"Ill-defined" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... administration, their rule compared not unfavourably with the makeshift methods of Byzantine statesmanship. In Imperial Italy we see the strange spectacle of a military despotism tempered by the usurped privileges and jurisdictions of the great proprietors, or by the ill-defined temporal pretensions of the bishops. In Lombard Italy matters were at least no worse. The Lombards were aliens; but so were the Greeks. The Greeks treated the Italians as inferiors. But the Lombards intermarried ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... understood. All things were supposed to have life, and therefore to be loci of force; man's sense of social relation with this force constituted his religion. This sense was at first doubtless vague, ill-defined, or undefined, and in this form it is now found in certain tribes.[9] Gradually, as the processes of human life and of the external world become better known, and the vastness of the extrahuman control ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... what its significance was. It scarcely reminded him just then of the girl with the tearful eyes, usually so present with him. Her face seemed to be receding from his memory; the whole story of his life seemed to grow dim and ill-defined. His mind was curiously elate with a sense of achievement, a certainty that he was near the goal, that ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Lapidoth who had gone through so much, and was "capable of submitting to anything in the form of duty." For Gwendolen had remembered nearly every word that Deronda had said about Mirah, and especially that phrase, which she repeated to herself bitterly, having an ill-defined consciousness that her own submission was something very different. She would have been obliged to allow, if any one had said it to her, that what she submitted to could not take the shape of duty, but was submission to a yoke drawn on her by an action she was ashamed of, and worn with ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... become so accustomed to the darkness that he could dimly see that the place was full of a steamy mist, through which horrible-looking, ill-defined figures were moving, wild-eyed and strange. Some were tossing their arms about, others were stretching out their hands supplicatingly toward the water pannikins, which the two blacks kept dipping full and handing to those who pressed ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... of RAM-UCR no. 381, a left M1, are sharp and the wear-facets resulting from occlusion with the lower dentition are small. The paraconule is a low, ill-defined cusp on the anterior margin of the crown; a metaconule is not present. A smooth stylar shelf is present labial to the metacone. The crown was supported by three roots. There are ...
— Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan • William A. Clemens
... under the influence of this new glow of feeling, in a way that at once amazed and delighted the good old gentleman. And yet there were ill-defined, but very decided, terrors and doubts in his delight Dr. Johns, by nature as well as by education, was disposed to look distrustfully upon any sudden conviction of duty which had its spring in any extraordinary exaltation of feeling, rather than in that full intellectual ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... general, and how a Naturalist would have analysed that 'tapage'! And yet, with all their efforts, would they have succeeded in conveying that singular impression of disturbance, of cross-purposes, of hurry, and of ill-defined fear, which Beyle with his quiet ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... justified him in interfering, even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter, dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him—instances, as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... hat, a huge, white, loose, shapeless felt, in keeping with his ill-defined attire, and made an awkward bow which at once included the old lady and the Dictator, on whom the blue eyes beamed for ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... this feeling. When oxen are taken into a country of high grass, they are much more ready to be startled; their sense of danger is increased by the increased power of concealment afforded to an enemy by such cover, and they will often start off in terror at the ill-defined outlines of each other. The springbuck, possessing this feeling in an intense degree, and being eminently gregarious, becomes uneasy as the grass of the Kalahari becomes tall. The vegetation being more sparse in the more arid south, naturally induces the different ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... black hair hung in a heavy mop over his low retreating forehead, almost meeting the ill-defined line of eyebrow that straggled above small dusky black eyes, that with the rest of his physique was an ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... those parts of the land surface of the earth which do not produce sufficient vegetation to support a human population. Few areas of large extent in any part of the world are absolutely devoid of vegetation, and the transition from typical desert conditions is often very gradual and ill-defined. ("Desert" comes from Lat. deserere, to abandon; distinguish "desert," merit, and "dessert," fruit eaten after dinner, from de ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... with such deference to permit her to pass that her conscience smote her and she was half-minded to turn and leave him more graciously, but this impulse was succeeded by another feeling, ill-defined, the prevailing second thought. Had she looked, she would have seen that her fluttering shawl touched his hand and he quickly raised it to his lips, releasing it immediately. As it was, she moved on, unaware of the gesture. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... or made any attempt to seize him, he would then shoot the leader, and thus strike terror into the others. But while he was thus arranging all the details in his mind, he was startled at seeing a whole group of savages leap from the side of the ill-defined path, which they were now traveling, and they speedily surrounded the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... seemed to care for either form of conveyance, and we soon left behind the blue-coated coolies still shouting the merits of their tiny gray donkeys with their tinkling bells, and began a journey on foot across the dusty plain. Road there was none: merely an ill-defined track presented itself, along which all the ministers and secretaries of the great nations of the world walked, ankle-deep ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... was in sight—the window opened upon a smooth lawn, there was not a chance of a person escaping notice, but no one was there; he summoned the domestics; they searched—no one was found, they had seen no one. Frantic with rage, yet with an ill-defined sensation of fear, the nobleman, re-entered the mansion, and dismissing every one, locked himself in ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... faces, cold, pinched, hungry ones, eager, earnest, pathetic and joyous, worn and weary, burdened and care-free, they again passed before him, misty and ill-defined, as though the snow still veiled and made them hazy, and none of them he knew. He wished they would stop passing. He was very tired. They, too, were tired. Would they for ever be passing before him, these people, these little children, ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... their new patent in the summer of 1621, and for the next fifteen years all settlers in New England based their claims to the soil upon territorial rights conveyed to them by the Plymouth Company. The grants, however, were often ignorantly and sometimes unscrupulously made, and their limits were so ill-defined that much quarrelling ensued. [Sidenote: Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and the Council for ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... rode home he was not much puzzled by his adventure in the woods. He remembered having belonged, when he was a child of ten, to a weird and mysterious confraternity called "Early Druids," which met in the depths of groves, with ill-defined purposes, and devoted the hours of meeting principally to the consumption of confectionery. He had heard for the past few months of the existence of secret organizations of working-men—wholly outside of the trades-unions and unconnected with ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... our writing should be accurate: because language expresses thought—is, indeed, the only expression of thought—and if we lack the skill to speak precisely, our thought will remain confused, ill-defined. The editor of a mining paper in Denver, U.S.A., boldly the other day laid down this law, that niceties of language were mere 'frills': all a man needed was to 'get there,' that is, to say what he wished in his own way. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... passionate declamation, rather than of severe analysis or of protracted and patient investigation. In the warm praises of the philosopher, no less than in the glowing inspirations of the poet, it often stands before us as a vague and ill-defined something which all men are required to worship, but which no man is bound to understand. It would seem, indeed, as if it were a mighty something not to be clearly seen, but only to be deeply felt. And felt it has been, too, by the ignorant as well as by the learned, by ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... way in the so-called cool of the morning, but this was neither bright nor fresh; the night having been hazy, there had been no terrestrial radiation, and the earth was dusty and parched; while the sun rose through a murky yellowish atmosphere with ill-defined orb. Thick clouds of smoke pressed upon the plains, and the faint easterly wind wafted large flakes of grass charcoal sluggishly through ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of the sea-wall to the beach was too great, and the space between the foot of the wall and the river-bank and breakwater too confined, for her to see the animals, even had not oncoming darkness rendered all objects increasingly ill-defined. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of JUSTICE in all circumstances where men are liable to come in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous: consequently there would be ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... hay had been cut, and the scent of the new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest chateau and under its leaking roof, came warm and aromatic to mix with the breath of the evening primrose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill-defined borders. The grim walls, that had defended the Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers the fact—which must, however, have been known to them—that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this garden himself, and had made the hay with no other ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... unconsciously, without volition and without the possibility of inhibition, in every individual in the same way, must be called hereditary. Different as are the teeth from the germs of teeth in the newly-born, so different are the man's concepts, clear, sharply defined by words, from the child's ill-defined, obscure concepts, which arise quite independently of all language (of ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... exchanged even a word on their abandoned undertaking, on the ill-defined cause which for the first time has undone their courage; they feel, toward one another, almost a sense of shame of their sudden ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and vivacity, and an impartial insouciance in their intercourse with all classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales is more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... return found his subjects ill-disposed to accede to his cowardly submission; and fifteen years later the claim founded on this special act of submission was formally renounced for a sum of 10,000 merks by Richard I., who was eager to raise money for his Crusade. Such was the ill-defined position of this ancient controversy, when fate seemed to fling into Edward's hands the opportunity of defining it anew with all the clearness dear to his legal mind. It was easy for him to secure a recognition ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... fantastic haze, as it were, of human likeness, shifting to and fro across it; sometimes vanishing entirely, but growing more perceptible than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half-deceive ourselves with the pastime ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... literature is yet to be born,—that it has scarcely a substantive existence. 'Its best works,' says this modern Scaliger, 'are scarcely more than a promise of excellence; the precursors of an advent; shadows cast before, and, like most shadows, they are too vague and ill-defined, too fluctuating and easily distorted into grotesque forms, to enable us to discriminate accurately the shape from which they are flung.... The truth is, that American literature, apart from that of England, has no separate existence.... The United States ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Everything depended on how well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,—how good a first impression of force and virility he would manage to convey,—for the first impression possessed the power of transmuting the present rather ill-defined enthusiasm into loyalty or dissatisfaction. But Tim himself believed in Thorpe blindly. So he ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... against the call. The more modern practice had occasionally been for it. Now, we all know how many colourable claims of right are created by prescription. What was the exact force of the "call," no man could say. In like manner, the exact character and limit of allowable objections had been ill-defined in practice, and rested more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule. This also made it hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's Act were enactory or declaratory, a predicament, however, which equally affects ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... expression puzzled him. The old pride was all gone, and she gave him the impression of one who is conquered and defenceless, and who is ready to yield anything, everything to the victor. And this ill-defined impression was singularly true, for she was in a passion of self-sacrifice. She felt that one who had been so generous and self-forgetful had a right to all that a true man could ask, and that it would be base in her to refuse. The greater the sacrifice the more gladly she ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... swarming with trout, many of which it was my luck to first explore and cast a fly into. Most of this lovely country, as said before, was part of the Apache Indian Reservation, on which no one was allowed to trespass; but the boundary line was ill-defined and it was difficult to keep our cattle out of the forbidden territory. Indeed, we did not try to ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... a sigh of relief. He would no longer approach Marian with doubtful and ill-defined intentions, which he believed chiefly accounted for the clever ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... ill-defined tales to the effect that this tribe once lived about Lake Buluan, and one writer[72] has attempted to show that the tribal name is derived from that early home. Today they are still in considerable numbers in that region, and this together with the fact that they are now, and have been since the ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... rare. The average man (and woman), in my experience, loses interest in anything that does not directly benefit him or in which his personal competitive feeling is not aroused. Interest becomes vague and ill-defined the farther the matter concerned is from the direct personal good of the individual, and proportionately it becomes difficult ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... A large white spot, ill-defined and shapeless in the distance and the dimness, glides along the edge of the wood, then across in front before the fir plantation, next down the hedge to the left, and presently passes within two yards, going towards the wood again along this mound. It is a white owl: he flies ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the door of the inner room, and Schalken thought he saw a shadowy and ill-defined form gliding into that apartment. He drew his sword, and, raising the candle so as to throw its light with increased distinctness upon the objects in the room, he entered the chamber into which the shadow had glided. No figure was there—nothing but the furniture which ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... from, his pocket a letter, and handed it to Edith. With a flushed face and a rapidly throbbing heart Edith took the letter. It seemed like that for which she had been so long waiting, but at the same time there was a certain ill-defined apprehension on her mind of disappointment. Had that letter come through any other channel, it would have excited nothing but unmingled joy; but the channel was suspicions, and Edith did not yet believe that he had really been to Plympton Terrace. She ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Only an occasional butte reared its head above the sea of low foothills that stretched away into the bad lands to the southward. The sides of the valley flattened and became ill-defined. Low ridges and sage-topped foothills broke up its continuity, so that the little creek that started so bravely from the mountains ended nowhere, its waters being sucked in by the parched and thirsting alkali soil long before it ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... later, to talk of "ce triste livre," and to declare, in the true romantic spirit, that "Bad maxims are worse than bad acts." There have always been, and always will be, people who experience a sort of malaise, an ill-defined discomfort, as though they sat in an east wind, while they read La Rochefoucauld. This is particularly true of Englishmen, who resent being told that "Our virtues are often only our vices in disguise," and who also, by the way, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... shallow articular cavities, separated by an antero-posterior ridge, for the accommodation of the lower articulating surface of the first phalanx; an inferior surface, also articulatory, which in shape is obverse to the superior, bearing two unequal condyles, separated by an ill-defined antero-posterior groove, which surface articulates with the os pedis and the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... against his environment, his integrity as an individual and remains a self-determining person. It is the loss of this self-determined individuality alone that renders man completely impersonal. When individual spontaneity is feebly manifested, we speak of an ill-defined or a "passive" personality. Personality is, in short, from the objective point of view, a self-determining individual with a unique nature and a definite status in the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... constantly pulverizes and dissevers laws and customs. You must understand in our day that neither the sheriff, the wapentake, nor the justice of the quorum could exercise their functions as they did then. There was in the England of the past a certain confusion of powers, whose ill-defined attributes resulted in their overstepping their real bounds at times—a thing which would be impossible in the present day. The usurpation of power by police and justices has ceased. We believe that even the word "wapentake" has changed its meaning. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... difference in their powers of conception, and that what is impossible with one is possible with another. But (wisely, too) passing this over, and admitting that there is a distinction (though a very ill-defined one) between the several truths we entertain of this nature; namely, that some we find it impossible, even in imagination, to contradict, whilst of others we can suppose it possible that they should cease to be truths—does it follow that different faculties of the mind are engaged in the acquisition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... succeed in getting passes out of camp, the prospect was dreary enough, dreary or undesirable. Going into town in a crowded tram is an amusement which quickly palls. Various ill-defined portions of the town, when you got there, were out of bounds, and a man had need to walk warily if he did not want ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... lightly and its sound among the boughs and leaves was a long, plaintive sigh that had in it a tone like the cry of a woman. The rain came only in gusts, but when it struck it was sharp and cold. The trees stood out, black and ill-defined, like skeletons. But the forest, its wet, its chill, and its loneliness, had no effect upon the attuned mind of Henry Ware. He was in his native element, and every nerve in him thrilled with the knowledge ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the country to the East, over which there spread a forest of desert oak, and near the sandhills thickets of ti-tree. The well seems to be at the head of an ill-defined watercourse, which, lower down, runs between an avenue of bloodwoods. Close to the well are several large ant-heaps, and from the sandhill above it little can be seen; but north of the well one mile distant is a high ridge of sand, from which is visible a prominent square hill, bearing 334 ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... bond of union between the organic beings of the same great classes—to illustrate which is the object and foundation of the natural system. The perception of this bond, I may add, is the evident cause that naturalists make an ill-defined distinction between ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... A deep sandy bay bore South-West five miles, which promised good anchorage. The appearance of the north-east part of Melville Island was still very triste, presenting to the eye nothing save patches of mangroves, behind which rose a range of ill-defined ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... he exceeded Lamb, and also most of his other contemporaries; but the mind of Lamb was quite as original, and more compact. The two friends were very dissimilar, the one wandering amongst lofty, ill-defined objects, whilst the other "clung to the realities of life." It is fortunately not necessary to enter into any comparative estimate of these two remarkable persons. Each had his positive qualities ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... words is bound up with the images they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence. Such, for example, are the terms democracy, socialism, equality, liberty, &c., whose meaning is so vague that bulky volumes do not suffice to precisely fix it. Yet ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... its meaning and implications. Others have rejected it on the basis of judgments just as superficial. Much confusion has crept into the discussion of the principle and into its application because of the constant use of ill-defined terms and partially formulated ideas. It is the purpose of the present study to analyze the positions of both the friends and opponents of non-violent direct action within the pacifist movement in the hope of clarifying thought upon this ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... than body; tip of snout rounded, slightly truncate; canthus rounded; tympanum small, less than one half diameter of eye; tympanum having posterior margin ill-defined, separated from eye by distance about equal to diameter of tympanum; diameter of eye slightly less than distance from eye to nostril; width of eyelid about two thirds interorbital width; paratoid gland indistinct; lumbar glands high, separated from ...
— A New Species of Frog (Genus Tomodactylus) from Western Mexico • Robert G. Webb
... connected with pressing to judicial trial would be "very imprudent." Later, with the lesson of twenty-two years' hard pressing before their eyes, they went still further, for they then advised that a subject so contentious, not to say so ill-defined in law, should be kept, if not altogether, at least as much as possible out of court. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 7. 298—Law Officers' Opinions, 1733-56, No. 99; Admiralty Records 7. 299—Law Officers' Opinions, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... had long since fathomed the nature of Athanase, and recognized in it that unyielding element of republican convictions to which in his youth a young man is willing to sacrifice everything, carried away by the word "liberty," so ill-defined and so little understood, but which to persons disdained by fate is a banner of revolt; and to such, revolt is vengeance. Athanase would certainly persist in that faith, for his opinions were woven in with his artistic sorrows, with his bitter contemplation of the social state. He was ignorant ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... lying between New Spain and Newfoundland, which newly acquired territory was thenceforth designated Norumbega or New France. All such original annexations, whether pretended or real, were in the circumstances extremely ill-defined; and maps of the time were frequently vague, confusing, and contradictory. Cartier, on his way to sow the seeds of a French Empire in North America, sailed past the coast (1534), and on his second voyage (1535) ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... different right down to its essential relationships from the human past. But they also believe that the forces that have been assailing and disintegrating the Normal Social Life, which have been, on the one hand, producing great accumulations of wealth, private freedom, and ill-defined, irresponsible and socially dangerous power, and, on the other, labour hordes, for the most part urban, without any property or outlook except continuous toil and anxiety, which in England have substituted a dischargeable agricultural ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... two and a half knots, when, slowly and carefully sweeping the horizon afresh with the telescope, after a rather long spell of meditation upon how this adventure was likely to end, a small, hazy-looking, ill-defined object swam into the field of the instrument. The object was about one point before the weather beam, and was so far away that the rarefaction of the air imparted to it a wavering indistinctness of aspect that rendered it quite unrecognisable. The fact, however, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... was odious. From her point of view—No. That is an abuse of language. There are mental states in which a woman has no point of view at all. She wanders over an ill-defined circular area of vision. That is why, in such conditions, you can never pin a woman down with a shaft of logic and compel her surrender, as you can compel that of a mere man. We went on arguing, and after a time I really did not know ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science. Thus, to speak of 'sex-totems,' or to call the protecting animal of each individual a 'totem,' is, I fear, to bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Muller's hard opinion that 'totemism' is ill-defined. For myself, I use the term in the strict sense which I have given, and in ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... whom she thought she had seen existed no longer, never had existed. It was a spectre seen in the limbo of another world, in the darkness of a half light. And she continued to walk, retaining of this ill-defined meeting an impression of coldness, of vague embarrassment, and of pain in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... me as pale phosphorescent figures of ill-defined outline, lost in their own halos, as it were. I could not help ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... disease is ill-defined and complicated, how, then, is the physician of the "Old School" to select the proper specific remedy, Under such circumstances, the diagnosis of the case as well as the medical treatment will at best ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... both on the shores of Britain and Norway for a small uninhabited island used for pasture; yet in old writers it sometimes is applied to the sea, or a deep water. Also, an ill-defined name applied to a low islet in a river, as well as the flat ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... difficult to find a woman upon whom superstition has so slight a hold as it has upon Gwen Darrow, yet, for all that, it required an effort for her to turn and gaze toward the centre of the room. A dim, ill-defined stain of light fell momentarily upon the chair in which the dead man had sat, and then flickered unsteadily across the room and, as it seemed to her, out through its western side, the while a faint, rustling sound caught her ear. She was plainly conscious, too, of ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... in the way. He had a keener eye than the majority of young men, and occasionally exercised the old man's privilege of saying outright things which, despite theory, are better left unsaid. Moreover, the situation was ill-defined, and an ill-defined situation does not improve in the keeping. Sir John said sharp things—too sharp even for Millicent—and, in addition to the original grudge begotten of his quarrel with Jack and its result, the girl nourished an ever-present feeling of resentment ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Such trade would be strictly lawful, from an international standpoint, unless declared by us to be contraband, because aiding to support the army of the enemy; and such declarations, by which provisions are included in the elastic, but ill-defined category of contraband, tend always to provoke the recriminations and unfriendliness of neutral states. Blockade avoids the necessity for definitions, for by it all goods become contraband; the extension of it therefore was ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... objects as in any respect correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness, that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has not yet taken place! It is even so with me while I gaze upon that ruin; nor ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... seek nor avoid intercourse; their manner is therefore natural, frank, and open." "If their demeanor is often cold and serious, it is never haughty or constrained." But an "aristocratic pride is still extremely great among the English; and, as the limits of aristocracy are ill-defined, every body lives in constant dread, lest advantage should be taken of his familiarity. Unable to judge, at once, of the social position of those he meets, an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with them. Men are afraid, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... almost supposed I had fallen on a continuation of some of the Eathie beds. I laid open a nodule with a blow of the hammer, and my heart leaped up when I saw that it enclosed an organism. A dark, ill-defined, bituminous mass occupied the centre; but I could distinguish what seemed to be spines and small ichthyic bones projecting from its edges; and when I subjected them to the scrutiny of the glass, unlike those mere chance resemblances ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... plan, with an axis and appendages; in Molluscs the muscles are attached to the skin and the shell, and the nervous system consists of separate masses; Articulates have a hard external skeleton and jointed limbs, and their nervous system consists of two long ventral cords; Radiates have ill-defined nervous and muscular systems, and in their lowest forms possess the animal functions ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... and grisly visitors: the footsteps of the stranger emitted such an awful and supernatural sound, when trampling on the skulls which strewed his path, that it was impossible for the coldest imagination not to labor under some crude and ill-defined apprehension. Verily, the weird sisters could not have chosen a fitter abode. Nevertheless, the French, supported by their mercurial temperament, were not deterred from forming an establishment on that sepulchral island, which, they thought, afforded some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... than by men of all classes whose features were not degraded by false piety. There alone were to be seen clear expressions and clean faces; there, above all, was not that horrible grimace of the working man of the Catholic clubs—that hideous creature in a blouse, whose breath belies the ill-defined unction of his features. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... by the sounds, the sentinels fancied the enemy approached nearer the walls; and they were not mistaken. With the advent of the second morning, here and there at intervals, ill-defined mounds of earth were seen so much in advance of the intrenched line that, by a general order, a fire of stones and darts was opened upon them; and straightway bodies of bowmen and slingers rushed forward, and returned the fire, seeking to cover ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... quickly that neither spoke; they caught their breath and waited in suspense. A shadow, dim, ill-defined, seemed to take partial form in ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... female (1 specimen). Carapace circular having juvenal pattern of large spots, some of which have borders darker than their centers and are best described as ocelli; junction of pale margin and ground color of carapace formed by ill-defined, ragged dark border; dorsal surface of forelimbs and hind limbs finely streaked and dotted, larger marks occurring toward insertions of forelimbs; lower border of pale postocular stripe in contact with upper margin ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.' He laughed as he quoted Lady Macbeth's words, but, in reality, his heart was sore with a confused, ill-defined pain, that bore a strong resemblance to jealousy. And suddenly he became aware of something excessive, almost—it might be—a touch of the courtesan, defacing the manners of the great lady. Certain inflections of her voice, certain tones ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... here." Carl had an ill-defined feeling that he wanted to keep them from becoming serious as long as ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... confusedly in our memory, and are recalled by the appearance of such real objects as in any respect correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has not yet taken place! It is even so with me while I gaze upon that ruin; nor can I divest myself of the idea that these massive towers ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... village that ten months before covered a life as fevered as it was unclean, only the Police barracks remained in repair, since life had passed the rest by and forgotten it. The ill-defined streets, incorporated as a part of the plan of the original village only because the helter-skelter builders knew no other plan for a village, were more ill-defined than ever because less used. Where nothing but ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... was their sustaining faith, although, occupied by the immediate problems of amelioration, they left it rather vague and ill-defined. The word itself is seldom pronounced in their writings. The idea is treated as subordinate to the other ideas in the midst of which it had grown up: Reason, Nature, Humanity, Illumination (lumieres). It has not yet entered upon an independent life of its own and received a distinct label, though ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... only escape through the nose; under such circumstances the only definite conscious muscular sensation I have is from the effect of closure of the lips; the sensations from the larynx are either non-existent or quite ill-defined, although I hear mentally the tonal sensations of the melody. No doubt by closing the lips in silent humming I am in some way concentrating attention to the sensori-motor sphere of phonation and articulation, and ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... assert Verba gignunt verba, but Verba gignunt res, a step further. The idea is Bacons idola fori, omnium molestissima, the twofold illusions of language; either the names of things that have no existence in fact, or the names of things whose idea is confused and ill-defined. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... gadding existence had come to an abrupt end. Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a rather ill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and the Occult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was a kind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month betting money. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopes of horses, and she invested ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... may be, the historical essence of the matter is that an immense body of restless, uncivilized Germans could not abide permanently in the centre of Roman provinces in a semi-dependent, ill-defined relation to the Roman government; the West Goths had not yet found their permanent home. Under the leadership of Alaric they raised the ensign of revolt, and spread desolation in the fields and homesteads ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... which is suggested by the differences with some of his closest friends. There was a lurking distrust of Mr. Webster's sincerity. We can see it plainly in the correspondence of the Western Whigs, who were not, perhaps, wholly impartial. But it existed, nevertheless. There was a vague, ill-defined feeling of doubt in the public mind; a suspicion that the spirit of the advocate was the ruling spirit in Mr. Webster, and that he did not believe with absolute and fervent faith in one side of any question. There was just enough correctness, just a sufficient ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the usual basis of trade and colonisation. At its head was Sieur de Monts, Pierre du Guast, the governor of Pons, a Calvinist and a friend of the King. After much deliberation it was decided to venture south of Canada and explore that ill-defined region, called "La Cadie" in the royal commission given to De Monts as the King's lieutenant in Canada and adjacent countries, the first record we have of that Acadia where French and English were ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... perfectly still, her eyes on the floor, when he entered the room. He came in so softly that she did not hear him. He lifted her head and looked into her eyes. He noticed with certainty what had been so far only a vague, ill-defined dread. Her face was very, very pale and transparent. Her eyes were sunken and had a strange brilliancy. She was much slighter end far more ethereal than on that day when they stood the deck of the ship and turned their faces so hopefully ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... few cases on record in which the mouth has been so small or ill-defined as not to admit of alimentation. Molliere knew an individual of forty whose mouth was the exact size of a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ago for a "little war," in which we inflicted a very heavy chastisement on the Malays for the assassination of Mr. Birch, the British Resident. It has on its south and southeast Sungei Ujong, Jelabu, and Pahang; but its boundaries in these directions are ill-defined. The Strait of Malacca bounds it on the west, and its coast-line is about a hundred and twenty miles long. From its slightly vague interior boundary to the coast, it is supposed to preserve a tolerably ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... not be. I am wholly indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure it will be for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder about for ages in a lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a confusion of ill-defined and contradictory rules said (but not evidenced) to be of divine institution. If annihilation is to follow death I shall not be aware of the annihilation, and therefore shall not care ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... democratic, finally to collapse under the overpowering grasp of a single Dictator or Despot, whose centralized system in the main, still survives; having also seen how the nucleus of China proper was encompassed on three sides by Tibetans, Tartars, Tunguses, Coreans, and by various ill-defined tribes to the south; let us see if there is any evidence whatever to show, or even to suggest to us, whence the orthodox Chinese originally came, and who ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... fertile in pretexts for war and in unfriendly interpretations. The First Consul wished to secure an interval of rest and leisure, to consolidate his conquests at home and abroad. He had not renounced the glorious and ill-defined project of the imperial government which he affected to exercise over Europe. "If England made a new coalition," he wrote to M. Otto, "the only result would be a renewal of the history of the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... fatigued, irresolute, weak, exhausted, feeble, languid, wearied, faded, half-hearted, listless, worn, faint-hearted, ill-defined, purposeless, worn down, faltering, indistinct, timid, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of the transport allotted to the brigade consisted of bullocks instead of mules—a mistake which was to leave the men without food for over twenty-four hours. Darkness soon closed in upon the column, and when the comparatively easy road across the Jam plain gave place to an ill-defined track running up a deep ravine, sometimes on one side of a mountain stream, sometimes on the other, sometimes in its very bed, even the native guides, men of the district, familiar with its every rock ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... deg. N., consists of a huge mass of Archaean rocks with a mean height of from 7000 to 7500 ft. above the sea, and is fl00ded in a deep central depression by the waters of Lake Tsana. Above the plateau rise several irregular and generally ill-defined mountain ranges which attain altitudes of from 12,000 to over 15,000 ft. Many of the mountains are of weird and fantastic shape. Characteristic of the country are the enormous fissures which divide it, formed in the course of ages by the erosive action of water. They are in fact the valleys ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and mingled, forming perpetual night. This was the Fountain of Oblivion. Upon its brink the Student paused, and gazed into the dark waters with a steadfast look. They were limpid waters dark with shadows only. And as he gazed, he beheld, far down in their silent depths, dim and ill-defined outlines, wavering to and fro, like the folds of a white garment in the twilight. Then more distinct and permanent shapes arose,—shapes familiar to his mind, yet forgotten and remembered again, as the fragments of a dream; ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... to choose their seats are too ill-defined," said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the malady had been reported by his great predecessor at Guy's Hospital, London, Richard Bright, the describer of Bright's Disease. Then he talks about the "curious facts" he had "stumbled upon" and refers to an "ill-defined impression" that these suprarenal bodies, in common with the spleen and other organs, "in some way or other minister to the elaboration of the blood." In the preface to his work he had spoken more confidently of the fact that Nature, as an experimenter and a vivisector, can ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... not sure that the apologetic vein would not be wiser. For what is this plea, but to acknowledge that man is so constituted that the boasted "religious sentiment," the "spiritual faculty,"—if it exist at all, and is any thing more than an ill-defined tendency, —instead of being a glorious light which anticipates all external revelation, and renders it superfluous, is, in fact, about the feeblest in our nature; which everywhere and always is seduced and debauched ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... rigorously concealed from us, and I never learnt what they really were even in later days. So I will not attempt to speak of them. We were soon aware of the bare fact that he was in Paris, exercising public functions which were somewhat ill-defined as yet; and on the evening of the 31st my mother informed us that we were going to join him at the Palais-Royal. [Footnote: It is not for me to pass judgment on my father's conduct in accepting the crown in 1830. There is no doubt the July Revolution ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and what it was, before the attribute had been foisted on it. The incompatibility of the quality, falsely ascribed or assigned, becomes—if, and when, it does become—manifest and intolerable, just in proportion as the idea of God, which has always been present, however vaguely and ill-defined, in the common consciousness, comes to manifest itself more definitely. The attribution, to the divine personality, of qualities, which are eventually found incompatible with it, may prove the occasion of the more precise and definite manifestation; we may say that action ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... traces of leg-stripes, and with two parallel (three inches apart) stripes about seven or eight inches in length on both shoulders. I have seen another rather light cart-horse, of a dirty dark cream-colour, with striped legs, and on one shoulder a large ill-defined dark cloudy patch, and on the opposite shoulder two parallel faint stripes. All the cases yet mentioned are duns of various tints; but Mr. W.W. Edwards has seen a nearly thoroughbred chestnut horse which had the spinal stripe, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... common. This idea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the association of a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as a monopoly.[83] This is true even of migratory hunting tribes. They claim a certain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined and subject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanent occupancy and cultivation. An exceptional case is that of the Shoshone Indians, inhabiting the barren Utah basin and the upper valleys ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... for he perceived 'twas useless to speak further of ill-defined plots and perchance groundless fears of treason against ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... began in earnest later on, as well as sand-fly fever. Besides these there was a skin disease which we called Basra sore—a very indolent ulcer which is not painful, but tends to spread over the legs and arms, leaving a flexible, bluish scar when it eventually heals. There was also an ill-defined syndrome, termed variously Mesopotamitis or acute debility, or the Fear of God. Officially one described it as the effects of heat. But of all these ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... idea, and that always the same in whatever context the expression may occur, and by whatever author it may be used. But ordinary language, in which documents are written, fluctuates: each word expresses a complex and ill-defined idea; its meanings are manifold, relative, and variable; the same word may stand for several different things, and is used in different senses by the same author according to the context; lastly, the meaning of a word varies from author to author, and is modified in ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... time of which we are speaking, there was in Moscow a certain widow, a Georgian Princess,—a person of ill-defined standing and almost a suspicious character. She was about forty years of age; in her youth she had, probably, bloomed with that peculiar oriental beauty, which so quickly fades; now she powdered and painted herself, and dyed her hair a yellow hue. Various, not altogether favourable, and ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... or by conversation and reading. By the latter method the knowledge acquired is limited in extent; and as it is entirely dependent on the power of observation, the impressions received are faint and ill-defined, and the conclusions arrived at, frequently incorrect. The practice of Arithmetic might possibly be left to such teaching, inasmuch as Arithmetic is an exact science based on fixed principles, from which correct reasoning must deduce correct results. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... my lord, that is impossible; you ask too much. How long do you suppose it will take, at a moderate computation, to get one hundred men of ill-defined rank out of a room with a decent regard for Precedence. Why, I have seen it take an hour at the Palace, where everybody knew his place, and here I cannot undertake ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... a moderate degree of effusion into the joint, and when this has subsided under rest it may be possible to feel ill-defined cords, or tufts, or nodular masses, and to grasp between the fingers those in the supra-patellar pouch. There is little wasting of muscles, and it is exceptional to have signs of disease of the articular surfaces ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... unpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the rich and powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably more bitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him with wearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy and appreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might have been given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known among ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... at intervals during the day, and at sundown heavy thunder and bright lightning came from the north-west, with a closing good smart shower. The next morning was fine and clear, though the night had been extremely cold. The bed of this creek proved broad but ill-defined, and cut up into numerous channels. Farther along the creek a more scrubby region was found; the soil was soft after the rain, but no water was seen lying about. The creek seemed to be getting smaller; I did not like its ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... see more and more clearly that both men and women are incomplete, fragmentary, mutilated creatures, as long as they are single. Do what they may to persuade themselves that their state is the happiest, they are still full of vague unrests, of dim, ill-defined dissatisfactions, of a tendency to narrow ways and selfish thoughts. Alone each is a half-made being, with every instinct and feeling yearning for its missing moiety. Together they form a complete and symmetrical whole, the minds of each strongest where that of the other needs reinforcing. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... an ill-defined term, covering facts ranging from the worship of the real divine animal, commonly conceived as a "god-body," at one end of the scale, to respect for the bones of a slain animal or even the use of a respectful name for the living ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... Chinese Amban of Urga, the Tartar General of Uliasoutai and the Chinese Amban of Kobdo. In view of the fact that there are no detailed maps of Mongolia, and that the boundaries of the administrative divisions of this country are ill-defined, it is hereby agreed that the precise boundaries of Outer Mongolia, as well as the delimitation of the district of Kobdo and the district of Altai, shall be the subject of subsequent negotiations as provided for by ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... forming the short petiole, 7 in number in a longitudinal row, were of nearly equal size. In seedlings one or two days old, the pulvinus was so indistinct that we thought at first that it did not exist; but in the middle of the petiole an ill-defined transverse zone of cells could be seen, which were much shorter than those both above and below, although of the same breadth with them. They presented the appearance of having been just formed by the transverse division of longer cells; and ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... Eastern situation was ill-defined and full of difficulties. Mr. Goschen, before he left England on his mission, came to Dilke to 'bewail the unwillingness of Gladstone and of Lord Granville to make up their minds how far they were going in the direction of coercion of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... almost impossible to apply the methods which we use in finding the distance of a star to the discovery of the distance of the nebulae. These flimsy bodies are usually too ill-defined to admit of being measured with the precision and delicacy required for the determination of distance. The measurements necessary for this purpose can only be made from one star-like point to another similar ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... gone over the entire ground from the point of view of a geologist. He ranges over a wide field, and appeals in support to writers of acknowledged ability in all branches of learning. Yet the impression we gather from his writings is that of ill-defined, but far-reaching antiquity, one necessary to account for the great climatic and geographical changes which he shows us have taken place since the Glacial Age. But he tells us that any term of years he could suggest would be a mere guess. We can not do better than ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... way home that day Mr Dunning confessed to himself that he did not look forward with his usual cheerfulness to a solitary evening. It seemed to him that something ill-defined and impalpable had stepped in between him and his fellow-men—had taken him in charge, as it were. He wanted to sit close up to his neighbours in the train and in the tram, but as luck would have it both train and car were markedly empty. The conductor George was thoughtful, and appeared ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... inquire, but we may examine an important part of it and ask ourselves the question, Why did pastoral tribes adopt agriculture? The common explanation is that they changed their mode of life in consequence of some ill-defined, fortuitous circumstances. A great legislator arose amongst them and taught them to till the soil, or they came in contact with an agricultural race and adopted the customs of their neighbours. Such explanations must appear unsatisfactory to any ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... purely intellectual side, the disqualifying circumstances are complexity and vagueness. If a topic necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, the essay may do something for it, but not the debate. Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, or unsettled terms, of which there are still plenty in our department. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects each perhaps in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... whose blood was up, instead of intrenching themselves and waiting developments, pushed northward and eastward inland in search of fresh enemies to tackle with the bayonet. The ground is so broken and ill-defined that it was very difficult to select a position to intrench, especially as, after the troops imagined they had cleared a section, they were continually being sniped from all sides. Therefore, they preferred to continue ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations? ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... some dust on the glass, comes into focus. If the button is not in the field, rest the thumbs and index fingers, using both hands, on the edge of the watch-glass, pressing lightly but steadily, and give the glass a slow, short, sweeping motion; the button will perhaps appear as an ill-defined blackness, because not quite in focus. Bring this into the centre of the field. Raise or lower the microscope until the button appears with sharp outlines. If the scale does not cover the button, rotate the eye-piece; ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Zachary Taylor, but the Mexicans were defeated. Texas had been declared a part of the American Union in the previous year (December, 1845), and the military occupation by the Americans of Mexican territory—for the boundaries were ill-defined—formed the culminating casus belli. Torn by dissensions at home, and betrayed by the treachery of her own generals—among them the traitorous Paredes—Mexico was in no position to face a war with her powerful neighbour. Following on the battle of Palo Alto, Santa-Anna, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... for it was considered exorbitant by those who were opposed to the purchase in 1803, yet the possibilities of the country, then so vague and ill-defined, so amply justified the prophetic faith of its advocates that a century later many millions of dollars in excess of the purchase money were spent in commemorating the transfer of a tract of land without which the present greatness of the United States would not have been possible. The present value ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... (eczema erythematosum) begins as one or more small or large, irregularly outlined hyperaemic macules or patches, with or without slight or marked swelling, and with more or less itching or burning. At first it may be ill-defined, but it tends to spread and its features to become more pronounced. It may be limited to a certain region, or it may be more or less general. When fully developed, the skin is harsh and dry, of a mottled, reddish or violaceous color, thickened, infiltrated and usually slightly ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... He may well ask what interest has South Carolina in a canal in Ohio. On his system, it is true, she has no interest. On that system, Ohio and Carolina are different governments, and different countries; connected here, it is true, by some slight and ill-defined bond of union, but in all main respects separate and diverse. On that system, Carolina has no more interest in a canal in Ohio than in Mexico. The gentleman, therefore, only follows out his own principles; he does no more than arrive at the natural conclusions ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... boundaries of the territory thus ceded by France were ill-defined, and, in fact, unknown. The French negotiator who conferred with Monroe and Livingston, declared a large portion of the country transferred to be no better known at the time "than when Columbus landed at the Bahamas." There was no way by which ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... sciences which have puzzled the sons of men, none had such an attraction for the learned Professor von Baumgarten as those which relate to psychology and the ill-defined relations between mind and matter. A celebrated anatomist, a profound chemist, and one of the first physiologists in Europe, it was a relief for him to turn from these subjects and to bring his varied knowledge to bear upon the study ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and recruit, but they stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not easy in imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the earth into the contracted spheres of their not remote past. But to feel how a little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of America, scarcely even a Great Britain in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... incest there is no word in Sanuto; but there is mention of Dona Sancia's indiscretions, and the suggestion that, through jealousy on her account, it was rumoured that the murder had been committed—another proof of how vague and ill-defined ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... of the Palace, and thence over the suburbs towards the west till lost in the mist. We then ascended through 1,500 feet of dense, wetting cloud, and, emerging in bright sunshine, continued to drift for two hours at an average altitude of some 3,000 feet; 1,000 feet below us was the ill-defined, ever changing upper surface of the dense cloud floor, and it was no longer possible to determine our course, which we therefore assumed to have remained unchanged. At length, however, as a measure of prudence, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Medical Journal) as a specific disease, produced by such causes as lead to debilitation of the system; propagated by contagion, generally through an abrasion or sore, but sometimes by simple contact with a sound surface; marked by an ill-defined period of incubation, followed by certain premonitory symptoms referable to the general system, then by the evolution of successive crops of a characteristic eruption, which pass on in weakly subjects into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... the lady teacher one morning not long after Langdon's arrival. Miss Darley turned her own away, and let them wander over the other scholars. But the diamond eyes were on her still. She turned the leaves of several of her books, and finally, following some ill-defined impulse which she could not resist, left her place, and went to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... certitude that this mother, refused in her heart to give her son up after all. It was more than Rachel's inconsolable mourning, it was something deeper, more inaccessible in its frightful tranquillity. Lost in the ill-defined mass of the high-backed chair, her white, inclined profile suggested the contemplation of something in her lap, as though a beloved ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... if its object cannot be shown to be the injury of another, though that may be incidentally its effect. But in its incidents, such as violence, intimidation, and in some cases injury to the public welfare, it often becomes an indictable offense. The law of conspiracy is the most ill-defined branch of jurisprudence, but it is safe to say of the boycott and the strike that they both introduce an insupportable element of tyranny, of dictation, of interference, into private life. If they could be maintained, society ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... claimed all America, from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, and from Mexico and Florida to the North Pole, except only the ill-defined possessions of the English on the borders of Hudson Bay; and to these vast regions, with adjacent islands, they gave the general name of New France. They controlled the highways of the continent, for they held ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... own husband. Set up and acted upon by him. How could I ever attain it or anything near it? Should I not be constantly shocking him by coarse, gross notions as to the needlessness of this or that fine point of conduct? by my ill-defined ideas as to a code of honor—my slovenly ways of looking ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... of certain tender emotions. It contains a large body of persons whose religious life consists simply of a succession of sensations not far removed from one's enjoyment of music and poetry; and another large body, to whom it furnishes refuge and consolation of a vague and ill-defined sort in times of sorrow and disappointment. To these persons the church prayers and hymns are not trumpet-calls to the battle-field, but soothing melodies, which give additional zest to home comforts and luxuries, and make the sharper demands of a life of the highest integrity less unbearable. Nay, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Alexander Crandall's farm lay; and, shortly after, drove through the village and mounted the road over which plied the Stenton stage. In the Bottom, beyond the east range, he went to the right and passed over an ill-defined way with numerous and deep fords. It was afternoon; an even, sullen expanse of cloud hid the deeps of sky through which the sun moved like a newly-minted silver dollar. A sharp wind drew through the opening; the fallen ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and open." "If their demeanor is often cold and serious, it is never haughty or constrained." But an "aristocratic pride is still extremely great among the English; and as the limits of aristocracy are still ill-defined, every body lives in constant dread, lest advantage should be taken of his familiarity. Unable to judge, at once, of the social position of those he meets, an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with him. Men ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him.' But there remained with me a sense of pain and fear. Doctor Bryerly, notwithstanding my uncle's sarcastic reflections, remained, in my estimation, a true and wise friend. I had all my life been accustomed to rely upon others, and here, haunted by many unavowed and ill-defined alarms and doubts, the disappearance of an active and able friend caused ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... same principle. One, the stick-dam, consists of interlaced stick and pole work below, with an embankment of earth raised with the same material upon the upper or water face. This is usually found in brooks or large streams with ill-defined banks. The other, the solid-bank dam, is not so common nor so interesting, and is usually found on those parts of the same stream where the banks are well defined, the channel deep, and the current uniform. In this kind the earth and mud entirely ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative duties,—men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... follow the sound, but the chapel grew and grew as I wandered, and I came no nearer to its source. At last the altar rose before me on my left, and through the bowed end of the aisle I passed behind it into the lady-chapel. There against the outer wall stood a dusky ill-defined shape. Its head rose above the sill of the eastern window, and I saw it against the rising moon. But that and the whole figure were covered with a thick drapery; I could see nothing of the face, and distinguish little ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... But that would hardly have accounted for a certain faint glow of indignation that came into them. In truth, he began distinctly to resent this state of affairs in the life of John and Mary Richling. An ill-defined anger beat about in his brain in search of some tangible shortcoming of theirs upon which to thrust the blame of their helplessness. "Criminal helplessness," he called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea—or the idea tried to define itself—that they had somehow been ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... was overlooked. When the machine was considered as a method of transport, the vertical screw type, or helicopter, became at once ridiculous. It had, nevertheless, many advocates who had some vague and ill-defined notion of subsequent motion through the air after the ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... cosmogony were current among the races of the lower Euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a dialect akin to Armenian, Hebrew and Phoenician. Side by side with these the monuments give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally call Sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of the empires which rose and fell in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... distance. Examining the road, there was a trail where the first three had crossed in quick succession. In the thick white dust their swift feet had left a line drawn roughly yet lightly, the paws leaving not an exact but an elongated, ill-defined impression. But where the fourth stopped, elevated his neck, and cried to his mate, there was a perfect print of the fore-feet side by side. So slight a track would be obliterated by the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... to go. Athens was compactly built, all quarters close together. Yet before he reached home and bed, he was fighting back an ill-defined but terrible thought. "Glaucon! They think I am Glaucon. If I chose to betray the Cyprian—" Further than that he would not suffer the thought to go. He lay sleepless, fighting against it. The dark was full of the harpies of uncanny ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... whenever the young gentleman turned his look elsewhere and could not see him. It may be Reb Jankiel did not realise his own feelings, yet he could not help seeing the contrast between his present humble attitude and the proud position he occupied in his own community. Such feelings, though ill-defined, if united to a bad heart, could produce no other results ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... appearance begins to pervade all things, the temperature falls noticeably, and nature seems to halt in expectation of the coming of something unusual. The decreasing portion of sun becomes more and more narrow, until at length it is reduced to a crescent-shaped strip of exceeding fineness. Strange, ill-defined, flickering shadows (known as "Shadow Bands") may at this moment be seen chasing each other across any white expanse such as a wall, a building, or a sheet stretched upon the ground. The western side of the sky has now assumed an appearance dark and lowering, as if a rainstorm of great ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... three powers what Bismarck used to call the furor consularis was developed to the highest degree. Yet this was not the worst. Under the Berlin agreement, made some years before, there was a German president of the municipality of Apia with ill-defined powers, and an American chief justice with powers in some respects enormous, and each of these naturally magnified his office at the expense of the other. To complete the elements of discord, there were two great native parties, each supporting its ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... besides the 'seas' of various sizes there were numerous very small black spots apparently quite circular and occurring at every intersection or starting-point of the 'canals.' Many of these had been seen by Schiaparelli as larger and ill-defined dark patches, and were termed seas or lakes; but Mr. Pickering's observatory was at Arequipa in Peru, about 8000 feet above the sea, and with such perfect atmospheric conditions as were, in his opinion, equal to a ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... watched there till she was fast asleep. I stood at the door, peeping through the small crevice, my sword laid on the table beside me, as my directions prescribed, until, a little after one, I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl's throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... better selection, he turned his steps thither. Passing out of the stable-yard he recognized the Missourian's voice in whispered conversation with the proprietor, but the two men withdrew into the shadow as he approached. An ill-defined uneasiness came over him; he knew the proprietor, who also seemed to know the Missourian, and this evident avoidance of him was significant. Perhaps his reputation as a doubtful Unionist had preceded him, but this would not account for their conduct ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... that!') which Scott picked up when he was visiting Miss Edgeworth in Ireland—Rob Roy shows well enough what Scott could do, in romance of adventure and in humorous dialogue. The plots of his novels are sometimes thought to be loose and ill-defined, and he tells us himself that he seldom knew where his story was carrying him. His young heroes are sometimes reckoned rather feeble and featureless. Francis Osbaldistone, like Edward Waverley and Henry Morton, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... all of them, upon the middle Tigris; and the heart of the country was a district on either side that river, enclosed within the thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh parallels. By degrees these limits were enlarged; and the term Assyria came to be used, in a loose and vague way, of a vast and ill-defined tract extending on all sides from this central region. Herodotus considered the whole of Babylonia to be a mere district of Assyria. Pliny reckoned to it all Mesopotamia. Strabo gave it, besides these regions, a great portion of Mount Zagros (the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson |
