"Define" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman it is remarkable! She certainly understands you better than you are understood by the greater part of those who have known you so long; and with regard to some others, I can perceive, from occasional lively hints, the unguarded expressions of the moment, that she could define many as accurately, did not delicacy forbid it. I wonder what she thinks of my father! She must admire him as a fine-looking man, with most gentlemanlike, dignified, consistent manners; but perhaps, having seen him so seldom, his reserve may be a little repulsive. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... has in every instance been found a certain method of excluding Texas fever. The regulations governing the movement of cattle from below the quarantine line are made yearly by the Secretary of Agriculture, and they define the boundary of infected districts. The infected area as now determined is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... To define the Khorassan Province also, by its being destitute of wood or trees. Note its passing off from this character between Ghuzni and Quettah, see Marryott's letter about Kooner, compare with Mazenderam forests. Fine plane trees occur here, all ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... power was independent of the spiritual. In Italy, a little later, Dante championed the divine right of the emperor (De Monarchia, 1311). In Germany, Marsiglio of Padua and Jean of Jandun, the literary allies of the emperor Louis IV., ventured to define anew the nature of the civil power from the standpoint of natural law, and to assert its absolute sovereignty (Defensor pacis, c. 1352); while the Franciscan William of Occam (d. 1349) examined, also in Louis' interests, into the nature of the relation between the two powers. He too concluded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... began jerking the roses on her bonnet far too roughly for artificial flowers. Perhaps I surprised you with that artificial word, but I can spell and define it; it's easy divided into syllables. Goodness knows, I have seen enough flowers made from the hair of the dead, wax, and paper, where you get the shape, but the colour never is right. These of Sally's were much too bright, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... draw,—in other words, that we detach things from their surroundings and put them in their due relief. The proper distribution of light can alone reveal the whole body. For this reason I do not sharply define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a haze of warm, light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a finger on the exact spot where the parts join the groundwork of the picture. If seen near ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... frequently been asked, both publicly and privately: "Do you believe in ghosts?" One can only answer: "How do you define a ghost?" I do believe, with all students of human nature, in hallucinations of one, or of several, or even of all the senses. But as to whether such hallucinations, among the sane, are ever caused by psychical influences from the minds ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... poets." We also admit this in another way, when we observe that the passage from soul to mind, from animal to human activity, is effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to define language or expression as an intermediate link between nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of the one and of the other. Where humanity appears, the rest has already disappeared; the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... 'nothingness'? Did I speak of the great void, my child? You are quick of hearing. Nothingness—well, you have learnt to think; are you capable of defining the meaning of the word—a monster that has neither head nor tail, neither front nor back—can you, I say, define the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... may, before his death, name his successor, but the nomination must be ratified by the people represented by their principal men assembled in the estufa. In this cacique may be recognized the sachem of the northern tribes, whose duties were purely of a civil character. Mr. Miller does not define the duties of the governor. They were probably judicial, and included an oversight of the property rights of the people in their cultivated lands, and in rooms or ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... his own intentions. The matter in question is of the first importance. Our good friend ought to define ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... where I believe Christ has laid none down: I will not attempt to compare his disciples with those of other masters: I am content to know that here is a fountain of living waters, which flows for us, and at which those who drink shall never thirst again. I will not even try to define the process by which a strong, bright, master-soul pours itself into poorer and narrower spirits, for I rest joyfully in the certain knowledge that it is so. Is it not possible to forget the fact too much in discussing the rationale ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... upon base running been strictly observed by the majority of the umpires each year; especially was this the case in 1892, when the observance of the balk rule was very lax indeed. The difficulty in framing a proper rule for the purpose is, to properly define the difference between a palpable fielding error, which enables a base to be run on the error, and an error plainly induced by the very effort made to steal a base. No base can be credited to a base ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... response, but as Mr. Mix watched her, he was desperately aware that his moment had come. His next sentence would define his future. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... sixteen other stories and sketches. To define them it is enough to say that they are written in M. Anatole France's prose. One sketch entitled "Riquet" may be found incorporated in the volume of Monsieur Bergeret a Paris. "Putois" is a remarkable little tale, significant, humorous, amusing, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... a correspondent later asked him to define his position. Chesterton replied, "The unreasonable patriot is one who sees the faults of his fatherland with an eye which is clearer and more merciless than any eye of hatred, the eye of an irrational and irrevocable love." His attitude sprang, he claimed, not from ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the face excepted, they are deformed in every sense of the word. In looking at the fine proportions of their faces one forgets their deformed bodies. What, then, is beauty? We know not; and when we attempt to define it or to enumerate its qualities we become like Socrates, we hesitate. The only thing that our minds can seize is the effect produced by it, and that which charms, ravishes, and makes me in love, I call beauty. It is something that can be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Persian walnut is difficult to define. To again quote Dr. Waite, "Juglans regia, as we know it in the east and north, frequently succeeds over long intervals of time under conditions of climate, soil, elevation, and general environment suitable for the peach. It is perhaps a trifle ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... a further difference of opinion, to be taken not quite so seriously, which I shall endeavor to define as objectively as possible. The German conservative press seems to be of the opinion that the goal for the winning of which we are waging the great war, and concerning which we are all of one mind, will be definitely attained immediately upon the conclusion ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... claims began in the last century with agnosticism. It was then conceded that there is an order other than that of natural science; but this order was held to be inaccessible to human knowledge. Such a theory is essentially unstable because it employs principles which define a non-natural order, but refuses to credit them or call them knowledge. The agnostic is in the paradoxical position of one who knows of an unknowable world. Present-day naturalism is more circumspect. It has interested itself in bringing to light that in the very procedure ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to his face so dismally. Bessie Fairfax was looking at him, her eyebrows raised, and fancying she saw a change; he was certainly not so brown as he used to be, nor so buoyant, nor so animated. But it would have perplexed her to define what the change she fancied was. Conscious of her observation, Harry dissembled a minute, then pushed back his chair, and invited her to come away to the old sitting-room, where the evening sun shone. No one offered to follow them; they were permitted ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to lecture upon the Physical and Metaphysical schools of Alexandria, it may be better, perhaps, to define the meaning of these two epithets. Physical, we shall all agree, means that which belongs to [Greek text: phusis]; natura; nature, that which [Greek text: phuetai], nascitur, grows, by an organic life, and therefore decays again; which has a beginning, and therefore, I presume, an end. And ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... revelation from God; and, referring to the Canon as received by the Jews, declares the books of which it consists genuine and credible. And by God being the author of the Bible we mean that it was "given by inspiration of Him." It may be necessary here to define certain terms which either have been, or may be, hereafter, employed in this essay. And these are:—Scripture; Testament; Inspiration; Gospel; Christianity; and Religion. Scripture, from scriptura, signifies writing—applied by way of eminence to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... some extravagant tom-foolery, and plenty of vulgarity. But its originality, its irrepressible drolleries, its substantial human nature, and its intense vitality, place it quite in a class by itself. We can no more group it, or test it by any canon of criticism, than we could group or define Pantagruel or Faust. There are some works of genius which seem to transcend all criticism, of which the very extravagances and incoherences increase the charm. And Pickwick ought to live with Gil Blas and Tristram Shandy. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly conscious of it. I could not imagine Antonia's living for a week in any other house in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... they probably dwelt among the islands, some of which were seen, and others known to exist, off the Arctic coast opposite the mouth of the Greygoose River. Moreover, a faint hope, that he would have found it difficult to define, was aroused by the fact that the kidnapper of his child had formerly been the rescuer ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... faith. He worked out his own ideas as to the origin of soul and heaven and God and Christ. They were terms that had filtered down to him through the hard surroundings of his life, and he set to work to define them in the fashion of the primitive savage. We meet with other examples. Thus among the superstitions of Lancashire is one which tells us of the lingering belief in a long journey after death, when food is necessary to support the soul. A man having died of apoplexy, near ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... but ever with a vague dread of being recalled to prison; not that prison, but one which was in itself a dim idea—not of a place, but of a care and sorrow: of something oppressive and always present, and yet impossible to define. At last, the morning dawned, and there was the jail itself—cold, black, and dreary, and very real indeed. He was left to himself, however, and there was comfort in that. He had liberty to walk in a small paved yard at ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... in the case of those whom the world has failed to recognise, and whom therefore it is the business of the critic to make known and to define. It is too soon to say in what particular niche among the teachers of the race posterity will place him; enough that in our own generation he has already been accepted as one of the wise masters, who, being called to high thinking for generous ends, did not fall below ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... reference than to some particular event was even possible: "It appears, therefore," he says, "that the prophecy, considered in itself, is so expressed, that no one, except the first author of the prophecy, will be able convincingly to define the exact event to which it really refers." We shall afterwards see that the testimony of the New Testament to which Dresde here alludes, does not by any means demand such a limitation. We have seen that Joel points to a fourfold oppression of Israel by the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell. Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace; The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... family; the man who works for specific objects, such as political reform; this man, worthy of all respect though he be, is still intent on the stages of his journey. The spiritual man, as we must now define him from the point of view of Ethical Culture, is the man who always thinks of the ultimate goal of his journey, i. e., a moral character complete in every particular, and who is influenced by that thought at all ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... applicable to the consistency of the stem are difficult to define. In general, stems may be either fleshy or cartilaginous. The meaning of these terms can best be learned by careful study of specimens of each, but a few general characters can be given here. Fleshy, fibrous stems occur ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... "inner light." Hence, criticism at its highest is not a theorist's attempt to impose iron laws on writers: it is an attempt to capture the secret of that "inner light" and of those who possess it and to communicate it to others. It is also an attempt to define the conditions in which the "inner light" has most happily manifested itself, and to judge new writers of promise according to the measure in which they have been true to the spirit, though not necessarily to the technicalities, of the great tradition. Criticism, then, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... made a soldier, which is a man-destroying machine in two senses,—a thing for the prosecuting or repelling an invasion like the block of stone in the fortress or the plate of iron on the side of the Monitor. They are alike. I have tried in vain to define a difference, and I see only this. The iron-clad with its gun is the bigger soldier: the more formidable in attack, the less liable to destruction in a given time; the block the most capable of resistance; both are equally obedient to officers. Or ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... "let us define our terms. Let us examine the nature of Good. Let us boldly and fearlessly stare our great opponent in the face and discover the true lineaments of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... sir, as to define exactly what your intentions are as to your son's future. Time is very valuable here, and every fraction squandered has to be ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... accepted its reality, sympathising, through friendship rather than through moral or intellectual agreement. For he was one of those fortunate mortals who, while possessing a strong sense of God, have but small necessity to define Him. Many of Julius's keenest agonies appeared to him subjective, a matter of words and phrases. Yet he respected them, out of the sincere regard he bore the man who suffered them. He did more. He tried a practical remedy. Modestly, as one asking rather than conferring ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... To this question we must give at once an affirmative answer. The expression of Cuvier, regarding the faculty of reasoning in lower animals, 'Leur intelligence execute des operations du meme genre,' is true in its full sense. We can in no manner define reason so as to exclude acts which are at every moment present to our observation, and which we find in many instances to contravene the natural instincts of the species. The demeanour and acts of the dog in reference to his master, or the various uses to which he is put by man, are ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the suffixes are very difficult to define. Many learners have believed that only concrete substances could be represented by the use of the suffix "ajx." Such words as bonajxoj, amikajxoj, etc., they would do away with, and replace by boneco, amikeco, etc. On giving the matter a little thought, however, it is quite clear ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... bounty, good as wise, To work our safety, and ensure her plan, Contrived to bind and rivet man to man: Lift against Virtue, Power's oppressive rod; Betray thy country, and deny thy God; And, in one general comprehensive line, To group, which volumes scarcely could define, 20 Whate'er of sin and dulness can be said, Join to a Fox's[118] heart a Dashwood's[119] head; Yet may'st thou pass unnoticed in the throng, And, free from envy, safely sneak along: The rigid saint, by whom no mercy's shown To saints whose lives are better than his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... materialism, if it had appeared two centuries later; but in the period in which his years were cast, the art of keeping close to the ground had not been fully learned. Matthew was filled with a sentiment which he neither knew nor attempted to define. At least he was sure that the mare was not to be caught. It was to be a dispensation somehow and someway that the horse should gallop over the hills with its dead burden to its back from year's end to year's end. When Mr. Jackson ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... The trustees did not define the precise nature of the relation between the president and the dean, but left these officers to make such division of work as should seem to them best, and we read in Mrs. Irvine's report for 1895 that, "For the present the Dean remains in charge of all that relates to the public devotional ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... I faced William. Spiritually speaking, we parted company. He passed into a praying and fasting trance, and my heart was nearly broken with the loneliness, for praying and fasting did not agree with me, and William seemed to recede in some mystical sense hard to define, so that I became a ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... stages of decline gratuitously painful to record; and which in this case mine cannot be the cold and technical hand to trace. At length came that time when physicians could define within a few days the final hour of release. And latterly the mocking pruderies of rank had been laid aside, and Maltravers had, for some hours at least in the day, taken his watch beside the couch ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed— in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them—conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... apprehension view objects in an identically ludicrous, beautiful, or repellent light; and in order to facilitate such identical apprehension between members of the same social circle or family, they usually establish a language, turns of speech, or terms to define such shades of apprehension as exist for them alone. In our particular family such apprehension was common to Papa, Woloda, and myself, and was developed to the highest pitch, Dubkoff also approximated to our coterie in apprehension, but Dimitri, though infinitely more ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... did the charm of Bakounin consist? I believe that it is impossible to define it exactly. It was not by the force of persuasion that he agitated. It was not his thought which awakened the thought of others. But he aroused every rebellious heart and awoke there an 'elemental' anger. And this anger, transplendent with beauty, became creative and showed to the exalted ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... not define a certain kind of labor, but a certain grade of labor. Architecture was a domestic industry once—when every savage mother set up her own tepee. To be confined to domestic industry is no proper distinction of womanhood; it is an historic distinction, an economic distinction, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and is found in almost every part of ethical science. A good action is not distinguished from a bad action by marks so plain as those which distinguish a hexagon from a square. There is a frontier where virtue and vice fade into each other. Who has ever been able to define the exact boundary between courage and rashness, between prudence and cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where it ceases ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... supreme was Westphalia, and the country which was subjected to its laws was designated as the Terre Rouge. There was no assembly of this tribunal beyond the limits of this Terre Rouge, but it would be quite impossible to define these limits with any accuracy. However, the free judges, assuming the right of suppressing certain crimes committed beyond their territory, on more than one occasion summoned persons living in various parts of Germany, and even in provinces far from Westphalia, to appear before them. We do not ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... rather vague terms. It would seem, however, that his aesthetic had a basis of Manichean metaphysics. But what is significant for us, in this youthful essay, is that the first time Augustin wrote as an author it was to define and to praise Beauty. He did not yet know, at least not directly from the text, the dialogues of Plato, and he is already inclined to Platonism. He was this by nature. His Christianity will be a religion all of light and beauty. For him, the supreme Beauty is identical with the supreme Love. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... to find ourselves compelled to dissent very widely from many of Professor Koelliker's remarks; and from none more thoroughly than from those in which he seeks to define what we may term the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in her, though I cannot define it. Her letters are less frequent; they are shorter; they are full of Antony and his wild, ambitious schemes. They keep the form, but they lack the spirit, of her ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... eighteenth century was remarkably similar to that of the Gold Coast in Africa at the end of the nineteenth. The French persistently attempted to encroach upon the English sphere of influence, and it was in attempting to define the two spheres that George Washington learned his first lesson in diplomacy and strategy. The French and English American colonies were almost perpetually at war with one another, the objective being the spot where Pittsburg now stands, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... limits of the old city, she paused, and leaning against the angle of a shop, looked curiously about her, as if endeavoring to define certain localities. At length she ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... barbarism, rejected every species of political aristocracy, and represented the English constitution as essentially antagonistic to the American, not as its type. I have accepted universal suffrage in principle, and defended American democracy, which I define to be territorial democracy, and carefully distinguish from pure individualism on the one hand, and from pure socialism or ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... surprised at my not having called this "beauty." Of course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... mind—ha! an original device!—who can accomplish this?—a device without a parallel! Think upon it, Moor! That were an art worthy of thee for its inventor. Has not poisoning been raised almost to the rank of a regular science, and Nature compelled, by the force of experiments, to define her limits, so that one may now calculate the heart's throbbings for years in advance, and say to the beating pulse, "So far, and no farther"? Why should not one try one's skill in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... aChristianity that is alive, though it may count but twelve apostles. As in India, so in Europe, many would call death what we call life, many would call life what we call death. Here, as elsewhere, it is high time that men should define the exact meaning of their words, trusting that definiteness, frankness, and honesty may offer a better chance of mutual understanding, and serve as a stronger bond of union between man and man, than vague formulas, faint-hearted ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the common-sense view. A gentleman can ask first for the lady of the house, then for any other member of the family, but he need never leave more than two cards. He must in this, as in all etiquette, exercise common-sense. No one can define all the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... find that I must go back to the subject of my last paper on the wasp in order to define my precise attitude towards that insect. Then, too, there was another wasp at table, not in itself a remarkably interesting incident, but I am anxious to relate it for the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... have been no great amount of grumbling. But the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune, and now the time was come when he must define ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... so in New York, where all power was concentrated in the hands of a few landowners. "To say," says Sabine, "that the political institutions of New York formed a feudal aristocracy is to define them with tolerable accuracy. The soil was owned by a few. The masses were mere retainers or tenants as in the monarchies of Europe."[31] The feudal lord was also the dominant manufacturer and trader. He forced his tenants to sign covenants that they ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... important interviews with Brett, Hartington's secretary, with regard to Central Asian affairs. He gave up Merv, and in return I agreed with him that the Foreign Office should propose to the India Office to ask Russia to define the Persian frontier by an English-Russian-Persian Commission, and the Afghan frontier by an English-Russian-Afghan Commission. Lord Granville was unfavourable, Lord Hartington favourable to this view, which ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Krylenko. The excitement of the internal struggle was over. It had been bitterly fought within the party, and both Krylenko of the Revolutionary Tribunal and Peters of the Extraordinary Commission were there merely to witness the official act that would define their new position. Peters talked of his failure to get away for some shooting; Krylenko jeered at me for having refused to believe in the Lockhart conspiracy. Neither showed any traces of the bitter struggle waged within the party for and against the almost dictatorial powers of the Extraordinary ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... any of your horrid New England directness, cousin," said St. Clare, gayly. "If I answer that question, I know you'll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last; and I'm not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's glass houses, but I never mean to put up one ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ordinances, with a right of appeal to the Municipal Court. Further than this, the charter granted to the Municipal Court the right to issue writs of habeas corpus in all cases arising under the city ordinances. Thirty-six sections were required to define the legislative powers of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... define by any precise characters the morphological range of the present species. Its variations ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... in gaiety, but very obviously different from her in states of mind affecting her appearance. She was unable to define the change; but it was unmistakable—Stella Condon seemed a little old-fashioned. When now, to Lowrie's wife, Linda was unmistakably out-of-date. Lowrie, fast accomplishing all that had been predicted for him, had married a girl incomprehensible ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the national government must not only define the rights of citizens, but it must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them in every state ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... do not often define it, that the forces we women fight in the enemy are the forces that have left ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... without reflecting on the character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know not. A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... move, and who owe this position, not to any transcendent qualities, but to the combined and irresistible influence of great personal charms, a high degree of mental vivacity, and those sympathetic and harmonizing qualities which it is so difficult to define, but which are equally distinct from mere amiability on the one hand and intense self-devotion on the other. There seems to be in such characters a hint of heroic possibilities that would only be narrowed and despoiled of some of their charm if put to the test of action. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... arrived at his destination, Mr. Tolman established himself temporarily at a hotel, and spent the next three or four days in walking about the city looking for what he wanted. What he wanted was rather difficult to define, but the way in which he put the matter to himself ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. A salt tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of the harbour entrance the shadows of canons were beginning most beautifully to define themselves. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... consequently obscured. If an animal, for example, is the suctorial member of a circle of species, forming the natatorial type of genera, forming a family or sub-family which in its turn is rasorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to define. But, on the other hand, if we take the rapacious or sub- typical group of birds, and look in it for the tribe which is again the rapacious or sub-typical group of its order, we may expect to find the qualities of that group exalted or intensified, and accordingly ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... so complex and unstable that one feels it is presumptuous to try to define it. It is a city so highly-strung, so ingrained with fickleness, and so changeable in its tastes, that a book that truly describes it at the moment it is written is no longer accurate by the time ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... outside those paltry limits, far away over all the spires and chimney-tops, where the sky was so bright and blue, life, real life, unfolded itself under many a varied aspect, and with this suspicion, sprung up a lingering dissatisfaction, a longing for something which no words of mine could define. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... he had used in getting himself away from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in the pretence that he ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... If we define poetry as the heart of man expressed in beautiful language, we shall not say that we have no national poetry. True, America has produced no Shakespeare and no Milton, but we have an inheritance in all English literature; and many poets in America have followed in the footsteps of their literary ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... many there are like her—read just enough to know there are such and such characters and such and such incidents. Now of course she has heard the minister define Robert's crime, as he would call it I suppose, so she thinks she can use the whole argument," replied Grace, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... endeavoured to define the relationship between these three people, so incongruously set beneath one roof. Of the fact that Miss Beverly was not happy I became assured. But respecting her exact position in the household ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... an affectionate good-by, promising to write regularly twice a week, and to return, if possible, at the end of three months. After he was gone, it seemed to Fanny that one-half of her life had left her, and she felt very unhappy. There was something in her sister's manner which she could not define, and as Julia seemed anxious to avoid her, she spent much of her time with Mrs. Miller, who each day grew fonder of her little "Kentucky sister," as she often called her in imitation ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... shall," said Crosbie. But he had had higher hopes in marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with Mortimer Gazebee. What those hopes were he could hardly define to himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of them. Lady de Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to that secretaryship at ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to him that they brought something a little different, in expression or feeling or suggestion, from the notes that came for Janet, which Janet often read out for their common benefit. He was unable to define the difference, but he was aware that it gave him pleasure, especially as he could not find that it was in any way connected with the respectful consideration that Elfrida might have thought due to his forty-seven years. If Mr. Cardiff had gone so far as to soliloquize upon the subject ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... meete in Holland with his ambassadors and messengers, to hold a friendly conference betweene them about the redressing and reformation of the grieuances and damages aforesayd: and that they should by equall waight of diligent elimination ponder, and in the balance of iustice discusse and define al and singular the foresaid grieuances and damages inflicted on both parts. [Sidenote: A meeting at Hage the 28. of August 1407.] Howbeit at length after sundry prorogations then made and continued on this behalfe, our ambassadors and messengers aforesaid vpon the 28. of August last past, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... not to settle the etymology or definition of a word, but to show that women had often died in childbed, poisoned in some way by their medical attendants. On the other point, I, at least, have no controversy with anybody, and I think the student will do well to avoid it in this connection. If I must define my position, however, as well as the term in question, I am contented with Worcester's definition; provided always this avowal do not open another side controversy on the merits of his Dictionary, which Dr. Meigs has not cited, as compared with Webster's, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Polk," I answered, and this time I raised my eyes with perfect frankness. "If you could define a real woman, Polk, in what terms would you express her?" I asked him straight ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... above—when it had once been infused into the minds of its first teachers—when it had gained full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few—it might be—and to the Protestant, the rationa Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was—left to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling Providence. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, was dexterously eluded, or speciously conceded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Boaz why he had not told what he knew as to the identity of that fugitive in the night, he seemed to find it hard to say exactly. How could a man of no education define for them his own but half-denied misgivings about the Law, his sense of oppression, constraint and awe, of being on the defensive, even, in an abject way, his skepticism? About his wanting, come what might, to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... and his Wife" besides reviving Lie's popularity also served to define his position in Norwegian literature. He had at first been assigned a definite corner as the "poet of Nordland," but his ambition was not satisfied with so narrow a province. In all his tales, so far, he has surpassed all predecessors in his descriptions of the sea; and the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Church inculcates the paramount necessity of an external authoritative Law to guide all her members;—Creeds to define the foundation of their Faith,—a Catechism to teach them the necessary elements of Christian Doctrine,—the several forms of Prayer contained in the Prayer Book to instruct them further in Religion, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... appears an advocate for the firm establishment of the papal despotism; yet he aims to give an enlightened principle to regulate the actions of mankind. The intentions of a visionary are difficult to define. If he were really an advocate for despotism, what occasioned an imprisonment for the greater part of his days? Did he lay his project much deeper than the surface of things? Did Campanella imagine that, if men were allowed to philosophise ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... perceptibly broader than the south. The only other important difference appears to be in the angular label-mould above the north entrance: whatever may have been its original function or significance, it serves to define the tower sexually, so to speak, as effectively as does the beard on a man's face. In Amiens the north tower is taller than the south, and more massive in its upper stages. The only traceable indication ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... found himself again among his constituents in Illinois, and although there was no political campaign in progress, current events and the roused state of public feeling seemed to require that he should define his views in a public speech. It marks his acuteness as a politician that he already realized what a fatal stab the Dred Scott decision had given his vaunted principle of "Popular Sovereignty," with which he justified his famous repeal of the Missouri Compromise. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... as if the Church might define contrary to the Scriptures, as she may contrary to the writings of particular men, how ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... difficulties that have since entangled me, regarded with a tremendous perplexity aspects that have now become lucidly plain. I came back to England confused, and doing what confused people are apt to do, clinging to an inadequate phrase that seemed at any rate to define a course of action. The word "efficiency" had got hold of me. All our troubles came, one assumed, from being "inefficient." One turned towards politics with a bustling air, and was ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the regal beauty crowned by my mother's massive hair, and pencilled brows. It was a timid, girlish face, with reverent eyes, and ripe, tremulous lips,—weak lips, as I remember them. From babyhood, I felt a want in the face. I had, of course, no capacity to define it; it was represented to me only by the fact that it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... fair to let the critic defend his own nomenclature; and the passage which I shall quote will serve not only as another attempt to define romanticism, but also to explain why Brandl regards the Lake poets as our romantic school par excellence. "'Lake School' is a name, but no designation. This was felt in England, where many critics have accordingly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... itself was large and old, and its far extremities, mantled as they were with dusk and shadow, impressed upon the mind that involuntary and vague sensation, not altogether unmixed with awe, which the eye, resting upon a view that it can but dimly and confusedly define, so frequently communicates to the heart. There was a strange oppression at Mordaunt's breast with which he in vain endeavoured to contend. Ever and anon, an icy but passing chill, like the shivers of a fever, shot through his veins, and a wild and unearthly and objectless ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... truth. All those rejected by you as heretics I also reject for the love of peace. For I accept as one the most holy churches of God, yours of elder, and this of new Rome; yours the See of the Apostle Peter, and this of the imperial city, I define to be one. I assent to all the acts of the four holy councils—that is, of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon—done for the confirmation of the faith and the state of the Church, and suffer nothing of their good judgments to be shaken; but I know that those ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... made him inclined to believe that his real friends were to be found among such people. Like many another young man of a generous heart and simple faith, he cherished great plans for a popular art, concerts, and a theater for the people, which he would have been hard put to it to define. He thought that a revolution might make it possible to bring about a great artistic renascence, and he pretended that he had no other interest in the social movement. But he was hoodwinking himself: he was much too alive not to be attracted and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... native State, where he did the law trade in a small way. Now—Smooth, I think they call you, says he—if I be not much mistaken the General will create a Babylon of parties, the result of which will render it difficult to define his own position. If the General would but get up a cross between southern secessionists and northern free-soilers, how happily it would illustrate his policy.' Clasping his hand, 'Major Sykes,' said I, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Tim said once, when they discussed dying as if it were a game. He wished to define his position, as ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the moon is on the ocean, And our little sons and heirs From a natural emotion Wish the luminary theirs; Then a feeling hard to stifle, Even harder to define, Makes me feel I 'd give a trifle For the ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... possibility that it would prove less complaisant. The safeguards and limitations inserted in any Act of the kind must of necessity be couched in general terms. The constitutional history of the United States and other countries is full of cases showing how difficult it is to define in practice where the border line between intra and ultra vires comes. It is the custom of all Governments, if there is any possible room for debate as to their competence to take any particular line of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... and paper. The leader has a dictionary which she opens at any place and selects a word which the rest are to define. ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... been resumed between France and England; but the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 brought the game of war again to a pause and restored Hudson Bay to England. The Company received back all its forts on the Bay; but the treaty did not define the boundaries to be observed between the fur traders of Quebec pressing north and the fur traders of the Bay pressing south, and this unsettled point proved a source ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... meagre in their instructions, from the difficulty of punching text illustrations. The article on accentuation is, we are told, the first successful attempt in any elementary work on the Flute, to define this important subject. It is written in a lucid and popular style, and is so attractive, that did our room allow, we might be induced to insert part of it. Appended to the treatise are thirty pages of Duettinos and Exercises, and altogether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... party in power chose Judge Measy as their candidate for the vacant place. The prospective judge was waited on privately by a deputation of Mrs. Tarbell's friends, headed by Mrs. Pegley, and asked to define his position on the Tarbell question. The deputation did not contain many voters, and no bargain which Mr. Measy, as he then was, could have made with it would have increased his majority very largely: as he was pretty sure of a majority, he must be cleared of all suspicion of making a bargain. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... some better-succeeding plan, then might their conjunctive force seem more potent; as life goes, however, unhappily, they are not always so provided, and the English "but" takes on its Gallic significance, which leads the Frenchman to define it as ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... that murder, approved and acknowledged, is not an epidemic peculiar to any time, or any country, or any opinion. We need not include hot-blooded nations of the South in order to define it as one characteristic of modern Monarchy. You may trace it in the Kings of France, Francis I., Charles IX., Henry III., Lewis XIII., Lewis XIV., in the Emperors Ferdinand I. and II., in Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, in James and William. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... perhaps familiar only with the lowliest and most unpretending of its kind, we are conscious that it deeply impressed even the "unsunned temper" of our childhood. The wisest among us may not be able to define precisely these impressions, or trace to their source the admiration and satisfaction it occasions, yet all are ready to acknowledge its beautiful fitness to adorn and glorify the Christian temple. But to the thoughtful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... the more she became convinced that this life which she had painted for herself in such glowing colours was really most simple and commonplace. There was something strange in it as well. What was it? That she could not define. At any rate, from her brother's account, it seemed to her very simple, tedious and boring. Apparently he had lived just anywhere, and had done just anything; at work one day, and idle the next; it was also plain that he liked drinking, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... loathed the million tricks of civilization. At the same time, being a man of some discrimination at least, he rarely let himself go completely. Of these wilder, simpler instincts he was afraid. They might flood all else. If he yielded entirely, something he dreaded, without being able to define, would happen; the structure of his being would suffer a nameless violence, so that he would have to break with the world. These cravings stood for that loot of the soul which he must deny himself. Complete surrender ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... of view. I do not know a more filling moment, exclusive of the wine, than he can enjoy there, with those cascades before him and those temples beside him; for Mr. Gray has mentioned only one of the two, I do not know why, that exist on this enchanted spot, and that define their sharp, black shadows as with an inky line just beyond the restaurant tables. One is round and the other oblong, and the round one has been called the Sibyls', though now it is getting itself called Vesta's—the goddess who long unrightfully claimed the temple of Mater Matuta ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... to avoid mere current controversial topics, and to encourage our contributors to define as far as possible the aim and outlook of education, as the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... questions at present insoluble, upon which it is intellectually, and indeed morally wrong to assert that we have real knowledge, had long been with him, but, although he had earned abundant odium by openly resisting the claims of dogmatic authority, he had not been compelled to define his philosophical position until he entered the Metaphysical Society. How he came to enrich the English language with the name "Agnostic" is explained in his article "Agnosticism" ("Collected Essays" 5 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... been introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define what we ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... had visited. My past experience had so disgusted me with eye surgeons that for one week I had daily passed his house, instinctively avoiding an entrance. One day, however, I quite as instinctively sought an interview with the Doctor, impelled by some strange impulse I could not well define. I was familiarly but courteously greeted with these words, "You have been in the city an entire week, and yet have not called to see me." In reply I frankly confessed that I avoided upon principle the members of his ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... he trod on, was the same as it had been but an hour, a moment before—yet suffering still from previous agony, and receiving back Barbara as an offering from the grave, that might have closed over her;—as the Ranger approached the Buccaneer, in a frame of mind which it is utterly impossible to define, Dalton threw upon him a look so full of contempt, as he glanced over his diminutive and disproportioned form, that Robin never could have forgotten it, had it not passed unnoticed in the deep feeling ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the bridegroom-elect should be marked by a gallant and affectionate assiduity towards his lady-love—a devouement easily felt and understood, but not so easy to define. That of the lady towards him should manifest delicacy, tenderness, and confidence; while looking for his thorough devotion to herself, she should not captiously take offence and show airs at his showing the same kind of attention to other ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... was the handsomest man I have ever seen, though I cannot tell why I think so. His hair and eyes were brown, his hair almost black, it was so dark, and a trifle curly. His eyes were clear and honest looking, with a touch of fun in them and something else that I have not been able to define, but that I liked. He wore a mustache, but it only partially concealed his mouth. I think perhaps it was his mouth that I liked best. It was a firm mouth, maybe a hard one, but I admire ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... often plainly influenced by chains of affinities. Nothing can be easier than to define a number of characters common to all birds; but in the case of crustaceans, such definition has hitherto been found impossible. There are crustaceans at the opposite ends of the series, which have hardly a character in common; yet the species at both ends, from being plainly allied to ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... meekly a deal of pestering and starvation, or be in bad odor with the senior members of the sewing circle. Duly appreciating all these difficulties, Brother Spyke chose a mission to Antioch, where the field of his labors would be wide, and the gates not open to restraints. And though he could not define the exact character of his mission to Antioch, he so worked upon the sympathies of the credulous old lady, as to well-nigh create in her mind a resolve to give the amount she had struggled to get and set apart ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Afterwards she passed a night of a very agitating kind. She dozed and dreamed, and awoke and dreamed again. Her life seemed all to run into dreams,—a strange confusion was about her, through which she could define nothing. Once waking up, as she supposed, she saw a group round her bed, the doctor,—with a candle in his hand, (how should the doctor be there in the middle of the night?) holding her hand or ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... academically, "would define romance as a species of fictitious writing originally composed in the Romance dialects, and afterward in prose. But—the dictionary is prosaic, it has no soul. Shall I tell you what romance means to me? I will. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... which he could not define held Stephen speechless; and before he could command his words, she began again in the same cool and quiet voice. "His mother ran away to marry his father. She came of a very good family in Fredericksburg, and her people ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... turned from it sharply. The deep-seated travail of his grief abruptly reached the paroxysm. With long strides he crossed the garden and reentered the Mission church itself, plunging into the coolness of its atmosphere as into a bath. What he searched for he did not know, or, rather, did not define. He knew only that he was suffering, that a longing for Angele, for some object around which his great love could enfold itself, was tearing at his heart with iron teeth. He was ready to be deluded; craved the hallucination; begged pitifully for the illusion; anything ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and massive than are usually the men of whom the terms are predicated. For every sort of permutation and combination is possible in human nature; and if I now proceed to define more fully what I have in mind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to each of those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg you to regard my conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary. I select types ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... benefit of the large number who will not be able to visit the locality, it may be well to define more fully and precisely the exact spot in which it was found. It is near the west line of the town of Lafayette, in the upper section of the valley of the Onondaga Creek, called Christian Hollow—a short two miles above the south line of the Reservation of the Onondaga Indians. The valley at ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... angel from heaven had taken possession of David's body and come here to play a divine part; because David sometimes talked so strangely—seemed not only to doubt the existence of a heavenly host, but even of Something beyond, so awful in Bridget's mind that she hardly liked to define it in words, though in her own Welsh tongue it was so ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... FIRST in the shape of a most chaotic pure experience which sets us questions, of a SECOND in the way of fundamental categories, long ago wrought into the structure of our consciousness and practically irreversible, which define the general frame within which answers must fall, and of a THIRD which gives the detail of the answers in the shapes most congruous with all our present needs, is, as I take it, the essence of the humanistic conception. It represents experience in its pristine purity to be now so enveloped ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... substitute for the good old terms "seaman" and "mariner." Capt. Bertie, of the Ruby gunship, once reported the pressing of a "sailor," Thomas Letting by name, out of a collier in Yarmouth Roads, and was called upon by My Lords to define the new-fangled term. This he did with admirable circumlocution. "As for explaining the word 'sailor,'" said he, "I can doe it no otherwise than (by) letting of you know that Thomas Letting is a Sailor."—Admiralty ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... into the dark hallway an uneasy feeling took possession of him—a feeling hard to define, and one for ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... himself—and to throw himself, with the sympathy of old friendship, into all the troubles and all the joys of the landlord's niece. If the reader be one who cannot take such a journey, and pass a month or two without the society of persons whom he would define as ladies and gentlemen, he had better be warned at once, and move on, not setting foot within the Lion d'Or ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... do not attempt to define the female figure below the waist, at least; but although we may safely veil or even conceal Nature, we cannot misrepresent or outrage her, except at the cost of utter loss of beauty. The lines of drapery, or of any article of dress, must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... French wished to define the northern boundary line between their possessions and those of the English, it was quite easy to do so, because they had already made treaties with the rulers of the various provinces and their rights in the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... impatiently yet with a feeling somehow of impending danger she could not wholly define, "—you've got to do it, so you had as well quit your nonsense and go ahead!" at the same time raking the horse's sides ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... hand knocked softly; before he could speak it opened, and Mrs. Trapes reappeared; she was clad in a long flannel dressing gown, and as she paused in the shadows by the door he could vaguely define that she still held the precious watch to ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... subject to the laws of periodicity, stochastic analysis, and with some rather brilliant manipulation it can be reduced to a Fourier Series. Fourier says that Maxwell is right and goes on to define exactly when, in a series of combined periodicities of apparently random motion, all the little particles will be moving in the same direction. Stochastic analysis says that if the letter "U" follows the letter "Q" in most cases, words beginning with "Q" will ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... or indirectly, to any request of a requesting entity for a copy or copies of an article or articles published in any issue of a periodical, the publication date of which is more than five years prior to the date when the request is made. These guidelines do not define the meaning, with respect to such a request, of ". . . such aggregate quantities as to substitute for ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... very strange, but I cannot define her face as I peer back into those childish times, though I can feel her strong arms about me. She seemed large and quite middle-aged to me, although she was in fact a handsome girl of twenty-three. Only by reference to a rare daguerreotype ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... necessarily less interesting. We all have to pass through that painful era of self-consciousness which prefaces manhood, that time when we feel so deeply, and are so utterly unable to express to others, or even to define clearly to ourselves, what it is we do feel. The natural freedom of childhood is dead within us; the conventional freedom of riper years is struggling to birth, and its efforts are sometimes ludicrous to an unsympathetic observer. In Lewis Carroll's mental attitude during this critical ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... years, amid varying external conditions, in which each modification was suggested by circumstances and tested by experience. And with the complexity of our operations our animating ideas have been striking deeper and growing bolder. Speaking then up to date, I would define the root idea of 'University Extension' in the following simple formula: University Education for the Whole Nation organized on a basis ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could only define as classical; and it was admitted that his nosegay vest and blue coat, as far as tender refinement went, far surpassed ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... And this a revelation; Why this a dream, why that a sweven, And not to ev'ry man *like even;* *alike* Why this a phantom, why these oracles, I n'ot; but whoso of these miracles The causes knoweth bet than I, Divine* he; for I certainly *define *Ne can them not,* nor ever think *do not know them* To busy my wit for to swink* *labour To know of their significance The genders, neither the distance Of times of them, nor the causes For why that this more than ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... cultured in our choice of them. Be it known to you then that our respected Head, vulgarly called The Bogey by ill-trained Juniors, is among our elect set yclept Lemonade, partly owing to her habit of fizzing over, and partly to a certain acid quality in her temper, otherwise hard to define. Miss Douglas, our honoured Form mistress, being a canny Scot, goes by the familiar appellation of Thistles, intended also to subtly convey our appreciation—or shall I say depreciation?—of ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... man who sells both scented soap and pilchards, would become narrow. We do not come into contact with the outside world much, save through the medium of potted lobster, and to sell a man potted lobster is not to have our fingers on his pulse. Potted lobster does not define a man. All customers are alike to the grocer, provided their money is good. I perceive now that I was over-hasty in deciding to become a grocer. That is rather for one's old age. While one is young, and interested in persons rather than in things, there ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... when they had marched for about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... synod of the church; therefore we add, that it belongeth to the synod (the clergy having the chief place therein, to give direction and advice), not to receive and approve the definition of the prince in things which concern the worship of God, but itself to define and determine what orders and customs are fittest to be observed in such things, that thereafter the prince may approve and ratify the same, and press them upon his subjects by his regal coactive power. To me it is no less than a matter ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... hour, the great Creator's share Of mine existence; and I turn'd to thee As men to idols, madly on my knee; And then uplifted by those arms of thine, I sat beside thee, warm'd with other wine Than vintage balm; and, mindful of thy blush, I guess'd a thought which words will not define. ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... powers of a species should be much improved by the continued natural selection of the most intellectual individuals. To show how minds graduate, just reflect how impossible every one has yet found it, to define the difference in mind of man and the lower animals; the latter seem to have the very same attributes in a much lower stage of perfection than the lowest savage. I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... not in front, one had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they were looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed with one another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate or define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little crowd of Selenites were standing. They seemed a ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... nor could he determine precisely how far his feelings were affected by this discovery. He felt a dislike toward Thorne on account of his tyrannical disposition and ill-treatment of younger boys. He cherished a dislike for the governess, the cause of which he could not as well define. Now, it appeared that these two were allied to each other. I beg to say that Jasper was too sensible and gentlemanly to dislike the governess simply because she was poor. That he knew very well had nothing to do with ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... remarks made in IV:Def.vi. of this part it follows that, if objects are separated from the present by a longer period than we can define in conception, though their dates of occurrence be widely separated one from the other, they all ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... admire and respect modesty and pudeur as much as any man—something has gone: a recognition of the bounds of division. There is, if that is a lamentable matter, a loss of certain of our young tricks at fifty. We have ceased to blush readily: and let me ask you to define a blush. Is it an involuntary truth or an ingenuous lie? I know that this will sound like the language of a man not a little jealous of his youthful compeers. I can but leave it to rightly judging persons to consider whether a healthy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... chapter on design I have described patterns as the examples or illustrations of the art of decoration, and as being the records of the motives which produced them in different eras. My present object is to class and define ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... that the Parliament should be illiberal; so Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their plays, say: "The children thou shalt get by this civilian cannot inherit by the law." This is interesting, because they use all the words I have been trying to define; when they say "the children thou shalt get by this civilian," they mean by this civilian a person who is under the civil, or Roman, or church law; that is, they mean to say, although you marry a woman ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... said council amounting to a rejection unless such act be again passed, or that of such particular legislature should be again negatived by a specified number of members of each branch. Eighthly, To establish a national judiciary, the members of which should hold office during good behavior; and to define their duties, powers, privileges, and emoluments. Ninthly, To provide for the admission of new states into the Union. Tenthly, To guaranty a republican form of government to each state and territory. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the crown were permitted to define authoritatively the import of acts of parliament, and on their official decisions the colonial judge convicted, and the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... use the term here in all seriousness, in all good faith; not critically, not playfully, but tenderly. Because in the humble world in which our comradeship was formed there is none other to designate the highest type of friendship, no other phrase to define that affection between girl and girl which is as the love of sisters. In the great workaday world where we toiled and hoped and prayed and suffered together for a brief period we were called "the three lady-friends" by our shop-mates, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... crave pardon, I had lost my thoughts. Why humour, as 'tis 'ens', we thus define it, To be a quality of air, or water, And in itself holds these two properties, Moisture and fluxure: as, for demonstration, Pour water on this floor, 'twill wet and run: Likewise the air, forced through a horn or trumpet, Flows instantly away, and ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson |
