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Defining   /dɪfˈaɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Defining

noun
1.
Any process serving to define the shape of something.  Synonym: shaping.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Defining" Quotes from Famous Books



... decision; and then the two girls stood for a moment looking down at the delicate little face, where, since the food and broth Dora had administered, a bright color showed itself upon the cheeks and lips; while the short, thick curls, carefully brushed, clustered around the white forehead, defining its classic shape, and contrasting with its ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... activity as Ronald Walton, without being stirred and inspired by the contact. The force, decision, aptitude, promptness, which distinguished Ronald, had constituted him a sort of prince among his fellow-students, who gave him the lead in all their united movements, without defining to themselves his claim to supremacy. Ronald's character was not free from imperfections; but its very faults were essentially national,—were characteristics of that "fast-running nation" which is "indivertible in aim," and incredulous of the existence of the unattainable. His ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... beauty, and the power of defining physical character, are based on moral instinct, and on the power of defining animal or human character. Nor is it possible to say that one flower is more highly developed, or one animal of a higher order, than another, without the assumption of a divine ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... Thierry, "Documens sur l'histoire du tiers Etat," III., 319), an act of the royal council, dated October 1, 1772, accepts 70,000 francs from the town of Amiens for the repurchase of the installment of its magistracies, and defining these magistracies, as well as the mode of election according to which the future incumbents shall be appointed. Provence frequently bought back its municipal liberties in the same fashion, and, for a hundred years, expended for this purpose 12,500,000 livres. In 1772, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... dominated by and subjected to the king-craft of a master who never brooked opposition to his will; and Wolsey, failing to carry out that will, was hurled without remorse from his high estate. The Cardinal's fall, the breach with Rome, the defining of the shape which the Reformation was to take in England, were all the outcome of Henry's resolve to be released from the wife to whom he had been wedded for eighteen years. Hitherto we have made only incidental allusion ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... appreciation. All good writing gains vastly when read thus. Mentally, at all events, we must image its sound if we are to get its full value. As to poetry, that goes without saying; for the essential, defining element in poetry is music. You may have truth, beauty, imagination, emotion, but without music you have not yet got poetry. But it is hardly less true that prose should be read aloud. "The best test of good writing," said Hazlitt—and no man in his ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... many incidental ideas which Mrs. Eddy has added to Quimbyism are her theory that the Godhead is more feminine than masculine, and her qualified disapproval of matrimony. Quimby himself had a large family and saw nothing unspiritual in marriage. In defining the real purpose of marriage Mrs. Eddy says nothing about children; "to happify existence by constant intercourse with those adapted to elevate it, is the true purpose of marriage." In her chapter on marriage she says: ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... is full of complexities. The question of how much an expenditure per volume is warranted is one that cannot be answered generally. There are many limiting and defining considerations. First of all, the book itself. If it is the kind to be a "big seller," a risk can possibly be taken on a larger advertising investment than would be warranted in the case of a good book of finer quality and limited appeal. Certain books of coarser, more obvious ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... six we assembled. My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to the coat than a straw hat. He smelled slightly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... whole body slightly sidewise, the better to face him. The soft silk fell in new lines about her, defining new curves. Her red lips smiled softly, and her eyes were dark ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... foundational times is not the Catholic Church asserting and defining a thing and then, some time after, the heresiarch denying this definition; no heresy comes within a hundred miles of such a procedure. What happens in the early Church is that some doctrine not yet fully defined is laid down by such and such a man, that his final settlement clashes with the opinion ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... the defining power of a telescope are close double or multiple stars, the components of which are not very unequal. The illuminating power should be tested by directing the telescope towards double or multiple stars having one or more minute components. Many ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... made to estimate the quantity of water derivable from the melting of one of these formations; yet the experiment is worth trying as a help towards defining ideas. Let us grant that the average depth of snow in them, of the delicate Martian kind, is twenty feet, equivalent at the most to one foot of water. The maximum area covered, of 2,400,000 square miles, is nearly ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... modest request the lieutenant states the whole case for the land-gang, at once demonstrating its utility and defining its functions. Unconsciously he does more. He echoes a cry that incessantly assailed the ears of Admiralty: "The sailor has escaped! Send us warrants and give us gangs, and we will catch ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... time of Alfred to the present day, statutes and decisions have busied themselves with defining the precautions to be taken in certain familiar cases; that is, with substituting for the vague test of the care exercised by a prudent man, a precise one of specific acts or omissions. The fundamental ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles, while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth in the essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aim to expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, by ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... hands, and lost himself in long and painful meditation. I shall tell all; he felt at intervals in the depths of his being, in the very depths, the agitation of a secret joy which he dared not confess to himself; but it was a passing movement of his soul which he did not succeed in defining in the midst of the whirlwind which shook him. And then, in such a moment, he thought but little of asking himself what he could or could not feel. His mind was elsewhere. Sometimes he sought to picture to himself all the successive phases ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... proposition what was implicitly contained in the subject. There are propositions that do no more than this; they are analytical, i.e. they merely analyze the subject. Thus, when we say: Man is a rational animal, we may merely be defining the word "man"—unpacking it, so to speak. But a synthetic judgment is one in which the predicate is not contained in the subject; it adds to one's information. The mathematical truths are of this character. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... generally entertained, however, that a quarter's warning to quit, where the house is of small rental, is sufficient notice; but where the rent is payable quarterly, or at longer intervals, this is a mistake, for unless a special agreement is made defining the time to be given as a warning, six months' notice to quit must be given, to expire on the same day of the year upon which the tenancy commenced. Where the rent is payable weekly or monthly, the notice to quit will be good if given for the week or month, provided care ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... In defining immediate factors which enter into our quest, I have spoken to the Congress and the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt

... 2, 1884, defining the rights of the married woman. It secured to her the control of property owned by her at the time of marriage and of wages earned afterward, made her not liable for her husband's debts and gave her the same power to make ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... of the clash of freedoms that may otherwise arise. The Utopian State will effectually interfere with and prescribe conditions for all sorts of contract, and for this sort of contract in particular it will be in agreement with almost every earthly State, in defining in the completest fashion what things a man or woman may be bound to do, and what they cannot be bound to do. From the point of view of a statesman, marriage is the union of a man and woman in a manner so intimate as to involve the probability of offspring, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... tendencies to enthusiastic devotion for the living life preserver, because the very name is a provocative. Were two such words ever before combined to form a name?—the one expressing the natural quality of the bearer of it, and the other defining what her deeds have made her in the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... clean, glossy towels. On the wall to the left of the door was the electric bell and the directions for using it, and tacked upon the door itself a card as to the hours for meals, the rules of the hotel, and the extract of the code defining the liabilities of innkeepers, all printed in bright red. Everything was clean, defiantly, aggressively clean, and there was a clean smell of new soap in ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... The Hague agreement defining the rights and duties of nations at war, and which Germany had accepted, were thrust aside and disregarded by Imperial Germany. The Hohenzollern dynasty was above rules and regulations. International law and the rights of non-combatants at sea were as nothing. That all nations had agreed ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... pointed arch, the groin rib became adopted in the early pointed vaulting as a means of giving expression and carrying up the lines of the architectural design. On its edge were stones moulded with the deep undercut hollows of early English moulding, defining the curves of the oblique as well as of the cross arches with strongly marked lines, and, moreover, falling on a level with each other in architectural importance; the oblique vault of the arch is no longer a secondary line in the vaulting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various

... up at Rickman's, blazing with all its lights, he felt that he had hit on the satisfying, the defining phrase. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... successful operation of disability insurance has been the difficulty experienced in its administration—largely on account of the impracticability of closely defining permanent or total disability. With almost every revision of the constitutions changes were made in the definition of the term "disability." Strict construction of the law by the executive officials led to dissatisfaction and often to appeals from their decisions to the insurance committees, ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy

... Introduction, Sect. 2; Part 1., Chapter 19; Part II., Chapter 21.—The "Pragmaticas del Reyno" comprises various ordinances, defining the privileges of Salamanca and Valladolid, the manner of conferring degrees, and of election to the chairs of the universities, so as to obviate any undue influence or corruption. (Fol. 14-21.) "Porque," says ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... stupid conflict of stupidities, a greater antagonism was coming into being, was slowly and quietly defining itself as a thing inevitable, sinking now a little out of attention only to resume more emphatically, now flashing into some acute definitive expression and now percolating and pervading some new region of thought, and that was the antagonism of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... bow, fixed to the keel, and projecting forward under the water-line, was the rostrum, or beak, a device of solid wood, reinforced and armed with iron, in action used as a ram. A stout molding extended from the bow the full length of the ship's sides, defining the bulwarks, which were tastefully crenelated; below the molding, in three rows, each covered with a cap or shield of bull-hide, were the holes in which the oars were worked—sixty on the right, sixty on the left. In further ornamentation, caducei leaned against the lofty prow. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... Two years after his acceptance of the post he was removed from it by order of the Court of Directors. But the work he had done in that short time was good work and left abiding traces. Hastings's plan had borne fruit in Impey's "Code," and afterwards in the passing of an Act of Parliament clearly defining the jurisdiction and the powers of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... to be having. In being one feeling in being one who was one not having what she was needing to be having she was being one deciding in telling anything. In being one deciding in telling anything she was defining that in being one she was ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... sand-dell, chary of vegetation but profuse in potsherds, towards the white walls and high red roof of the Mission-house seen above a wave of tamarisks on the opposite dune. The hedge of prickly pear defining her small domain did not obstruct the view, for it consisted largely of gaps, by one of which a group of three Frankish ladies had just gone from her. She could see their white-clad forms, under sunshades, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... and inner entrances supplied the place of doors. Each house was comparted by screens of willow matting or unhaired skins suspended from the rafters, with spaces between for storage. These slightly-constructed apartments opened towards the central fire like stalls, thus defining an open central area around the fire-pit, which was the gathering place of the inmates of the lodge. This fire-pit was about five feet in diameter, a foot deep, and encircled with flat stones set up edgewise. A hard, smooth, earthen floor completed ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... he's an angel with pin-feathers sprouting all over him," retorted Dad. "But it isn't business, which I take the liberty of defining as the way of making the best of one's opportunities instead of frittering them away. He has unquestionably done a few dozens of poor devils a lot of good, including myself. But he could find many more cripples in any big city, and a few of ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... to be, if you cannot invent for yourselves all the intermediate stages of the transformation, however startling. And, indeed, if modern philosophers had stuck more closely to this old proverb, and its defining verb "make," and tried to show how some person or persons—let them be who they may—men, angels, or gods—made the sow's ear into the silk purse, and the savage into the sage—they might have pleaded that they were still trying to ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the famous Synod of Cambridge, the first ever held in New England, in which the Church set about defining its own position and denouncing the Hutchinsonians. Eighty-two heresies were decided to have arisen, all of which were condemned, and this being settled, Cotton was admonished, and escaped exile only by meekly explaining away his errors. Wheelwright, refusing to yield, was sentenced ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... he possessed independently of the imperial crown, might, by gradual encroachments, defraud them of their rights. A sort of constitution was accordingly drawn up, consisting of thirty-six articles, defining quite minutely the laws, customs and privileges of the empire, which constitution Charles was required to sign ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... in various ages condemning heresies and proclaiming doctrines of faith; and they could not in a stronger manner assert their infallibility than by so defining doctrines of faith and condemning errors. We also behold the Church of Christendom ever saying Amen to the decisions of the Bishops of Rome. Hence it is evident that, in every age, the Church recognized the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... Everything could be predicated of everything, or nothing of anything. To these difficulties Plato finds what to us appears to be the answer of common sense—that Not-being is the relative or other of Being, the defining and distinguishing principle, and that some ideas combine with others, but not all with all. It is remarkable however that he offers this obvious reply only as the result of a long and tedious enquiry; by a great effort he is able to look down as 'from a height' ...
— Sophist • Plato

... alone do not constitute beauty, while on the other hand beauty may take very complicated forms. A third element one may suggest is essential, and its indescribable nature causes all the difficulty there is in defining beauty. This third element is—charm. A work of art, to be beautiful, must charm, and to different people different things are charming. Plato's theory is that the sense of beauty is a dim recollection of a standard we have seen in a heavenly pre-existence. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... sun-steeds crossing the peaks and the lakes; and his disappointment became consternation on hearing Clotilde's English friend (after objection to his pagan clothing of the solemn reality of sunrise, which destroyed or minimized by too materially defining a grandeur that derived its essence from mystery, she thought) announce the hour for her departure. He promised her a positive sunrise if she would delay. Her child lay recovering from an illness in the town below, and she could not stay. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... distance apart in the lantern, were brought together, and flashes of brilliant light, which the wind could neither make flicker nor extinguish, issued from the lighthouse. It was a noteworthy sight, these sparkling rays, rivalling the brilliancy of the plains, and defining sharply the outlines of the surrounding objects. Johnson could not help clapping ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... organism, or to various indiscretions of food or drink, to unhygienic surroundings, to material injuries, or to other forms of environmental stress quite dissociated from the action of bacteria. It is true that one would need to use extreme care nowadays in defining more exactly the diseases that thus lie without the field of the bacteriologist, as that prying individual seems prone to claim almost everything within sight, and to justify his claim with the microscope; but after that instrument has done its best or worst, there will still remain ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... information may be optionally recorded; a user can customize the program's behavior by creating the appropriate file in the current or home directory. (Therefore, dot files tend to {creep} — with every nontrivial application program defining at least one, a user's home directory can be filled with scores of dot files, of course without the user's really being aware of it.) See also ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... expression whatever. There is, of course, that shadowy and futile geographical division known as the Township—but it is laid off utterly without regard to human consideration, and serves no purpose save as a means of defining voting boundaries and limiting the spheres of constables and sheriff's deputies—a mere ghostly phantom of a social entity that we need not ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... secret of that spell is the same detachment from the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana, is "the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth." He might have been defining philosophy. ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... that we have already mastered, on to which we can hitch our new ones; but to multiply them in respect of such a matter as thought, is like scratching the bite of a gnat; the more we scratch the more we want to scratch; the more we define the more we shall have to go on defining the words we have used in our definitions, and shall end by setting up a serious mental raw in the place of a small uneasiness that was after all quite endurable. We know too well what thought is, to be able to know that we know it, and ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... and night and the four seasons were as real to me as the things that took place in my restaurant. The earth was being disclosed to my mental vision as a whole and in detail. Order was coming out of chaos. Continents, seas, islands, mountains, rivers, countries, were defining themselves out of a misty jumble of meaningless names. Light was breaking all around me. Life was becoming clearer. I was broadening out. I was overborne by a sense ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... Chron. xii. 7, 8, 9, 13, it is applied to the king and all the nation. In fine, the word is applied to all persons doing service to others—to magistrates, to all governmental officers, to tributaries, to all the subjects of governments, to younger sons—defining their relation to the first born, who is called Lord and ruler—to prophets, to kings, to the Messiah, and in respectful addresses not less than fifty times in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... remains on this site, but here and there a fragment aids in defining the general plan of the pueblo. In general form the village was a large rectangle with a line of buildings across its center, dividing it into two unequal courts, and a projecting wing on the west side. As may be seen from the illustration, one end of the ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... of preserving light within the colors, involved a certain order of processes. The principal conditions were: first, that the outline should be completed on the panel before the painting, properly so called, was begun. The object, in thus defining the forms, was to avoid alterations and repaintings, which might ultimately render the ground useless without supplying its place. Another condition was to avoid loading the opaque colors. This limitation was not essential with regard to the transparent colors, as ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... for example, considered as an unpicturable force) one must first consider what we, the investigators, are, not at our less good, but at our best. It is with us, as given, with our best qualities regarded as defining in part the Q. E. D. of the experiment, that the investigation must begin. The nature of any and every form of real underlying energy or essence must be defined in terms of our sense of our own will and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... be some of cousin Silas's connections from Omaha; but even before Amelia had time to deny that, his ignorance of local tradition denied it for him. He must have heard of this or that, by way of cousin Silas; but he owned to nothing defining place or time, save that he had been in the war—"all through it." He seemed to be a man quite weary of the past and indifferent to the future. After a half hour's talk with him, unseasonable callers were likely to withdraw, perhaps into the pantry, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... cordially, having all goodwill towards them personally, hating the sin but loving the sinners, to employ a good old theological phrase. Angus began, adroitly enough, with a eulogy of the psalms and paraphrases, defining them as the mountain peaks of song in all ages ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... of the skylight, perceived her master striding rapidly along the road to Planche-au-Vacher. There she lost sight of him—the underwood was too thick. But, after a few minutes, the gaze of the inquisitive woman was rewarded by the appearance of a dark object emerging from the copse, and defining itself on the bright pasture land beyond. "Monsieur le Cure is going to La Thuiliere," thought she, and with this half-satisfaction she descended to her ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... is an imaginary body, which is so controlled by specially constructed tables as to be "full" on a day not differing by more than two or three days at most from the date on which the actual moon is full. This may seem, at first sight, a very clumsy arrangement, but it has the advantage of defining the date of Easter precisely, without introducing any question as to the special meridian where the moon might be supposed to be observed. Thus, in 1905, the moon was full at 4{h} 56{m} Greenwich mean time on the morning ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... Puerto Rico and of Spain has been established, as provided by the treaty of peace. The Cuban political prisoners in Spanish penal stations have been and are being released and returned to their homes, in accordance with Article VI of the treaty. Negotiations are about to be had for defining the conventional relations between the two countries, which fell into abeyance by reason of the war. I trust that these will include a favorable arrangement for commercial reciprocity under the terms of sections 3 and 4 of the current tariff act. In these, as in all matters of international concern, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that evening, the eve of his birthday anniversary, after thanking the assembled thousands for their "magnificent welcome," and defining the words "Coercion" and "Invasion"—at that time so loosely used—he continued: "But if the United States should merely hold and retake her own Forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importation, or even ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... desirable, a special mission was despatched to England, and the disputes were finally settled by an assurance, on the first point, that the right of impression should be exercised with caution, and redress afforded for any act of injustice; and by establishing a rule defining the difference between a continuous and an interrupted voyage to the colonies of the enemy, and stipulating that on re-exportation there should remain, after the draw-back, a duty to be paid of one per cent., ad valorem, on all European articles, and not less than two per cent, on colonial ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... accordingly proceeded to study the optical laws of refraction, in which his knowledge of geometry and mathematics greatly helped him. And in course of time, by his rare and exquisite manipulative skill, he succeeded in constructing a four-inch refractor, or achromatic telescope, of admirable defining power. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... defeated have given it at once the character of a kind of Holy Alliance of the conquerors established to regulate the incredible relations which the treaties have created between conquerors and conquered. Wilson had already committed the mistake of founding the League of Nations without first defining the nations and leaving to chance the resources of the beaten peoples and their populations. The day, however, on which all the peoples are represented in the League, the United States, without approving ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... year, it supplies weekly and monthly alphabetical lists of whatever comes from the press, in book form, as completely as the titles can be gathered from every source. It gives valuable notes after most titles, defining the scope and idea of the work, with collations, features which are copied into ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... to these, and by this process produced a series of rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-, usually —oroi—). This mode of defining boundaries, which is probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have borrowed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... piece of bone must come out which will make a sound when thrown into a shield twelve feet off; which feet are to be measured by that of a man of middle stature. From which strange law may be deduced, not only the toughness of the Lombard brain-pan, but the extreme necessity of defining each particular, in order to prevent subsequent disputes, followed up by a blood-feud, which might be handed down from father to son. For by accepting the legal fine, the injured man expressly renounced his primaeval ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... of Happiness as a state of mind under certain conditions, it follows that it can be realized to a great degree, and in all cases to some degree, firstly by forethought or carefully defining what it is or what we desire, and secondly by making a fixed idea by simple, well-nigh mechanical means, without any resource to les grands moyens. According to the old and now rapidly vanishing philosophy, this was to be effected by sublime ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... heaven amid the acclamations of the assembled thousands. These reforms were threefold: The first guaranteed security to life, honor, and property; the second is a new system of taxation; the third, a remodelled plan for levying soldiers, and defining their time of service. The subject can best be illustrated by quoting a few extracts from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to arrive early in November were received with the assurance that the alarm which had been raised was founded on phantoms. It appeared that nobody had dreamed of defining infallibility, or that, if the idea had been entertained at all, it had been abandoned. Cardinals Antonelli, Berardi, and De Luca, and the Secretary Fessler disavowed the Civilta. The ardent indiscretion that was ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... man had sounded. 'The danger of stirring things,'—the dangers, too, of that unscanned swiftness that too late ties leaden pounds to his heels were the dangers that were always threatening the Elizabethan movement, and defining and curbing it. The wisest men of that time leaned towards the monarchy, the monarchy that was, rather than the anarchy that was threatening them. The will of the one rather than the wills of the many, the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... us; and in all my thoughts of London as a physical entity the impression then received of it returns to me. It lay vast, low, and obscure in front of the dull red of the sunset, with dim lights twinkling dispersedly throughout it, and the dome of St. Paul's doubtfully defining itself above the level. There is no other general view of London to be compared with this, seen under those conditions. Soon after, we came to some ridges and mounds, which, said Bennoch, marked the place where were buried the heaps of the slain ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... controversies in matters of faith, feeding with the word of God, binding and loosing, and ministering of the sacraments (for in pure spiritualibus, as he speaketh in Summa, cap. 5,) he yieldeth them not the power of judging and defining, but only things external, which pertain to the external worship of God, or concern external ecclesiastical discipline; such things he acknowledged to be res spirituales;(920) but vera spiritualia he will have ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... greatest number, contented himself with reiterating in as many ways as possible the proposition that self-love fixes our measure of virtue. The next thing to do, after settling utility as the standard of virtue, and defining interest as a term applied to whatever can procure us pleasures and deliver us from pains,[120] was clearly to do what Bentham did,—to marshal pleasures and pains in logical array. Instead of this, Helvetius, starting from the proposition that "to judge is to feel," launched out into ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... by death of her sole relative, she had only her own unaided exertions to rely on. Frances went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, and she came out a model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black stuff dress, so accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, with her spotless white collar turned back from a fair and shapely neck, with her plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her temples, and in a large Grecian ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... contours, modelling the chiaroscura in dead colour, and finally in colouring this black-and-white preparation. The new analysis left the contours to be determined by the junction, more or less fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly defining them as they are known to be defined when seen near at hand or felt... 'Local colour' in light or shade becomes different not only ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... to himself, that there would not be "ten or a dozen in the party" on that yacht. Without defining anything in his mind, he breathed in fancy the same bold ocean breeze which filled the sails, and toyed with Celia's hair; he looked with her as she sat by the rail, and saw the same waves racing past, the same vast dome of cloud and ether ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with this definition: In order to be a citizen one must be a voter. Associate-Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said: "They include all such privileges as are fundamental in their nature; and among them is the right to exercise the elective franchise, and to hold office." Even the Dred Scott decision, pronounced by the Abolitionists ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... on her lips. Without explaining her thought, she slipped from his knee and glided across to the tall golden harp, which had been brought from Monrovia. The light and diaphanous silk of her loose peignoir floated about her, defining the maturing grace of her figure. Abruptly she ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... courtyard, up all the narrow alleys, waiting for some hardy Socialist to "demonstrate." But it was not the plentiful troops, not even a lively thunderstorm that swept Rome all the afternoon, which discouraged the Socialists: they too were in doubt and apathy. They were hesitating, passing resolutions, defining themselves into fine segments of political opinion—and waiting for Somebody to act! They too awaited the completion of those endless discussions among the diplomats at the Consulta, at the Ballplatz in Vienna, and wherever ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), 'called upon me, desiring to know what would be my definition of taste. I told him I must decline defining it, because I knew he would publish it. He continued his importunities in frequent calls, and in one complained much that I would not give him it, as he had that morning got Henry Dundas's, Sir A. Macdonald's, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... squealed." He gave a detailed account of his midnight interview with Firmstone, defining sharply between his facts and his inferences. He finally concluded: "The old man's sharp. There isn't a corner of the mine he doesn't know, and there isn't a chink in the mill, from the feed to the tail-sluice, that he hasn't got his eye on." Luna's mood changed from ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... trained Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been accustomed, but asks for that in continually more ardent or more virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dullness the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of "Bleak House" there are nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's at the brick-maker's, or finished ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... to defining the sounds you hear, and concentrating on a special one, as that of a passing tram, or a ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... was now demanded, he was ready to make that concession, provided that entire independence and self-government were left to the remainder of his dominions. The King of Denmark declared he was ready to accept the line of the Schlei as proposed: and without defining it he declared it was necessary there should be a military and commercial line drawn for the sake of the independence of Denmark; and he declared moreover that there should be an European guarantee for the possession of the remainder of his territory. The German ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... as the girl was quite aware, glanced often at her. She did not, however, meet his gaze, for once Alton was on the way to recovery, she had left the ranch somewhat hastily, and there had been as yet no defining of the relations between them, while neither she nor her father were cognizant of the actual cause of his wound. In the meanwhile she made the most of Thorne, and by degrees Alton lost his grip of the conversation. He had never ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... Some authors, in defining the primary races of mankind, have separated these Indians into two classes; but this is certainly incorrect. Among the young women or chinas, some deserve to be called even beautiful. Their hair was coarse, but bright and black; and they wore it in two plaits hanging ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... discovered it in the recent edicts themselves, which they represented as derogating from the efficiency of both prelates and inquisitors of the faith. To meet this new objection, Francis complaisantly published another ordinance (on the twenty-third of July, 1543), carefully defining the respective provinces of the lay and clerical judges. Prelates and inquisitors were authorized to proceed, in accordance with canon law, to obtain information alike against clergymen and laymen, in case of suspected heresy, and the secular judges were strictly ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... any rate—the word 'quittor' is usually held to indicate one or other of the two latter conditions, and probably the last of these; and that the two first are held of small account, or hardly of sufficient gravity to allow of the word 'quittor' being applied to them. In fact, by defining quittor as a 'fistula,' or little pipe, we have ourselves already indirectly restricted the use of the word to the two latter conditions, for in those varieties known as Simple or Cutaneous and Tendinous, the wound is generally ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... administrative services was not adequately recognized. But this arose from the old British tradition under which fighting and administration were not distinguished as being quite separate and yet equally essential for fighting. The public had not got into its head the reality of the process of defining the two different functions with precision, and of confiding them to different ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... if, however, he had tried and failed, which from my own experience I should think most likely, he might have spared his "almost." "Almost" is a very dangerous word. I once heard a man say that an escape he had had from drowning was "almost" providential. The difficulty about defining an individual arises from the fact that we may look at "almost" everything from two different points of view. If we are in a common-sense humour for simplifying things, treating them broadly, and emphasizing resemblances rather than differences, we can find excellent ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... This is certainly good defining, and the passage we have Italicized has the true Transcendental ring. Indeed, the book is a system of Kantian Ethics, as the author herself says in her Preface; and the tough old Koenigsberg professor has no reason to complain of his gentle expounder. Unlike ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... in such a degree of forwardness as to promise that it will be completed before the meeting of the next Congress. This consideration points to the expediency of maturing at the present session a system for the regulation and government of the penitentiary, and of defining a system for the regulation and government of the penitentiary, and of defining the class of offenses which shall be punishable by confinement in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams

... conveyed by the verb to diddle—is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining—not the thing, diddling, in itself—but man, as an animal that diddles. Had Plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... effects are produced. The old masters indeed are simpler; their characteristics are written larger, and are easier to read, than their analogues in all the mixed, confused productions of the modern mind. But when once we have succeeded in defining for ourselves those characteristics, and the law of their combination, we have acquired a standard or measure which helps us to put in its right place many a vagrant genius, many an unclassified talent, many precious though imperfect ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... of the League, by forbidding all distinctive 'catechisms and formularies,' which might have the effect of openly assigning the schools to this or that religious body. It refused, at the same time, to attempt the impossible task of defining what was undenominational; and its author even contended, if we understood him correctly, that it would in no way, even indirectly, interfere with the substantial teaching of any master in any school. This assertion ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... inches. Nearly an inch shorter than the English sparrow. Male — Upper parts olive-green; under parts yellow; a yellow line from the bill passes over and around the eye. Crown of head, patch below the eye, and line defining throat, black. Female — Similar, but paler, and with grayish instead of black markings. Range — United States eastward from the Rockies, and from Iowa and Connecticut to Central, America, where it winters. Migrations — May. September. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... concessions to the Ambalat oil block; the ICJ decision has prompted Indonesia to assert claims to and to establish a presence on its smaller outer islands; Indonesia and Singapore pledged in 2005 to finalize their 1973 maritime boundary agreement by defining unresolved areas north of Batam Island; Indonesian secessionists, squatters, and illegal migrants create repatriation problems for Papua New Guinea; piracy remains a problem ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... sovereignty sacrificed by the national government to the League, and the diminution of congressional powers. This group was anxious to insert reservations making plain the right of Congress alone to declare war, defining more exactly the right of the United States to interpret the Monroe Doctrine, and specifying what was meant by domestic questions that should be exempt from the cognizance of the League. Had Wilson at once combined with this group and agreed to the suggested reservations, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... flexion, abduction or adduction, rotation or circumduction. The movement of abduction is that which passes from and that of adduction that which passes toward the median line, or the center of the body. The movements of flexion and extension are too well understood to need defining. It is the combination and rapid alterations of these movements which produce the different postures and various gaits of the animal, and it is their interruption and derangement, from whatever causes, which constitute the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... two chapters of this study are summary chapters. The first of these is an analysis of democracy on one segment of the Pennsylvania frontier. Arbitrarily defining democracy, certain objective criteria were set up to evaluate it in the Fair Play territory. Political democracy was investigated in terms of popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, and majority rule, and the political system was judged on the basis of ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... the objection not that we may plunge into the crucial controversy of a science that is not identical with ours, but in order to make my drift clear by the defining aid of express contradiction. No political dogma is as serviceable to my purpose here as the historian's maxim to do the best he can for the other side, and to avoid pertinacity or emphasis on his own. Like the economic precept laissez faire 38, which the eighteenth century derived from Colbert, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... revealed as manifold, as essential, acting as force and knowledge' (Svet. Up. VI, 8); 'He whose wishes are true, whose purposes are true' (Ch. Up. VIII, 1, 5); how can these passages, which clearly aim at defining the nature of Brahman, be liable to refutation?—Owing to the greater weight, we reply, of those texts which set forth Brahman as devoid of qualities. 'It is not coarse, not fine, not short, not long' (Bri. Up. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... would have been edged off his footing, and hurled down the precipice. A whole pack of 'pursuing wolves' [29:1] is upon him, far more ravenous than any which beset the path of the believers in revelation; and he has left himself no shelter. If he had commenced by defining what he meant by 'Nature' and 'Supernatural,' he might have avoided this inconsistency, though he must have sacrificed much of his argument to save his creed. As it is, he has unconsciously juggled with two senses of Nature. Nature in ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... War College. They trace the origin of and give the reason for the policy of this country in Cuba, the Philippines, and Porto Rico, devised and inaugurated by him. It is not generally known that the so-called Platt Amendment, defining our relations to Cuba, was drafted by Mr. Root, and that the Organic Act of the Philippines was likewise the work of Mr. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... cruelty, had he not enabled her to accomplish more than in all her life before? To what might he not have led her, if she had put her hand frankly and truthfully in his? There are times when to those most bewildered in mazes of error light breaks, clear and unmistakable, defining right and wrong with terrible distinctness. Such an hour was this to Christine. The law of God written on her heart asserted itself, and she trembled at the guilty thing she saw herself to be. But there seemed no remedy save in the one she had driven away, never to return, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... went on apace in every direction. Following up the war teachings of Nietzsche and Treitschke and others, General Von Bernhardi issued book after book defining in clear language the alleged national beneficence, biological desirability and inevitability of war, which, when it came, would be "fought to conquer for Germany the rank of a world-power;" the universities and schools and press ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... specific against getting stiff in the tastes is that spiritual grace which is the very antidote, the very antithesis of egotism. Up to a certain point, a certain time, we are usefully employed in cultivating our tastes, in refining them, and in defining them. We cannot be too strenuous in defining them; and, as long as we are young, the catholicity of youth will preserve us from a bigoted narrowness. In aesthetic matters—and I imagine we both understand that we are dealing with these—the youngest youth has no ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... McLeod was surrendered, and soon after Mr. Webster resigned. Having been unjustly criticised by certain political leaders, and his motives impugned for remaining so long in the Cabinet, he at once sought vindication in a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, defining his position, in which he poured out a torrent of eloquence seldom equalled, and in which he clearly indicated the chagrin that even a great man may feel when he is made the subject of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... of Louviers, though never fortified, is noticed on several occasions in history. It was the seat of the conferences between Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Philip Augustus, which ended in the treaty of 1195, defining new limits to Normandy.—It was, as I have already mentioned, one of the items of the compensation made by the same Duke to the Archbishop of Rouen, for the injury done to the church, by the erection of Chateau Gaillard.—During the wars of Edward IIIrd, "Louviers," ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... "sub-species" to designate forms which possess many of the characteristics of true species, but which hardly deserve so high a rank. Now if we reflect on the weighty arguments above given, for raising the races of man to the dignity of species, and the insuperable difficulties on the other side in defining them, it seems that the term "sub-species" might here be used with propriety. But from long habit the term "race" will perhaps always be employed. The choice of terms is only so far important in that it is desirable to use, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... steps toward actually defining the new music took place in the second century, when the Christians were free to worship more openly, and, having wealthy converts among them, held their meetings in public places and basilicas which were used by magistrates and other officials during the day. These basilicas ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... be able most readily to comprehend the position of the various parties in Europe, by placing them before us as they stood severally in the summer of 1532, and defining briefly the object which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... (12), (13) and (14), respectively; by amending paragraphs (4) and (9) in their entirety and resdesignating them as paragraphs (7) and (15), respectively; and by adding new definitions, including, paragraph (2) defining "archived program," paragraph (4) defining "continuous program," paragraph (6) defining "eligible nonsubscription transmission," paragraph (8) defining "new subscription service," paragraph (10) defining "preexisting satellite digital audio radio service" and paragraph (11) defining ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... the Observatory, on the crest of the hills defining the Huron valley, is the largest group of university buildings off the Campus, the old University Hospitals, which are to be replaced in 1922 by the new Hospital, ground for which was broken in September, 1919. Following the erection of ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... in which Ingram talked—separating, defining, exhibiting, so that he and his companion should get as near as possible to what he believed to be the truth of the situation—was oddly in contrast with the blind and passionate yearning of the other for some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... this foolish cry about the slavery of dogma? How can Truth make men anything except more free? Unless a man is prepared to say that the scientist enslaves his intellect by telling him facts, he dare not say that the Church fetters his intellect by defining dogma. Christ did not condemn the Pharisaic system because it was a system, but because it was Pharisaic; because, that is, it was not true; because it obscured instead of revealing the true relations between God and man; because it made the Word of God of none effect through ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... North Carolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a net result against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blank it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor and providing a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than ten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himself unsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... Nec vero terroe ferre omnes omnia possunt—that is to say, that not every soil is suited to every tree, Senor Don Jose—to the exhaustive treatise on bees, in which the poet describes the habits of those wise little animals, defining the drone in ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... at the lower end, admits the rest, not as in themselves constituting the Good, but rather as harmless additions or at most as necessary accompaniments of its operation. Plato, in the Republic, distinguishes between the necessary and unnecessary pleasures, defining the former as those derived from the gratification of appetites "which we cannot get rid of and whose satisfaction does us good"—such, for example, as the appetite for wholesome food; and the latter as those which belong to appetites "which we can ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... died in the old cabin were on their way to civilization. They were taking gold with them, gold which they meant to exchange for supplies. Would they, at the same time, dare to have in their possession a map so closely defining their trail as the rude sketch on the bit of birch bark? Was there not some strange key, known only to themselves, necessary to the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... progenitors of the pianoforte, the Greek monochord and lyre, precisely as our music is the outgrowth of the diatonic scale developed by the Greeks from those instruments. Numerous obstacles stand in the way of defining its story, but it is known that from the ninth century to the thirteenth bow instruments gained in importance. They divided into two classes—the viol proper, with flat back and breast and indented sides, to which belonged the veille, videl, or as it has been called, guitar-fiddle, and the pear-shaped ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... constitution of the United States recognized two distinct powers, in presence of each other, represented in a judicial point of view by two distinct classes of courts of justice, the utmost care which could be taken in defining their separate jurisdictions would have been insufficient to prevent frequent collisions between those tribunals. The question then arose, to whom the right of deciding the competency of each court was to ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... shall find evidence of the fact, because there we find in exaggerated shapes all the evils I have been defining. The best mode of testing the matter is to take the statistics of some large city which has grown from a country town to a vast business hive within a very few years. Chicago fulfils these conditions precisely. In 1852 it numbered 49,407 souls. At the close of 1868 it had reached to ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell

... by the numerous arrangements in the Roman art of land-measuring referable to the Gracchan assignations of land; for instance, the due placing of boundary stones, so as to obviate future mistakes, appears to have been first suggested by the Gracchan courts for defining boundaries and by the ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... spirits. His sensations were similar to those which one can well imagine an ancient Greek might have experienced who, having sent to consult the Delphic oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply, foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked oracular. Her dark face and inscrutable eyes, the stamp of power upon her brow, all suggested that she was a mistress of the black ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... follows that a cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... is very impressive." Some one says "power is ability." And ability? "Well, that is the innate power to do something." And so we get to use our word in the attempted definition itself, which is simply talking in a circle. We can find good descriptive words, but no defining words. ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... glacial action, and the traces of it in North America—especially the defining of its limits, such as the terminal moraine of the great movement itself—are of great interest and value The maps and diagrams are of much assistance in enabling the reader to grasp the vast extent of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... institutions contributed, in some minor degree, to the conflict of interests. There is an action and reaction of cause and consequence, which limits and modifies any general statement of a political truth. I am stating general principles—not defining modifications and exceptions with the precision of a mathematical proposition or a bill in chancery. The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... corner had put out the blazing glory of his oranges and lemons, and Brett Place was all darkness, interspersed with the misty halos of the few lamps defining its triangular shape, with a cluster of three lights on one stand in the middle. The dark forms of the man and woman glided slowly arm in arm along the walls with a loverlike and homeless aspect in ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... the best means of defining the boundaries of States, especially when the lines are of great length and run through unsettled countries. Natural indications, like rivers and mountains, however indistinct in appearance, are in practice subject to unavoidable error. By the treaty of 1783, a boundary was established ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... their confidence. He would probably have been satisfied with the restoration of a Bourbon to the throne, if the throne could be founded in a constitution, admitting the representatives of the people to a share in legislation, and defining the extent and the measure of the executive authority. He was animated by the same principles and sentiments which governed him in the part he acted in 1789 and 1792: and although he might acquiesce in a different government, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... recognition on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all ...
— Inaugural Presidential Address - Contributed Transcripts • Barack Hussein Obama

... than most people are quite willing to see, 'is a paradox.' 'I hold,' he says elsewhere, 'that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.' And, after defining his ideal, 'a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour,' he says, very justly, that 'within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist.' In another essay he narrows the duration to 'half an hour, at the very utmost'; and wisely. In ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... the hills, and murdered and robbed our subjects. The Marquess was extremely desirous to avoid a rupture with them. Remonstrances were addressed to them, and proposals made to settle differences by the better defining of the boundaries between their country and ours. These proposals were regarded as a proof of weakness, and the bold demand was made we should give up to them the great fertile region north of the Ganges. There was no ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... different corporations. One is known to us and works exclusively in wadding; the other, which we are about to study, works in resin, without ever having recourse to cotton. Faithful to my extremely simple principle of defining the worker, as far as possible, by his work, I will call the members of this guild the Resin-bees. Thus confining myself to the data supplied by my observations, I divide the Anthidium group into equal sections, of equal ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... stop, for he felt sure that as much efficiency could be obtained at two-thirds the cost. One of his first acts as Administrator was to call together five great lawyers, who had no objectionable corporate or private practice, and give to them the task of defining the powers of all courts, both ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House



Words linked to "Defining" :   define, process, physical process



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