"Uncertain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be in some common hall trod by the footsteps of an ever-changing crowd. But the brilliant sunlight no longer streamed on the pallid walls, the tapers burning at every altar simply gleamed like stars amidst the uncertain gloom which filled the building. A solemn high mass had been celebrated at midnight with extraordinary pomp, amidst all the splendour of candles, chants, golden vestments, and swinging, steaming censers; but of all this glorious display there now remained only the regulation number of tapers ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... examination. When sick, according to Parkes, the coat of the animal is rough or standing, the nostrils are dry or covered with foam, the eyes are heavy, the tongue protrudes, the respiration is difficult, the movements are slow and uncertain, and the various organs of the body perform their functions abnormally. On the other hand, the healthy animal moves freely, has a bright eye and moist nostril and a clear skin, the respiration is not hurried and the breath has no unpleasant odor, the circulation ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... against a massive carved bookshelf, and looked at Sagan, who, with a cigar-butt buried in his ragged beard, was walking, with long, uncertain steps, up and down the floor. The tiger in the old ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... It became a marvel to Martie that life could go on for any one while her own future was so frightfully uncertain. She was going to have a baby, and she was not married—that was the summary of the situation. It was like something in a book, only worse than any book that she had ever read. Sometimes she felt as if her brain were being ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... night leading to far-off African lands, hugging the shore by a tufted darkness of trees, there came a felucca that gleamed with lanterns. The oars sounded in the water, mingling with the voices of the men, whose vague, uncertain forms, some crouched, some standing up, some leaning over the river, that was dyed with streaks of light into which the shining drops fell back from the lifted blades, were half revealed to the watchers above them ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... In a civilized country when ridicule fails to kill a movement it begins to command respect. Opponents meet it by respectful and cogent argument and the mutual behaviour of rival parties never becomes violent. Each party seeks to convert the other or draw the uncertain element towards its side by ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... saw we Dread, all trembling how he shook With foot uncertain proffered here and there, Benumbed of speech, and with a ghastly look Searched every place, all pale and dead with fear, His cap borne up with staring of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... affect the rights of nationalities there represented, still Congress might be unwilling to subject the existing treaty rights of the United States on the Isthmus and elsewhere on the continent to be clouded and rendered uncertain by the expression of the opinions of a congress composed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... uncertain what reply to make to this speech and began whispering together. Finally, Indigo said to Trot, "We do not think it matters what you were in your own country, for having left there you have forfeited your ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... his personal conviction that he was right, Anketam had to admit that Jacovik had reason for his own opinion. He knew that many of the farmers were uncertain about the ultimate outcome of ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... German national spirit flourished, but the future of the Empire was uncertain till its fate was decided by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In the great hall of the Palace of Versailles in 1871 William I, King of Prussia, proclaimed, in the hour of victory, the restoration of the confederated ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... upon its bleak, bare surface as if they would fain shield it with a pure and beautiful mantle. Faster and faster came the storm, even the deacon concluded that it would amount to something, after all; perhaps there might be sleighing on Thanksgiving-day; though he thought it rather uncertain. His wife did not reply, she was bidding the children be a little less ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Jim to hold his tongue. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Furze wished to appear in court, and they were uncertain what Catharine might do if they went any further. Mr. Orkid Jim had the best of reasons for silence, but Mr. Humphries, the builder, of course repeated what he himself knew, and so it went about that Tom was wrong in his accounts, and all ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... the little compact, disciplined crowd in the strangers' gallery, the light, elusive, flickering movements high up behind the grill, the wigged, attentive, weary Speaker, the table and the mace and the chapel-like Gothic background with its sombre shadows, conspire together, produce a confused, uncertain feeling in me, as though I was walking upon a pavement full of trap-doors and patches of uncovered morass. A misplaced, well-meant "Hear, Hear!" is apt to be extraordinarily disconcerting, and under no other circumstances have ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... as he turned away, but other sounds came from within the house, clearly audible with the opening of a door upstairs—a long and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of Mrs. Adams. Russell paused at the steps, uncertain, but Alice waved to him to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain, to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which provides for State purchase of the railways of the country. Whether a solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State control ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... that they found the Elk after being lost in the woods for one Day and part of another, the most of the meat was Spoiled, they distance was So great and uncertain and the way bad, they brought only the Skins, york was left behind by Some accident which detained us Some time eer he Came up after passing round the pt. No. 2 in verry high swells, we Stopd & Dined in the commencement of a bay, after which proceeded on around the bay to S E. & assended ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Peter, gathering up the scattered sheets of Kenelm's effusion with hurried, trembling hands. "Don't ask,—don't talk of it; 'tis but one of the disappointments that all of us must undergo, when we invest our hopes in the uncertain ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... importance of these principles is obvious. The next chapter will show more of their influence on ideas and emotions; but for the present we will consider their lessons in the sphere of the physical. Psychology speaks here in no uncertain terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes, until the most insignificant message from the subconscious becomes a distressing and alarming symptom. The person whose mental ear is strained ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... instruction is given in villages and visitas are in excess of seven hundred, as was represented to his Catholic Majesty by the royal officials in a report in the year 1720. As for the number of Spaniards and foreigners, the computation is extremely difficult and uncertain; and therefore it is not safe to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the way; its atmosphere, heated by a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to have told their relations one to another; but it was evident that an uncertain number of young people, placed near the lady who held the baby, were of the same party; they slept in twos and threes, leaning on one another's shoulders and covered by the same wraps. It was to seats left vacant near this group that the man and his wife who had ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Richardson had the not uncommon failing of the humble-born: he desired above all, and attempted too much, to depict the manners of the great; he had naive aristocratical leanings which account for his uncertain tread when he would move with ease among the boudoirs of Mayfair. Nevertheless, in the honest heart of him, as his earliest novel forever proves, he felt for the woes of those social underlings who, as we have long since learned, have their microcosm faithfully reflecting the greater ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... a word, Patty need not have insisted on her silence. But Patty was so excited that it made her quick of speech and a little uncertain of temper. ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... no more heed to her than if he were a shadow of a man, and went by her with wavering, uncertain steps, without a word. In sudden alarm she hastened to the roof, and found Mildred kneeling by her chair, weeping and almost speechless from grief. She took the girl in her arms, and said excitedly, "Vat did ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of Constantine. But as some mixture of prodigy and fable has in every age been supposed to reflect a becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the emperor was desirous of ascribing his resolution not so much to the uncertain counsels of human policy as to the eternal and infallible decrees of divine wisdom. In one of his laws he has been careful to instruct posterity that in obedience to the commands of God he laid the everlasting ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... with her cap on one side, and her shoes down at heel; with a row of pins between her teeth; with the Oriental Cashmere Robe slowly slipping off the table; with her scissors suspended uncertain in one hand, and her written directions for dressmaking held doubtfully in the other—so absorbed over the invincible difficulties of her employment as to be perfectly unconscious that she was at that moment the object ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... unlikely that Harry would reciprocate her proposed feelings? The Imp hesitated between a natural vexation and an artistic pleasure. Such a failure on his part would wound the woman, but it would add pathos to the play. She became almost sure that she could love Harry; she remained uncertain whether he should return the compliment. And, after all, to be Lady Tristram of Blent! That was attractive. Or (in case Harry suffered defeat) to be Lady Tristram of Blent in the sight of heaven (a polite and time-honored way of describing ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... men, and induce them to face danger more readily on his account, if he bestowed some pains on the burial of the horsemen who fell in that expedition, ordered them to be conveyed into the camp, in order that all might be spectators of the honours paid them at their funeral. Nothing is so uncertain, or so difficult to form a judgment of, as the minds of the multitude. That which seems calculated to increase their alacrity, in exertions of every sort, often creates in them fear and inactivity. Accordingly, those who, being always accustomed to ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... street lamps, the town was in darkness and the streets silent, except for a chance wayfarer. Two or three seamen came up the quay and went aboard the steamer in the next berth. A woman came slowly along, peering in an uncertain fashion at the various craft, and shrinking back as a seaman passed her. Abreast of the Seamew she stopped, and in the same doubtful manner looked down on the deck. The skipper crossed to the side, and straining his eyes through the ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... is capable of is to calculate—interpreting the vague phrases of ministers, spelling out the sense of the speeches of sovereigns, and ruminating on the words attributed to diplomatists reported on the uncertain authority of the newspapers—whether it is to be to-morrow or the day after, this year or the next, that we are to be murdered. So that one might seek in vain in history an epoch more insecure, more crushed under ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... us: which is the only means to keep the true Sabbath in inward holinesse." {149} The anonymous translator ascribes the book to Weigel. It is, in fact. Part Two of [Greek] Gnothi Seauton, but it is uncertain whether it was written by Weigel himself. But whether written by Weigel or later by one of his school, it is a good illustration of the way in which mystically inclined Christians of that period endeavoured to make spiritual ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the sailor hesitated, uncertain as to which way to turn. Little by little, however, his eyes grew accustomed to the touch of the water, and he saw, lying on the bottom a few feet ahead of him, a small ball glowing with a pale phosphorescent light. Stooping to touch ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... day in which she peculiarly wished his attendance at some one of those parties in which Englishmen think the notion of festivity strange—for it includes conversation—Volktman had foretold the menace of some great misfortune. Uncertain, from the character of the prediction, whether to wish his wife to remain at home or to go abroad, he yielded to her wish, and accompanied her to her friend's house. A young Englishman lately arrived at Rome, and already celebrated in the circles of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... interest, which last is a great thing gained; for the pupil rejoiced in the anticipation of success. The struggle over single difficult places destroys all pleasure, palsies talent, creates disgust, and, what is worse, it tends to render uncertain the confirmation of the faculty already partially acquired,—of bringing out a fine legato tone, with loose and quiet fingers and a yielding, movable wrist, without the assistance of ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... appears on the title-page of this volume, it is necessary that I should exactly state what part I had in its preparation. I had no doubt originally engaged to undertake the work myself; but finding, from multiplicity of engagements and my uncertain health, that I could not accomplish it satisfactorily, I thought the best course I could take was to recommend Mr. Cooke to the publishers; a gentleman well known, not only in this country, but in the United States. The whole of the work has therefore been prepared by himself, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... stood close And awful; drank the light up as it dropt, And kept the dusk of ages at their roots); They do not well who mock at such, and cry, "We peaceably, without or fault or fear, Proceed, and miss not of our end; but these Are slow and fearful: with uncertain pace, And ever reasoning of the way, they oft, After all reasoning, choose the worser course, And plunged in swamp, or in the matted growth Nigh smothered struggle, all to reach a goal Not worth their pains." Nor do they well whose work Is still to feed ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... full. Our other book was much more compassable and more widely circulated. Its author was a certain Johannes Marchesinus, of whom so little is known that his date has been put both at 1300 and at 1466. Even the title of the book was uncertain. Marchesinus names it Mammotrectus or Mammetractus, which he explains as 'led by a pedagogue'; but a current form of the name was Mammothreptus, which was interpreted as 'brought up by one's grandmother'. The book consists of a commentary on the whole Bible, chapter by chapter; ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... distances of the planets. Plato probably intended to represent the earth, from which Er and his companions are viewing the heavens, as stationary in place; but whether or not herself revolving, unless this is implied in the revolution of the axis, is uncertain (Timaeus). The spectator may be supposed to look at the heavenly bodies, either from above or below. The earth is a sort of earth and heaven in one, like the heaven of the Phaedrus, on the back of which the spectator ...
— The Republic • Plato
... walked an elderly man, with bronzed features and thin gray hair, supporting his somewhat uncertain steps by a stout cane. He was apparently tired, for, seeing a slight natural elevation under a branching elm tree, he sat down, and looked thoughtfully ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... in the case of the liveries or uniforms which some corporations prescribe as the distinctive dress of their employees. In this country the aversion even goes the length of discrediting—in a mild and uncertain way—those government employments, military and civil, which require the wearing of a ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... evil tendencies show themselves, my reliance will be confidently placed on pious example, on religious instruction, and, above all, on intercession by prayer. Repeat to your friend," he concluded, "what you have just heard me say. Let him ask himself if he could confront the uncertain future with my cheerful submission ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... of her pain smote him with anguish. He lost his head and forgot the barrier between them—that he was poor, with a dark past and an uncertain future, that she ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... and water at their best, the home has a reasonable chance of escaping many of the sorrows brought by disease or uncertain health; and, the power to work to the best advantage being secured, we may now pass to the forms ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... to protect my face or body, I advanced my left fist, and waited for Sam Weeks to come on with a rush, as I was certain he would do, bracing myself well on my legs to receive the shock, although the pitching of the ship made me somewhat more uncertain of my equilibrium than if the combat ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... cannot hear again. They were to sail by the next packet, and it is uncertain how soon they ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Heliodorus died, whether of sickness or through some deliberate violence is uncertain (I should not like to say, and I wish that the facts themselves were equally silent), many men of rank in mourning robes, among whom were these two brothers of consular rank, by the express command of the emperor, attended his funeral when ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... over his fear of startling him. The bear caught sight of Blessing slinking off to the ship and set after him. Blessing also was now much less concerned than he had been as to the bear's nerves. He stopped, uncertain what to do; but a moment's reflection brought him to the conclusion that it was pleasanter to be three than one just then, and he went back to the others faster than he had gone from them. The bear followed at a good rate. Hansen did ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... ensued in the barracks when Garcia opened the attack the men who ran out to meet him had left the gates of the barrack yard open, and as I stood, uncertain what to do, I saw a soldier pushing them together. He had just closed one when I caught sight of him. I fired with my revolver, and shouted to the men. "We must get inside those gates," I cried. "We can't stay here. Charge those gates!" I pointed, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... authority, and I have been informed that he deliberated for some time as to whether he should retire behind the Loire, or immediately hazard a bold stroke upon Paris, which would have been much more to his taste than to resign himself to the chances which an uncertain temporising might bring about. This latter thought pleased him; and he was seriously considering his plan of attack when the news of the 31st, and the unsuccessful issue of Caulaincourt's mission, gave him to understand ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... this remark, because the hearers felt uncertain whether he meant the pronoun for a jest. To evade the difficulty, old O'Beirne bade Dan fetch a mug for a drop of poteen, and meanwhile said to ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... later Lincoln spoke with no uncertain voice. 75,000 militia were called out to suppress the "rebellion." The North gave the President loyal support. The insult to the flag set the blood of the nation, of Democrat and Republican, aflame. The time for reconciliation ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sled. Presently he found the dog moccasins for which he had been looking, repacked his sled, and fitted the shoes to the bleeding feet of the team leader. Elliot, suspicious and uncertain what to do, watched him at work, but at a signal from Sheba turned reluctantly away and drove down to ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... conversation was only about the state of poor old Matthew Frost. Lionel had taken Clay Lane on his road home for the purpose of inquiring after old Matthew. There, standing in the kitchen, he found Lucy. Decima was with the old man, and it was uncertain how long she would stay with him; and Lucy, who had no umbrella, was waiting for the shower to be over to get back to Deerham Court. Lionel offered her the shelter of his. As they advanced through the courtyard, Lucy saw Sibylla at the small drawing-room window—the ante-room, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 'Life is very uncertain, love, but I don't feel like sickness or death just at present,' answered Hammond cheerily. 'Indeed, I feel that the present is full of sweetness, and the future full of hope. Don't suppose, dear, that I am not grieved at this good-bye; but before we are a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... I waited above an hour before it came, still vainly longing for access to the library; and, after that lonely repast was concluded, I waited again about an hour and a half in great suspense and discomfort, uncertain what to do. At length Lady Ashby came to bid me good-morning. She informed me she had only just breakfasted, and now wanted me to take an early walk with her in the park. She asked how long I had ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... They felt uncertain as to just what their duty might be in a case like this, for while it seemed only right that the guilty one should suffer, at the same time both Fred and Bristles remembered what sorrowful faces that brother and sister had, and ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Murray and Adair never lost an opportunity of taking an observation, while they kept their reckoning with the greatest care; but, after all, they often could only guess at their position. The weather, too, was very uncertain. Day after day down came torrents of rain—not merely English spring showers—but, as Adair observed, regular bucketsful, which compelled them to open the ports to let the water run off the decks, for ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... thousand ducats. The Indian revenue, so called, was nearly spent; still it might yield him four hundred and twenty thousand ducats. The quicksilver mines would produce something, but so little as hardly to require mentioning. As to the other mines, they were equally unworthy of notice, being so very uncertain, and not doing as well as they were wont. The licences accorded by the crown to carry slaves to America were put down at fifty thousand ducats for the two years. The product of the "crozada" and "cuarta," or money paid to him in small sums by individuals, with the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they left the spring, the youths realized what was before them. The trail now led constantly upward, and was in parts stony and uncertain. In several places they had to leap brooks of ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... Waller says, women are born to be controuled. Gentle as he was, he knew that. A tyrant husband makes a dutiful wife. And why do the sex love rakes, but because they know how to direct their uncertain wills, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... presently introduce some of his exploits and hardships, in comparison with which the state of things at the beacon bore an aspect of comfort and happiness. Looking to their slender stock of provisions, and their perilous and uncertain chance of speedy relief, he would launch out into an account of one of his expeditions in the North Sea, when the vessel, being much disabled in a storm, was driven before the wind with the loss of almost all their provisions; and the ship being ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... triumphs will go very little way to console faded beauties. Perhaps statesmen, at a particular period of existence, are not much gratified at thinking over the most triumphant divisions; and the success or the pleasure of yesterday becomes of very small account when a certain (albeit uncertain) morrow is in view, about which all of us must some day or other be speculating. O brother wearers of motley! Are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and tumbling, and the jingling of cap and bells? This, dear friends and companions, is my ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a moment, and looked up and down the house doubtfully, as if seeking for signs of life from within. A great many people were still out of town, and he was uncertain whether the occupants of this house were at home or not. The place had evidently been in the hands of painters and cleaners since he saw it last: the stone-work was scrupulously white, the wood-work was painted a delicate green. The visitor lifted his well-defined ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... roadway between the entrances of Diana's Grove and Lesser Hill were many trees, with not much foliage except at the top. In the dusk this place was shadowy, and the view was hampered by the clustering trunks. In the uncertain, tremulous light which fell through the tree- tops, it was hard to distinguish anything clearly, and at last, somehow, he lost sight of her altogether, and turned back on his track to find her. Presently he came ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... foe. The American land-forces had reached the outer lines of the British camp, and the increasing din of the musketry, with ringing through it the whip-like crack of the Tennesseean rifles, called out the whole British army to the shock of a desperate and uncertain strife. The young moon had by this time struggled through the clouds, and cast on the battle-field a dim, unearthly light that but partly relieved the intense darkness. All order was speedily lost. Each ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lover' and 'A Drama in Muslin' we find him dealing with a life he knows. He is no longer on ground wholly foreign to him, and it is no longer necessary that he should grope from one uncertain standing place to another, verifying himself by the dark lantern of his note-book as he goes. He moves with a more natural ease, views things with a larger and more comprehensive eye, and has at least that outside sympathy with ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... state that the Colhuas came from the east in ships. Sahagun mentions that a tradition to this effect was current in Yucatan. The precise value of these traditional reports is uncertain; but, if accepted as vague historical recollections, they could be explained by supposing the civilized people called Colhuas came from South America through the Caribbean Sea, and landed in Yucatan and Tabasco. They are uniformly described as the people who first established civilization ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... compiled by the author during the uncertain hours which he could spare from the more active duties of the ministry. It substantially embodies the instructions and discourses delivered by him before mixed congregations in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... He stood uncertain whether to go or stay, then hastened his steps, and determined to have speech with Mark. He sought distraction of some kind to rid himself of his mood of depression, and to drive away the insistent thoughts of Vera. Passing the warped houses, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... she whispered, "you know I loved you more than any other human being, but I dare not show it lest my feelings should run riot with me. Farewell! The future is all obscure and uncertain. I dare not talk of when ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Eleanor was standing, uncertain of what was best to do in this strange meeting. She had felt over-joyed a moment before, to find Paul there, but now she wondered why he was so angry, and why he had not waited to greet her, as long ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... he threw off the bedclothes, and by the uncertain light of the fire, which was still glimmering, found his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Catherine talk so much at once before," said Frieda lazily. "She looks beautiful to-night, too,—to boot!" She had just heard that phrase and though a little uncertain as to its exact significance, took pleasure in inserting it here and ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... those subjects are treated by the leading subject of this realm is to me most unsatisfactory. Although the prime minister of England is always writing letters and making speeches, and particularly on these topics, he seems to me ever to send forth an "uncertain sound." If a member of Parliament announces himself a Republican, Mr. Gladstone takes the earliest opportunity of describing him as a "fellow-worker" in public life. If an inconsiderate multitude calls for the abolition or reform ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... terrified (uncertain as to whether he were a soul in torment or a human being still alive), and debating as to whether he could get off the couch, relight the candle, and close the windward window, he heard a sound that caused his heart to miss a beat and his hair to rise on end. A ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... am as good as new," he smilingly answered. "A trifle weak and uncertain in my lower extremities, but a few days of exercise in the mountains will overcome all that. Is all well with you and Graustark? They will give me no news here, by whose ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... made in safety. In fact nothing had been seen of the raiders since the start, and it was uncertain what might ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... of appointing this guardian or regent have been so various, and the duration of his power so uncertain, that from thence alone it may be collected that his office is unknown to the common law; and therefore (as sir Edward Coke says, 4 Inst. 58.) the surest way is to have him made by authority of the great council in parliament. The earl of Pembroke by his own authority assumed, in very troublesome ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... are all, like swimmers in the sea, Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate, Which hangs uncertain to which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... understand the value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial or Maximus is uncertain; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six hundred volumes was then considered ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... who chases the chain of necessity to the sources of this grand instability, is merged at once in a haze of speculations, beautiful as sunlight through morning mists, but uncertain as the veriest chimeras. While beyond the idea of comprehensive motion the colossal symmetry of Truth expands in ultimate outlines, her features are shrouded, but in such an attractive clare-obscure of inviting analogies and semi-satisfying glimpses, that the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brooding and meditative, looking at life with half-closed eyes and then shutting them to be alone with memory and the interpreter, his painting, so beautiful and full of surety in early pictures like the Wounded Heron, grows to be often labored and muddy, and his drawing uncertain. That he could draw and paint with the greatest, he every now and then gave proof; but the surety of beautiful craftsmanship deserts those who have not always their eye fixed on an object of vision; and Watts was not, like Blake or Shelley, one of the proud seers whose visions are ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... a quarter which was unexpected to us, although it should not have been so. Several of the electric ships had been hovering above us during the fight, their commanders being apparently uncertain how to act—fearful, perhaps, of injuring us in the attempt ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Italian history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness, of which may be looked upon as established. But how far beyond that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the poems of Hesiod or even of Homer. If Herodotus is correct in the period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome. The date thus assigned however, like all other ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and hold onto the dock!" was the additional order, accompanied by a punctuation mark in the form of another bullet which splintered the gunwale of the boat. Looking as they were, into the dazzling eye of the bulb light, the men were uncertain of the number of their assailants: surrender was natural. Cleary's men made quick work of them. The boat from the yacht now hove to by this time, filled with excited and profane sailormen. The skipper of the "White Swan," ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... animal scurried along, almost hidden by the clover, only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across a furrow, stopped, started off again at full speed, changed its course, stopped anew, uneasy, spying out every danger, uncertain what route to take, when suddenly it began to run with great bounds, disappearing finally in a large patch of beet-root. All the men had waked up to watch ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was cooking some flapjacks in the grease which he had carefully saved. The coffee was bubbling away gaily, sending its aroma far and wide upon the whispering morning breeze. The skies were still dark, their stars not yet gone from them. Only the faintest of dim, uncertain lights in the horizon told where the east was and where before long the sun would roll up above the floor of the desert. The horses, already hitched to the buckboard, were vague blots ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... his hands were thus employed, the whole map, as it were, of the known countries seemed to pass without volition before his mind. He saw the cities along the shores of the great Lake; he saw their internal condition, the weakness of the social fabric, the misery of the bondsmen. The uncertain action of the League, the only thread which bound the world together; the threatening aspect of the Cymry and the Irish; the dread north, the vast northern forests, from which at any time invading hosts might descend on the fertile south—it all ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... yoke! I need no more to be guided, agitated, heated. My heart ferments sufficiently of itself. I want strains to lull me, and I find them to perfection in my Homer. Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart. But need I confess this to you, my dear friend, who have so often endured the anguish of witnessing my sudden transitions from sorrow to immoderate joy, and from sweet melancholy to violent passions? I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy. Do not ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... It is too much." Fairthorn was choking; but as if the idea presented to him was really too monstrous for belief, he clutched at Darrell with so uncertain and vehement a hand that he almost caught him by the throat, and sobbed ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... judge, he must feel; before he can distinguish good from evil, he must compare. Morals, is a science of facts: to found them, therefore, on an hypothesis inaccessible to his senses, of which he has no means of proving the reality, is to render them uncertain; it is to cast the log of discord into his lap, to cause him unceasingly to dispute upon that which he can never understand. To assert that the ideas of morals are innate, or the effect of instinct, is to pretend that man knows how to read before he has learned the letters ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... thing: "Go on! Go on! You are called upon!" He had heard this voice when he had left his home and had chosen the life of a Samana, and again when he had gone away from the Samanas to that perfected one, and also when he had gone away from him to the uncertain. For how long had he not heard this voice any more, for how long had he reached no height any more, how even and dull was the manner in which his path had passed through life, for many long years, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... thinking:—"Presently we shall know what is the matter, and the doctor will give her the right medicines." But when the examination was ended, instead of turning to the bottles in his bag, he seemed uncertain and began to ask interminable questions. How had it happened, and where, particularly, did she feel pain ... Had she ever before suffered from the same trouble ... The answers did not seem to enlighten him very much; then he turned to the sick ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... I long since hesitated whether I should follow your Excellency or him—and I begin to be uncertain whether I have made the best choice, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... watching for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it be when one of us alone Goes on that strange last journey of the soul? That certain search for an uncertain goal, That voyage on which no comradeship is known? Will our dear sea sing with the old sweet tone, Though one sits stricken where its billows roll? Will space be dumb, or from the mystic pole Will spirit-messages be backward blown? When our united ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the aisle, and hurried away, leaving Duncan and Miss Brunswick alone together in the box. If Roderick Duncan had really desired an opportunity to confide his troubles to Beatrice, it was afforded him then; but now that it was at hand, he felt suddenly uncertain about the wisdom of such ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... and those my father bought for his own reading, and which I liked, though I only caught a glimpse of their meaning by strenuous study. To this day Sheridan's Comedies, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and Captain Cook's Voyages are so mixed up in my remembrance that I am still uncertain whether it was Sterne who ate baked dog with Maria, or Sheridan who wept over a dead ass in the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... grandchild, and I was badgered finally into rising and making a few scattering remarks by way of grateful acknowledgment. An effort of this kind would be trying to the sensibilities of even a real philosopher, and I will confess that, what with stammering and repeating myself, I was uncertain for some moments whether I should be able to make myself intelligible. At last, however, a sudden reflection coming straight from my heart drew me from the slough of renewing thanks and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... with the first advance from the state of separate wandering families to that of a nomadic tribe. The authority of the strongest or the most cunning makes itself felt among a body of savages as in a herd of animals, or a posse of schoolboys. At first, however, it is indefinite, uncertain; is shared by others of scarcely inferior power; and is unaccompanied by any difference in occupation or style of living: the first ruler kills his own game, makes his own weapons, builds his own hut, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... my guide. At first he was nothing but a shape, well muffled, with some kind of flat cap upon his head. A little more light revealed a glittering eye, more, a great, hooked nose with wide nostrils. He was a man of uncertain age, bordering upon the elderly, with a black skullcap under which curled outward two silverygray horns of hair. The lower part of his face was covered with a ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... subsistence, Mrs. Howe, after waiting two or three years in the hope of her husband's return, was forced to apply for an Act of Parliament to procure an adequate settlement of his estate, and a provision for herself out of it during his absence, as it was uncertain whether he was alive or dead. This act Mr. Howe suffered to be passed, and read the progress of it in a little coffee-house ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... he had been—before he had inevitably returned to the mountains where he was born—a brakeman in the lowest stratum of the corruption of small cities on big railroads; and his thin stooped body, his gaunt head and uncertain hands, all bore the stamp of ruinous years. But in the midst of this his eyes, like David's, retained their singularly tranquil color ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hand. Let him next imagine a dinner-party, say at the Crooms, and Wilson, who had taken her down, talking about the state of the Liberal party. She would say—of course she was absolutely ignorant of politics. Nevertheless she was intelligent certainly, and honest too. Her temper was uncertain—that he had noticed—and she was not domestic, and she was not easy, and she was not quiet, or beautiful, except in some dresses in some lights. But the great gift she had was that she understood what was said to her; there had ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... strange delusions, Felix approached, to call him to breakfast. The black beheld him walking backwards and forwards, with orderly and composed steps, and congratulated himself upon the change since the day before. He had not, however, ventured to address his master since being ordered away, and uncertain how he would be received, preferred to be spoken to first. With this view, he drew nigh one of the flower-beds, which Armstrong was passing and re-passing, and pretended to busy himself with tying ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Herrick shot with one accord. One Indian came on; the other uttered a cry of pain; then both dashed outside for the shelter of the veranda. There was silence; the Indians hesitating in doubt as to their companions' fate, the white men uncertain as to what form the attack ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... on. Our company has been selected. We need only a handful of actors, but the manager has enlisted the street. The dearest little girl has been chosen for Betsy, and each day she practices her lullaby at the piano with uncertain, questing finger. A gentle rowdy of twelve will speak the Duke's blood-curdling lines. I understand that two quarrelsome pirates have nearly come to blows which shall act the captain. The hero, Red Joe, will be played ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... barely visible in the uncertain light there clustered about the central structure the long, low-lying guard-room, stables, quartermaster's store, and several smaller adjacent buildings comprising "The Barracks." It was a bitter ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... surely cut loose. I ought to have been halfway up the hill watching things from a safe distance, but I wasn't. Lucky for me the shaft was a little on the drift, so she didn't quite shoot my way. But she distributed about a ton over those renegades. They sort of half got to their feet uncertain. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... animals when at bay, and the facility with which they rip open their antagonists with their tusks. They were in former times considered as royal game, and fines were imposed on those who killed them without having the privilege of doing so. The time of their extirpation in England is uncertain; but we know that in the reign of Charles the First, orders were given for some domestic hogs to be turned into the New Forest, that they might become wild; but they were all destroyed in the time of Cromwell. Some still exist ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... tavern office and faced Latisan in the yard; there were curious spectators on the porch, the loungers of the hamlet, but she paid no attention to them; she was searching the countenance of Latisan, avidly anxious, fearfully uncertain regarding what mischief had ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... for the weight of his wet garments was beginning to tell upon him. As the rowboat came closer he also thought to dive, but the effort almost cost him his life. He came up half unconscious, and only realized in a dim, uncertain ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... about it for a long time, but throughout Mrs. Fonss felt a coldness in whatever she said, which she could not overcome. She was afraid of being too sympathetic with Tage on account of her own emotion. Besides, in the uncertain state of her mind she was distrustful of the idea that there might be even the faintest shadow of an association between her kindness of to-night and what she was to ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... their own hearts, as will teach them better to understand and excuse what they detect in the hearts of others; ever remembering that all things on earth are earthly; and therefore changeful, perishable, and uncertain. ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... of the last two of the judges of Israel. Eli and Samuel were not as the rest, men of war, but priests. It is uncertain who wrote these books. Some say that Samuel wrote the history of his times, and that Nathan the Prophet continued it. Elkanah, though a godly man, had sore family trials, the result of having married two wives, just as Abraham and Jacob did before him. It is probable that Elkanah ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... at last; the moonlight streamed pale and uncertain through the casement; no sound broke the stillness, even the wind had ceased its moaning. He could go forth now without fear ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of which was most uncertain as the coach journeys soon overlapped, there was always a lengthy, well-attended "roll-up" at the Store. Here we first made acquaintance with Messrs. Browne and Lyon, then negotiating for the purchase of Bayley's fabulous mine of gold. No account of the ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the community; or partly of foreigners and partly of clients, the latter being equalised by the patres with the former in self-defence; and whether as a name it dated from or was antecedent to the so-called Tullian organization is uncertain. But we know that in one way or other a second political division in the State arose and that the constitution, of which Servius Tullius was the reputed author, made every freeman in Rome a citizen by giving him a vote in the Comitia Centuriata. Yet though ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... no longer. For three years he did good service and saved money, and the lurid nose grew dim. There is, however, a limit to human endurance. Like victims of other forms of circular insanity, the dipsomaniac completes his cycle in an uncertain period and falls upon bad times. For a month before we parted company I saw signs of relapse in Sam. He was loquacious at times, at other times morose. He talked about going into business for himself, and his ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... In the uncertain light of dawn they could see nothing around them but leaden breakers from whose foam-crested manes the wind swept the blinding spray. The ship lay in this terrible plight for some little time, while every soul on board counted each ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... a 'matsouri', a fete, a procession passing through the quarter which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmes tell us, with a disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which we dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of the stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert going on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths of the abyss to our lofty altitudes, reaches us confusedly, a smothered, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... precious of the old marbles of Rome is the Rosso antico. Its classical name has been lost, unless it be identical, as Corsi conjectures, with the Marmor Alabandicum, described by Pliny as black inclining much to purple. For a long time it was uncertain where it was found, but recently quarries of it have been discovered near the sea at Skantari, a village in the district of Teftion, which show traces of having been worked by the ancients. From these quarries the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... that at least one of his injuries had been the work of a Pauline whom he had met in the opening bout; but the great majority were presents from Ripton, and Drummond had described the dusky one, in no uncertain terms, as a ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... the meantime, all the while, even from the very first evening when we off-saddled in the rocky Westchester woods and made our first flying-camp, I had become uneasy concerning the Siwanois—uncertain concerning his loyalty to the very verge ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... that in no sense does Flamineo resemble Iago. He is not a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to well-considered ends. He is the desperado frantically clutching at an uncertain and impossible satisfaction. Webster conceives him as a self-abandoned atheist, who, maddened by poverty and tainted by vicious living, takes a fury to his heart, and, because the goodness of the world has been for ever lost to him, recklessly seeks ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... stood a woman, also in black, with dishevelled hair floating down her back. Her face was colorless, she looked like a corpse, and her thin, blue lips were pressed together as if in death. There was life in her eyes—a gloomy, wild, fanatical fire flashed from them. Her glance was glaring and uncertain, like a will-o'-the-wisp, and filled those upon whom it fell with a shivering, mysterious feeling ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... years ago, they built durable homes, curiously enough, more than in the Northern States; planted oaks about them, that bore the strength of the earth up to heaven in sturdy arms, shaming the graceful, uncertain elm of shallower soils. Just such old farm-houses as those, Blecker thought, would turn out such old-time moulded men as McKinstry: houses whose orchards still held on to the Waldower and Smoke-house ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... feet and took her rudely by the shoulder. "Do you mean to say—" he began, almost with violence; and then checked himself, peering at her with fierce, uncertain eyes. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... attempt to sow fall wheat; and it was several seasons before their crops became nearly adequate for food. The difficulties of transportation up the St Lawrence rendered the arrival of supplies irregular and uncertain. Cut off as they were from civilization by the St Lawrence rapids, they were in a much less advantageous position than the great majority of the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick settlers, who were situated ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... others. Crates Thebanus was adored for a God in Athens, [3679]"a nobleman by birth, many servants he had, an honourable attendance, much wealth, many manors, fine apparel; but when he saw this, that all the wealth of the world was but brittle, uncertain and no whit availing to live well, he flung his burden into the sea, and renounced his estate." Those Curii and Fabricii will be ever renowned for contempt of these fopperies, wherewith the world is so much affected. Amongst Christians I could reckon up many kings and queens, that have ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... pool, when coming to my waggon-driver, I found him looking with no little alarm in an opposite direction, and with good reason, as no fewer than two lions with a cub were eyeing us both, apparently as uncertain about us as we were distrustful of them. We thankfully decamped to the waggon and sat down to keep alive our scanty fire, while we listened to the lion tearing and devouring his prey. When any of the other hungry lions dared to approach he would pursue them for some paces with a horrible howl, which ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... dates as he leaned against one of the palm-trees, casting an interrogating glance from time to time across the desert in quest of some deliverer, and on his terrible companion, watching the chance of her uncertain clemency. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... which never run down, the doctor's agreeable carelessness and imperturbable good-humor, the exceeding kindness of Mr. Regulus, who grew so gentle, that he almost seemed melancholy,—all continued the same. In reading, writing, thinking, feeling, hoping, reaching forward to an uncertain future, the season of fireside enjoyments and comforts passed,—spring,—summer. Mrs. Linwood and Edith returned, and I was once more installed in that charming apartment, amid whose rosy decorations "I seemed," ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... economy, a mixture of private enterprises of all sizes and extensive government intervention, experienced enormous difficulties in the late 1980s, notably declining real growth, runaway inflation, foreign debt obligations of more than $100 billion, and uncertain economic policy. Government intervention includes trade and investment restrictions, wage/price controls, interest and exchange rate controls, and extensive tariff barriers. Ownership of major industrial facilities is divided ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke short-sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure, the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of themselves. But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love songs. Not that he ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... differences were the constant occasion of personal animosity and bitterness. The two men represented the age in an uncommonly complete way. Swift had the greater genius: he was, indeed, in respect of natural endowment, the foremost man of his time; but his nature was undisciplined, his temper uncertain, and his great powers quite as much at the service of his passions as of his principles. He made himself respected, feared, and finally hated; his lack of restraint and balance, his ferocity of spirit when opposed, and the violence with which he assailed his enemies, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lifting him from the slough of despair by which he was so nearly submerged. It was as though the presence of his twins had drawn from him an acknowledgment of his duty, a sense which was so strongly and incongruously developed in his otherwise uncertain character, and demanded of him a sacrifice of all personal inclination. They were her children. Yes, and they were his. Her children—her children. And she was gone. They had no one to look to, no one to care ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost." In this reign, too, began to be sung the Te Deum, which is generally known as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It was first used at Milan, but whether he wrote it or not is uncertain, though there is a story that he had it sung for the first time at ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the second lot. But the first lot are no nearer starting than they were two weeks ago. I may be kept waiting here for weeks and weeks. I do not like to turn out Palmer, although I very much want to go with the first bunch. On the other hand I am paid pretty well to get to the front, and I am uncertain as to what I ought to do. If the second column were to start immediately after the first, we then would have two men in the field, but if it does not, then Collier will be paying $1000. a week for stories of tea houses and "festivals." Palmer threatens to resign ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... ceremonies, and sacrificing to the god Fear. In the meanwhile the oldest of his commanders, and chiefly Parmenio, when they beheld all the plain between Niphates and the Gordyaean mountains shining with the lights and fires which were made by the barbarians, and heard the uncertain and confused sound of voices out of their camp, like the distant roaring of a vast ocean, were so amazed at the thoughts of such a multitude, that after some conference among themselves, they concluded it an enterprise too difficult and hazardous ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the eastern desert. Two figures were moving across its expanse, swiftly and stealthily, furtive dark shadows against the lighter ground. They saw them dimly, dipping and rising over the rolling desert, now lost, now reappearing in the uncertain light. They were flying away from the Arabs. And then, suddenly they halted upon the summit of a sand-hill, and the prisoners could see them outlined plainly against the sky. They were camel-men, but they sat their camels astride as a horseman ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... it till to-morrow [came this night], But I count myself surer of War than ever; as the Austrians have named Generals, and their Army is ordered to march, from Kolin to Konigsgratz"—Schlesien way. "So that, expecting nothing but a haughty Answer, or a very uncertain one, on which there will be no reliance possible, I have arranged everything for setting out on Saturday next. To-morrow, so soon as the news comes, I will not fail to let you know. Assuring you that I am, with a perfect affection, my dear Brother and my dear Sister,—Yours,—F." [OEuvres ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Uncertain how far the foregoing chapter is not better left without comment of any kind, I nevertheless think that some of my readers may be helped by the following extracts from the notes I took while translating. ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... of the national legislature, beg leave to suggest for consideration, whether they have not some claim to national attention and encouragement, from the nature and importance of their undertaking; which though hazardous and uncertain as concerns their private emolument, must, at any rate, redound to the public security and advantage. If their undertaking shall appear to be of the description given, they would further suggest to your honorable bodies, that unless they can procure a regular supply for the trade in which ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and the puddles quivered in the gray uncertain moonlight. We stood up under a part of the roof at the corner of the old house thinking of ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; Now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade; now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad; as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of burdens," he answered, gruffly; "what I said was not meant angrily. I love you, and that's enough. Now the question only is, Where to go? If at least this baby had not come, the chance of an uncertain existence might be borne for some time. But now, you ill, the child requiring careful nursing, the end of it is there is nothing for it but to buy a farm, and to give the two thousand thalers for a premium. ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen to another man. As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes which necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes: but they are infinitely uncertain and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace, than the foreign causes that tend to raise, to depress, and sometimes to overwhelm, a community. It is often impossible in these political inquiries to find any proportion between the apparent force of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves were not consecutive and clear but only ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... submarines were forecasted for delivery during the period July to the end of December, the dates of three, however, being somewhat uncertain; of this total of twenty-six, only nine were actually delivered. Of the remainder, seven were shown in a November forecast as delayed for four months, two for five months, ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... to the boats; a third, Boccanegra's, lost her mainmast, and staggered away crippled. What was Doria about? The wind was now in his favour; the enemy was in front: but Doria continued to tack and manoeuvre at a distance. What he aimed at is uncertain: his colleagues Grimani and Capello went on board his flagship, and vehemently remonstrated with him, and even implored him to depart and let them fight the battle with their own ships, but in vain. He was bent on tactics, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... apparition had faded, and the Mountain appeared only as an uncertain bulk shadowed upon the night, then came the miracle. Gradually, the east, beyond the great hills, showed a faint silver glow. Silhouetted against this dim background, the profile of the peak grew definite. With no other warning, suddenly from its summit the full moon shot forth, huge, majestic and ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... carefully carpeted with lynx skins; then it seemed to them that a big cord, wet, cold, and viscous, was gliding between their legs. Through some fissures cut in the wall there fell thin white rays, and they advanced by this uncertain light. At last they distinguished a large black serpent. It darted quickly away ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... for they not only swam round and round her, but approached her so closely and so persistently that Miss Trevor became seriously alarmed; while even Leslie began to grow somewhat uneasy lest the brutes, whose temper he knew to be rather uncertain, should develop an inclination to attack the craft. To the relief, however, of all hands, the curiosity of the creatures at length appeared to be satisfied, and they drew off from the brig a little, still remaining upon the surface, however. And presently the huge brutes began to develop a ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... confused by the sudden outcry, stood the Dauphin and the two lads, and towards them ran Hugues with all his speed, La Mothe not far behind. La Follette waited at the door, uncertain and bewildered. But from a further covert, the thicket of more distant alder, a troop of ten or a dozen horsemen had burst, galloping at the charge, nor could there be any doubt of their sinister purpose. It was a race for the boy, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... appendages of military establishments. Standing armies, it is said, are not provided against in the new Constitution; and it is therefore inferred that they may exist under it.1 Their existence, however, from the very terms of the proposition, is, at most, problematical and uncertain. But standing armies, it may be replied, must inevitably result from a dissolution of the Confederacy. Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce them. The weaker States ...
— The Federalist Papers
... forward or deliver this and is on his return to England, can inform you of our different movements, but I am very uncertain as to my own return. He will probably be down in Notts, some time or other; but Fletcher, whom I send back as an incumbrance (English servants are sad travellers), will supply his place in the interim, and describe our travels, which have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... small bay, and cut off from the main jungle by some large rocks. Three of our party immediately declared that they would have a tiger-hunt, and bring back his skin as a trophy. They landed, two of them having each a ship's musket, a very uncertain weapon, as they are at present provided, for, whether from damp or careless manufacture, the percussion caps will not often go off; and the third armed with nothing but a knife. On their landing, they took their position ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat |
