to throw a complex matter into very simple form, but we should say that the want of energy and definiteness in contemporary opinions, of which we first complained, is due mainly to the following notion; that if a subject is not ripe for practical treatment, you and I are therefore entirely relieved from the duty of having clear ideas about it. If the majority cling to an opinion, why should ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... The election for the pontificate was on the 6th of March, and soon after Caesar received a further evidence of popular favor on being chosen praetor for the next year. As the liberal party was growing in courage and definiteness, Cicero showed himself more decidedly on the other side. Now was the time for him, highly placed as he was, to prevent a repetition of the scandals which he had so eloquently denounced, to pass laws which no future Verres or Lucullus ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... priest's office (Shaman, Shamanism) consist here chiefly in the use of charms, to exorcise a dreaded power. From this savage fetichism the nature-worship found among the Aztecs in Mexico, and the worship of the sun in Peru, are distinguished by the greater definiteness and order of their religious conceptions and usages. In them the gods have names, and an ordained priesthood cares for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... with indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definiteness.' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons |
