"Unfixed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... competence? If, by peace, he mean that tranquillity of mind which innocence and good deeds produce, he is right and clear so far; for we all know that, without health, which has a well-known positive meaning, there can be no happiness. But competence is a word of unfixed meaning. It may, with some, mean enough to eat, drink, wear and be lodged and warmed with; but, with others, it may include horses, carriages, and footmen laced over from top to toe. So that, here, we have no guide; no standard; and, indeed, there can be ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... time to time, I jotted them down and put them away with this manuscript. Thus among these notes you will find a history of the city of Kor as she told it to me, which I have omitted here. Still, many of these remarkable events did more or less fade from my mind, as the image does from an unfixed photograph, till only their outlines ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and well-dressed youths around her shone, But every eye was fixed on her alone. On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and Infidels adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those: Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike, Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... be so. The seed of the thought must have been sown, he believed, at his first meeting with Marlowe; his mind would have noted automatically that such evident strength and grace, with the sort of looks and manners that the tall young man possessed, might go far with any woman of unfixed affections. And the connection of this with what Mr. Cupples had told him of the Mandersons' married life must have formed itself in the unconscious depths of his mind. Certainly it had presented itself as an already established thing when he began, after satisfying himself of the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... invented first to damn mankind! Nature took care to dress you up for sin; Adorned, without; unfinished left, within. Hence, by no judgment you your loves direct; Talk much, ne'er think, and still the wrong affect. So much self-love in your composure's mixed, That love to others still remains unfixed: Greatness, and noise, and shew, are your delight; Yet wise men love you, in their own despite: And finding in their native wit no ease, Are forced to put your ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... as I told you, two years and upwards that we remained at Venice and thereabout, in the greatest hesitation imaginable, irresolute and unfixed to the last degree. William's sister importuned us daily to come to England, and wondered we should not dare to trust her, whom we had to such a degree obliged to be faithful; and in a manner lamented her being suspected ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... few moments returned, trailing with him his own discovery among lunatics, who was a slender man with a fixed smile and an unfixed and rolling head. He had a goatlike beard just long enough to be shaken in a strong wind. Turnbull sprang to his feet and was like one who is speechless through choking ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... look and tone, the yearning of the daughter's heart for the mother she had never seen, save only with the unfixed, undistinguishing eyes of earliest infancy, perhaps the under-thought that she might soon rejoin her in another state of being,—all came upon her with a sudden overflow of feeling which broke through ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... troops of horse of the citizens. Their chief strength, under God, consisting in the bodies of their citizens, proper and stout men, who, if they come to fight pro aris et focis, for religion, liberty, wives and children, and estates, for their all, are full of courage; not like mercenary, unfixed, unfaithful men, whose trade is in blood, and who are pests ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... told Some ancients like my rusty lay, As Grandpa Noah loved the old Red-sandstone march of Jubal's day I used to carol like the birds, But time my wits has quite unfixed, Et quoad verba,—for my words,— Ciel! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore; Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those; Favours to none, to all she smiles extends, Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... concentrated fire on the streets. Their advancing lines, covering the whole city front, looked magnificent, and it was dreadful to think that such a splendid body of men must march into such a slaughter-pen. Their movement was a repetition of ours. With bayonets unfixed they moved forward and attempted to maintain a firing-line under Marye's Heights on the ground from which we had been driven, only to be hurled mercilessly back as we had been. Our line had been the first to make this effort, and for some reason we had approached to within ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... poor George is gone! His cruise is up soon! He knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions are unfixed and at loose ends. They say,—"God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will excuse them hereafter,—"To work hard, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... dictionary at the present day, would be as bold, and we may add as untimely and illogical a proceeding as to endorse any one grammar, when nothing can be clearer to the student of language than that our English tongue is more unfixed and undergoing changes more rapidly than any other which boasts a truly great literature. The scholar, consequently, generally pursues an eclectic system, if timid conforming as nearly as may be to 'general ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... drinks, indulges in badinage with his servant, and listens to the music of his private band. The musicians play melodies from popular operas of the period in which Mozart wrote—not Spanish melodies of the unfixed time in which the veritable Don Juan ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... her I thought, What would I give if I was a square man, and how happy I could be with such a woman as my wife. I did not tell her my business, for fear she would think less of me. I could not endure the deception, so after three days of happiness I tore myself away, feeling as if I was "unfixed for life." In a short time she visited relatives in New Orleans, and sent me an invitation to call; but as I was acquainted with her friends, the same old dread came upon me, so I declined, with the excuse that ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... persuasions! and a queen!" "O Dalica!" the shuddering maid exclaimed, "Could I encounter that fierce, frightful man? Could I speak? no, nor sigh!" "And canst thou reign?" Cried Dalica; "yield empire or comply." Unfixed though seeming fixed, her eyes downcast, The wonted buzz and bustle of the court From far through sculptured galleries met her ear; Then lifting up her head, the evening sun Poured a fresh splendour on her burnished throne— ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... inclosure below them was shallower now from the number that had fallen, and was filled with a confused mass of struggling men. In their midst was Bathurst fighting desperately with his short weapon, and bringing down a man at every blow, the mutineers being too crowded together to use their unfixed bayonets against him. In a moment Captain Forster leaped down, sword in hand, and joined Bathurst ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... adjectives, like the indefinite article, leave the meaning unfixed, or, in some degree, vague. With a slight shade of difference in meaning, we say, Give me a paper, one paper, any paper, some paper, and so on. Though these words restrict the meaning of the noun, they do not fix it to a particular object. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace—to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma universale—that abstract form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the frail ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting |
