"Determinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have you done ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one fundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate order of precedence among them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the various principles when they conflict, ought ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... Revolutionary War. It was not without good reason, therefore, that the more cautious Scot addressed to him so many pathetic letters: "I beg of you to attend to these money matters. I cannot rest in my bed until they have some determinate form." Watt's inexperience in money matters caused apprehensions of ruin to arise whenever financial measures were discussed. He was at this time utterly wretched, and Mrs. Watt at last became anxious, long and bravely ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... the morning and close before evening every day; but the hour of the expanding becomes earlier or later, at the length of the day increases or decreases. 3dly. AEquinoctial flowers, which open at a certain and exact hour of the day, and for the most part close at another determinate hour. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... and to consume the same by fyre, and thairafter to salt it, in signe of a perpetuall desolatioun." We suspecting nothing suche creweltie, bot thinking that suche wordis myght eschape hir in choler, without purpose determinate, becaus sche was a woman sett a fyre by the complaintes of those hypocrytes who flocked unto hir, as ravennis to a carioun; We, (we say,) suspecting nothing suche beastlie crueltie, returned to our awin housses; ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way. Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the picture, and let us call the possibility of this structure the pictorial form of ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... just where they were, but even Steve was at a loss, although he was fairly certain that Englishman's Bay was well to the north, probably as far distant as six miles. But, since from where they gazed islands and mainland melted into each other, even Wass Island was not determinate. But after all it didn't much matter where they were. In a calm sea they could reach the shore in the dingey if it became necessary, while a distress signal would undoubtedly be soon seen from the nearer head-land. But Steve was not ready ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... defined to be a succession of poetical feet arranged in regular order according to certain types recognized as standards, in verses of a determinate length. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... wants a friend who will sympathise with distresses of sentiment as well as with actual misfortune. Heaven knows, and you know, my dearest Matilda, that these diseases of the heart require the balm of sympathy and affection as much as the evils of a more obvious and determinate character. Now Lucy Bertram has nothing of this kindly sympathy, nothing at all, my dearest Matilda. Were I sick of a fever, she would sit up night after night to nurse me with the most unrepining patience; but with the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fight for a living; that He set us an example that we might see what sinners we were; that religion was one thing, and a very proper thing, but business was another, and a very proper thing also—with customs, and indeed laws, of its own far more determinate, at least definite, than those of religion; and that to mingle the one with the other was not merely absurd—it was irreverent and wrong, and certainly never intended in the Bible, which must surely be common sense. It was the Bible always with him—never the will of Christ. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... depth, an equilibrium, a comprehension, a sagacity, a culture, which I do not possess and cannot command. Nor in the domestic drudgery line, nor the parlor ornament line, nor the social philanthropic line, nor the ministering angel line, can I be said to have a determinate value. As an investment, as an economic institution, as an available force, I suppose I must be reckoned a failure; but I do write lovely poetry. That I insist on: and yet, incredible as it may seem, of that one little ewe lamb have I been repeatedly and remorselessly robbed by an unscrupulous ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Don Garcia, he has by no means hit the spirit and tone of modern times, nor even of his own nation: his ideas of the tragic style were opposed to the observance of everything like a local and determinate costume. On the other hand it is astonishing to observe the subjects which he has borrowed from the tragic cycles of the Greeks, such as the Orestiad, for instance, losing under his hands all their heroic magnificence, and assuming a modern, not to say a vulgar air. He has succeeded ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of others, which by nature being subject to change, cannot by consequence, serve for a certain determinate rule in all ages; and if it now survive through the large extent of its entertainment, it hath much the advantage of others, that are in a manner deceas'd to this that is fixt, and retaind by a well assur'd custome and if its being universally known allows all persons to share its uses, ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... talked about; it is to study, and ask, and obey, and believe. The Lord's part is to reveal Himself to you. It is a matter of revelation. You cannot attain it by any efforts of your own, be they never so determinate. Therefore your prayer must be constantly like that of Moses—'I beseech thee, show me Thy glory.' And you see, that makes your part easy, because the other ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... signs collected is that in numerous instances there is an entire discrepancy between the signs made by different bodies of Indians to express the same idea, and that if any of these are regarded as rigidly determinate, or even conventional with a limited range, and used without further devices, they will fail in conveying the desired impression to any one unskilled in gesture as an art, who had not formed the same precise conception or been instructed ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... materially mischievous is to be apprehended, if you quit much is to be dreaded; that the same motives which induced you to accept originally ought to decide you to continue till matters have assumed a more determinate aspect; that indeed it would have been better, as it regards your own character, that you had never consented to come forward than now to leave the business unfinished and in danger of being undone; ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... manners, customs, and morals—three things concerning which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in producing good; and we can so little frustrate His determinate and omnipotent goodness, that out of our most desperate follies and wickednesses the ultimate result is sure to be preponderating good; but does this excuse the sinners and fools who vainly attempt to thwart His purpose? or will they be permitted to say that they are ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own notions, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... laws of the system were changed, it would be impossible that any event should have been otherwise than it was. In all these cases, the circumstances preceding any change are called the causes of that change; and, since a determinate event, or effect, constantly follows certain circumstances, or causes, the connection between cause and effect is concluded to ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... we shall find in the moral government of the world, and the order of the intellectual system, laws as determinate, fixed, and invariable as any in Newton's 'Principia.' The progress of vegetation is not more certain than the growth of habit; nor is the power of attraction more clearly proved than the force of affection or the influence of example. The man, therefore, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... place the dash amongst the grammatical points, ought to give us some rule relative to its different longitudinal dimensions in different cases. The inch, the three-quarter-inch, the half-inch, the quarter-inch: these would be something determinate; but 'the dash,' without measure, must be a perilous thing for the young grammarian to handle. In short, 'the dash' is a cover for ignorance as to the use of points, and it can answer no ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... can't place no dependence in ye; but, law, ye air jes' like that old gun o' mine; sometimes it'll hang fire, an' sometimes it'll go off at half-cock, an' ginerally it disapp'ints me mightily. But, somehows, I can't determinate to shoot with no other one. I'll hev ter feel by ye jes' like I does by that thar ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the most studied and accomplished symmetry; and they bear no berries, but only dry seeds. The Myrtillae and Aurorae are both Cinqfoil; but the Myrtillae are symmetrical in their blossom, and the Aurorae unsymmetrical. Farther, the Myrtillae are not absolutely determinate in the number of their foils, (this being essentially a characteristic of flowers exposed to much hardship,) and are thus sometimes quatrefoil, in sympathy with the Ericae. But the Aurorae are strictly cinqfoil. These last are the only European form of a larger group, well named 'Azalea' from the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Platonists substituted the idea of the Absolute, for the Supreme Essence itself;—as the first, simplest principle, anterior to all existence; of which nothing determinate can be predicated; to which no consciousness, no self-contemplation can be ascribed; inasmuch as to do so, would immediately imply a quality, a distinction of subject and object. This Supreme Entity can be known only by an intellectual intuition ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... attained to power by successful conquest of the nations; but on the contrary by chicanery, insidious policy, flattery of princes and priestcraft. This enemy is described with sufficient accuracy and peculiar precision in the subsequent part of the Apocalypse. Prophecy has a determinate meaning; and we are not at liberty to give loose reins to our imagination: otherwise we shall bewilder, rather than satisfy the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... what you will of it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks in which others have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or less comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources; the nature of the game is a thing determinate and fixed: there is no royal or poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial theorem was an effort of genius; but there ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of a pulpy character, quite soft in infancy and childhood; but it gradually becomes more and more consistent, and in middle age it assumes the form of determinate structure and arrangement. It is more abundantly supplied with blood than any organ of the system. No lymphatics have been detected, but it is to be presumed that they ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... God, and with him, they are employed by the Lord of all in their varied spheres to fulfil his will. But he, by his great Creator, favoured highly above them, is called to obedience in a way to them unknown. Yet not less determinate than the laws and dispositions of the material world are all His arrangements, especially his covenant provisions made with regard to man. The lower creatures of God, though they know him not, obey his word. Moral agents on earth are subject wholly to his control. ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... might further (and is far more important) expect that the reproductive system would be affected, as under domesticity, and the structure of the offspring rendered in some degree plastic. Hence almost every part of the body would tend to vary from the typical form in slight degrees, and in no determinate way, and therefore without selection the free crossing of these small variations (together with the tendency to reversion to the original form) would constantly be counteracting this unsettling effect of the extraneous conditions on the reproductive system. Such, I conceive, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... of instruction. The truths and facts, before repeated in Hebrew, were now generally promulgated in Greek by the apostles and their converts. The historical cyclus, which had been forming in the Church at Jerusalem, assumed a determinate character in the Greek tongue" ("Introduction to the New Testament," by S. Davidson, LL.D., p. 405. Ed. 1848). Thus we find learned Christians obliged to admit an uninspired collection as the basis of the inspired Gospel, and laying down a theory ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... buttons on your coat, or a steel penknife in your pocket, beware of their action. If you work at night, beware of iron candlesticks, or of brass ones with iron rods inside. Freed from such disturbances, the needle takes up a certain determinate position. It sets its length nearly north and south. Draw it aside and let it go. After several oscillations it will again come to the same position. If you have obtained your magnet from a philosophical ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall |
