"Unfixed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to consult the general wishes of the people, and it appeared to him that they were in favour of triennial parliaments. At the same time, in the bill which he proposed to bring in, he intended to leave the term of future parliaments unfixed, so that it might form a subject of debate in committee. His bill contained two clauses, one to repeal the septennial act, and the other to determine the period of each parliament's existence. The resistance of the proposition was left to ministers themselves, and Lord Althorp's mode of getting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... back a photograph of the uncovered countenance, with its one unvarying granite story for all. There is one glory of the Gazetteer with his fixed facts, and another of the Poet with his variable quantities of fancy. The fixed fact may be unfixed next year, like an almanac, but the hasty sketch of the true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... because the people with whom she lived were in the habit of doing so;—but as soon as ever she had fixed the date of her departure, that day to her was a day of release. On this occasion the day had been fixed,—and it was unfixed, and changed, and postponed, because it was manifest to Lady Milborough that she could do good by remaining for another fortnight. When she made the offer she said nothing of her previous arrangements. "Lady Rowley, let her come to me. As soon as her friend Lady Peterborough is at Monkhams, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... seated himself at last at his writing-table, and after some minutes' thought dashed off the following epistle. He did not stop for a word, he would not hesitate about the wording of sentences: it seemed to him that if he paused to consider, his resolution might be shaken, his purpose become unfixed. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all this with folded hands and unfixed eyes. But the close of the story was too much for her: she threw herself on a great divan, overcome—for the time being—with worry and maternal weakness. A grin strayed across Herr Carovius's face. He twirled his Calabrian headpiece in his hands, and let his leery eyes wander ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... quiescent consonants. This variation affects not indeed the pronunciation, or does it in a very slight degree. Hence, however, some who judge of the language only from its appearance in writing, have taken occasion to vilify it, as unfixed and nonsensical[27]. A proper attention to the affinity which the Scottish Gaelic bears to some other languages, particularly to other dialects of the Celtic, might contribute to fix the orthography in some cases where it appears ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... before collected, were written down and applied to the Temple Service. The latter part of the Proverbs of Solomon were first copied out, and the inspired words of the prophets began to be added to the Scriptures. Joel's date is unfixed, but Hosea, Amos, and Jonah, had recently been prophesying, and the glorious evangelical predictions of Isaiah and Micah were poured out throughout this reign, those of Isaiah ranging from the humiliation ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... If this be the sense, that there were some ministers fixed, and limited to particular places and churches; others unfixed, having an unlimited commission, and these are to be especially honored: then the meaning is, that the apostles and evangelists who were unfixed, and had unlimited commissions, and laid the foundation, were to be ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... and wisdom, or of good and truth. It is well to be observed, that there is not any good or truth which is not in a substance as in its subject: there are no abstract goods and truths; for, having no abode or habitation, they no where exist, neither can they appear as airy unfixed principles; therefore in such case they are mere entities, concerning which reason seems to itself to think abstractedly; but still it cannot conceive of them except as annexed to subjects: for ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the fair earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... peace, he mean that tranquillity of mind which innocence and good deeds produce, he is right and clear so far; for we all know that, without health, which has a well-known positive meaning, there can be no happiness. But competence is a word of unfixed meaning. It may, with some, mean enough to eat, drink, wear and be lodged and warmed with; but, with others, it may include horses, carriages, and footmen laced over from top to toe. So that, here, we have no guide; no standard; and, indeed, there can be none. But as every ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... time when he was laughing and crying with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an impure vapour—begotten of the slime of the earth by the fevers and adulterous heats of an intemperate summer sun, striving by the ladder of a mountain to climb to heaven and rolling into various figures by an uneasy, unfixed revolution, and stopped at the middle region of the air, being thrown from his pride and attempt of passing towards the seat of the stars—turns into an unwholesome flame and, like the breath of hell, is confined into a prison of darkness ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... large masses of oaken beams were fastened together, and thrown into the channel, and by them huge piles were continually fixed and unfixed, being all thrown into disorder by the rising of the stream, and afterwards they were broken and carried away by ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... energy of an intelligence of the same kind as though vaster in scope than the human. Partly through the influence of mythology, the Greek mind became early possessed with the conception of nature as living, thinking, almost speaking to the mind of man. This unfixed poetical prepossession, reduced to an abstract form, petrified into an idea, is the force which gives unity of aim to Greek philosophy. Little by little, it works out the substance of the Hegelian formula: "Whatever is, is according to reason: whatever is according to reason, that is." Experience, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... acknowledge, that I looked upon the coming conflict with a strange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling, perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young, ardent, and ambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappy middle position, in which stands a man of birth too high to suffer his adoption of the humbler means of existence, and yet of resources too inadequate to sustain him without action—nay, bold and indefatigable exertion. I, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the grand regulator of the blood's flow; and it is admirably situated for measuring out a regular portion of blood at every contraction. John Bell, believing in the Harveian theory, said, "It is awful to think of the unfixed position of the heart;" and Dr. Arnott declared that "the heart, the heart alone, is the ragged anomaly in the laws of fitness in mechanics." The heart was now seen to have a right position; for it should swing ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... works arises from a quality the very reverse of that which produces obscurity, properly so-called. Obscurity is the natural product of turbid forces and confused ideas; of a feeble and clouded or of a vigorous but unfixed and chaotic intellect.... Now if there is any great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. Browning's intellect it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim.... The very essence of Mr. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... anybody. That is where the somewhat sombre fun begins. I cannot even tell you for certain whether it is the name of a forest or a town or a hill. I can only say that in any case it is of the kind that floats and is unfixed. If it is a forest, it is one of those forests that march with a million legs, like the walking trees that were the doom of Macbeth. If it is a town, it is one of those towns that vanish, like a city of tents. If it is a hill, it is a ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... soft a whisper that for a long time he had not known it was his heart he heard. When something within uttered and re-uttered the place's name, he would silently explain to himself: "It is because I am from home. It is this unfixed camp-life, this life without my father, without Bonaventure, that does it. This is not love, of course; I know that: for, in the first place, I was in love once, when I was fourteen, and it was not at all like this; and in the second place, it ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable |
