"Looseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrative, disconnected incident, capricious disquisition, and coarse humour. That, no doubt, was the very manner in which his mind worked; and the essential element of his spirit resides precisely in this haphazard and various looseness. His exceeding coarseness is itself an expression of one of the most fundamental qualities of his mind—its jovial acceptance of the physical facts of life. Another side of the same characteristic appears in his glorification of eating ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... choice of an agent, and both were of the opinion that in Major Tobias Clutterbuck they had just the man that they were in want of. The younger merchant had long felt vaguely that the major's social position, combined with his impecuniosity and the looseness of his morality, as inferred from his mode of life, might some day make him a valuable agent under delicate circumstances. As to the old soldier's own inclinations, Ezra flattered himself that he knew the man's nature to a nicety. It was simply a question of the price to be paid. No doubt the figure ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all I know there is a strata of the Magnificent, but the surface-ground is weedier than ever. I am not a prude (I think!), but the eternally amusement-seeking and irresponsible lives led by many of the rich, and the really appalling looseness of morals now being led by girls without a qualm, bode very seriously ill for the future of that New World which we were promised the war would make safe for—well, I believe we were told it was to be Democracy, but ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... he said, his fingers closing upon the looseness of the linen as he spoke. "A weakling—girl! And so, girl-like, he loves to play at make-believe. You know their games? There is the shell of a ruined house beyond the walls and he holds it against all-comers with a sword of lath, or ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... finger from yonder pranksome gallant? Go to! Here is an orange left of last week's repast. Decay hath overtaken it,—it possesseth neither savor nor cleanliness. Ha! cleverly thrown! A hit—a palpable hit! Peradventure I have still a boot that hath done me service, and, barring a looseness of the heel, an ominous yawning at the side, 'tis in good case! Na'theless, 'twill serve. So! so! What! dispersed! Nay, then, I ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... situated, surprise as much as they delight me! If any thing could excuse some looseness in the manner of regarding the usual ties of life, it would surely be to find oneself so placed, by no misconduct of our own, as to be a but to the world's dislike and injustice; and yet here, where there was reason to expect some resentment against ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... putting on a proper bandage on the belly, so that it can be tightened or relaxed with ease, as a tightish under waistcoat, with a double row of buttons. This is to compress the bowels and increase their absorption, and it thus removes one principal cause of corpulency, which is the looseness of the skin. Secondly, he should omit one entire meal, as supper; by this long abstinence from food the absorbent system will act on the mucus and fat with greater energy. Thirdly, he should drink as little as he can with ease to his sensations; since, if ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... wisdom. He was learned in all that had been; well-informed as to all that was; and speculative and hopeful as to all that might be and was yet to be. Disgust at the scholastic methods, blended with the adventurous character of his mind, and perhaps also with some looseness of moral principle, led him at one time to the brink of universal scepticism; but disappointment, sorrow, and the solitude of the Tower, made him a sadder and wiser man, and he returned to the verities of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... safety-valve, while he still went on all the time putting in coal under the boiler. The least that he could expect would be a great hissing and fizzling at all the joints of his machine; and it would be only by means of such a degree of looseness in the joints as would allow of the escape of the imprisoned force in this way that could prevent the repression ending in a ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... fallen (when free to move), and of the grounds of a reasonable expectation that they will so fall. If it should be worth anybody's while to seek for examples of such misuse of language on my own part, I am not at all sure he might not succeed, though I have usually been on my guard against such looseness of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance beforehand, and only hope that I may thereby deter others from committing the like fault. And I venture on this personal observation by way of showing that I have no ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... of the houses to be fairly well conducted, some of them models of excellent management and pure living; but the other two-thirds were charged with looseness beyond description. The number of inmates in some cloisters was kept below the required number, that there might be more money to divide among the monks. The number of servants sometimes exceeded that of the monks. Abbots bought and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... only question, How may all these depravations of the sacred text be most satisfactorily accounted for? [And the answer is evidently found in the existence of extreme licentiousness in the scribe or scribes responsible for Codex D, being the product of ignorance and carelessness combined with such looseness of principle, as permitted the exercise of direct attempts to improve the sacred Text by the introduction of passages from the three remaining Gospels and by ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... criminals. He was detected in the very act of committing a grave criminal offence. He has been educated under good moral influences, and possessed a patrimony that supplied every reasonable want. No looseness of living, no violent passion is alleged against him, and no adequate motive appears for the act. For a year or two past he has been unusually restless by day and by night, has slept poorly, and his countenance has worn an expression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... parts; and variety, the proper relief and introduction of new material. If the principal idea is repeated too much, monotony ensues; if there are too many accessory ideas, in place of variety we have looseness and want of unity. And in carrying out these principles in compositions of different lengths and in different styles, the composer has practically ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... distinguished, and often lax, has not impaired the vitality of his prose. The heart which beats in his works, the knowledge of human nature, the dramatic vigour of his character, the nobility of his whole being win the day against the looseness of his manner, the negligence of his composition, against the haste of fatigue which set him, as Lady Louisa Stuart often told him, on "huddling up a conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way." In this matter of denouements he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Vertue and Sobriety of Manners? It too often happens, that a Man elevated above the rest by his uncommon Genius, is as much distinguish'd by his extraordinary Immorality: And it would be well if it stop'd here; but by degrees he often grows much worse, by adding Impiety and Profaneness to Looseness of Manners: For being unable, that is, having a moral Impotence of Will to restrain his evil Propensions and govern his vicious Appetites, and finding his guilty Enjoyments, attended with inward Uneasiness and unavoidable Remorse, and being conscious that his irregular Life is ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... hen's egg; it is shaped like our medlar, but its substance is sweeter and more delicate. This fruit is astringent; {210} when it is quite ripe the natives make bread of it, which they keep from year to year; and the bread has this remarkable property that it will stop the most violent looseness or dysentery; therefore it ought to be used with caution, and only after physic. The natives, in order to make this bread, squeeze the fruit over fine sieves to separate the pulp from the skin and the kernels. Of this pulp, which is like paste ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... acquaintance Martie had looked forward. The more distinguished members of his company he hardly knew; the others were semi-successful men like himself, women too poor and too busy to waste time or money, or other women of a more or less recognized looseness of morals. Martie detested them, their cologne, their boasting, their insinuations as to the personal lives of every actor or actress who might be mentioned. They had no reserves, no respect for love or marriage or parenthood; they told stories entirely beyond ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... steadied by Phil's gentle reminder, Acton dropped all looseness, and began to treat Phil with the greatest respect, never taking any risks, but working in a scientific fashion, which poor Phil found hard enough to parry, and when he could not do that, hard enough to bear. But he never faltered; he took ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the all-engrossing thing, but let this suffice. It is delightful to see how a good man may live in the midst of the ungodly, and keep his garments unspotted, and his name unsullied by the adverse influences around him. What a rebuke such a life is to many who excuse their looseness and irregularities because they are thrown among the irreligious; and how stimulative it becomes to others that are similarly situated, and trying to live consistently in the midst of ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... to have these unwashed crowds standing gazing and commenting while one is eating. A man is sent with me to direct me aright where the road forks, a mile or so from the village; from the forks it is a newly made road, in fact, unfinished; it resembles a ploughed field for looseness and I depth; and when, in addition to this, one has to climb a gradient of twenty metres to the hundred, a bicycle is anything but a comforting thing to possess. The country becomes broken and more mountainous than ever, and the road winds about fearfully. Often a part ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... her room when she reached the house. She wished to investigate the feeling of looseness at her knee. The satin band that belonged there was gone. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Doubtless she had lost it at the corral—the Ramblin' Kid would pick it up! The thought tormented her. Once more she ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... without alarm or regret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never keep their beds ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... consciousness, than want a house, a carriage or a cook. It was as if she had had from him a kind of expert professional measure of what he was in a position, at a stretch, to undertake for her; the thoroughness of which, for that matter, she could closely compare with a looseness on Sir Luke Strett's part that—at least in Palazzo Leporelli when mornings were fine—showed as almost amateurish. Sir Luke hadn't said to her "Pay enough money and leave the rest to me"—which was distinctly what Eugenio did say. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... British occupation, land was of little value, and an extreme looseness existed in the description of boundaries and landmarks. In the absence of fences the Cypriote can generally encroach upon any land adjoining his limit, should it belong to the state. Every season he can drive his plough ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... all plain Wiltshire rustics who talk a broad vernacular, but at the end a shepherd and shepherdess enter and sing a duet in a more courtly strain. The author of this slight production is not known, but it is regarded by the latest authority on masques as an imitation, in the looseness of its construction, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... a word which appears to be used with a considerable amount of looseness. In addition to the meaning implied by necrosis (namely, 'death' of the part), caries is generally used to indicate that there is also a condition of rottenness, decay, and stench. It is particularly applied, in fact, when the death of the bone is slowly progressive, and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Murphy's frequent looseness of phraseology, false elegance, and futile commentary, are nowhere more conspicuous than in his version of the sixth book of the Annals and of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... too, had to be contrived so as to prevent any escape of the emanations through joints. It is lathe turned and circular, a 'dead fit.' By means of a special contrivance any slight looseness caused by wear and tear of closing can be adjusted. And another feature. That is the appliance for preventing the loss of emanation when the door is opened. Two valves have been inserted into the door and before ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... trifling matters brings on a certain looseness of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over the country I have been amused by simple people who imagined ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... absurd embellishments in which the latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the primitive villa, and the looseness of the time when a growing burgess-class made ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... judicatories, EVEN THEN, were the seats of injustice and iniquity. And many in their armies, by miscarriages, became their plague unto the great prejudice of the cause of God, the great scandal of the gospel, and the great increase of looseness and profanity throughout all the land." But, since the time of that acknowledgment there has still been more and more degeneracy, so that judicatories have consisted of, and been filled with perjured traitors ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... and I moved into the country, with our heads full of fresh butter, and cool, crisp radishes for tea; with ideas entirely lucid respecting milk, and a looseness of calculation as to the number in family it would take a good laying hen to supply with fresh eggs every morning; when Mrs. Sparrowgrass and I moved into the country, we found some preconceived notions had to be abandoned, and some departures made from the plans we had laid down ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... she got those things," Fanny said. Looseness of principle as to property rights was not as strange to her imagination as to that of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... him Andrews brought an equipment and a training such as few officers possessed. Experience had shown him the merit, the capacity, and the defects of the American volunteer officer. At the very bottom of these defects was the looseness of his early instruction in the elements of his duty; once wrongly taught by an instructor, himself careless or ignorant, he was likely to go on conscientiously making the same mistake to the end of his term. Realizing his opportunity, Andrews set about establishing uniformity in ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... followed. A single incident of the journey has come down to us: that of the chastisement inflicted in the isle of Cyprus on Brother Barbaro, who had been guilty of the fault which the master detested above all others—evil-speaking. He was implacable with regard to the looseness of language so customary among pious folk, and which often made a hell of religious houses apparently the most peaceful. The offence this time appeared to him the more grave for having been uttered in the presence of a stranger, a knight ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... misery caused by an enemy more redoubtable still. Arbois, though so charming to look at, is far from being a little Eden. It is eminently a Catholic place; atheism and immorality abound; bigotry among the women, scepticism among the men, a looseness in domestic morality among all classes characterize the population, whilst we need no information on the subject of dissipation generally. The numbers of cafes and cabarets speak volumes. There is, of course, in this townling, of not six thousand souls, a theatre, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... text showing what is effected by infant baptism. Thousands are having their children baptized, and they do not know the reason why any more than that it is a custom. Thus we behold the meaninglessness, looseness, and carelessness of professed Christians. Just doing things because others do them. They have no conviction from God nor the Bible. God wants us to be able to give a Scriptural reason for all we do in our form ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:" say they, youth is the worthier age, for that visions are nearer apparitions of God than dreams? And let it be noted that howsoever the condition of life of pedantes hath been scorned upon theatres, as the ape of tyranny; and that the modern looseness or negligence hath taken no due regard to the choice of schoolmasters and tutors; yet the ancient wisdom of the best times did always make a just complaint, that states were too busy with their laws and too negligent in point of education: ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... American Tobacco Company case were delivered late in May and were unexpectedly reassuring to business. This was another evidence that the best thought of the Nation everywhere was seeking to rectify the looseness of the past without killing business initiative and continued endeavor. So matters see-sawed in the business world. It was indeed in a state of unstable equilibrum. Stocks declined now abruptly; then, after some slight ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... drill is more specialised, and has specialisation for its end: a game calls on the whole of an individual: he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the seventh standard, and nothing will so entirely outrage the children's feelings as a teacher's careless arbitration. In physical games, too, the social side is strongly developed: leadership, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... New York was called the Evening Post. It was commenced by Henry De Forest in 1746. It was remarkable chiefly for stupidity, looseness of grammar, and worse orthography, and died before it was able ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... had gone for a little ramble in the lower woods, but they soon appeared, Mr. Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... or four days it was a question whether the little one would live, for so greatly had it been reduced by the looseness of the bowels that it had not strength to grasp the nipple of its nurse; the milk, therefore, was obliged to be drawn, and the child fed with it from a spoon. After the lapse of a few days, however, it could obtain the breast-milk for itself; ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... sees him floundering in the morass of a new language, always with something that he wants to say but can only suggest. Here, for example, is a personal statement, line by line more or less inarticulate, but as a whole clear enough. With all the mental incompleteness, the verbal looseness, the fumblings and gropings of the traditional Baboo, it is a genuine piece of irony. Seldom can a convert to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... the Army Regulations for a constant, and a raw volunteer regiment for a variable, and not a formula in Davies which suited the purpose. Unfortunately, these perplexities were quite as apt to end in relaxation as in rigor, so that the regiments thus commanded sometimes slid into a looseness of which a resolute volunteer officer would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... gentlemen connected with navigation, and very young men who, for the price of a ticket, a cigar, and a glass of beer, purchase the flattering delusion that they are "seeing life," and "going it with a perfect looseness." The performances consist of Ethiopian minstrelsy, comic songs, farces, and the dancing of "beauteous Terpsichorean nymphs"; and these succeed one another with not a minute's intermission for three ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... preacher lifts his head and ventures a brief excursion from the sheets before him, how obviously their interest quickens and their eyes brighten. Even they, in the depths of their hearts, would rather be spoken to, though such a practice might mean, now and then, a little looseness in expression, a little breakdown in the preacher's grammar. More than this may be said:—It has seemed to us, as the result of attending many churches, that in such sanctuaries as we have referred to reading is going out of fashion. We have listened of late months to many well-known ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... posture. I can also admit the stiffness of the Elbow, in smooth and Swift Division; for which it is most properly apt; but Cross and Skipping Divisions cannot (I think) be so well express'd without some consent or yielding of the Elbow-Joint unto the motion of the Wrist.... This motion or looseness of the Wrist I mention, is chiefly in Demi-semiquavers; for, in Quavers, and Semiquavers too, we must allow so much stiffness to the wrist as may command the Bow on and off the String, at every Note, if ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... individuality came to its own. Yet there had always been a clearly felt difference between the conclusions of the biological sciences and those dealing with lifeless substance, in the relative vagueness, the insubordinate looseness and inaccuracy of the former. The naturalist accumulated facts and multiplied names, but he did not go triumphantly from generalization to generalization after the fashion of the chemist or physicist. It is easy to see, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... course, derivative. The stock comparison of Plautus and Terence comes from Anne Dacier,[8] and Echard's footprints can be tracked in the snows of Cicero, Scaliger, Rapin, Andre Dacier, the Abbe D'Aubignac, and Dryden. Having set the Ancients against the Moderns, Echard is able to attack the looseness of English double plots by pointing to Terence's success within a similar structure. He is also able to praise Terence's genteel style. Against this, Echard admits, along with his precursors, Plautus' superiority in point ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... were brought to the city by companies seeking labor, hastened the deterioration and gave rise to problems where only tendencies existed before. Neighborhood life is conspicuously lax and the spirit of the community quite naturally comports with the looseness and immorality of the district. Though such conditions are plainly evident, no organized influence has been projected to correct them. As with the neighborhood, so with housing, crime, delinquency, ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... sisters drove her in to town to school in the old buggy which their father had brought from England. However, she managed to see me quite often, and I encouraged her, although, mind ye, I never let her know the looseness o' the ways o' a tavern. The sisters had the Methodist parson picked out fer her, an' he, poor man, was fair crazy fer her heart, too, but she had the givin' o' it herself, and this it was that caused all ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlours, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,—the freshness and candour of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage—their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Nervously dreading lest they should invade his beloved Philippian Church, he speaks with great severity of these conspirators. The conclusion of the chapter is apparently directed against the licence of certain Gentile converts. These seem to have been "enemies of the cross of Christ" in the looseness of their lives rather than in the corruptness of their creed. It is difficult in this case, as in that of the Judaizers, to know whether these errors already existed at Philippi or not. The passage concludes with an exhortation to ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... Samuel Johnson produced his principal works before the close of this period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. Poetry began to stir with new life; a noble ambition animated Young ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... enter into combination and form a colour lake that precipitates out in the dye-bath, causing the loss of material alluded to above, while some of it gets mechanically fixed on the cotton, in a more or less loose form, and this looseness causes the colour ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... Percy Adams Hutchison (Harper's Magazine). An attentive reader of the American short stories during the past few years may have observed with interest at rare intervals the work of Mr. Hutchison. In it there was always a promise of an achievement not unlike that of Perceval Gibbon, but a certain looseness of texture prevented Mr. Hutchison from being completely persuasive. In "Journey's End," however, it must be confessed that he has written a memorable sea story that is certainly equal at least to the better stories in Mr. Kipling's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the looseness of the marriage tie in their old sinful lives, we found many strange complicated tangles, some of which it was impossible to straighten. To deal with some of them would have caused endless difficulty, without any possibility of improving matters. ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... number of THE CONTINENTAL, I notice some editorial remarks upon a portion of my article 'Touching the Soul,' which appeared in the June number. For these remarks I am under obligation to you, as pointing out the looseness of my phraseology, whereby I have failed to convey the idea I intended; for which looseness the only excuse must be that my mind was occupied more with the thought than with the expression, and the latter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... which cannot bear a close inspection, triumph perpetually in drawing-rooms, in debating societies, and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. To the conversational education of the Athenians I am inclined to attribute the great looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in most of their scientific writings. Even the most illogical of modern writers would stand perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which seem to have deluded some ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after much listening to and fro, I determined the spot where the hidden water was loudest, hung Lilith's hand about my neck, and began to dig. It was a long labour, for I had to make a large hole because of the looseness of the sand; but at length I threw up a damp spadeful. I flung the sexton-tool on the verge, and laid down the hand. A little water was already oozing from under its fingers. I sprang out, and made haste to fill the grave. Then, utterly ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... of contraction or expansion. In the second place, the extremities of the angle leaves are wrought into rich flowing lobes, and bent back so as to lap against their own breasts; showing lateness of date in exact proportion to the looseness of curvature. Fig. 3 represents the general aspect of these later capitals, which may be conveniently called the rose capitals of Venice; two are seen on service, in Plate VIII. Vol. I., showing comparatively early date by the experimental form of the six-foiled rose. But for elaborate edifices ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... visit to Sampson's hut having not been without results tending to that condition. The warmth of the room was very agreeable in contrast to the bleakness of out-doors. She felt free and moved to exercise a looseness of tongue with the amiable old negress which was not common with her. The occurrences of the morning were gradually withdrawing themselves into a distant perspective that left her in the attitude of a spectator rather than that of an actor. And she laughed and ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... nature or Divine. Surely Power is an expression of Will and not co-ordinate with it. The common division, Power (or Will), Wisdom, and Love is more to the point. Yet Dr. Rashdall identifies the two triads by what I must needs think a looseness of reasoning.' The Margaret Professor of Divinity hardly seems to recognize that he is criticizing the Angelical Doctor and not myself. If Dr. Sanday had had the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the result, if less ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... meetings, &c., and will probably very soon attend the parochial meetings of Lord John Townshend's Committee in Westminster. Notwithstanding all this, the Parliament still continues steadily to Mr. Pitt, which, considering the looseness of morals and of the times, does the members great credit. * * * The Duke of York never misses a night at Brookes's, where the hawks pluck his feathers unmercifully, and have reduced him to the vowels I. O. U. The Prince likewise attends very ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... of the profaner sort are plated over with a lift of silver, which is fastened with small nails with broad silver heads. Most of these are or have been slaves, though love have set them loose at liberty to enslave souls to sin and Satan; and for the looseness of their lives, and public scandals committed by them and the better sort of the Spaniards, I have heard them say often, who possessed more religion and fear of God, they verily thought God would destroy that city, and ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... modified, however, by the fact that the pus can more readily reach the surface. In from twenty-four to forty-eight hours the patient is conscious of a sensation of chilliness, or may even have a rigor. At the same time he feels generally out of sorts, with impaired appetite, headache, and it may be looseness of the bowels. His temperature rises to 100 or 101 F., and the pulse quickens to ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... wife will be furious with you—furious, I say. And here she comes, too," he said, brightening, as he ever did, at sight of his lovely wife, who had remained his sweetheart, too; and this I am free to say, that, spite of the looseness of the times and of society, never, as long as I knew him, did Sir Peter forget in thought or deed those vows he took when wedded. Sportsman he was, and rake and gambler, as were we all; and I have seen him often overflushed with wine, but never heard from his lips a blasphemy or ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... point in the looseness of this gentleman's character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... during dinner. He did not like her, and he thought now of the young girls he would meet if he accepted her invitation. Lady Seveley was a shadow; and when the shadow defined itself he saw the slight wrinkling of the skin about the eyes, the almost imperceptible looseness of the flesh about the chin; but, worse to him than these physical changes, were the hard measured phrases in which there is knowledge of the savour and worth of life. He unpacked his portmanteau, and, dallying with his resolutions, he wondered if he should go ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... a carriage, then, this niece of the doctor?" interrupted Porthos, one of whose faults was a great looseness of tongue. "A ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... But these scattered ashes must have dropped to the dust through gaps in the Creator's fingers, to be blown hither and thither by the wind. They had become heaped up, but were never before united. Yet in this day which had come to Bengal, even this collection of looseness had taken shape, and proclaimed in a thundering voice, at our very door: "Here ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... very grateful to our national pride. Yet this is the least degrading part of the story. The shameless insincerity of the great and noble, the warm assurances of general support which James received, down to the moment of general desertion, indicate a meanness of spirit and a looseness of morality most disgraceful to the age. That the enterprise succeeded, at least that it succeeded without bloodshed or commotion, was principally owing to an act of ungrateful perfidy, such as no soldier had ever before committed, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plenty of wine; she could not too touch yellow wine; she had, what is more, drunk and eaten so many fat things that in the thirst, which supervened, she had emptied several cups of tea; the result was that she unavoidably got looseness of the bowels. She therefore squatted for ever so long before she felt any relief. But on her exit from the private chamber, the wind blew the wine to her head. Besides, being a woman well up in years, she felt, upon suddenly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... been characteristic of Buonaparte: his escapades and disobedience had savored rather of recklessness. Like scores of others in his class, he had fully exploited the looseness of royal and early republican administration; his madcap and hotspur versatility distinguished him from his comrades not in the kind but in the degree of his bold effrontery. The whole outlook having changed since his final flight to France, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Din Driscoll hastened back to the House. But he only learned that Jacqueline and Berthe were not up yet. He mumbled at such looseness in discipline, until he remembered that they were not troopers, but girls. And since girls are to be waited for, he did it in his own room. From his saddlebags he laid out shaving material. The Old Brigade had advised ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... is all here, and you may read it for yourself. It was all public ten years ago, and in this package are the reports of the trial. I have read them over so often that I almost know them by heart; and I know, too, the haste of that trial, and the looseness of that evidence. I have marked it in places—for your eyes only, dearest—for I prepared it for you, to be handed to you in case of my death. My life, however, has been preserved, and I now give this into your own hands. You must take ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed his moral flabbiness in the general dampness, looseness and limpness of the act,—not that he often shook hands with his pupil, for though that pupil was only a boy made of ordinary flesh and blood like other boys, he was nevertheless heir to a Throne, and in strict etiquette even friendly ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... quite grotesquely. Altogether he was so inclined to overemphasize and embellish his facts that it was not always easy to say where truth ended and fiction began. Somehow it seemed to me as though the moistness and looseness of his lips had something ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... as he swung against the blackened wall, his scarecrow clothes hanging on him, their once decent material making their pinning together of buttonless places, their looseness and rents showing dirty linen, more abject than any other squalor could have made them. Antony Dart's blood, still running warm and well, was doing its normal work among the brain-cells which had stirred so evilly through the night. ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year 157 B.C. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha[4] was there, and made himself especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily upward, by his mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of military ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... them round the neck, changing them as often as they dry." It is not improbable that the hint was taken from this circumstance for the anodyne necklaces, which, some time ago, were in such repute, as the Doctor, some little way further on, prescribes the same root for the looseness, fevers, and convulsions of children, during the time of teething, mixed, to make it appear more miraculous, with some ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the following sub-topics in almost exactly this order and wording: the ears; food and how obtained; the tongue; paws, including cushions; whiskers; teeth; action of tail; sounds; sharp hearing; sense of smell; cleanliness; eyes; looseness of the skin; quick waking; size of mouth; manner of catching prey; claws; care of young; locomotion; kinds of prey; enemies; protection by society for the prevention of cruelty to animals,—twenty-two ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... a gown is intended. How completely it clothes the entire figure, and with what ease and comfort to the wearer! There is not a line about it which indicates compression, or one expressive of that looseness and languishing abandonment that we remarked just now in the costume of La belle Hamilton. The entire person is concealed, except the tip of one foot, the hands, the head and throat, and just enough of the bust to confess ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the visible phenomena of Induction and Conduction; and he tries by the strong light of his imagination to see the very molecules of his dielectrics. It would, however, be easy to criticise these researches, easy to show the looseness, and sometimes the inaccuracy, of the phraseology employed; but this critical spirit will get little good out of Faraday. Rather let those who ponder his works seek to realise the object he set before him, not permitting his occasional vagueness ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... of thought. "A few years of journalism," said Mr. W.B. Yeats on one occasion, "is an invaluable discipline for the man of letters." No one is more fully alive to the defects of journalism than Mr. Yeats—its frequent looseness, prejudice, obviousness, and dissipation of interest. But, in spite of that, he saw that the good journalist's faculty of addressing himself directly to the subject in hand, of stating it clearly and in its essentials without waste of words, of so escaping his own particular ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... anile friend, in the very looseness of her prating has let out the truth. Or rather—a common custom with her—she has talked in her sleep. Her very weakness has, however, given ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... resumed their climb; and after a further three-quarters of an hour of arduous labour—the steepness of the acclivity and the looseness of the soil rendering progress exceedingly slow and difficult—they finally reached their goal, to find themselves standing, as it were, upon the rim of a huge basin about a third of a mile in diameter and some three hundred feet deep, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... career, and occasionally before, Turner was extravagant to an extreme degree; he played equally with nature and with his colors. Light, with all its prismatic varieties, seems to have been the chief object of his studies; individuality of form or color he was wholly indifferent to. The looseness of execution in his latest works has not even the apology of having been attempted on scientific principles; he did not work upon a particular point of a picture as a focus and leave the rest obscure, as a foil to enhance it, on a principle of unity; on the contrary, all is equally obscure and ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... understood as intimating, in this phase of his argument, that unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other vice than falsehood, is to be preferred, in practice, over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against a would-be murderer?[1] The looseness of Dr. Smyth's logic, as indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... and the brutality with which it suffers the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate looseness in management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the "mal dare," is, indeed, the root ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... in England, vol. ii., p. 151. The other characteristics which Dr. Waagen discovers in Turner are, "such a looseness of treatment, such a total want of truth, as ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... actual life found vent in violence and debauchery, were gratified by the dramatic representation of the worst crimes and most vitiated tastes. The Puritans brought about reformation and self-restraint, by enforcing a new code of morals all the more rigid from the looseness which on every side they found to combat. In closing the theatres, they were actuated, in Mr. Green's words, by the hatred "of God-fearing men against the foulest depravity presented in a ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... letter; he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice passages. The rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity, this lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in the endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some pages, have—contrary to all good usage—the superfluous eleventh syllable. Milton never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson in epic verse so little pretentious ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of a crop is not an assurance that the method is right: consideration for the good of the land must be shown. Depth of soil is a requirement of a good agriculture, and deep plowing is a means to that end. The looseness of the soil and the character of the season may make substitution right in one instance and wrong in another. Deep soils, well filled with organic matter, will bear shallow preparation of a seed-bed more frequently than thin soils, and yet it is the latter ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... view, seeking its meaning in sound logic, its force in past history, its value in present experience. First, then, we are to inquire what really is the logical significance of the resurrection of Christ. The looseness and confusion of thought prevailing in relation to this point are amazing. It seems as if mankind were contented with investigations careless, reasonings incoherent, and inferences arbitrary, in proportion to the momentousness of the matter in hand. In ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to see you urgently," she said, and Miss Alimony received her in that spirit. She was hatless but she had a great cloud of dark fuzzy hair above the grey profundity of her eyes and she wore an artistic tea-gown that in spite of a certain looseness at neck and sleeve emphasized the fine lines of her admirable figure. Her flat was furnished chiefly with books and rich oriental hangings and vast cushions and great bowls of scented flowers. On the mantel-shelf was the crystal that amused her lighter moments and above ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... effectiveness, there must be a mastery of the delicate balance between natural tendencies and discipline. If the student is subjected to too much discipline, stiff, angular results may be expected. If the student is permitted to play with the flabby looseness which some confuse with natural relaxation, characterless playing must invariably result. The great desideratum is the fine equilibrium between nature and discipline. This may seem an unnecessary observation to some, but many students never seem to be able to strike the happy ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the Bark, and of Cordials, and Drinks acidulated with spiritus vitrioli, and some Spoonfulls of mulled Red Wine every two or three Hours, he was restored to Health and Strength. The only Accident which happened during the Cure, was a Threatening of a Looseness, and the Return of his Flux; which however was stopt by a Dose of the tinctura rhei; by joining some of the electuarium diascordii with the Bark, and giving ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... inconsequential rhodomontade of Mr Slick is one of those startling pieces of levity that a stranger often hears from a person of his class in his travels on this side of the water. The odd mixture of strong religious feeling and repulsive looseness of conversation on serious subjects, which may here and there be found in his Diary, naturally results from a free association with persons of all or no creeds. It is the most objectionable trait in his character—to reject it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... shall, as thou dost, like horns wear, And none shall scorn Belphegor's arms to bear. And now, Malbecco, hear thy latest doom. Since that thy first reports are justified By after-proofs, and women's looseness known, One plague more will I send upon the earth! Thou shalt assume a light and fiery shape, And so for ever live within the world; Dive into women's thoughts, into men's hearts; Raise up false rumours and suspicious fears; Put strange inventions ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... England and in the society of London. But it is certain that the scene of trouble and danger in which it grew up greatly affected it. This may possibly account, though it is questionable, for the looseness of texture, and the want of accuracy and finish which is sometimes to be seen in it. Spenser was a learned poet; and his poem has the character of the work of a man of wide reading, but without books to verify or correct. It ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... me, by a degree of attention that was engaging. I thought indeed that I discovered contradictory qualities in him; but the sprightliness of his imagination, and the whimsicality of his remarks, compensated for a looseness of principle, which was too ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... desire, with that vigor and certainty the public so much admires, and rightly so. The golden mean should be observed; between undue tension, which implies inability to control, whether it be in the larynx or the breathing apparatus, and a looseness inconsistent with neat and certain results, the voice-producer must choose, with that common sense so indispensable to success in all undertakings, but which will never be adequately encouraged till students ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... carelessness of composition. 1. Pointless badinage and padded scenes. 2. Inconsistencies of character and situation. 3. Looseness of dramatic construction. 4. Roman admixture and topical allusions. 5. Jokes on the dramatic machinery. 6. Use ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... morning to night, and, even at the beginning of the rain, not so much as stir a few yards to shelter, but continue in it without necessity, till they were, as we say, wet through and through. And that is soon effected by the looseness and spunginess of the plaiding; but the bonnet is frequently taken off, and wrung like a dishclout, and then put on again. They have been accustomed from their infancy to be often wet, and to take the water like spaniels, and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... "above the common Rules." Though defective in its action, it was resplendent with sublime thoughts perhaps superior to any in Virgil or Homer, and full of incomparable and exquisitely moving passages. In spite of his belief that Milton's blank verse was a mistake, making for looseness and incorrectness, he borrowed lines and images from it, and in Bk. IV of The Life of Our Blessed Lord he incorporated a whole passage of Milton's blank verse in the midst ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... themselves are in a sense the stages of the essentialization. In the first of them his language emerges, to an extent imparting its unmistakable coloration to a matter perhaps not entirely distinguished. There is a looseness and lushness, a romanticism and balladry, in the work, that is not quite characteristic. Still, the honesty, the grimness and savagery and lack of sensuality, are Sibelius's own. The adagio is steeped in his proper pathos, the pathos of brief, bland summers, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... by land along the coast between the Italian conquests of Rome and her acquisitions on the other shore. On the other hand the Celts in the districts south of the Po were doomed irretrievably to destruction; for, owing to the looseness of the ties connecting the Celtic nation, none of the northern Celtic cantons took part with their Italian kinsmen except for money, and the Romans looked on the latter not only as their national foes, but as the usurpers of their natural heritage. The ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... to determine the broad lines of political organisation; it was so far unscientific that many individuals fall between or within two or even three of its classes. But that was met by giving the correlated organisation a compensatory looseness of play. Four main classes of mind were distinguished, called, respectively, the Poietic, the Kinetic, the Dull, and the Base. The former two are supposed to constitute the living tissue of the State; the latter are the fulcra and resistances, the bone and cover of its body. They are ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... been as awkward as most beginners in climbing the shrouds, the looseness and give of the ratlines puzzling him; but he had, for years, practised climbing ropes in the gymnasium at Shadwell, and was confident in his power to do anything in that way. The consequence was that, as soon as the sailors gained the top, where he and the midshipman ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... D.F. III. 67 notices a certain looseness in the use of tenses, which Cic. displays in narrating the opinions of philosophers, but no ex. so strong as this is produced. Ut aut approbet quid aut improbet: this Halm rejects. I have noticed among recent editors of Cic. a strong tendency to reject explanatory ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the Lords of Looseness That hamper faith and works, The Perseverance-Doubters, And Present-Comfort shirks, With brittle intellectuals Who crack beneath a strain— John Bunyan met that helpful set In Charles the ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... imputed to the one party as a fault, or to the other as a merit. It was with Raoul as it had been with his country—each was the creature of circumstances; and if the man had some of the faults, he had also most of the merits of his nation and his age. The looseness on the subject of religion, which was his principal defect in the eyes of Ghita, but which could scarcely fail to be a material one with a girl educated and disposed as was the case with our heroine, was the error ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... zealous in desiring the Favour of the Nobility for what is deny'd to be lawful; and that I ought not to wish an Encouragement of the Stage, when 'tis affirm'd that from Thence we derive our Corruption of Manners. Mr. Collier has endeavour'd to prove this from the Looseness of some of our Plays, and then has brought the Opinion of the Fathers to ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... and, as surely as there is a ball on the tee, when it does so there will be mischief. Depend upon it the instinct of activity will prevent the right hand from going through with the swing in that indefinite state of looseness. Perhaps a yard from the ball in the upward swing, or a yard from it when coming down, there will be a convulsive grip of the right hand which, with an immediate acknowledgment of guilt, will relax again. Such a happening is usually fatal; it certainly deserves ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... in the circle. Two or three were asleep, their heads sagging on their necks with maudlin looseness. The others spoke infrequently, but often let down their chairs while they spat in the sand-box under the stove, or screwed about in the direction of the gaming-table. Among these was Old Michael. He sat nearest the door, a checkerboard balanced on his knees, his black ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... whether the design is Rondo or compound Song-form, simply because it is scarcely possible to decide just when the "Trio" assumes the more intimate relation of a Subordinate theme, or when the freedom and comparative looseness of association (peculiar to the Song with Trio) is transformed into the closer cohesion and greater smoothness of finish which fuses all the component Parts of the design into one compact whole,—the distinctive stamp ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... that after going to the field he had to toil there all day until the sun went down. He and his fellow slaves had to work in all types of weather, good as well as bad. Although the master or the overseer were not as cruel as some he had heard of they tolerated no looseness of work and in case a person was suspected of loafing the whip was applied freely. Although he was never whipped, he has heard the whip being applied to his mother any number of times. It hurt him, he says, because he had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... and author alike, equally in the dark, are too happy to have her home to worry about it either, preferring to wander with her through the dear old rooms and let explanations go hang. Anyhow, perhaps one can forgive a certain amount of looseness in a story that holds such pleasant things as a family rainbow, an "osier ait" and a sailor-poet worshipping from afar. And indeed, though far from brilliant, the book is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... element of truth in the former to which the latter has not done justice; that Bentley presses Collins's arguments beyond their logical conclusion; that Collins is not what Bentley would have him to be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... is made up, as the name itself really tells, of broken up rock masses. One can tell this sort of soil by its lightness and the ease with which a mass of it drops apart. By the word lightness one does not mean colour or weight, but looseness. A clay soil may be told by its stickiness; its power to form lumps or masses; its tendency to crack and bake under the hot sun. Such a soil is called heavy. Humus soil is made up largely of decayed animal and vegetable matter. Its presence ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... ingredients of the stools. Most frequently they are dark colored and of very offensive odor. They are of a more liquid character than is natural, except when, as is sometimes the case, periods of constipation alternate with periods of unnatural looseness. Tormina, or griping, is usually present, but not so severe as in the acute affection. Tenesmus, or straining, often accompanies it. The appetite is impaired, there is general debility, and the patient is nervous and irritable. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... up now," said she, "that from the first moment you saw me, you have felt a sort of a spooney hankering, and a general looseness, including a desire to write poetry and use hair-oil, and wear pretty neckties; a sort of a feeling that your clothes don't fit you, and you can't bear the sight of gravy, and dote on lavender kids, and want to part your hair in the middle. That's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... rapier and his uniform; I girded on the rapier, which was rather too long, and I wore the uniform, which was rather too large. From that time," said Dubois, calling the chevalier's attention to the looseness of his coat, "from that time I contracted the habit of always having plenty of room to ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to adjust the string. Already a piece of stick, several inches in length, had been fixed to the small of the stock, and, of course, behind the trigger. This was fastened transversely, but not so as to preclude all motion. A certain looseness in its adjustment gave it the freedom required to be worked as a lever—for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and discharge, and the fear of an imaginary contagion, make the nurses very unwilling to introduce their fingers into the reluctant little patient's mouth, and without this scrutiny all is in vain. The physician is compelled to set the example, to try the looseness of the teeth with his own fingers, and to ensure the nurse's entire knowledge of the extent of ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... is difficult not to believe that fundamentally sins of education are to blame for it. The school may bring much to the children, but no mere information can be a substitute for a training in thorough thinking. Here lies the greatest defect of our average schools. The looseness of the spelling and figuring draws its consequences. Whoever becomes accustomed to inaccuracy in the elements remains inaccurate in his thinking his life long. If the American public loses a hundred million dollars a year by ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... they appeared to disdain such trifles. They were at the age when men may eat or drink anything and at all times without apparently disturbing the centres of energy. They were, in fact, doing large quantities of work every day—for boys. Yet daily in their work, I was finding the same litter and looseness of which their cottage was but an unmistakable suggestion. In fact, the place was a picture of their minds.... We are each given a certain area of possibility. Not one in a million human beings even roughly makes the most of it. The organisation of force and the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... is. I don't know what young women's comin' to. They ain't decent, I tell you. They ain't decent. That's what comes of Sunday dancin' an' all the rest. Young women nowadays are like a lot of animals. Such fast an' looseness ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... ignorant. Papists also are in general ignorant of divine things, and very vicious. Nor do the bulk of the church of England much exceed them, either in knowledge or holiness; and many errors, and much looseness of conduct, are to be found amongst dissenters of all denominations. The lutherans in Denmark, are much on a par with the ecclesiastics in England; and the face of most Christian countries presents ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... to all Chinamen, operate variously according to their taste, thus:—"All sour medicines are capable of impeding and retaining; bitter medicines of causing looseness and warmth as well as hardening; sweet possess the qualities of strengthening, of harmonising, and of warming; acids disperse, prove emollient, and go in an athwart direction; salt medicines possess the properties of descending; ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... me how to remedy this looseness of the kernel I will agree to show you how 100 bushels of corn can be raised on one acre every good ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... to prevail with thy Majesty,—every one is like to give Christ a free passport and testimonial to go abroad, and are almost Gadarenes, to pray him to depart out of their coasts. There is a strange looseness and indifferency in men's spirits concerning the one thing necessary. Men lie by and dream over their days, and never put the soul's estate out of question; none will give so much pains, as to clear their interest in thee, to lay hold on thee, so as they may make peace ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... keep out water which may be struck in passing through the various strata, it is protected by plank or wood tubbing, or the shaft is bricked over, or sometimes even cast-iron segments are sunk. In many shafts which, owing to their great depth, pass through strata of every degree of looseness or viscosity, all three methods are utilised in turn. In Westphalia, where coal is worked beneath strata of more recent geological age, narrow shafts have been, in many cases, sunk by means of boring apparatus, in preference to the usual process of excavation, and the practice has since been ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... chiefly in the determination of his thoughts to infer the existence of that action from some preceding objects; as liberty, when opposed to necessity, is nothing but the want of that determination, and a certain looseness or indifference, which we feel, in passing, or not passing, from the idea of one object to that of any succeeding one. Now we may observe, that, though, in reflecting on human actions, we seldom feel such a looseness, or indifference, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... catechism also form a part of the college course. The religious atmosphere which surrounds the college is as genial and cheerful as the natural atmosphere which bathes the hills and valleys around in October days. It has no element of sectarianism or bigotry. Free alike from cant, from looseness and indifference, the religious tone of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... reached from the waist to about half way down between the hips and the knees. It was as delightful a gown as ever was contrived by ambitious modiste or mincing male designer in these modern times. It fitted with a free and easy looseness and its colors were such as blended smoothly and kindly with the complexion of its wearer. The fur of the wolverine was a mixed black and white, but neither black nor white is the word to use. The black was not black; ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... legs, shoes like army slippers, and a ponderous nose, was Columbus, Cato, or Cockelorum Tibby, the tragedian, was more than I could tell. Several robust ladies attracted me; but which was America and which Pocahontas was a mystery; for all affected much looseness of costume, dishevelment of hair, swords, arrows, lances, scales, and other ornaments quite passe with damsels of our day, whose effigies should go down to posterity armed with fans, crochet needles, ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... now ascended by a narrow and precipitous path. Their task was continued with no little difficulty, by reason of the looseness of the soil, and the huge rocks that obstructed their progress. By dint of scrambling, rather than walking, they, however, approached to the summit, when a light became visible over the hill, growing brighter as they ascended. It was the castle turret, where Lord ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... conviction that the evolutionary doctrines of the day are not only untrue, but thoroughly bad and irreligious. This belief, and the natural anxiety with which he contemplates their prevalence, may excuse a certain vehemence and looseness of statement which were better avoided, as where the geologists of the day are said to be "broken up into bands of specialists, little better than scientific banditti, liable to be beaten in detail, and prone to commit outrages on common-sense and ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... general affairs, indeed, in all matters of consequence, the male sex must ever lead, and the other follow; but surely they have something in their power, were they to exert themselves. They ought never, by a silent approbation, to encourage looseness and profligacy among the men, and thus be accessary to the prostitution of numbers in the lower rank of their own sex; and if they have it not in their power to reform their gallants altogether, they can ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... He must even take her to supper, shamming. He finally went about and asked how she was getting along. The actors were all dressing, talking, hurrying about. Drouet was palavering himself with the looseness of excitement and passion. The manager mastered himself only ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... narrower and shorter in women than in men; but it must be noticed that they are more intertwined and contorted than in men, and shrink together by reason of their shortness that they may, by their looseness, be better stretched out when necessary: and these vessels in women are carried in an oblique direction through the lesser bowels and testicles but are divided into two branches half way. The larger goes to the stones ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... confusion of material and immaterial in the acts ascribed to the angels. Dr. Johnson, who wished for consistency, would have had it preserved "by keeping immateriality out of sight." And a general arraignment has been laid against Milton of a vagueness and looseness of imagery, which contrasts unfavourably with the vivid and precise detail of other poets, of Homer or of Dante, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... "Guelpho shall pray thee, God shall him inspire, To pardon this offence, this fault commit By hasty wrath, by rash and headstrong ire, To call the knight again; yield thou to it: And though the youth, enwrapped in fond desire, Far hence in love and looseness idle sit, Year fear it not, he shall return with speed, When most you wish him and when ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... may be made to look very beautiful by being surrounded with fumed oak bookcases, eight feet high. The shelves should be made movable with Tonks' patent.[42] Mr. Gladstone[43] speaks of the looseness and the tightness of movable shelves, the weary arms, the aching fingers, and the broken finger-nails. This can be avoided by the use of the patent here named. The bottom cases should be deeper and wider, to take quartos and folios, but there should ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... is alleged without lessening their strength) contain within their limits States each of which enjoys a large amount of independence. That neither the German Empire nor the Austro-Hungarian monarchy suffer inconvenience from the looseness of the connection between the States which they each contain is one of those assertions more easily made than proved to be true; but supposing its truth to be, for the moment and purely for the sake of argument, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... he has not shown himself a man of very questionable honesty, but only that the evidence will not bring him within the grasp of the criminal law, as guilty of embezzlement under the statute, and this because of the looseness of the arrange ments, that had been implied instead of expressed. It is exceedingly to be regretted that with the best intentions and kindest purposes, want of caution and experience on her part should have enabled the prisoner thus to secure himself from the possibility of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In looseness of the bowels we give a teaspoonful of lemon juice in a little hot water and sugar. That has as much effect as is desirable, and it has no bad effect whatever. Or enema injections may be employed. (See Diarrhoea, Dysentery, Enema). ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk |
