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Define   /dɪfˈaɪn/   Listen
Define

verb
(past & past part. defined; pres. part. defining)
1.
Determine the essential quality of.  Synonyms: delimit, delimitate, delineate, specify.
2.
Give a definition for the meaning of a word.
3.
Determine the nature of.
4.
Show the form or outline of.  Synonym: delineate.  "The camera could define the smallest object"
5.
Decide upon or fix definitely.  Synonyms: determine, fix, limit, set, specify.  "Specify the parameters"



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"Define" Quotes from Famous Books



... a picture of it in Injury and Insult: "As soon as it grew dusk I gradually fell into that state of mind which so often overmasters me at night since I've been ill, and which I shall call mystic fear. It is a crushing anxiety about something which I can neither define nor even conceive, which does not actually exist, but which perhaps is about to be realised, at this very moment, to appear and rise up before me like an inexorable, horrible misshapen fact." This "frenzied anguish" is a ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... as my text the normality of Mr Wells, on the understanding that I shall define the essential term as I will; and this brief outline of his early experiences may help to show, inter alia, that he viewed life from many angles before he was twenty-seven. That he had the capacity ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. But he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... grisette and lorette are now obsolete, and the names given to this class of women constantly varies. I shall, nevertheless, employ them in the course of this work because they clearly define certain special varieties ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... neighbour as thyself." In these two commandments the whole law is summed up, the whole duty of man is made known. It is well to emphasize this two-fold aspect of the truth at a time when we are often tempted to define religion wholly in the terms of morality, and, while insisting on the duties which we owe to each other, to forget those which we owe to God. If there be a God righteousness must surely have a meaning in relation to Him; it cannot ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... wicked and the rewarder of good deeds, is continually bringing to pass: would that she could always do so! She is a kind of sublime agent of the powerful Deity, dwelling, according to common belief, above the human circle; or, as others define her, she is a substantial protection, presiding over the particular destinies of individuals, and feigned by the ancient theologians to be the daughter of Justice, looking down from a certain inscrutable eternity upon all terrestrial and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... for decrying the theatre, in which all the arts blend with the knowledge of history, manners, and customs of all people, and scenes of all climes, to afford a varied entertainment to the most exacting intellect. I have no sympathy with people who are constantly anxious to define the actor's position, for, as a rule, they are not animated by a desire to promote his interests. "'Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus;" and whatever actors deserve, socially or artistically, they are sure to receive as their right. I found the other day in a well-circulated ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... baron from his niche, "you are only too happy. You are now in the precise position to define my old conception of the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you know, in my vocabulary, is he who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and down his room in gown and slippers, drums on the window of a rainy afternoon, and, as he stirs his evening ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... great weight with me, the undertaking of performing it satisfactorily is so difficult that I doubt my ability to fulfil what you ask. It would be more easy for me, I believe, to define the formal object of logic; to give the square of a circle; to find the mathematical [side [87]] of the double of the cube and sphere, or to find a fixed rule for the measurement of the degrees of longitude ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... Courts.—It is difficult in brief space to define minutely the province of each court The following accounts, therefore, ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James

... deferentially, and the attitude and the address left it difficult to define his relation to them; the one was that of a servant, the other indicated the familiar and friend. On the other side, Simonides, as was his habit in business, after answering the salutation went ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... more stress is laid upon these events than they deserve. It was a necessity to define the course of the government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending conflict. The legal officers were consulted. They said war de facto existed. Seven States ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Law we define as an ordination of reason. From first to last it is so. From the laws which we daily obey to the everlasting laws holding the spheres together—can we account of them as other than the expression of reason? So do we account of the moral law, with this essential difference, that ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... savage nations, not recognize the existence of the question. But we cannot treat the question as the learned critics of Christianity do. They pretend either that no such question exists at all or that the question is solved by granting to certain persons or assemblies of persons the right to define evil and to resist it by force. But we know all the while that granting such a right to certain persons does not decide the question (still less so when the are ourselves the certain persons), since there are always people who do not ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... to find ourselves compelled to dissent very widely from many of Professor Kolliker's remarks; and from none more thoroughly than from those in which he seeks to define what we may term the philosophical ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... thought, and with the thought suppressed the unpleasant, confused feeling in her breast. She would not permit herself to define the cold sensation that already pressed her heart quietly but powerfully. It grew and rose in her throat, filling her mouth with a dry, bitter taste, and compelling her to turn around and look once more. As she turned he carefully shifted from one ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... an elevation front, gradually drifting up. Little tongues are carried up in advance by the heated currents. The aliens retreated before it. On the plateau you can see the sentries. I guess they posted themselves there, at intervals, between the edge and the new caves, to define the limits of safety. They died there. Six of them. The rest, several hundred, reached the caves. They are ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville

... It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines, amplifies, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... spring of 1781. During this inchoate period of union the action of the United States was that of a confederation in which some portion of the several sovereignties was understood to be surrendered to the whole. It was the business of the articles to define the precise nature and extent of this surrendered sovereignty which no state by itself ever exercised. In the mean time this sovereignty, undefined in nature and extent, was exercised, as well as circumstances permitted, by the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... of awe and of wonder I may never well define,— For the thoughts that come in the shadows Never ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... society, laid down the theory that "it is ENTIRELY IMPOSSIBLE to draw conclusions with regard to the sensations of animals by an effort to imagine what our own would be under similar circumstances"; and when a vivisector has reached the stage where he can hold that belief, he may define pain as something pertaining only to human beings, and feel himself justified in declaring that "VIVISECTION OF ANIMALS NEVER CAUSES PAIN," according to his definition of the word. It is well for the world that with this ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... define service before one could dispute that," Carr returned casually. "What I mean is that the people who send you here have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get here you find yourself rather at ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... he felt, however, are only well begun on special days not easy to define; essays are only written on days when we have determined to be idle,—and this, after the opening flirtation with indolence, must be a busy day,—and it is not every day that one can begin a novel. He might arrange his books, but really they were ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... was infinitely prettier than any other woman of her race I have ever seen. For a women to be beautiful, they say in Spain, she must fulfil thirty ifs, or, if it please you better, you must be able to define her appearance by ten adjectives, applicable to three ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... treatise, will startle any body; but, if errors exist, even in plausible guise, it may not be amiss, if I tell of them. To suppose every verb or participle to be either "transitive" or "intransitive," setting all passives with the former sort, all neuters with the latter; (p. 59;)—to define the transitive verb or participle as expressing always "an act DONE by one person or thing to another;" (p. 60;)—to say, after making passive verbs transitive, "The object of a transitive verb is in the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... frequently as "the head of Charles I." in Mr. Dick's discourse. And, she adds, with her usual causticity, that if one were to classify the population into two great divisions, it would be impossible to define them more expressively ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... power of this woman may be difficult to define, but a glance at her society reveals, at least partly, its secret. Nowhere has the glamour of a great name more influence than at Paris. A few celebrities form a nucleus of sufficient attraction to draw ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... 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 differed from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... I dare say. Lick and Flick are so much alike. And I don't know one little bit about sciences. I don't know one of them from another. They are all the same to me. I only define science as something that I can't understand. I had a notion that you were mixed up with astronomy. That's why I got thinking of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... of our faculties themselves, there exists no necessity why a vivid power to conceive ideas, should NOT be combined with a dialectic skill in expressing them. Degerando, an admirable French writer, in one of his Treatises, has some profound observations on this subject; and does not hesitate to define poetry itself as a species ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... to time of late the Kaiser has posed as the champion of peace. His official spokesman, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, has announced the Imperial readiness to stay the war—on his master's own terms, which he disdains to define precisely. ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... may be 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

... with a jibbering devil on either shoulder, filling me again with nameless fears and vague, unreasoning doubts of I knew not what. Above and around me seemed an ever-growing shadow, a foreboding expectancy of an oncoming evil I could neither define nor shake off, try how ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... Heaven," 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

... to believe in a God, the maker of all things, or at least to pretend to such a belief, to define the nature of this existing Deity by the attributes which are given to him, to place the foundation of morality on this belief, and in idea at least, to connect the welfare of civil society with the acknowledgement ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner

... are romantic, as the French are impulsive, the English sentimental, and the Russians religious. There is some real meaning in these generalisations. They are easily to be felt when one comes into contact with a nation, though they may be hard to establish or define. When I say that the Germans are romantic, I mean that they do not easily or willingly see things as they are. Their temperament is like a medium of coloured glass. It magnifies, distorts, conceals, transmutes. And this is as true when their intellectual attitude is realistic ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... not a quality called taste[561], which consists merely in perception or in liking? For instance, we find people differ much as to what is the best style of English composition. Some think Swift's the best; others prefer a fuller and grander way of writing.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you must first define what you mean by style, before you can judge who has a good taste in style, and who has a bad. The two classes of persons whom you have mentioned don't differ as to good and bad. They both agree that Swift has a good neat style[562]; but ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... is much talk of civilization and culture. Two words define all that is necessary to be known about them. Civilization is peace. The uncivilized state of man is incessant war. Culture is conscience, because conscience means the exercise of honest judgment, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... now and always, and the ending rare, for the Cleopatras are gone. Emblems of purity, refinement, and peace, they are truly the gems for woman. Queenly or demure, they become her, and she bestows on them a quality hard to define, but singularly sweet and acceptable. Gold and precious stones may occupy billions of years in the making, or may be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... however, is paid to this highly important quality of accuracy. As a man eminent in practical science lately observed to us, "It is astonishing how few people I have met with in the course of my experience, who can DEFINE A FACT accurately." Yet in business affairs, it is the manner in which even small matters are transacted, that often decides men for or against you. With virtue, capacity, and good conduct in other respects, the person ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... science, the pride in the new Germany, the more than kind and friendly interest in three strange children—all these manifestations of the German character and of German family life made a subconscious impression upon me which I did not in the least define at the time, but which is very ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... any answer to that," said I, "I must ask you to explicitly define and accurately set forth the nature of the assistance that you desire me ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... you and the Governor-General agree in opinion on the subject of the affairs of Malabar. He says, "examine and report the state of the province before you commence your military operations; define the evils, and propose a system of government which shall afford a remedy, towards the establishment of which system military operations ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... the most absolute and uncontrolled. A circumstance which crowns the defects of the Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, the want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as respects individuals, must, like all other laws, be ascertained ...
— The Federalist Papers

