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Defining   /dɪfˈaɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Defining

noun
1.
Any process serving to define the shape of something.  Synonym: shaping.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Defining" Quotes from Famous Books



... art nothing is more strange than this: genius does not recognize genius. Still, the word is much abused, and the man who is a genius to some is never so to others. In defining a genius it is easiest to work by the rule of elimination and show what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... concessions to the Ambalat oil block; the ICJ decision has prompted Indonesia to assert claims to and to establish a presence on its smaller outer islands; Indonesia and Singapore pledged in 2005 to finalize their 1973 maritime boundary agreement by defining unresolved areas north of Batam Island; Indonesian secessionists, squatters, and illegal migrants create repatriation problems for Papua New Guinea; piracy remains a problem ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... he wrote: "We are bound to understand by this terme [the Rule of Magistracy] the proper sphere, bounds and limits of that office which is not to intrude itself into the office and proper concerns of Christ's inward government and rule in the {276} conscience." After defining the magistrate's proper functions in the affairs of the external life, he then adds: "The more illuminated the Magistrate's conscience and judgment is, as to natural justice and right, by the knowledge of God and communications ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... proposed by the inventors of oil-painting, of preserving light within the colors, involved a certain order of processes. The principal conditions were: first, that the outline should be completed on the panel before the painting, properly so called, was begun. The object, in thus defining the forms, was to avoid alterations and repaintings, which might ultimately render the ground useless without supplying its place. Another condition was to avoid loading the opaque colors. This limitation was ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the treaty defining the rights, immunities, and privileges of consuls, between Italy and the United States, ratified in 1868, either Government may, after the lapse of ten years, terminate the existence of the treaty by ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson

... nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be called a positive impression; ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... his instinctive sense that God was everywhere. "The tree is glad," said he, "I know it is; I can cut it down: no matter, there was a nymph in it. The water does sing," said he; "I can dry it up; but no matter, there was a naiad in it." But in thus clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own humanity. What sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the spirit in the stream, not for the stream; always for the dryad in the wood, not for ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains! Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous position in which he ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... impression was a bath of freshness after the long strain of the preceding two years and his recent sweltering weeks in New York. At the end of ten minutes (his stroll had been slow) a figure drew near him, at first indistinct, but presently defining itself as that of a woman. She was walking apparently without purpose, like himself, or without other purpose than that of looking at the stars, which she paused for an instant, throwing back her head, to contemplate, as he drew nearer to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... a powerful telescope of his own. His principal difficulty was in procuring a lens of considerable diameter, possessed of high perfection of defining power. I suggested to him the employment of a reflecting telescope, by means of which the difficulties connected with the employment of glass could be avoided. This suggestion was based upon some knowledge I had acquired respecting ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... has the same meaning in the following words. They are, however, too simple to need defining; in fact, there are no simpler words on which to base definitions: airy, balky, bony, briny, chunky, downy, dusty, healthy, hearty, miry, musty, rusty, scaly, showy, sinewy, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture, Professor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants 'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Robertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July, 1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were strictly ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this voice, through its forcible pre-occupation of his childish conscience, still seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive character, defining itself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit, the other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of various sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy, light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... object of the preceding lecture (and I choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in defining it), was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which I shall in these lectures[118] give the general term of Imagination;—that is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... persons of standing, quite properly disregarded her querulous importunities. The whole matter of dealing with the weed was by now in the hands of a permanent body, the Federal Disruptions Commission. This group had spent the first six months of its existence exactly defining and asserting its jurisdiction, which seemed to spread just as the vegetation calling it into being did; and the second six months wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission over certain "Cease and Desist" orders issued to firms using allusions ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... with the extraordinary property of radio-activity. Dalton often said: "Thou knowest thou canst not cut an atom"; but the fact that he applied the term atom to the small particles of compounds proves that he had escaped the danger of logically defining the atom, the danger of thinking of it as a particle which never can be cut. The molecule of Avogadro has always been a decomposable particle. The peculiarity of the new kind of particles, the particles of radio-active bodies, is, not that they can be separated into unlike ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... on all sides, gives no complete satisfaction to any. It balances, and weighs, but it does not finally pronounce. It aims less at deciding this controversy, than at defining the limits within which its economic aspect may be said to lie. I think any one who reads the Report with attention will feel, after careful study, that the limits of the economic controversy are moderately restricted. ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... this site, but here and there a fragment aids in defining the general plan of the pueblo. In general form the village was a large rectangle with a line of buildings across its center, dividing it into two unequal courts, and a projecting wing on the west side. As ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... rainbow's worth Of delicate colours lies enamelled, Translucently glowing, shining. Each balmy breath of the hours From eastern gleam to westward gloam Is meaning-full as the falling flowers: It is a crystal syllable For love's defining, It is love alone can spell—— Yea, Love remains: after this drift of days Love is here, Love is not dumb. The touch of a silken hand, comradely, untrammelled Is in the sunlight, a bright glance On every ripple of yonder waterways, A whisper in the dance ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... necessity of adhering to the Nanking Provisional Constitution until a permanent instrument was drawn up, the Kuo Ming Tang rapidly established an ascendancy; for although the Nanking Constitution had admittedly failed to bring representative government because of the difficulty of defining powers in such a way as to make a practical autocracy impossible, it had at least established as a basic principle that China could no longer be ruled as a family possession, which in itself marked a great advance on all ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... with a perfect knowledge of the world's physical geography and the laws of national development, he would have been able to foretell a priori the situations of all the greatest capitals. It is a law as fixed as that defining the course of matter in the line of least resistance, that population flows to the level where the best livelihood is most easily obtained. The brute motives of food and raiment must govern in their selection of residence nine tenths of the human race. A few noble enthusiasts, like those of Plymouth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... establishing the authority of the apostolic writings (since that existed from the beginning), but for bringing home to the consciousness of the churches their supreme importance as an authoritative rule of faith and practice, and also the necessity of carefully defining their extent as well as their true interpretation. Heretical teachers arose who sowed in the Christian church the seeds of gnosticism. Of these some, as Marcion, rejected on dogmatical grounds a portion of the apostolic writings, and mutilated those which ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... by which slavery was forever abolished and black men transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with this definition: In order to be a citizen one must be a voter. Associate-Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said: "They include all such privileges as are fundamental in their nature; and among them is the right to exercise the elective franchise, and to hold office." ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... Book of Paley's 'Moral and Political Philosophy' is entitled 'PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS' it is in fact an unmethodical account of various fundamental points of the subject. He begins by defining Moral Philosophy as 'that science which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it. The ordinary rules are defective and may mislead, unless aided by a scientific investigation. These ordinary rules are the Law of Honour, the Law of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... horrify my readers if I confess I have accepted doctors for our hospitals, nurses for our districts, and workers of every type, and yet have never known which way they prefer to worship? Nor have I ever played the censor on their right to help us by defining what they ought to believe before I allowed them to set to work. Before a member joins the permanent staff we must know he is in absolute sympathy with our aim to glorify God and serve our brother, and that ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... at once involves a third party, the neutral; and it therefore appears desirable, before tracing the progress of this warfare, to outline briefly the principles of international law which, by a slow and tortuous process, have grown up defining the respective rights of neutrals and belligerents in naval war. Blockade is among the most fundamental of these rights accorded to the belligerent, upon the conditions that the blockade shall be limited to enemy ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... seeing the breeze rising, and hoping to use it, made most telling speeches in the debate on the Address, clearly defining the crisis as a question between revolution and counter-revolution, and declaring enthusiastically for the former. Lamartine and others, the sentimental and the plain honest, were very damaging on the same side. The Government ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... no doubt he's an angel with pin-feathers sprouting all over him," retorted Dad. "But it isn't business, which I take the liberty of defining as the way of making the best of one's opportunities instead of frittering them away. He has unquestionably done a few dozens of poor devils a lot of good, including myself. But he could find many more cripples in any big city, and a few of them ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... we shall find evidence of the fact, because there we find in exaggerated shapes all the evils I have been defining. The best mode of testing the matter is to take the statistics of some large city which has grown from a country town to a vast business hive within a very few years. Chicago fulfils these conditions precisely. ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... to directing attention to a very few hereditary characteristics of a marked kind, some of which are most desirable and others greatly the reverse; I shall also describe new methods of appraising and defining them. Later on in the book I shall endeavour to define the place and duty of man in the furtherance of the great scheme of evolution, and I shall show that he has already not only adapted circumstance to race, but also, in some degree and often unconsciously, ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... being one of the ablest of political bosses and of standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential nomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as one who "when he is bought, will stay bought." As Secretary of War ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... was ambiguous in certain respects, particularly as regards the extent of sovereignty sacrificed by the national government to the League, and the diminution of congressional powers. This group was anxious to insert reservations making plain the right of Congress alone to declare war, defining more exactly the right of the United States to interpret the Monroe Doctrine, and specifying what was meant by domestic questions that should be exempt from the cognizance of the League. Had Wilson at once combined with this group ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... half so near and dear to me as you. Men don't usually talk about these things to one another, you know, Boy; but, though I am a bachelor, you see, I feel toward you as most men feel toward their sons. What does the mere defining of the relationship matter? Could we possibly be any more to ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... many denominations, and then each one has its own church. About twenty or thirty miles from Chicago, we saw a very extensive tract of prairie on fire, which quite illuminated the sky, and, as the night was very dark, showed distinctly the distant trees and houses, clearly defining their outline against the horizon. On the other side of us, there was a smaller fire, but so close as to allow us to see the flames travelling along the surface of the ground. These fires are very common; we saw no less than five that night in the ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... and steadily looking through its transparency, the cosmopolitan rejoined: "That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it to modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible of, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in words suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... the Constitution were not clear as to what they meant by the word direct, and specifically they could not have told whether an income tax was direct or not, because no such tax existed in England or America at that time. Hence the Supreme Court was placed in the awkward position of defining a word which the framers themselves could not define, although the uniform practice hitherto had been to regard the income tax as indirect and therefore constitutional, even if ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... 'That live Mashona building-boy's worth many dead Phoenicians to me, at any rate. As to defining romance, we'd better agree to differ. 'Do well unto thyself, and all men will speak well of thee,' he went on, with a tang of bitterness. 'Jew-boys and Arabs mopped up trade when they were living, now they jump other ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... of the last week has duly blazoned forth the names of the successful candidates, and great must have been the rejoicings of their friends in the country at the event. But we have to quarrel with these journals for not more explicitly defining the questions proposed for the examinations—the answers to which were to be considered the tests of proficiency. By means of the ubiquity which Punch is allowed to possess, we were stationed in the examination room, at the same time that our double was delighting a crowded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... whole course of which he traced, proving that the Lualaba or Nyangoue were merely different names or affluents of this mighty stream. Stanley's remarkable journey completed the rough outline of African geography by defining the course of the fourth great river ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... the corner had put out the blazing glory of his oranges and lemons, and Brett Place was all darkness, interspersed with the misty halos of the few lamps defining its triangular shape, with a cluster of three lights on one stand in the middle. The dark forms of the man and woman glided slowly arm in arm along the walls with a loverlike and homeless ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... science; Jewish questions likewise disappeared from his interests; he was completely absorbed by German literary culture. This is all the more astonishing when we reflect that anti-Semitism continued to increase steadily. As a grown man Herzl could recall that one of his teachers, in defining the word "heathen," had said, "such as idolators, Mohammedans and Jews." Whether it was this incident,—as the memory of the grown man always insisted—which enraged him beyond endurance, or the increasingly ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... pledge yourselves to protect the rights of one-half of the American people, and to thus carry your own principles to their logical results. The thirteenth amendment of 1865, abolishing slavery, the fourteenth of 1867, defining citizenship, and the fifteenth of 1870, securing United States citizens in their right to vote, and your prolonged and powerful debates on all the great issues involved in our civil conflict, stand as enduring monuments to the honor of the Republican party. Impelled by the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... quiet along the National lines, and was spent in defining and adjusting the commands in position. Skirmishers exchanged occasional shots, and artillerists from time to time tried the range of their guns. McClernand moved his right still nearer to the river, Oglesby's ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... land-measuring referable to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, the due placing of boundary stones, so as to obviate future mistakes, appears to have been first suggested by the Gracchan courts for defining boundaries and ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... to be otherwise; the thoroughly trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually more ardent or more virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dullness the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of "Bleak House" there are nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... of Publicity is full of complexities. The question of how much an expenditure per volume is warranted is one that cannot be answered generally. There are many limiting and defining considerations. First of all, the book itself. If it is the kind to be a "big seller," a risk can possibly be taken on a larger advertising investment than would be warranted in the case of a good book of ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... all her life before? To what might he not have led her, if she had put her hand frankly and truthfully in his? There are times when to those most bewildered in mazes of error light breaks, clear and unmistakable, defining right and wrong with terrible distinctness. Such an hour was this to Christine. The law of God written on her heart asserted itself, and she trembled at the guilty thing she saw herself to be. But there seemed no remedy save in the one she had driven away, never to return, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted narrowness. In aesthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are dealing with these—the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... able to do this than an uncultivated mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... international: Croatia and Italy made progress toward resolving a bilateral issue dating from World War II over property and ethnic minority rights; progress with Slovenia on discussions of adjustments to land boundary, but problems remain in defining maritime boundary in Gulf of Piran; Croatia and Yugoslavia are negotiating the status of the strategically important Prevlaka Peninsula, which is currently under a UN military observer ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... erection by ecclesiastical authority, is qualified by Canon 1418 which prescribes that benefices should be erected by a legitimate document defining the place of the benefice, its endowment and the duties and ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... very evident, that property is a matter of progress. It requires, among other particulars, which are the effects of time, some method of defining possession. The very desire of it proceeds from experience; and the industry by which it is gained, or improved, requires such a habit of acting with a view to distant objects, as may overcome the present disposition either to sloth or to enjoyment. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... statement of these truths has been wrought out differently by individual intellects. The universal body of Christians has taken care of Christian truth; while the Church Fathers, or doctors, have held in their hands the task of defining ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... expedient course is that no portion of the community should insist on imposing its own will upon any other portion, except in matters which are vitally connected with the maintenance of the social union. The question where this vital connection begins is open to much discussion. The line defining the sphere of legitimate interference may be drawn variously, whether at self-regarding acts, or in some other condition and element of conduct. Wherever this line may be best taken, not only abstract speculation, but the practical and ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... object of the preceding Lecture, (and I choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] give the general term of Imagination;—that is to ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... right angles to one another. The illusion was so complete that Herschel for several years remained in the belief that the rings were real. They were, however, mere optical illusions, due to the imperfect defining qualities of the telescope with which he observed the planet. Later he wrote that 'the observations which tend to ascertain' (indicate?) 'the existence of rings not being satisfactorily supported, it will be proper that surmises of them should either ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... off his footing, and hurled down the precipice. A whole pack of 'pursuing wolves' [29:1] is upon him, far more ravenous than any which beset the path of the believers in revelation; and he has left himself no shelter. If he had commenced by defining what he meant by 'Nature' and 'Supernatural,' he might have avoided this inconsistency, though he must have sacrificed much of his argument to save his creed. As it is, he has unconsciously juggled with two senses of Nature. Nature in the first ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... begins to make His system, He finds ready to His hand this material—this infinite mass of tiny bubbles which can be built up into various kinds of matter as we know it. He commences by defining the limit of His field of activity, a vast sphere whose circumference is far larger than the orbit of the outermost of His future planets. Within the limit of that sphere He sets up a kind of gigantic vortex—a motion which sweeps together all the bubbles into a vast central mass, the ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... provided by the treaty of peace. The Cuban political prisoners in Spanish penal stations have been and are being released and returned to their homes, in accordance with Article VI of the treaty. Negotiations are about to be had for defining the conventional relations between the two countries, which fell into abeyance by reason of the war. I trust that these will include a favorable arrangement for commercial reciprocity under the terms of sections 3 and 4 of the current tariff act. In these, as in all matters of international concern, ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... In defining the limits of their reserves, so far as we could see, they wished to have about two-thirds of the Province. We heard them out, and then told them it was quite clear that they had entirely misunderstood the meaning and intention of reserves. We explained the object of these ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... objection not that we may plunge into the crucial controversy of a science that is not identical with ours, but in order to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'a—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, with ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley

... obstacle to the successful operation of disability insurance has been the difficulty experienced in its administration—largely on account of the impracticability of closely defining permanent or total disability. With almost every revision of the constitutions changes were made in the definition of the term "disability." Strict construction of the law by the executive officials led to dissatisfaction and often to appeals from ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... the 17th century formed a distinction between the representations of the ancients and those of the moderns. We find Boileau emphasizing the statement that, while Virgil paints, Tasso describes. This may be a useful indication for us in defining not what should, but what in practice has been called "descriptive poetry." It is poetry in which it is not imaginative passion which prevails, but a didactic purpose, or even something of the instinct of a sublimated auctioneer. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... the type of reaction, it is possible to select groups of records which present more or less consistently one of the following special tendencies: (1) the tendency to react by contrasts; (2) the tendency to react by synonyms or other defining terms; and (3) the tendency to react by qualifying or specifying terms. How clearly the selected groups show these tendencies is indicated by Table II. The majority of records, however, present no such tendency in a consistent ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent

... of pleasure and honor to himself, and to his family, must have always acted to limit woman's freedom, even while it gave her protection and a secure position in society. With the development of settled government in city states, like Athens or early Rome, the necessity for defining citizenship made the family increasingly a political institution. A man's offspring through slave women, concubines, or "strangers" lived outside the citizen group, and so were negligible; but the citizen ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... Synod of Cambridge, the first ever held in New England, in which the Church set about defining its own position and denouncing the Hutchinsonians. Eighty-two heresies were decided to have arisen, all of which were condemned, and this being settled, Cotton was admonished, and escaped exile only by meekly explaining away his errors. Wheelwright, refusing to yield, was sentenced ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... commending the proved essences of religious experience. Two things are always true of sound doctrine. First: it is not considered to have primary value; its worth is in the experience to which it witnesses. Second: it is not fixed but flexible and progressive. Someone has railed at theology, defining it as the history of discarded errors. That is a truth and a great compliment and the definition holds good of the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... in any comprehensible terms the relation of the Veiled Being to that living reality in our lives who is, in his terminology, the true God. Speaking from the point of view of practical religion, he is restricting and defining the word God, as meaning only the personal God of mankind, he is restricting it so as to exclude all cosmogony and ideas of providence from our religious thought and leave nothing but the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... help it?" he returned with a mocking air. "She has magnificent eyes, a bewildering smile: then she has that je ne sais quoi, as our foreign friend would say. There is no defining it, there is no assuming it. To conclude, I consider Miss ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... wonder of daybreak on the desert without watching for the harbinger of gold in the V of the pass, with its revelation of a dome of blue where unfathomable space had been. For the first time daybreak interested her only in broadening and defining her vision of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... large and free outlook, self-forgetfulness, charm of manner, joy of heart,—in order to convince ourselves that those who have passed through the Utopian school are on the high road which leads to "goodness." So obvious is all this, that in defining the word "useful" I may be said to have decided the question in favour of Utopia; and what is now in dispute is not whether Utopianism is "useful," in any sense of the word, but whether my sense of the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... saw Ferrol walking up and down in very confidential conversation with Christine. If she had been really observant she would have seen that Ferrol's tendency was towards an appearance of confidential friendliness with almost everybody. Great ideas had entered Madame's head, but they were vaguely defining themselves in Christine's mind also. Where might not this friendship with Ferrol ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... she the power, by so much as a hair or an outline. They grew up, straight, fine, and fearless, full of the new spirit, eager to test life, to examine facts, possessed by that awakening feeling for truth which had always frightened her a little in Susan. Vaguely, without defining the sensation, she felt that they were growing beyond her, that she could no longer keep up with them, that, every year, they were leaving her a little farther behind them. They were fond of her, but ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... perfect when it is in everything as it ought to be. It is easy thus to define perfection, but not so easy to define what the perfection of any special object is: this needs the knowledge of what its nature is. And we have to rest content with very general terms defining God's Holiness as the essential and absolute good. 'Holiness is the free, deliberate, calm, and immutable affirmation of Himself, who is goodness, or of goodness, which is Himself' (Godet on John xvii. 11). 'Holiness is that attribute ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... quibbling. In cases of necessity both poetry and wit could exchange parts, because they both honored truth only in their special way. However high might be the flight of reason, it drew matter in a loving spirit after it, and while sharply and stiffly defining it, never mutilated what it touched. It is true the Greek mind displaced humanity, and recast it on a magnified scale in the glorious circle of its gods; but it did this not by dissecting human nature, but by ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do] [Warburton saw this as "a ridicule on the Augustine manner of defining free-will."] A ridicule may be intended, but the sense is clear enough. Power first signifies natural power or force, and then moral power or right. Davies has used the same word with ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... The old masters indeed are simpler; their characteristics are written larger, and are easier to read, than their analogues in all the mixed, confused productions of the modern mind. But when once we have succeeded in defining for ourselves those characteristics, and the law of their combination, we have acquired a standard or measure which helps us to put in its right place many a vagrant genius, many an unclassified talent, many precious though imperfect products of art. It is so with ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... fears possessed him. The two men who fought and died in the old cabin were on their way to civilization. They were taking gold with them, gold which they meant to exchange for supplies. Would they, at the same time, dare to have in their possession a map so closely defining their trail as the rude sketch on the bit of birch bark? Was there not some strange key, known only to themselves, necessary to ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... Bing begins by defining two kinds of writers. First, those whose power is their keen observation. They see things accurately and they secure their effects by recording just what they see. Second, those writers who do not merely see external ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... something 'different', and thus all the disadvantages connected with the view of difference cling to your theory as well. If on the other hand it should not be allowed that Brahman differs in nature from avidy, then Brahman's nature itself is constituted by avidy, and the text defining Brahman as 'the True, knowledge, infinite' is contrary to sense.—If the reality of 'difference' is not admitted, then there is no longer any distinction between the proofs and the mutual objections set forth by the advocates of different theories, and we are ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... war, independently of its political and moral relations, consists of five principal parts, viz.: Strategy, Grand Tactics, Logistics, Tactics of the different arms, and the Art of the Engineer. We will treat of the first three branches, and begin by defining them. In order to do this, we will follow the order of procedure of a general when war is first declared, who commences with the points of the highest importance, as a plan of campaign, and afterward descends to the necessary ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... recurrent seasons. Osiris, supreme god of the Egyptians, was born of a yet older god, Sev, Time. Adonis and Aeon acknowledge the same parentage.[165-2] The ancient Arab spoke of time (dahr, zaman) as the final, defining principle; as uniting and separating all things; and as swallowing one thing after another as the camel drains the water from a trough.[166-1] In the Koran it is written: "Time alone destroys us." ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... Earl Rosse at Parsonstown was the successful means by which nebulae of this form were discovered. This powerful telescope was capable of defining with greater accuracy the structural formation of those objects than any other instrument in use. It was ascertained that spiral coils and convoluted whorls enter into the structure of most nebulae, indicating a similarity in the process of change ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... word, and for fully twenty minutes there was an eager argument, people citing passages and derivations, and defining shades of meaning with immense animation and brilliant wit, as I now understand, though then it seemed to me a wearisome imbroglio about a trifle. I did not know what real benefit was done by these ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... proportion as it had become matter of honourable pride and lucrative advantage to be a citizen of Athens, it was natural that the laws defining and limiting the freedom of the city should increase in strictness. Even before the time of Themistocles, those only were considered legitimate [307] who, on either side, derived parentage from Athenian citizens. But though ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... recommend to your consideration, such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.' The circumstances under which I now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject, farther than to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are assembled, and which in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute in place of a recommendation of particular ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... their city methods to fit open-air conditions. They do not need to strip to the contest, for contest there is none, and Indian packers are cheap at a dollar a day. But even so the problem of the greatest comfort—defining comfort as an accurate balance of effort expended to results obtained—can be solved only by the one formula. And that formula is, again, go light, for a superabundance of paraphernalia proves always more of a care than a satisfaction. When ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... paternity, and secondly on account of the clash of freedoms that may otherwise arise. The Utopian State will effectually interfere with and prescribe conditions for all sorts of contract, and for this sort of contract in particular it will be in agreement with almost every earthly State, in defining in the completest fashion what things a man or woman may be bound to do, and what they cannot be bound to do. From the point of view of a statesman, marriage is the union of a man and woman in a manner so intimate ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... least objection to defining our position," said M. de Bellegarde. "We understand that it should not at first appear to you quite clear. We rather expected, indeed, that you ...
— The American • Henry James

... the lantern, were brought together, and flashes of brilliant light, which the wind could neither make flicker nor extinguish, issued from the lighthouse. It was a noteworthy sight, these sparkling rays, rivalling the brilliancy of the plains, and defining sharply the outlines of the surrounding objects. Johnson could not help ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... true. He didn't think robots were alive, either, though biophysics professors tended to become glibly evasive when pinned down to defining life. Robots could learn, if you used the term loosely enough. And any robot with more than five hundred hours service picked up a definite and often ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... treatment for either a country or small city dining-room is to have corner cupboards of this kind cutting off two corners. They are convenient and unusual and pretty as well. They can be painted in white with a colored line defining the panels and can be made highly decorative if the panels are painted with a classic or a Chinese design. The decoration, however, should be kept in variations of the same tone as the stripe on the panels. For ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... associate as full of vigorous activity as Ronald Walton, without being stirred and inspired by the contact. The force, decision, aptitude, promptness, which distinguished Ronald, had constituted him a sort of prince among his fellow-students, who gave him the lead in all their united movements, without defining to themselves his claim to supremacy. Ronald's character was not free from imperfections; but its very faults were essentially national,—were characteristics of that "fast-running nation" which ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Some authors, in defining the primary races of mankind, have separated these Indians into two classes; but this is certainly incorrect. Among the young women or chinas, some deserve to be called even beautiful. Their hair was coarse, but bright and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... lists. For one thing, the conversation of those evenings would seem to have drifted continually into the mere definition of phrases. Now Johnson had spent years of his life, during the compilation of his Dictionary, in doing nothing else but defining; and, whenever the dispute took a phraseological turn, he had it all his own way. Goldsmith, on the other hand, was apt to become confused in his eager self-consciousness. "Goldsmith," said Johnson to Boswell, "should not be ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... it, and at all events she knew that her actions must soon give it contradiction. But men make strange distinctions between speech and action, not to be accounted for without long investigation and disquisition. There are cases where people shrink from defining in words their purposes, or giving voice to their feelings, even when they are prepared by acts to stamp them for eternity. There are cases where men do acts which they dare not cover by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... newspaper absently. House Bill Twenty-nine had been the one measure touching the sensitive "vested interests"; the one measure for the suppression of which the corporations' lobby had felt called on to take steps. It was an omnibus bill put forth as a substitute for the existing law defining the status of foreign corporations. It had originated in the governor's office,—a fact which Kent had ferreted out within twenty-four hours of its first reading,—and for that reason he had procured a printed ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... having all goodwill towards them personally, hating the sin but loving the sinners, to employ a good old theological phrase. Angus began, adroitly enough, with a eulogy of the psalms and paraphrases, defining them as the mountain peaks of song in all ages ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... Wright in the American Journal of Theology, Volume XVI, page 385, quotes Leuba as defining religion as a belief in a psychic superhuman power. Wright has objections to this definition on the ground of its narrowness. He attempts to add breadth to the definition in: "Religion is the endeavor to secure the conservation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... published in 1737. In 1739 he was appointed a naval physician, and in 1741 became professor of medicine at the University of Upsala, but in the following year exchanged his chair for that of botany. To Linnaeus is due the honour of having first enunciated the true principles for defining genera and species, and that honour will last so long as biology itself endures. He found biology a chaos; he left it a cosmos. He died on January 10, 1778. Among his published works are "Systema Naturae," "Fundamenta Botanica," and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... read a paper at the Catholic Conference on June 30th, 1890, from which I take the following extracts as illustrative of the rising feeling of this subject in the Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Barry began by defining the proletariat as those who have only one possession—their labour. Those who have no land, and no stake in the land, no house, and no home except the few sticks of furniture they significantly call by the name, no right to employment, but at the ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... define Him." Once having grasped this truth I began to see how natural knowing God became. The difficulty of the forced, of the artificial, of the mere assent to what other people say, of which the Caucasian to his credit is always impatient, seemed by degrees to melt away from me. No longer defining God I no longer tried to know Him in senses obviously impossible. I ceased trying to imagine Him. Seeing Him as infinite, eternal, changeless, formless because transcending form, and indescribable because ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... a youth in the town of Halifax, some two-and-thirty years ago, attending a lecture given by a young man to a small but select audience. The aspect of the lecturer was earnest and practical, and his voice soon rivetted attention. He spoke of duty, defining it as a debt owed, and there was a kindling vigour in his words which must have strengthened the sense of duty in the minds of those who heard him. No speculations regarding the freedom of the will could alter the fact that the words of that young man did ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... was curiously matter-of-fact, literal, legal and unmystical. He was determined to explain everything and provide for all contingencies by his legal instrument of the government of the world: and he did so after the cold fashion of a lawyer defining rights on each side, and assuming that the stronger party will exert his strength. So far as his genius made his readers accept his views of the relation between God and man it cannot be denied that he ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... In thus determining and defining death, Christianity reveals both its essence and its mission; for, through its Gospel, Christianity brings the good news that the issue of sin and death as between God and man has been settled by our Lord Jesus ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... the Christian principle, and to inquire what attitude toward them our preaching should adopt. If it be true that what is most revealing in any age is its regulative ideas, then what is more valuable for the preacher than to attempt the understanding of his generation through the defining of its ruling concepts? And it is this audacious task which, for two reasons, we shall presume ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... the conviction that violence and the taking of human life, being themselves wrong, cannot lead to anything but evil."[7] Thus he defines the absolute pacifist as one who accepts the ends and means argument of Huxley, which is really an argument based upon expediency, rather than defining him correctly as one who insists that violence and the taking of human life are the greatest evils, under any conditions, and therefore cannot be justified, even if they could be used for the achievement ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... the pointed arch, the groin rib became adopted in the early pointed vaulting as a means of giving expression and carrying up the lines of the architectural design. On its edge were stones moulded with the deep undercut hollows of early English moulding, defining the curves of the oblique as well as of the cross arches with strongly marked lines, and, moreover, falling on a level with each other in architectural importance; the oblique vault of the arch is no longer a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... humanitarian partisans of the prisoner. If a Judge may not deal with the fallacies of a defence by placing before the jury the true trend of the evidence, what other business has he on the Bench? And it was for thus clearly defining the issue that some one suggested a petition for a reprieve, on the ground that the evidence was purely circumstantial, and that my "summing up was against the weight of the evidence." Truly a strange thing that circumstances by themselves shall ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... and fidelity by his upright life. He it was who helped overworked Sister Hope with her heavy washes, kneaded the endless succession of batches of bread, watched over the children, and did the many tasks left undone by the brethren, who were so busy discussing and defining great duties that they forgot ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... tried and failed, which from my own experience I should think most likely, he might have spared his "almost." "Almost" is a very dangerous word. I once heard a man say that an escape he had had from drowning was "almost" providential. The difficulty about defining an individual arises from the fact that we may look at "almost" everything from two different points of view. If we are in a common-sense humour for simplifying things, treating them broadly, and emphasizing ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... and forming on their declivities other and lesser valleys full of dewy freshness. These rocky heights made a vast enclosure, circular in form, in the centre of which a meadow lay softly stretched, like the lawn of an English garden. A number of evergreen hedges, defining irregular pieces of property which were planted with trees, gave to this carpet of verdure a character of its own, and one that is somewhat unusual among the landscapes of France; it held the teeming secrets of many beauties in its various contrasts, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... not yet been scientifically explored throughout, and, moreover, as there is considerable difficulty in defining the kind of mountain to be regarded as a volcano, it is impossible to give an absolute statement as to the number of volcanoes in the country. If under the term volcano be included all mountains which have been in a state ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer swinging round to ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... is that which results from the clash between what I lately called the sympathetic and the cynical temper. Materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival types that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man's soul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter insists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the brutal. This latter is the spiritual ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... important contribution to scientific progress. At the same time he clarified the conception of elements and compounds, rejecting the older notions, the four elements of the "vulgar Peripateticks" and the three principles of the "vulgar Stagyrists," and defining an element as a substance incapable of decomposition, and a compound as composed of two or more elements. He explained chemical combination on the hypotheses that matter consisted of minute corpuscles, that by the coalescence of corpuscles of different substances distinctly new corpuscles ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... DEFINITIONS:—In defining words, that meaning is given which is appropriate to them in the connection in which they are used. The pupil should look in the dictionary for the meaning of all the others with which he is ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... king and all the nation. In fine, the word is applied to all persons doing service to others—to magistrates, to all governmental officers, to tributaries, to all the subjects of governments, to younger sons—defining their relation to the first born, who is called Lord and ruler—to prophets, to kings, to the Messiah, and in respectful addresses not less than fifty times in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... up his brow, and brought out admirably his clear skin, his ardent eyes, his black and slightly curling hair, which had the brilliancy of jet. The hair grew vigorously upward from the forehead and temples, sharply defining those five black tongues which our ancestors used to call the "five points." Notwithstanding this abrupt contrast of black and white, Max's face was very sweet, owing its charm to an outline like ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... years ago, even seventy or eighty years ago, before the age of steamboats and railroads, it was more difficult than at present to define the limits between this class and the next; and, moreover, in defining these limits I emphatically disclaim any intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of value for books of travel. Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" is to me the best book of the kind ever written; it ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... the visitor could only make out the details one by one. When his eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness he was sure to notice a dozen or more green baize bags which hung upon the walls, each half defining, in the same vague way as all the others, the outline of the object it contained. Each green baize bag was closely tied at the neck, and suspended at an equal height with the rest upon a nail. There was something ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... possible to apply federal law in the same way throughout the Union: errors of construction, and divergencies of judgment involving the national Constitution, laws, and treaties, are corrected through this power of appeal to one central supreme tribunal. A little later an Act was passed defining crimes against the United States. The courts were speedily organized, and John Jay of New York was made the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... long before she attempted to draw me into what she called society," Hosmer continued. "I am little versed in defining shades of distinction between classes, but I had seen from the beginning that Fanny's associates were not of the best social rank by any means. I had vaguely expected her to turn from them, I suppose, when she married. Naturally, I resisted anything so distasteful ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... bold one, so far as he himself is concerned," returned Anton, significantly; "and there is something in it, baron, which does not satisfy me on your account, though I should find a difficulty in defining it." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... Charlie, by defining more clearly the two lines of public sentiment, had increased Jake Vodell's strength materially, but the Mill workers' union had not yet officially declared for the sympathetic strike that would deliver the community wholly into the hands of the agitator. The Mill men, who were still ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... civilized military powers TO BACK RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FORCE. Such an agreement would establish an efficient World League for the Peace of Righteousness. Such an agreement could limit the amount to be spent on armaments and, after defining carefully the inalienable rights of each nation which were not to be transgressed by any other, could also provide that any cause of difference among them, or between one of them and one of a certain number of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... high, Billows of blue with your deafening cry! Stars, lend assistance, a shining Pathway defining! ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... darkness filling the shutter-hole grew paler and became blotchy with ill-defined shapes, as if a new universe was being evolved out of sombre chaos. Then outlines came out, defining forms without any details, indicating here a tree, there a bush; a black belt of forest far off; the straight lines of a house, the ridge of a high roof near by. Inside the hut, Babalatchi, who lately had been only a persuasive ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Defining" :   process, define, physical process



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