"Vague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the credit which was attached to their mandates and predictions. If they were not dictated by a divinity, they were framed at least by a profound knowledge of mankind; they applied themselves exactly to the circumstances of individuals, and made a notable contrast to the vague and loose generalities of their rival temples. As Arbaces now arrived at the rails which separated the profane from the sacred place, a crowd, composed of all classes, but especially of the commercial, collected, breathless ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... his father and mother almost effaced themselves, scarcely daring to ask him a question, even to discover what he would like for dinner, the fever of work fell away. It was replaced by dreary boredom or vague restlessness. He began to seek the society of his father and to smoke with him in silence. Now and again he even assisted at some of the medical operations which his father conducted as a charity. Once he pulled a tooth out from a pedlar's head, and Vassily Ivanovitch ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... against her side was enough. She didn't look into the future, nor did she think of what fate the years held in store for her daughter, but content, lost in emotive contemplation, she watched the blind movements of hands and the vague staring of blue eyes. This puling pulp that was more intimately and intensely herself than herself developed strange yearnings in her, and she often trembled with pride in being the instrument through which so much mystery was worked; to talk to herself of the dark ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... newcomer, pointing out the various interesting features of the little college town, in an attempt to put the stranger entirely at her ease after her disquieting experience. So far she had had slight opportunity to observe this latest freshman arrival. She had a vague idea that Jean Brent was an unusually attractive girl, but the side view she obtained of her, as they walked along, was far from satisfactory. The newcomer said little, and only once during the short ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... have a vague idea that what we call the 'ear' is only partly concerned with the work of hearing; but only a few know exactly what a complicated organ the ear, as a whole, really is. The external 'ear' only serves as an aid to the collection of sounds, and the real work of hearing is performed by a delicate ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on the ground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as though perhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vague shadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. I was drifting down, sinking, with only ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... uncomfortable. As I knew, he commenced his business career with ten pounds' capital, and could hardly speak plain English, while now his goods were known in every bazaar from Cairo to Singapore. This knowledge fostered a vague but daring hope ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... heavily on the back of a chair. "Crailey?" She looked at Mrs. Tanberry with vague interrogation, but Mrs. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... poison gas that we have heard vague rumours about," I remarked to the Captain. The gas rose in great clouds as if it had been poured from nozzles, expanding as it ascended; here and there brown clouds seemed to be mixed with the general yellowish green ones. "It looks like chlorine," I said, "and ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... against which her husband was contending; to Lizzie, life consisted of three babies, whom it was her duty to feed and protect, and a husband, who was her instrument for carrying out this duty. The world outside of these was to her a vague and shadowy place, full of vague and shadowy terrors. Somewhere up in the sky was a Holy Virgin who would help when properly appealed to, but Lizzie was handicapped in appealing to this Virgin by the fact that her husband despised ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... allured him, and so had Old Burgundian: he had had designs also upon Visigothic, and had finally chosen Lombard rather than the others because the material was not merely defective but also delightfully vague, affording a wide opportunity for genuine philological insight. And indeed to classify a language on the basis of a phrase scratched on a brooch, the misquotations of alien chroniclers, the shifting ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... forbidden. When some proclamation prohibited the boys from going out in the streets after nine o'clock in the evening, or some article declared carnal love unlawful, it was to his mind clear and definite; it was forbidden, and that was enough. For him there was always a doubtful element, something vague and not fully expressed, in any sanction or permission. When a dramatic club or a reading-room or a tea-shop was licensed in the town, he would shake ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... entire rental value there would be no chance for the land monopolist to exploit the earnings of labor. Man's means should not be "drained and exhausted by excessive taxation," as the Pope seems to fear, showing that he has a vague idea of the method by which it is proposed to destroy ownership. But as the rental value to-day is already paid by labor, the proposed plan could not drain or exhaust labor any more than at present, while such a tax falling ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... return, and during the winter months, he was constant in his attendance at the meetings of the Entomological and Zoological Societies. It was at one of these evening gatherings that he first met Huxley, and he also had a vague recollection of once meeting and speaking to Darwin at the British Museum. Had it not been for his extreme shyness of disposition, and (according to his own estimation) "lack of conversational powers," he would doubtless ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a wistful sadness in the fall of evening, a vague regret for the fading glories of the day which, passing out of our lives for ever, leaves us so much the richer or poorer, the nobler or more unworthy, according to the use we have made of the opportunities it has offered us for the doing of good ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... among the classical poets. "The Essay," says De Quincey, "is a collection of independent maxims tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or logical dependence; generally so vague as to mean nothing. And, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... laughing. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of Guerre des Auteurs anciens et modernes, "that sent bishops to their dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of biting when he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious satire than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself. While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest things. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and content myself with the possession of his love, and with the assurance that he will return to me as soon as possible. As soon as possible! but what a vague hope! He sails with the first fair wind. What a dreadful certainty! Perhaps to-morrow! Oh, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... names that made memorable those wonderful days touch chords of association that still vibrate in the life of the hour. For the most part the artists and their associates have gone their way—not into a Silent Land, a land of shadows and vague, wandering ghosts—but into that realm wherein is the "life more abundant," of more intense energy and of nobler achievement; the realm in which every aspiration of earth enlarges its conception and every inspiration ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... artistic sight, sound, or idea will most probably be used up in bringing to life again some of the many millions of sights, sounds, and ideas which lie inert, stored up in our mind. The artistic emotion will therefore not give rise to an active impulse, but to that vague mixture of feelings and ideas which we call a mood; and if any alteration occur in subsequent action, it will be because all external impressions must vary according to the mood of the person who ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... foreigner the advantage of their own indigenous Jus Civile. It is true that we, at the present day, should probably take a very different view of the Jus Gentium, if we were performing the operation which was effected by the Roman jurisconsults. We should attach some vague superiority or precedence to the element which we had thus discerned underlying and pervading so great a variety of usage. We should have a sort of respect for rules and principles so universal. Perhaps we should speak of the common ingredient as being of the essence ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... terrible truth, that of all men in the world he was the most lonely, separated as he was from all that he had known and loved by an impassable gulf of nearly four long centuries—that his well-loved Golden Star was but a memory known to few, a name in a vague tradition; that the resting-place, even of her mummy, was unknown, and that all that the darkest prophecy could have foretold had in very truth fallen upon the land of the Incas and the Children of ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... Many minds were yearning for something to fill the void,—for a more substantial ground of rest and of hope. They longed for a goal on which their aspirations might center, and to which their exertions might tend. The burden of sin and of suffering that rested on the common mass excited at least a vague yearning for deliverance. The Roman Empire, with all its treasures and its glory, failed to satisfy the hearts of men. The dreams of philosophy could not be realized on the basis of ancient society, where the state was every thing, and where ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the sparrow of city streets! But his impudence is not a manner of prudence, an art of remaining vague, an elegant method of having no opinion. His eyes always express either wrath or delight. Do you care to know the secret by which the little beggar, with his "Chappie" and his "See" can steal away our hearts? It is that he is frank and fearless that he believes, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... unlike what Tess had expected to hear that she drew a long, disappointed breath. There had been a vague wish within her heart that she were going to be of infinite benefit to him. It was such a little thing to lose a fine supper. His life had not been in ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Switzerland without seeing him. But when I had somewhat recovered from the agitation of admiration, it was followed by a feeling of very marked fear. Bonaparte then had no power: he was thought even to be more or less in danger from the vague suspiciousness of the Directory; so that the fear he inspired was caused only by the singular effect of his personality upon almost every one who had intercourse with him. I had seen men worthy of high respect; I had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real communication between the worlds. Youth remains another planet—even as age and childhood are ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... pupils should come to an understanding that two languages should be regarded as distinct whenever the speakers of them are unable to converse together, or freely to exchange ideas, whether by word or writing. Scientifically speaking, such a test might be vague and unsatisfactory, like the test of species by their capability of producing fertile hybrids; but if the pupil is persuaded that there are such things in nature as distinct languages, whatever may have been their ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... give such specific directions as will qualify the novice to hive a swarm of bees, under almost any circumstances; for I know the necessity of such directions and how seldom they are to be met with, even in large treatises on Bee-Keeping. Vague or imperfect directions always fail, just at the moment that the inexperienced attempt to ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... gone! But he had bequeathed to Marian a purpose and an object, which gave her a spirit to try hard and feel out a way for herself in this confused tangle of a world around, her. She was happier, though perhaps more anxious; for now it was not mere vague dislike and discontent, but a clearer perception both of the temptations around and of the ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Diana gave a vague assent. She had, in truth, two recent letters from Marsham in her pocket at that moment, giving a brilliant and minute account of the Parliamentary situation. But she hid the fact, warm and close, like a brooding bird; only drawing on her companion to talk politics, that she ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whether I had been sleeping or musing, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious. It ceased, but my heart beat anxiously; my inward tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then my chamber-door was touched as if fingers ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... materializations followed one another just as they had the summer before. The only difference Eliphalet could detect was a stronger flavour in the spectral profanity; and this, of course, was only a vague impression, for he did not actually hear a single word. He waited awhile in patience, listening and watching. Of course he never saw either of the ghosts, because neither of them could appear to him. At last he got his dander up, and he thought it was about time to interfere, so he ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... throne, and appears inclined to be quiet. There is another great warrior chief, named Moselekatsee, who revolted from Chaka, and who is much such another character; but our accounts of these people are vague at present, and require time to corroborate their correctness. You will have to act and decide when you arrive there, and must be guided by circumstances. With the caravan you propose to travel with, I think there will not be much danger; and if there is, you must ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... readily the influence of his models. He used especially the meter of the common evangelical hymns, and cultivated the vague personification of the poets of the eighteenth century. He himself, however, was essentially a romantic poet, as was evinced by his fondness for Byron and Marlowe. His common style is represented by the following lines from his poem entitled ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Certainly this was vague explanation, yet though the main object might be asserted "to put the act in force against the insurgents," the hint was given that the commerce of friendly neutrals might be "incidentally and indirectly affected." ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... that he is right in so doing. I am aware that it has been not unusual, especially perhaps of late years, to apply the name of God to very different conceptions, to empty it of all implication of personality, and to reduce it to signifying something very large and very vague, such as the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard words may signify), the great First Cause, the Universal Substance, "the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil the law of their being,"[1] and so forth. Now without expressing any opinion as to the truth or falsehood of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... power of winning confidence, many patients, especially ladies, consulted him when suffering from any misery, as a sort of Father-Confessor. He told me that they always began by complaining in a vague manner about their health, and by practice he soon guessed what was really the matter. He then suggested that they had been suffering in their minds, and now they would pour out their troubles, and he heard nothing more about the body...Owing to my father's skill in winning ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... was wet with the vague horror of something. He made an effort to speak, to straighten up; gave her a dreadful look of appeal which turned into ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... with love intense, Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence; Sweet when the lost arrive: Sweet the musician's ardour beats, While his vague mind's in quest of sweets, The choicest ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... windowless walls began to crawl up the stripped skyscraper between them and the lake. Daisy pulled the black-out curtains on that side. For a day or two longer their thoughts and conversations were haunted by Gusterson's vague sardonic visions of a horde of tickler-energized moles pouring up out of the tunnels to tear down the remaining trees, tank the atmosphere and perhaps somehow dismantle the stars—at least on this side ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... had an odd one," said Miss Oliver absently. "It was one of those vivid dreams I sometimes have—they are not the vague jumble of ordinary dreams—they are as clear ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mean? I mean that this is all too unbusinesslike. It's too vague. I'm risking my life to put this business through, and I want to get what I deserve. It's the biggest thing I've ever done, and I won't do ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Christianity we make a distinction without alleging much difference between the Father and the Son, even so in ancient times a distinction of a similarly vague kind was made between the All-Father Fire and His Image and First-begotten Son Light. The disc of the Sun seems to have represented the former and the Sun-star or radiate Sun the latter where both were represented in one illustration, as for instance in ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... that, natural proof of a God there is none, and our trust must be placed solely in revelation; while Brougham, another Immense Being worshipper, declares that revelation derives its chief support from natural Theology, without which it has 'no other basis than vague tradition.' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... said to her: "I have a strange feeling that I have known you always." She had cherished the saying in her heart, hoping—believing that it might, in some vague, mysterious way, be true. And not at all aware that this pretty sentiment is as old as the race and the merest banality on the masculine tongue, signifying: "At this moment I am drawn to you, as to no other woman; but an hour hence ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... old and white before me now, beseeching me to speak for them, and most lovingly will I do it. Howells, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton, Cable, Remus—how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the lamented past! I remember it so well—that night we met together—it was in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... frankness with which he had expressed himself. He retained but a very slight recollection of all that he had said, but he thought it was quite sufficient to have aroused the ridicule of those around him. Most painful of all sensations, the vague sense of a folly committed, the extent and the consequences of which are alike unknown to us! As he approached his home it seemed to him that he had profaned his affection for Marguerite by mentioning her name in that ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... no pride of life. And why? Because always before them and above them there stood some great principle, some idea, some duty to which their life belonged, not to themselves. All work is modest, all idle self-contemplation is vain. And what the young man needs with his vague aspirations and conceits is to make himself the servant of some worthy purpose. And what the merchant needs with his growing business is to count himself the steward of some worthy Master. And what the student needs ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... in coming, yet her nerves did not assert themselves unpleasantly, as usual. In fact, she had forgotten her nerves, in the strange, vague gladness that was half pain which flooded her being. She would berate herself for being "an old fool," though conscious at the same time of little, warming heart-thrills that exulted over her reason. As Polly had said, the president ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... inhabitants of Cap, they thronged the court of Government-House and the Jesuits' Walk; and even in the Place d'Archer and the Rue Espagnole, passengers found it difficult to make their way. The assemblage could scarcely have told what detained them there, unless it were the vague expectation of more news, the repetition of the praises they loved to hear, and, perhaps, some hope of getting one more glimpse of Toussaint on this night of his triumph. From mouth to mouth circulated the words which General Laveaux had ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... as little harm as may be—to be of some use at home—and to make turnips grow in the upland at Inglewood, I have some vague fancy to see foreign parts, especially now they are all in such a row—it would be such fun—but I suppose you would not trust me there now. Here I am for you to do as you please with me—a gracious permission, considering that you did not ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mind, to abstraction and generalization. In the numberless changes of these languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and their rapid deterioration, they seem to betray a lack of individuality, and to resemble the vague and tumultuous history of the tribes who employ them. They exhibit an almost incredible laxity. It is nothing uncommon for the two sexes to use different names for the same object, and for nobles and vulgar, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... foreign countries, that they had originally fled on account of their share in the Porteous Mob. But little credit can be attached to these surmises, as in most of the cases they are contradicted by dates, and in none supported by anything but vague rumours, grounded on the ordinary wish of the vulgar, to impute the success of prosperous men to some unpleasant source. The secret history of the Porteous Mob has been till this day unravelled; and it has always been quoted as a close, daring, and calculated act of violence, of a nature ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in some old marvellous tale, Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of spectres pale ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... was about, I seized and clung to the branches of a small tree with the tenacity of a drowning man—unable to open my eyes while sticks and leaves, huge limbs of trees and deluges of water flew madly past, filling my mind with a vague impression that the besom of destruction had become a veritable reality, and that we were all about to be swept off the face of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... come in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham station. If you love English scenery, and have a few hours to spare, you can't do better, the next time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon Road or Shrivenham station, and make your way to that highest point. And those who care for the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all about England, will not, if they are wise, be content with only a few hours' stay; for, glorious as the view is, the neighbourhood is yet more interesting for its relics of bygone ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... to manifest itself upon his good-natured features. Psycho-analysis was not his strong point. In a vague way he began to suspect that Gladys Norman's devotion to Malcolm Sage was not strictly in accordance ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... the vague feeling which had depressed them all, ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider, that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been patent—almost, it seemed, a tangible thing—but, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... whom De Vaux addressed thus hastily, the equerry and his fellow-servants of the royal chamber rushed hastily into the tents of the neighbouring nobility, and quickly spread an alarm, as general as the cause seemed vague, through the whole British forces. The English soldiers, waked in alarm from that noonday rest which the heat of the climate had taught them to enjoy as a luxury, hastily asked each other the cause of the tumult, and ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... (sec. 19) to vague schemes of colonial control suggested during the war. More serious measures were impending. When George Grenville became the head of the cabinet, in April, 1763, he took up and elaborated three distinctly new lines of policy, which grew to be the direct ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... Brandan; and 200 leagues west of the Canaries lay somewhere the lost Island of the Seven Cities, that two valiant Genoese had vainly endeavored to discover, and in search of which, yearly, the merchants of Bristol sent expeditions, even before Columbus sailed. In his northern journey, too, some vague and formless traditions may have reached his ear of the voyages of Biorn and Lief, and of the pleasant coasts of Helleland, Markland, and Vinland that lay toward the setting sun. All were hints and rumors ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and took away my strange, deformed companion. The hapless creature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her out beyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for her poor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. A vague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant vigilance indispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for hours together moping and mowing, and distorting her features with indescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some strange tameless animal, than associating ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they "think alike", they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions. Normally, there is a give-and-take, and each preserves the sense of his own identity, since the two different sets of sense receptors give different ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... lay inert, her brain reeling with vague, swift ideas that burnt her in passing, like flames. She remembered her husband's infamous behaviour, his humiliating conduct to her, his threats, his plans for a divorce; and she gradually came to understand that she was the victim of a regular conspiracy, that the servants had ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... not have been altogether effaced from his heart. Full of doubt and anxiety, therefore, she paused at the stile, against which she felt it necessary to lean for support, not without a touch of interest and somewhat of curiosity, to control the vague apprehensions which she could not help feeling. We need scarcely inform the reader that the meeting on both ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... him out standing quite still, gnawing at his mustache ends, and staring, absent-mindedly, into a vague distance, that saw nothing of the expression of gentle inquiry that covered the nervousness in Anton. Yet Nicholas' sudden apprehension seemed, on reflection, to be unwarranted. Certainly, thought he, Anton's attitude towards Ivan had completely changed. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... disordered, poor thing!" Isabel said in her gentle way when she returned them—"at least, judging by these. They are hopelessly mixed and vague." ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... of that, Eachin," said Simon, in that vague way in which lukewarm comforters endeavour to turn the reflections of their friends from ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and sensational narrative. Like Harold, and Scott's Marmion, it just misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description, the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to pathos. The lonely death of the hero ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... said the other. Her placid acceptance of these facts was very comforting to Miss Mary. She did not realise how different she herself was from the vague, scared woman of a week ago; nor how her quiet, well-dressed taciturnity ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... was Saint Michael and not the saints who had appeared to her.[2347] She herself found it difficult to unravel the tangled web of her dreams and her ecstasies. And from these vague visions of a child the doctors were laboriously essaying to elaborate a ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... had preceded them, but many dragged their pitiful belongings along with them, and the murmur of their alien voices rang through the bustle of the station. Hetty Torrance was not unduly fanciful, but those footsteps caused her, as she afterwards remembered, a vague concern. She believed, as her father did, that America was made for the Americans; but it was evident that in a few more years every unit of those incoming legions would be a citizen of the Republic, with rights equal to those enjoyed by Torrance of Cedar Range. She had seen that as yet the constitution ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... could only make requisitions upon the thirteen members of the confederacy in proportion to the assessed value of their real estate, and it was not provided with any means of enforcing these requisitions. On this point the articles contained nothing beyond the vague promise of the states to obey. The power of levying taxes was thus retained entirely by the states. They not only imposed direct taxes, as they do to-day, but they laid duties on exports and imports, each according to its own narrow view of its local interests. The only restriction upon this was ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... elicited from them contemptuous sneers or strong denunciations. I have a right to complain of this treatment, and I do strongly protest against it as unchristian, hurtful and ungenerous. To prejudge and condemn an individual, on vague and apocryphal rumors, without listening to his defence or examining evidence, is tyranny. Perhaps I am in error—perhaps I deserve unqualified condemnation; but I am at least entitled to a privilege which is granted to the vilest criminals, namely, the privilege of a fair trial. I ask nothing ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Child-dreams—more vague and fragmentary than my animal ones; and yet more calm, and simple, and gradually, as they led me onward through a new life, ripening into detail, coherence, and reflection. Dreams of a hut among the valleys