"Looseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relation, and none that proved afterward. What he had seen at the corner of Palace Square nearest the Vistula was not the face of a Latin woman, nor was any looseness of common birth evident in it. The key might have had to do with the little hat she wore, just a hat for wearing on the head, a protection against sun and rain, and with the austerely simple black dress; ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... who know 'tis generally allowed, that the Infidelity and Looseness of the Age is very much owing to the Play-Houses; who have observed, that the Zeal of particular Persons have decreased, and their Strictness of Life abated, by their going to Plays; and do think that ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... certainty the public so much admires, and rightly so. The golden mean should be observed; between undue tension, which implies inability to control, whether it be in the larynx or the breathing apparatus, and a looseness inconsistent with neat and certain results, the voice-producer must choose, with that common sense so indispensable to success in all undertakings, but which will never be adequately encouraged till students look more frequently for the reasons of the procedures ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... critics point out that he pays for the first offence by losing his post, and for the second by nearly losing his life. They are quite entitled to do so, though the careful reader will not forget Iago's part in these transactions. But they ought also to point out that Cassio's looseness does not in the least disturb our confidence in him in his relations with Desdemona and Othello. He is loose, and we are sorry for it; but we never doubt that there was 'a daily beauty in his life,' or that his rapturous admiration ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... unwearied industry with the pen. His official communications and his ordinary correspondence Page dictated; but his personal letters he wrote with his own hand. He himself deplored the stenographer as a deterrent to good writing; the habit of dictating, he argued, led to wordiness and general looseness of thought. Practically all the letters published in these volumes were therefore the painstaking work of Page's own pen. His handwriting was so beautiful and clear that, in his editorial days, the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... inherent in most Eastern books of the description which we call "light literature," and the ancestral tale-teller never collects a larger purse of coppers than when he relates the worst of his "aurei." But this looseness, resulting from the separation of the sexes, is accidental, not necessary. The following collection will show that it can be dispensed with, and that there is such a thing as comparative purity in Hindu literature. The author, indeed, almost always ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... almost constant effort. Right at this point is where perhaps more Christians have failed to do what was required of them than at any other; and consequently experience less joy and power than formerly. There are many things employed by Satan to weaken this consciousness of God. Looseness of thought, moments of idleness, or yieldings to self, serve to weaken the reverential feeling in our hearts toward him. A little attention to the world, a little thought for the morrow, a little anxiety, a little too much talking,—these things destroy the consciousness ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... from pulpit duties, that if he were a layman he should watch with more anxiety and carefulness than laymen do the relations that exist between pastors and the women of their flock. I do not understand this as a statement that there is any general looseness of conduct among the clergy at all; but as one which covers a kind of impropriety for which there is no name and no punishment. There are women whose affection for their husbands is uprooted through their intercourse with their pastors. There ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... meet with a series of short notices which arrest attention, in the surroundings they are in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religious chronological framework is regularly filled in with them (e.g. 1Kings xiv.-xvi.); their loose connection and neutral tone made it specially easy for later editors to interweave with ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... reason why the novel is still held to be inferior to the drama is to be found in its looseness of form. The novel is not strictly limited, as the play must be by the practical necessities of the theater; and the practitioners of the art of fiction permit themselves a license of structure which cannot but be enfeebling ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... first, in putting on a proper bandage on the belly, so that it can be tightened or relaxed with ease, as a tightish under waistcoat, with a double row of buttons. This is to compress the bowels and increase their absorption, and it thus removes one principal cause of corpulency, which is the looseness of the skin. Secondly, he should omit one entire meal, as supper; by this long abstinence from food the absorbent system will act on the mucus and fat with greater energy. Thirdly, he should drink as little as he can with ease to his sensations; since, if the absorbents of the stomach and bowels ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in language which approaches theirs and yet differs from it, as they also resemble yet differ from one another, we do not escape from the circle of uncertainty, and we conclude either that the early Fathers made quotations with a looseness irreconcileable with the idea that the language of the Gospels possessed any verbal sacredness to them, or that there were in their times other narratives of our Lord's life standing in the same relation to the three ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... policy, in confining us in a loathsome prison. The Britons know, probably, that a long and lingering imprisonment weakens the body, and diminishes the energy of the mind; that it disposes to vice, to a looseness of thought, and a destruction of those moral principles inculcated by a careful and early education.—Such a sink of vice I never saw, nor ever dreamt of, as I have seen here. Never was a juster saying than this;—"Evil communications corrupt good manners." One vicious fellow may ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... humiliation or distress of mind. Thus, he will often give a costly feast to impress his neighbours with his wealth and maintain his local prestige, whilst on all sides he has debts innumerable. At most, with his looseness of morality, he regards debt as an inconvenience, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... peace has caused to overflow. Beneath it all I know there is a strata of the Magnificent, but the surface-ground is weedier than ever. I am not a prude (I think!), but the eternally amusement-seeking and irresponsible lives led by many of the rich, and the really appalling looseness of morals now being led by girls without a qualm, bode very seriously ill for the future of that New World which we were promised the war would make safe for—well, I believe we were told it was to be Democracy, but the Government official and the profiteer still seem the most firmly dug in of us ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... have received, if the design had been carried out in the peace of England and in the society of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in which it grew up greatly affected it. This may possibly account, though it is questionable, for the looseness of texture, and the want of accuracy and finish which is sometimes to be seen in it. Spenser was a learned poet; and his poem has the character of the work of a man of wide reading, but without books to verify or correct. It cannot be doubted that his life in Ireland ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... field he had to toil there all day until the sun went down. He and his fellow slaves had to work in all types of weather, good as well as bad. Although the master or the overseer were not as cruel as some he had heard of they tolerated no looseness of work and in case a person was suspected of loafing the whip was applied freely. Although he was never whipped, he has heard the whip being applied to his mother any number of times. It hurt him, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... in the looseness of this gentleman's character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... this will keep us from being offended with the loose and blotted handling of David Cox. There is no other means by which his object could be attained. The looseness, coolness, and moisture of his herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his broad-leaved weeds; the play of pleasant light across his deep heathered moor or plashing sand; the melting of fragments of white mist into the dropping blue above; all this has not been fully recorded except by ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... livers." By pouring a pint of boiling water on a handful of the plant—stems, flowers and leaves—an [19] excellent gargle may be made for a relaxed throat; and a teacupful of the same infusion may be taken cold three or four times in the day for simple looseness of the bowels; also for passive losses of blood. In France, Agrimony tea is drank as a beverage at table. This herb formed an ingredient of the genuine arquebusade water, as prepared against wounds inflicted by an arquebus, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... degree of egoism. It is possible, for example, for the aesthetic instincts, when not kept aglow by the sympathetic, or hardened with an alloy of the scientific, to evolve a peculiar form of selfishness which leads at last to looseness of life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... by a narrow and precipitous path. Their task was continued with no little difficulty, by reason of the looseness of the soil, and the huge rocks that obstructed their progress. By dint of scrambling, rather than walking, they, however, approached to the summit, when a light became visible over the hill, growing brighter as they ascended. It ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Madv. on D.F. III. 67 notices a certain looseness in the use of tenses, which Cic. displays in narrating the opinions of philosophers, but no ex. so strong as this is produced. Ut aut approbet quid aut improbet: this Halm rejects. I have noticed among recent editors of Cic. a strong tendency to reject explanatory clauses introduced by ut. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Rome. He was born at Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year 157 B.C. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha[4] was there, and made himself especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily upward, by his mere ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... measures, gave offence to the Lieutenant Governor, who considered these censures as manifesting a want of respect for himself. Sometimes he coarsely termed them impertinent; and at other times, charged him with looseness in his information, and inattention to his duty. On one of these occasions, Colonel Washington thus concluded a letter of detail, "Nothing remarkable has happened, and therefore I have nothing to add. I must beg leave, however, before I conclude, to observe, in justification ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... extempore, replied: By two arguments. The first I draw from the practice of physicians, for when their patients' stomachs grow very weak, they prescribe no hot things, and yet give them wine as an excellent remedy. Besides, they stop looseness and immoderate sweating by wine; and this shows that they think it more binding and constipating than snow itself. Now if it were potentially hot, I should think it as wise a thing to apply fire to snow ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... doubtful, at what he doesn't know. And first under that head come the arts; they have no existence for him or his friends. A play or a book pleases him or it doesn't, he approves of its limiting conventional morals, or violently condemns what he thinks is looseness, and that's the extent ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... county official quoted above, "a great part of the shortcomings of county officials and a great deal of the looseness which prevails in the management of county affairs can be charged to the citizen people themselves." Another ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... Ernest's beautiful plane seemed to sparkle with preparedness. He went over it bolt by bolt, nuts, screws, wires, and wings passing under his careful and critical eye. He looked at and tested the tension of the wires, the swing of the rudder, the looseness of the ailerons. Satisfied at last that everything was perfectly in tune, he turned and gave a critical glance ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... stories during the past few years may have observed with interest at rare intervals the work of Mr. Hutchison. In it there was always a promise of an achievement not unlike that of Perceval Gibbon, but a certain looseness of texture prevented Mr. Hutchison from being completely persuasive. In "Journey's End," however, it must be confessed that he has written a memorable sea story that is certainly equal at least to the better stories ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and falsehood below personal impurity? Yet is he to be understood as intimating, in this phase of his argument, that unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other vice than falsehood, is to be preferred, in practice, over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against a would-be murderer?[1] The looseness of Dr. Smyth's logic, as indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which are put forward in excuse for common ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... is not guesswork, not looseness, and not error. The process of approximation is as exact and correct at every point as that by which an absolute result is secured; the result only fails of exactness because of some inherent difficulty in the problem. The attempt to "square the circle" gives only an approximate result, because ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... five per cent. These are called "salted horses," and are very valuable; as, although they are not proof against the disease, they are not so liable to take it. A salted horse may be known by the peculiar looseness and roughness of his skin, and also by a certain unmistakable air of depression, as though he felt that the responsibilities of life pressed very heavily upon him. He is like a man who has dearly bought his experience; he can ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty of manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... and Necrosis.—Caries is a word which appears to be used with a considerable amount of looseness. In addition to the meaning implied by necrosis (namely, 'death' of the part), caries is generally used to indicate that there is also a condition of rottenness, decay, and stench. It is particularly applied, in fact, when the death of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... work of the house or relatives, rather than the act of the wife, who was not "a person" in the case. Indeed, in the olden time a woman was not a person in the eye of the law, but rather a chattel. The case is somewhat different under the new codes,[26] but the looseness of the marriage tie is still a scandal to thinking Japanese. Since the breaking up of the feudal system and the disarrangement of the old social and moral standards, the statistics made annually from the official census show that the ratio ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... slightly clouded on the sides, his feet alone and a spot over each eye being of a full tawny or bright brown hue. He has the broad short truncated muzzle of the mastiff, and the lips are still more deeply pendulous. There is also a singular general looseness of the skin on every part ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... feature of the Bethel and Aurora communities is the looseness of the bond which keeps the people together. They might break up at any time; but they have remained in community for thirty years. Their religious belief is extremely simple, and yet it seems to suffice to hold them. They have not had among them any good business-men, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Artists in England, vol. ii., p. 151. The other characteristics which Dr. Waagen discovers in Turner are, "such a looseness of treatment, such a total want of truth, as I never before ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... as to think of an ill thing? Why does he entertain himself with lewd Comedies? Has he a mind to discharge his Priestcraft, and flesh himself up for a Poet? Yes, this is the consequence, by using to see these smutty things, he'll learn to write 'em. What need I mention the Sham-Oaths, and looseness of Farce, or the Fustian raving against the Gods in Tragedy, were these things really unconcern'd with Idolatry, a Parson, of all Mankind, should not be known to ogle them, for were they not highly Criminal, the foolery of them is Egregious, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... Johnson produced his principal works before the close of this period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. Poetry began to stir with new life; a noble ambition animated Young and Akenside, and in Thomson, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... free state, sir, and her brother show'd How that the Pope, fore-hearing of her looseness, Hath seiz'd into th' protection of the church The dukedom ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... reported about one-third of the houses to be fairly well conducted, some of them models of excellent management and pure living; but the other two-thirds were charged with looseness beyond description. The number of inmates in some cloisters was kept below the required number, that there might be more money to divide among the monks. The number of servants sometimes exceeded that of the monks. Abbots bought and sold land in a fraudulent manner; gifts ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... "These requirements necessitate looseness, lightness and warmth, which can be obtained from the union underclothes, a princess skirt and dress, with a shoe that allows full development and use of the foot. While decoration and elegance are desirable, they should not sacrifice ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... him boundless independence and courage, it had given him a rare experience of men and manners, and it had lifted his satire far above petty or narrow personal considerations. But it had encouraged a looseness of utterance, a mixture of the colloquial and the bombastic, which was unfortunate. In the best parts of Coningsby and of Tancred he had shown himself a very careless writer of English. But Lothair, even in its corrected form—and the first edition is a miracle ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... elsewhere. Nervously dreading lest they should invade his beloved Philippian Church, he speaks with great severity of these conspirators. The conclusion of the chapter is apparently directed against the licence of certain Gentile converts. These seem to have been "enemies of the cross of Christ" in the looseness of their lives rather than in the corruptness of their creed. It is difficult in this case, as in that of the Judaizers, to know whether these errors already existed at Philippi or not. The passage concludes with an exhortation ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... a much more gradual slope than the lower. The whole structure, which was built of poles, brush, stones, and earth, appeared to be very substantial, a most sound and enduring piece of workmanship. But along the crest, which was not more than a foot and a half in width, it was built with a certain looseness and elasticity for which he was at a loss to account. Presently he observed, however, that this dam had no place of overflow for letting off the water. The water stood in the pond at a height that brought it ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... spite of their looseness and other faults, the adoption of the Articles of Confederation was a forward step in American public law. Their greatest value was this: they helped to keep before the States the thought of union, while at the same time, by their very inefficiency, they proved ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... noticed that the foliage was turning yellow on many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very loose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations and heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull it out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marks of an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies who went around nights chopping off the roots of my trees, for I knew that most of my neighbors ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... those vehement inclinations that are in man to all manner of looseness, fulfilling the desires of the flesh. That must not be understood here; men are made the children of God by fulfilling their lustful desires; it must be understood here in the best sense. There is not only in carnal men a will to be vile, but there is in them a ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... restaurants begets irregularity in the meal hours, and thus promotes bad health; and the absence of the restraints which the table of a family at home, or even the public board of a hotel, imposes, is the beginning of a looseness of manners, which is generally sure to be followed by a similar defect in morals. The cooking, at the majority of restaurants, is unhealthy, and intoxicating liquors are sold, to an extraordinary extent, as a part of the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... which are to be imputed to the one party as a fault, or to the other as a merit. It was with Raoul as it had been with his country—each was the creature of circumstances; and if the man had some of the faults, he had also most of the merits of his nation and his age. The looseness on the subject of religion, which was his principal defect in the eyes of Ghita, but which could scarcely fail to be a material one with a girl educated and disposed as was the case with our heroine, was the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... History to be enjoyed. It may be said, of course, that enjoyment, question-begging term at best, isn't in these austere connections designated—but rather some principle of appreciation that can at least give a coherent account of itself. On that basis then—as I could, I profess, but revel in the looseness of my apprehension, so wide it seemed to fling the gates of vision and divination—I won't pretend to dot, as it were, too many of the i's of my incompetence. I was competent only to have been abjectly interested. On reflection, moreover, I see that no impression of over-much ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... to prevail with thy Majesty,—every one is like to give Christ a free passport and testimonial to go abroad, and are almost Gadarenes, to pray him to depart out of their coasts. There is a strange looseness and indifferency in men's spirits concerning the one thing necessary. Men lie by and dream over their days, and never put the soul's estate out of question; none will give so much pains, as to clear their interest in thee, to lay hold on thee, so as they may make peace with thee. Now, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... has all three of these elements in it. Sandy soil is made up, as the name itself really tells, of broken up rock masses. One can tell this sort of soil by its lightness and the ease with which a mass of it drops apart. By the word lightness one does not mean colour or weight, but looseness. A clay soil may be told by its stickiness; its power to form lumps or masses; its tendency to crack and bake under the hot sun. Such a soil is called heavy. Humus soil is made up largely of decayed animal and vegetable matter. Its presence ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... brother. You have not felt more than I have: but I have the satisfaction of seeing him mend, while you undergo the terrible suspense of waiting for posts. He has been pulled much back by the operation of his quicksilver, which flung him into a severe looseness and kind of salivation: it weakened him much and kept him from the air, but it brought off a great load of black stuff from his stomach, and his spirits are exceedingly better. He is to go to the Bath as soon as he is able. Would to heaven I could prevail for his going to Italy, but he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... word he had pretended to take from his old authorities were to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these authors were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to prove whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility. Let me give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's mind. Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of the "Organon," that the smell of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... who had been Miss Bay of Albany, who was the mother of the fair and free young waltzing-women in New York, and who floats back to me through the Rhinebeck picture, aquiline but easy, with an effect of handsome highbrowed, high-nosed looseness, of dressing-gowns or streaming shawls (the dowdy, the delightful shawl of the period;) and of claws of bright benevolent steel that kept nipping for our charmed advantage: roses and grapes and peaches and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... phases of this glamorous love-making—Krishna embracing one woman, dancing with another and conversing with a third. The background is a diagram of the forest as it might appear in spring—the slack looseness of treatment befitting the freedom of conduct adumbrated by the verse. The large insects hovering in the branches are the black bees of Indian love-poetry whose quest for flowers was regarded as symbolic of urgent lovers pestering their mistresses. In style the picture illustrates ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... adaptation of that beautiful gown to all the purposes for which a gown is intended. How completely it clothes the entire figure, and with what ease and comfort to the wearer! There is not a line about it which indicates compression, or one expressive of that looseness and languishing abandonment that we remarked just now in the costume of La belle Hamilton. The entire person is concealed, except the tip of one foot, the hands, the head and throat, and just enough of the bust ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... speakers then, this time a private, still too rangy, but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... and all its helplessness, that the Church was able to settle the real basis and the chief lines of its reformed constitution. It is not, as Mr. Gladstone says, "a heroic history"; there is room enough in the looseness of some of its arrangements, and the incompleteness of others, for diversity of opinion and for polemical criticism. But the result, in fact, of this liberty and this incompleteness has been, not that ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the latter to tighten up suddenly at some part of the upward or downward swing, and, as surely as there is a ball on the tee, when it does so there will be mischief. Depend upon it the instinct of activity will prevent the right hand from going through with the swing in that indefinite state of looseness. Perhaps a yard from the ball in the upward swing, or a yard from it when coming down, there will be a convulsive grip of the right hand which, with an immediate acknowledgment of guilt, will relax again. Such a happening ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... finish. The book is brimful of its author's high spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Yet the fun is so good-natured and infectious, and the looseness of design is so frankly declared that the book possesses a certain unity arising from its general atmosphere ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... There's a reprobate looseness about you; Should I wear you to-night, I believe, As I come with my bride from the altar, You'd laugh in your wicked old sleeve, When you felt there the tremulous pressure Of her hand, in its delicate ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... miscellaneous work extremely well. Very shrewd observations are to be found in his reviews, for instance his indication, in reviewing La Touche's Fragoletta, of that common fault of ambitious novels, a sort of woolly and "ungraspable" looseness of construction and story, which constantly bewilders the reader as to what is going on. But, as a rule, he was thinking too much of his own work and his own principles of working to enter very thoroughly into the work of others. His politics, those of a moderate but ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... that Bentley presses Collins's arguments beyond their logical conclusion; that Collins is not what Bentley would have him to be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the other side of the river a horseman riding from the south toward the town. She could not mistake the khaki-clad figure that, while fully at home in the saddle, still lacked the indescribable, easy looseness and swinging grace of the western rider. It was Willard Holmes, and the young woman's heart told her why the engineer had come. Since that meeting at the river in the hour of his victory she had known that he would come and she had known what ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... their climb; and after a further three-quarters of an hour of arduous labour—the steepness of the acclivity and the looseness of the soil rendering progress exceedingly slow and difficult—they finally reached their goal, to find themselves standing, as it were, upon the rim of a huge basin about a third of a mile in diameter and some ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... unspeakably wearisome, after the first novelty had worn away. Cornelia lived in an age when many of the common proprieties and decencies of our present society would have been counted prudish, but she could not close her eyes to the looseness and license that pervaded her mother's world. Woman had become almost entirely independent of man in social and economic matters, though the law still kept its fictions of tutelage. Honourable marriages were growing fewer and fewer. Divorces were multiplying. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... decreasing the resistance to the passage of the electric current;" and, also, "the jolting motion would be a make-and-break, and the articulate sounds would be impaired. There can be no virtue in a speaking telephone having a jolting motion." "Delicacy of contact is a virtue; looseness of contact is a vice." "Looseness of contact is a great virtue in Hughes' microphone;" and "the elements which work advantages in Hughes' are detrimental to the good working ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... and drank with milk and water) strengthenth the inward parts, and prevents consumption; and powerfully assuageth the pains of the bowels, or griping of the guts, and looseness. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... resolved that nothing would make me descend by that awesome crack, so I kept on eastward along the top to look for a better way. I found one about a mile farther on, which, though far from easy, had no special risks save from the appalling looseness of the debris. When I got down at length, I found that it was near sunset. I went to the place I had bidden my native look for me at, but, as I had feared, there was no sign of him. So, making the best of a bad job, I had supper and a pipe, and spent a very chilly ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Upon translation, no one has written so much and so well as Dryden in his various prefaces. Whatever has been said since is either expansion or variation of what he had said before. His general theory may be stated as an aim at something between the literalness of metaphrase and the looseness of paraphase. "Where I have enlarged," he says, "I desire the false critics would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but either they are secretly in the poet, or may be fairly deduced from him." Coleridge, with his usual cleverness of assimilation, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... taken plenty of wine; she could not too touch yellow wine; she had, what is more, drunk and eaten so many fat things that in the thirst, which supervened, she had emptied several cups of tea; the result was that she unavoidably got looseness of the bowels. She therefore squatted for ever so long before she felt any relief. But on her exit from the private chamber, the wind blew the wine to her head. Besides, being a woman well up in years, she felt, upon suddenly rising ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... name of Epist. obscurorum virorum, so to heart, that for shame and grief he made away with himself, [1682]Jovius in elogiis. A grave and learned minister, and an ordinary preacher at Alcmar in Holland, was (one day as he walked in the fields for his recreation) suddenly taken with a lax or looseness, and thereupon compelled to retire to the next ditch; but being [1683]surprised at unawares, by some gentlewomen of his parish wandering that way, was so abashed, that he did never after show his head in public, or ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dance. They are all plain Wiltshire rustics who talk a broad vernacular, but at the end a shepherd and shepherdess enter and sing a duet in a more courtly strain. The author of this slight production is not known, but it is regarded by the latest authority on masques as an imitation, in the looseness of its construction, of Davenant's ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... all, in battle or for duty, broke through the barriers within which prudence, reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, which it would be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but in the notoriety of one relation,—a notoriety due chiefly to the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... lax, has not impaired the vitality of his prose. The heart which beats in his works, the knowledge of human nature, the dramatic vigour of his character, the nobility of his whole being win the day against the looseness of his manner, the negligence of his composition, against the haste of fatigue which set him, as Lady Louisa Stuart often told him, on "huddling up a conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way." In this matter of denouements he certainly ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... then, too, would she consent to give up all further consideration for her brother's family? Would she agree to abandon her idea of assisting them, if ultimately it should turn out that the property was hers? No; there was certainly a looseness about such a plan which did not befit him; and, moreover, were he to attempt it, he ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... doll was made over to Anna: I was no worse off, and was very contented with my obstinacy. To-day I found the beautifully wrought bodice, which I had carried beyond reach of even the supreme court of appeal, clothing with ridiculous looseness a rag-doll whose head tottered on its stem like an over-ripe plum, and whose legs had no deportment at all: and am sending it off in charitable surrender to Anna to be given, bag and rag, to whichever one of the children ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... praying and studying Hebrew may serve to give it colour. "As he talks to-day at Potsdam and Berlin," says Verhaeren, in his book "Belgium's Agony," "the Kings of Israel and their prophets talked six thousand years ago at Jerusalem." The chronology is characteristic of anti-Semitic looseness: six thousand years ago the world by Hebrew reckoning had not been created, and at any rate the then Kings of Jerusalem were not Jewish. But it is undeniable that Germanism, like Judaism, has evolved a doctrine ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... on the porch, and her sister was out of the house, Plutina possessed herself of the new revolver, with its holster, which, after slipping down her gown from the shoulder, she attached under the left arm-pit. The looseness of the ill-fitting garment concealed the weapon effectually enough. For ready access, the upper buttons to the throat were left unfastened, in seeming relief against the heat of midday. Thus equipped, the girl stole out through the back way, unobserved by her relations, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... was a tall girl, of a broad-shouldered, athletic type, a college girl by the sign of the austere cut of her gown, but a western girl by the sign of the flying ends of the scarf about her throat, the unafraid looseness of her bright hair. Her face, lit by her amber eyes and crowned by those loose masses of hair, had a rare, dusky-gold beauty. Despite her hair she was dark-skinned, smooth and warm like bisque, and that same gold-dusted radiance that was in her hair and that same amber-gold light ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... reasonable expectation that they will so fall. If it should be worth anybody's while to seek for examples of such misuse of language on my own part, I am not at all sure he might not succeed, though I have usually been on my guard against such looseness of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance beforehand, and only hope that I may thereby deter others from committing the like fault. And I venture on this personal observation by way of showing that I have no wish to bear hardly on the preacher for falling ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... occasionally before, Turner was extravagant to an extreme degree; he played equally with nature and with his colors. Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his studies; individuality of form or color he was wholly indifferent to. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... antagonism on Rosemary Roselle; he visualized her as a thoughtless and capricious female, idling in vain luxury, cutting with a hard voice at helpless and enslaved human beings. He condemned his former looseness of being, his playing with insidious and destructive forces. A phrase, "Babylonish women," crept into his mind from some old ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... her hands again, and stood towering over her, intoxicated with his own tinsel phrases; almost sincere; a splendid physical presence, save for the slight thickening of face and form, the looseness of the lips, the absence of all ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disdain such trifles. They were at the age when men may eat or drink anything and at all times without apparently disturbing the centres of energy. They were, in fact, doing large quantities of work every day—for boys. Yet daily in their work, I was finding the same litter and looseness of which their cottage was but an unmistakable suggestion. In fact, the place was a picture of their minds.... We are each given a certain area of possibility. Not one in a million human beings even roughly makes the most of it. The organisation of force ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... beaten with a little Sherry-sack, and put to it, is not bad in a looseness. At other times you may add Butter. It ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... shelter obtained in the little glade he occupied; into which, although the sunbeams did not enter, a certain degree of heat was reflected from the convent walls, of whose grey surface he obtained a glimpse through the branches. The sheep-skin jacket which was his constant wear—its looseness rendering it a more endurable summer garment than might have been inferred from its warm material—lay upon the grass beside him, exposing to view a woollen shirt, composed of broad alternate stripes of red and white; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... richer than I am. And then to be insulted as well as pillaged. Last Sunday I went to church. It is a place I trouble not often. Didn't the cure lash the hotel-keepers? I grant you he hit all the trades, except the one that is a byword for looseness, and pride, and sloth, to wit, the clergy. But, mind you, he stripeit the other lay estates with a feather, but us hotel-keepers with a neat's pizzle: godless for this, godless for that, and most godless of all for opening our doors during mass. Why, the law forces ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... parochial schools, especially the higher authorities, such as bishops, allow themselves to criticize sternly the American public schools for looseness, too much freedom, lack of moral teachings, etc. A prominent German Catholic bishop, who has been for thirty years in America and who can hardly speak English, stated to the writer that the American ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... of names and other words of Oriental languages the Editor has 'endeavoured to strike a mean between popular usage and academic precision, preferring to incur the charge of looseness to that of pedantry'. Diacritical marks intended to distinguish between the various sibilants, dentals, nasals, and so forth, of the Arabic and Sanskrit alphabets, have been purposely omitted. Long vowels are ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Religious Helon treat, Refin'd from all the looseness of the Great. Helon who sees his Line of Virtues run } Beyond the Center of his Grave, his own } Unfinisht Luster sparkling in his Son. } A Son so high in Sanedrims renown'd, In Israels Intrest strong, in Sense profound. Under one Roof here Truth a Goddess dwells, } The Pious Father builds ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... to whose acquaintance Martie had looked forward. The more distinguished members of his company he hardly knew; the others were semi-successful men like himself, women too poor and too busy to waste time or money, or other women of a more or less recognized looseness of morals. Martie detested them, their cologne, their boasting, their insinuations as to the personal lives of every actor or actress who might be mentioned. They had no reserves, no respect for love or marriage or parenthood; they ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... without hearing any more; for he knew that some hours of strong labor were before him, and to meet them with a heavy heart would be almost a new thing for him. Some time ago he had begun to hold the plough of heaviness, through the difficult looseness of Willie's staple, and the sudden maritime slope of Jack; yet he held on steadily through all this, with the strength of homely courage. But if in the pride of his heart, his Mary, he should find no better than a crooked furrow, then truly the labor of his latter days would be the dull ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... [Footnote A: The looseness and inaccuracy of persons in reference to their own ages, in early times, is quite observable. In depositions, they speak of themselves as "about" so many years, or as of so many years "or thereabouts." A variance on this point is often found in the statements of the same person at different times. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... beds made up at any time of day, knitting and sewing going on in many rooms—all this was in unforeseen contrast to the rigorous military and educational training and precision. He could but compare the genre picture of looseness in the homes with that of the correct and ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Division; for which it is most properly apt; but Cross and Skipping Divisions cannot (I think) be so well express'd without some consent or yielding of the Elbow-Joint unto the motion of the Wrist.... This motion or looseness of the Wrist I mention, is chiefly in Demi-semiquavers; for, in Quavers, and Semiquavers too, we must allow so much stiffness to the wrist as may command the Bow on and off the String, at every Note, if ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... they had hoped to work their vengeance. As I was soon discovered to have shared my mother's heresy, I was dragged from her dead body, imprisoned in a solitary cloister, and treated with severity, which the Abbess assured me was due to the looseness of my life, as well as my spiritual errors. I avowed my marriage, to justify the situation in which I found myself—I implored the assistance of the Superior to communicate my situation to my husband. She smiled coldly ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... is, must now go through the field every two or three days and examine every head, and if there is any sign of its growing in quarters, or if a leaf is growing through the head, or if there is any looseness in its growth, the heads are staked and cut for market. For, as like produces like, it will never do to get seed from an inferior head, especially in the case of cauliflowers; for the seeds from these are more apt to run wild than any seed I ever grew. We usually ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... she might be called old fashioned. Her views on life had certainly little in common with those held by most present-day women. She had no taste for bridge, she refused to adopt freak fashions in dress, she discouraged the looseness of tone in speech and manner so much affected by other women of her acquaintance—in a word she was in society but not of it. Naturally, she had more acquaintances than friends, yet she was not unpopular among her intimates. While secretly ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... war at the factory where the guns are made disclosed the fact that these parts are rigidly tested by a gauge by the Government inspectors, and that looseness is regarded as a fatal defect. Even play of half a hundredth of an inch is enough to insure the rejection of a piece. The very first thing done by the Gatling Gun Detachment, upon assembling these guns, was to obtain a set of armorers' tools and to file away these ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... Phil's gentle reminder, Acton dropped all looseness, and began to treat Phil with the greatest respect, never taking any risks, but working in a scientific fashion, which poor Phil found hard enough to parry, and when he could not do that, hard enough to bear. But he never faltered; he ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... apertures which are posterior in the rabbit, run together into one dorsal opening, the cloaca. There is, of course (Rabbit, Section 4), no hair the skin is smooth, and an external ear is also absent. The remarkable looseness of the frog's skin is due to great lymph spaces between it ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... The tavern door closed, and once more the alley was hued with melting greys and purples. The man in the cloak examined the strings of his mask, tilted his hat still farther down over his eyes, and tested the looseness of his sword. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Grieg-ton Smith has seized the fascinating looseness of the Griegorian tonality and its whimsicality. The "Humoresque" is a bit of titanic merriment; the "Mazurka" is most deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the "Arietta" is highly original, and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... to the pain occasioned by the edge of a silver or metal spoon pressing on their tender gums. The spoon ought to be of ivory, bone, or wood, with the edges round and smooth, and care should be taken to keep it sweet and clean. At this period a moderate looseness, and a copious flow of saliva, are favourable symptoms. With a view to promote the latter, the child should be suffered to gnaw such substances as tend to mollify the gums, and by their pressure to facilitate the appearance of the teeth. A piece of liquorice or marshmallow ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... conversations with Franklin upon religious topics, deeply deplored the looseness of his views. Though Dr. Priestly rejected the divinity of Christ, he still firmly adhered to the belief that Christianity was of divine origin. In his ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... their brief excursion round my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position without—let us say—splitting certain differences; the looseness of the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the famous and popular detective; ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... and deluding Anne, by a marriage which should be no marriage at all, had crossed his mind on the journey. He had asked himself whether a trap of that sort might not be easily set in a country notorious for the looseness of its marriage laws—if a man only knew how? And he had thought it likely that his well-informed brother, who lived in Scotland, might be tricked into innocently telling him what he wanted to know. He had turned the conversation to the subject of Scotch marriages in general ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... has generally been enrolled among the Anabaptists, and it is possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness that it includes not only Denck but all the sixteenth-century exponents of a free, inward religion. Anabaptism has often been treated as a sort of broad banyan-tree which flourished exuberantly and shot out far-reaching branches ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... a looseness and a vulgarity in the East India House writing, the literature of clerks which is quite disgusting. Our clerks write better than theirs, but they do ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... fer companions. After that, the sisters drove her in to town to school in the old buggy which their father had brought from England. However, she managed to see me quite often, and I encouraged her, although, mind ye, I never let her know the looseness o' the ways o' a tavern. The sisters had the Methodist parson picked out fer her, an' he, poor man, was fair crazy fer her heart, too, but she had the givin' o' it herself, and this it was that caused all ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... am na weak! She that worked evil and looseness, harlotry, strife, and shame, shall she na have her hire? As, Sunday by Sunday, I wad ha' set her in kirk, before the congregation, for the stern rebuking of her sin, so, mak no doubt, the Lord pursues her now! Aye, He shakes His ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... there has been much general misunderstanding and looseness of both thought and statement, which has again led to exaggerated ideas of the direct influence of the mind over the body, is the well-known effect of emotional states, such as fright or anger, upon ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the orator, with a smile that singularly illumined his thin, but powerful features. "As I gave it up! Into what dregs of vice, what a sink of iniquity was I plunged! The very cleansing of my soul was an Augean task. Knavery, profligacy, laxity of morals, looseness of principles—that was what the stage did for me; that was the labor of Hercules to be cleared away! Give it up, Mr. Barnes!" And with a last penetrating look, he strode out of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of the craftsman. The manner of the oldest weavers was to produce a fabric not too thick, flexible rather—for was it not meant to hang in folds?—and of an engagingly even surface. It was not too fine, yet had none of the looseness associated with the coarse, hurried work of later and degenerate times. It was more like the even fabric we associate with machine work, yet as unlike that as palpitating flesh is like a graven image. It was the logical production of honest workmen who counted ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... worth mentioning. But the most curious symptom of all was the gradual and, as it were, imperceptible loss of the secret of blank verse itself, which had been the instrument of the great triumphs of the stage from Marlowe to Dekker. Something of this loss of grasp may have been noticed in the looseness of Fletcher and the over-stiffness of Jonson: it is perceptible distinctly even in Ford and Massinger. But as the Restoration, or rather the silencing of the theatres by the Commonwealth approaches, it becomes more and more evident until we reach the chaotic and hideous jumble of downright ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the execution is "tighter", if I may be permitted an expression which will be understood in studios; we are very far indeed from the admirable looseness of handling which is the charm of the portrait of Miss Rose Corder. There every object is born unconsciously beneath the passing of the brush. If not less certain, the touch in the portrait of the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... absence of an influence is sometimes as significant as the presence of it. The looseness of Wergeland's style, its frothy abundance, its digressions and parentheses, its slipshod violence, would be to Ibsen so many beacons of warning, to be viewed with horror and alarm. A poem of three stanzas, "To the Poets of Norway," only recently ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... bass string of a grand pianoforte; this will be found very handy. Should the rapping or sounding all round the border not reveal any weak spot, we may be sure the seat of the complaint is to be sought for elsewhere; possibly there is looseness in the interior and therefore ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... is a child," he said, his fingers closing upon the looseness of the linen as he spoke. "A weakling—girl! And so, girl-like, he loves to play at make-believe. You know their games? There is the shell of a ruined house beyond the walls and he holds it against ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... this omnipresent self, which crop out with varying degrees of prominence, in different persons, and under different circumstances. Notice only a few of these: In Galatians, fifth chapter, nineteenth verse: "The deeds of self are ... improper sexual intercourse, impurity, shameless looseness...." It will, wherever possible, debase the holiest functions of the body. In Colossians, third chapter, fifth verse, speaking of the "old man": "And covetousness, which is reckoning of highest worth that which is less worthy than God." That is to say, the ambitious longings of ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... That old world was more dissolute than ours. There was an old king with mistresses openly in his train, to whom the great folks of the land did honour. There was a nobility, many of whom were mad and reckless in the pursuit of pleasure; there was a looseness of words and acts which we must note, as faithful historians, without going into particulars, and needlessly shocking honest readers. Our young gentleman had lighted upon some of the wildest of these wild people, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Plasden's high morality is found in the fact that the civil governments insist on moral laws and a careful observance of them. One blushes with shame at the looseness and laxity with which the greater municipalities of our Earth are governed, and all this under the shadow of our ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... "Bussy D'Amboys" upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly[2]; nothing but a cold, dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was shooting; a dwarfish thought, dressed up in gigantic words, repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperboles; the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and, to sum up all, uncorrect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry, and true nonsense; or, at best, a scantling of wit, which lay gasping for life, and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish. A famous ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... vagueness and uncertainty of the doctrinal speculations of infidelity, and the looseness and immorality of its rules of life, are not the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and only evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... impressions are purely a matter of sympathetic sensations. In listening to a faulty singer the hearer feels a sensation of tightness and contraction of the throat. A well used voice awakens exactly the opposite sensation, that of looseness ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... "Little Abe" was the all-engrossing thing, but let this suffice. It is delightful to see how a good man may live in the midst of the ungodly, and keep his garments unspotted, and his name unsullied by the adverse influences around him. What a rebuke such a life is to many who excuse their looseness and irregularities because they are thrown among the irreligious; and how stimulative it becomes to others that are similarly situated, and trying to live consistently in the midst of all ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... the ideas and methods of Ricardo, who has been described by Senior, not without justice, as "the most incorrect writer who ever attained philosophical eminence."[152] So far as such a sweeping criticism can be justified by looseness in the use of terms, it is justified by Ricardo's failing in this respect. That he should have attained the eminence he did, dominating English economic thought for so many years, in spite of the confusion which his loose and uncertain use of words occasioned, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... contradiction, even when in error. He took advantage of his official station to vent his spleen and gratify his petulance in a variety of ways incompatible with the courtesy of a gentleman. It may excite a grave smile at the present day to find Washington charged by this very small-minded man with looseness in his way of writing to him; with remissness in his duty towards him; and even with impertinence in the able and eloquent representations which he felt compelled to make of disastrous mismanagement in military affairs; and still more, to find his reasonable request, after a long ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... said she, "that from the first moment you saw me, you have felt a sort of a spooney hankering, and a general looseness, including a desire to write poetry and use hair-oil, and wear pretty neckties; a sort of a feeling that your clothes don't fit you, and you can't bear the sight of gravy, and dote on lavender kids, and want to part your ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... consider a way to modify it so that it would harmonize with my views. The more I studied the document, the less I liked it. A cursory reading of the plan, which is printed in the Appendix (page 281), will disclose the looseness of the language and the doubtful interpretation of many of the provisions. It showed an inexpertness in drafting and a fault in expression which were chargeable to lack of appreciation of the need of exactness or else to haste in preparation. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... with covering detachment, which is large enough to offer considerable resistance, the combat patrol is primarily to Warn, especially against flank attacks. Size varies widely because of looseness in definition, e.g., 100 men might be covering detachment for a regiment, but a combat patrol ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... great safeguard was the affection of Russell. For Edwin's sake, and for shame at the thought of Edwin's disapproval, he abstained from many things into which he would otherwise have insensibly glided in conformation to the general looseness of the school morality. But Russell's influence worked on him powerfully, and tended to counteract a ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... 'Duchess' does more and more strike me as a new thing; something like (if like anything) what the Greeks called pedestrian-metre, ... between metre and prose ... the difficult rhymes combining too quite curiously with the easy looseness of the general measure. Then 'The Ride'—with that touch of natural feeling at the end, to prove that it was not in brutal carelessness that the poor horse was driven through all that suffering ... yes, and how that one touch of softness ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... he takes the least trouble to ascertain), are preposterous. The Coronation is much better, and The Sea Voyage, with a kind of Amazon story grafted upon a hint of The Tempest, is a capital play of its kind. Better still, despite a certain looseness both of plot and moral, is The Coxcomb, where the heroine Viola is a very touching figure. The extravagant absurdity of the traveller Antonio is made more probable than is sometimes the case with our ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... In the July number of THE CONTINENTAL, I notice some editorial remarks upon a portion of my article 'Touching the Soul,' which appeared in the June number. For these remarks I am under obligation to you, as pointing out the looseness of my phraseology, whereby I have failed to convey the idea I intended; for which looseness the only excuse must be that my mind was occupied more with the thought than with the expression, and the latter was so absorbed in the former as to have suffered in consequence. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... eye and saw that he had forgotten the purpose of the dinner, being dimly conscious that that purpose was now idle. Cargill and Vennard had ceased to talk like rebels. The Home Secretary had subsided into his old, suave, phrasing self. The humour had gone out of his eye, and the looseness had returned to his lips. He was an older and more commonplace man, but harmless, quite harmless. Vennard, too, wore a new air, or rather had recaptured his old one. He was saying little, but his voice ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... merits and admirers. On the contrary, it is impossible to sit under the minister of the Free College Church without being "built up" in all the Christian graces. He is an uncompromising foe to the Scarlet Lady, to the materialistic tendencies of the present day, to looseness and infidelity, of every kind, in religious matters; and some would perhaps object that his sermons are too strongly impregnated with the Confession of Faith, the Deed of Demission, and the Shorter Catechism. But he is on this account all the more entitled to rank ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... in Major Tobias Clutterbuck they had just the man that they were in want of. The younger merchant had long felt vaguely that the major's social position, combined with his impecuniosity and the looseness of his morality, as inferred from his mode of life, might some day make him a valuable agent under delicate circumstances. As to the old soldier's own inclinations, Ezra flattered himself that he knew the man's nature ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness and yet play; Play on the stage—where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour? In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em. The difference lies only ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... a novel, she expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often wondered I had never thought of doing so before. "Look," she added, "how silly all the novels are nowadays; I'm sure you could write one." (Ethelbertha intended to be complimentary, I am convinced; but there is a looseness about her mode of expression which, at times, renders her ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... with something that he wants to say but can only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line by line more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With all the mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings and gropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... a certain pliability, or perhaps I ought to call it looseness of disposition," he admitted. "There are many things connected with the past which I find it almost impossible to associate with you. For a trifling instance," he went on, with a slight smile, inclining his head towards his host's ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the common grammarians. This author, in his third chapter, supposes his auditor to say, "But you have not all this while informed me how many parts of speech you mean to lay down." To whom he replies, "That shall be as you please. Either two, or twenty, or more." Such looseness comported well enough with his particular purpose; because he meant to teach the derivation of words, and not to meddle at all with their construction. But who does not see that it is impossible to lay down rules for the construction of words, without first dividing them into the classes ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the broad lines of political organisation; it was so far unscientific that many individuals fall between or within two or even three of its classes. But that was met by giving the correlated organisation a compensatory looseness of play. Four main classes of mind were distinguished, called, respectively, the Poietic, the Kinetic, the Dull, and the Base. The former two are supposed to constitute the living tissue of the State; the latter are the fulcra and resistances, the bone and cover of its body. They ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of facts which no one seeks to deny, we shall find that the socialists themselves are among our most interesting witnesses, affording in what they assert a solitary and signal exception to that looseness of thought and observation which is otherwise their distinguishing characteristic. The motive here in question as ascribed to the exceptional wealth-producer, the director, the man of business ability—the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... volunteer regiment for a variable, and not a formula in Davies which suited the purpose. Unfortunately, these perplexities were quite as apt to end in relaxation as in rigor, so that the regiments thus commanded sometimes slid into a looseness of which a resolute volunteer officer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... consistency, and ingredients of the stools. Most frequently they are dark colored and of very offensive odor. They are of a more liquid character than is natural, except when, as is sometimes the case, periods of constipation alternate with periods of unnatural looseness. Tormina, or griping, is usually present, but not so severe as in the acute affection. Tenesmus, or straining, often accompanies it. The appetite is impaired, there is general debility, and the patient is nervous and irritable. The complexion becomes sallow, the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce |
