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Definite   Listen
noun
Definite  n.  A thing defined or determined. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Definite" Quotes from Famous Books



... gray hair, and, as Amedee said, though out of the world we were near it. It was the new-comer's "singular air" which established his identity. Amedee's vagueness had irked me, but the thing itself—the "singular air"—was not at all vague. Instantly perceptible, it was an investiture; marked, definite—and intangible. My interrogator ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... and did various kinds of business with it. But Gorman's occupations were numerous and not definite. He was everything by turns, and nothing long. When visible to the outward eye (and that wasn't often), his chief occupations were loafing about and drinking. On the present occasion he drank a good deal more than usual, and lay down to sleep, vowing vengeance against firemen in general, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... said, gravely, at last, "either you are dreaming or I am. I understood that your reply to my question, the year before last, was as definite and as absolute a refusal as a man could receive. Certainly I have not from that moment had any reason to entertain a moment's doubt that you yourself intended it ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... foundation been a cathedral. The Chapter of canons with the Dean at their head has always been its Governing Body. As a church it was served by prebendaries or canons, who had definite periods of duty annually, and two residential bodies of priests, of whom some, the chantry priests, lived at St. William's College. This College was erected shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century: ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... result of childless couple's unceasing petitions to Heaven (3, a, f, g), and is only a span in length when born (c, d, g). Three of the tales do not mention anything definite about the hero's birth (b, e, h). In all, however, his name is significant, indicating the fact that he is either a dwarf, or wonderfully strong, or a glutton (3 Carancal, from Tag. dangkal, "a palm;" [a] Pusong, from Vis. puso, "paunch, belly;" [b] Cabagboc, from Bicol, "strong;" [c] ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... impervious to foreign ideas from without, and fostered within by all sorts of artificial legislation. This isolation affected every department of private and public life. Methods of education were cast in a definite mould; even matters of dress and household architecture were strictly regulated by the State, and industries were restricted or forced into specified channels, thus retarding ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... gens it is necessary to belong to some family; and to belong to a family a person must have been born in the family so that his kinship is recognized, or he must be adopted into a family and become a son, brother, or some definite relative; and this artificial relationship gives him the same standing as actual relationship in the family, in the gens, in the phratry, and ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... bits of study I did in Malham Cove; the small couples of leaves are different portraits of the first shoots of the two geraniums. I don't find in any botany an account of their little round side leaves, or of the definite central one ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... without a fly wheel, it would be done away with entirely. Some straight line air compressors are so constructed that the momentum of the piston and other moving parts is nearly sufficient to equalize the strains without a fly wheel; but the fly wheel is there because it insures a definite length of stroke, and because it enables us to operate eccentrics and to regulate the speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various

... Imperialism is quieting down and people are beginning to realize that matters nearer home need a little attention, I cannot see how the manufacturing centres can do anything save return Radicals. We are the only party with a definite home policy." ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... also immediately demonstrated that the tone and temper of Congress had changed since the Southern Senators and members had withdrawn, and that we, the military, could now go to work with some definite plans ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... feeling of idleness; it was the first time since he had left the little Ohio college, where he had spent his undergraduate years, that he had known this emptiness of purpose. There was nothing for him to do now, except to dine at the Hitchcocks' to-night. There would be little definite occupation probably for weeks, months, until he found some practice. Always hitherto, there had been a succession of duties, tasks, ends that he set himself one on the heels of another, occupying his mind, relieving his will ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... rather possible that he might have a suspicion, or be able to give us some kind of direction. But he knows nothing at all. That was perfectly clear. And if he had known anything—had known anything definite—he would have told me. I am sure of that. He was still in bed when I called on him. I suppose he thought I had come about my own matter. When he heard that Johanna had disappeared, he turned very pale.... ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... of the Bible depends upon the witness of the Spirit within our own souls, its authority has definite limits. We can verify spiritually the truth of a religious experience by repeating that experience; but we cannot verify spiritually the correctness of the report of some alleged event, or the accuracy of some opinion. We can bear witness to the truthfulness of the record of the consciousness ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... experiment: Make up your mind to devote your hours of travel to thinking. The brain, like the muscles, needs definite and well-planned exercise. It must be methodical and regular. There is no limit to its possible results. You would be glad to spend your two travelling hours in a gymnasium on wheels. Make of your homeward car a mental gymnasium. Each night or morning, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... 24-inch telescope of great excellence, in the clear and steady air of Arizona, found delicate spokelike streaks radiating from a rounded spot like a hub, and all of which, in his opinion, were genuine and definite markings on the planet's surface. But others, using larger telescopes, have failed to perceive the shapes and details depicted by Mr. Lowell, and some are disposed to ascribe their appearances to Venus's atmosphere. Mr. Lowell himself noticed that the markings ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... any Lord, for there are "lords many." It signifies one definite, particular Lord; not one of a number of equal lords, but one standing out separate and distinct from all others—the one above all others. This is the Lord who is "my shepherd." When rightly considered, this one little common word as here used contains ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... hour Desmond wandered in a desultory fashion along the quiet roads of natty houses with brightly painted doors and shining brass knockers. He had no definite objective; but he hoped rather vaguely to pick up some clue that might lead him to Mrs. Malplaquet's. He walked slowly along surveying the houses and scrutinizing the faces of the passers-by who were few and far between, ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... vehemently to protest against the malign influence of some "no good" boy on the mainland, and Nelly, eager to satisfy her own cravings for some definite cause for the ending of the life of a strong boy, supported Tom's vague theories quite enthusiastically. To each distinct natural phenomenon blacks assign a real presence. Even toothache, to which he is subject, Tom ascribes to a malignant fiend, so he asks for a pin ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... out plans. Approach your customer or the public, with a definite plan. Here is one of simple power: Attract the attention, secure the interest, carry the conviction, demand the decision, then in any line of business you will have your order book full. Selling power is confidence backed up by the ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... my dear Mrs. Delancy, I have come to a definite conclusion in regard to our present position. You must not stay here all night. I'd be a coward and a cur to subject you to such a thing. Well, I'm going ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon

... an enemy, a fixed plan, variable arrangements. This is the rule the nature of the transaction prescribes. But all this belongs to treaty. All these shiftings and changes are a sort of secret amongst the parties, till a definite settlement is brought about. Such is the spirit of the proceedings in the doubtful and transitory state of things between enmity and friendship. In this change the subjects of the transformation are by nature carefully wrapt up in their cocoons. The gay ornament ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a collection of stirring essays on topics of present-day interest. Opening with a discussion of the former democracy of this country, the author considers the beginnings of the change, the cause and certain definite tendencies in American democracy. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... summary of this momentous conversation, in which I have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the Commissary; but the remainder of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, has left but little definite in the memory of the Arethusa. The Commissary was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to show a predilection ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... recruiting officers to secure new members, and to look up any who may have dropped out or whose attendance is irregular. The sense of pride and emulation in such work, and the feeling on the part of our pupils that they are actually accomplishing something definite for their class or school will do much to cement loyalty and train the children to assume responsibility for ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... morning, what of our new-gained respect for the Tree People, we faced into the mountains. That we had no definite plan, or even idea, I am confident. We were merely driven on by the danger we had escaped. Of our wanderings through the mountains I have only misty memories. We were in that bleak region many days, and we suffered much, especially from ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... of this promise, finding himself by virtue thereof bound up from declaring the whole counsel of God, he turned a little melancholy; and, to get the definite time of that unhappy promise exhausted, in the end of the year 1678, he went over to Holland (not knowing what work the Lord had for him there,); where he conversed with Mr. M'Ward and others of our banished worthies. In ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... early wedding, communications from Lord Maxwell to Mr. Boyce of a civil and formal kind, a good deal more notice from the "county," and finally this definite statement from Aldous Raeburn as to the settlement he proposed to make upon his wife, and the joint income which he and she would have immediately ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was undoubtedly least common under the second. In other words it appears probable that the practice of considering certain crimes as the result of insanity has a tendency to make those crimes increase in number, as they undoubtedly increase in barbarity, from year to year. Meanwhile, however, no definite conclusion has been reached as to the state of mind of a man who murders the woman he loves and then ends ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... for he seems to have caught some of its fleeting beauties and transferred them to canvas. This picture had a startling effect upon Europeans when it was exhibited in Paris. When they compared the falls of Switzerland to it, they gained a more definite idea of the vast expanse ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Dockwra. I cannot find definite information either concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb wrote in his "Table Talk" in The Athenaeum, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... unaccountable in operation, however indisputable in effect? Contemplate music from a scientific standpoint—that is, merely as a succession of sound-waves, conveyed from the instrument to the ear by pulsations of the atmosphere, or of some other intervening medium. Music is thus reduced to a series of definite vibrations, a certain number of which constitute a note. Each separate note has three distinct properties, or attributes. First, its intensity, or loudness, which is governed by the height, depth, amplitude—for these amount to the same ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... the tide of returning happiness. He had scarcely been able to believe his ears. Yet here was a definite, spontaneous proposition to remove the incubus which weighed upon his soul. Here was an opportunity to redeem the bonds of the Parsons estate and to repair his damaged self-respect. It seemed to him as though ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... experience vaguely and intermittently, and especially at times of emotional exaltation, would seem to be the first glimmerings of that secret power which, with the mystics, is so finely developed and sustained that it becomes their definite faculty of vision. We have as yet no recognised name for this faculty, and it has been variously called "transcendental feeling," "imagination," "mystic reason," "cosmic consciousness," "divine sagacity," "ecstasy," or ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... his lips, and addressing the two men, who were mortified at having brought him no more definite news, he cried: "My lads, I know all I want to know. Go to bed and sleep sound; my word, you deserve to!" He himself, setting the example, slept like a man whose brain has solved a problem of the utmost importance which has long ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... of the known probability of a reorganization such as is embodied in this act, persons appointed to fill such vacancies have uncertain tenure and are thereby deterred from initiating and carrying through definite administrative policies; and in several instances such appointments have been accepted temporarily ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... to cover the field. Every reader will notice the absence of poets whose work would be a necessary ornament of any anthology not limited by a definite aim. Two years ago some of the writers represented had published nothing; and only a very few of the others were known except to the eagerest "watchers of the skies." Those few are here because within the chosen period their work ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... replied absently. Better leave that decision to Nye; he knew the country and the situation. "You ask about the cart, Callie, but don't make it definite. Have to see how ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... rapt in his own thoughts, and talk without a definite object was foreign to at least two of the three. The brothers were waiting in their stolid Indian fashion for sleep to come. The trader was thinking hard behind his lowered eyelids, which were almost hidden by the thick smoke ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... up together from obscure beginnings to their present affluence, as the owners of the "T.T." ranch and the "O——" ranch respectively. They had been partners in all but name. Now they contemplated a definite deed of that nature. It was a consummation which the older man had looked forward to ever since he first lent a hand to his new and youthful neighbor. It was a consummation which Jeffrey, with acute foresight and honest purpose, had set himself to achieve. If ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... policy toward America. But the "War of 1812," as it is termed in the United States, "Mr. Madison's War," as it was derisively named by Tory contemporaries in Great Britain, arose from serious policies in which the respective governments were in definite opposition. Briefly, this was a clash between belligerent and neutral interests. Britain, fighting at first for the preservation of Europe against the spread of French revolutionary influence, later against the Napoleonic plan of Empire, held the seas in her grasp and exercised with vigour all ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer has defined evolution, the development of society is, in relation to its component individuals, the passing from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social development, the more society resembles one of those lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet live. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... by the Porte Saint Denis; but from this point all the information was vague, unsatisfactory, and uncertain, so that, after two hours of useless inquiry, Buvat returned to Madame Denis's house without any more definite information to give Bathilde than that, wherever D'Harmental might be gone, he had passed along the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Buvat found his ward much agitated; during his absence she had grown rapidly ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a click, I saw a door open a little way, and the small blue flame of a taper floated into the room. Then the door closed with a definite sound of shutting in. The light shone redly through protecting fingers, and upwards on to a small face. It came to a halt, and I made out the figure of a girl leaning across a table and looking upwards. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... think himself about the extent of woodland and pasturage?—Isak had no idea at all; he had always thought of the place as being his own as far as he could see. The Lensmand said that the State required definite boundaries. "And the greater the extent, the more you will ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... values even in this world for which we have no expression, for which we have no definite standard, and of which we have no very clear comprehension. They are values, none the less. But there is one standard of value of which I think it may be safely said the American people have come into a very clear comprehension, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... a definite example. Mr. Wimp says that when I burst open the door of Mr. Constant's room on the morning of December 4th, and saw that the staple of the bolt had been wrested by the pin from the lintel, I jumped at once to the conclusion that I had broken the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... perhaps, the potent influence in fixing Hawthorne's attention on a definite object, and incited him to seek in the history of his own country, and especially in the colonial tradition of New England, which was so near at hand, the field of fiction. He stored his mind, certainly, with the story of his ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... telephone manager became by compulsion an inventor. There was no source of information and each exchange did the best it could. Hundreds of patents were taken out. And by 1884 there had come to be a fairly definite idea of what a telephone ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... alone. On the contrary, the object appears to have been to use the additional funds in order that, irrespective of race or creed, the benefits of education might be diffused as widely as possible throughout the country. But delay again followed, and it was not until the next year that definite instructions were issued by Lord Bathurst for the transfer of the Jesuits' Estates to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning. These instructions were contained in the following historic letter, destined to have so large a part in the establishment of McGill College and ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... Fork," about ten miles from the village. As they neared the settlement, the master gathered from M'liss that the rumor was untrue, and that she had seen her father that day. As she grew reticent to further questioning, and as the master was satisfied from her manner that she had some definite purpose beyond her usual willfulness, he passively resigned himself ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... law which we are now considering. Its end is the security of property, and property very often of great value. The method by which it effects the security is efficacious, because it admits, in its original rigour, no gradations of injury; but keeps guilt and innocence apart, by a distinct and definite limitation. He that intromits, is criminal; he that intromits not, is innocent. Of the two secondary considerations it cannot be denied that both are in our favour. The temptation to intromit is frequent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... awake for hours that night, going over and over that interview with Nick till her tired brain reeled. She was not exactly frightened by this new element that had come into her life. The very fact of having something definite to look forward to was a relief after dwelling for so long in the sunless void of non-expectancy. But she was by no means sure that she welcomed so violent a disturbance at the actual heart of her darkened existence. She could not, moreover, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... one ever tell? Experience? I was still, I felt, as ignorant of life as a new-born infant; experience has taught me nothing; what I needed was some definite, a priori principle, some deep conception of the meaning of existence, in the light of which problems of this kind would ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... printing books with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a great admirer ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris

... Experience proves that the results of continued stammering or stuttering are definite and positive, and that they are inevitable. Stammering is known to be at the root of many troubles. It causes nervousness, self-consciousness and sometimes brings about a mental condition bordering on complete mental breakdown. It causes mental sluggishness, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... time I was unable to account for these eccentricities, and the problem was not rendered much clearer, although a startling suggestiveness was added to it, when, at length, I noticed that the periods of activity of the engine had a definite relation to the age of the moon. Then I discovered, with the aid of an almanac, that I could predict the hours when the engine would be busy. At the time of new moon it worked all day; at full moon, it was idle; between full moon and last quarter, ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... slipped away as soon as they conveniently could. They had no very definite plans for the day, and one suggestion after another was made as they ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... rock my new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... spring of the apse at St Pancras. It shares its western porch with St Pancras and two, if not four, of the northern group of churches. In the north and south doorways of this porch it has kinship with Monkwearmouth, and at Brixworth there are definite signs that these doorways led into passages which may have been connected with other buildings of the monastery, or possibly even with an atrium or fore-court. The aisled nave and the traces of a crypt bring it into relation, not merely with Hexham or Ripon, but with the ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... point to be considered. It is of course true that a Christian Church (whether the Christian Church, or not, depends on the connotation of the definite article) existed before the Christian scriptures; and that the infallibility of these depends upon the infallibility of the judgment of the persons who selected the books of which they are composed, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... worthy of love's belated condescension—not Raoul's; for the moment she scarcely thought of Raoul; for the moment Raoul's image grew faint and indefinite in the glory of being loved. Instinct, too, thrust it into the background; for as Raoul grew definite so must his youth, his circumstances, the world's laughter, the barriers never to be overcome. But merely to be loved, and to rest in that knowledge awhile—here were no barriers. The thing had happened: it was: nothing could ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the Continent; I have offered to take him with me on my next voyage in the yacht. He has but one answer—he simply says No to everything that I can suggest. You have heard from his own lips that he has no definite plans for the future. What is to become of him? ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... great pool in front of the Manor, he saw Mr. Bates, with a group of men already there, preparing for the dreadful search which could only displace his vague despair by a definite horror; for the gardener, in his restless anxiety, had been unable to defer this until other means of search had proved vain. The pool was not now laughing with sparkles among the water-lilies. It ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... a little surprised and indignant when, after carrying on what seemed to her a long conversation with Mr. Clark upon various unimportant subjects, her father left with nothing more definite than that they were pleased with the rooms and would let him ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... have some definite object which he could not explain; and when Don tried to question him, the great fellow only laughed ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... Francis Tudor's wife was buried. Hugo, who had accompanied the funerals disguised as one of his own 'respectful attendants,' saw scarcely anyone. He had to recover the command of his own soul, and to adopt some definite attitude towards the army of suspicions which naturally had assailed him. Could he believe Darcy? He decided that he could, and that he must. Darcy had inspired him with confidence, and there was no doubt that the man had an extensive practice in Paris, and was well known at the British Embassy. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... fragment of rock, rested his glass on the drooping branch of a tree, and watched the ship as it swept through a bank of luminous fog and took a more definite form. Hitherto it had seemed floating between a curve of the sky and the blue line of water, but now it came out clearly, and as North looked he saw a dark pile of storm-clouds muster up behind ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... were divided counsels and pitiful irresolution. The commanders of the various contingents were brave men, veterans of the Mediterranean wars. But the coalition lacked one determined leader who could dominate the rest, decide upon a definite plan of action, and put it into energetic execution. Time was wasted till the bad weather began. Then the various squadrons made their way to the ports where they were to pass the winter. A squadron of the Venetians remained in the Cretan ports. The rest dispersed to ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... death was naturally limited. The jury contented themselves by bringing in a verdict of "Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown." Laverick laid down the paper. The completion of the inquest was at least the first definite step toward safety. The question now before him was what to do with that twenty thousand pounds. He sat at his desk, looking into vacancy. After all, had he paid too great a price? The millstone was gone from around his neck, something new and incomprehensible had crept into his life. Yet for ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... proud in his experience, Jawn grew daily more bitter at the prospect before him, and more hostile to his superiors. For a few days after the ride he had hoped for some word; he had felt that such an appeal as the one he had made to Jim Weeks should be productive of some notice, if not of a definite result. But as the week wore away, and no word came, his heart sank. Every day he rattled the dumpy little engine about the division yards, chewing the stem of his pipe, and hardening his heart against the world. He spent Sunday in his room at the boarding-house, for he had no family. Monday ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... became more accustomed to the subdued light, they beheld shadow-like forms slowly appear upon the walls, and while intently gazing, these apparitions gradually materialized and assumed definite shape, resolving themselves into paintings portraying the last scenes in the life of Christ. Penetrating everything was the clinging odor of incense, which, in some subtle way, brings to mind the awful majesty ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... had evidently just come round to it, from her card-table, by one of the passages—with the expectation, to all appearance, of joining her stepdaughter. She had pulled up at seeing the great room empty—Maggie not having passed out, on leaving the group, in a manner to be observed. So definite a quest of her, with the bridge-party interrupted or altered for it, was an impression that fairly assailed the Princess, and to which something of attitude and aspect, of the air of arrested pursuit and purpose, in Charlotte, together with the suggestion of her next vague movements, quickly ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... kept before him. The Boy Scouts of America therefore recognize the religious element in the training of a boy, but it is absolutely non-sectarian in its attitude toward that religious training. Its policy is that the organization or institution with which the boy scout is connected shall give definite attention to his religious life. If he be a Catholic boy scout, the Catholic Church of which he is a member is the best channel for his training. If he be a Hebrew boy, then the Synagogue will train him in the faith of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... to discover definite grounds for uneasiness. He met his cherished Miss Bailey walking across Grand Street on a rainy morning, and the umbrella which was protecting her beloved head was held by a tall stranger in a long and baggy coat. After circling incredulously about ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... are to be made in China, while money is very easily lost, and unless a man before leaving home secures a definite position in a good business firm, in Government employ or in some profession, it would be most unwise of him to go out on the chance of finding ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... well-grown lass, standing stoutly on her legs, with her head well balanced, with a straight back, and well-formed though not slender waist. She was sharp about the shoulders and elbows, as girls are—or should be—at that age; and her face was not formed into any definite shape of beauty, or its reverse. But her eyes were bright—as were those of all the Mackenzies—and her mouth was not the mouth of a fool. If her cheek-bones were a little high, and the lower part of her face somewhat angular, those peculiarities ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... symbolical rites, a considerable advantage will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of productions, should have become the bete noire of the producers, are points on which more definite information would seem to be required. But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress, we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such announcements are calculated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... give attention to the problem of a New France. The spirit of colonization was in the air, and Richelieu, with his genius for ideas, could not fail to see its importance or what would befall the laggards. His misfortune was that he lacked certain definite qualifications which a greater founder of colonies needed to possess. Marvellous in his grasp of diplomatic situations and in his handling of men, he had no talent whatever for the details of commerce. His fiscal regime, particularly after France engaged in her duel with ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... so assiduously with this new toy that the table top was soon a mass of scrawly loops and irregular lines and his pencil-point worn down to the wood. Then he took another pencil, but this time he had a definite object ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... I had made an advance. It was a small one, no doubt, but it was an advance. It would not do to rest there, however, or to draw definite conclusions from what I had seen without further facts to guide me. Mrs. Boppert could supply these facts, or so I believed. Accordingly I ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... changed their shape year by year with the wind and rain, and Cricket had no definite idea of the exact locality of the spot where mamma and auntie had buried their money-bags, thirty years before. She enlarged the hole the children had begun, till it was quite an excavation, carrying on her game of "incubus" with the children all ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... however, even before the Law some of the leading men were gifted with the spirit of prophecy, it is to be believed that a heavenly instinct, like a private law, prompted them to worship God in a certain definite way, which would be both in keeping with the interior worship, and a suitable token of Christ's mysteries, which were foreshadowed also by other things that they did, according to 1 Cor. 10:11: "All . . . ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... multiplied with astonishing rapidity. When Gregory arrived at the cannery he had decided upon a definite course of action. He would wire Farnsworth, the estate's attorney, to sell his bonds at a sacrifice if need be. They should bring enough, added to his own personal account, to pay for the equipment he desired. After that, he'd go to Diablo and call ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... There are definite laws of etiquette in the matter of introductions. A man has seen the lady once, or, it may be, has watched her from a distance with longing eyes for months past. He may not make himself known to ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... deeds of valor; thirdly there is a movement in both to an ideal world, to a Fableland, outside of Hellas and beyond even Troy; finally there is a Return in both to Greece and to the Present. Setting the stages of this movement down in definite numbers, we have, first in the Telemachiad: (1) Hellas, the Present; (2) back to Troy, the Past, in the reminiscences of Nestor, Menelaus, Helen; (3) forward to the Fairy World in the account of Proteus; (4) ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... especially all the space between the growth of the eyebrows and the growth of the hair, is covered with hardly perceptible down as soft as bloom. Look then at the eyebrows themselves. Their line is as definite as in later life, but there is in the child the flush given by the exceeding fineness of the delicate hairs. Moreover, what becomes, afterwards, of the length and the curl of the eyelash? ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... the accident there was a change in the tone of the physicians who had been giving almost all their time to Martin's case. There was no visible change in Martin, but that fact in itself was so surprising that it was construed into a definite ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... the higher classes the obligation which they owe to the lower orders of society, and in urging them to assume the guardianship of the latter, the writer is not referring to vague and diffuse measures of ordinary philanthropy, but to definite and practical ones, of vast importance to the welfare of the wealthiest as well as to that of the poorest member of society. The individuals who have been most actively engaged in the stirring scenes of commercial life, are little aware, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... because the entire plant is gelatinous, tremulous, and without a definite margin, and also ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... the candle. This is a simple demonstration of the law of conjugate foci—namely, that the distance between the lens and an object on one side and that between the lens and the corresponding image on the other bear a definite relation to each other; and an object placed at either focus will cast an image at the other. Whether the image is larger or smaller than the object depends on which focus it occupies. In the case of the object-glass ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... traces of navigation and commerce are necessarily involved in much obscurity, and are, besides, few and faint. It is impossible to assign to them any clear and definite chronology; and they are, with a few exceptions, utterly uncircumstantial. Nevertheless, in a work like this, they ought not to be passed over without some notice; but the notice we shall bestow upon them will not be that either of the chronologist or antiquarian, but of a more ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... accomplished His own beneficent purpose in permitting the warning of the judgment to be given just as it was. The great day was at hand, and in His providence the people were brought to the test of a definite time, in order to reveal to them what was in their hearts. The message was designed for the testing and purification of the church. They were to be led to see whether their affections were set upon this ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... novel of mystery a tantalising delay may be singularly effective. In a novel which depends chiefly for its effect on sheer horror, delays are merely dangerous. By resting her terrors on a pseudo-scientific basis and by placing her story in a definite locality, Mrs. Shelley waives her right to an entire suspension of disbelief. If it be reduced to its lowest terms, the plot of Frankenstein, with its bewildering confusion of the prosaic and the fantastic, sounds as crude, disjointed and inconsequent as that of a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... of a canal with locks, the abandonment of the sea-level idea, and for a further and still more thorough inquiry into the facts, upon the ground that the accumulated data were "far from possessing the precision essential to a definite project." This took the project of canal construction out of the domain of preconceived ideas based upon guesswork into the substantial field of a scientific undertaking for commercial purposes. The receiver at once commenced to reorganize ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... organization of State governments without delay. Affairs must necessarily be in a very unsettled state until that is done. The people are now in a mood to accept almost anything which promises a definite settlement. What is to be done with the freedmen is the question of all, and it is the all-important question. It requires prompt and wise action to prevent the negro from becoming a ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... into the street and disappear m the crowd moving toward Broadway. He waited for a while thinking deeply and then with a definite plan in his mind strolled forth. First he bought a second-hand suit case in Seventh Avenue, then found a store marked "Gentlemen's Outfitters" where he purchased ready-made clothing, a hat, shoes, underwear, linen and cravats, arraying himself ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... other kind of almsgiving. It is well to save life, but the world is already overstocked with life; and in saving life one may be making the struggle for existence still more unendurable for those who come after. But in giving your money to science you are accomplishing a definite good; the results of science have always been beneficent. Science will alleviate the wants of the world more wisely than the kindest heart that ever beat under the robe of a Sister of Mercy; the hands of science ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... notes kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Thomas Seccombe. I have aimed at brevity and relevance, but it is hoped that the reader will find all the information that is necessary. Here and there a name has baffled research, but I have been able to give definite particulars of a very large number of people—noblemen and ladies in society in London or Dublin, Members of Parliament, doctors, clergymen, Government officials, and others who have hitherto been but names ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... first send to La Jara for Joaquin and Manuelita Flores," she answered. "When they come, I shall be able to tell something definite ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... her infidelity, her intemperance, her brawling in the streets, her conviction and fine at the Hammersmith Police Court. It was all he could do to restrain himself from getting her to acknowledge the reason of her visit to Maple Cottage; but his instructions were too definite to be ignored. He felt that the introduction of Miss Campion's name would have told in favor of his client—at any rate, with the jury; and he would not have been a zealous pleader if he had not wished to take advantage of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... passed without anything definite coming in answer to all these advertisements. Once news came of two children saved from the sea in the neighbourhood of the Gilberts, and it was not false news, but they were not the children he was seeking for. This incident at once depressed and stimulated him, for it seemed to say, "If these ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Melun, Fountainebleau, Sens, and finally the rich town of Auxerre coming under consideration. The lecturer also drew special attention to the advantage derived from travelling alone for the purpose of observing better the archaeological wealth, and the customs of the French, having a distinct and definite line of study and object lesson ever in view; to his wide sympathy with the French people, to their sumptuous care for their ancient monuments, their courtesy and reverential manner of hospitality towards English speaking students; and also in particular to ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater

... her, I fancy," went on Anguish. "And, by the way, Miss Calhoun, we heard something definite about your friend, Prince Dantan. It is pretty well settled that he isn't Baldos of the guard. Dantan was seen two days ago by Captain Dangloss's men. He was in the Dawsbergen pass and they talked with him and his men. There was no mistake this time. The poor, half-starved chap confessed to being ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Before he had come to any definite conclusion as to how this affected Mr. Dudley's feelings towards me, we reached the lichgate, where we found the rest of the party awaiting us. We all separated: Diana took Betty, who gazed at me mournfully, but was too loyal to her mother to say anything; Hugh gave a series of ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... as though he had formed some definite idea about Luna, and therefore did not make much account ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... body carried round in the Cachalot's head in solution, is a valuable whale-product. Bland and demulcent, spermaceti is employed as an ingredient in ointments, cosmetics, and cerates. Spermaceti candles of definite size form the measure of electric light, giving rise to the phrase "of so many candle-power." Present-day spermaceti is both a saving and a destructive agent. Large quantities of it are used in Europe in the manufacture of ecclesiastical candles, and part of the same consignment ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... which seem to be the beginnings of future coal deposits, are found almost entirely in cold countries. Hence it is a serious matter to attempt to describe the climate of any part of the Palaeozoic era. Certainly of the climate earlier than the Carboniferous it is very risky to say anything definite. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests. So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world's combat from afar, filling ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... her conversation with Willy Fennessy less satisfactory than usual. He could not give any definite account of what he and Patsey had seen: maybe they'd seen nothing at all; maybe—as an obvious impromptu—it was the calf of the Kerry cow; whatever was in it, it was little he'd mind it, and, in easy dismissal of the subject, would the misthress be against ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... into a sheaf, which he brings as a 'wave-offering.' And then, in one humble little sentence at the end, he puts his only personal request. The modesty of the man is lovely. His prayer has been all for the people. Remarkably enough, there is no definite petition in it. He never once says right out what he so earnestly desires, and the absence of specific requests might be laid hold of by sceptical critics as an argument against the genuineness of the prayer. But it is rather a subtle trait, on which no forger would have been likely to hit. Sometimes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... is of my own people, a small man, definite, hard-featured, an accurate weapon of small calibre. Of the other I cannot judge. He is heavily built, and when he is still the dignity of the Orient is about him like his robe. His head is large and beautifully domed, his hands tapering and aristocratic. When he speaks it is of subtleties. But ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens

... of the twelve tribes of Israel being sealed, thus representing symbolically the fact that God's church, comprising the true Israel, was perfect and complete, no part being omitted. In the chapter under consideration we have this divine sealing process again after the apostasy, and once more the definite number 144,000 occurs, showing that the church before the end is to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... palms, ferns, vines, cacti and bulbs, which are classed not upon a strict botanical basis but with reference to their general habits and requirements, my sole object in this book being to make the proper cultural directions as definite and clear as possible. ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... than to explore their genealogy, and state what were their journeyings and habits. The nation is a form of society that rests on the same basis—a basis at once natural and part of a divine system—as the family. By a nation is meant a people dwelling in a definite territory, living under the same government, and bound together by such ties as a common language, a common religion, the same institutions and customs. The elements that enter into that national spirit which is the bond of unity, are multiple. They vary to a degree ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... importance happened, though Alice and Mrs. Farnsworth again spent the morning in the woodland, presumably studying Searles's play. My thoughts galloped through my head in a definite formula: "If she is not my aunt—" "If she is an impostor—" "If she is a spy playing a deep game in the seclusion of Barton—" "If she is the actress Searles is seeking—" At any rate, I would respect her wish to play the ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... see what results from this difference of scale. In the first place, Greek political thought although (as we shall see) it aimed at universality, at arriving at certain definite laws or conclusions about politics, never succeeded in divesting itself of a certain element of local or national individuality. When Plato and Thucydides think and write of 'the State' they are also thinking of the City—the same word, polis, serves indeed for the two—and not ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... from all earlier speakers and writers in that he outlines a program for definite action. He estimates that for the entire South there are seven white non-slaveholders for every three slaveholders. He would organize these non-slaveholding whites into an independent political party and would hold a general ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... any work of literature there should be definite structure. This requires, (1) Unity, (2) Variety, (3) Order, (4) Proportion, and (5) due Emphasis of parts. Unity means that everything included in the work ought to contribute directly or indirectly ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... calmer, he began his explanations over again. Philippe next repeated his, in less definite terms, this time, and with a hesitation which old Morestal, absorbed in his grievances, did not observe, but which could not ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... somehow did acquire a little knowledge, and the rudiments of some definite tastes and inclinations, during this period. Recently, in London, I have once or twice endeavoured to probe the minds of County Council schoolboys of a similar age, with a view to comparing the sum of their knowledge ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... specifications must be submitted with the application for loan. The site must be free and clear of all mortgages or other obligations. Your own financial rating is looked up by the lender and, if satisfactory, the company issues a commitment that you can take to your local bank where definite amounts are paid as the work progresses; so much when exterior walls are complete; such a proportion when rough piping for plumbing has been installed; another amount when all lath and plaster has been finished; and so on until the final ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... has had a definite place in the commercial world for a great many years. It is used in various forms in making furniture and furniture parts, building trim, tool parts, toys, athletic paraphernalia and many other useful and beautiful articles in ...
— A Course In Wood Turning • Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers

... of Angatan. I knew that an island of that name, the subject of a thousand bug-bear stories, to which I had often incredulously listened, was said to lie somewhere to the north of Hao; but I had never met with any one who could give me any definite and satisfactory information ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... of the sniper. Wilmshurst had no definite idea of the fellow's position. He could only surmise, basing his assumption on the report of the rifle, that he was either on the kopje ahead or else concealed behind one of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... from those things which are believed, and therefore it is necessary to study and understand, as far as we can, the doctrines of the Christian faith before we can possess or manifest belief. It is important that we should have a definite knowledge of these doctrines; that we should study them in relation to the Scriptures upon which they profess to be founded, and that we should be in a position to defend them against assailants. ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... every one of them to silence in discussions upon agricultural topics. This puzzle had led him to not unfrequent ruminations in his mind as to whether or not his vocation might lie in something higher than the mere tilling of the ground. These ruminations had lately taken a definite direction, and it was after several conversations which he had held with his ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... Mr. Armstrong,' he complained. 'I am deprived of the consolation of one device which has hitherto upheld me at such times of trial. The piece might run, sir, for a year; it might even run for two. There is no looking forward to a definite date of relief, sir. It is like being imprisoned at Her Majesty's pleasure. A painful prospect, Mr. Armstrong—-a period of unassuaged incertitude, sir.' Daroo burst down upon him like a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. The little domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a definite finish, and the question was how far Lady Anne was in a mood to renew or forgo hostilities. Her pose in the arm-chair by the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a December afternoon Egbert's pince-nez did not materially ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... Sacred Chronology. Two fields in which Science has gained a definite victory over Theology Opinions of the Church fathers on the antiquity of man The chronology of Isidore Of Bede Of the medieval Jewish scholars The views of the Reformers on the antiquity of man Of the Roman Church Of Archbishop Usher Influence ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... differences of creed, believing that all good men held, in essentials, much the same faith. His view of essentials was generous, as he admitted. He occasionally spoke of himself as 'sceptical,' that is, in contrast with those whose faith was more definite, more dogmatic, more securely based on 'articles.' To illustrate Murray's religious attitude, at least as it was in 1887, one may quote from a letter ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... applied to Deity, expresses the definite and certain truth that God is a living being and not ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... the finger of the right, and there was always a certain pressure before raising her arm again. These little caresses were frequently repeated, as if she were wishing either to accustom me or herself to a habit of it, so as, doubtless, gradually to increase them to something more definite. I could not help feeling what a different effect these endearments would have had twenty-four hours earlier; but now, momentarily satisfied passions, and the new love that had seized me for Mrs. B., prevented at first the inevitable cockstand that would otherwise ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... the Park till his cigar was entirely smoked, and then sauntered out with no definite object in view. It occurred to him, however, that he might as well call on the keeper of a liquor saloon on Baxter Street, which he had ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr

... springs and cog-wheels that grew rapidly louder till it culminated abruptly in a single sonorous stroke. At once Captain McKittrick laid his hand to the halyards of the flagstaff, a bundle of bunting rose in the air, shapeless and without definite color. But suddenly, wonderful enough, there came a breeze, a brisk spurt out of the north. The bunting caught it, twisted upon itself, tumbled, writhed, then suddenly shook itself free, and in a single long billow rolled out into ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris

... IMMEDIATE ANTECEDENT. The same remark applies to the next apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induction of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with this limitation only—that, whilst their consecutive introduction at various definite intervals, is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of analysis does not enable us to predict the periods themselves at which the more distant ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... condemnation. If he is merely the sum-total of his motives, he is as little free to act other than he does as a number of chemical elements combined in certain proportions are free to form anything but a definite chemical substance. As {160} Mr. Balfour has well expressed it,[14] "It may seem at first sight plausible to describe a man as free whose behaviour is due to 'himself' alone. But without quarrelling over words, it is, I think, plain that whether ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness— apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... threatened danger; but now that his presence had been removed, now that she was free to sift the meaning of his words, their full significance was borne in upon her. With an alarming clearness of vision, she recognized that behind his threats lay a definite meaning; that the man himself, at all times passionate, and, on occasion, violent in temperament, had suddenly become a danger—something as fierce and menacing ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... power. The governor of New France, now Jean de Lauzon, a weak old man who thought more of the profits of the fur trade and of land-grants for himself and his family than of the welfare of the colony, knew not how to act. A negative answer he dared not give; and he equally feared the effect of a definite promise. On the one hand was the certainty that war would break out again in all its fury; on the other the equal certainty that the fate which had befallen the Hurons in Huronia would almost inevitably overtake the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... extremely complicated composition of varied morsels, definite instructions lacking, however. It is not clear whether the dish was served hot (in which case the dish would not stand up long) or whether served cold, jellyfied. Moreover, the title gustum—hors d'{oe}uvres—is not consistent either with similar creations by Apicius or with our own notions ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... ramping with impatience over the man's lack of definite memory, now rushed to the atlas and began to study ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... according to the period in question and according to the more or less dangerous nature of the threat it offered to established religion. It is only as far as Athens and Imperial Rome are concerned that we have any definite knowledge of the law and the judicial procedure on this point; a somewhat detailed account of the state of things in Athens and Rome cannot ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... that the reader may know by means of definite figures the extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing animals, we append below a statement copied from the Fur News Magazine for November, 1912, of the sales of the largest London fur house ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... occupation of Ulanoff, Rudnik, Kraftza, Bourgny, and Shushav to the westward of the upper San, threatens the German position east of the river; General von Mackensen is drawing in his wings to protect his centre from attack; furious German assaults to the south of Przemysl continue without definite result; in the region of Shavli, the Russian troops now occupy a very extended front on the line of the Rivers ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... direct application to the Mutual Life Insurance Company for a loan of $400,000 on a valuable city business block which he owned. He was told that the corporation had no funds available for that purpose. The refusal was authoritative and definite. A few days later a lawyer and real-estate agent came to his office and said to him: "I'm informed that you want $400,000 on your property. I can let you have it, or $500,000 if you ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... (through which there was no need to go), and happen, too, at exactly such a time and at a moment of his life when his mind was in the state it was, and the event, in these circumstances, could only produce the most definite and decided effect upon his fate? Surely he was the ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... it looks very much to me as if Holmes had managed to fix things so that they'll get off without ever going before a jury at all! Niles isn't handling the case right. He's allowed Holmes and his crowd to pull the wool over his eyes completely. If we had some definite proof I could force him ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... which hangs near it, which set Theophile Gautier thinking of Heine's notion of decayed gods, who, to maintain themselves, after the fall of paganism, took employment in the new religion. We recognise one of those symbolical inventions in which the ostensible subject is used, not as matter for definite pictorial realisation, but as the starting-point of a train of sentiment as subtle and vague as a piece of music. No one ever ruled over his subject more entirely than Leonardo, or bent it more dexterously to ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... have been grasped, get together a small number of boys, and go through with them the initial stages step by step, until the boys bubble over with scouting ideals, and until the notion of a fancy uniform and games in the country have given place to a definite desire to qualify for manhood and citizenship. These boys will make the nucleus round which to form a troop, and should pass on their training and enthusiasm to the boys who are enlisting under them. It has been found better to obtain distinctly older ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... to give her the most positive assurances on anything he spoke; and as he had already fathomed the chief prejudices of his Excellency, and knew exactly where and to what his political wishes tended, she heard nothing from her uncle but expressions of admiration for the just views, the clear and definite ideas, and the consummate skill with which that 'young fellow' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... efficient for the benefit of the inefficient. Year by year Parliament makes life harder for those whose labour benefits the State and easier for those who are a drag upon it."[1189] "There is in fact no definite and declared Socialist party in the present House of Commons, and yet what may be called the spirit of Socialism pervades the whole House to a greater extent than in any previous Parliament."[1190] For instance, Mr. Rutherford, M.P., in an anti-Socialistic speech brought forward a "Democratic ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... had something more definite to relate. "I hope you will approve, but if you don't it can't be helped," she said, "for the thing is arranged. That younger ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... entertained and was related to the first families of France, and had an income of eighty thousand francs, a splendid estate, and several magnificent houses in Paris. I was quite sure that she would refuse me nothing, and though I had no definite plan of profiting by her wealth I experienced a certain pleasure at the thought that I could do ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... our interview ended. When I saw Paul and told him the news, he seemed to think that the search was already at an end. I found it hard to persuade him that a week or two might elapse before anything definite was known. In his enthusiasm he insisted that I should answer John Carvel's letter by begging him to come at once. As he was the person most ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... world affairs, impossible as was his conception of an America divided from Europe economically and spiritually as well as politically and of an America united in itself by a provoked and constantly irritated hostility to Europe, he had an American program which, taken by itself, was definite, well conceived, and in a sense prophetic. It is interesting to note that in referring to much the same relationship, Blaine characteristically spoke of the United States as "Elder Sister" of the South American ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... others, equally cheap and nasty, at Marbridge, Mrs. Polkington felt fate was hard upon her. It was like having two Captain Polkingtons, of a different sort, but equally unsuitable for public use, in the place. In self defence she had been obliged to make definite rules for Mr. Gillat's coming and going about the house, and still more definite rules as to the rooms in which he might be found. The dining-room was allowed him, and there he was ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... government of Hong-Kong. Mr Henry Drummond partly supported the views of those gentlemen, but nevertheless exposed, in very able and eloquent terms, the inconsistencies of Mr. Hume's speech, who seemed to have no clear and definite notions of the way in which his own theory should be carried out. Lord John Russell opposed the resolution in a speech as anti-reform in its character as if it had been made by Sir Charles Wetherell. Mr. Fergus O'Connor bitterly opposed Mr. Hume's motion, and afterwards voted for it. Mr. Urquhart ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... order now established in the world may be traced back to a situation in which it did not appear. Dialecticians, on the other hand, refute this presumption by urging that every collocation of things must have been preceded by another collocation in itself no less definite and precise; and further that some principle of transition or continuity must always have obtained, else successive states would stand in no relation to one another, notably not in the relation of cause and effect, expressed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... according to climate and racial predisposition, although, as has been justly said, the force of both these two elements diminishes as the influence of the past in giving consistency to our will becomes more definite, and our means of modifying climate and race become better known. There is no sign that Rousseau, any more than many other inquirers, ever reflected whether the capacity for advance into the state of civil society in any highly developed form is universal throughout ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... to a very definite weakness for Aaron Burr. Few hopeless romanticists escape it. Dramatically speaking, he is one of the most striking figures in American history, and I imagine that I have not been the first dreamer of dreams and writer of books who has haunted ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... gngen och p pannan. The definite form may be used thus instead of the possessive when there ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... necessary to speak here of the attitude towards the old "supernatural" religion taken by the English Deists of the last half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century. Here was the first definite struggle of the English church with a group of thinkers who, under the leadership of Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke and others, attempted to adapt humanistic philosophy to theological speculation, to establish the sufficiency of natural ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... the same as or a different species to the next I am unable to say, as the description is meagre, and the number of teeth vary so much in the same species that no definite rule can be laid down ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... conceal our feelings from them. But underlying character they do not judge so well as fleeting expression. Not what Mrs. Jones IS in herself, but what Mrs. Jones is now thinking and feeling—there lies their great success as psychologists. Most men, on the contrary, guide their life by definite FACTS—by signs, by symptoms, by observed data. Medicine itself is built upon a collection of such reasoned facts. But this woman, Nurse Wade, to a certain extent, stands intermediate mentally between ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... a pause, definite, distinct, while you could count five. The boy at the fire started to frozen attention at sight of us, as sharply as his distorted body could start. But before he could speak, or I did, another voice answered Paulette's from the dark of the cave behind the fire,—an unexpected, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... the question of love, properly considered, is the question of creating the future man. As she herself has elsewhere quite truly pointed out, practice must precede, and precede by a very long time, the establishment of definite rules ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... in Latin. He planned a Latin work in six parts, to cover the whole field of the philosophy of natural science. The most famous of the parts completed is the Novum Organum, which deals with certain methods for searching after definite truth, and shows how to avoid some ever ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck



Words linked to "Definite" :   definiteness, definite article, indefinite, definite integral, clear, decisive, expressed, distinct, law of definite proportions, defined, explicit, definite quantity



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