"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the great tower with a vague consciousness that he was going to do something up there—perhaps sketch a general plan of the structure. But he began to discern that this Stancy-Castle episode in his studies of Gothic architecture might be less useful than ornamental to him as a professional man, though it was too agreeable ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... jar and fret. Love is made a vague regret. Eyes with idle tears are wet. Idle habit links us yet, What is love? for we forget: ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a latch. There is nothing so interesting to the juvenile mind, as the wonderful; there is no power that it so eagerly covets, as that of astonishing spectators by its miraculous exertions. Mind appeared, to my untutored reflections, vague, airy, and unfettered, the susceptible perceiver of reasons, but never intended by nature to be the slave of force. Why should it be in the power of man to overtake and hold me by violence? Why, when I choose to withdraw ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... purpose but to make the reader's spine creep. The mildest of these horrors is "The Fall of the House of Usher," which some critics place at the head of Poe's fiction. It is a "story of atmosphere"; that is, a story in which the scene, the air, the vague "feeling" of a place arouse an expectation of some startling or unusual incident. Many have read this story and found pleasure therein; but others ask frankly, "Why bother to write or to read such palpable nonsense?" With all Poe's efforts to make it real, Usher's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... They have a vague idea of a future state; many have dreamed of it. Some of their medicine men pretend to have had revelations from bears and other animals; and they thus learned that their future existence would be but a continuation of this. They will go ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... black majesty the dome of St. Paul's; its vastness suffered no diminution from this high outlook, rather was exaggerated by the flying scraps of mirky vapour which softened its outline and at times gave it the appearance of floating on a vague troubled sea. Somewhat nearer, amid many spires and steeples, lay the surly bulk of Newgate, the lines of its construction shown plan-wise; its little windows multiplied for points of torment to the vision. Nearer again, the markets of Smithfield, Bartholomew's Hospital, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... I like to recall it as one of those days about which we ask ourselves why we did not value them more when we had them. I speak of it here, because, in the soothing peace of the Fal that twilight, the AEsthetic seemed to stir in me—not so as to wake, but so as to wake soon. I felt some vague premonition of all the love, the sentiment, and the sorrow which would be mine in the manhood that was brightening to a pale, but ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... quietly without being seen by his mother and tiptoed up to his room, where, in sour meditation, he spent the intervening time until supper was ready. In a vague way he realized that he had, by deserting the team, betrayed himself to all his comrades as a fellow swayed by petty jealousy; but this thought, which seemed trying to force itself humiliatingly upon him, he beat back and thrust ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... she even gave way to a gesture of impatience when Mrs. Blankley asked for a fifth cup of tea. Mrs. Blankley is a great advocate of temperance. In connection with which, Aunt Anna once said that she thought there should be temperance in all things beginning with "t." Which vague saying, as illustrative of her wit, was treasured up by her indulgent husband and quoted "As ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a year. Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert; and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized her somewhat vague but persistent ideals. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of a sound new in that house. His door stood open for ventilation and it came floating up the old stairs. He was aware of a vague pleasure before he localised the sound. It was music; a piano—but not the usual rooming-house instrument; a piano in tune, softly played. It drew him to the door and to the banisters outside, a poignant, haunting melody rippling in a minor treble, a melody that queerly ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... gravelled flat of each enclosure, and perpendicularly down steps cut in the sandstone or let into the walls. I counted 800 houses from the river, and there must be many more: the inhabitants are Bengalees and Khasias, and perhaps amount to 3000 or 4000; but this is a very vague estimate. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... father Parmenides," the centre of the school of Elea; Heraclitus, thirdly, author of the doctrine of "the Perpetual Flux": three teachers, it must be admitted after all, of whom what knowledge we have is to the utmost degree fragmentary and vague. But then, one way of giving that knowledge greater definiteness is by noting their direct and actual influence ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... criticism, fashion, customs, the pulpit; and under each head are grouped, without formal system, those notes on life and studies of society that had gradually accumulated in the author's mind. A final chapter, "Des Esprits Forts," expresses a vague spiritual philosophy, which probably was not insincere, and which at least served to commend the mundane portion of his book to pious readers. The special attraction of the whole lies in its variety. A volume merely of maxims would have been too rigid, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... there is in the Library an antique chair, venerable by age and association, which is used only on Commencement Day, when it is occupied by the President while engaged in delivering the diplomas for degrees. "Vague report," says Quincy, "represents it to have been brought to the College during the presidency of Holyoke, as the gift of the Rev. Ebenezer Turell of Medford (the author of the Life of Dr. Colman). Turell was connected by marriage with the Mathers, by some ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... a reply to this shout, and Jack, with a vague feeling of fear in his heart, hurried forward, climbed the fence that separated the field from the highway, and fairly ran ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... cab, and drove off at once. George remained in the street; he paced up and down, and took no rest—he was far too excited and nervous for that. He had got a dangerous game to play, and his plans were vague and shadowy. He had promised Mr. Sanders he would make inquiries about the person he suspected had forged the cheque, and let him know in the morning. His plan was to try and raise the money, pay it to Mr. Sanders on account of the transgressor, and induce him to ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... the unending columns press In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness. Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless, And turn with profound gesture vague and slow, As who would pray good for the world, but know Their benediction empty as ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... a home and a person to whom he could trust; and she was so abhorred, and the reports against her so shocking where she resided, that she was glad to leave a place where every one, as she passed, would get out of her way, as if to avoid contamination. Yet these reports were vague, although hinting at some horrid and appalling crimes. No one knew what they exactly were, for the old woman had outlived her contemporaries, and the tradition was imperfect; but she had been handed down to the next generation as one to be ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... by the lively attentions of a fiercely foreign town, he deliberately resolved to take his pleasure regardless of consequences and of the sacred ties of Belgrave Square. We prefer to think that some vague idea of combining two duties—that which he owed to himself and that which he owed to Mrs. Greyne—moved him in all he did, and that the subterfuge into which he was undoubtedly led was not wholly selfish, not wholly criminal. Nevertheless, ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... had received many communications, all of which, however, were made with the vague hope of getting a reward. None were at all reliable. At length he thought that it was useless to wait any longer in Canada, and concluded to go to New York as a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... his greater self, of the man he had contrived to be for a few hours. He sat in his chair, dimly realizing it, with vague and wordless regrets. Then, upon the table, he saw the flute, and rose to put it in the cupboard. It would never be useful again, but he did not want to throw ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... A vague depression of spirits had overtaken Aurora, reaction, perhaps, from the excitements of the day, and she sought her friend with the instinct to make herself feel better by ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... not in any popular appreciation of his merits, but in the contrary truth,—that the mass of people could place no intelligent estimate upon him at all, either for good or for ill. Outside of Illinois a few men, who had studied his speeches, esteemed him an able man in debate; more had a vague notion of him as an effective stump speaker of the West; far the greatest number had to find out about him.[104] In a word, Mr. Lincoln gained the nomination because Mr. Seward had been "too conspicuous," whereas he himself was so little known that it was possible ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... at which life began to be manifest at the Bar T ranch after the stirring events of the night before. Bud Larkin himself, worn out with his nights and days of vigil, had gone to sleep on his bed almost in the act of taking his boots off. Vague ideas of escape had coursed through his mind only to be overtaken and killed by the slumber he had ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... suddenly as if he had run against the trunk of a tree. Despite his broken utterance, a vague sense of his situation was ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... a vague energetic disposition to improve material things. In another part of England ingenious people were beginning to use coal in smelting iron, and were producing metal in abundance and metal castings in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... were covered with beautiful vegetation and full of animal life, yet the sight of that leaden-coloured barrier of cloud resting on the forest tops, whilst the savannahs were bathed in sunshine, ever raised in my mind vague sensations of the unknown and the unfathomable. Our course was nearly parallel to this gloomy forest, but we gradually approached it. The line that separates it from the grassy savannahs is sinuous and irregular. In some places a dark promontory ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... as I entered the breakfast-room, a vague steam as of frying sausages, which, creeping in from the neighboring kitchen, obscured in some degree the six white faces of your wife and children. The breakfast-table was amply covered, for you were always what is termed by judicious housewives "a good provider." I remember ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... logical statement of reasonings consist in the use of vague or figurative language, or in the substitution for one another of expressions supposed to be equivalent, though, in fact, dangerously discrepant. Against such occasions of error the logician can provide no safeguard, except the advice to be careful and discriminating in what you say ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the thoughtful with a silent, vague dismay, And from its unholy magic we are fain to steal away; Out here in the quiet moonlight we may pause awhile and rest, Whilst the solemn stars of heaven bring back ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... which might break through at any moment and land them in the water below. There, certain death awaited them, for they would smother and drown under the hideous pall. With his heart in his throat Eric turned sharply to the right, trusting only to a vague sense of direction. A score of steps brought him to a slight billowing of the ash, and with a sigh of relief he knew he was on ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the period of energy to sixty or even seventy; but Nature's laws must be obeyed, and the period of decline begins, and goes on with accelerated rapidity. Then comes Old Age; and as we descend the semicircle towards eighty, we find that the remnant of life becomes vague and cloudy. By shading off, as I have done, the portion of the area of the diagram according to the individual age, every one may see how much of life is consumed, and what is left—D.V.. Here ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... walk up the road a little way, or shall we stand and wait for him here?" said Ellen, trembling half from exertion and half from a vague fear ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and the metropolitan East had faded and become as hazy and vague as the Highwoods. Ten days, and the witchery of the West leaped in her blood and held her fast ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... to have enjoyed her outing, else it would not seem consistent for her to wish to come again to-morrow; and she must, she must come again! Her poor contradictory little heart found itself clinging to the one vague, absurd hope, despite ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... but more systematically. The lands in Brazil are not measured, and everything is done by the eye. The quantity of cane which a piece will require for planting is estimated by so many cart-loads; and nothing can be more vague than this mode of computation, for the load which a cart can carry depends upon the condition of the oxen, upon the nature of the road, and upon the length of the cane. Such is the awkward make of these vehicles, that much nicety is necessary ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it." "There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... evidence touching unsoundness of mind, and the application thereto of the legal test of criminal responsibility. In point of fact, juries are hardly to be blamed for this, since the law itself is antiquated and the subject one abounding in difficulty. Unfortunately the opportunity for vague yet damaging testimony on the part of experts, the ease with which any desired opinion can be defended by a slight alteration in the hypothetical facts, and the practical impossibility of exposure, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... and a half after sailing night had settled down. The English shore was but a vague, distant line. A short, choppy sea was running. In the sky was a new ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... to fill all the horizon of these preachers' vision, was to him little better than another tumult of words; while, far beyond all the tumults, hung still, in the vast of thought unarrived, unembodied, that something without a shape, yet bearing a name around which hovered a vague light as of something dimly understood, after which, in every moment of inbreaking silence, his soul straightway began to thirst. And if the Truth was not to be found in his own heart, could he think that the blows by which he ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... somehow. I wish you'd talk with her and try to have her let up on Viola. I don't think they're doin' right by her. If she was my own girl I'd stop it—I would so." Then he added, in a curious tone, this vague defence: "As for Viola, she would be all right if they would leave her alone. She's gifted in a way I don't understand; but if she isn't twisted by Clarke's foolishness she's going to make some man a good wife. She's a good girl, and, as I say, if she was my ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of the sixteenth century, and long before the seventeenth, a vague rumor, a confused tradition, had located, in the neighborhood of the Vermilion Sea, a famed land, whose rivers rolled over gold, and whose mountains rested on golden foundations; the treasures of Mexico and Peru were nothing in comparison with those which were to be gathered there. ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... visage expressed some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague resemblance to a block of granite. A few gray locks on either side of his head fell straight to the collar of his greasy coat, which was buttoned to the chin. He resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote; he was, apparently, scoffing but melancholy, full of disdain and philosophy, but half-crazy. He ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... that any previous judgment as to what ought to occur is as nearly impossible as may be. We predict from knowledge, real or supposed, of facts which are associated in our minds with any new subject under consideration. Children often know in a general, vague, and indefinite way that which, for the sake of a full and systematic knowledge, we may desire them to study. What they know will unconsciously modify their expectations, and their expectations in turn ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... day, she realized with vague wonder, her slowly formed theories had been set at naught, her whole philosophy turned upside down. Had these years of protest and rebellion done no more than lead her in a wide circle, past empty gain, and joyless ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... young man of thirty or thereabouts, smooth-faced, good-looking and athletic. It was quite true that he wore a red coat when tramping through his woods and vales, not because it was fashionable, but because he had a vague horror of being shot at by some near-sighted nimrod from Manhattan. A crowd of old college friends had just left him alone in the hills after spending several weeks at his place, and his sole occupation ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference between the effect of written words, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... than that that kept him gazing in idle happiness. He was delighting in the sense of his own property around him, the most substantial pleasure possible to man. His feeling, deep though it was, was quite vague and inarticulate. If you had asked Gourlay what he was thinking of he could not have told you, even if he had been willing to answer you civilly—which is most unlikely. Yet his whole being, physical and mental (physical, indeed, rather than mental), was surcharged with the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... to be forgiveness and restoration at all, they must come in such a fashion as that there shall be no doubt whatsoever of their reality and power. The vague kind of trust in a doubtful mercy, about which I have been speaking, may do all very well for people that have never probed the depths of their own hearts. Superficial notions of our sin, which so many of us have, are contented ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... This was rather vague, and Pignaver, who read the classics and prided himself on his memory, was reminded of those Lacedaemonians who answered the wordy fugitives from Samos by saying that they had already forgotten the first half of their ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... heard a policeman's step coming softly towards my house—pad, pad! A dreadful moment, then he passed by. I went into the room again all shaken, wondering whether I had done right, whether Allen would hawk the letter about—a thousand vague apprehensions. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... natural that the keenest curiosity should have been excited; not only because of that peculiar and indescribable charm of the man, which all recognized and which won all hearts, but also because of that hidden chapter—that sojourn in the desert, about which he preserved silence. It was felt in a vague way by his intimates that he had met with unusual experiences which had profoundly affected him and changed the course of his life. To me alone was the truth known, and I must now tell, briefly as possible, how my great friendship and close ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... conscious of new and vague horizons. "I once smelled summat sweet," he said dreamily. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... suddenly resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared,—this almost overwomanized woman, might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... from which stands out, on the right, close to the footlights, the trunk of a large oak, with a board nailed to it. A vague, milky, impenetrable light prevails. TYLTYL and MYTYL are at ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... signatures. Three of the remainder (Nos. 1, 3, and 6) may be classed as uncertain in their properties, that is, while the plants themselves seem to possess some medical value, the Indian mode of application is so far at variance with recognized methods, or their own statements are so vague and conflicting, that it is doubtful whether any good can result from the use of the herbs. Thus the Unaste[']tstiy[^u], or Virginia Snakeroot, is stated by the Dispensatory to have several uses, and among other ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Jesuits Garnet, Gerard, and Greenway, for whose arrest a proclamation was issued. Garnet had undoubtedly done much to persuade Catesby from having recourse to outrage or violence, and had never been consulted except in such a vague way that he could not possibly have suspected what was in contemplation. He had even secured from Rome a condemnation of violent measures, and had communicated this to Catesby. Greenway was consulted after the plot had been arranged, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Venetian and Chinese lanterns of various colours. These had been hung from hooks in the rocks and pillars with infinite good taste at long intervals, so as to illuminate not too brilliantly the mystical darkness of the scene. Looking upon the vague, indefinite vista, as it glimmered away into an indefinable distance, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... hope of the new life, when programmes would never be neglected. In less than a month he would be thirty years of age. At twenty, it had seemed a great age, an age of absolute maturity. Now, he felt as young and as boyish as ever, especially before his father, and he perceived that his vague early notion about the finality of such an age as thirty had been infantile. Nevertheless, the entry into another decade presented itself to him as solemn, and he meant to signalise it by new and mightier resolutions to execute vaster programmes. He was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a man surviving in his children, or in his works, or in the universal consciousness, is but vague verbiage which satisfies only those who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may be persons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to possess great talent, or what we call great talent, and yet to be stupid ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... V. Despite a vague belief (referred to by Plato) of a remote and perished era of civilization, the most popular tradition asserts the Pelasgic inhabitants of Attica to have been sunk into the deepest ignorance of the elements of social life, when, either ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I think, a wistful sadness in the fall of evening, a vague regret for the fading glories of the day which, passing out of our lives for ever, leaves us so much the richer or poorer, the nobler or more unworthy, according to the use we have made of the opportunities it has offered us for the doing of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Mr. Saintsbury apparently thinks that Jefferies made a mistake in drawing his philosophy from an open-air study of nature, for he writes: "Unfortunately for Jefferies his philosophic background was not like Wordsworth's clear and cheerful, but wholly vague and partly gloomy." It was neither vague nor gloomy, we may remark, parenthetically, but we may admit that Jefferies saw too deeply into nature's workings, and had too sensuous a joy in life to interpret all Nature's doings, a la ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... courtship: "True courtship consists in a number of quiet, gentlemanly attentions; not so pointed as to alarm, not so vague ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... quietly, resting his shaky old hands on the crook of his cane. And as soon as old Lisa and Cowhouse Martha saw where Pickaxe Bengt had taken refuge, they, too, came tottering up, and sat down at Ingmar's feet. They did not speak to him, but somehow they must have had a vague idea that he would be able to protect them—he who was ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... his eyes, he could just see the vague outline of the big collie. The dog arose from a bundle of straw, stretched himself fore and aft, and walked gravely forward to welcome the visitors who were so kindly easing his loneliness. He was barely visible, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... agony of Christianity. These people here are among those who plume themselves on having abandoned Christian dogma. But deep down in their natures, there is not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,—the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational worship. And while they are dropping away from the old Church in all directions, they simultaneously, from sheer habit, create new-fangled creeds very much more absurd than anything ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... for a moment could it be supposed that the former document referred to Chichikov; yet, as each man pondered the position from his own point of view, he remembered that no one REALLY knew who Chichikov was; as also that his vague references to himself had—yes!—included statements that his career in the service had suffered much to the cause of Truth, and that he possessed a number of enemies who were seeking his life. This gave the tchinovniks further food for thought. Perhaps his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... vague geographical expression in the 17th century, but not so vague as India or Turkey. Indian ink comes from China (Fr. encre de Chine), and Indian corn from America. The names given to the turkey are extraordinary. We are not surprised that, as an American bird, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... be called "fanatical," as well as "false"; for it is nowhere laid down in Scripture; and it not only changes the way of acceptance, but it takes away the rule and standard of righteousness, and substitutes a vague notion, called sincerity, in its place, which never was, nor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that already gloomy place of travel: Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other native land of mine, the Latin Quarter. But when the Sierras had been climbed, and the train, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of the bay, Radisson heard of another lake leagues to the north, whose upper end was always frozen. This was probably some vague story of the lakes in the region that was to become known two centuries later as Mackenzie River. The spring of 1663 found the explorers back in the Lake of the Woods region accompanied by seven hundred Indians of the Upper Country. The company filled three hundred and sixty canoes. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... which there had been four Commissions on Oxford and Cambridge, and three on the Scottish Universities. The terms of reference of the Commission of 1901 on its appointment under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson were vague. A Judge of the High Court in Ireland threatened to resign if Trinity College—the main centre of University education in the island—were included in the scope of the inquiry of a Commission on the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... explains it by natural similitude; he that lays his hand on his breast, when he expresses pity, enforces his words by a customary allusion. But theology has few topicks to which action can be appropriated; that action which is vague and indeterminate will at last settle into habit, and habitual peculiarities ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... mother, he was a frequent hearer of Bishop Skinner, to whose church he was in the habit of carrying me. He died when I was very young, but not before my mind was impressed in favour of Episcopacy.... I readily confess, that in respect to Church Government, my principles were sufficiently vague and unformed; for to this important subject my attention was never particularly drawn till I came to this country, when my venerated friend, the late Dr. Stewart, of Kingston, urged me to enter the Church, and as I ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... inclined to think it a vision of his own brain, when suddenly a vague suspicion of the truth flashed upon his mind. He barred the door, and hastened wildly back. Yes, there she was, - there, in the chamber he had quitted, - there in her old innocent, happy home, so changed that none but he could trace one gleam of what she had been, - there upon her knees, - with ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... shed a pleasant odour which mingled pleasantly with that of the dressing-table; and she wandered about the room, her mind filled with vague meditations, studying the old engravings, principally pictures of dogs and horses, hounds and men, going out to shoot in bygone costumes, with long-eared spaniels to find the game for them. There was a multitude of these pictures on the walls, and Evelyn wondered who was her next-door ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... dressed the body swore that there were marks of hard skinny fingers on her throat. Estenega had made no secret of his admiration of her. At different times girls of the people had left Monterey suddenly, and vague rumors had floated down from the North that they had been seen in the redwood forests where Estenega's ranchos lay. I asked him, point-blank, one day, if these stories were true, prepared to scold him as he deserved; and he remarked coolly that stories of that sort were ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... not sufficient documents to carry us back to the origin of that tradition that would have it that the human form has been given to certain food preparations from remote times. Savants will not be slow to see in this a vague relic of the horrible festivities that succeeded human sacrifices among primitive peoples. For want of prisoners and of designated victims, a symbolic representation would have gradually developed, and been kept up, though losing its religious character. We merely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... which runs through the second, third, and fourth cantos, may possibly owe some of its details to a vague recollection of incidents which happened, or were supposed to happen, at Tahiti, in the interval between the final departure of the Bounty, September 21, 1789, and the arrival of the Pandora, March 23, 1791; but, as a whole, it is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... collected for carrying an army." "Great preparations at Ostend," he notes a week later; "Augereau commands that part of the Army. I hope to let him feel the bottom of the Goodwin Sand." It was just this sort of apprehension, specific in direction, yet vague and elusive in details, that Bonaparte was skilled ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the youth in order to force him by this last means to a realization of his wrong-doing. And here the punishment must not be given for general bad conduct or for a perverse disposition—those being vague generalities—but for a special act of wrong-doing at that time. He should not be punished because he is naturally bad or because he is generally naughty, but for this one special and particular act which he has committed. Thus ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... with slight olive tinge to it, a strong, intelligent face, not strictly beautiful, yet strangely attractive, the forehead low and broad, the nose straight, the lips full and inclined to smile. Suddenly a vague remembrance ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... just come back after a long, vague holiday, feeling well and keen about my work. The boys are not back yet, and I have returned to put things ready for next half. But my serene mood has received ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... answer—but I was beginning to think; and to wonder, too, in a vague, not very pleasant fashion. Was this—was Crone's death, murder, whatever it was—at all connected with the previous affair of Phillips? Had Crone told me the truth that night I went to buy the stuff for Tom Dunlop's rabbit-hutches? or had he kept something ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... applies to commodities, services, capital, to anything which can be said, literally, or by analogy, to have a price. "A short period" is, however, a vague expression and, since precision is the hallmark of an important law, we must accord to this one a status inferior to that which the preceding three can ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... up stairs, where Kat was lying on the bed, moaning and trying not to cry, with the painfully swollen wrist, laid out on a pillow. Twenty minutes' later the doctor was there with splints and bandages, and Kat, looking into his eyes with a vague alarm, asked, after he had examined it: "How long before I can ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... returned with her husband; but Jacopone had shrunk into a crippled tremulous old man, who pulled a vague forelock at Odo without sign of recognition. Filomena, it was clear, was master at Pontesordo; for though Giannozzo was a man grown, and did a man's work, he still danced to the tune of his mother's tongue. It was from her ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... in the most enviable of all humours: that in which a person, with a sufficiency of money and a knapsack, turns his back on a town and walks forward into a country of which he knows only by the vague report of others. Such an one has not surrendered his will and contracted for the next hundred miles, like a man on a railway. He may change his mind at every finger-post, and, where ways meet, follow vague preferences freely and go the low road or the high, choose ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be but the symbol for a vague feeling of tension, irritation or stimulation, which seeks relief or expression by the performance of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the landscape broadened before them. The bit of rugged shore line which lay there like a vision might be a point of land on the continent of North America or of Asia. Then again it might be the side of an island. Phi thought of this in a vague sort of way. His chief desire to put foot once more on something that did not drift with wind and tide, he bent every effort to ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... official intercourse. Intelligent, grave, dignified; conscientious in all his relations, from the student upwards to the teacher, the pastor, the professor; nothing empty as a scholar, nothing unsettled or inconsistent as a divine, nothing vague or groundless as an instructor; sincere, generous, honorable, devout; keenly sensitive in respect to the proprieties and charities of life; warm in his affections, strong in his attachments, stern in his integrity; above the arts ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... very wonderful that he was to live with her always. He felt happy and excited—so happy and excited that the parting when it came slipped over him lightly. Miss Trevor even thought he took it too easily and had a vague wish that he had shown more sorrow. Stephen said farewell to the boy he loved better than ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... throwing me off my guard with that plea was shrewd enough to get away with a very large sum of my hard-earned money. Besides"—and I was laughing, though not too good-naturedly—"I've noticed that you 'gentlemen' become vague about business only when the balance is against you. When it's in your favor, you manage to get your minds on business long enough to collect to the last fraction ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... silver quarter, on Christmas Eve, and I hied myself to Rag Hall at once to divide it with the poorest family there, on the express condition that they should tidy up things, especially those children, and generally change their way of living. The man took the money—I have a vague recollection of seeing a stunned look on his face—and, I believe, brought it back to our house to see if it was all right, thereby giving me great offence. But he did the best for himself that way, for so Rag Hall came under the notice of my mother too. And there ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... continue the musical business when the elders retire to the country. At first a passionate lover, Claude was afterwards a good and devoted husband. Phlipote never again opened her lips regarding the vague love which for a moment had flowered in her heart: only sometimes, a cloud of reverie veiled her eyes, which seemed to seek sadly, beyond the circle of her slow, calm life, a brilliant but chimeric image visible for ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... days of immediate demands and quick results, this question is too vague and too far-reaching to bring instant consolation. Apart from that, too, it cannot decide whether any war, however great, can ever abolish the natural and primitive fighting ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the trail. It had seen a lot of use, but less in recent weeks. There were sharp hoof-prints of the animal he had caught, larger hoof-prints, vague pad-marks of various sizes, but nothing that looked human. The trail went under a charred tree trunk at a height that was not comfortable for a man, and the spacing of the steps around the gnarled roots of an old slump did not fit ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... children felt but did not comprehend. She was a woman of not very much intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried it ill, and knew not what to do with it; but they could not tell that. They only felt a vague sense of disturbance and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... cruel fingers for them. She shook off the bewildered, dazed feeling, but it came again as the tempest of flame and smoke went racing to the north. Street and house and steeple and the vast crowds seemed sailing away on some swift crescent river to a great, vague, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... interests, and its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... had ascribed his behaviour of the previous day, his first, false version, his reticence and his confusion to scruples of conscience and vague apprehensions. Anxious about the consequences of the business and dreading lest his testimony might complicate it, he had tried to avoid the annoyance ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of his Essay relates to the ends of government. The conception on this subject, he tells us, which exists in the minds of most men is vague and undistinguishing. He first assumes, justly enough, that the end of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from each other." He then proceeds ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... graves. Even the pyramid texts reappear after one thousand years of practical oblivion. The value of master words was so firmly fixed in the Egyptian mind that misunderstood texts of all sorts were copied out and placed in the graves to secure to the dead some vague benefit ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [Coll.]; conjecturality^; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; bare supposition, vague supposition, loose supposition, loose suggestion. association of ideas, (analogy) 514.1; metonym [Gramm.], metonymy [Gramm.], simile (metaphor) 521. conceit, idea, thought; original idea, invention (imagination) 515. V. suppose, conjecture, surmise, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... period of European peace which began in 1815 was not one of internal repose; the very absence of those engrossing and imperious interests which belong to a time of warfare gave freer play to the feelings of discontent and the vague longings for a better political order which remained behind after the convulsions of the revolutionary epoch and the military rule of Napoleon had passed away. During thirty years of peace the breach had been widening between those ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... those of the other gospels. They were wrought at Jerusalem, under the eyes of the rulers, who did their utmost to detect them, and could not; but in frenzied despair, plotted to kill Lazarus. How different from the frequently vague and wholesale statements of the other gospels concerning events which happened where no enemy was watching to expose delusion! many of them in ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... it, and yet, years after you had thought that all had been disposed of for ever, the mention of a name wakes up associations in the mind of some one who heard the calumny, but never heard or never attended to the refutation, or who has only a vague and confused recollection of the whole, and he asks the question doubtfully, "But were there not some suspicious circumstances connected ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... a small tribe of the nation called Snake Indians, a vague denomination, which embraces at once the inhabitants of the southern parts of the Rocky mountains and of the plains on each side. The Shoshonees with whom we now are, amount to about one hundred warriors, and three times that number of women and children. Within ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... escape; and now, when weakened and depressed alike by bodily and mental suffering, such fancies obtained so much possession of her that she became more and more restless. The exertions of Sir Nigel and his companions, even of her own friends, failed in rousing or infusing strength. Sometimes it was vague conjectures as to the fate of her husband, the dread that he had fallen into the hands of his foes—a catastrophe which not only herself but many stronger minds imagined could scarcely be avoided. She would dwell on these fancies till suspense became intolerable; and then, if these were ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... golden glass and drank a vague toast heartily. Others in the Club were frankly intoxicated and many a heated scene marked the progress of unceremonious and impromptu revels. Young officers, who carried their lives in their hands every hour, showed their contempt of life in many bottles. Old men, stern and gray at dawn, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... 18th centuries you will find that nearly all its expressions, having reference to the country, show something of this kind; either a foolish sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always "warbling;" mountains always "lift their horrid peaks above the clouds;" vales always "are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods;" a few more distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired in the neighborhood of ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... the almost finished ship the noise of the riveting which had been but a vague palpitation of the air ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... insisting that the King of Portugal had moved first in this matter, and therefore should be the plaintiff. As to the rest he said that the suit was obscure, vague, and general, insufficient to form a case on possession, and to pass a sure sentence upon it, let them specify wherein they thought the treaty was not observed, and let them attempt the fitting remedy and interdict, and he will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... occasion for a commission to sit on Tilden. If it had struck us in 1880, Hancock would have been elected. Neither result would have its occasion in the superiority of the Democratic party, but in the belief that the Republican party was in some vague way blamable for the condition of things, and there should be a change. The Republican party is not as strong as it used to be. The old leaders have dropped out and no persons have yet taken their places. Blaine has dropped ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... spectators who were not familiar with the game. The old women, however, surrounded the curate in order to converse with him about spiritual matters, but Fray Salvi apparently did not consider the place and time appropriate, for he gave vague answers and his sad, rather bored, looks wandered in all ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... far in this vague description to show that Estotiland was an American country, except its western direction and perhaps its trading with Greenland. The points of unlikeness are at least as numerous as the points of likeness. But in what follows ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... his eyes was to him like a vast panorama, in the contemplation of which he forgot, for the moment, even his beloved fields and woods. Of the life of the majority of human beings, particularly the dwellers in large towns, Clare had as yet but very vague and indistinct notions, and was surprised, therefore, at many of the scenes before him. What struck him most was the feverish anxiety manifested in the countenances of the hurrying crowds, and the restless tumult of the never-ending wave of human life which kept floating up and ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... unimportant matters. For he scared up some grouse, and this is the tragedy. The open season for grouse is September 1st in Chelan and September 15th across the line. And the birds would not cross the line. They were wise birds, and must have had a calendar about them, for, although we were vague as to the date, we knew it was not yet the 15th. So they sat or fluttered about, and looked most awfully good to eat. But they never went near the danger-zone or ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... eyes were upon him, he tried to cross the hall and mount the stairs with dignity. The great leathern bag did not conduce to this, and he succeeded in appearing awkward in the extreme, and had a vague, uncomfortable impression that such ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... was left alone in life, with a common school education, a thorough knowledge of the Bible and of "Robinson Crusoe," a vague tradition of God everywhere, and a deep distrust of those who should ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tidings of the battle fought at Minden the defamation of this officer arrived. He was accused of having disobeyed orders, and his conduct represented as infamous in every particular. These were the suggestions of a vague report, which no person could trace to its origin; yet this report immediately gave birth to one of the most inflammatory pamphlets that ever was exhibited to the public. The first charge had alarmed the people of England, jealous in honour, sudden and rash in their sentiments, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... mathematics; but, as she knew very well, it was necessary that she should see her father before he went to bed. The case of Cyril Alardyce must be discussed, her mother's illusions and the rights of the family attended to. Being vague herself as to what all this amounted to, she had to take counsel with her father. She took her letters in her hand and went downstairs. It was past eleven, and the clocks had come into their reign, the grandfather's clock in the hall ticking in competition with the small clock on ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... few or of many books may find "reminders" in these pages. The author hastens to confess echoings from bygone days, hintings of vagrant fancies, and whimsical reveries wherein appeared the vague ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... quarters, viz, by the dissolute companions of Nero, to whom the mention of such an example served as an apology for their own extreme dissipation; (392) and by those who envied him for the affluence and dignity which he had acquired. The charge, however, is supported only by vague assertion, and is discredited by every consideration which ought to have weight in determining the reality of human characters. It seems totally inconsistent with his habits of literary industry, with the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... kindnesses—in particular the splendid paint-box, which remained Iskender's own—and, sobbing, prayed from the heart that he might live. The hooting of an owl, or the bark of some dog in the distance, alone broke the stillness, of which the rustle of the tamarisks seemed part, so faint and vague it was. At moments, looking up at the stars, he could have deemed them living creatures, for they seemed to throb in time with ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... whom I found working a loom in a cottage by the side of the river kept a ferryboat, and with his help I crossed again to the other bank. Wandering on with a somewhat vague purpose, I soon found myself—now under a gray sky—on a marshy flat, which a backwater of the Dordogne had almost made an island. Here there were many low shrubs of dwarf elder covered with berries; pools, and wide ditches, where the dark water ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was not that I meant," returned the king, sorry to have shown the bitterness of his thought in such a manner. "Well! I assure you that, notwithstanding the mask with which the villain covered his face, I had something like a vague suspicion that he was the very man. But with this chief of the enterprise there was a man of prodigious strength, the one who menaced me with a force ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... written to Arthur without getting any reply. Yes, he must go. And mingled with that reluctance and nameless apprehension which he felt at the thought of returning into her neighbourhood, he was acutely conscious, all the time, of a certain vague but sweet pleasure at the thought that fate had so ordained it. Perhaps it would be necessary for him to see her! A thrill of pleasure passed through him at the thought, followed almost immediately by a reaction of keen and bitter ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of insanity attacking the worrier and the delicate than the robust and the indifferent. In fact, the temperament which produces the faulty habits we are considering rarely culminates in insanity. It seems worth while, however, to replace the vague fear of insanity by a knowledge of the variety of mental unbalance remotely threatening the person who lacks the desire or the will, to place a check upon these faulty habits of mind. We may thus, in the worrier whose fears have taken this ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Jack found her when he came home. The stillness of the whole place showed him the children must be absent, and a vague alarm seized upon him. His fears for Estelle were easily roused. Yet fear or danger seemed very far from that bright, cheerful kitchen. Putting down the armful of things he was carrying, he gazed tenderly at his mother as he warmed his fingers over the genial flames. He could not bear ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... shuddered, looked through the window apprehensively in the gloaming, saw some vague, misty wraith approaching. Then he felt for the aureus ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance—perfect because vague and dream-born—that we see in our tea-cups at breakfast while we growl over ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever seen, and he says it moved him strangely. He had an intense desire to know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of the same kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts, and from him he learned the secret of the art. He proved an apt pupil, and surprised ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... happened then. I have a vague memory of the man accompanying us in the lift and giving some unintelligible account of things. I was stunned. We had interpreted the ambiguous telegram in all other ways than this. Adrian was dead. That was ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... So vague an answer was of course unsatisfactory, and the haughty Prussian king reiterated his demand in very ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Mr. Lovel pleaded his feeble health as a reason for declining their hospitality. A very dull life for a girl, perhaps; but for Clarissa it was not altogether an unhappy life. She was at an age when a girl can make an existence for herself out of bright young fancies and vague deep thoughts. There was that in her life just now which fades and perishes with the passing of years; a subtle indescribable charm, a sense of things beyond the common things of daily life. If there had been a closer bond of union ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of the old man caused the little boy to open his eyes. The moon, just at its full, cast long, vague, wavering shadows in front of the cabin. A colony of tree-frogs somewhere in the distance were treating their neighbors to a serenade, but to the little boy it sounded like a chorus of lost and long- forgotten whistlers. The sound was wherever the imagination ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... in these phases of animal life, which winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are eager for Winter to be gone, since he too is fugitive, and cannot keep his place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel has lost its cunning. The drifts, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... best to make certain changes delicately, imperceptibly, so that Innes would not, above all things, be perplexed into seeking for their reason. The walks and rides came to a vague conclusion, and Miss Anderson no longer kept the Viceroy or anybody else waiting, while Innes finished what he had to say to her in public, since his opportunities for talking to her seemed to become ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan |
