"Unformed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I slowly make my way up-hill; the wood along the road is still wet with the dawn. It offers me its autumnal fragrance; I breathe it in, I gaze at its golden tints, I think of Rose, of her past and her future. But, beyond my dreams, an unformed idea seems to spread like a clear sky, without outline, without colour, without beginning or end; and I have a secret feeling ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... many young men fail to discover until too late what life work they are best fitted for, unless they possess a talent so strong that it amounts to genius. How many of necessity are sent out into the world at an unformed age to slavery in order that they and their dependents may live. What chance or time have they, grinding away at any work which brings a dollar, to know for what work they are most suited. They know only when it is too late that ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... seemed younger and slimmer and more childish than I had thought her, her bosom without its kerchief meagre or unformed, and her cheeks not painted either, but much burned by the July sun. Nor were her eyes black, as I had supposed, but a dark, clear grey with black lashes; and her unpowdered hair seemed to be a reddish-chestnut and scarce longer than my own, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... form, the look altogether, of her face, coupled with what I could see of her figure, made me guess her age to be about twenty. There was the appearance of maturity already in the shape of her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed, unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was latent. Their languor, when she was silent—that voluptuous languor of black eyes—was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full lips (to other eyes, they might have looked too full) ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... strange, for Richard Shafer was only twenty and had just finished his second year in college. To Carola Brune, who was a year younger, he seemed perfect as a playmate, but she simply could not imagine him as a husband. He was too vague, unformed, boyish in his moods and caprices. She was a strong girl, with quick and powerful impulses in her nature, and she felt that she would need a strong man to hold her. What Richard was, what he would be, she could not clearly see. She loved to make music with him—she ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... many lyrics heard by him in his childhood—from mother, or nurse, or some old crooning dame at the fireside—which are to be found in no collection, and which are now to himself but like a distant, unformed sound? All our collectors, whilst smiling in triumph over the pearls which they have brought up and borne to the shore, lament the multitude of precious things irrecoverably buried in the depths of oblivion. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and an irresolute prince sufficed. What could the artful manoeuvrings of Catherine and the waverings of Henry III. do towards taming both Catholics and Protestants at the same time, and obliging them to live at peace with one another, under one equitable and effective power? Henry IV. was as yet unformed, nor was his hour yet come for this great work. Henry III. and Catherine de' Medici failed in it completely; their government of fifteen years served only to make them lose their reputation for ability, and to aggravate for France the evils which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... twenty-eight years old. On the Coast he had established a reputation as a gaily original newspaper writer. Thus far, however, he had absolutely no literary standing, nor is there any evidence that he had literary ambitions; his work was unformed, uncultivated—all of which seems strange, now, when we realize that somewhere behind lay the substance of immortality. Rudyard Kipling at twenty-eight had done ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of such an altogether unexpected event distracted Lesbia's mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde. She hardly knew what the actors were talking about. Mary, her younger sister! Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and with manners utterly unformed. That Mary should be engaged to be married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... kidding!" But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly; and always unformed tears would ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... did not come to him all at once, nor were they as yet firmly fixed. They were rather suggestions which became increasingly insistent as the years went on. He had entered the seminary at the tender age of twelve, his mind wholly unformed, but protesting even then. All through his course he had sought what there was in Christianity upon which he could lay firm hold. In the Church he had found an ultra-conservative spirit and extreme reverence for authority. Tito had told him that it was the equivalent of ancestor-worship. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fantasia on Mozart's "Don Giovanni." The little, wild, unformed melodies rustle in quick gusts along the keys as if wavering shadows, yet with all the familiar rhythm and family likeness, filling the mind of the hearer with the atmosphere and necessity of what is to follow, while gradually the full ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... experience daily gave of his capacity. For Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... clearest evidence, that the actual cellular contents of the ovarian tubes, by the gland-like action of a modified portion of the continuous tube, passes into the cementing stuff: in fact cirripedes make glue out of their own unformed eggs! (33/6. On Darwin's mistake in this point see "Life and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... tragedy, which was not executed with his rapidity of composition upon other occasions, but was slowly and painfully elaborated. A few days before his death, while burning a great mass of papers, he picked out from among them the original unformed sketch of this tragedy, in his own hand-writing, and gave it to Mr. Langton, by whose favour a copy of it is now in my possession. It contains fragments of the intended plot, and speeches for the different persons of the drama, partly in the raw materials of prose, partly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the memory of his mother's tenderness. The father, though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. The boy was almost a dwarf in size. When sixteen he grew ahead,[202] and was so feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to teach him dancing failed from the extreme weakness ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Pageant, the Masque, we work our way to the Play itself. The first beginnings of the modern Drama must here be passed over: there were the rough and unformed comedies such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' performed in a college hall: or the tragedy played on boards spread over a waggon in the courtyard of an inn. Let us suppose that we are past the beginnings and are in ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... whence the pathos of those eyes, hardly up to the dog's in intelligence, yet omnipotent over the father's heart? God was there. The misery was that the devil was there too. Thence came the crying and tears. "Rescue the divine; send the devil to the deep," was the unformed prayer in ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... beginning God made the heavens and the earth, and while the earth was still unformed, God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Then God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness Night. And there was an evening and a ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... to embellishment. In fact, to embellish my story I have neither leisure nor ability; I shall, therefore, do no more than give a simple narration of events. They are the labours of my evenings, and will come to you an unformed mass, to receive its shape from your hands, or as a chaos on which you have already thrown light. Mine is a history most assuredly worthy to come from a man of honour, one who is a true Frenchman, born of illustrious parents, brought up in the Court of the ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... in greatest breadth. The rock is a coarse sienite, forming detached bare masses and ridges, but none of considerable height. In the hollows the soil appears rich, dark, and pulverulent, with much admixture of unformed bird-guano. The scanty vegetation is apparently limited to a grass growing in tussocks, and a few maritime plants. The ground resembles a rabbit warren, being everywhere undermined by the burrows of the mutton-bird, a dark shearwater (Puffinus brevicaudus) the size of a pigeon. A person in walking ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... into the world beyond. By this tragic circumstance our thoughts are sobered and we find ourselves face to face with a sad and bitter incident—the termination of a life while it was still incomplete and unformed. I hope that the whole school will refrain from useless comment and will form no harsh or unjust judgments. This is a time for charity ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... like these lessons of yours. At your age, with your judgment quite unformed, it is not proper that you should spend so much time with ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... the more were they linked to him in a connection of absolute dependence. Csar it was who provided their daily food, Csar who provided their pleasures and relaxations. He chartered the fleets which brought grain to the Tiber—he bespoke the Sardinian granaries whilst yet unformed—and the harvests of the Nile whilst yet unsown. Not the connection between a mother and her unborn infant is more intimate and vital, than that which subsisted between the mighty populace of the Roman capital and their paternal emperor. They drew their nutriment ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... the test that must be set over against all systems and institutions that have to deal with unformed characters. The everlasting question must be put again and again, does this, that or the other save, find, restore, or benefit the individuals that come under its influence? Whatever does this, is good; whatever fails to do this is not good. It is fair to ask what ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... systems of means are formed, organised, and established for the attainment of various ends of felt value. The establishment of these systems of means is only possible because in the human infant the nervous system is relatively unformed at birth, is relatively plastic, and so is capable of being organised in such and such a definite manner. On the other hand, in many animals the nervous system of each is definitely formed at birth; it is so organised ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... thousand, and a small one a strong nation," we may gratefully recognize the merciful guidance and blessing of the Lord, Who has "hastened it in his time." In 1784, we see one single bishop of our communion, and one only, outside the realm of Great Britain and Ireland; and him with an unformed diocese and a future on which rested more clouds than sunshine. In 1884 time would fail him who should undertake to read the roll of regions occupied and churches organized. An American statesman once said, in words that have been ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... looked about for a girl of equal rank who might marry their boy. They decided on little Marie Adrienne de Noailles, daughter of a great peer of France. The girl was only twelve years old, and her mother was very unwilling to have her married to a boy whose character was unformed, and whose fortune would allow him to become as wild as he chose. Her father, however, liked the match, and her mother finally agreed, insisting, however, that the children should wait two years ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... spinning up along the shining Mohawk, and still his eyelids would not close. In his waistcoat-pocket lay a bulky letter, the last of many in the same superscription—a prim, unformed, school-girlish hand—that had come to him during the last two years of his cadet life. Its predecessors, carefully wrapped and tied, were in the old trunk somewhere ahead among the baggage. In his hand again was the telegram that, reaching him at the moment ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... and still my plans in regard to her father remained unformed, the men on whom I relied did not appear, and mademoiselle did not speak of resuming her flight southward. There came no further sign of the existence of De Berquin. From or of the outside world we heard nothing, save occasionally, when the wind ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... small quarto shape, bound in limp parchment, with strings to tie the covers together. Its pages, measuring 9 and 3/4 by 8 in., were 64, and numbered throughout; but a bare third of them were written on, and these in an unformed hand which yet was eloquent of much. A paragraph would start with every letter drawn as carefully as in a child's copy-book; would gradually straggle and let its words fall about, as though fainting by the way; and so would tail into incoherence, to be picked up—next ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... slip? Should I instantly drag her off to France like a proper chaperone? Then how could I explain to Anne—Anne would be heavy dragging with that lodestone of a yacht in the harbor. Or could we stay here as we had planned and not see Cary again? The unformed shapes of different questions and answers came dancing at me like a legion of imps as I lay with my head on the pillow and looked at Anne's confident, handsome face, and admired the freshness and cut of her ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... her with some unformed idea of sympathy. He murmured vague words of comfort, as he might have done to a wailing child that had hurt itself; but he had no idea how to still the tempestuous grief of a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... mantlepiece, just above where the weeping girl crouched, stood a photograph—the photograph of a young and good-looking, gaily-smiling man. Across it, in a boyish and somewhat unformed hand, was written, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... in the tempered air Of comfort till themselves become the springs Of a yet milder race: all are not born To touch majestic eminence and shine Directing spirits in their nations' sight And radiate unformed posterity: But through transcendent mercy all are born To enter on a nobler heritage Than these, if each but wills to choose aright In serving Duty, man's prerogative: Which is far pleasanter than paths of flowers, Than warmest clustering of ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... shape and afar off; but it has been there. After a quarrel, or with some strong sense upon him of irritation or discomfort arising out of the continuance of this life in his path, the man has brooded over the unformed desire to take it. "Though he should be hanged for it." With the entrance of the Punishment into his thoughts, the shadow of the fatal beam begins to attend—not on himself, but on the object of his hate. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... which later poets have profited, but his own handling of them was feeble and prolix. Yet there was a simplicity about the old French language and a certain elegance and delicacy in the diction of the trouveres which the rude, unformed English ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... example, had she been permitted, so fast are evil fashions destroying the beautiful and practical national costumes. Little did Lukerya dream that she, in her peasant garb, with her thick nose and rather unformed face, was a hundred times prettier than Annushka, with far ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... of him as a steady, religious-minded man, but not peculiarly devout, and indeed the just balance of his mind made him perceive that the prime duty of an undergraduate was industry rather than attempts to exercise his yet unformed and uncultivated powers. In 1848 he was second wrangler. There were two prizes, called Dr. Smith's, for the two most distinguished mathematicians of the year. The senior wrangler's papers had the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... influence, calls up from the unknown abyss of the feelings new combinations of fancy, which, though vague and obscure, as those nebulae of light that astronomers have supposed to be the rudiments of unformed stars, afterwards become distinct and brilliant acquisitions. In a crowd, I am like the somnambulist in the highest degree of the luminous crisis, when it is said a new world is unfolded to his contemplation, wherein all things have an intimate affinity with the state of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... pins, buckles, and all that shone and glittered, her particular desire for Christmas had been a Netiquette and Complete Letter Writer, and this Mr. V.V. had duly obtained for her, though it had run to a dollar and a quarter. The little girl might have been any age or no age; she was unformed for her years, somewhat elfin of countenance, and thin in the cheek. On one of these cheeks, Dr. Vivian now laid the back of his hand, and told Kern to stick out her tongue. She did it as she did everything (except cheroot-making), like a game, sticking it out ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... will appeal to the pride of their Catholic companions; and an appeal to pride is generally a trump card. They will ask—"Is it possible that gentlemen could submit themselves to the guidance of a clergyman whose manners are unformed and whose English is marred by ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Finn's sticky mouth could open in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed to catch the sense of ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... lesson from a Jewish king. Scarcely can any one in a Christian land be in more disadvantageous circumstances than Josiah—nay, scarcely in a heathen: he had idolatry around him, and at the age he began to seek God, his mind was unformed. What, then, was it that guided him? whence his knowledge? He had that, which all men have, heathen as well as Christians, till they pervert or blunt it—a natural sense of right and wrong; and he did not blunt it. In the words of the text, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy. In tragedy he often writes with great appearance ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... the man the song belonged to. Whereupon, my children, I finished that old tune on that bugle, and this is what I got. I knew you'd like to look at it. Don't grab." (We were all struggling for a sight of the well-known unformed handwriting.) ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... remarked, easily. "Red, dirty, unformed, no hair.... This is a little redder, a little more dirty, a little more unformed; it has a little less hair.... Beyond ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... him not only immoderately fascinating in his appeal to her own imperious youth, but the most interesting life partner that a romantic maiden with secret intellectual promptings could demand. Her brilliant long eyes melted and flashed, her soft unformed mouth wore a constant ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... did a damsel saunter, Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing; "Maiden meet," held I, "till arise my forefelt Wonder ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... woman was small and very pretty, but with the pallor of fatigue and overwork; her lips were beautifully chiselled, but almost colorless; and she was so thin that her figure had the frail appearance of an unformed girl. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... been pasted on, tiny bunches of flowers and leaves all of which had lost their color, and many of which had fallen off. The album had belonged to Dora's mother, and the verses were all written in unformed, childish characters. There were also some drawings, and among these one of a small house and a well, with a man standing near it, particularly attracted Hunne's attention, and he took the book in his own hands, and ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... treatment. In its upright, unostentatious cradle it is protected against that injudicious fondling and dangerous promiscuous osculation to which, as an infant in human arms, it is so often subjected. Above all, it is kept from that shameless and mortifying publicity so unjust to the weak and unformed animal. The child repays this consideration by a gratifying silence. It cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or actions; it cannot participate in our pleasures. Why should it be forced into premature contact with them, merely ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of many heavy years since that time of hope and passion, but, perhaps, the vague shadow would pass away, and he could renew the boy's thoughts, the unformed fancies that were part of the bright day, of the wild roses in the hedgerow. All other things should be laid aside, he would let them trouble him no more after this winter night. He saw now that from the first he had allowed his imagination to bewilder ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... revealed the lagoon, one broad sheet of silver and blue, the shawls were opened, limbs went luxuriously at the stretch; you could see and hear chatter the couple of adventurers if you cared. Bellaroba you have seen already—very gentle, very simple, very unformed without and within. She had pretty ways, coaxing and appealing ways. When she asked a question it was with lifted eyebrows and a head on one side. She would take your hand without art, and let you hold it without afterthought. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the envelopes was addressed in a clear, ordinary lady's hand; the other, cheap and poor in quality, was in a firm, and yet unformed, handwriting. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... is dim and hard to define. The mind of the community had not yet firmly grasped the conception of public office as a trust for the public good, and the general opinion which stimulates and sustains the official conscience in holding this trust sacred was still unformed. The courts of justice were the first branch of the government to feel the pressure of public opinion, and to respond to the demand for impersonal and impartial right. But this process had only begun when Bacon, who had never before served as judge, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... had an unchildish sense of the incongruity of her presence as a visitor in Lady Anne's house. Walter Gray's glance roamed over his young daughter. He saw nothing of her dreary attire. He saw only the spiritual face, over-pale, the slender, young, unformed body, graceful as a half-opened flower in its ill-fitting covering, the slender feet that had a suggestion of race, the toil-worn hands the fingers of which ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... prettiest cottage you ever saw on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place. Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere child—her mind quite unformed." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin's side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... question of just how the high romantic affairs ahead of him would affect this delicately intelligent boy. For a time perhaps he might misjudge his father.... He spent a week-end with Lady Viping and stayed on until Wednesday and then he came back to London. His plans were still unformed when the day came for Lady Harman's release, and indeed beyond an idea that he would have her met at the prison gates by an enormous bunch of snowy-white and crimson chrysanthemums he had nothing really concrete at ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... randomness (disorder) 59. [taking form from surroundings] fluid &c. 333. V. deface[Destroy form], disfigure, deform, mutilate, truncate; derange &c. 61; blemish, mar. Adj. shapeless, amorphous, formless; unformed, unhewn[obs3], unfashioned[obs3], unshaped, unshapen; rough, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of unadulterated joy. My mother, who was then living with me alone, perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who is my usual helper in these times of parturition, I must spur her up at all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify my unformed fancies. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fled, and in her room sat down, staring in a sudden panic. She needed to search out a certain faded picture. It was almost with a sob that she noted the thin shoulders, the unformed jaw, the eye betokening pride rather than vigour, the brow indicative of petulance as much as sternness. Mary Ellen laid the picture to her cheek, saying again and again that she loved it still. Poor girl, she did not yet know that this was but the maternal love of a woman's heart, pitying, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... ages. Youngest sons in a family, like monks in a convent, may remain children till they have reached middle age; but the elder, should their father die prematurely, are suddenly ripened into manhood, when they are almost boys. Charles had left Oxford a clever unformed ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the wide bottom of the valley the construction camp sprawled its ugly mass. From where he stood in the doorway he looked down on it over the grade—its straggling unformed planning; the flimsy shacks, half unhewn logs, half canvas, without respect for streets or angles or lines; its half-hearted struggle to lift itself up the slope to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... but still it cannot conceive of them except as annexed to subjects: for every human idea, however elevated, is substantial, that is, affixed to substances. It is moreover to be observed, that there is no substance without a form; an unformed substance not being any thing, because nothing can be predicated of it; and a subject without predicates is also an entity which has no existence in reason. These philosophical considerations are adduced in order to shew still more clearly, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... impatiently. This girl was irritating to a degree, and yet there was all the time that vague dejection about her, and withal a certain childishness, which seemed to insist upon patience. The girl was really older than Ellen, but she was curiously unformed. Some of the other girls said openly that ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... remarkable books that have come down to us from that opulent age. It has in abundance most of the faults that a book can have. It was hastily written in six weeks. It is ill-arranged, full of repetitions, full of digressions, and almost without a regular plan. Its style is unformed, sometimes rhetorical, sometimes familiar. But with all these faults, it teems with apt phrases, telling passages, vigorous sentences which sum up in a few convincing lines the substance of its message. It lacks ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... part with the lady as you have done with the gentleman. I am to step in, I suppose, as the confidential counsellor on all subjects of sweet May. I am to preserve her from a youth whose passions are so impetuous and whose principles are so unformed.' ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are mad," she said, turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes afire. "Have I ever deceived you? Have I ever pretended to care for you? Bah, no! You are only an unformed, hysterical boy. Before, you were indifferent to me. Now, I am very quickly growing to hate you! ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... imperfect by-roads which lead from these parish-roads to scattered farmhouses and cottages, the motion is yet slower and very irregular; just as we find it in the capillaries. While along the field-roads, which, in their unformed, unfenced state, are typical of lacunae, the movement is the slowest, the most irregular, and the most infrequent; as it is, not only in the primitive lacunae of animals and societies, but as it is also in those lacunae in ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... or at least the re-inventor of the inductive method, and the father of all discovery since his time. These notions have been held firmly, while more special ones concerning his system and himself have been, for the most part, vague or unformed. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... of my opinion, and that you will look on those half-lines hereafter as the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed, unanimated mud. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... his pride and delight, were made of no account. Flesh of his flesh, the keeper of his honour and his peace henceforth, the maker or marrer of his life's happiness, be it long or short, was this pretty unformed, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... nations. We simply assert, that English families removed from out of the sphere of those proper duties, common to every people, and from all opportunities of public worship or religious example, incur a risk which is very serious in kind, especially to those still young and unformed in character. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... and in adventures in which the horrible is sometimes dangerously near the ludicrous. Brown had not a particle of humor. Of literary art there is little, of invention considerable; and while the style is to a certain extent unformed and immature, it is neither feeble nor obscure, and admirably serves the author's purpose of creating what the children call a "crawly" impression. There is undeniable power in many of his scenes, notably in the descriptions of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, found in the romance of "Arthur Mervyn." ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... I should say that the education of the colored race in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in an ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learning upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moral condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all, marry me, Pauline, if you can bring yourself to do it. I am the only approach to a friend that you have in the world. As your husband, I can care for you and protect you. You are young, your character is unformed, you are ignorant of the world. You have no home, no protection, literally none, and I am afraid to trust you. You need not be angry if I say so. I think I've earned the right to find some faults in you. I don't expect you to love me. I don't ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... the religious element. It is as instinctive and elemental as the law of self-preservation. It informs the whole intellect and personality of the people. And he who would greatly influence the people by uttering their unformed thoughts must have this great and unanalyzable bond ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... much more than things that the passing world—the world of action and achievement—seemed to me to be an unworthy world, and the world of thought to be the true and real world. It will thus be seen that I was young and my mind unformed." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... many of the elevated and more noble inventions of Raphael and other great men; yet it must be honestly confessed, that in what is called knowledge of the figure, foreigners have justly observed, that Hogarth is often so raw and unformed, as hardly to deserve the name of an artist. But this capital defect is not often perceivable, as examples of the naked and of elevated nature but rarely occur in his subjects, which are for the most part filled ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... between Farragut and Mr. Folsom did not end with this separation. The latter survived to the end of the civil war, and was thus privileged to follow the successful and great career of the admiral to whom, while yet an unformed boy, he had thoughtfully extended a helping hand. As late as 1865 letters passed between the two, showing that both cherished warm recollections of that early association; Mr. Folsom dating his, as though careful ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and phrases to describe the sparkling waters of Lake Memphremagog, the wooded western shore in the distance. The few boats floating on the surface of the water looked unreal. The faint soft beat of a distant motor equally false. Jimmy hardly breathed; he had a vague unformed desire to hold this scene, to prolong it. There was a silence that was almost painful. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet has compared to creation. An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers. Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding? If more ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... altar, how little did she dream of the shadows and darkness that were to fall upon her path! And alas! how little does many a careless girl, who gives herself away, thoughtlessly, to a young man of unformed character, dream of the sorrow too deep for tears that awaits her. Surely this were anguish enough,—and surely it called for the sustaining sympathy of friends. But the friend of her early years, the sister in whose arms, in the days of ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... potent to resist temptation, however tremendous. He felt so proud of the boy. Billy was never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened, holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already—a real little man. Dale took his son's hand in his, took Billy with him into the granary, the hay loft, or across the fields, cut bits of willow and showed how to make a ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... no one, Digby," replied Hamilton, in a reserved tone; "nor am I going to wrong any one by uttering unformed suspicions." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... grave. All that had been sweet and strong in her friendship with Elsie now flooded in upon her in a mighty wave of undefined emotion. She was immediately conscious only of the wasted figure before her, and its peril, but back of consciousness were unformed memories of their girlhood together, of the inseparable intimacy of their young womanhood, and of that shy and tender time when she had been the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... book, "A Romance of Two Worlds," was an eager, though crude, attempt to explain and express something of what I myself had studied on some of these subjects, though, as I have already said, my mind was unformed and immature, and, therefore, I was not permitted to disclose more than a glimmering of the light I was beginning to perceive. My own probation—destined to be a severe one—had only just been entered upon; and hard and fast limits were imposed ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... man, the strength of his purpose—the sudden and full realization of both—this caught her like a tangible thing, and left her no more than the old, blind, unformed protest. He must not go! She could ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... looking about them, people do learn, and information to a certain point is general. Those who have knowledge are not shy of imparting it, and those who are ignorant take care not to seem so; but are sometimes agreeable, often amusing, and seldom betes. Nowhere have I seen unformed sheepish boys, nowhere the surliness, awkwardness, ungraciousness, and uneasy proud bashfulness, I have seen in the best companies in England. Our French friend Lucien has, at fifteen, the air and conversation of a finished ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Unheard by sharpest ear—unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest mind, Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth, And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world, incessantly, Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss; Open, but still a secret—the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... so simply, so cordially, with such frank pleasure, that his own restraint gave way at first glance. In her glowing color, in the tones of her voice, lay a charm which carried him back to Colorow, linking the mature and splendid woman with the unformed girl of the mountain-cabin. He took her hand with a keen thrill of admiration—whatever had come to her she had gained in grace without apparent ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of Paul de Chateauvieux—jealousy of his opportunities, his influence, his relation towards that keen sweet nature. That, too, had been one of his dreams of the future,—the dream of tutoring and training her young unformed intelligence. He had done something towards it; he had, as it were, touched the spring which had set free all this new and unexpected store of power. But, if he had planted, others had watered, and others would reap. In this great crisis of her fortunes he had been nothing to her. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried so furiously to resist, Edwin charged with lowered head from the room, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... among the most absorbed of those who had listened to his speech. Passing at once into the room, he crossed as if by instinct to the desk, and there halted. On the top of some unopened letters lay the significant yellow envelope of a telegram—the telegram that in an unformed, subconscious way had sprung to his expectation on the ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... rapidly in those long periods of unbroken reflection. To develop a human being, leave him or her alone most of the time; it is too much company, too little time to digest and assimilate, that keep us thoughtless and unformed until life is half over. She astonished him by suddenly ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves—And ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 'Paradise Lost;' but he has, instead, shed on us a shower of plumes, as from the wing of a fallen angel—beautiful, ethereal, scattered, and tantalizing. Southey's poems are large without being great—massive, without being majestic—they have rather the bulk of an unformed chaos than the order and beauty of a finished creation. Campbell, in many points the Virgil of his time, has, alas! written no Georgies; his odes and lesser poems are, 'atoms of the rainbow;' his larger, such as 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' may be compared to those segments of the showery ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... study the youth, who certainly was, as Aunt Ada said, remarkable for the cameo-like cutting of his profile, though perhaps no one without an eye for art would have remarked it, as he had the callow unformed air of a lad of seventeen or eighteen, and looked shy and grave; but his voice was a fine one, and was heard to more advantage in the solos to a hunting ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure was free,' and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... "Some unformed idea that we were going to escort, or rescue, benighted travelers flickered dimly in my mind as I galloped through the night air; but when I managed to approach my companion and called out to him for explanation, he only turned ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various |
