"Finality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preventing any connection. He was present, he was the real centre of the group. And yet he asked nothing of them, and he imposed nothing. He left each to himself, and he himself remained just himself: neither more nor less. And there was a finality about it, which was at once maddening and fascinating. Aaron felt angry, as if he were half insulted by the other man's placing the gift of friendship or connection so quietly back in the giver's hands. Lilly would receive no gift of friendship in equality. Neither would he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... in a tone of finality. "You will go to-night? Fortunately the people coming to dinner are a set of crocks. No bridge, and leave early. You can easily catch ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... embodied the results. It was succeeded, in 1837, by a descriptive volume bearing the imposing title, Der Mond; oder allgemeine vergleichende Selenographie. This summation of knowledge in that branch, though in truth leaving many questions open, had an air of finality which tended to discourage further inquiry.[927] It gave form to a reaction against the sanguine views entertained by Hevelius, Schroeter, Herschel and Gruithuisen as to the possibilities of agreeable residence on the moon, and relegated the "Selenites," one of whose cities Schroeter thought ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of a speaker, certainly upon such an occasion as this, is not merely to give information. It is not to speak with finality upon any subject. Is it not, rather, to direct the thoughts of the listeners along worthy lines? For any good that shall result from the meeting together of speaker and audience will be the direct outcome of their thoughts and not of his words. So, after having thus spoken briefly of the university ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... recognized the finality in Miss Susan's tone. "Do you know of any one who would like a dog," she asked, "a very ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day. "Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several specimens of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... thocht ye were an oot-an'-oot Leeberal—nane o' your finality Whigs that took ae bit step in the richt direction, and then durstna venture further. Ye maun vote for the five-pound vote if ye are to be oor man," said ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... when Hiram said it. There was now in Tweet's question a tone of finality. Hiram felt that his reply would end the matter. Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled on "No." He could not bring himself to part with this semblance of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... the blunders of Grant and Pemberton are apparent in their every movement—and the history of the siege and capture of Vicksburg, if ever correctly written, will demonstrate to the world that folly opposed to folly marked its inception, progress, and finality. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... frank and friendly in tone, by which I knew that she had not—as some women would have done—set the blame upon me for our temporary outburst of emotion. And yet there was a subtle difference from her previous manner of writing that only emphasised the finality of our separation. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... with an iron persistency of accomplishment as methodical as ploughing a field. Tira, sitting at her side of the hearth, heard, through drowsy ears, the incomprehensible vision of the tree of life with its twelve manner of fruits, and when Israel shut the Bible with an air of virtuous finality, she came ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... never be your friend, Elizabeth"—there was a sad finality about Malcolm's tone that made Elizabeth shrink from him ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a futile longing. But it ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... old masters, was playing for the throat. This upward thrusting, when continuous, is difficult to meet, and Maurice saw that sooner or later the blade would reach home. If not sudden death, it meant speechlessness, and death as a finality. Then the voice of his ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... denouement; finish &c (completion) 729; fate; doom, doomsday; crack of doom, day of Judgment, dies irae, fall of the curtain; goal, destination; limit, determination; expiration, expiry^, extinction, extermination; death &c 360; end of all things; finality; eschatology. break up, commencement de la fin, last stage, turning point; coup de grace, deathblow; knock-out-blow; sockdolager [U.S.]. V. end, close, finish, terminate, conclude, be all over; expire; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... these truths are enlightening, unifying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them, and facts will become your servants instead of your tyrants. No charm of detail will be lost, no homely picturesque circumstance, no touch of human pathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels and thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... had ridden twelve cold, rainy miles to hear the Happy Family declare. He had expected them to take that stand, but it was good to hear it spoken in just that tone of finality. He stacked his cup and saucer in his plate, laid his knife and fork across them in the old range style, and began to roll a cigarette,—smoking at the table being another comfortable little bad habit which Rosemary ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... is itself a progressive movement instead of a static finality involves some serious alterations in the historic conceptions of the faith, as soon as it is applied to theology. Very early in Christian history the presence of conflicting heresies led the church to define its faith in creeds ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most futile;" and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an air of finality. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Science. The avoidance of this commonly made distinction may offend two different sets of students—students of metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the 'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of the conclusion of the metaphysicians. But I must avow my own conviction that the only distinction we can make is one of convenience, and it may help to make my peace ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Finality and stability are absent from its councils. To-day, for reasons none can explain, it is pro-foreign to the verge of servility. To-morrow, for reasons equally obscure, the pendulum swings back, and—the students are heaving mud ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... not, I repeat, intended as a finality. If any Staff Officer into whose hand this book may come, or may be brought into knowledge of the working of the Regulations contained in it, can suggest any improvement, let him do so. If he can show any plan by which the end aimed at can be more simply, or inexpensively, or ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... provided Miss Seaton promises strictly to have nothing more to say in future against any of us to anybody," stipulated Judith with quiet finality. ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... that when a person has given no thought to war, and the objects of war, this distinction may seem strange. Death is a big matter to the average being, and one of some finality; and the manner of one's going may strike him as of little account. In which assumption he is perfectly right—if he is the member of the party who is going to be killed. But that is not the idea which a man going into a scrap should hold for a moment. A man goes ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... again; nothing ever did. And now with ironic conformity to law, his philosophy had turned on him, demonstrating beyond cavil that not only did the things one longed to be free of come to a sure finality but so did those ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... more tangled than ever. Finality had not been reached either in regard to his relations towards his wife, towards Elaine, or towards Larssen; in regard to the Hudson Bay scheme, or in his regard to his future freedom for work on the lines he so earnestly desired. The whirlpool had sucked him back, and he was once more ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... method of checking the current of the melodic phrase with such emphasis and determination as to convey the impression of finality; either absolute finality, as we observe it at the very end of a composition, or such relative finality as is necessary for the completion of some independent section of the piece,—conclusive as far as that section is concerned, though not precluding the addition of other sections ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... universal heart aches for assurance, for confidence, for finality, for certainty. Mr. Dan Crawford tells of a cannibal chief beside whose deathbed an African boy was reading selections from the Gospel of John. He was impressed by the frequent recurrence of the ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... put into my own words the form of thought which seems to animate them, it is something of this kind. They feel that the world in which we live is the expression of some great plan or purpose or pattern which is not yet complete, which shows no sign of finality, but is ever growing in complexity; which resolves itself again and again into simplicity, and then spreads out again on a yet wider scale. The plan or purpose is not a dead mechanical thing; the life which explains it is within and not without ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... not as a thing that hurt her, but as an unpleasant incident of the day, like the rudeness of a stranger, and yet not to be forgotten. It had the importance of extreme finality; his ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust—the trust of my reader. For having limned in the colors at my command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality, to write Finis to the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... not appear to have by any means reached finality in its form, such questions as the angle of impact which the jet should make with the surface of the vane, and the size of the orifice through which the steam should be ejected, being still debatable points. But on one matter there is hardly any room for doubt, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... son, with what she knew to be professional finality." Mother, if you can hurry dinner a little, I shall be glad. I have to drive over to Jocelyn's, and I should like to start as soon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... conversation had ceased to interest him. So, evidently, had his letters, for he thrust them from him with an air of finality as he rose to his feet and glanced at his watch. It was not yet very late, but with the waning of summer the days were growing perceptibly shorter and the light in the office where the two men were ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... fallen very low even in this girl's estimation and the fact was almost intolerably galling, but he could make no effective defense. She went from him slowly, but with a suggestive deliberation, without looking back, and there was a hint of finality in the way ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... with a note of finality, and Dr. David Moss stared at it gloomily. "I hope so," he said. But nobody in particular ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... made swift examination. "Dead!" he pronounced with finality, "Good God! dead as a herring! The man's been dragged and kicked to death!" He made a futile effort to release the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... that society or convention or whatever it was had drawn the grim chevaux de frise between those who had accomplished, or whose forebears had accomplished for them, and those who were yet to accomplish; with hosts eager to applaud the achievements of finality, but who had no adequate encouragement for those who had yet to achieve their mission, who fought their battles in the dark and won them in the glorious light, or losing, sank back into that oblivion out of which they had ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... is in sort a preliminary death. Making hers, Charity felt herself already gone, and looked back at life with a finality as from beyond the grave. It was a frightful thing to review her journey from ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... in gardens," said Albert with great finality, "but bulb work seems to me like fancy work. And then too, bulbs ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... and regret were her portion—in a far greater degree than after that other crisis of her life, when its realities had come to her, and she knew she must bear them alone. She had been too young then to understand half the possibilities of mental pain, and also there was no finality about anything—all might develop into sunshine again. Now she had the most cruel torture of all, the knowledge that she herself by her wilfulness and pride had pulled down the blinds and brought herself into darkness, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... this way," said the sergeant, with finality. "Hauled over this pass to the Cerberus. Somebody must've knocked this bush loose while workin' at getting 'em along. So he replanted it. Only not good ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... first discovered and worked out for the short-story in the medium of poetry.[8] The ballad and narrative poem must be, by reason of their highly artificial form, comparatively short, possessing totality, immediateness, compression, verisimilitude, and finality. The old ballad which commemorates the battle of Otterbourne, fought on August 10, 1388, is a fine example of the short-story method. Its opening stanza speaks the last word in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... ring of finality in her tone that struck dismay to Alan's heart. He prepared to entreat and argue, but before he could utter a word, the boughs behind them parted and Captain Anthony ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gently, but with a finality that left Katherine no hope of persuading him. He took up her cloak and threw it over her shoulders, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... you are brothers at any rate, whether citizens of Massachusetts or subjects of Virginia—I am a minister—and, fellow-citizens of Boston, there are two great laws in this country; one of them is the LAW OF SLAVERY; that law is declared to be a 'finality.' Once the Constitution was formed 'to establish justice, promote tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' Now, the Constitution is not to secure liberty; it is to extend slavery into Nebraska. And when ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Finality grinned at her from across the room. Love was lying bleeding and fettered at the feet of some intangible, superhuman spectre which Dea Flavia dreaded ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute that can arise. It starts with finality—a point which the Roman Church has travelled towards fifteen or sixteen centuries, stage by stage, and has not yet reached. The matter of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was not authoritatively settled until the days of Pius ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lunged forward and tried with her tiny open palm to push Barton's horse a trifle faster back through the intricate thicket. Then once in the open again she drew herself up with an absurd air of dignity and finality and ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... unchanged, then! This time he recognized the note of finality in her tone. All the time and thought he had given to this matter were wasted. He had failed, and he knew why. He seldom permitted himself the luxury of anger, but he felt all the poison of bitter hatred stirring within him at that moment, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said the district attorney, with an air of finality, "we suspect you. We hold that you had motive, opportunity, and means for this crime. Therefore, unless you can prove an alibi for Tuesday night, and bring witnesses to grove where you, were, we must arrest you, on suspicion, for the murder of ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... procession. The whole land was so unlike anything she had ever known that she began to feel unlike herself. In the valley where she had been born and where she had lived all her days everything had an air of finality. Nothing could be changed. The tiny fields were chained to the earth. They were fixed in their places and surrounded by aged stone walls. The fields like the mountains that looked down at them were as unchangeable as the passing days. She had a feeling ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... touch him. It had been a peculiar change, that for awhile startled him more than the imminence of war. He might have been thrilled over the wild race, the reckless dash, as of unbridled horses, with which a nation long in suspense hurtled toward a finality; but it was an elation thoroughly dampened by dread. As the days had passed, however, and nothing more terrible happened, his courage came creeping back, even growing into modest bravado. Excursions to the country with his rifle became frequent again. He began ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... believe he went in there," said Agnes with finality, after standing as if trance-bound for a long time, gazing after the foam-white river as it ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... once more I dreamed of finality in change I deceived myself, forgetting that God Himself cannot unmake the past or undo what is done. A year had hardly gone by in this new apprenticeship to life, when at moments of weariness or overstrain sharp doubts shot through me and were gone again, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... There was a finality to this that was uncanny. Janice became sure, right then and there, that Mrs. Bridget Burns would never clear up the wreck Olga Cedarstrom had made of the back kitchen. The girl wished with all her heart that she had boxed Arlo Junior's ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... air of unalterable finality the massive oak door closed after him. In the resonant click of its latch the great wrought-iron lock seemed to smack its lips with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... yet humble in the depths of her heart, asserting strength like a reed erect, but, like the reed, ready to bend beneath a firm hand; talking much of religion, not loving it, and yet prepared to accept it as a possible finality." ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... at the man with an air of finality. The lumberman still lingered uneasily, twisting his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... refuse," he said with a finality so absolute that her last hope went out like an ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... with you myself," he announced, in a tone of finality, "and go on to the Mess for Mackay afterwards. The worst is over now, and you'll only let yourself in for a demonstration if your men find out that any harm has come to you." The diplomatic suggestion had the desired effect; and they rode leisurely back to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... headline that night. Wednesday brought problems of conduct. It was obvious that Rachel was going away because of Anna. Her departure was a fact which presented itself with no finality. It resembled an insincere thought of suicide. Rachel, having gone, would still remain. The emotional prospects of the farewell closed his thought to the future. He spent Wednesday waiting for a seven o'clock on Thursday. An hour had detached itself from hours that went before ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... is no such thing as finality. Not a week since I said "Finis," and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rather going on with the record. Until this afternoon I had no cause to think of what is done. Renfield had become, to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... I saw that the struggle between us had begun—the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not tonight." This in her tone for finality. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... long time later the horse stopped short with an air of finality, and refused absolutely to proceed. Keith descended to see what was ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... jeering frontier mob faded; and in its stead, looming bigger and bigger, advancing, enfolding like a storm cloud until it blotted out every other thought, came realisation of the thing she had done: came appreciation of its finality, its immensity. Then it was that the infinite bigness of this uninhabited wild, the sense of its infinite loneliness, pressed her close. Despite herself, against all reason, as a child is afraid of the dark there grew upon her a terror of this intangible ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... get Conscription, the better I'll like it. Conscription solid for every bloomin' able-bodied man an' boy. An' I 'ope Ben Shrillett an' 'is likes is the first to be took. Conscription,' he said with the emphasis of finality as he fumbled in wet straw for a wetter boot, 'out-an'-out, lock, stock, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... under the T'ang dynasty that a certain finality was reached in regard to the strict application of the tones to Chinese verse. For the purposes of poetry, all words in the language were ranged under one or the other of two tones, the even and the oblique, the former ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of the Potter is followed by a metrical Oracle which has all the marks of Jeremiah's style and repeats the finality of the doom, to which the nation's forgetfulness of God and idolatry have brought it. Once more the poet contrasts the constancy of nature with his people's inconstancy. Neither the metre nor the sense of the text is so mutilated as some ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason that would ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... and his stepfather received the news of Powers' marriage with many misgivings and rebuked him severely for having made such a choice, finally vowing that they disowned him and never wanted to see him again. With a finality not at all disconsolate John Powers set about to polish his Indian wife for the polite society of his mother, so he sent her to school, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... himself. The world seemed to be conspiring against him: the chorus of Fate was singing behind the scenes, singing of the happiness of others in sardonic comment on his own final unhappiness. Yet despite the pain of finality there was on him something ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... over, and Frank was left behind. With awful finality it came to him that there was nothing he could do. It was clear that Phaestra had wanted his pal, needed him—come for him. From the fact that Frank remained behind it was evident that she had succeeded in retaining ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... of the warm moisture which is redolent of the death of the leaves, and the weakened, weary, anaemic sun increased, while rendering it poetical, the sensation of solitude and of finality that hovered over this spot which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of such a compromise as Serbia's reply to the ultimatum promised to afford. Whether, as seems very probable, this current bade fair to gain the upper hand, it is still too soon to determine with finality. There are certainly many indications that this was one of the dangers apprehended in Berlin. Russia's moderation was another. And the interplay of the two might, had Germany held aloof, have led to a compromise. For this reason Germany did not ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... words, hastily came up to the priest, "What were you so glibly holding forth?" he inquired. "All I could hear were a lot of hao liao (excellent, finality.") ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... nevertheless each his own individuality, as swimmers carrying each his undetachable burden through dark, enormous and cavernous seas. Mysterious journey! Uncharted, unknown and finally—but there is no finality! Mysterious and stunning sequel—not end—to the mysterious and tremendous adventure! Finally, of this portion, death, disappearance,—gone! Astounding development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... foolishness about scaffolds and heads rolling off—I assure you it was infinitely worse than a beheading. A heavy sense of finality brooded over all this, unrelieved by the hope of rest and safety following the fall of the axe. These proceedings had all the cold vengefulness of a death-sentence, and the cruelty of a sentence of exile. This is how I looked at it that morning—and even now I seem to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... he had earned her displeasure. When he spoke again, it was as one who accepts a sad finality. "I love you, and I want you. I hoped you might think a little of me some day. For I believe I could make you happy. So it was disappointing to find out that you hadn't thought of me that way; that you were figuring ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... warm dusk slightly cast down, although he had previously realised that football would be beyond him for at least a week. It is sometimes one thing to acknowledge a fact oneself and another to hear the same fact stated by a second person. There's a certain finality about the latter that is convincing. But if Don was downcast he didn't show it to his companion. Don had a way of concealing his emotions that Tim at once admired and resented. When Tim felt blue—which was mighty seldom—he let it be known to the whole world, and when he felt gay he was ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... repetition of a single elementary form, the measures, | >q. q |, or | >q. q q |, for example. Variation, subordination, synthesis, are present in every rhythmical sequence. The regular succession is interrupted by variant groups; points of initiation in the form of redundant syllables, points of finality in the form of syncopated measures, are introduced periodically, making the rhythm form a complex one, the full set of relations involved being represented only by the complete succession of elements contained ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... colour green—which the spectator does not see, but imagines—there is excellent reason why you should dot the frame all over with green, for the picture and its frame are not two things, but one thing." "But," cries his opponent, "there is a finality in all things; if you carry your principle out to the bitter end, the walls as well as the frame should be dotted with the complementary colours, the staircases too, the streets likewise; and if we pursue the complementaries into the street, who shall ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... powerful that has ever existed."] All the powerful nations are burdened with debt. War, too, is a much more difficult enterprise than it used to be; every campaign of the king of Prussia has been more arduous than all the conquests of Attila. It looks as if the Peace of 1762-3 possessed elements of finality. The chief danger he discerns in the overseas policy of the English—auri sacra fames. Divination of this kind has never been happy; a greater thinker, Auguste Comte, was to venture on more dogmatic ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... popular as to prove to people what they already believe and that day's sermon was long remembered among the Cameronians. It redd up their position so clearly, and settled their precedence with such finality, that Walter, hearing that the Frees had done far wrong in not joining the Church of the Protests and Declarations in the year 1843, resolved to have his school-bag full of good road-metal on the following morning, in order to impress the Copland boys, who ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... are called "Fire-Keepers" (of the origin of the name "Fire-Keeper," I will treat further, anon) then speak to the motion, or upon the measure, and, finally, decide everything; and they are, in view of this power of finality of decision with all questions, regarded as the most important Chiefs among the confederated tribes. The decision of the "Fire-Keepers" does not, by any means, always show concurrence in what may have been the consensus of opinion expressed ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her heart like ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... into the highways and byways, seeking prospective lodgers. It folded its hands and waited placidly for them to come. When they came, it pondered them with care, catechized them tactfully, and either rejected them with courteous finality or admitted them on probation. Had it been given to self-exploitation, it could have boasted that never had it harbored a bug or a scandal ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of his power lay in the fact that his writings supplied an encyclopaedic knowledge of the medical art down to his own time, with commentaries and additions of his own, written with great assurance and conveying an impression of finality, for he asserted that he had finished what Hippocrates had begun. The world was tired of political and philosophical strife, and waiting for authority. The wars of Rome had resulted in placing political power in the hands of one man, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... a poet and an unusual sense of melody, where was he lacking in what makes a great poet? In power of expression. He never attained, except in a few poems, that union of sound and sense which is characteristic of the best poetry. The touch of finality is not in his words; the subtle charm of verse outside of the melody and the meaning is not his — he failed to get the last "touches of vitalizing force." He did not, as Lowell said of Keats, "rediscover the delight and wonder that lay enchanted in the dictionary." ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... subject of the election, and finally launched upon a long diatribe after the Platonic fashion, with the professor as a sympathetic interlocutor. His daughter refrained from combatting him openly, but he divined and resented her unexpressed opposition. Her attitude was one of finality; her silence indicated an indifference to his opinions more exasperating than words. It was the young astronomer, he reflected, who had helped to crystallise her strange views. His lurking fear that she might one day marry and leave him was aroused at the thought, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... neither guessed his reason. He taught her coon-can, two-handed whist and Chinese solitaire before a gray lightening outside proclaimed that the night was over. Miss Bridger, heavy-eyed and languid, turned her face to the window; Billy swept the cards together and stacked them with an air of finality. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... familiar with the arguments on both sides, and Porter's paper can be regarded only as an expression of views already uttered, but now invested with a formality becoming the seriousness of the occasion. In its finality it has somewhat the character of a protest, though indirect and couched in perfectly becoming language, against a decision which Farragut had now reached and which Porter had always combated. The latter does not appear to have doubted the ability of the fleet ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... v. Syn. for {flush} (sense 2). Has a connotation of finality about it; one speaks of draining a device before taking ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... cannot know, is the relation of the remedy to the ailment, for there are as many cases as there may be patients, each liable to variation, so that experimentation begins afresh every time. This is why the practice of medicine remains an art, for there can be no experimental finality in it. Cure always depends on chance, on some fortunate circumstance, on some bright idea of the doctor's. And so you will understand that all the people who come and discuss here make me laugh when they talk ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... very naughty, but equally lovable child. He is never out of mischief, but he is always very penitent for his misdeeds—afterwards! His bent is towards theology, and he speaks with the authority of an ancient divine on all matters pertaining thereto, and with an air of finality which brooks no argument. When some one was being given the priority in point of age over me, he was heard to indignantly exclaim that "Jesus and Teacher are the oldest people in the world." He is no advocate for the equality of the sexes, and closes all discussion on equal rights by explaining ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... of ways from means to ends—ends in themselves desirable, yet for the most part distant and for him, certainly, below the [147] visible horizon—he would at all events be sure that the means, to use the well-worn terminology, should have something of finality or perfection about them, and themselves partake, in a measure, of the more excellent nature of ends—that the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... day or two he had faced the fact that, not only must he use every endeavor to revive his past, but that such revival threatened with cruelty and finality to separate him ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a step leading up to the main idea. The vocal indication of this connective principle is the circumflex inflection. The tone will be raised, as in the principal emphasis, but instead of being allowed to fall straight to a finality, it is turned upward at the finish, to hook on, as it were, to the following. The weight of voice will be less marked, the inflection less long, and the pause usually less decided, than in the case of the primary emphasis. "Recall romance, recite ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... weather," I suggested. "These gray November days with their depressing atmosphere of finality may ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... is plain, was very firmly convinced that his own cosmopolitanism was a European finality and was worth all that it had cost. What would he have said if he could have looked ahead a hundred years and beheld the nations still snarling at each other's heels in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... back; he flung up his arms in a gesture of finality, shaking clenched fists into the sky. He was at the point of surrender. The torture had reached his vitals. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting came the sense of things finished—done forever. A vast, all-embracing finality—"Neant"—the habitant expression for the uttermost nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but a premonition warned him that to utter it ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... abandoned the creator's standpoint of the god at the heart of his work. It seemed as important, as great to him, but somehow it had taken on a strange solidarity, as though he had left it a plastic beginning and returned to find it hardened into the shapes of finality. He acknowledged it admirable,—and wondered how he had ever accomplished it! He confessed that it should be finished as it had begun,—and could not discover in himself the Titan who had watched over ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... three men could sense the determination in his voice, the utter finality of his words. There was no mistaking the iron-hard will of the man. They knew that nothing could shake him—nothing, at least, that they ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I prefer to take his word." Stanton's tone of overbearing finality made Nancy clench her hands with rage. She turned ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... consultation. She knew it from the silence which followed the curt finality of Broderick's retort and from the scraping of chair legs followed by the sound of the men pacing back and forth and speaking in new, unguarded tones. Now their conversation came to her for ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... who sees the outside as the truth. A hundred cases might be given. We may take, for the sake of argument, the case of what is called falling in love. The sincere realist, the man who believes in a certain finality in physical science, says, "You may, if you like, describe this thing as a divine and sacred and incredible vision; that is your sentimental theory about it. But what it is, is an animal and sexual instinct designed for certain natural ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... posterity as a sort of bearded lady, and Mr. Wyndham as a sort of beardless one. But about Honore' de Balzac he knew much. Balzac he understood. Balzac's work, Balzac's soul, in that great rugged figure aspiring and indeflexible, he gave us with a finality that could have been achieved through ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... he is, he is going to have no effect on me," said Gordon, with a finality that quite ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... the philosophy of "Sartor Resartus" cannot, of course, be overlooked. Everything that man has woven for himself must in time become merely "old clothes"; the work of his thought, like that of his hands, is perishable; his very highest symbols have no permanence or finality. Carlyle cuts down to the essential reality beneath all shows and forms and emblems: witness his amazing vision of a naked House of Lords. Under his penetrating gaze the "earthly hulls and garnitures" of existence melt ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... not do that," said Betty, with simple finality. "A sheep ranch is not amusing——" She stopped short and stood still for a moment. They had been walking down the avenue, and she stopped because her eyes had been caught by a figure half sitting, half lying in the middle ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Secretary of State. One by one during the month of August all the features of the "Omnibus Bill" became law. The great majority of the Southerners indicated their ready acceptance of the compromise as a "finality"; and radicals like Jefferson Davis, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and William L. Yancey retired from public life, either voluntarily or by compulsion of the people. The big cities of the East and the Northwest celebrated the passage of the crisis ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... hurry? The pictures had all vanished from the walls. The books were gone from the old book-case; the furniture itself was being carried away, the marble-topped table being the last piece left. The woman was washing the parlor floor, slopping on the soapy water with that air of finality that made Ellen Robinson realize that the old home was broken up at last. Grimly she walked into the dining-room, and saw immaculate empty closets and cleanly shining window-panes. As far as the work had progressed it ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... was softly crying. Her hopes had faded. There was the note of finality in each word her men had uttered. She ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... she said, then, very quietly, "I'm going to homestead that land." There was no escaping the note of finality in her decision. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... friends took on themselves the means they thought most likely to make that disappearance a finality." ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... stick the pencil back and snap the elastic on with inflexible finality; but he never began the squeezing. Some men grumbled at him. He was spoiling the trade. Well, perhaps to a certain extent; not much. Most of the places he traded with were unknown not only to geography but also to the traders' special lore which ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... surprised at the calm with which she came to this decision. It had all the force of finality to her. She cared for the hurt to her pride as little as she cared for what Rose Parker would think of her ignominious return, as little as she cared for what the world thought of a wife who deliberately left the father of ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the fact; to the scientist it is the evidence that establishes the fact. To the religionist truth is something that is unchanging, that is fixed, final, and heretical to question. Confronted with a constantly changing universe, he would delude himself that his inner convictions give him a finality concerning his evolving environment. It is therefore not so much Science that the religionist is fighting, but the scientific method. This scientific method of approach, he rightly perceives, has so pervaded our mode of thinking that it is the subtle and most disintegrating force that is shattering ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... them also. His manner proved it. As soon as you mentioned shorthand he became suspicious and showed uneasiness and anger. I tell you again," with an air, of finality, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... a tone of finality in this speech which effectually sealed Nigel's lips, and, in truth, his ever-increasing trust in the wisdom, power, and resource of his friend ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... there is the title-page of a treatise on The Duplication of the Hexahedron, demonstrated geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies of Europe.[2] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all stages, occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear in ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... finality of that moment Now to come; in the eternal now, which thou Sweet Presence, hast awakened me to— I ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... vibrated, whether it be that of colour, form, sound or whatever else," (Path, May, 1886) These higher interpretations I am unable to give; it requires the deeper being to know the deeper meaning. Those here appended may prove suggestive; I do not claim any finality or authority for them, but they may be interesting to students of the occult Upanishads where the mystic power of ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... not least, the Protestant principle contained within itself the germs of the destruction of the finality, which the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and other Protestant Churches fondly imagined they had reached. Since their creeds were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled the canon defined the creed. If the private judgment of Luther ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... barely noon-time, crossed to the book stall where he secured something to read and thereby while away the time, and then having sought a comfortable chair in a secluded corner deposited himself in it with an air of finality which indicated that he had no idea of departing from the hotel until after he had secured the ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished; and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... with thanks. Then he looked towards the betting man, who shook his head. The auctioneer, who was rather wanting to get away, raised his hammer with an air of finality. ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the letter. I read it through a dozen times. Of course, I would do her bidding, but my heart rebelled at the finality of the lines. I knew I would never hear from Vicky Van again. As she said, since we hadn't traced her yet, we ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... happened, and that the high C now 'finishes' the passage. Thus it will be called 'high doh', and the hand sign will be repeated, but at a higher level. Be careful not to bend the hand at the wrist when giving this sign, or the effect of finality and repose ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... her out," said Lite in a tone of finality, "but you won't send her back." He paused. "She ain't much protection, maybe," he remarked somewhat enigmatically, "but it'll beat staying alone nights. You—you can't tell who might come prowling around ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower |
