"Indistinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obstacle to the rapid development of a new industry. It is true that there exists some queer-folk beliefs about photographs,—ideas of mysterious relation between the sun-picture and the person imaged. For example: if, in the photograph of a group, one figure appear indistinct or blurred, that is thought to be an omen of sickness or death. But this superstition has its industrial value: it has compelled photographers to be careful about their work,—especially in these days of war, ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... confused murmur, prominent out of which come the voices of two men swearing at one another. The language they are making use of is disgraceful. The telephone seems peculiarly adapted for the conveyance of blasphemy. Ordinary language sounds indistinct through it; but every word those two men are saying can be heard by all the telephone subscribers ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... a moment before replying. Memory seemed to hold up against an indistinct photograph of towering fir-crested heights, where through a broken ridge of rock a shower of silvery threads cascaded musically down, down, down, until they lost themselves in the mighty Fraser, that hurled itself through the yawning canyon ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... other for a moment, but Lily still saw her opponent through a blur of scorn that made all other considerations indistinct. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... cutting the milky way with their iron rods and feathered arrows; from the top of the chapel steeple a great cross of stone, seeming to stretch out its arms; here and there the whitish zinc, cutting the dark blue of the slates; in spots an indistinct glittering and flashes of pale light enveloped in opaque shadows, and then the tops of three or four large trees which extended beyond the eaves, as if prying into the secrets of the attic. By the glittering light of the stars, the slightest peculiarity in the architecture assumed singular ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... he rejoined; "and as for those strong impressions in childhood, I have heard of many cases when they seemed to be prophecies sent from the Lord. When I saw thy father in London, I had even then an indistinct idea that I might sometime be sent to America on ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... indistinct, I heard, sending bubbling words up through the sea of darkness down below. At first I did not try to hear; I listened only to the great throbbings of my own heart, until there came the sound of a woman's voice. It was eager, anxious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... perfectly satisfied. We see the thing ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will.—We do not wish the thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For knowledge is conscious power; and the mind is no longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be the victim of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... to see him again. In the abyss down yonder before her she now heard a slight sound, the indistinct ripple of the waves over the rocks. She rose to her feet with the idea of throwing herself over the cliff and bidding life farewell. Like one in despair, she uttered the last word of the dying, the last word of the young soldier slain in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... settling. Above me in the great unfathomable vault of sky not a star glimmered. Under the gloom of the approaching darkness the vast expanse of marsh to my left lay silent, desolate, and indistinct, save for its low edge of undulating sand dunes. Only the beach directly before me showed plainly, seemingly illumined by the breakers, that gleamed white like the bared teeth of a fighting ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... berries in the bosom of her coat, while she stood patiently for him. And she watched his quick hands, so full of life, and it seemed to her she had never SEEN anything before. Till now, everything had been indistinct. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the month of May, when this battle of vitalizing warmth against the last remnants of the cruel winter is nearing its end, the newly arrived European witnesses a scene which is without parallel anywhere in the west. Every sound resembling a report, however distant and indistinct, has a wonderful effect upon the people out in the open; children and the aged, men and women are suddenly rooted to the spot, turn to the east towards the river, crane their necks and seem to be ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of 1843. It was a severe winter to the cottage. The bow of promise that had spanned it seemed to have withdrawn to such a vast height above it that its outlines were indistinct—its colors ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... marble table, covered with a decaying drapery, a Carrara alabaster of Niobe and her children on the mantelpiece, a huge mirror, and a tapestry of one of the hunts of Henri Quatre, showed that Time had been there, and that the Prussians had not; but the indistinct light of the single chandelier left me but little opportunity of indulging my speculations on the furniture. The count had left me, to ascertain when the duke should be at leisure to receive me; and my first process was, like a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... paused beside the parapet and looked down at the indistinct little fields below, and the blurred masses of white wild roses waving midway ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... celebrated picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the ground. The animals now formed a compact pack with heads turned to the center towards each other. Whole masses of sand were stirred. The caravan was enveloped by a dusk deeper than before and in that dusk there flew beside the riders dark and indistinct objects, as though gigantic birds or camels were dispersed with the hurricane. Fear seized the Arabs, to whom it seemed that these were the spirits of animals and men who had perished under the sands. Amid the roar and howling could be heard strange ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to question his associates, the speaker turned his glance down the long table, where sat figures, indistinct in the gathering gloom. At his right hand, half in shadow, there showed the bold outlines of a leonine head set upon broad shoulders. Under cavernous brows, dark eyes looked out with seriousness. Half revealed as it was, here ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... by a ring of dead white ash. The breeze was crooning softly through the branches of the trees, singing weird chanties to itself. In between the murmurs of the wind there came another sound, the indistinct sound of a sleepy man mumbling to himself. Bryce half-raised himself on one elbow and listened. Half a dozen feet away from him Cumshaw lay tightly rolled in his blankets. He tossed restlessly and once all but sat up. Bryce dropped quickly but soundlessly ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... but he restrained himself. On one of these occasions, just as a heavy cloud approached the moon, and while his raft was a dozen yards or so from shore, he was alarmed at sight of something approaching him through the water. What it was he could not conjecture, as it was low down, and very indistinct on account ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... the eastern range, it is true, the light still lingered, receding step by step from the earth into the clouds that were gathering with the evening mist, about the limited horizon, but the frozen lake lay without a shadow on its bosom; the dwellings were becoming already gloomy and indistinct, and the wood-cutters were shouldering their axes and preparing to enjoy, throughout the long evening before them, the comforts of those exhilarating fires that their labor had been supplying with fuel. They paused only to gaze at the passing sleighs, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... could not move it without the aid of my complex machinery of blocks and pulleys. A steady breeze was blowing off shore when we set sail, at a little before sunset. It swept us quickly past the reef and out to sea. The shore grew rapidly more indistinct as the shades of evening fell, while our clipper bark bounded lightly over the waves. Slowly the mountain top sank on the horizon, until it became a mere speck. In another moment the sun and the Coral Island sank together into the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a sacrilegious, undertaking? I cannot reconcile myself to this idea—it would madden me. The reason why I am now dissatisfied is that I have not a clear appreciation of the past. The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... feet; above the candles their heads and shoulders were indistinct. For a moment Mrs. Ennis hesitated and looked at Burnaby with a new bewilderment ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... both in a cab, and rattling through the silent streets on our way to Charing Cross Station. The first faint winter's dawn was beginning to appear, and we could dimly see the occasional figure of an early workman as he passed us, blurred and indistinct in the opalescent London reek. Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for the air was most bitter, and neither of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the deep-drawn breath and half-repressed shudder might be heard. And now the little party paused irresolutely, fearing to proceed,—they had omitted to notice some land-mark in their progress; the moon had not long been up, and her light was as yet indistinct; so they sat them down on a little grassy spot on the bank, and rested till the moon ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... was interesting, what about the natural world around us? The boat loosed its moorings when time was up, and the grey walls of St. Malo receded; the innumerable roofs, towers and steeples grew dreamy and indistinct, dissolved and disappeared. The water was still blue and calm and flashing with sunlight. To the right lay the sleeping ocean; ahead of us, Dinard. Land rose on all sides; bays and creeks ran upwards, out of sight; headlands, rich in verdure, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... scenes and incidents. The portion of the river above the mouth of the Ohio, which it had taken me twenty days to ascend in a barge, we were not forty-eight hours in descending. Trees, points of land, islands, every physical object on shore, we rushed by with a velocity that left but vague and indistinct impressions. We seemed floating, as it were, on the waters of chaos, where mud, trees, boats, were carried along swiftly by the current, without any additional impulse of a steam-engine, puffing itself off at every stroke of the piston. The whole ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... remembered, just in time, that he was Dionysus. He conquered his first impulse and put his arms around her. As he did so, he discovered that his face was being covered with kisses. Kathy was murmuring little indistinct terms of endearment into his ear every time she reached it en route from one side of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his head, and remained for five minutes in profound silence, during which time the two friends puffed in concert, until they began to grow quite indistinct and ghost-like ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... In the comfortable house to which they had come, these things were at hand, and were freely given, without hoping for the rewards which man can give. The pursuers of these unfortunate Indian women followed on their trail, which, with native instinct, the squaws had made as indistinct as possible, until they found themselves at a Mexican settlement, within the boundaries of New Mexico. Here they were informed that their late captives were safe under the protection of Kit Carson. This name acted like magic in settling their future mode of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... diameter, and more or less disguised by a green coating of chrysocolla. The color of the mineral itself is a glistening grayish lead color, resembling chromite somewhat in appearance, but the crystals of an entirely different shape, being highly modified or indistinct rhombic prisms. The specific gravity is over 5, and the hardness 4. Before the blowpipe on a piece of wood charcoal it gives off fumes of sulphur, fuses, boils, and finally leaves a globule of copper. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... floor of the valley; and she could see the main trail below her weaving around low mounds and sinking into depressions; disappearing into timber groves, reappearing farther on, disappearing again, and again reappearing until it grew blurred and indistinct in ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... exhausted, feeble, languid, wearied, faded, half-hearted, listless, worn, faint-hearted, ill-defined, purposeless, worn down, faltering, indistinct, timid, worn out. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... principal artery. He made a desperate leap upwards, spouting his blood over his destroyer, and then fell gasping across the body of his master. A low growl, intermingled with faint attempts to bark, which the rapidly oozing life rendered more and more indistinct, succeeded; and at length nothing but a gurgling sound ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... aimed to be simple, that youth of lower as well as advanced classes may understand him; clear, that no indistinct or erroneous impressions may be conveyed; accurate in the recital of facts; and interesting as regards both matter and style. Avoiding fragmentary statements, he has gone into detail sufficiently to show events ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... the things left by his father, the boy made a tracing from the plan he had been studying. He followed all the lines of the original carefully, except in one place where the plan was so indistinct that he could not tell exactly where they were intended to go. Being in a hurry, and feeling confident that they should be continued in a certain direction, he drew them so without ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... to promise this verra nicht 'at he would merry me!' she cried, but through her tears and sobs her words were indistinct. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... for King Edward. Under Van Artevelde's bold dominance, and in consequence of his alliance with England, the warlike renown of Flanders had made some noise in Europe, to such an extent that Petrarch exclaimed, "List to the sounds, still indistinct, that reach us from the world of the West; Flanders is plunged in ceaseless war; all the country stretching from the restless Ocean to the Latin Alps is rushing forth to arms. Would to Heaven that there might come to us some gleams of salvation ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cautiously through the bushes, and that somebody appeared as a shadowy, indistinct figure, not twenty yards away. Only the keenest eyesight could have detected it, and still Stafford waited. Presently he heard the soft crunch of gravel under its feet, and at that moment leapt towards it. The figure stood as though paralysed for a second, ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... fact that the room was still in darkness made it obvious that something nefarious was afoot. Plainly there was dirty work in preparation at the cross-roads. He stared into the blackness, and, as his eyes grew accustomed to it, was presently able to see an indistinct form bending over something on the floor. The sound of rather stertorous ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... bank. The boat bumped unexpectedly among the reeds, and the tall, fair-haired man disappeared suddenly, having apparently fallen back into the invisible part of the boat. There was a curse and some indistinct laughter. Hagshot did not laugh, but hastily clambered into the boat and pushed off. Abruptly the boat passed out of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... sleeping around me, wrapped in their hooded cloaks; they speckled the grey ground with black, and the obscure plain panted; I fancied I heard the heavy breathing of a slumbering multitude. Indistinct sounds, the neighing of horses, the clash of arms rang out amidst the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... "The incense of the earth is sweeter," she said; and the sound of the wind in the boughs reminded her of the voice of the priest intoning the "Veni Creator." "Nature is more musical," and her eyes strayed over the great park to its rim miles away, indistinct, though the sky was white as white linen above it, only here and there a weaving of some faint cream tones amid clouds rising very slowly; a delicious warmth fell out of the noonday sky, enfolding the earth; and, discomforted ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... that country for my education. I took it into my head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the statue of Memnon, and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people, who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is foreign to my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines. Well now, one of my fellow passengers on the way up was a scribe of Memphis, an extraordinarily able man, versed in all the lore ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... praetors three years previously to attend to the distribution of the grain, and providing that of that number the four who secured the lot should give out grain in turn: and the praefectus urbi, appointed for the Feriae, was always to choose one of them. The Sibylline verses which had become indistinct through lapse of time he ordered the priests to copy out with their own hands in order that no one else should read them. He allowed the offices to be thrown open to all such as had property worth ten myriad denarii and were competent to hold office in accordance with the law. This ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... later crop of horrors were sewn during that period. Its spiritual mentality corresponded almost exactly with the physical thaw that accompanied it—mist, then vapour dripping of rain, the fading away of one clear world into another that was indistinct, ghostly, ominous. I find written in my Diary of Easter Day—exactly five weeks after the outbreak of the Revolution—these words: "From long talks with K. and others I see quite clearly that Russians have gone mad for the time being. It's heartbreaking ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the constant maiden, and Ewaedah, the daughter of Kynvelyn, [Footnote: The Welsh have a fable on the subject of the half man, taken to be illustrative of the force of habit. In this allegory Arthur is supposed to be met by a sprite, who appears at first in a small and indistinct form, but who, on approaching nearer, increases in size, and, assuming the semblance of half a man, endeavors to provoke the king to wrestle. Despising his weakness, and considering that he should gain no credit by the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... black, indistinct figures, leaping out of the smoke, converging on the coach, their naked arms uplifted, their voices mingling in savage yells. Like lightning he worked his rifle, heart throbbing to the excitement, oblivious to all else; almost without realization he heard the deeper bellow of ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... former impression of it. The moon's light gives a magical effect to old ruins or Gothic buildings, but not to a monument which consists of white brilliant marble. Moonlight makes the latter appear in indistinct masses, and as if partly covered with snow. Whoever first promulgated this opinion respecting the Taj-Mehal perhaps visited it in some charming company, so that he thought everything round him was heavenly ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... rolling higher than it had done six hours ago, and dashed on the rocks and on the reef in beautiful breakers, sending up now and then a tall jet of foam or a shower of spray. The hazy mainland shore line was very indistinct under the bright sky and lowering sun; while every bit of west-looking rock, and every sail, and every combing billow was touched with warm hues or gilded with a sharp reflection. The air was like the air nowhere but at the Isles of Shoals; with the sea's salt strength ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... could not have told what caused her to tremble as though of an ague—could not have told why, though she sought to see clearly the face of this man who came to her with the words of a lover, there seemed to fall between them some interposing veil, rendering his features uncertain, indistinct. Craving and needing a friend at this hour of her life, none the less she saw not now ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... those inquiries range; how complicated, how confused, how apparently inextricable the ca- uses which tend to the decline of the Roman empire! how countless the nations which swarm forth, in mingling and indistinct hordes, constantly changing the geographical limits—incessantly confounding the natural boundaries! At first sight, the whole period, the whole state of the world, seems to offer no more secure footing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they proved to be to Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care he endeavored, even under the most trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it, he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that they might not pass into history ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a sand-bar interrupted the mirror-like expanse, and caused a rushing, foam-sprinkled whirlpool. Beyond the river, amid the light, floating night-mists, were dimly seen the houses of a little village, on whose window-panes a moonbeam often flashed, and at the left of the park rose the indistinct mass of the city of Marktbreit, whose steep, narrow streets were filled with shadows, while above the steeples and higher roofs the moon-rays rippled, bringing them out in bright relief ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... day an obscure interval, from mid-day to four o'clock; the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... bushes, the grey villages, and scant birch trees,—the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his thoughts wandered; their outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the varying expression of Dan's face, wondered if Mrs. Bob had any idea of the bright memories she had left behind her in the bush. Then as the Maluka crooned on, everything but the crooning became vague and indistinct, and, beginning also to see into the heart of things, I learned that when a woman finds love and comradeship out-bush, little else is needed to make even the glowing circle of a camp fire ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint, and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... intellectual as merely logical, whereas it is plainly transcendental, and concerns not merely the clearness or obscurity, but the content and origin of both. For the faculty of sensibility not only does not present us with an indistinct and confused cognition of objects as things in themselves, but, in fact, gives us no knowledge of these at all. On the contrary, so soon as we abstract in thought our own subjective nature, the object represented, with the properties ascribed to it by sensuous ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... apologetically before the group, indistinct in the faint light from the office window. Already the train was sliding away into the dark. "Pardon," he apologized. "I am looking for the ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... but me an' Polly, Ole 'Stracted," said Ephraim, pushing the door slightly wider open and stepping in. They had an indistinct idea that the poor deluded creature had fancied them his longed-for loved ones, yet it was a relief to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... mortification he found that, each time, the sound was getting more indistinct; for the speed at which they had travelled had taken so much out of the horses, that they were unable to compete with the fresher animals ridden by the bush rangers, who were all well mounted, many of the best horses in the district having been stolen by them. At last the sound could be heard ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... heard a low moaning, as fitful as the uncertain firelight. And then, as he drew his horse to a standstill, he made out upon the floor near the fire and in the shadow of one of the hanging timbers, an indistinct form. For an instant the low moaning was quieted; then again it came to his ears, seeming to speak of ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... would be a group that only needed framing to make a picture, where two grave men, each wrapped in his burnous, sat Turk-fashion, playing checkers before a low doorway, while back in the shadow an indistinct figure, in flowing white drapery, touched the strings of some instrument which sent out a sound of thin tinkling, that could scarcely be called music ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a clear memory of seeing myself in the character of my dying father lying in the bed and in the room in which he died. It was a most curious sensation. I saw his shrunken hands and face, and lived again through his dying moments; only now I was both myself, in an indistinct sort of way, and my father, with ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... pleadings and briefs that he would not endure a blurred or broken letter, and bad punctuation was a source of real irritation to him. Many times have I, as his clerk, required his printer to take out an indistinct letter. It was Mr. Butler's ideal to achieve ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to the small boxes which in France are called, not inaptly, "bathing-tubs," a face which even the dim light and the distance could not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman, and it was surmounted with a coiffure of pink roses and diamonds. This person was looking round the house, and her fan was moving to and fro with the most practiced grace; when she lowered it, Newman perceived a pair of plump ...
— The American • Henry James
... frequently for small matters before the court, while many of them can neither read nor write, and neither testify intelligibly nor produce written evidence, and if some do produce it, sometimes it is written by some sailor or farmer, and often wholly indistinct and contrary to the meaning of those who had it written or who made the statement; consequently the Director and Council could not know the truth of matters as was proper and as justice demanded, etc. Nobody ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... breaths he turned at times to glance over his shoulder and correct his course. And now, as he drew near, he saw though indistinct the unmistakable, snakelike weaving of horrible tenuous fingers, rolling and groping ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical trance ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... sure and tell me just when to let him have it, Thad," replied the other, beginning to cover the indistinct moving figure ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... uncouth ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing eloquence. Opposite the host, on the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... off duty everything gets blurred. The outlines of objects grow indistinct and misty. I have to sit down in a chair. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... on the window through which the street lamps showed blurred and indistinct, and he rubbed the pane clear with the tips of his fingers (he described every action to T. ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... those servants, those broken references to the morrow coupled with the name Vivian had assumed,—needed the unerring instincts of love more cause for terror?—terror the darker because the exact shape it should assume was obscure and indistinct. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Glibly in high spirits, and Enoch concluding things had been done as they should be: but, for my own part, I experienced a confusion of intellect that did not suffer me to be so much at my ease. I had an indistinct sense of being as passive as a blind man with his dog. Instead of taking the lead, as I was entitled to have done, I was led: hurried away, like a man down a mountain with a high wind at his back: or traversing dark alleys, holding by the coat-flap ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... bring her thoughts back to the other with an effort. Barrington stood out clear and distinct, definite in word and action, knowing what he intended to do and doing it without thinking of failure; Lucien was a shadow in comparison, indistinct, waiting rather than acting. Barrington would have made an attempt to get her out of Paris before this, and Jeanne was convinced that she would have gone without fear. If the enterprise had failed, it would have been a splendid failure. Lucien had not ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... walk from one room to another or to his brougham for a short drive, though his memory was gone, his hold upon language even for common purposes imperfect, the reasoning power much decayed, and even his perception of personality rather indistinct, yet so much remained about him as one of the most manful, energetic, affectionate, and simple-hearted among human beings, that he still filled a great space to the eye, mind, and heart, and a great space is accordingly left ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the day he revolved from time to time indistinct ideas of somehow giving this girl a chance. He wished Josephine would and could help, or perhaps his sister Ursula. It was not a matter that could be settled, or even taken up, in haste. No man of his mentality and experience ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... tutor, 'extreme hunger is, in some constitutions, a rapid effect of intense study, and the appetite may be innocently gratified while it rather adds to the impetus of thought than checks its advance. Excess begins when the perceptions become weak and indistinct by indulgence. Every person is able to judge for himself when he approaches that point, and, if he respect himself, he will stop short of it. Such men as those to whom you allude feel renovated by their meal, and return to their intellectual pursuits with increased alacrity, but the veritable ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... genius and enthusiasm for art, from England I think I must have got my common-sense, and the capacity of keeping the money which I make; also a certain natural coldness of disposition, which those who only know me as a public character do not dream of. All my earliest memories are very vague and indistinct. I remember tramping over France and Italy with a man and woman—they were Italian, I believe—who beat me, and a fiddle, which I loved passionately, and which I cannot remember having ever been without. They are very shadowy presences now, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... history, but the events of history, the lives of those who made history, exist just as much outside of the span of time of their physiological life—that is, are immortal in historical time. They may fade and become more indistinct with the distance in time, just as things in space become more indistinct with the distance in space, but they can be brought back to full clearness and distinction by again approaching the things ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... From one of these Mr. Poole was the first to catch a glimpse of the hills for which we had been looking out so long and anxiously. They apparently formed part of a low range, and bore N.N.W. from him, but his view was very indistinct, and a small cone was the only marked object he could distinguish. He observed a line of gum-trees extending to the westward, and a solitary signal fire bore due west from him, and threw up a dark column of smoke high into the sky above that depressed interior. A meridian ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... blowing, shrill and shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. When it was just so dark, as that the forms of things were indistinct and big—but not wholly lost. When sitters by the fire began to see wild faces and figures, mountains and abysses, ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When people in the streets bent down their heads and ran before the weather. When those who were obliged ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... Morton) we have spoken of. Lingham is supposed to have done Mercutio. Well, he did do him. That is, he went through the motions. He seemed to be saying something anent the great case of Capulet vs. Montague, but so indistinct that there was a general sense of relief when he staggered off to die. Deaths generally had this effect Thursday night, and the house not only applauded the exits, but made ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... Manchester Guardian.—'Bell's talk is full of salt and vivacity, a brilliant stream in which city slang reinforces rustic idiom, and both are re-manipulated by inexhaustible native wit. She is the most remarkable creation in a gallery where not a single figure is indistinct or conventional.... Mr. Gibson's essay—for there is confessedly something experimental about it—must be reckoned, with those of Mr. Abercrombie, to whom "Krindlesyke" is dedicated, among the most remarkable dramatic poems ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... they waded across the river. He was fearful that some of them might stray from the ranks, and stumble upon his place of refuge; but a kind Providence put it into their heads to mind their own business, and Tom gathered hope as the yells of the mountaineers grew indistinct in the distance. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... glances towards the kneeling figure in the foreground. Duty wears a smile as she beckons his approach with tokens of deep appreciation. There still lingers another form. Whose can it be? Can we not recognize that face, though indistinct, in the dim outline? Duty steps between and intercepts our view. This is the picture from which Lady Rosamond vainly tried to withdraw her thoughts, repeating the consoling words with saddened emphasis: "Everything is ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... suitable preparation for our farther researches. It is scarcely possible to enter one of these venerable religious edifices of the old world, which form so striking a feature in its scenery, without feeling in some degree an impression as if the dim and solemn fane were peopled with shadows; as if indistinct forms were beckoning along its lonely aisles, or waiting the stranger's approach in its deep and vaulted recesses. The building is not always of great extent, (this of Penshurst is not so,) but the impression seems to be the result not more of the solemn style ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... presentation of one of the most interesting of astronomical phenomena so absorbed my attention that I watched the satellite and shadow during their whole course, though the former, passing after a time on to a light band, became comparatively indistinct. The moment, however, that the outer edge passed off the disc of Jupiter, its outline became perfectly visible against the black background of sky. What was still more novel was the occultation for some little time of a star, apparently of the tenth magnitude, not by the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... in the fresh night air, come together within us in the same moment of time, and to us are present simultaneously. We say of a thing that it is in the present when we have a precise perception of it. We say that it is in the past when we preserve but an indistinct image of it. A thing may have been accomplished millions of years ago, yet if it makes the strongest possible impression upon us it will not be for us a thing of the past; it will be present. The order ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... roof-trap. It was Dunke himself. He caught sight of the ladder, gave a shout of triumph, and was off in pursuit of his flying prey. As others appeared on the roof they, too, took up the chase, a long line of indistinct running figures. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... who had just come on deck. He told me to go aloft with a telescope and examine them more minutely. I then discovered that they were trees growing on a small island, apparently cocoanuts, or palms of some sort. Beyond, to the south and west, were several islands of greater elevation, some blue and indistinct, but others appeared to be covered with trees like the nearer one, while between us and them extended from north to south a line of white surf distinctly marked on the blue ocean. On reporting to Harry what I had seen, he said that the surf showed the existence of a barrier reef surrounding ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... ghastly. What a solitude! For miles over the smooth prairie not a human habitation was to be seen. In the other direction stood the mysterious forest. How black and dismal seemed the trunks of the trees in the shimmering moonbeams! She gazed timidly at their indistinct ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... premise that I only tell the story as I got it from my old clerk, and that it may therefore seem rather indistinct; but there is an entry in the register yonder to show that it is not without foundation. However, I will waste no more words in preamble, but give you the story, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the stately junket was concluded, it was the pleasure of M. de Chateaurien to form one of the escort of Lady Mary's carriage for the return. As they took the road, Sir Hugh Guilford and Mr. Bantison, engaging in indistinct but vigorous remonstrance with Mr. Molyneux over some matter, fell fifty or more paces behind, where they continued to ride, keeping up their argument. Half a dozen other gallants rode in advance, muttering among themselves, ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the images and ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... distinguish each one from the others" (Phys. i, 1). The reason of this is clear: because he who knows a thing indistinctly is in a state of potentiality as regards its principle of distinction; as he who knows genus is in a state of potentiality as regards "difference." Thus it is evident that indistinct knowledge is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... circle, and Will, who always called me "the little preacher," told me to say the Lord's Prayer. The sun was setting, and the brilliant western clouds were shining round about us. There was a sighing in the treetops far below us, and the sounds in the valley were muffled and indistinct. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... boarding-house to look into the distance where an accustomed but always interesting sight met his eyes. Away in the distance, between two foothills, appeared the tiny thread of smoke which marked the approach of the little train from Conejo. It was fascinating to watch it; at first so indistinct, then plainer, and finally to see the little engine puffing its way along, dragging the small cars. There would be no one on it but the train gang and nothing more exciting than the mail, but its bi-weekly arrival never lost ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... prise de possession by the grasping outer barbarian— for such Champlain must have appeared to the descendants of king Donnacona. In the stream, the ripple of the majestic St. Lawrence caresses the dark, indistinct hull of an armed bark: in Indian parlance, a "big canoe [6] with wings"; on an adjoining height waves languidly with the last breath of the breeze the lily standard of old France; on the shore, a cross recently raised: emblems for us of the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... this respect, for the chief markings on Mars have been perceptible with the same definiteness of outline and characteristics of form through many succeeding generations, whereas the features, such as we discern on the other planets, are either temporary, atmospheric phenomena, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorable conditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may be taken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on the actual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... trade, somewhat above 2,000 years ago, saw the country actually lying there; sailed past it, occasionally landing; and made report to such Marseillese "Chamber of Commerce" as there then was:—report now lost, all to a few indistinct and insignificant fractions. [Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, t. xix. 46, xxxvii. 439, &c.] This was "about the year 327 before Christ," while Alexander of Macedon was busy conquering India. Beyond question, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... river, verticality in respect of the wall behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass. If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the water's edge, the flat was unbroken by ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... pride in these endowments and emendations? Have I nothing of a presbyterian sourness, an hypocritical severity, when I survey my less regular neighbours? In a word, have I missed all those nameless and numberless modifications of indistinct selfishness, which are so near our own eyes, that we can scarcely bring them within the sphere of our vision, and which the known spotless cambric of our character hides from the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... coldly. Bob glanced at her smart little French shoes, and thought otherwise. He said nothing, but hastily bundled his two guests downstairs and into the street. The whirlwind dance of the snow made the sleigh an indistinct bulk in the glittering darkness, and as the young girl for an instant stood dazedly still, Bob incontinently lifted her from her feet, deposited her in the vehicle, dropped Jimmy in her lap, and wrapped them both tightly in the bearskin. Her weight, which was scarcely more than a child's, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... scribbled off at large in the earliest editions of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was aware of the extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people were discussing the probabilities of the case, with very indistinct ideas of what a sardonyx ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... distance. Steaming through the Golden Gate we were soon on the open Pacific commencing a voyage of nearly four thousand miles. We felt the motion of the waves and became fully aware that we were at sea. The shore grew indistinct and then disappeared; the last visible objects being the lights at the entrance of the bay. Gradually their rays grew dim, and when daylight came, there were only sky ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... in a bridle-path leading apparently to the interior of the wood, and the foot-prints had become more and more indistinct with the transition to ground covered with fallen leaves. They had failed entirely as Green spoke, and he flung the light about in an effort to pick them up again. Then something met his eye on a spike of blackthorn, and he carefully picked ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... fear, we are babes and sucklings, and might take many a lesson from you. Will you instruct me in your creecket? What are they doing now? It seems very unintelligible—indistinct—is it not?' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bay is far too wide, and the land on each side too flat, to permit any but an indistinct glimpse of the shore from the deck of a vessel which keeps well towards the middle. On the present occasion we could distinguish nothing, on either hand, except the tops of trees, with occasionally a windmill or a lighthouse; but the view ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... company stared dumbly at the indistinct little window, paralysis attacking every sense but that of sight. At the expiration of another minute the place was deserted, and Anderson Crow was the first to reach the bicycles far up the river bank. Every face was as white as chalk, and every voice trembled. Mr. Crow's dignity asserted ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... rear. It opened into a short passage that, after a few feet, gave on a sort of corridor at right angles—and down this latter, facing him, at the end, the door of a lighted room was open, and he could see the figure of the man who had entered the shop, back turned, standing on the threshold. Voices, indistinct, came to him. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... property had been put to, it was certainly very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk. The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the lasso and the lariat and the bolas, and had an indistinct idea that they had been sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private revenge; but they were essentially a huntsman's implements, after all, and it was not very strange that this young man had brought one of them with him. Not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... pulled merrily on through fog and rain, the beautiful wooded shore on our right, passing bergs here and there, the largest of which, though not over two hundred feet long, seemed many times larger as they loomed gray and indistinct through the fog. For the first five hours the sailing was open and easy, nor was there anything very exciting to be seen or heard, save now and then the thunder of a falling berg rolling and echoing from cliff to cliff, and the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... that in one part the canes were swaying slightly here and there, as if the wind was pressing them on one side. Then as he turned his head a little he started and his heart began to beat with excitement, for what had been for a time indistinct now grew plainer and plainer and shaped itself into what looked to be quite a strong body of men, evidently rough sailors, creeping slowly through a plantation of sugar-cane and making for some definite place. One minute they would be quite indistinct and faint; the next ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... about from rock to rock, guiding myself by the indistinct sounds I heard, I blamed myself for not having listened to Thora's words of expressed fear at the opening of the cave. That she had the viking's stone in her possession was a matter of small comfort to me when I seriously reflected upon the extreme danger of the situation, and I ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... it was a dizzying experience to sit at the head of her own table, and, with assumed calmness, invite the minister not to spare the loaf-bread. Babbie's prattle, and even Gavin's answers, were but an indistinct noise to her, to be as little regarded, in the excitement of watching whether Mr. Dishart noticed that there was a knife for the butter, as the music of the river by a man who is catching trout. Every time Gavin's cup went to his lips Nanny calculated (correctly) how much ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... like the scraping of the leg of an overall against a sage-brush, and yet it was so trifling, so indistinct, that a field mouse might have made it. But somehow Smith knew, he was sure, that something human had caused it; and as he listened for a recurrence of the sound, the conviction grew upon him that there was movement and life outside. He was convinced ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... indistinct in this place, but by supplying "'an" after "ghibta" and reading "'ayni" for "'anni," I have no doubt the words are: Wa in ghibta 'an 'ayni fa-ma ghibta 'an kalbiand if thou art absent from my eyes, yet thou are not absent from my heart. The metre is Tawil ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that its view is not only narrow, but also for the most part confused: of those things that we take in at one prospect we can see but a few at once clearly and unconfusedly: and the more we fix our sight on any one object, by so much the darker and more indistinct shall ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... was a wide expanse of forest, spreading around till lost in the far distance, while out of it were seen rising the dagobas of Anarajapoora, with the artificial lakes I have described glittering among them, and several curious rocks and mountain heights dim and indistinct ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... neglects his family, goes with drunkards and bad women, makes indecent proposals to respectable women of his acquaintance without realizing that it is improper. He cannot keep his mind on one thing. Speech is a little thick, indistinct and hesitating. Syllables are dropped or repeated, speech finally becomes undistinguishable. He is very excited; he thinks he is persecuted. He is a big fellow generally. He is a king, he is rich and mighty. This is the usual run. As the disease ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... enemy." The horror and confusion which this intimation produced at Berlin may be easily conceived: horror the more aggravated, as it seized them in the midst of their rejoicings occasioned by the first despatch; and this was still more dreadfully augmented, by a subsequent indistinct relation, importing that the army was totally routed, the king missing, and the enemy in full march to Berlin. The battle of Cunersdorf was by far the most bloody action which happened since the commencement of hostilities. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
