"Indefiniteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He pardoned her indefiniteness, for when she paused and hesitated she pressed her lips to his, and that assurance was enough ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... reply, the judges gave such a halting opinion in favor of the king's policy as to remind us of the reluctant verdict wrung from the physicians and lawyers of Mecca on the occasion of coffee's first persecution.[81] "The English lawyers, in language which, for its civility and indefiniteness," says Robinson, "would have been the envy of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of genius," Keats himself has said, "are as great as certain ethereal chemicals, operating in a mass of created matter: but they have not any determined character." That indefiniteness of literary aim—that want of willpower, without which genius is a curse, which have hampered the young man all along—are now still further emphasised by the restlessness of a passionate lover. John Keats cannot stay indoors this fine May morning, "fitting himself for verses fit to live," ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... She did not express the hope of seeing me again, and for some obscure reason, buried in the mysteries of love's psychology, I dared not express the hope to her. And so we parted, with a thousand things unsaid, on a note of ineffectuality, of suspense, of vague indefiniteness. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... space they opened up with their aloofness and indefiniteness, until, alas! they took concrete shape when chosen as title to the picture of a robust, Royal Academy, Fed-on-Virol looking babe, which doubtless, when trying to grab some passing Olympian butterfly, fell off the lap of ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... an offender. In another OPA case, the Court ruled that in a criminal prosecution, a price regulation was subject to the same rule of strict construction as a statute, and that omissions from, or indefiniteness in, such a regulation, could not be cured by ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... unbridled excess and violence. As a result of this widespread unpopularity, a rebellion was organized, including almost the whole of the baronage of England, guided by the counsels of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and supported by the citizens of London. The indefiniteness of feudal relations was a constant temptation to kings and other lords to carry their exactions and demands upon their tenants to an unreasonable and oppressive length. Henry I, on his accession in 1100, in order to gain popularity, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... country than his superstitious predecessor Ludwig I. Priding himself on being a German Prince, Ludwig would not tolerate the interference of the Roman party with the political affairs of Bavaria.] The Jesuit notion does not err on the score of indefiniteness. According to it, the Power whom Goethe does not dare to name, and whom Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell present to us under the guise of a 'Manufacturer' of atoms, turns out annually, for England and Wales alone, a quarter of a million of new souls. Taken in connection with the dictum of Mr. Carlyle, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... opposite to him at the table; and that the man was not too ill to appear as a guest. The "took him and healed him and let him go," of our translation, is against the notion rather, but merely from its indefiniteness being capable of meaning that he sent him away; but such is not the meaning of the original. That merely implies that he took him, went to him and laid his hands upon him, thus connecting the cure with himself, and then released him, set him ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... writing the early history of Ireland, one of the greatest difficulties which the historian—great or small—has to encounter is to be found in that curious unreality, that tantalizing sense of illusiveness and indefiniteness which seems to envelope every figure whose name crops up on his pages. Even four hundred years later the name of a really great prince and warrior like Brian Boru, or Boruma, awakens no particular sense ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... to meet the consequences. This Colonel Burr deemed a sort of defiance, and would have felt justified in making it the basis of an immediate message; but, as the communication contained something concerning the indefiniteness of the request; as he believed it rather the offspring of false pride than of reflection; and as he felt the utmost reluctance to proceed to extremities while any other hope remained, his request was repeated in terms more explicit. The replies ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... women are gracious, delicious masks; his men cover many octaves in virility and variety. That he is extremely short-sighted has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of this fact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineates passion as a psychologist; and while ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... conception of species rests on a subjective abstraction and has a merely relative value—like the conception of genus, family, order, class, &c.—no class of animals is of so much importance as that of the Sponges. In it the fluctuating forms vary with such unexampled indefiniteness and variability as to make all distinction of species quite illusory. Oscar Schmidt has already pointed this out in the siliceous sponges and keratose sponges; and I, in my monograph, in three volumes, on the ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... some agonising hours; but he could not forget the angelic resignation with which her own affliction had been borne, and the soothing converse by which his had been alleviated. This train of thought was pursued till his aching mind sunk into indefiniteness. He sat for some little time almost unconscious of existence, till the crying of a child, waked by its father's return, brought him back to the present scene. His thoughts naturally ran to his friend Eugene. Surely this youthful bridegroom might reckon ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... period, without attempting to excuse the arbitrary stretch of authority, one would have chafed, I suppose, under the injustice, but still submitted, as it is the duty of manhood to submit to any inevitable necessity. It was the doubt and indefiniteness of the whole affair that made it so inexpressibly exasperating. It was bad enough to have no palpable adversary to grapple with: it was worse to have no specific charge. As I had contravened a general order by crossing the Federal lines without ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... people was not well adapted for the particular task. If the only question to-day were whether we always rendered ourselves intelligible to her, she might say with some show of reason that we did not. She might have grumbled, as Bismarck used to do, over our apparent indefiniteness. But that indefiniteness in policy was only apparent. Its form was due to the habit of mind which was, what it always has been and probably always will be, the habit of mind of the people of these islands. It was the defect of her qualities that prevented Germany from understanding ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... unexpectedness—of novelty—of originality—call it what we will—and all that is ethereal in loveliness is lost at once.... We lose, in short, all that assimilates the beauty of earth with what we dream of the beauty of heaven!' And, as another of the elements of this creation of beauty, there must be indefiniteness. 'I know,' he says, 'that indefiniteness is an element of the true music—I mean of the true musical expression. Give to it any undue decision—imbue it with any very determinate tone—and you deprive it at once of its ethereal, its ideal, its intrinsic and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... expressing feelings which the common man scarcely experiences without a sense of shame. The poet came to be essentially the man who felt acutely, and anything that was a "feeling" came to have a sort of value of its own as denoting poetic sensitiveness. Hence the excessive softness, the indefiniteness, the languishing and the effeminacy which since the beginning of the nineteenth century have been tolerated in poetry because poetry was supposed to be the proper vehicle for such weakness. It ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people who formerly lived throughout the Mississippi Valley and raised the mounds of that region. It should also be clearly ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... persons assemble, but they do so in a manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwards they all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; but again the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And this indefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, for example, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging' of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whether Edgar is mad that he should return from his hollow tree ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... feature, or characteristic of the great mother. The various epithets of Demeter, the local variations of her story, its incompatible incidents, bear witness to the manner of its generation. They illustrate that indefiniteness which is characteristic of Greek mythology, a theology with no central authority, no link on historic time, liable from the first to an unobserved transformation. They indicate the various, far-distant spots from which the visible ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... existence are 'writ large' in the records, if they are studied with philosophic closeness and insight, and could be illustrated in many ways had we only time and space for such an exercise. But we must hurry on to remark that Mr. Finlay's indefiniteness in the use of the terms 'Greece' and 'Grecian' is almost equalled by his looseness in dealing with institutions and the principles which determined their character. He dwells meditatively upon that tenacity of life which he finds to characterize ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... sulphocyanate when the assay is nearly, but not quite, finished; and the slowness with which this is removed on shaking up with the precipitate. This is worse with large quantities of precipitate, and if about 1 gram of silver is present, it gives an indefiniteness to the finish which lowers the precision of the process to about 1 in 500; this is useless for the assays of bullion. One writer states that this inconvenience is due to portions of liquid being entangled in the precipitate, ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... is somewhat indefinite, it is true, but its indefiniteness is the chief element in the value of it. A definite and precise answer, even if one of that character were ready at hand, would be utterly ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of a clear evening the harbour gathers to itself the additional charm of mysterious indefiniteness, and among the long-drawn-out reflections appear sinuous lines of yellow light beneath the lamps by the bridge. Looking towards the ocean from the outer harbour, one sees the massive arms which Whitby has ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... the various manifestations of the "Church-Union Movement." Although loose thinking and indefiniteness of purpose characterize most of these various moves, a close analysis reveals two different underlying principles which support and explain them. As an Anglican clergyman stated: "There are two courses open, uniting on points of agreement ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... indefiniteness," says Mr. Fallow, "as to the characters represented in the play, but usually they were the King of Egypt, his daughter, a fool or jester, St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, St. David, St. Denys, St. James, and a St. Thewhs, who represented ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... squirrel which is clinging to the limb of a tree, and if, as the man circles the tree, the squirrel also circles the tree so that he constantly faces the man, when the man has gone completely around the tree, has he gone around the squirrel? Here the indefiniteness lies in the meaning of to "go around." With this indefiniteness remedied, there is no longer any possibility of difference ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... the child (fulfillment of the wish to be himself the father, as above). The elders are acquainted only with figurative language ("Similitudines," "Figmenta," etc.); but the wanderer is well informed in practical life, in experience he is an adept. As a fact, parents in their indefiniteness about the question, Where do babies come from? give a figurative answer (however appropriate it may be as a figure of speech) in saying that the stork brings them, while the child expects clear information (from experience). On the propriety ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... persons on board, our voyage up these wide straits, after entering them at Point de Tour, had, in point of indefiniteness, been something like searching after the locality of the north pole. We wound about among groups of islands and through passages which looked so perfectly in the state of nature that, but for a few ruinous stone chimneys on St. Joseph's, it could not be told that the foot of man had ever trod the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... shut the door altogether. He gives a sop to his conscience to stop its barking, and he probably deceives himself as to the gravity of his present decision by the lightly given promise and its well-guarded indefiniteness, 'When I have a convenient season I will send for thee.' The thing he really means is—Not now, at all events; the thing he hoodwinks himself with is— By and by. Now that is what I know that some of you are doing; and my purpose and earnest prayer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... as often I have asked myself, a question: Have these modern girls not lost much of the tender, waiting, indefiniteness of youth? I have seen so many among them who, to me at least, appear at odds with the world, and their passionate, unbalanced and over-excited natures. Their faces at sixteen, fifteen, and even at fourteen years, already are old, with ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... final organization by Nicholas V. in 1447. It is difficult to speak with certainty concerning the libraries, whether public or private, supposed to have existed previous to the fifteenth century, both on account of the doubtful authority and indefiniteness of the passages in which they are mentioned, and the custom which so readily obtained in those dark ages of dignifying with the name of library every petty collection of insignificant codices. But many libraries of the fifteenth century being in existence, and others having been ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... good, but only in the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after life." * Like nine out of ten men who look back on college he could make no definite estimate of the actual gains from those four years; but it is precisely the indefiniteness, the elusiveness of the college experience which marks its worth. This is not to be reckoned financially by an increase in dollars and cents, or intellectually, by so many added foot-pounds of knowledge. Harvard College was of inestimable ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and the challenge of the sentries. But through the stormy days and the heavy nights Nature is always busy in producing a rapidity and profusion of growth which would turn Malacca into a jungle were it not for axe and billhook, but her work does not jar upon the general silence. Yet with all this indefiniteness, dreaminess, featurelessness, indolence, and silence, of which I have attempted to convey an idea, Malacca is very fascinating, and no city in the world, except Canton, will leave so vivid an impression upon me, though it may be but of a ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... themes of the keenest personal interest, the life of the world we live in. It is herein that he excels! His knowledge is wide, his sympathies are many-sided, his power of exposition is unsurpassed. No one has set before us the mind of our time, with its half-lights, its shadowy vistas, its indefiniteness, its haze on the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... temporarily monotheistic force, through the modifications or corrections supplied by the context or even by the same verse [Footnote Ref 3]. "Henotheism is therefore an appearance," says Macdonell, "rather than a reality, an appearance produced by the indefiniteness due to undeveloped anthropomorphism, by the lack of any Vedic god occupying the position of a Zeus as the constant head of the pantheon, by the natural tendency of the priest or singer in extolling a particular god to exaggerate his greatness ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... proclaims the divine will that all who sit in darkness shall be enlightened, and that every night but prepares the way for the freshness and stir of a new morning. The great prophecy of these verses in its indefiniteness goes far beyond its immediate occasion in the state of Judah under Ahaz. As surely as the dawn floods all lands, so surely shall all who walk in darkness see the great light; and wherever is a 'land of the shadow of death,' there shall the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... which was at length brought about is remarkable for its indefiniteness. The English promised that they would not support the rebellious subjects and enemies of the King of Spain; and it was arranged that an unrestricted trade should again be opened with all countries, with which it had been carried on before the war. At the first glance ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in Brussels in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons of diverse ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 cathedral, which, by its complexity of structure, while catching the eye would fain lift the thoughts to something greater and better than the world, making the beholder feel his littleness, and even its own littleness, comparison ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... I touched Auber on the shoulder. He did not move. An intuition, growing till it all but became an idea, and then remaining short of expressibility, unable to perceive even its own indefiniteness—a film for impressions where there is no light—such was the vagueness of my guess concerning the metamorphosis that was taking place. Yet I began to understand that Auber Hurn, the real man, was not there, not on the bed, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus, the alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object and action. The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating the special act of sucking; afterwards it acquires indefiniteness. Such is the real nature of the distinction between what are called instincts and reason, upon which so many volumes ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... dwelt long on this preliminary stage because it is only in it that treatment is likely to be of any service, while the very indefiniteness of the symptoms constantly leads to their being overlooked, or referred to teething, or thought at any rate to be a mere temporary ailment for which it is not worth while ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... in a certain sense, he is so; and it is his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!—no. The essence of all artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you an illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off range of hills, from the sides of which thick clouds ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. Often the effect is very successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. Too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... to reconcile herself to her disappointment and the indefiniteness of her father's return, in the thought that if her meeting with him was deferred, why, so was her parting ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann |
