"Indefinite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know no bounds,have no bounds; go on for ever. Adj. infinite; immense; numberless, countless, sumless[obs3], measureless; innumerable, immeasurable, incalculable, illimitable, inexhaustible, interminable, unfathomable, unapproachable; exhaustless, indefinite; without number, without measure, without limit, without end; incomprehensible; limitless, endless, boundless, termless[obs3]; untold, unnumbered, unmeasured, unbounded, unlimited; illimited[obs3]; perpetual &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... general and somewhat indefinite term. As defined by the various dictionaries, it means an attack, an assault, aggression, injustice, oppression, transgression of a law, misdemeanor, trespass, crime and persecution. In all of these definitions there is implied an act considered as disagreeable ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... journey to Russia was out of the question until the following Easter, only German towns could serve my purpose for the present. From many quarters, as for instance from Darmstadt, I received unfavourable replies; and from Karlsruhe, where I had applied direct to the Grand Duke, the answer was indefinite. But the severest blow to my confidence was a direct refusal which came in response to the application I had at last made to St. Petersburg, the acceptance of which would have ensured a regular salary. This time the excuse made was that the Polish revolution of that summer had paralysed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Democratic leaders, since it omitted to demand the sweeping away of the doctrine of malicious conspiracy or the prohibition of the issuance of injunctions to protect business rights, which had regularly been asked by the American Federation of Labor since 1904. In its place was substituted an indefinite statement against the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes where none would be allowed if no labor dispute existed and a declaration in favor of jury trial on the charge of ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... common jelly-fish, of which M. Quatrefages says excellently well—"Who would not exclaim that a miracle had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the hen in his poultry-yard, and the reptile give birth at once to an indefinite number of fishes and birds? Yet the history of the jelly-fish is quite as wonderful as that would be." Ask him if he knows about all this; and if he does not, tell him to go and look for himself; and advise ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... at this flame, grew keener, more acute, acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering kisses and caresses, till it was dissipated by the transports and ardent passion of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... placed in a gold box in a Stone House in the grounds of the Palace,—the gold box only to be opened when death or incapacity deprived the nation of its self-appointed leader. For the term of the presidency was openly converted into one of ten years and made subject to indefinite renewal by this precious instrument which was the work of the puppet senate. In case of the necessity of an election suddenly arising, an Electoral College was to be formed by fifty members drawn from the Legislative ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings of ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... time arrived for renewing the licences of public-houses. There can be no doubt that the measure proceeded from excellent motives; but it is certain that by encouraging the increase of public-houses to an indefinite extent, immorality and crime had been introduced into every nook and corner of the land. The picture which the poet Cowper drew of the evils of public-houses in his day have been increased a hundredfold by such a measure so that it is ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... said he; "but perhaps it would be better still to say that a guess is a particular and definite conclusion deduced from facts which properly yield only a general and indefinite one. Let us take an instance," he continued. "Looking out of the window, I see a man walking round Paper Buildings. Now suppose I say, after the fashion of the inspired detective of the romances, 'That man is a stationmaster or inspector,' that would be a guess. The ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... of great shoals terminating in a steep talus; such being the original mode of accumulation of all coarse materials conveyed into deep water, especially where they are composed in great part of pebbles, which can not be transported to indefinite distances by currents of moderate velocity. By inattention to facts and inferences of this kind, a very exaggerated estimate has sometimes been made of the supposed depth of the ancient ocean. There can be no doubt, for example, that the strata a, Figure 7, or those nearest to Monte Calvo, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... justice. You have heard the evidence; the law for the purposes of this trial you are to take from the judge. But you are not to be led away with the idea that you must convict this prisoner at any rate. It is a well-established principle that it is better for an indefinite number of guilty men to escape than for one innocent man to be convicted and punished; and for the best of reasons,—for to have the very machinery established for the protection of right turned into an instrument for the infliction ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... afternoon. As it stands now, the repealing section gives any city the right to grant saloon licenses of indefinite length, instead of for ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... black mud of the streets; the low sky; the funereal mirth of drunken women hanging on to men just as drunken; the wild dancing of dishevelled children round the street organs, as numerous as the omnibuses—all that caused twenty-five years ago an indefinite suffering to a Parisian. But little by little one finds that the profusion of the squares is restful to the eyes; that the beauty of the aristocratic ladies effaces the image ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... army be successful; so now, when the chance had come, they were neither ready to forward such an enterprise, nor could they make up their minds to depart from their passive attitude. But to postpone all idea of counterstroke until some indefinite period is as fatal in strategy as in tactics. By no means an uncommon policy, it has been responsible for the loss of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... some travellers that they have no religion of any kind; but I don't think this is quite true, though it is not far from it," replied Mr. Eng. "Religion is a very indefinite idea among the Dyaks, and they are chary in speaking of what there is of it. Some who have been among them maintain that they believe in a Supreme Being, who has a great many different names among the various tribes. They ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... had received its death-blow that afternoon. Already, that evening, it began to revive a little. It was very much enfeebled; it was very indefinite and diffident; but it was not dead. It amounted, perhaps, to nothing more than a vague kind of feeling that he would not, on the whole, make his departure for England quite so precipitate as, in the first heat of his anger, the first chill of his despair, he ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... uncomfortable night, the schooner rolling heavily and yawing wildly as the seas took her on her weather quarter. We saw no more of the stranger that night, although some of us fancied that we occasionally caught a glimpse of something looming very faint and indefinite in the darkness ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... inconveniently to its height. Beyond these habitations rose the trees surrounding another patrician abode; and beyond that the houses took a sudden turn, and nothing more was visible in a straight line but the dusky, indefinite ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... strikingly bright. But it was low down toward the horizon, and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky. It is ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked like something else. But that description does not describe; it is too vague, too general, too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a cross across that is out of repair—or out of drawing; not correctly shaped. It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is canted out of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was purely patriotic. He foresaw clearly, and deliberately chose, the trials which he endured. He was an individual who could not become the indefinite portion of a mass, but fought for himself, on his own account. He was a self-sacrificing hero, but did not claim that distinction or any merit, feeling only that he was in the line of duty to self, country, and God. He fought ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... yet at the same time produce contrast and unity is difficult. It is this difference of interpretation that adds charm to the piano recitals of different virtuosos. There is no one right way and no one best way, but rather an indefinite margin for personal opinion and the exhibition of artistic taste. If there was one best way, there are now machines which could record that way and there the whole matter would end. But we want to hear all the ways and consequently we go to the recitals of different pianists. How can I express ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the minds of two persons who use it with equal familiarity. The word railways, for example, will probably call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly locomotive, the image either of a "Bradshaw," or of the station with which he is most familiar, or of an indefinite length of tram-road; he will alternate between these three images, which represent his stock of concrete acquaintance with railways. But suppose a man to have had successively the experience of a "navvy," an engineer, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... is concerned justice is expeditious. Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... home for the Easter vacation, which he was spending with Mrs. Errington, not at their country place, but in her town house in Park Lane. One morning, when the City was smiling with sunshine, and was so full of the breath of the sweet season that in quiet corners it seemed in some strange and indefinite way almost Countrified, Horace went into Mrs. Errington's boudoir and begged her to come out for a walk in the Park, where he had already been bicycling before breakfast. When there was no question of money she was always ready to accede to any request of the boy's, and she got up ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... had seized me that would not be dismissed. Yet what worse thing than she had already endured could come from that bundle of loose clothes on the bed? The figure moved uneasily under the covers and made an indefinite motion. I could only guess at the words addressed to Miss Etta as she bent over him. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... It would seem that the process of counsel is indefinite. For counsel is an inquiry about the particular things with which action is concerned. But singulars are infinite. Therefore the process ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Mike; I should miss you, too," replied the girl civilly, growing uneasy at the unusual trend of the man's speech, halting and indefinite though it was. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... left free to drift as her nature should decide. Instinctively she felt more drawn toward her mother's unreasoning, emotional faith than toward a system of philosophic, critical inquiry. But on both sides what was offered her to worship was too indefinite to satisfy her strong religious instincts. Once more she filled in the blank with her imagination, which was forthwith called upon to picture a being who should represent all perfections, human and divine; something that her heart could love, as ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a noise at the far side of the corral seemed to disturb the stock. A faint stir of awakening or surprise—just a hint in the air. All was still in a moment. Then it came again. We listened. Something, an indefinite something, somewhere, was astir. The surprise became unrest, anxiety, fear, among ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... had vanished. Neither would have alluded to the feeling which had replaced it, nor, indeed, could have clearly expressed his thoughts, but mutual liking, respect and confidence had suddenly changed to something stronger. During the few minutes they spent in the water a bond, indefinite, indescribable, but not to be broken, had ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold. They believe in the jury as the 'palladium of our liberties'; and are convinced that the British Constitution represents an unsurpassable though unfortunately an ideal order of things, which must have existed at some indefinite period. Chatham in one of his most famous speeches, appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... mostly on the summit of the range, instead of proceeding, like other travellers, along the valleys, and we must get what little sleep we could during the day, when we could hide in some secluded spot. The thought of seeing a fire had to be abandoned for an indefinite period, because, even in the remote contingency of our finding fuel at the great altitudes where we should have to camp, every one knows that a fire and a column of smoke can be seen at a very great distance, both by day and night. We pondered and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... courteous forms, the Field-Marshal was not long in coming to the point. The negotiations would be greatly facilitated, nay, more, instead of beginning his reign with a large slice of territory occupied by a foreign enemy for an indefinite period, the King might open it with an actual enlargement of his frontier, if he would only give the easy assurance of ruling on the good old system, and of re-hoisting the blue banner of Piedmont instead of the revolutionary tricolor. The moment was ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... savoured of ostentation, had wished for a tiny expedition, and would gladly have gone out into the desert with but one tent, Batouch and a servant to do the cooking. But the journey was to be long and indefinite, an aimless wandering through the land of liberty towards the south, without fixed purpose or time of returning. She knew nothing of what was necessary for such a journey, and tired of ceaseless argument, and too much occupied with joy to ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... into the street, it was with some wild and indefinite intention of flying to the ends of the earth, but recalled to his senses by the stares of the passers-by, he concluded he had better first return and get his hat. When he reached his own room, where Clem was thoughtfully pacing the floor, he ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... after a minute or two, "I think you ask too much, but you must have it your own way. I won't annoy you and drive you into a corner: you may depend on that, to be perfect strangers for an indefinite time—Then you won't speak to me when I see you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... in the field consists of marching. Battles take place only at indefinite intervals, but marches are of daily occurrence. It is only by good marching that troops can arrive at a given point at a given time and in good condition ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... running at even a slow speed, the motion imparted to lever L would be indefinite; and this, especially if the governor is fitted to the air valve lever, as in fig. 25, is very undesirable. Therefore, to obtain a definite opening we must set out the cam, as shown in fig. 31. In this diagram the roller is shown standing clear of the back of ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... is all right," agreed the woman, "but it may take you a long time before you succeed, your method being sort of haphazard and indefinite. However, I advise you to travel ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... first youth, but still beautiful, not very tall, somewhat plump, but with that freshness which lends to a woman of forty an appearance of having only just reached full maturity, she seemed like one of those roses that flourish for an indefinite time up to the moment when, in too full a bloom, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... his chagrin, that the lovely little shrine of St. Spitz, whose stained windows glowed like rubies in its cloister of dark trees, was rather a fashionable hobby among the wealthy landowners of Dalmatian Hills. It had been closed all summer, and they had missed it. The Bishop, in his airy and indefinite way, had not made it quite plain that Gissing was only a lay reader; and in spite of his embarrassed disclaimers, he found himself introduced by Mr. Airedale to the country-house clique as the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... a man of indefinite age; his high, narrow forehead, cold grey eyes, and determined manner bespoke an unflinching purpose. He had a large book under his arm, and there seemed every probability that he had left a package of similar volumes in the hall. He took a seat before it had been offered him, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... pleasures. Not one who, if taken to task on the momentous subject of a spiritual future, could have given any rational explanation of why he or she held certain vague ideas on the subject of salvation, or put off the deeper consideration of the subject to some indefinite period when they would have had their fill of vanities, and lost either the means or the ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... of a most singular machine for making carding implements—I said: 'How is it, that with these wonders, the American portion of the Crystal Palace in London should have been so scant? Here is enough for almost an indefinite supply: the reaping-machine is but a unit.' 'True,' he replied, 'but we could get no guarantee for securing the patents; and if one man was simple enough to give the English his reaping-machine, it did not suit others to be robbed. We have little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... more pronounced throw the strongest light on what I have indicated as his distinctive intellectual quality: the rejection of all general and dogmatic points of view. His casuistic utterances are often only a vindication of the personal, and therefore indefinite quality of human truth; and their apparent trifling with it is often only the seeking after a larger truth, in which all seeming contradictions are resolved. It was inevitable, however, that this mental quality ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... had been thus strafed in public, either for bringing us there or allowing us to have beer. At any rate, we were hurried out to await our train on the platform. A small circle soon formed round us, largely made up of sailors, whom we concluded must be on indefinite leave. As our train was steaming up a civilian gave vent to his feelings by fixing his evil eyes upon us and at the same time moving his lips with a deadly purpose, cursing us inaudibly. I should never have thought a face could express such condensed hatred. He must have been ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... that the various mutations of the evening-primrose display a great degree of regularity. There is no chaos of forms, no indefinite varying in all degrees and in all directions. Quite on the contrary, it is at once evident that very simple rules ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... Extent of it. There is Light behind Light, and Glory within Glory. How far that Space may reach, in which God thus appears in perfect Majesty, we cannot possibly conceive. Tho' it is not infinite, it may be indefinite; and though not immeasurable in its self, it may be so with regard to any created Eye or Imagination. If he has made these lower Regions of Matter so inconceivably wide and magnificent for the Habitation of mortal and perishable Beings, how great may we suppose the Courts ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... followed, Ferris remarked boldly: "I intended to ask for an indefinite leave on account of breaking health. I shall now remain here, as an ordinary witness, subject to your orders, and with no other interest than to clear up ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... extend to an indefinite period, I got Jacob to construct a rude bedstead out of two large chests that had transported some of our goods across the Atlantic, and which he put in a corner of the parlour. This I provided with a small hair-mattress, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... embracing and filling the woodland. With a delicious sound the brook rushed by, and the branches Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely audible whispers. Filled with the thoughts of love was Evangeline's heart, but a secret, Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror, As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the swallow. It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits Seemed to float in the air of night; and she felt for a moment That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was pursuing a phantom. With this thought she slept, and the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hooting or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted by the galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' or the word 'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out: "Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags," threaten the refractory with the lamp post, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... recalled, brought forth fortune and an ability to settle down in peaceful competence in after life. But there was Diana. Would she wait for him? Encircled on all sides with lovers, would she keep faith with an adventurer gone for an indefinite quest? The desponding, self-distrusting side of his nature said, "No. Why should she?" Then, to go was to give up Diana—to make up his mind to have her belong to some other. Then there was his mother. An unutterable reverential pathos ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... corn without any corresponding rise in the land-tax must have largely increased their material prosperity. Yet the number of peasant-proprietors had diminished, while the obligations of the peasantry generally had increased; and, still worse, their obligations were vexatiously indefinite, varying from year to year and even from month to month. They weighed especially heavily on the so-called Ugedasmaend, who were forced to work two or three days a week in the demesne lands. This increase of villenage morally depressed the peasantry, and widened still further the breach ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... open to America at this present moment two courses: one which will lead her to militarism and the indefinite increase of armaments—that is the course of isolation from the world's life, from the new efforts that will be made toward world organization; the other to anticipate events and take the initiative in the leadership of world ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a number of Spirit forms as coming to those present—to one a little child, to another an old man with white hair, etc. The descriptions were in general vague and indefinite, and might have applied to many persons. Nevertheless, they were in very many cases wide of the mark. Sometimes a father, a mother, or other relation was described as present. In some cases the death of such relations was acknowledged by the person to whom the Medium addressed herself, but in other ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her—and he easily hated her. Why did she make him feel as if he were uncertain of himself, insecure, an indefinite thing, as if he had not sufficient sheathing to prevent the night and the space breaking into him? How he hated her! And then, what a rush of tenderness ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... be safely asserted that the divinity that doth hedge most great writers is lost the moment their admirers become acquainted with their habits of thought and methods of composition. The popular delusion that H.G. "knows every thing" is calculated to work indefinite injury to some modest men who are supposed to "know something." GREELEY'S mind, like a camera obscura, may be said to retain its impressions while in the dark, and to lose them when exposed to the light. He has never, to any extent, heeded the scriptural injunction against ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... about forty thousand dollars some of the purchasers began to get anxious about their dividends. None were forthcoming, and as the promoter was inclined to be indefinite as to future prospects he was presently arrested. But when the case came to trial I pointed out a fact that, strange as it may seem, practically no one of the multitude of stockholders had previously noticed, namely, that the circulars made no actual statement as to where the railroad ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... never supposed that they would be called upon to labor for the defense of their freedom and country, found themselves with a barrel of pork upon their heads and a policeman with a loaded musket by their side proceeding up country for an indefinite period. A school teacher was missing, and was found to have gone up with a case of ammunition. Casual visitors from down the coast had ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... will please us all, Albert," Mrs. Tescheron assured him sadly, although it seemed to her there could be nothing more disappointing than an indefinite postponement of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... strikes, and to enter upon the more efficacious political struggle with the employers of labour in the House of Commons. "To go on following the old beaten paths of trade unionism is simply to go on exhausting the possibilities of error for an indefinite period. If the new unions are simply to play the part of regulators of wages, as trade and prices rise and fall, they will be of very slight advantage to the workers compared with what they might accomplish if they took a broader view of their opportunities and their duties. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Bat made an indefinite sort of noise down in his throat; perhaps the burglar fancied it indicated interest; at ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... however, removes from it the personal thought of the giver, and makes its acceptance more a matter of mercenary than of friendly interest. If, however, such exchange is made at the suggestion or with the approval of the giver, it still remains a personal gift. The indefinite way in which many people choose wedding gifts for their friends, following only the conventional ideas of what is suitable, has taken a great deal of personal interest from the gift ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... is that the demand for the product of labor is ordinarily subject to indefinite increase. If labor is economized in one direction, the power dispensed with will be utilized in another direction. The community income of economic goods is a flow. Under our present system of division of labor each individual uses ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... first one is that while in theory the distinction between a public and a private bill is clear, in point of fact there is no little difficulty in drawing a line of demarcation, and the result has been the recognition of an indefinite class of "hybrid" bills, partly public and partly private in content and handled under some circumstances as the one and under others as the other, or even under a procedure combining features of both. The second fact to be observed is that, in part to reduce expense and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... also it is deeper; but the colour of both, like that of the two dry wines, increases in proportion to their age, a circumstance exactly the reverse of that which takes place in French wines. German sherry wines are capable of preservation both in bottles and casks for an indefinite period. In one of the bodegas or cellars belonging to the firm of M. P. Domecq, at Xeres, are to be seen five or six casks of immense size and antiquity (some of them, it is said, exceeding a century). Each of them bears ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... don't know anything about that; but as there had been nothing said by me which required any explanation by letter, I did not send one. Everything was so indefinite, and feeling your position to be so much wealthier than mine, I fancied I might have mistaken your meaning. And when I heard of the other lady—a woman of whose family even you might be proud—I thought how foolish I had ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and sometimes said that these men who conduct church work and missionary work do not know much about dollars; that a dollar, a thousand dollars, or a million dollars, is a very indefinite thing; and that they ask for a million dollars, or half a million dollars, with a great deal of nonchalance, as if it were merely a matter of asking. It is not so. When this Finance Committee indorse the recommendation of the National Council that ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... choosing that way which is entirely appropriate and induced by the fault itself: this is the purpose and the cause of our pecks of trouble. The battle has to be fought—and won—by each of us: the only effect of temporary surrender is indefinite delay. The battle has still to be fought again with added difficulties later on. "The popular-class composer nowadays is not infrequently a thoroughly competent and well-read musician who, if he chose, could write really solid ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... exercise some architectural craft, they have not to learn it. But man comes into the world with the capabilities, rather than the means and appliances, of life. He begins with a small capital, but one which admits of indefinite improvement. He is, in his very idea, a creature of progress. He starts, the inferior of the brute animals, but he surpasses them in the long run; he subjects them to himself, and he goes forward on a career, which at least hitherto has not found ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... a view to some decisive course of action, when all should be found prepared. The cautionary order issued for total abstinence from violence had been looked upon, of course, as a momentary or interim restraint. But if once it were understood that this order was absolute, or of indefinite application, the chill to the national confidence would be that of death. For we are not to suppose that the faith and love of the peasantry can have been given, either personally to Mr O'Connell, or to Repeal, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... having backed and scraped down the steps and thanked her profusely for some indefinite thing for which she ought to be thanked, he went rushing around the corner, let himself in by King Lentz's window, and surreptitiously gained his room. At last, having torn off the red choker tie and freed his neck, back once more to the ease of bachelor ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years."[39] Another periodical says: "The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of the world ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... particularly anxious to record,—his sense of the spiritual processes which worked behind the grim offence of war, the new birth of religious ideas, which was one of its most wonderful results. He had both witnessed and shared this renascence. It was too indefinite, too immature to be chronicled with scientific accuracy, but it was authentic and indubitable. It was atmospheric, a new air which men breathed, producing new energies and forms of thought. Men were rediscovering themselves, their own ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... mishaps at the hands of enemies, and so forth. But there is another aspect to this power of disengaging the soul from the body. If only the safety of the soul can be ensured during its absence, there is no reason why the soul should not continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man may, on a pure calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should never return to his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a "permanent possibility of sensation" or a "continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external relations," the savage thinks ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... kettles. Lee helm! Down go the buckets and kettles and out run the wretched scarecrows of seamen to the weary business of tacking ship, letting go, brailing up, hauling in, and making fast for the thousandth time; and then back to the pumps and kettles again. No human being could endure this for an indefinite time; and though their diet of worms represented by the rotten biscuit was varied with cassava bread supplied by friendly natives, the Admiral could not make his way eastward further than Cape Cruz. Round that cape his ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Catherine had been upon their return speedily aware. The difficulty was how to get it done; and whom to trust in their absence; which would soon, owing to the calls of the service, take place again, and for an indefinite period of time. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... attempts at scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook science" per se, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity sui generis, as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses," constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like, has brought it down from ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... to protect? If all she heard was true, he sorely needed protection from himself. For tales of him had filtered to her young ears—indefinite rumours of unworthy things—of youth wasted and manhood threatened—of excesses incomprehensible to her, and to those ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... hand stretched out to save her. She was drowning in deep water and she saw Le Gardeur buffeting the waves to rescue her but she wrenched herself out of his grasp. She would not be saved, and was lost! Her couch was surrounded with indefinite shapes of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... an indefinite distance beyond him, burning like red-hot iron through the darkness, a little scarlet or crimson gleam, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and we do it; or why they believe so and so, our fathers told us it was so. [Note 86 ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... used with caution. "It is raining" is correct, although it has no antecedent. We desire that the antecedent shall be vague, impersonal. But unnecessary use of the indefinite it, you, or ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... himself 'Nipe' or 'Neep', but we don't know whether that refers to him as an individual or as a member of his race. Since Russian lacks both definite and indefinite articles, it is possible that he was calling himself 'a Nipe' or 'the Nipe'. Certainly that's the impression ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... certain uniformity of method. The entire number system may consist of but two words, one and many; or of three words, one, two, many. Or, the count may proceed to 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, or 100; passing always, or almost always, from the distinct numeral limit to the indefinite many or several, which serves for the expression of any number not readily grasped by the mind. As a matter of fact, most races count as high as 10; but to this statement the exceptions are so numerous that they deserve examination in ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... we shall leave this subject, which we present gratis to the members of the Philosophical Society. Should they consent to avail themselves of the vast field which we have pointed out, we shall endeavour to labour in it ourselves at some future and indefinite period. ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... attitude was that it adjusted nothing, improved nothing, left everything to drift on toward an indefinite end. If Lester had married Jennie and accepted the comparatively meager income of ten thousand a year he would have maintained the same attitude to the end. It would have led him to a stolid indifference to the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... as she could, pretending to arrange her hair at a mirror, then fidgeting with one of her slipper-buckles; but the intelligent elderly woman in charge of the room made an indefinite sojourn impracticable. "Perhaps I could help you with that buckle, Miss," she suggested, approaching. "Has it come loose?" Alice wrenched desperately; then it was loose. The competent woman, producing needle and thread, deftly made the buckle fast; and there was nothing for Alice ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Prideaux, the antiquity of the Persian prophet. See his work, vol. ii. * Note: There are three leading theories concerning the age of Zoroaster: 1. That which assigns him to an age of great and almost indefinite antiquity—it is that of Moyle, adopted by Gibbon, Volney, Recherches sur l'Histoire, ii. 2. Rhode, also, (die Heilige Sage, &c.,) in a very ingenious and ably-developed theory, throws the Bactrian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... over, for I knew well that General Johnston had no army with which to oppose mine. So that the only questions that remained were, would he surrender at Raleigh? or would he allow his army to disperse into guerrilla bands, to "die in the last ditch," and entail on his country an indefinite and prolonged military occupation, and of consequent desolation? I knew well that Johnston's army could not be caught; the country was too open; and, without wagons, the men could escape us, disperse, and assemble again at some place agreed on, and thus the war ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... two o'clock in the morning, and also happened to be a chance to play a matinee in the town you were jumping to, you took your suit-case to the theater, lugged it from there after the performance, to the station, and spent an indefinite number of hours thereafter, in an air-tight waiting-room. Waiting, be it observed, for a chance to curl up in a seat in the day-coach, when the train ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... are all busy in determining the constant laws under which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of thinking at all when they look at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... for living with a man or woman of another caste other than those who may become Dhanwars, or for taking food from a member of an impure caste, the only ones which are lower than the Dhanwars. Temporary exclusion for an indefinite period is awarded for an irregular connection between a Dhanwar man and woman, or of a Dhanwar with a Kawar, Binjhwar, Rawat or Gond; on a family which harbours any one of its members who has been permanently expelled; and on a woman who cuts ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... susceptible of almost indefinite expansion. Thus ruminated Judge Enderby, rising early with a brisk appetite for romance, as he fingered the two five-dollar bills received from his ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... feelings, blind longings, and obscure impulses which then arise in the mind, attest the awakening of an impulse which knows not its aim; a kind of vague and yearning melancholy is engendered, which leads to an abandonment to poetry of a gloomy, Byronic kind, or to indulgence in indefinite religious feelings and aspirations. There is a want of some object to fill the void in the feelings, to satisfy the undefined yearning—a need of something to adore; consequently, when there is no visible object of worship, the Invisible is adored. The time of this mental ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... her—I couldn't help it—until I felt father's hand touch mine. That seemed to break the spell. I looked down at the carpet again and felt the color rushing to my face. I heard the rustle of her dress, a soft, silky, indefinite sound. She had come forward into the room, had taken one of the chairs, I knew—I heard the subsiding of her draperies—and then I felt her watching me. Her presence was like a great light in a closet. It was oppressive. I began to breathe quickly, and ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... of you rule the ranch," Aunt Betty intervened. "I rule it and expect to do so for an indefinite period." ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... distinction of birth is so valuable because it is incommunicable. That, of course, is quite true. English people, happily, as I think, never have, and never will, regard mere birth with any veneration or even interest. What affects them is that potent, if rather indefinite, thing, position—the aura of distinction which surrounds great office, great wealth, and even great learning; and, oddly enough, most of all by the acclamation of fashion. The Committee of Almack's put the thing exactly, when a certain Duchess, to whom they had refused ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... must be told, was not well satisfied with his western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with. The railroad contractors held out large but rather indefinite promises. Opportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for himself he saw no better means for livelihood than the mastery of the profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon. During the summer ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... and seen something of its matchless symmetry, beauty, and indefinite capabilities, ever unfolding, to promote human welfare, through its unity with variety, its liberty with order, its freedom of action of each part in its own sphere, coexisting with the harmonious working of all together as one grand whole—all of which arises, as was said, from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Where sin aboundeth, grace aboundeth much more," Rom. v. 20. And what the Lord said unto Paul in his extremity, 2 Cor. xi. 9. "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is made perfect through weakness:" concerns every man in like case. His promises are made indefinite to all believers, generally spoken to all touching remission of sins that are truly penitent, grieved for their offences, and desire to be reconciled, Matt. ix. 12, 13, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance," ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... at the discretion of this Court to sentence the prisoner to a term of imprisonment of two years, or for an indefinite period, or for life. Owing to—on account of certain circumstances which were—have arisen—this sentence is suspended. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... was a prompt little woman. Instead of finishing her tea she postponed that meal to an indefinite season, threw on her bonnet and shawl, and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... too much for Toby. He laughed with pleasure, got up, pulled on his clothes, took the note, and started off with alacrity, to convince the captain that he merited all the good that was said of him, and that indefinite "something" besides. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... blessed thing to find and fill the perfect will of God. It is a blessed thing to have our life laid out and our Christian work adjusted to God's plan. Much strength is lost by working at a venture. Much spiritual force is expended in wasted effort, and scattered, indefinite and inconstant attempts at doing good. There is spiritual force and financial strength enough in the hands and hearts of the consecrated Christians of to-day to bring the coming of Christ, to bring about the evangelization of the world in a generation, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... State can no longer be responsible for the mind and character of your children. From the first day of the coming year, all schools will be closed for an indefinite period. Fathers, see that your boys are trained to be men. Mothers, see that your daughters are trained ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... surface, their upper portion being uncovered: occasionally they assume the form of buttresses, but never to such a marked degree as occurs in some other trees, such as the Simool, Herietiera, etc. The supports are only thrown out towards the base of the principal branches, not as in the banian at indefinite distances. The trunk is a compound one, formed entirely by the mutual cohesion of roots; not as in almost all other trees by the growth of parts in an ascending direction. Its aspect is picturesque and varied, occasionally ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Mrs. Berrington was ready solemnly to declare that she had not misapplied were, as her sister looked into them, an abyss of indefinite prettiness. The girl had sounded them before without discovering a conscience at the bottom of them, and they had never helped any one to find out anything about their possessor except that she was one of the beauties of London. Even while Selina spoke Laura had ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the innermost of their leafy depths as if steeped in the exhalations of a golden mist. While, contrasting strangely with the wondrous radiance around them, the huge bronze pine-tree in the middle of the Place, and the wide front of the basilica, rose up in gloomy shadow, indefinite and exaggerated, lowering like evil spirits over the joyous beauty of the rest of the scene, and casting their great depths of shade into the midst of the light whose dominion they despised. Beheld from a distance, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... to leave this matter to chance or to the eye of the occupant of an airship was too indefinite. Accordingly he invented a machine, something like a range-finder for big guns. With this it was a comparatively easy matter to drop a grenade ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never get their richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first, the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon; secondly, that Nature is just as economical ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... truly a most lame and impotent conclusion! And this, then, is the result of all my high fancies and indefinite aspirations! Verily, I am a very distinguished hero, and have not abused my unrivalled advantages in the least. What! am I bitter on myself? There will be enough to sing my praises without myself joining in this chorus of congratulation. O! fool! fool! Now I know ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... easily eight hundred men there in front, he judged; men well armed and ready for an indefinite stay in the hills, with a railroad at their back to bring up supplies, and with the entire State behind them. And the State was ready to send more and more men after these if it should be necessary. He had no doubt that hundreds of other men were being ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... out a definite Law, coming athwart Friedrich Wilhelm's wrath, would check Friedrich Wilhelm in mid-volley,—or hope with good ground to do it. Hope, we say; for the King is in his own and his people's eyes, to some indefinite extent, always himself the supreme ultimate Interpreter, and grand living codex, of the Laws,—always to some indefinite extent;—and there remains for a subject man nothing but the appeal to PHILIP SOBER, in some rash cases! On the whole, however, Friedrich Wilhelm is by no means ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... contrast the deified men, or various representatives of an heroic humanity, among different races: nor did it seem too great a stretch of imaginative probability to conceive that their general characteristics might be adopted and imitated by beings already invested by the human mind with an indefinite power, and inhabiting a world in which the wonderful ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... consists of two distinct social structures, connected and, as it were, encased one within the other; two governments, completely separate and almost independent, the one fulfilling the ordinary duties and responding to the daily and indefinite calls of a community, the other circumscribed within certain limits, and only exercising an exceptional authority over the general interests of the country. In short, there are twenty-four small sovereign nations, whose agglomeration constitutes the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... against their fellow-Jews. Probably three hundred thousand Jewish soldiers are under arms in this district. Besides the inevitable loss by death of many of these and the distress caused by the removal of so many others for an indefinite period from breadwinning for their families, there must be ineffable woe caused by the fact that this district is the scene of strenuous conflicts, which lead to the wholesale destruction of the Jewish homes in a literal ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... state of a notary's office or a counting-room under a system of this sort! The master of it winds up his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new engagements and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business.—There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... With purpose indefinite, Godwin set forth in the direction suggested. At little more than a saunter, he passed out of High Street into its continuation, where he soon descried the Church of St. Sidwell, and thence, having made inquiry, walked towards the Old Tiverton ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... unfortunate driver he will discern the difficulty and suggest the remedy; dirt has no terrors for him, oil is his delight, grease the goal of his desires; mind you, all this concerns the American hoodlum or the hoodlum of indefinite or of Irish extraction; it applies not to the Teutonic or other hoodlum. He will pass you by with phlegmatic indifference, he will not throw things at you, neither will he help you unless strongly appealed to, and then not over-zealously or over-intelligently; his application is short-lived and ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... girl could give no explanation as to why she was thus alone and deserted. To all questions she could only reply by the words "papa Simon," and "mamma Francoise." Of course this was too indefinite for these people to act upon; besides, at that time they had much to do—the invasion promised them much spoil. They took Cinette away, and after the peace they continued to keep her. They had amassed quite a little property, and bought a farm in Blaisois. Cinette was happy in these days, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... words to safeguard the rights of humanity. Our initial blunder was in turning away the Belgian Commissioners, when they first presented the wrongs of their crucified nation, with icy phrases as to a mysterious day of reckoning in the indefinite future. An act of justice now will be worth a thousand future "accountings" after the long agony of the world is over. "Now is the accepted time, this the ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... Jack, in the same reflective tone, as if taking up her thought, "persons who are not good have a perception of the indefinite. I did not think of it in that ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... little doubt as to the truth of what Nell M'Collum told him. There was a saucy and malignant confidence in her manner, which, although it impressed him with a sense of her earnestness, left, nevertheless, an indefinite feeling of dislike against her on his mind. He knew that her motive for disclosure was not one of kindness or regard for him or for his family. Nell M'Collum had often declared that "the wide earth did not carry a bein' she liked or loved, but one—not even excepting herself, ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... must and did have, he certainly looked for a reward far beyond any recognisable in the liberal check that had started up his pen. For Onward and Upward was to do some good in the world: the years might come and go for an indefinite period, yet throughout their long procession young men—it was for them he was writing—would rise up here, there, and everywhere and call him blessed. To scrimp his sermons in such a cause was surely justifiable; more, it was commendable. "Where it has been dozens it will now be thousands," ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... offers to resign them for the benefit of the State. Mr. Crimpton gives his case to the jury, expressing his belief that a verdict will be rendered in his favor. A verdict of guilty (for so it is rendered in our courts) will indeed give the prisoner to him for an indefinite period. In truth, the only drawback is that the plaintiff will be required to pay thirty cents a day to Mr. Hardscrabble, who ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... sufficient light they continued their search along the beach, and were rewarded by discovering a case which contained, among other articles, fish-hooks and lines. This was indeed a prize, for undoubtedly fish swarmed along the shore, and they might catch enough to supply themselves with food for an indefinite period. Still, Owen recollected that unless water was found they ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... an indefinite number of conditions hereafter, according to the various characters and moral ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... paper, but it suits me exactly; and, for the first time in my life, I have enough to do, and also the satisfaction of feeling that I am of some little use to my fellow-creatures. A lady's influence out here appears to be very great, and capable of indefinite expansion. She represents refinement and culture (in Mr. Arnold's sense of the words), and her footsteps on a new soil such as this should be marked by a trail of light. Of course every improvement must be the work of time, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... This was indefinite, but Margaret felt that something more was coming, of a nature which Mrs. Rushmore considered fortunate in the extreme, and in a short time she had learned the news, but with no mention ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... standpoint which reduces that formalism to a special system. Thus it becomes possible to discover the essential contents of the history of Pedagogics from its idea, since this can furnish not an indefinite but a certain ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... babbling man was grazed by a shot that made the blood stream widely down his face. He clapped both hands to his head. "Oh!" he said, and ran. Another grunted suddenly as if he had been struck by a club in the stomach. He sat down and gazed ruefully. In his eyes there was mute, indefinite reproach. Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his knee joint splintered by a ball. Immediately he had dropped his rifle and gripped the tree with both arms. And there he remained, clinging ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... male parent was or may have been the same person in each case, and this whether the mother was the same or not. Now, quite apart from the fact that primitive man was unlikely to have evolved a term for such an indefinite relationship, except in so far as it involved rights or duties, it is obvious that great complications would arise which would in practice make the nomenclature unworkable. For to call two boys brothers because they have the same group of men as possible fathers is only practicable in a society ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... chair listening to Vandover, struck with wonder, marvelling at that which his old chum had come to be. He was sorry for him, too, yet, nevertheless, he felt a certain indefinite satisfaction, a faint exultation over his misfortunes, glad that their positions were not reversed, pleased that he had been clever enough to keep free from those habits, those modes of life that ended in such fashion. He rapped sharply ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... meaning of Life can be empirically determined more and more exactly, and completely, a positive metaphysic is possible: that is to say, a metaphysic which cannot be contested and which will admit of a direct and indefinite progress; such a metaphysic would escape the objections urged against a transcendental metaphysic, and would be strictly ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... look as if Calcutta were not wholly irredeemable. A ticca-gharry deposited a sea-captain; three carriages arrived in succession; an indefinite number of the Duke's Own, hardly any of them drunk, filed in to the rupee seats under the gallery: an overflow from Jimmy Finnigan, who could no longer give his patrons even standing room. When this ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction of the village street. It was a vague, indefinite disturbance, brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever. Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp. In the darkness I heard ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... bites of venomous snakes. Two of the patients recovered. According to Russ this strange symptom is sometimes instantaneous and in other instances it only appears after an interval of several hours. In those who survive the effects of the venom it lasts for an indefinite period. One man seen by Russ had not only lost his speech in consequence of the bite of a fer-de-lance snake, but had become, and still remained, hemiplegic. In the rest of Russ's cases speech alone was abolished. Russ remarks that the intelligence was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... suspicion and suspense hung about our circle. The atmosphere was heavily charged with electricity, which foreboded storms. It would be well for me to quit Guernsey before all the truth came out. I wrote to Tardif, telling him I was going for an indefinite period to London, and that if any difficulty or danger threatened Olivia, I begged of him to communicate with my mother, who had promised me to befriend her as far as it lay in her power. My poor mother thought of her without bitterness, though with deep regret. To Olivia herself I wrote ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda's willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions preparatory to a receipt which remained indefinite, this ring, which on Deronda's finger had become familiar to Lapidoth's envy, suddenly shone detached and within easy grasp. Its value was certainly below the smallest of the imaginary sums that his purpose ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... inaccurate method, the attraction of the earth has been compared with that of a mountain—a very indefinite method indeed. A better method was that of Astronomer Airy and Mr. Dunkin, who went down into the Harton coal pit 1,260 feet to see how much difference that depth would make in the movements of a pendulum. It gained ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... important position in the history of literature; many innovations, timidly made elsewhere, have in them been carried boldly out to their last consequences; much that was indefinite in literary tendencies has attained to definite maturity; many things have come to a point and been distinguished one from the other; and it is only in the last romance of all, QUATRE VINGT TREIZE, that this culmination is most perfect. This ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... resulted had she remained. As the distance lengthened between himself and the mill, Bob was conscious of some cooling down of the excitement that had prompted him to set out; but he did not pause in his walk till he had reached the head of the river which fed the mill-stream. Here, for some indefinite reason, he allowed his eyes to be attracted by the bubbling spring whose waters never failed or lessened, and he stopped as if to look longer at the scene; it was really because his mind was so ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and leisurely plunge into a different atmosphere. It is better to visit few places, and to become at home in each, than to race from place to place, guide-book in hand. A beautiful scene does not yield up its secrets to the eye of the collector. What one wants is not definite impressions but indefinite influences. It is of little use to enter a church, unless one tries to worship there, because the essence of the place is worship, and only through worship can the secret of the shrine be apprehended. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted by her appreciative discourse. Mrs. Follingsbee had a sort of indefinite faith in French phrases for mending all the broken places in life. A thing said partly in French became at once in her view elucidated, even though the words meant no more than the same in English; so she consoled ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... vigour with rare gracefulness. The leaves are a light glossy green, ovate, and often a foot long, while the flowers are pure white (resembling slightly the azalea, but free from its fragility), large, and with an elusive scent, sweet and yet indefinite. The fruit, smooth and of porcelain whiteness, varies in size and shape, and is said to be edible, though blacks ignore it. A large marble and an undersized hen's egg may dangle together, or in company with others, from the topmost branches of some tall tree, which ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of Glibly were numberless; and not to be escaped. Words are too equivocal and phrases too indefinite, for men like him not to profit by their ambiguity. To them a quirk in the sense is as profitable as a pun or a quibble in the sound. They snap at them, as dogs do at flies. It is no less worthy of observation that, though some ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
