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Definiteness

noun
1.
The quality of being predictable with great confidence.  Synonym: determinateness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Definiteness" Quotes from Famous Books



... migrating warblers, and all through early September the woods are again full of their slender, flitting forms and their gentle voices. If you know your locality well you may mark the very dates of the month by their coming and going. So with equal definiteness the earlier departing of our summer residents leaves gaps in our hearts and the woodland on pretty definite September days. The cry-baby young of the orioles have hardly ceased to complain about the house, making the midsummer peevish, before the birds are flocking. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... he had secured the model he desired despite her husband, the speculation came into his mind how far he could push his influence over Ninitta. At first a mere impersonal idea, the thought was instantly, by his habit of mental definiteness, realized so clearly that his cheek flushed, partly, it is to be said to his credit, with genuine shame. He looked at the beautiful model, and turned away his eyes. Then, hardly conscious of what he was doing, he laid down his palette, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... her into his arms, he was taking what he had paid for; but it was horrible. If only it had been a healthy, reckless, sinful woman; but here he had youth, piety, meekness, the pure eyes of innocence. . . . While they were engaged her piety had touched him; now the conventional definiteness of her views and convictions seemed to him a barrier, behind which the real truth could not be seen. Already everything in his married life was agonising. When his wife, sitting beside him in the theatre, sighed or laughed spontaneously, it was bitter to him that she enjoyed ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... follows: "The Central Powers united in reply which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war." The President further referred ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... wiping the window with the napkin, and straining their eyes to see the invisible, diverted his unsettled attention. A new perception of how much he liked them and enjoyed having them with him, took hold of his thoughts. It had not occurred to him before, with any definiteness, that he would be insupportably lonely when the time came to part ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... not uncivil," said Father Payne. "He did not deride my absence of definiteness, he only deplored it. But I really got more out of the subsequent talk. We adjourned to a sort of portico, a pretty place looking on to a formal garden: it was really very charmingly done—a clever fake of an, old garden, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... twentieth birthday, and now, for the first time, she was asking herself that question which brings tearful uncertainty, vague fears, disquieting speculations to the great majority of women—should she give herself, body and soul, into the hands of a definite man? It was the definiteness, the identification of the man, that caused all her difficulty. All women expect to be chosen by, and to choose, some man; but when he arrives in actual flesh and blood—that is quite another matter. Some, perhaps many, have no doubts. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... unless they are frequently revived by personal intercourse, are apt to alter insensibly and to become untrue. They acquire increased definiteness but ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... the world of bliss, and say, There the celestial hosannas roll; there the happy ones, the unforgotten ones of our love, wait to welcome us. These forms of speech are entirely natural; they are harmless; they aid in giving definiteness to our thoughts and feelings, and it is well to continue their use; it would be difficult to express our thoughts without them. However, we must understand that they are not strictly and exclusively true. God is everywhere; and wherever he is there is heaven to the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... dilly-dallying nor shilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was the same with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit the bull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definiteness of aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a great burning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; he burned ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... contained the extended argument of a stump speech. Its one pervading thought, emphasized in resonant phrase, iterating and reiterating, "that reform is necessary," was an additional proof of its origin. But with all its effusiveness of expression, it lacked definiteness in the enunciation of principles. Only two or three propositions upon pending issues were explicitly set forth. It accepted the Constitutional Amendments; denounced "the present tariff levied upon nearly four thousand articles as a masterpiece of injustice, inequality, and false pretense;" ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... on a high note; determined feet in strong boots sounded on the stairs—fainter, fainter; a door slammed below with a dreadful definiteness, and Elsie was left alone, to wonder how soon her spirit would break—for at no less a price, it appeared, could ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... his personal allusion blind, he can always do so with the greatest ease and without the slightest degree of grammatical incorrectness. "Caught cold," "better ask," "honorably sorry," "feel hungry," and all the common sentences of daily life are entirely free from that personal definiteness which an Occidental language necessitates. We shall see later that the absence of the personal element from the wording of the sentence does not imply, or prove, its absence from the thought of either the speaker or hearer. The Japanese language abounds in roundabout methods of expression. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... have been lying among the long, thick weeds of the pond. And it would not have been the accident it would have appeared to be. Of that she felt sure. Brought face to face with this definiteness of situation, she ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... rules of giving to abandonment with always more to abandon, she grasped thoroughly, and she was enabled to formulate a bigger and stronger love-philosophy. In the light of the revelation she re-examined the married lives of all she had ever known, and, with sharp definiteness as never before, she saw where and why so many ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... they had expected to find within that mysterious room, they could not perhaps have explained with any definiteness. Once they stood within the threshold, however, they became slowly conscious of a vague disappointment. Here was nothing so very strange, after all! The room appeared to be in considerable disorder, and articles of clothing, books, and boyish belongings were ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... or shew of logic. From my own rebellious heart the same evil thoughts had risen, like pale apparitions hovering and lost in the fumes of a necromancer's cauldron. His was like the summing up of all this—a reflection of my own feelings and fancies—but reduced to an awful order and definiteness, and clothed with a sophistical form of argument. The effect of it was powerful. It revived and exaggerated these bad emotions—it methodised and justified them—and gave to impulses and impressions, vague and desultory before, something of the compactness ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... allies are not only almost structureless, but are amorphous; and the irregular form is constantly changing. Of the organisms resulting from the aggregation of amoeba-like creatures, we find that while some assume a certain definiteness of form, in their compound shells at least, others, as the Sponges, are irregular. In the Zoophytes and in the Polyzoa, we see compound organisms, most of which have modes of growth not more determinate than those of plants. But among ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... even a way in which the very definiteness of Turner's knowledge adds to the mystery of his pictures. In the course of the first volume I had several times occasion to insist on the singular importance of cast shadows, and the chances of their sometimes gaining supremacy in visibility over even the things that ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... the modern and the classical aesthetic mind is the greater precision and definiteness of the latter. The modern genius is Gothic, and demands in art a certain vagueness and spirituality like that of music, refusing to be grasped and formulated. Hence for us (and this is undoubtedly ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... conveyed to Justin the knowledge that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... definiteness to this subject, is, a correct view of the object for which we are placed in this world. A great many even of professed Christians, seem to be acting on the supposition, that the object of life is to secure as much as possible of all the various enjoyments placed ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... grandfather McLeod detailed the method of treating her, and Randall was so far gone that he acquiesced. From her eleventh to her fifteenth year she lived under this 'control.' The manifestations increased in power and definiteness. The 'controls' at last were three—her grandfather, her brother, and her own father. At sixteen the most violent of the manifestations ceased, and the girl went away to school. At this point Joe Lambert enters—he ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... its characteristic effect. There the mind is drawn more to objects; here, more to relations. The former, therefore, naturally detaches things as much as possible, and sets each out by itself in the utmost clearness and definiteness of view; while the latter associates and combines them in the largest possible variety consistent with unity of interest and impression, so as to produce the effect of indefiniteness and mystery. Thus a Shakespearian drama is like a Gothic ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... discussing an extreme form of the bifurcation theory. It is, as I think, the most defensible form. But its very definiteness makes it the more evidently obnoxious to criticism. The intermediate form allows that the nature we are discussing is always the nature directly known, and so far it rejects the bifurcation theory. But it holds that there are psychic additions to nature as thus known, ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... had said loftily, as he stood beside his sister on the platform a few moments before, "go into the Army or Navy and become admirals or generals or something of that sort." And then he had hinted with less definiteness that his own career would probably combine the advantages of all the professions though he only followed one. But Tom soon dropped from these sublime heights to more mundane considerations, and his last words concerned a new cricket bat which ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... since then. Nobody knows what came over him. Frank had never been one to tie himself down, but he is a regular New York business man now. He buys mines and sells them, and railroads and things." She laughed pleasantly. "It lacks definiteness, I can see. And Nick van Rensselaer! I have just been telling the Countess ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... facts of life from the open book of chance. That this was such a moment he had no doubt; and when he turned inland and sped across the snow-covered tundra he was not startled because the shadow took upon it greater definiteness and drew in closer. Oppressed with his own impotence, he halted in the midst of the white waste and whirled about. His right hand slipped from its mitten, and a revolver, at level, glistened in the pale ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... logical bent of the French mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they revolt against and break through ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... vague,—became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that she now remembered,—something about a lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... examination of the University of London. Now, I do not think that is a desirable state of things. I cannot understand why physiology should not be taught—in fact, you have here abundant evidence that it can be taught—with the same definiteness and the same precision as anatomy is taught. And you may depend upon this, that the only physiology which is to be of any good whatever in medical practice, or in its application to the study of medicine, is that physiology which a man knows of his ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the effect of a work of art inheres in the medium itself. Painting may be an aid to literature in that it helps us to more vivid images; the literary interpretation of pictures or music gives to the works with which it deals an intellectual definiteness. But the functions peculiar to each art are not to be confounded nor ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... conceptions of literary art, and though it exists only in fragmentary remains, these still furnish the chief standard of excellence in nearly every department. The subject is therefore unique both in the value of its materials and in the definiteness of its limits. What is demanded for the adequate treatment of it is not universal knowledge, but minute and thorough scholarship; not a wide and diversified experience, an unlimited range of sympathies, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... from a fountain-head, the existence of which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted upon thought. These things ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... heavily overbrowed—with a suggestion of character which had not yet asserted itself to those who knew him best. Correspondingly, his nose, although of a Greek type, was more notable for substance than clearness of line or modelling; while his lips had a boyish fulness along with a definiteness of bow-like curve, which manly resolve had not yet begun to compress and straighten out. His chin was at least large enough not to contradict the promise of his face; his shoulders were square, and his chest and limbs well developed: altogether it was at present a fair tabernacle—of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... Low Germans were divided, like most other barbaric races, into several fluctuating and ill-marked tribes, whose names are loosely and perhaps interchangeably used by the few authorities which remain to us. We must not expect to find among them the definiteness of modern civilised nations, but rather such a vagueness as that which characterised the loose confederacies of North American Indians or the various shifting peoples of South Africa. But there are ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... favorite branches of knowledge and culture. Of the real elements and processes of a higher education, and of the subjective conditions of mental growth and training, comparatively few, either of the students or their parents, appeared to have any definite idea. There was no lack of definiteness of choice. Tastes and inclinations were usually positive; reasons were not so plentiful. That the young lady 'liked' this study or 'disliked' that, was the reason perhaps most frequently assigned. If its force was not at once conceded, she strengthened it by increased emphasis, declaring that ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... the author for his beautiful and valuable treatise, which will open new views to many a pious student, give definiteness to the aspirations of many a devout soul, and be the means, we doubt not, of encouraging a more intelligent use of that Psalter which forms so large a part of our daily prayer and praise, and which is the best interpreter of the wants and feelings of the human soul, its deepest depths of grief, ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray

... a real crisis, a definite transaction, a point of time as clear as the morning dawn. It is not an everlasting dying and an eternal struggle to live. But it is all expressed in a tense that denotes definiteness, fixedness and finished action. We actually died at a certain point and as actually began to live the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... of his going gave her a sharp pang of prospective loneliness. "I know you must return to your work," she said, slowly, "but I shall feel very helpless without you," and the voicing of her dependence upon him added definiteness ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... forward another half-step and laid her hand upon the gate-latch with a movement whose definiteness did not ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... theory of education such as usually lingers among the impedimenta of the childless. He brought this out, refurbished it, and applied it to Jane. At first he thought his wife had not overrated the quality of the child's mind. Jane seemed extraordinarily intelligent. Her precocious definiteness of mind was encouraging to her inexperienced preceptor. She had no difficulty in fixing her attention, and he felt that every fact he imparted was being etched in metal. He helped his wife to engage the best teachers, and for a while continued ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... many are too fond of saying that at proper times and places the practice may often be right. But they leave the occasion, and the when, and the where, undefined and unsettled, and from this want of definiteness in their language they do a great deal of harm to themselves and to others. Now a legislator ought not to leave the matter undetermined; he ought to prescribe some limit, either greater or less. Let this be the rule prescribed: No ...
— Laws • Plato

... as some have fancifully imagined, that the remembrance of any occurrence of which the effect has been entirely, or almost entirely mental, should be remembered by offspring with any definiteness. The intellect of the offspring might be affected, for better or worse, by the general nature of the intellectual employment of the parent; or a great shock to a parent might destroy or weaken the intellect of the offspring; but unless a deep ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... the Biographic Sketches which she contributed to a London newspaper. They have since been collected in a single volume, now in its fourth edition. They are masterpieces in the style of the vignette. Their conciseness, their clearness in fact, their definiteness in judgment, and above all, the rightly graduated impression of the writer's own personality in the background, make them perfect in their kind. There is no fretting away of the portrait in over-multiplicity of lines and strokes. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... viva voce practice of the language, but to select for attention certain questions, so that their answers may be carefully prepared by the pupils after the portions of the text to which they refer have been read through. If this is done the viva voce practice will gain in definiteness and precision without in the least preventing spontaneous questions being asked ad libitum. (2) Sujets de Rdaction, which are intended to offer something better than the usual subjects set for "Free Composition," and have the supreme advantage ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... shall forget the first morning of my waking in my new abode. At this very moment it is as if I saw how the day dawned in the chamber; how all the objects gradually assumed, as it seemed to me, an unaccustomed definiteness. From the near church ascended the morning hymn with its pleasant serious melody, which attuned the soul to harmonious peace. I rose early; I had to care for house and children. All was cheerful and festival-like in my soul; a sweet emotion penetrated me like the enlivening breeze of spring. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... enjoyed his consciousness of inspiration was the very condition of its undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of what others do, and vague ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But Lentulus was at once so unreceptive, and so little gifted with the power of displaying his miscellaneous ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... of York, came of a patrician family of Northumberland. Neither the date nor the place of his birth is known with definiteness, but he was born about 735 at or near York. As a child he entered the cathedral school recently founded by Egbert, Archbishop of York, and ultimately became its most eminent pupil. He was subsequently assistant master to Aelbert, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... doors. I hastily changed slippers for boots and ran out. The barn hid the "Phalanstery" from sight. Passing to the other side of it I saw the flames pouring out of the front, surmounted by a heavy cloud of black smoke. Without definiteness of purpose we all started for the building, and all saw that there was no chance of saving it. Ere long the flames were chasing one another in mad riot over the structure; running across the long ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... typically belongs. That book is an earnest and uncaricatured record of states of criminal life, written with didactic purpose, full of the gravest instruction, nor destitute of pathetic studies of noble passion. Even the "Mysteries of Paris" and Gaboriau's "Crime d'Orcival" are raised, by their definiteness of historical intention and forewarning anxiety, far above the level of their order, and may be accepted as photographic evidence of an otherwise incredible civilization, corrupted in the infernal fact of it, down to the genesis of such figures as the Vicomte d'Orcival, the Stabber,[40] ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... moments of her vigil when she tried to reassure herself with the very tenuity of her reasons for alarm. It was a comfort to think how little there was that she could state with the definiteness of knowledge. In all that met the eye George's relation to Diane was not less happy than in the first days of their life together. If, on Diane's part, the spontaneity of wedded love had gradually become the adroitness of domestic tact, there was nothing to affirm it but Mrs. Eveleth's ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... Jesus as closely as possible with the benefits which he brought. But only the will of the writer is plain here, all else is confused, and what is mainly felt is that the attempt to conceive the blessings of salvation as the fruit of the sufferings and resurrection, has deprived them of their definiteness and clearness. In proof we may adduce the following: If we leave out of account the passages in which Ignatius speaks of the necessity of repentance for the Heretics, or the Heathen, and the possibility that their sins may be forgiven (Philad. 3. 2:8. 1; ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... hand are little better than rough guesses. Long before the definite estimates were undertaken, geologists had proved that the earth is very, very old, and it can hardly be said that the attempted computations have added much of definiteness to that proposition. They have, indeed, proved that the period of time to be drawn upon is not infinite; but the nebular hypothesis, to say nothing of common-sense, carried us as far as that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... hesitation or lack of definiteness in making plans might cause failure even with victory within our grasp. Moreover, plans as great as our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy. The ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... this ideal, which we cannot describe with greater definiteness, we are bound to recognise that GOODNESS is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... day by day, every cranny of the soil,—to the broad leaflets that, week by week, have stolen out from their green sheaths to wanton with the wind and caress the dews! Is there any quick-witted farmer who shall tell us with anything like definiteness what the phosphates have contributed to all this, and how much the nitrogenous manures, and to what degree the deposits of humus? He may establish the conditions of a sure crop, thirty, forty, or sixty bushels to the acre, (seasons favoring); but how short a reach is this toward ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... flesh over and over! Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... gasp; then, without conscious volition, he sought to explain it to his own shocked senses, to realize it as some illusion, some combination of natural causes, the hour, the pallor pervading the air, the distance, for his boat was near the middle of the stream,—but the definiteness of ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle had made the small Felicia recite them over and over ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... renders life in Kingston tolerable. Owing to the sea breeze invariably blowing from the same direction, Jamaicans have the puzzling habit of using "Windward" and "Leeward" as synonyms for East and West. To be told that such-and-such a place is "two miles to Windward of you" seems lacking in definiteness to ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... strangest chapters of his Psychology,[17] tries to show the necessary order in which the development of conceptions in the human race occurs. No abstract conception can be developed, according to him, until the outward experiences have reached a certain degree of heterogeneity, definiteness, coherence, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... strength of governments. Thus far Russia, in her remote seclusion, had taken no part in the politics of Europe. It was not until the reign of Ivan III. that this great northern empire emerged from that state of chaos in which she had neither possessed definiteness of form nor ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... he sat there he did not know, until, suddenly, across his sightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white. It was curious. But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw that it was a coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges. Next, in the line of breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe. In the stern he saw a young bronzed god in scarlet hip-cloth dipping a flashing paddle. He recognized him. He was Moti, the youngest son of Tati, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... lived in a whirl of telephones, telegrams, letters, scurryings across London, interviews, brain-racking questionings and reiterated declarations of political creed. But his selection was a foregone conclusion. His youth, his absurd beauty, his fire and eloquence, his unswerving definiteness of aim, his magic that had inspired so many with a belief in him and had made him the Fortunate Youth, captivated the imagination of the essentially unimaginative. Before a committee of wits and poets, Paul perhaps would not have had a dog's chance. But he appealed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... The torch is passed on to those only whose hands are outstretched to receive it. To read with the imagination, one must take time to let the figures reform in his own mind; he must see them with great distinctness and realise them with great definiteness. Benjamin Franklin tells us, in that Autobiography which was one of our earliest and remains one of our most genuine pieces of writing, that when he discovered his need of a larger vocabulary he took some of the tales which he found in an odd volume of the "Spectator" and ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... had had nothing of the elegant primness of the Augustans. 4. In speech and especially in literature, most of all in poetry, they were given to abstractness of thought and expression, intended to secure elegance, but often serving largely to substitute superficiality for definiteness and significant meaning. They abounded in personifications of abstract qualities and ideas ('Laughter, heavenly maid,' Honor, Glory, Sorrow, and so on, with prominent capital letters), a sort of a pseudo-classical substitute for emotion. 5. They were still more fully ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... shipyards, the construction of their engines of war was being carried on by day and by night. No contracts were made for the delivery of work at certain times; everything was done under the direct supervision of the Syndicate and its subordinates, and the work went on with a definiteness and rapidity hitherto unknown ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... Banerjee, an orthodox Hindu of Bengal, of great ability and eminence, says:—"Owing to the highly tolerant character of Hinduism and to the great diversity of opinion on the point, it is not easy to answer the question with any great degree of definiteness. I think that the beliefs that are generally considered indispensable in a Hindu are: Belief in God, in a future state, and in the authority of the Vedas. The practices that are generally considered indispensable are: The rules prohibiting marriage ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... and without perhaps a full perception of their import; while the second uses the same expressions literally, and with the ordinary signification attached to the words that compose them. It is not so much that we do not hold what Paul held, but that we hold it with the greater definiteness and comprehension which modern discovery has rendered possible. We not only accept his words, but we extend them, and not only accept them as articles of faith to be taken on the word of others, but as so profoundly entering ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... coldly. He was not fond of giving an undergraduate leave in the middle of the term. "The college could have wished for a more definite message," he said. "Too late for what, Mr. Warrender?" "Too late to see my father alive, sir!" cried the young man; and as this had all the definiteness that the college required he was allowed to go. This was how his studies were broken up just as they approached their conclusion, although, as he had been so capricious and self-willed, nobody expected that in any circumstances it could have ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... position near their intersection.[108] He further attempted to show that the limits of this vast assemblage must remain for ever shrouded from human discernment, owing to the gradual extinction of light in its passage through space,[109] and sought to confer upon this celebrated hypothesis a definiteness and certainty far beyond the aspirations of its earlier advocates, Cheseaux and Olbers; but arbitrary assumptions vitiated his reasonings on this, as well as on ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... Perspicuity. — N. perspicuity, perspicuousness &c. (intelligibility) 518; plain speaking &c. (manifestation) 525; definiteness, definition; exactness &c. 494; explicitness, lucidness. Adj. lucid &c. (intelligible) 518; explicit &c. (manifest) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... 3. Where greater definiteness is necessary, the periphrastic forms in -urus sim and -urus essem are employed, especially in clauses of Result, Indirect Questions, and after non ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... some acknowledged and ponderous authority—German, of course, and all the more awe-inspiring, but of whom Gard had not heard. For it usually came down to the question, Who are your authorities? He rarely could tell who his were. They promptly faded away before all the weight and definiteness Ernst could bring ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... perfected—I believe I may say quite truly—through the will and power which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence of which we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with great definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted upon thought. These things are as power and desire, or supply and demand, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... developing the abstract conception of equality—that the ideas of equality in size, relations, forces, resistances, and sensible properties in general, were evolved during the same period. But however this may be, it is clear that as fast as the notion of equality gained definiteness, so fast did that lowest kind of quantitative prevision which is achieved without any instrumental aid, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... definiteness of thought than ever before, what were the deep feelings which her reticent little mother—Marguerite was an inch the taller—kept hid in that dear breast. Rarely had emotion moved it. She remembered its terrible heavings at the time of her father's death, and the later silent downpour of tears ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... though it may count but twelve apostles. As in India, so in Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted reticence, and what is at the root of it all, want ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... replied the Reverend Murdo, "Mr. McGinnis is right in asking for definiteness. My answer is that we must trust this committee to do what is wise and reasonable, and we must accept their decision ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... in that long descent are marked out with a precision and definiteness which would be intolerable presumption, if Paul were speaking only his own thoughts, or telling what he had seen with his own eyes. They begin with what was in the mind of the eternal Word before He began His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... By this he imposes on himself without any necessity the same limits that confine the field of the simple poet, without, however, being able to carry out the limitation properly, or to vie with his rival in absolute definiteness of representation. He ought rather, therefore, to depart from the simple poet, just in the choice of object; because, the latter having the advantage of him on the score of form, it is only by the nature of the objects that he can resume the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... embraces a number of cases. Between the Russians, the French, the English, the Germans there is a similarity of will, but not, it seems, an analogy of sentiment. I shall undertake to analyze the case of Germany. It has peculiar interest on account of its importance, of its definiteness, of the comparisons to which it leads, and the reflections which it suggests. Numerous facts easy to verify and in part recent permit us to throw some light upon it and offer us ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... mistaken in this thing, and much less to be deluded by the devil. I have also sought to let all the reasons against building another Orphan House, and all the reasons for doing so, pass before my mind; and I now, for the sake of clearness and definiteness, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... he explained the position of the pope on the subject of lay investiture, declared that he must stand by that position, and that if Henry also would not obey the pope, he must leave England again. Here was a sharp issue, drawn with the greatest definiteness, and one which it was very difficult for the king to meet. He could not possibly afford to renew the quarrel with Anselm and to drive him into exile again at this moment, but it was equally impossible for him to abandon this right of the crown, so long unquestioned ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... lower, until the body recedes to its greatest distance from the sun, by which time the velocity has abated to the value from which we supposed it to commence. We thus observe that the nearer the planet is to the sun the quicker it moves. We can, however, give numerical definiteness to the principle according to which the velocity of the planet varies. The adjoining figure (Fig. 39) shows a planetary orbit, with, of course, the sun at the focus S. We have taken two portions, A B and C D, round the ellipse, and joined their extremities ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... as was the alarm caused by the South German risings, and great as were the hopes which they kindled in the Viennese, the word that was to give definiteness and importance to the impulses that were stirring in Vienna could not come from Bavaria or Saxony. Much as they might wish to connect themselves with a German movement, the Viennese could not get rid of the fact ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... a certain crisp definiteness about those two words which carried conviction with them. Mabane and I were a little staggered. Our position was such a strong one, our request so reasonable, that I think that we had never realized the possibility of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Pound had added his few words, almost hidden beneath a mass of verbiage about Ahasuerus, and before them my forebears had every one of them left imprinted some sage injunction gained from their experience in living. So I gathered my strength to do my best. But there was a lack of definiteness in my purpose. There was no goal at which I aimed. In my younger days I had had instilled into me the necessity of aspiring to a particular height, to something concrete, to become a leader at the bar, in politics ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... vapourings as degeneration and absence of ideals, or on references to the splendours of the past. Every accusation, even if it is uttered in ladies' society, ought to be formulated with all possible definiteness, or it is not an accusation, but idle disparagement, unworthy ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... rests. It is because of them that, in order to bring out the greatest and best of which he was capable, he needed a certain amount of time before his completely developed individuality, to which his poetic genius was indissolubly united, could reach that point of clearness and definiteness of expression which he demanded of himself. * ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... class. Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, ...
— Philebus • Plato

... ear has a fairy fineness. There is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty, which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We think that he has more definiteness and roundness of general conception than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author imitates nobody; we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer. His thoughts ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... sits down he does it as he does everything—with definiteness and force. He does not spill over as does the Alimentive nor drape himself gracefully like the Thoracic, but planks himself as though ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... English race, fiction began to take con-structural shape and definiteness of purpose in Elizabethan days. Up to the sixteenth century the tales were either told in verse, in the epic form of Beowulf or in the shrunken epic of a thirteenth century ballad like "King Horn"; in the verse narratives of Chaucer ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... The grim definiteness with which he described the manner of their end added to those sensations which had already become acutely discomforting to Nathaniel. Had he possessed the use of his voice when the Mormons were leaving he would have called upon them to return and lengthen the thongs about his ankles ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... Old-Fashioned Home The Swelling of Jordan A Call to Judgment A Changed Life The Lost Opportunity A Great Victory Paul a Pattern of Prayer A Startling Statement The Grace of God Conversion Five Kings in a Cave Definiteness of Purpose in Christian Work The Morning Breaketh An Obscured Vision The Compassion of Jesus Sanctification An Unheeded Warning The Approval of the Spirit A Reasonable Service The ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... into account. The concepts of the average pupil are entirely too indefinite and limited to supply the necessary foundation for a science such as physiology. Herein lies the great value of experiments and observations. They supplement the pupil's experience, and increase both the number and definiteness of his concepts. No degree of success can be attained if this phase ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... open to the charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may teach, as has been said, what the poet never ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... Jesus' ministry could not be earlier than the spring of 29. This is at least two years later than is indicated by the statement in John. The remark in John is, however, so incidental and so lacking in significance for his argument that its definiteness can be explained only as due to a clear historic reminiscence; but it does not follow that Luke has erred in the date given by him. Although Augustus did not die until A.D. 14, there is evidence that Tiberius was associated with ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... there is an increase of the penalty for a second offense, and death for a slight offense when frequently repeated: in the Netherlands stealing of linen left in the fields to be bleached led to the death penalty for stealing a pocket handkerchief. And with increasing definiteness of authority there follows increasing definiteness of punishment; and when finally the habit becomes fixed, conformity with it becomes a paramount consideration, and a deed is no longer viewed with reference to its intrinsic import so much as to its ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... knowledge of the multiplication table, I gave a searching test upon that subject and issued a simple little certificate to the effect that the pupil had completed it. These little certificates acted like stakes put down along the way, to give incentive, direction, and definiteness to the educative processes, and to stimulate a reasonable class spirit or individual rivalry. I meet these pupils occasionally now—they are to-day grown men and women—and they retain in their possession ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... expected to run high in the presence of such astounding triumphs, and it should, therefore, not be deemed surprising that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally left ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... don't know their own minds and apparently are least likely to take an eligible residence when they most profess satisfaction with it. Be that as it may, house agents' offices in general have a want of definiteness unknown to, say, banks or pawnbrokers'. There is no exact spot for you to stand or sit; you are unaware as to which of the clerks is going to attend to you, and the odds are heavy that the one you approach will transfer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... the United States Government. It was useless to discuss methods of controlling big business by the National Government until it was definitely settled that the National Government had the power to control it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness, settled that the National ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... was wonderful. He seemed to be a clean-natured boy, but what he did and did not know it would have been hard to say, as, added to a certain secretiveness which in different ways both Phoebe and Ishmael possessed, there was in him a strain of elusiveness; you could not coerce him to a definiteness he did not wish any more than you could catch a butterfly by stabbing at it ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... indeterminateness into that misty immensity and weird obscurity which, as constituent factors in a poem, not as back-ground, form one of the elements of the false sublime. Either not seeing the literary necessity of definiteness, or having no such abundant and ordered literature as we possess, upon which to draw for details, and being too conscientious to invent facts, however he might invent language, he published his epics of Ossian—false indeed to the original, but true to himself, and to the feelings excited by meditation ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... Gothic windows of the dining-room, they had much more definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering attentively; but any one entering that dining-room for the first time, would perhaps have ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... judgments upon the alleged military defects of Patrick Henry, no reader can now fail to note an embarrassing lack of definiteness, and a tendency to infer that, because that great man was so great in civil life, as a matter of course, he could not be great, also, in military life,—a proposition that could be overthrown by numberless historical examples to the contrary. It would greatly aid ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... certain as to consult the organized women. They alone are at liberty to express their views, while the education they have had in their unions in handling questions vital to their interests as wage-earners, and as leaders of other women gives clearness and definiteness to the expression of ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... romance." "The English poets of our times, without entering into concert with the Germans, have adopted the same system. Didactic poetry has given place to the fictions of the Middle Ages." She observes that simplicity and definiteness, that a certain corporeality and externality—or what in modern critical dialect we would call objectivity—are notes of antique art; while variety and shading of colour, and a habit of self-reflection developed by Christianity [subjectivity], ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... calamity came upon us, you could not find anywhere a happier home than that created by the Indian woman. There was nothing of the artificial about her person, and very little disingenuousness in her character. Her early and consistent training, the definiteness of her vocation, and, above all, her profoundly religious attitude gave her a strength and poise that could not be overcome ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... Thursday compared to him, I'm afraid, are as molehills to the mountains yonder. If I described them by their amiable qualities alone they'd be as indistinguishable and as insipid as a row of dolls. Only through their aberrations, their unconscious perfidies, iniquities, do they develop definiteness of outline and begin to live. Oh! nothing could be unkinder than to whitewash them. Take Mrs. Callowgas, for instance, with one eye on the Church, the other on the world. The permanent inconsistency of her attitude, as I may say her permanent ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... time given to it could not be justified. It yields large fruitage in the development of the power of concentration and intellectual keenness. Yes, but better than that. All mathematical subjects, in that they require absolute accuracy and definiteness in their operations, are particularly helpful in developing those fine moral qualities of honesty, integrity, and upright dealing. Again, history is taught in the schools as an intellectual subject. In intellectual development alone it is worth all it costs. But over and above the value as a mental ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... not love her," was Barbara's quick decision, and she laid the open letter down with a definiteness which said that you, too, are laid out and laid low. Your sister's very wrists can be articulate. However, I laughed at her and she soon joined me. We do not mean to be extravagant with our fears. Who shall prescribe ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... body was known to be reduced within the narrow limits of the House of Representatives, intrigue was rather stimulated than diminished by the definiteness which became possible for it. Mr. Clay, who could not come before the House, found himself transmuted from a candidate to a President-maker; for it was admitted by all that his great personal influence in Congress would almost undoubtedly ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally show to saying anything straight out, so that they may seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover paper. This sometimes happens with the best authors; now and then, for example, with Lessing in his Dramaturgie, and even in many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as the reader perceives ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... clans, tribes, and nations. They acquire consistency with the organization of society; they tend to become more and more elaborate, just as in other points social intercourse tends to produce formal definiteness; they grow decrepit and have to be artificially strengthened and revived; they lose their original meanings and must be constantly reinterpreted to bring them into accord with new ideas, social, moral, and religious. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... and rise again on the third day." Here we have, obviously, the knowledge of the writer, after the event, reflected back and attributed to Jesus. It is of course impossible that Jesus should have predicted with such definiteness his approaching death; nor is it very likely that he entertained any hope of being raised from the grave "on the third day." To a man in that age and country, the conception of a return from the lower world of shades was not a difficult one to frame; and it may well ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... own. Although it has vaguely personified in darkest ages other diseases, like the Plague, the Pestilence, and Maya (the Smallpox), these have rapidly faded away in even the earliest light of civilization, and have never approached in concreteness and definiteness the malevolent personality of Cancer. Its sudden appearance, the utter absence of any discoverable cause, the twinges of agonizing pain that shoot out from it in all directions, its stone-like hardness in the soft, elastic ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... on its bones! One had lost the under jaw and hung low, looking unutterably weary—but now and then hove high as if to ease the bit. Above them, at the end of a branch, floated erect the form of a woman, waving her arms in imperious gesture. The definiteness of these and other leaf masses first surprised and then discomposed me: what if they should overpower my brain with seeming reality? But the twilight became darkness; the wind ceased; every shape was shut up in ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... round Copernicus seem to respond more happily to the requirements of Professor Pickering's hypothesis, for here there is an absence of that definiteness of direction so manifestly displayed in the case of the Tycho rays, and we can well imagine that with an area of condensation surrounding this magnificent object beyond the limits of the streaks, and a number of active little craters on and about its ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... will; and in these directions the teaching of music should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook. Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination. The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... the newness,' as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... said Lord Ronsdale. "You subsequently learned with more definiteness the actual circumstances of ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... contemplation. The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Veds. With respect to practical improvement, the case is still more evident. The character which improves ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... whose wishes but a short time ago he had refused or gratified, according to the mood of the moment, like those of a child, had since gained, even in his eyes, so well founded a claim to respect, she opposed him in her courteous, modest way with such definiteness of purpose, Biberli's fate interested him so much, and the prospect of seeing his daughters brought before the court was so painful, that he admitted the force of Eva's reasons and let her set forth on her difficult mission accompanied by his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... has not the definiteness of an answer; it has only the music that teases us out of thought as it fills ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... the whole country is familiar enough with legislative corruption, so there's nothing new in your charge that the Legislature of Massachusetts was bought up. But what will attract national notice is the definiteness of your accusation. You charge H.M. Whitney, brother of the late W. C. Whitney, and one of the foremost business men of your State, with having done the corrupting in order to get through a complete charter for a gas company. Now, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson



Words linked to "Definiteness" :   conclusiveness, definite, decisiveness, predictability, finality



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