of Thibet—the young of forest animals, wild cats, and dogs, and fowls, brought ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... more. His mother's fame as a flannel-washer was against him; Brougham Street was against him; and, chiefly, his poverty was against him. True, he had gorgeously given a house away to an aged widow! True, he succeeded in transmitting to his acquaintances a vague idea that he was doing well and waxing financially from strength to strength! But the idea was too vague, too much in the air. And save by a suit of clothes, he never gave ocular proof that he had money to waste. He could not. It was impossible for him to compete with even the more modest ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... talking to him directly over the register: "I think you'll have to get along without the name for the present. I'll tell you by and by." As Mr. Ransom pronounces these words, Miss Reed, on her side of the partition, lifts her head with a startled air, and, after a moment of vague circumspection, listens keenly. "But she was beautiful. She was a blonde, and she had the loveliest eyes—eyes, you know, that could be funny or tender, just as she chose—the kind of eyes I always liked." ...
— The Register • William D. Howells
... summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments to have waited upon a bishop in his own land. I have a vague memory of an entrance-hall with panelled paintings and a double-staircase with a snow-white carpet, about which I had read in the newspapers that it was woven in one piece, and had cost an incredible sum. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... change has taken place in the king's affections. You know whom that concerns. Afterwards, the news continues, people are talking about one of the maids of honor, respecting whom various slanderous reports are being circulated. These vague phrases have not allowed me to sleep. I have been deploring, ever since yesterday, that my diffidence and vacillation of purpose, notwithstanding a certain obstinacy of character I may possess, have left me unable to reply ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... when he doesn't. Now I felt sure that when Dr. Farr heard the news he would have a fit. I expected him to use language and even his umbrella. But nothing of this kind happened. He simply sat there like a slightly faded and vague old gentleman and said ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... indifferent music till all hours. It was this second event which brought about the third excitement. For having been a little imprudent one night, in the matter of "night-caps," or careless as to draughts, my Aunt was taken seriously ill. At least she chose to think herself so, though I now have vague suspicions that the singing lady knew more about it all than she cared to tell. All I know is that the doctor was sent for, and that, after a long confab in the sick room, he came to me and ordered my immediate return home. "Your poor Aunt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... kennel of evil savours, Heale was slowly trying to poke things into something like order; and dragging out a few old drugs with a shaky hand, to see if any one would buy them, in a vague expectation that something must needs have happened to somebody the night before, which would ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... hours before Denis managed to go to sleep that night. Vague but agonising miseries possessed his mind. It was not only Anne who made him miserable; he was wretched about himself, the future, life in general, the universe. "This adolescence business," he repeated to himself ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... difficulties such as are met with in our American wilderness. The crossing of a stormy ocean, the reclamation of the soil from nature, the fighting with savage men are mere generalities wherein some vague idea may be gained of true pioneer life. But it is only by following woman in her wanderings and standing beside her in the forest or in the cabin and by marking in detail the thousand trials and perils which surround her in such a position that we can obtain the true picture of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... country seven years, appeared at the Shoals two years before the date of the murder. He lived about the islands during that time. He was born in Ueckermuende, a small town of lower Pomerania, in Northern Prussia. Very little is known about him, though there were vague rumors that his past life had not been without difficulties, and he had boasted foolishly among his mates that "not many had done what he had done and got off in safety;" but people did not trouble themselves about him or his past, all having enough to do to earn their bread and keep the wolf from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... possibly have hit something, and from roofs with ordinary guns and revolvers which could not possibly have hit anything at all. In the gray haze that hung over Paris the next morning, I wandered through empty streets and finally, with some vague notion of looking out, up the hill of Montmartre. All Paris lay below, mysterious in the mist, with that strange, poignant beauty of something trembling on the verge. One could follow the line of ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for. In passing through the woods, most persons have a vague consciousness of slight chirping, semi-musical sounds in the trees overhead. In most cases these sounds proceed from the warblers. Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... passed since I had read the remarkable manuscript of this remarkable man; this man who remembered no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as to his age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my grandfather's great-grandfather upon his knee; this man who had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for the green men of Barsoom and fought against them; ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Diderot's only contributions to aesthetic criticism. He could not content himself with reproductions, in eloquent language upon paper, of the combinations of colour and form upon canvas. No one was further removed from vague or indolent expansion. He returns again and again to examine with keenness and severity the principles, the methods, the distinctions of the fine arts, and though he is often a sentimentalist and a declaimer, he can also, when the time comes, transform himself into an ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... way of talking about "miracles," and "the impossible," and "genius" is quite vague and popular. What do we mean by "genius"? The Latin term originally designates, not a man's everyday intellect, but a spirit from without which inspires him, like the "Daemon," or, in Latin, "Genius" of Socrates, or the lutin which rode the pen of Moliere. "Genius" is claimed for Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... themselves came forward to testify to the falsity of these charges, and the fact that Richard had himself placed Conrad of Montferat upon the throne, and had no possible interest in his death, was alone more than sufficient to nullify the vague rumors brought against him. Richard himself in a few a scornful words disposed of this accusation. The accusation that he, Richard of England, would stoop to poison a man whom he could have crushed in an instant was too absurd to ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... you shake and swing, Our hearts shape the message We would have you bring. Dreams of happy Springtimes We hope yet to share; Vague, but pleasant visions All to ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... voluminous folds of a single piece of grey-white stuff. Something supernatural about her terrifies the beholders, who throw themselves on their faces. Her outline flows and waves: she is almost distinct at moments, and again vague and shadowy: above all, she is larger than life-size, not enough to be measured by the flustered congregation, but enough to affect them with a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... vague path beginning at the rear of the malocas marched the twenty-four, the two northerners bending under the weight of their packs, the pair of Brazilians sweeping the jungle with practiced eyes, the score of Mayorunas ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... sense or that sense out of it, but at the end of the ends the "Divine Comedy" will stand for the patriotism of medieval Italy, as far as its ethics is concerned, and for a profound and lofty ideal of beauty, as far as its aesthetics is concerned. This is vague enough and slight enough, I must confess, but I must confess also that I had not even a conception of so much when I first read the "Inferno." I went at it very simply, and my enjoyment of it was that sort which finds ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... such a twitter as she did it! All that old delight in doing somebody else up, a vague somebody whose meannesses she didn't know, was as nothing to the joy of doing Tausig up. She was dancing on a volcano again, that incorrigible Nance! Oh, but such a volcano, Maggie! It atoned for a year of days when there was nothing doing; no excitement, no risk, nothing ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... of the thirteenth century the Templars had become suspect, not only in the eyes of the clergy, but of the general public. "Amongst the common people," one of their latest apologists admits, "vague rumours circulated. They talked of the covetousness and want of scruple of the Knights, of their passion for aggrandizement and their rapacity. Their haughty insolence was proverbial. Drinking habits were attributed to them; ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... revenues is to have no other check, certainly Congress should supply the Department of Justice with appropriations sufficiently liberal to secure the best legal talent in the defense of these claims and to pursue its vague search ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Shape in words a mortal's prayer! Prayer, that, when my day is done, And I see its setting sun, Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, Sink beneath the horizon's rim,— When this ball of rock and clay Crumbles from my feet away, And the solid shores of sense Melt into the vague immense, Father! I may come to Thee Even with the beggar's plea, As the poorest of Thy poor, With my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... at the helm obeyed, and the next send of the sea drove the Scud down upon the quarter of the ship, so near her that the old mariner himself recoiled a step, in a vague expectation that, at the next surge ahead, she would drive bows foremost directly into the planks of the other vessel. But this was not to be: rising from the crouching posture she had taken, like a panther about to leap, the cutter dashed onward, and at the next instant she ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... imperilled all our dispositions, and Colonel Whitehead wisely kept A Company at Asiago in case the enemy should drive a wedge between the two Brigades. It was the more unfortunate that O.C. D Company, acting on one of those vague orders which often circulate during battle, whose source it is impossible to trace with certainty, had withdrawn his company somewhat from the slopes, believing himself to be conforming to the desires of the 144th Brigade. Monte Catz was therefore left in a dangerously salient position on the west, ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... organically connected. They become incipiently reflex; and, on the occurrence of the appropriate stimulus, the whole nervous apparatus which in past generations was brought into activity by this stimulus, becomes nascently excited. Even while yet there have been no individual experiences, a vague feeling of pleasure or pain is produced; constituting what we may call the body of the emotion. And when the experiences of past generations come to be repeated in the individual, the emotion gains both strength and definiteness; and is accompanied ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... could not imagine that, situated as I was, it could be difficult for me to obtain a command for a good soldier, I determined to go and ask the Comte d'Argenson. I made my request, and presented my memorial. He received me coldly, and gave me vague answers. I went out, and the Marquis de V——, who was in his closet, followed me. "You wish to obtain a command," said he; "there is one vacant, which is promised me for one of my proteges; but if you will do me ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... arms, and Aunt M'riar had to do it for her in the end. Not, however, unwillingly, because it enabled her to give her mind to pinking or gauffering, or whatever other craft was then engaging her attention. We do not ourself know what pinking is, or gauffering; we have only heard them referred to. A vague impression haunts us that they fray out if not done careful. But this ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... cared to come to listen; and I remember with delight those hours when perhaps twenty boys would come and sit all about my study, filling every chair and sofa and overflowing on to the floor, to listen to long, vague stories of adventure, with at all events an appearance ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dreamily in pairs, is a vague line of the motto,—a foreshadowing of the heroic idea, as are the soft calls of the wind with wooing harp ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... attendant who came to them deftly aided Geoffrey to force a little cordial between the sufferer's teeth. Savine made no sign. Forgetting her indignation in her terror Helen glanced at Geoffrey in vague question, but he merely raised his ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... OR HIS UNDERSTANDING HAS NOT AS YET BEEN PAINED by the confused and perplexing ideas resting on no fixed point of view, leading to no satisfactory result, sometimes dull, sometimes fantastic, sometimes floating in vague generalities, which we are often obliged to hear and read on the conduct of War, owing to the spirit of scientific investigation having hitherto been little directed to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... became possessed of a dollar to buy a steamboat like Craig's. But Mr. K., who had furnished the additional capital, looked in vain for the improved service. The new rolling stock was not in evidence, and explanations were vague and unsatisfactory, as is often the case in the railroad game at which men play. It took a stern court of inquiry to develop the fact that the railroad and steamship had simply changed hands—and at a mutual profit of one hundred per cent. And Mr. K., as he ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... ridiculous humbug have we known to be passed off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in Chemistry. The young brains were vexed and wearied day after day to acquire by vague description and by rote the details of an almost ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... doctor's peep from Parnassus has afforded, may furnish the imagination of the reader with materials to create in his own mind a vague yet not unjust notion of Neck-or-Nothing Hall; but certain details of the Hall itself, its inmates and its customs, may be desired by the matter-of-fact reader or the more minutely curious, and as the author has the difficult ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... exposure, imprisonment, disgrace. A peculiar apathy of peace seemed to envelop him. There was no longer hope to entice, no further struggle to be waged against the terror of fear, or the joy of love, or the horror of remorse; all seemed gone from him, even to the vague interest in things transpiring ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... of revolt against her duty, unable altogether to abandon the hope, the longing to see Iver again, filled with vague terror of what the future might bring forth, she remained as struck with paralysis, kneeling, speechless, with head bowed, hands fallen at her side, seeing, hearing, knowing nothing; and was roused with a start by the voice of Jonas ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... part of those in it. There is nothing to prevent this—no fence, or boom; no mark, even, between what is dangerous and what is not; no division whatever. Persons ignorant of the river may just as likely as not row right into danger. A vague caution on a notice-board may or may not be seen; in either case it gives no directions, and is certainly no protection. Let the matter be argued from whatever point of view, the fact remains that these accidents occur from the want of an efficient ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... those strong feelings of respect and attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name of Robinson Crusoe—both were associated ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of poetry who is trying to find some English poem that he can get no trace of except from vague memory, would be quite apt to meet ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... among the rocky coves of the island. Others, that he was one of the ancient comrades of Kidd or Bradish, returned to convey away treasures formerly hidden in the vicinity. The only circumstance that throws anything like a vague light on this mysterious matter is a report which prevailed of a strange, foreign-built shallop, with much the look of a picaroon,[1] having been seen hovering about the Sound for several days without landing or reporting herself, though boats were seen going to and from ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was a voucher for his message, to gain his way through. But how could Amos Green, a foreigner and a civilian, hope to pass? It was impossible, clearly impossible. And yet, somehow, in spite of the impossibility, he still clung to a vague hope that a man so full of energy and resource might find some way out of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... got this despatch from Mine City: you see it's pretty vague: 'bodies of two men found forty miles from branch of P. & O. Line, thought to be drovers overcome by heat and thirst.' I wired for more particulars; but the railway hands had shovelled ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Then suddenly that "h" would appear or disappear, and the illusion was over. It was like a sudden shock of cold water down the back. I never discovered the origin of his family; it was a matter of which he did not speak, perhaps because he was vague about it himself; but if an earl of Norman blood had married a handsome Cockney kitchenmaid of native ability, I can quite imagine that Samuel Savage might have been a child of the union. For the rest he was a good man and a faithful one, for whom I ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... more and more vague, the voice of Marmaduke the parrot came across the water out of the rigging; a far-away voice, which grew fainter and fainter as the ship grew dimmer, until it died away as ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... universal sweep of the scythe of persecution, and he felt himself moved and incited to go to some of the Lords and leaders of the Congregation to warn them of what he feared; but, considering that he had only a vague and unaccountable suspicion for his thought, he wavered, and finally returned home. Thus, though manifestly and marvellously instructed of the fruition of some bloody business in hand that night, he was yet overruled by the wisdom which is of this ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to be evaded, but it is an excellence. The future just as future lacks urgency and body. To get ready for something, one knows not what nor why, is to throw away the leverage that exists, and to seek for motive power in a vague chance. Under such circumstances, there is, in the second place, a premium put on shilly-shallying and procrastination. The future prepared for is a long way off; plenty of time will intervene before it becomes a present. Why be in a hurry about getting ready for it? The temptation to postpone ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... was perfectly soundless, and for the time, at least, lonely; the splendid afternoon had begun to fade, and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see. It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity, a vague brutality. That element is rarely absent from great Roman work, which is wanting in the nice adaption of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... assented to." On this Dr. Parr observes, "Why Dr. Warburton was ever suspected of secret infidelity I know not. What he was inclined to think on subjects of religion, before, perhaps, he had leisure or ability to examine them, depends only upon obscure surmise, or vague report." The words inclined to think seems a periphrase for secret infidelity. Our critic attributes these reports to "an English dunce, whose blunders and calumnies are now happily forgotten, and repeated by a French buffoon, whose morality ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... me," said Jones—Then vague recollections began to stir in his mind, that long glabrous face, the set of that jaw, that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... be good enough to complete it by sending what precedes and follows; for we have here nothing authentic relating to your affairs. All that we know of you, we get from the gazettes, imperfectly, by scraps, in a vague and uncertain manner, a ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... been the chances beyond those limits? Considering how fatal to the identity of a word the change of a single consonant would be in monosyllabic languages, we might expect that monosyllabic roots, if their meaning was so general, vague, and changeable, would all the more carefully have preserved their consonantal outline. But this is by no means the case. Monosyllabic languages have their dialects no less than polysyllabic ones; and from the rapid and decisive divergence of such dialects, we may learn how rapid and decisive ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... or, even where neither facts nor arguments are suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair distribution of lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the vague, general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding deeds on the other side; and in this way very similar facts are brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of this book to trace the story of Japan from its beginnings to the establishment of constitutional government. Concerned as this story is with the period of vague and legendary antiquity as well as with the disorders of mediaeval time and with centuries of seclusion, it is plain that it is not an easy task to present a trustworthy and connected account of the momentous changes through which ...
— Japan • David Murray
... interlaced with trees as black as if they were drawn in India ink on the wavering background of the mist. A broad, very low bed on a platform a few steps above the floor, two or three small lacquer screens with vague fanciful decorations in gold, denoting, as did the double doors and the heavy woollen carpet, a dread of cold carried to excess, chairs of various styles, long chairs and low chairs, placed at random, all well-stuffed and of lazy or voluptuous ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... perhaps have done in the old days because he was then so alien to it—he began to love this Judaism with an intense fervor. Although in his own eyes he could not, at first, clearly justify this new yearning, it became so powerful at length that it crystallized from vague emotions into a definite idea which he must needs express. It was the conviction that there was only one solution for this Judennot—the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... justified by faith for which Ignorance pleads may well be called "fanatical," as well as "false"; for it is nowhere laid down in Scripture; and it not only changes the way of acceptance, but it takes away the rule and standard of righteousness, and substitutes a vague notion, called sincerity, in its place, which never was, nor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that encounter had kept his lips as firmly closed upon the subject as though Harpocrates, the god of silence, had sealed them with his finger, and that was Gyges, chief of the guards of Candaules. One day Gyges, his mind filled with various projects and vague ambitions, had been wandering among the Bactrian hills, whither his master had sent him upon an important and secret mission. He was dreaming of the intoxication of omnipotence, of treading upon purple with sandals of gold, of placing the diadem upon the brows ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... the world—except by the Masons themselves. Often these writers imply, if they do not actually assert, that our order begged, borrowed, or cribbed its emblems from Kabbalists or Rosicrucians, whereas the truth is exactly the other way round—those impalpable fraternities, whose vague, fantastic thought was always seeking a local habitation and a body, making use of the symbols of Masonry the better to reach the minds of men. Why all this unnecessary mystery—not to say mystification—when the facts are so plain, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... he encountered the lady who, a week before, had taken possession of the rooms on the ground floor, the "parlours" of Mrs. Bundy's terminology. He had heard her, and from his window, two or three times, had even seen her pass in and out, and this observation had created in his mind a vague prejudice in her favour. Such a prejudice, it was true, had been subjected to a violent test; it had been fairly apparent that she had a light step, but it was still less to be overlooked that she had a cottage piano. She had furthermore a little boy ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... a protector to Bootea," she said. "Sometimes I wondered if such men lived; yet I suppose a woman always has in her mind a vague conception that such an one might be. But always that, that is like a dream, is ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... their properties, that is, while the plants themselves seem to possess some medical value, the Indian mode of application is so far at variance with recognized methods, or their own statements are so vague and conflicting, that it is doubtful whether any good can result from the use of the herbs. Thus the Unaste[']tstiy[^u], or Virginia Snakeroot, is stated by the Dispensatory to have several uses, and among other things is said to have been highly recommended in intermittent fevers, although ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... His eyes were fixed on Lucilla—absorbed in watching her. He spoke to Nugent, without looking at him; animated, as it seemed, by a vague fear for Lucilla, which was slowly developing into a ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... was aware of something new. The whole air was throbbing with sound. From all sides it came, rumbling, indefinite, an inarticulate mutter, low, but thick and strong, rising, falling, reverberating among the rocks, dying away into vague whispers, but always there. He looked round at the blue, cloudless sky in bewilderment. Then he scrambled up the rocky pinnacle above him, and sheltering himself in its shadow, he stared out over the plain. In his wildest dream he had never imagined ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of silence, and jubilee Of long-hushed voices; and faces sweet Were thronging the shadowy side of the street As far as the eye could see; Dreaming again, in anticipation, The same old dreams of our boyhood's days That never come true, from the vague sensation Of walking asleep ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... knew she must resign it when Rosamond married. But, secretly disliking and distrusting Franval as she did, the thought that he was soon to become the husband of her beloved sister filled her with a vague sense of terror which she could not explain to herself; which it was imperatively necessary that she should conceal; and which, on those very accounts, became a daily and hourly torment to her that was almost more than she ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... concerning certain psychal impressions which, of late, have occasioned me much anxiety and surprise. I need not tell you how sceptical I have hitherto been on the topic of the soul's immortality. I cannot deny that there has always existed, as if in that very soul which I have been denying, a vague half-sentiment of its own existence. But this half-sentiment at no time amounted to conviction. With it my reason had nothing to do. All attempts at logical inquiry resulted, indeed, in leaving me more sceptical than before. I had been advised to study Cousin. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... vague day-dream into a practical reality. Having made himself acquainted with all the requisites for a trading enterprise beyond the mountains, he determined to undertake it. A leave of absence, and a sanction of his expedition, was obtained from the major ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... carefully designed by the French manipulator of underground wires. Louis Delgado he already knew, and held in contempt, yet Louis was the only possible instrument for use in converting certain vague possibilities into definite realities. Changing the nebulous into the concrete; shifting the dotted line of a frontier from here to there on a map; changing the likeness that adorned a coin or postage-stamp: these were things to which Monsieur Jusseret lent ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the blind hazard of chance was this great tragedy consummated; not by the discord of men or from the vague opposition of physical obstacle, by fault of route or length of delay, was help denied to him. The picture of a wonderful life had to be made perfect by heroic death. The moral had to be cut deep, and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible. I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet go it must. I ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near, the field of Cressy. By the aid of the books, we fancied we could trace the positions of the two armies; but it was little more than very vague conjecture. There was a mead, a breadth of field well adapted to cavalry, and a wood. The river is a mere brook, and could have offered but little protection, or resistance, to the passage of any species of troops. I saw no village, and we may not have been within a mile of the real ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of this unknown mountain, to which, for want of a better, we gave the name of Notre Dame. For the old bellringer was not alone in his ignorance. Ask whom we would, we invariably received the same vague reply—it was a mountain "on the Italian side." They knew no more; and some, like our friend of the Campanile, had evidently "not noticed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various |