... speech, Hath accents pitched like thine - Thy mould and his define A likeness each to each - But go! Deep pain Alas, would be His name to thee, And ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... nothing was said of responsibility in Mr. Motley's instructions. But the idea was necessarily involved in their statements. For if, as Mr. Motley's instructions say, the right of a power "to define its own relations," etc., when a civil conflict has arisen in another state depends on its (the conflict's) having "attained a sufficient complexity, magnitude, and completeness," inasmuch as that Power has to judge whether it has ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... kind, 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

... ladder, in the silence of a winter night. And what bliss to reach, all powdered with snow, a perfumed room, with hangings of painted silk, to find a woman there, who likewise shakes away the snow from her; for what other name can be found for the white muslin wrappings that vaguely define her, like some angel form issuing from a cloud! And then I wish for furtive joys, for the security of audacity. I want to see once more that woman of mystery, but let it be in the throng, dazzling, unapproachable, adored on all sides, dressed ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... any of those thoughts into words, though in her books she loved best those words that expressed her half-formulated feelings. Had she been removed to the noise and the whirl of city life, she would very probably have known how to define what she had lost, she might even have made others feel what she herself had so keenly felt. But in the silent towers of her home, or amidst that noiseless, ever- growing life that belongs to undisturbed nature, all she could have wished to express was expressed for her, in ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in twenty years—twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes to ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... Chaldees' excellency"—the "great Babylon" of Nebuchadnezzar. Within a space little more than three miles long and a mile and three quarters broad are contained all the undoubted remains of the greatest city of the old world. These remains, however, do not serve in any way to define the ancient limits of the place. They are surrounded on every side by nitrous soil, and by low heaps which it has not been thought worth while to excavate, but which the best judges assign to the same era as the great ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... wasting them," she said, the innocence of a kitten in her strange eyes—their colour impossible to define to-day. "Indeed not, Paul! He was my lover in ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn

... rational, grew weaker with Henry as the night advanced; the shadow of trouble deepened as his weary wits lost their balance to combat it. The premonition was as formless and amorphous as a cloud, and, though he could not see any shape to his fear, or define its limitations, it grew darker ere he slept. He considered what might happen and, putting aside any lesser disaster, tried to imagine what the morning would bring if May ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... bodies of men not known as Whigs, who scouted the idea of being bound by the acts of any national convention. He was a very large slave-owner, and thus identified in interest, and presumably in sympathy, with the South; but he could not be induced to define his position. His active supporters were chiefly from the slave-holding States and those free States which had generally given Democratic majorities, while the men most violent in their opposition to the Wilmot proviso were his most conspicuous ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... 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 ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... spoken of as the "red races," between whom and the four following there was not at first much mixture of blood. These four, though differing considerably from each other, have been called "yellow," and this colour may appropriately define the complexion of the Turanian and Mongolian, but the Semite and Akkadian ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... roving about, now with one person and now with another, 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 a certain ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... So-and-So; and I should be unworthy of the care bestowed upon my education by my dear parents if I were altogether insensible to the advantages of his worldly position. But beyond this point I am at a loss to define my sentiments; and so I ask you, my dear papa and mamma, for permission to study the question for some little time longer, when I may be able to furnish you with a more accurate report of my feelings. At the same time, if the interest I have in this young man is likely to conflict ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... words which no one can precisely define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in traveling through every country in the world, because her family had thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the nostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the wool. Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner; in bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the windows with his hands in his pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, half-critical, watch Isabel and Madame Merle as ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... define psychology, it will be helpful to make some inquiry into the nature of science in general. Science is knowledge; it is what we know. But mere knowledge is not science. For a bit of knowledge to become ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle

... susceptibilities, Holmes, even in your exuberance. That 'old party,' as you so unfeelingly define her, cannot own to more than two or three years seniority over my respectable self—four at ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... and was thus enabled to represent much more accurately the annual motion of the earth which produced the second inequality of Mars, to whose motion he now returned. Three points are sufficient to define a circle, so he took three observed positions of Mars and found a circle; he then took three other positions, but obtained a different circle, and a third set gave yet another. It thus began to appear that the orbit could not be a circle. He next tried to divide into 360 equal ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... them, I must believe that the final issue of it is worth the time and study needed to arrive at such results as would, I am convinced, finally crown them. If it were worth while, I could, I am persuaded, define, a priori, the lines of investigation along which we should move, but each investigator will choose his own route, and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... about in time that, after a number of years of study in the Arts under some master, a student was permitted to present himself for a test as to his ability to define words, determine the meaning of phrases, and read the ordinary Latin texts in Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic (the Trivium), to the satisfaction of other masters than his own. In England this test came to be known by the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Cf. the "Memoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the ordinary sentiments of the young nobility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment for the person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered the trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then possessed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... to define this motive power of woman's nature is the feminine spirit. That spirit manifests itself most frequently in motherhood, but it is greater than maternity. Woman herself, all that she is, all that she has ever ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... favourably. On the tenth day of my solitude, a strange thing happened. I awoke after a good night's sleep to find myself possessed with a marked repugnance for my room. The air seemed to stifle me. The more I tried to define the cause of this dislike, the more unreasonable it appeared. There was something about the room that made me afraid. Absurd as it seems, this feeling clung to me obstinately while dressing, and more than once I caught myself shivering, and conscious of an inclination ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... Manicheism than some of his radical phrases imply, appears from his "Gnowthi seauton, De Essentia Originalis Institutiae," of 1568. After admitting that Augustine, Luther, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are correct when they define original sin as an inordinate disposition, a disorder (ataxia), perversion, and confusion of the parts of man, Flacius proceeds: "The substantial form of a certain thing for the most part, consists in the right position and disposition ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... inaccurate to say that he belonged to it. Religious party views are always rather difficult to describe, and it will be found that in every party there are some whose minds do not run on partisan lines. An eminent bishop was once asked to define the three parties of the National Church, and he replied, that the High Churchman always asked what the Church taught, the Broad Churchman could be distinguished by his asking what reason taught, and the Evangelical ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... seemed to her exactly to define her feeling for Scarborough. She liked it so well that she repeated it to herself reassuringly many times in ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... laid up in a Kaffir hut for six weeks. When I got better, as I could not walk very well I rode upon oxen that I had trained. That white beast you saw is the last of them; the others died of the bite of the tsetse fly. A fear which I could not define caused me to press forward as fast as possible; for the last twenty-four hours I have scarcely stopped to eat or sleep. When I got into the Mazitu country this morning I found the kraals empty, except for some women and girls, who knew ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... pent up in a gloomy apartment, or traversing narrow and crowded streets. His food was coarse, and his lodging humble. His heart gradually contracted a habit of morose and gloomy reflection. He could not accurately define what was wanting to his happiness. He was not tortured by comparisons drawn between his own situation and that of others. His state was such as suited his age and his views as to fortune. He did not imagine himself treated with extraordinary or unjustifiable ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... She had often seen that when a person was unfortunate, Mary's pity might easily be mistaken for love, and, indeed, it was a temporary sensation of that kind. Such it was—why it was so, let others define, I cannot argue against instincts. As reason is cultivated in man, they are supposed to grow weaker, and this may have given rise to the assertion, "That ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft

... human beings are three-fold in nature. They have a body, a mind—or what St. Paul calls a "soul"—and a spirit. "Soul" is a word whose meaning we have altered so much that I must define what I mean by it and what I think St. Paul meant by it. The soul includes the emotions and the intellect, that part of a man which is not wholly physical and which is not entirely spiritual. Everyone has a soul. And every one ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... contributed most materially to the success of the negotiations. I have further to add, that it was found impossible, owing to the extent of the country treated for, and the want of knowledge of the circumstances of each band, to define the reserves to be granted to the Indians. It was therefore agreed that the reserves should be hereafter selected by officers of the Government, who should confer with the several bands, and pay due respect to lands actually cultivated by them. A provision was also introduced to the effect ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... Raf's inner uneasiness grew. For some queer reason which he could not define to himself or explain to anyone else, he was now possessed by an urgency to trail the globe which transcended and then erased his dislike of the aliens. It was as if some appeal for help was being broadcast from the other ship, drawing him on. It was then that he began ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... ladies were right in their prophesy, and she was no longer lonely at school. She enjoyed talking about her schoolfellows, about her new life, about her studies. The Misses Bruce were decidedly fond of a gossip, but something which she could not at all define in their manner prevented Hester from retailing for their benefit any unkind news. They told her frankly at last that they were only interested in the good things which went on in the school, and that they found no pursuit so altogether ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... their mother Mississippi. It was almost more than the little convent girl could take in: at least such was the expression of her eyes; for they opened as all eyes have to open at pilot stories. And he knew as much of astronomy as he did of hydrology, could call the stars by name, and define the shapes of the constellations; and she, who had studied astronomy at the convent, was charmed to find that what she had learned was all true. It was in the pilot-house, one night, that she forgot herself for the first time in her life, and ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... there flashed across his mind the memory of the first time he had seen her, and the look of amusement upon her face then, that had given him such deadly offense. There was no amusement now, but there was embarrassment and something else. Ranald could not define it, but it chilled his heart, and at once he began to feel how badly dressed he was. The torn shirt, the ragged trousers, and the old, unshapely boots that he had never given a thought to before, now seemed to burn into ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... the reading lessons. Words are not repeated in the vocabularies. In the latter half of the book, definitions are introduced. It is hoped that the teacher will extend this defining exercise to all the words of the lesson liable to be misunderstood. The child should define the word in his own language sufficiently to show that he has a mastery of the word in its use. Drills in articulation and emphasis should be given with every lesson. The essentials of good reading are not ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... with General Foch. Up and down the long line, now here, now there; the British and Belgians on the north, the French and Americans on the south, first one, then the other, then together, the Allies drove forward with hammer blows on the yielding German armies. That subtle force, so hard to define, the morale of the invaders, was broken down. Their confidence was gone. They knew they were defeated. The one hope of their leaders was to get safely back to Germany, and soon a general retreat was in progress. But to remove armies aggregating several million men, with guns and supplies, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... of reminiscence on the starlit terrace. She was the same, but so mysteriously changed! And it was the mystery, the sense of unprobed depths of initiation, which drew him to her as her freshness had never drawn him. He had not hitherto attempted to define the nature of the change: it remained for his sister Nannie to do that when, on his return to the Rue de Rivoli, where the family were still sitting in conclave upon their recent visitor, Miss Durham ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... neither German nor English,) from the perusal of which they carry away nothing but some very obscure terms, on which they themselves have superinduced a very vague meaning. These terms you in vain implore them to define; or, if they define them, they define them in terms which as much need definition. Heartily do we wish that Socrates would reappear amongst us, to exercise his accoucheur's art on these hapless Theaetetuses and Menos of our day! Many such ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... In the morning he rises earlier than usual and sets himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular step with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 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"

... of their eyes, the softness of their hair, the very feel of their firm, strong bare legs gave her an actual pang of joy. But a half hour—an hour—with them, and she grew restless, irritable. She didn't try to define this feeling. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... for, in due time, acute and able advocates came forward to prove that the articles assailed rested on an impregnable foundation. During these debates it was found necessary to distinguish the different shades of doctrine by the establishment of a fixed terminology. The disputants were obliged to define with precision the expressions they employed; and thus various forms of speech ceased to have an equivocal meaning. But, in the second or third century, theology had not assumed a scientific form; and the language of orthodoxy ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the drink. "It's making some kind of sense now. Symbiosis, parasitism and all the rest are just ways of describing variations of the same basic process of living together. And there is probably a grading and shading between some of these that make the exact relationship hard to define." ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... more than a word to say in most of his opinions and decisions. Now sentiment ruled him strongly and pushed him—but, unfortunately, in diametrically opposite directions. The sentiment of friendship compelled him hitherward. While another sentiment, which he refused to define—he recognised it as wholesome, yet he was a trifle ashamed of it—compelled him quite other-where. He took refuge in an adroit ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Precisely on that part of the coast, to which the united channels of the water lead, a harbour has been surveyed and approved of by competent naval officers. These geographical facts, therefore, render it easy to define one situation more favourable than any other that might be found along that coast, for the nucleus of a colony, and which would divide almost equally the whole coast line between Sydney and Cape York. I allude to Port Bowen, near Broad Sound; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... those of children towards their parents are assuredly the highest in degree, because without them the bonds which hold society together would be destroyed. These duties form the subject of the fifth commandment. To define their character in a single trait, a profound wisdom has selected the word honour, thereby pointing to a respect which arises, not from fear and terror, but from gratitude, love and submission. ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... was at his sole will and disposal, and he caught eagerly at all proposals made to him as if they were new lights. As, for instance, that some impartial arbitrator should be demanded from the Swabian League to define the boundary; and that next Rogation- tide the two knights should ride or climb it in company, while meantime the serfs should be strictly charged not to trespass, and any transgressor should be immediately escorted ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... analysis, we find that our senses observe nothing of cause or effect: they observe, first, that one fact succeeds another, and, after some opportunity, that this fact has never failed to follow—that for cause and effect we should substitute invariable succession. An older philosophy teaches us to define an object by distinguishing its essential from its accidental qualities: but experience knows nothing of essential and accidental; she sees only that, certain marks attach to an object, and, after many observations, that some of them attach invariably, whilst others may at times ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... which this exhibition created in me, and Lord Gower laughed, and said, "You perhaps do not know who it is?" Indeed I did not. Je define seulement que sa figure n'est pas laide. His chevelure was like that which I see in a picture of the grand Conde. If there is anything of that hid under this disguise je lui passerai cette singularity and yet, if your ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... just inside of their front door. The density of this area varied, the end in which the house was built was so total that I couldn't penetrate, while the other end that curved around to end by the road tapered off in deadness until it was hard to define the boundary. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... the shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... mountains that traverse the interior of Guinea, from the Cameroon in the north, to Angola in the south, and about 100 miles inland, and called by the geographers Crystal Mountains. The limit to which this animal extends, either north or south, I am unable to define. But that limit is doubtless some distance north of this river [Gaboon]. I was able to certify myself of this fact in a late excursion to the head-waters of the Mooney (Danger) River, which comes into the sea some sixty miles from this ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... him, she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define, but of which she had ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... Keyser's Point, for I knew that to the west of this point I should find Turval's Creek. While rowing along the marsh I came upon two duck-shooters in their punt, but so enveloped were they in the mist that it was impossible to do more than define their forms. I, however, ventured a question as to my locality, when, to my utter astonishment, there came back to me in clear accents my own name. Never before had it sounded so sweet to my ears. It was the voice of my friend, who with a companion was occupied in removing from the water the flock ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... good if not abundant. The dining-room was very dreary, although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, paneled to the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little more to define their lineaments to each other than the flames ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... this gift limited to mere paysage. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned for praise is only first among many. But whether these things are supported by sufficient strength of character, plot, incident, "thought," and the rest; whether that strange narrative power, so hard to define and so impossible to mistake or to fail to distinguish from these other elements, is present—these are great questions and not easy to answer. I am, as will have been seen throughout, rather inclined to answer ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... twenty-three hybrids in Peru, and there are undoubtedly as many, or more, in Brazil. The most common are Mamelucos (offspring of white with Indian), Mulattoes (from white and Negro), Cafuzos or Zambos (from Indian and Negro), Curibocos (from Cafuzo and Indian); and Xibaros (from Cafuzo and Negro). "To define their characteristics correctly," says Von Tschudi, "would be impossible, for their minds partake of the mixture of their blood. As a general rule, it may be said that they unite in themselves all the faults without ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... countless treasures at Sardis. His dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the river Halys to the east; on the other side of that river began the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyages, extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, but comprising, in a south-eastern direction, Persis proper or Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on the east by the line of Mount Zagros (the present boundary-line between Persia and Turkey). Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... to be real, 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 ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... had rapturously risen, she nodded and smiled as she swerved down on the chair beside him. She looked to him somehow different. He had quite forgiven her for being late: her mere presence was a perfect excuse. And the very change in her, though he could not define it, was somehow pleasing to him. He was about to question her, but she shook her head and held up to her lips a black-gloved forefinger, enjoining silence for the singer, who, with dogged British pluck, had ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... the name is obtained from the fact, that the drugs given, do not produce symptoms corresponding to those of the disease for whose relief they are administered as in homoeopathy. The introduction of the term is contemporary with homoeopathy itself. It was merely given to define briefly the distinction that exists between the rival modes of treatment, and it has been accepted and adopted by all medical men who have no faith in homoeopathy, and the treatment that ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... it is sufficient to say that the affidavits for the complainant so clearly define the principle of operation of the flying machines in question that I am reasonably satisfied that there is a variableness of the angle of incidence in the machine of defendants which is produced when a supplementary plane on one side is tilted or raised and the other stimultaneously tilted ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... we are with the human body. There must have been, and must be a central god in the machine of each animate corpus. The little soul of the beetle makes the beetle toddle. The little soul of the homo sapiens sets him on his two feet. Don't ask me to define the soul. You might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so whimsically and so god-like pedals her way along the highroad. A young lady skeltering off on her bicycle to meet her young man—why, what could the bicycle make of such a mystery, if you explained it till ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... seventeenth-century dramatic history, I have sought to keep in view the bearings of the past on the present. A large portion of the book discusses, as its title indicates, methods of representing Shakespeare on the modern stage. The attempt is there made to define, in the light of experience, the conditions which are best calculated to conserve or increase Shakespeare's genuine vitality in the theatre of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... assembling in public councils, and their zeal for the tribe to which they belong, are qualifications that fit them to act under that species of government; and they seem to have but a few steps to make in order to reach its establishment. They have only to define the numbers of which their councils shall consist, and to settle the forms of their meeting: they have only to bestow a permanent authority for repressing disorders, and to enact a few rules in favour of that justice they ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... can define love, and say what it is? There are so many kinds of love. We say that we ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... name of the peoples of the Russian Republic, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly expresses the firm will of the people to immediately discontinue the war and conclude a just and general peace, appeals to the Allied countries proposing to define jointly the exact terms of the democratic peace acceptable to all the belligerent nations, in order to present these terms, in behalf of the Allies, to the governments fighting against the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... but Lady Greendale noticed it, and the girl herself felt that, although he was no less kind and friendly, there was some impalpable change in his manner, something that she felt, though she could not define it, even ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... He would, despite every priest in Prague. More than one passenger had walked by while she was crouching in her niche beneath the statue— had passed by and had not seen her. Indeed, the night at present was so dark, that one standing still and looking for her would hardly be able to define her figure. And yet, dark as it was, she could see something of the movement of the waters beneath her, some shimmer produced by the gliding movement of the stream. Ah! she would go now and have done with it. Every moment that she remained was ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... say so! A thing easier to feel than define,' murmured Ladywell. 'But it's no use, Neigh—I can't help it as long as she repulses me so exquisitely! If she would only care for me a little, I might get to trouble less ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... and at last finding expression and fulfilment in the rapture of ecstasy. We may think the numerical subdivisions of the Path pedantic and find fault with its want of definition, for it does not define the word right (samma) which it uses so often, but in thus ignoring ceremonialism and legalism and making simple goodness in spirit and deed the basis of religion. Gotama rises above all his contemporaries and above all subsequent ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... and Great Britain remark that it is a condition of peace, not of armistice. But Clemenceau makes it a question of regard and consideration for France. France would not understand there being no mention of it; there was no desire to define anything, only just to mention it, and in three simple words. "I ask you," says Clemenceau, "to put yourselves into the spirit of the people of France." At once the British representative notes the necessity of a clear statement regarding reparations ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... science permits me to postulate (a concession by science which I much doubt if it could make) that matter, as we know it, has the semblance of being what we call a substance, charged with a something which we define as energy, but which at all events simulates a vital principle resembling heat, seeking to escape into space, where it cools. Thus the stars, having blazed until their vital principle is absorbed in space, sink into ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... did not understand. Though vagabond in essence, the fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and irony not found upon the face of normal man, and in turning from it to the other passengers Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt, and questioning, that he could not define. Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he tried to diagnose this new sensation. He found it disconcerting that the faces and behaviour of his neighbours lacked anything he could grasp and secretly abuse. They ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... is caricature, how can I define it? Ah, here it is explained by some great authority—whom I cannot say, for I have it under the heading of "Cuttings from Colney Hatch," undated, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... this same issue of Democracy which has long been the dividing line between the Socialist Party and the I. W. W. Like the Bolshevists of Russia, the I. W. W. have championed Democracy but we have refused to allow the capitalist thinkers to define it for us. We have practiced Democracy in our organization and we have sublimated it into the most perfect of Democratic organizations. But always, it has been a Democracy only of proletarians. We have built the framework of a new society which says that those shall not vote who do not work. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... refer to the extract from Diana's speech he will see how completely free Peele was from any inherited bondage of the couplet measure. It is not easy to define exactly what Marlowe did give to blank verse. His famous Prologue to the First Part of Tamburlaine makes it quite clear that the general public were indebted to him for the introduction of blank verse upon their unpolished stage, it having previously been ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... laughter-loving people, to whose weakness he is altogether too well adapted now."[474] The friends of a free Kansas appreciated the superiority in debate of the Illinois statesman, whose arguments now called out half a dozen replies from as many Republican senators. It afforded a fine opportunity to define and shape the principles of the new party, and each senator attracted wide attention. But the speech of Seward, who took the floor on the 9th of April in favour of the immediate admission of Kansas ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... dragged into this war. Such a happening would be nothing more nor less than a catastrophe in itself, to say nothing of the internal dissensions here. On the other hand, as things are now, Washington is becoming a perfect arena for diplomatic chicanery, and I have just an instinct—I can't define it in any way—which leads me to believe that some fresh trouble has started within ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... liturgies who have never known religious aspiration so sincere as that of this ignorant young Hercules, whose best confession was that he meant hereafter "to put in his best licks for Jesus Christ." And there be those who can define repentance and faith to the turning of a hair who never made so genuine a start for the kingdom of Heaven as Bud ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... a reconciliation with Donald based on an acceptance of the latter's wife but with certain reservations. The Laird never quite got around to defining the reservation but in a vague way he felt that they should exist and that eventually Donald would come to a realization of the fact and help him define them. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... a prime meridian which is to serve for a great period of time, it is important to so fix and define it that the natural changes of time may not render it in the least degree uncertain. To this end, the nation within whose borders the chosen point may fall should engage to establish it in the most enduring manner, and protect it against ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various

... Looking over the fourteenth volume of Col. Godfrey's work entitled "Important Discoveries," to see if we could find anything therein written by which we could identify "Uncle Alek's Mule," and if possible to define him, that there could be no reasonable doubt but that it was the same mule rode by Nat Turner, and that he was driven by the young mother in her flight with her infant to the Dismal Swamp, and if what G. P. R. James said in his ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold

... Soissons, Robert II. Comte de Flandre, and Enguerrand I. Sire de Coucy, the three loftiest and lordliest personages then of this part of the world, to a conference at his chateau in Anizy, there to fix and define where the authority of the Sire de Coucy ended and that of the bishops of Laon began. In 1210 the burgh of Anizy became a free commune and elected its first mayor. The next year its seigneur, Robert de Chatillon, bishop-duke of Laon, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... (Accidents of pregnancy).—These three terms indicate a premature expulsion of the products of conception. Let us medically define these terms as follows; Abortion implies expulsion of the foetus before the sixteenth week. Miscarriage, the expulsion between the sixteenth and twenty-eighth weeks. Premature labor designates the time of expulsion as between the twenty-eighth week to within a few weeks before the normal ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... attempt to define this word fact. Fact expresses for me something in its nature primary and unanalyzable. I start from that. I take as a typical statement of fact that I sit here at my desk writing with a fountain pen on a pad of ruled scribbling paper, that the sunlight falls upon me ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... reconstruct that Gospel from the materials available to us with any tolerable or sufficient approach to accuracy? I believe no one who has gone into the question carefully would deny that we can. Here it is necessary to define and guard our statements, so that they may cover exactly as much ground as they ought and ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... have taken the trouble to inform me that I am a pessimist. Perhaps so; but I am not worrying much about it. A pessimist is a person somewhat difficult to define. The fool who smokes in a powder-house, or believes that his neighbors always speak well of him behind his back; the wife who encourages her husband to pay court to other women on the supposition that no harm can ensue; the banker who accepts a man's unsecured note because he is a church member ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... This seventeenth-century pagan depended upon himself for his 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 Manchester, at a public ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... time, straining his eyes towards the coast, when the rising sun gave a faint blue outline of the Wicklow mountains, and assured him that he had actually and really before him, "The Holy Hills of Ireland." Nearer and nearer he comes, and Howth at one side and Wicklow Head at the other define what he, not unjustly, regards as the Bay. And surely on a bright clear morning, with just enough of sunlight, it is as fair a scene as mortal eye can rest on. The Dublin and Wicklow hills, which at first seemed to rise from the shore, recede by degrees, and with their ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... that surrounds it, have been studied in their relation to man and history. Physical geography, or physiography, has thus arisen. In recent years scientists have gone far in the study of the physical geography of the sea, in making maps of its bottom, and in the endeavor to define the system of oceanic winds and currents. In connection with physical geography, the distribution of animal life on the land and in the depths of the sea has been studied, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... maid, and let who will be clever,'" declaimed the Bonnie Lassie, who was feeling perverse that day. "You want me to define his social status for you and tell you whether you'd better invite him to dinner. You'd better not. He might ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... something quite different; I can't describe it to you, but it seemed to stop the breath. I went into the front room and the back room, and the kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as you would expect, but there was something strange about them all. I couldn't define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It was one of the rooms on the first floor, though, that was the worst. It was a largish room, and once on a time the paper must have been cheerful enough, but when ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... through the fruitful valley. A feeling of forgiveness crept into his soul. He looked toward the churchyard, of which a part remained, with crosses bowing toward the earth, but a part had become railroad. He was just trying to define his feelings, when, whistle went the first signal, and a while after the train came slowly along, puffing out smoke mingled with sparks, for wood was used instead of coal; the wind blew toward the house, and standing there they soon found themselves enveloped in a dense smoke; but by and by, as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... rough material of literature, but it does not become literature until the artist's imagination, as with a divine ray, has penetrated the mass and inspired it with an ideal existence. Among the numerous attempts of his contemporaries to define the creative faculty of the poet, this comparatively simple one of Hazlitt's is worth noting. "This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of imagination, is perhaps what stamps the character of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin



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