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The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable and at the same time dreaded to be just from the pain of obligation were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to town he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise and where he was reduced to meet frequently meet reason with persuade and finally bribe the man whom he always most wished to avoid and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient when required to depend on his affection for her - for a woman who had already refused him - as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for ~ Jane Austen
Vague quotes by Jane Austen
She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she'd read, novels, biographies, occasional books, about music and art - she could remember nothing about them at all, so that it seemed rather pointless even to say that she had read them; such claims were things people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle; looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene; a man in an office looking over Regent's Park, rain in the street outside - a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years. ~ Alan Hollinghurst
Vague quotes by Alan Hollinghurst
When superior people hear guidance, they carry it out diligently and ably. When mediocre people hear guidance, it seems vague and uncertain. When lesser people hear guidance, they laugh. ~ Lao-Tzu
Vague quotes by Lao-Tzu
I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. ~ C.S. Lewis
Vague quotes by C.S. Lewis
Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Vague quotes by Yuval Noah Harari
As for the Republicans
how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage' ... ) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. ~ H.P. Lovecraft
Vague quotes by H.P. Lovecraft
I don't fool you, do I? Those others" - he waved a vague hand to indicate their
missing comrades - "they think I'm all that - but you know better, don't you."
"Know what?" she'd asked.
He leaned forward, smelling of beer and cigarettes. "You know I'm a fraud. I can
feel the beast inside me, screaming to get out. And if I loose it, it will pull me up to greatness despite myself."
"So why not let it free?" She hadn't been a werewolf then. The world had been a gentler place, the monsters safely in their closets, and she had been brave in her ignorance.
His eyes were old and weary, his voice slurring a bit. "Because then everyone would
see," he told her.
"See what?"
"Me. ~ Patricia Briggs
Vague quotes by Patricia Briggs
At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity
like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view. ~ Ayana Mathis
Vague quotes by Ayana Mathis
Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case. ~ Theodor Adorno
Vague quotes by Theodor Adorno
He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness
or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?
of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. ~ Tao Lin
Vague quotes by Tao Lin
As the idea imparted by the term Cataclysm, Catastrophe, or Revolution, is extremely vague, and may comprehend any thing you choose to imagine, it answers for the time very well as an explanation; that is, it stops further inquiry. But it also has had the disadvantage of effectually stopping the advance of science, by involving it in obscurity and confusion. ~ George Julius Poulett Scrope
Vague quotes by George Julius Poulett Scrope
Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism--a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood. ~ G.K. Chesterton
Vague quotes by G.K. Chesterton
I learnt too late that what is most important to us is always most precious at the moment it occurs, and it is precious in its absolute immediacy and not as some vague confirmation of future directions; since the only certain fact, aside from death, is the flimsiness of everything. ~ Luke Davies
Vague quotes by Luke Davies
People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are "supposed to cost." ~ William Poundstone
Vague quotes by William Poundstone
The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the placards [wanted posters], devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud--there was always some such ready to help them--stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. ~ Charles Dickens
Vague quotes by Charles Dickens
Most of what I want simply slips away like water flowing through a net, and always what remains are only vague, elusive fragments of images ... that sink into countless strata in my mind. ~ Daido Moriyama
Vague quotes by Daido Moriyama
Now Miss Mapp's social dictatorship among the ladies of Tilling had long been paramount, but every now and then signs of rebellious upheavals showed themselves. By virtue of her commanding personality these had never assumed really serious proportions, for Diva, who was generally the leader in these uprisings, had not the same moral massiveness. But now when Elizabeth was so exceedingly superior, the fumes of Bolshevism mounted swiftly to Diva's head. Moreover, the sight of this puzzling male impersonator, old, wrinkled, and moustached, had kindled to a greater heat her desire to know her and learn what it felt like to be Romeo on the music-hall stage and, after years of that delirious existence, to subside into a bath-chair and Suntrap and Tilling. What a wonderful life! . . . And behind all this there was a vague notion that Elizabeth had got her information in some clandestine manner and had muddled it. For all her clear-headedness and force Elizabeth did sometimes make a muddle and it would be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to catch her out. So in a state of brooding resentment Diva went home to lunch and concentrated on how to get even with Elizabeth. ~ E.F. Benson
Vague quotes by E.F. Benson
Dream Song 55
Peter's not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.
The architecture is far from reassuring.
I feel uneasy.
A pity, - the interview began so well:
I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away
and sloshed out a martini
strangely needed. We spoke of indifferent matters
God's health, the vague hell of the Congo,
John's energy,
anti-matter matter. I felt fine.
Then a change came backward. A chill fell.
Talk slackened,
died, and began to give me sideways looks.
'Chirst,' I thought 'what now?' and would have askt for another
but didn't dare.
I feel my application failing. It's growing dark,
some other sound is overcoming. His last words are:
'We betrayed me. ~ John Berryman
Vague quotes by John Berryman
The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history. ~ Mark Twain
Vague quotes by Mark Twain
You know, it's such a peculiar thing
our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime. Look at them. Do you know any you'd feel big and solemn about? There's nothing but housewives haggling at pushcarts, drooling brats who write dirty words on the sidewalks, and drunken debutantes. Or their spiritual equivalent. As a matter of fact, one can feel some respect for people when they suffer. They have a certain dignity. But have you ever looked at them when they're enjoying themselves? That's when you see the truth. Look at those who spend the money they've slaved for
at amusement parks and side shows. Look at those who're rich and have the whole world open to them. Observe what they pick out for enjoyment. Watch them in the smarter speak-easies. That's your mankind in general. I don't want to touch it. ~ Ayn Rand
Vague quotes by Ayn Rand
Well, it's nice to know that the Trolls made it this far south,' Ulath said. 'I'd hate to have to go looking for them.'
'Their Gods were guiding them, Ulath,' Tynian pointed out.
'You've never talked with the Troll-Gods, I see,' Ulath laughed. 'Their sense of direction is a little vague - probably because their compass only has two directions on it.'
'Oh?'
'North and not-north. It makes finding places a little difficult. ~ David Eddings
Vague quotes by David Eddings
Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. ~ Erik Larson
Vague quotes by Erik Larson
The mere thought that she was alone and surrounded by books gave her a near-sensuous thrill. As she looked around her room, dark escaper for the slash of light near her lamp, and saw the vague outlines of her books, she asked herself 'Have I not the whole world? ~ Andrew Wilson
Vague quotes by Andrew Wilson
We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. ~ George F. Kennan
Vague quotes by George F. Kennan
A goal that is not in writing is like cigarette smoke: It drifts away and disappears. It is vague and insubstantial. It has no force, effect, or power. But a written goal becomes something that you can see, touch, read, and modify if necessary. ~ Brian Tracy
Vague quotes by Brian Tracy
I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it. ~ Christopher Nolan
Vague quotes by Christopher Nolan
The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague. ~ Bill Cosby
Vague quotes by Bill Cosby
You will know when the time comes, Cloudstar replied. Could you be any more vague? Firestar thought irritably. ~ Erin Hunter
Vague quotes by Erin Hunter
I really don't worry too much about what I see through the viewfinder, at least not at that point, especially if I'm using a flash because I don't know what it's going to do. I just see vague potentiality. It's really working with a set of attributes that will hopefully interact in an interesting way. ~ John Divola
Vague quotes by John Divola
Caitlyn, s'il vous plait!" Madame said, whacking the blackboard with her stick, its end pointing to the irregular verb devoir, "to have to." She
wanted Caitlyn to conjugate it.
Caitlyn felt the class's attention turn to her, and a clammy sweat broke out in her armpits. Her brain stopped in its tracks, unable to move under
the pressure. A vague sense of having known how to speak French in her dreams tickled at her brain, but the skill was as lost to her in the waking
world as was Raphael.
"Devoir," Caitlyn croaked. "Er. Je dev? Tu dev?"
Madame gaped at her, horrified.
Caitlyn shook her head; she knew those words were wrong. "Er … I mean, uh …" And then out of nowhere came, "Egli deve, lei dovrebbe …"
These words felt right. He must, she must …
Several girls burst into laughter.
"What?" Caitlyn demanded.
"You're speaking Italian!" one girl shrieked, and collapsed into hysterical giggles. ~ Lisa Cach
Vague quotes by Lisa Cach
Moreover, behind this vague tendency to treat religion as a side issue in modern life, there exists a strong body of opinion that is actively hostile to Christianity and that regards the destruction of positive religion as absolutely necessary to the advance of modern culture. ~ Christopher Dawson
Vague quotes by Christopher Dawson
I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night. ~ Thomas Merton
Vague quotes by Thomas Merton
The average, vague understanding of being can be permeated by traditional theories and opinions about being in such a way that these theories, as the sources of the prevailing understanding, remain hidden. ~ Martin Heidegger
Vague quotes by Martin Heidegger
I had the vague notion that bearing arms was in poor taste. Unless you were terribly wealthy, hunting was for the brutish lower class, uncivilized country folk, primitive types, people who were dumb and callous and ugly. Violence was just another function of the body, no less unusual than sweating or vomiting. It sat on the same shelf as sexual intercourse. The two got mixed up quite often, it seemed. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh
Vague quotes by Ottessa Moshfegh
The world is full of unknown mysteries and vague resolutions. ~ Tommy Wallach
Vague quotes by Tommy Wallach
A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment. ~ Edward Gibbon
Vague quotes by Edward Gibbon
You can't plan your character arc - you have a vague idea, maybe, but I'm constantly surprised. Sometimes actors in films will play the ending of the movie, or even the middle, and you know where it's going - as an audience member you can read the actor. ~ Evan Peters
Vague quotes by Evan Peters
There is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, they are persons, they are not some vague idea in the clouds. This God spray does not exist! The three persons exist! ~ Pope Francis
Vague quotes by Pope Francis
At first I was surprised and confused; then as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested
interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald
Vague quotes by F Scott Fitzgerald
It has been the struggle between privileged men who have managed to get hold of the levers of power and the people in general withtheir vague and changing aspirations for equality, for justice, for some kind of gentler brotherhood and peace, which has kept that balance of forces we call our system of government in equilibrium. ~ John Dos Passos
Vague quotes by John Dos Passos
carrying a vague but constant fear ~ John Green
Vague quotes by John Green
They only think they think. No total vision, total system, merely schemes with a vague family resemblance, no more identity than bridges and, say, spiderwebs. But they rush across chasms on spiderwebs, and sometimes they make it, and that, they think, settles that! ~ John Gardner
Vague quotes by John Gardner
Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny, it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own; but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights, or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals. ~ G.K. Chesterton
Vague quotes by G.K. Chesterton
Let's live suddenly without thinking.
Let's live like the light that kills.
And let's as silence,
because Whirl's after all:
(after me) love, and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague I don't know tenuous Now -
spears and The Then - arrows making do
our mouths, something red, something tall. ~ E. E. Cummings
Vague quotes by E. E. Cummings
In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don't even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires - or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can't match. ~ Charles Duhigg
Vague quotes by Charles Duhigg
I get a very vague idea and - perhaps because I once was a journalist, or perhaps because that's what made me want to be a journalist - I go off and explore it for a bit, rather than mapping out a plot and then filling in the research. ~ Aminatta Forna
Vague quotes by Aminatta Forna
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. ~ Frank O'Hara
Vague quotes by Frank O'Hara
Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge. ~ John Locke
Vague quotes by John Locke
Our words are often only vague, inadequate descriptions of our thoughts. Something gets lost in translation every time we try to express our thoughts in words. And when the other person hears our words, something gets lost in translation again, because words mean different things to different people. "A long time" may mean 10 hours to one person, but 10 days to another. So when a thought is formed in my brain, and my mouth expresses it in words, and your ears hear it, and your brain processes it, your brain and my brain never truly see exactly the same thing. Communication is always just an approximation. ~ Oliver Gaspirtz
Vague quotes by Oliver Gaspirtz
Fourth Meditation"

1

I was always one for being alone,
Seeking in my own way, eternal purpose;
At the edge of the field waiting for the pure moment;
Standing, silent, on sandy beaches or walking along green embankments;
Knowing the sinuousness of small waters:
As a chip or shell, floating lazily with a slow current...

Was it yesterday I stretched out the thin bones of my innocence?
O the songs we hide, singing only to ourselves!
Once I could touch my shadow, and be happy;
In the white kingdoms, I was light as a seed,
Drifting with the blossoms,
A pensive petal.

But a time comes when the vague life of the mouth no longer suffices;
The dead make more impossible demands from their silence;
The soul stands, lonely in its choice,
Waiting, itself a slow thing,
In the changing body.

The river moves, wrinkled by midges,
A light wind stirs in the pine needles.
The shape of a lark rises from a stone;
But there is no song. ~ Theodore Roethke
Vague quotes by Theodore Roethke
Did not at first give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived. ~ Zane Grey
Vague quotes by Zane Grey
I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed. ~ Robert E. Howard
Vague quotes by Robert E. Howard
The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by all; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the 'still, small voice' of reason. ~ William Hazlitt
Vague quotes by William Hazlitt
The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories ... Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration. ~ Igor Stravinsky
Vague quotes by Igor Stravinsky
The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll
Vague quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll
Our hearts and minds desire clarity. We like to have a clear picture of a situation, a clear view of how things fit together, and clear insight into our own and the world's problems. But just as in nature colors and shapes mingle without clear-cut distinctions, human life doesn't offer the clarity we are looking for. The borders between love and hate, evil and good, beauty and ugliness, heroism and cowardice, care and neglect, guilt and blamelessness are mostly vague, ambiguous, and hard to discern. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
Vague quotes by Henri J.M. Nouwen
I think there are fundamentalists all over the world. I think all religions have fundamentalists who have different interpretations of scriptures that are very vague. ~ Ishmael Reed
Vague quotes by Ishmael Reed
My own interest in Yoga came from a vague understanding of Indian thought and Indian philosophy in the late sixties and early seventies and from looking at the idea of meditation and at what meditation was. ~ Paul Harvey
Vague quotes by Paul Harvey
Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled 'wrong'. ~ Raymond Smullyan
Vague quotes by Raymond Smullyan
Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.
He took up his violin fom the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air - his own no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Vague quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle
If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever - something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen. ~ Haruki Murakami
Vague quotes by Haruki Murakami
This makes it clear that intercession is also a daily service we owe to God and our brother. He who denies his neighbour the service of praying for him denies him the service of a Christian. It is clear, furthermore, that intercession is not general and vague but very concrete: a matter of definite persons and definite difficulties and therefore of definite petitions. The more definite my intercession becomes, the more promising it is. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Vague quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
My reading has been lamentably desultory and immedthodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia, whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions, nor can form the remotest, conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in the first named of these two Terrae Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear or Charles' Wain, the place of any star, or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness - and if the sun on some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the west, I verily believe, that, while all the world were grasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study, but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarc ~ Charles Lamb
Vague quotes by Charles Lamb
The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security ... ~ Hugo Black
Vague quotes by Hugo Black
Whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which out seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in doubtful case ... But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other. ~ John Marshall
Vague quotes by John Marshall
If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.' ~ A.R. Ammons
Vague quotes by A.R. Ammons
among them Pleistocene ("most recent"), Pliocene ("more recent"), Miocene ("moderately recent") and the rather endearingly vague Oligocene ("but a little recent"). ~ Bill Bryson
Vague quotes by Bill Bryson
Tree At My Window
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. ~ Robert Frost
Vague quotes by Robert Frost
This stretch through the fogbound forest gradually lulled Grange into his favorite daydream; in it he saw an image of his life: all that he had he carried with him; twenty feet away, the world grew dark, perspectives blurred, and there was nothing near him but this close halo of warm consciousness, this nest perched high above the vague earth. ~ Julien Gracq
Vague quotes by Julien Gracq
Vague. Since when are you vague with me?
I exhale and recap the whole situation. Chase scoffs and laughs appropriately. By the time I'm finished, I've successfully converted him to team Seth. ~ Skyla Madi
Vague quotes by Skyla Madi
The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers
its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks
are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power. ~ Howard Zinn
Vague quotes by Howard Zinn
sometimes I feel my heart fall to vague depths between words
there are such spaces that I can't help but feel my heart fall between the pregnant pause of all you will not say
and all i can not ask ~ Jewel
Vague quotes by Jewel
Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Vague quotes by Vincent Van Gogh
When causes are vague and goals uncertain... it becomes necessary to fall back on the bloated and honeyed words of propaganda. ~ Peter Englund
Vague quotes by Peter Englund
Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other. ~ H.P. Lovecraft
Vague quotes by H.P. Lovecraft
Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.'
'I don't know disassociation.'
'Well, love, but you know the idiom "not yourself" - "He's not himself today," for example,' crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. 'There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.'
'Engulf means obliterate.'
'I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is "existential," Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father's. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices - Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold ou ~ David Foster Wallace
Vague quotes by David Foster Wallace
I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. ~ Albert Camus
Vague quotes by Albert Camus
One starts gambling for a joke, out of curiosity, as a little challenge to fortune. One goes on, pricked to the quick by delusions, excited by vague desires that grow. Woe to you if you win anything - an AMBO, a small TERNO! It is all up with you, for your chance of winning seems certain ... It is the devil's money going back to hell. ~ Matilde Serao
Vague quotes by Matilde Serao
In such a case secrecy must be absolute to be effective, and although mere vague curiosity induced many persons of my intimate acquaintance to ask to be allowed to just go in and have a peep, I never admitted anyone. ~ Henry Bessemer
Vague quotes by Henry Bessemer
You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. ~ Nelson Algren
Vague quotes by Nelson Algren
He's very nice. He's something I replied. She considered this zipping her purse shut. Then she said Well everyone is. Everyone is Something. For some reason that stuck with me simple and yet not every since she'd said it. It was like a puzzle as well two vague words with one clear one between them. ~ Sarah Dessen
Vague quotes by Sarah Dessen
I say vague things because that's as close as I can get to stopping myself from saying anything, my mind addled by the feeling of her body through her shirt. ~ Veronica Roth
Vague quotes by Veronica Roth
He thinks it's dangerous for us to leave each other so much freedom and make these vague plans to travel together in the future, doing Council work, with no promises. I told him I'm not going to marry you and hang on to you like a barnacle, just to keep you to myself and stop you loving anyone else.'
'It's all right, you know. Other people don't have to understand. ~ Kristin Cashore
Vague quotes by Kristin Cashore
The soldier doesn't usually act on his own initiative, he doesn't harbour feelings of hatred or resentment or jealousy, he isn't motivated by long-held desires or personal ambition; the only motivating force is a vague, rhetorical, empty patriotism, for those soldiers, that is, who are moved by such feelings or allow themselves to be convinced. ~ Javier Marias
Vague quotes by Javier Marias
At least when I was an adult, I had a name for what was wrong with me: manic depression. It's easier to make sense of things - even very disturbing things like sexual acting out and suicidality - when there's a big, fat label slapped on top. But as a child, I knew nothing. I had no diagnosis. All I had was a vague and gnawing awareness that I was different from other children, and that different was not good. Different must be kept hidden. ~ Terri Cheney
Vague quotes by Terri Cheney
I have to keep things vague, jumble up all the men, the lovers and the exes, but I tell myself that's OK, because it doesn't matter who they are. It matters how they make me feel. ~ Paula Hawkins
Vague quotes by Paula Hawkins
In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team. ~ Luis Suarez
Vague quotes by Luis Suarez
It is certain that there are genuinely moderate Muslims, perhaps a substantial number, who do not seek to impose Islam on this country and the world through violent jihad. However, they are conspicuous by their silence regarding the more problematic doctrines of Islam. To the extent that Muslim 'leaders' and lobbying organizations in the United States even address the issue, they offer nothing more than vague, tepid condemnations of terrorist violence and heated denials that the behavior of Islamic terrorists has any connection with Islam. Where is the Muslim outrage in this country over the supposed few who hijacked their religion? Where is the Million Muslim March on the Mall in Washington, D.C., sending a message to all Muslims in the Arabic world condemning the killing of human beings in the name of Allah? Where is the cry to raise the consciousness of the rest of the Muslim world about their hijacked religion? ~ Brigitte Gabriel
Vague quotes by Brigitte Gabriel
After every battle, he ritually dips his hood into the blood of his enemies. I've seen the hood, kept under glass in the armory. The fabric is stiff and stained a brown so deep it's almost black, except for a few smears of green.
Sometimes I go down and stare at it, trying to see my parents in the tide lines of dried blood. I want to feel something, something besides a vague queasiness. I want to feel more, but every time I look at it, I feel less. ~ Holly Black
Vague quotes by Holly Black
For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so. ~ James Branch Cabell
Vague quotes by James Branch Cabell
The comparison of religions is only possible, in some measure, through the miraculous virtue of sympathy. We can know men to a certain extent if at the same time as we observe them from the outside we manage by sympathy to transport our own soul into theirs for a time. In the same way the study of different religions does not lead to a real knowledge of them unless we transport ourselves for a time by faith to the very center of whichever one we are studying...This scarcely ever happens, for some have no faith, and the others have faith exclusively in one religion and only bestow upon the others the sort of attention we give to strangely shaped shells. There are others again who think they are capable of impartiality because they have only a vague religiosity which they can turn indifferently in any direction, whereas, on the contrary, we must have given all our attention, all our faith, all our love to a particular religion in order to think of any other religion with the high degree of attention, faith, and love that is proper to it. ~ Simone Weil
Vague quotes by Simone Weil
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. ~ John Piper
Vague quotes by John Piper
You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories. ~ Natalie Goldberg
Vague quotes by Natalie Goldberg
Faith must be definite, specific; an unqualified, unmistakable request for the things asked for. It is not to be a vague, indefinite, shadowy thing; it must be something more than an abstract belief in God's willingness and ability to do for us. It is to be a definite, specific, asking for, and expecting the things for which we ask. ~ E.M. Bounds
Vague quotes by E.M. Bounds
When I write a tune - and it's been like this for many years - I always hear in the back of my head some sort of vague, orchestrated, fully fleshed-out big-band version of the song with other parts going on. ~ John Scofield
Vague quotes by John Scofield
The first few years after Samuel came to Salinas Valley there was a vague distrust of him. And perhaps Will as a little boy heard talk in the San Lucas store. Little boys don't want their fathers to be different from other men. Will might have picked up his conservatism right then. ~ John Steinbeck
Vague quotes by John Steinbeck
Perhaps that was just a hunch."

Barbee shivered again. He knew that he himself possessed what he called the "nose for news" - an intuitive perception of human motivations and the impending events that would spring from them. It wasn't a faculty he could analyze or account for, but he knew that it wasn't unusual. Most successful reporters possessed it, he believed - even though, in an age of skepticism for everything except mechanistic materialism, they wisely denied it.

That dim sense had been useful to him - on those summer field trips, before Mendrick turned him out, it had led him to more than one promising prehistoric site, simply because he somehow knew where a band of wild hunters would prefer to camp, or to dig a comrade's grave.

Commonly, however, that uncontrolled faculty had been more curse than blessing. It made him too keenly aware of all that people thought and did around him, kept him troubled with an uneasy alertness. Except when he was drunk. He drank too much, and knew that many other newsmen did. That vague sensitivity, he believed; was half the reason. ~ Jack Williamson
Vague quotes by Jack Williamson
So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man. ~ William Barclay
Vague quotes by William Barclay
I don't understand it either. Obscure and vague, but intelligent. 'Everybody writes like that now, ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Vague quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
After a deep silence, mingled with sweet dreams, I asked, "Speak to me of that beauty which the people interpret and define, each one according to his own conception; I have seen her honoured and worshipped in different ways and manners."
She answered, "Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is the magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear−−it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination. ~ Kahlil Gibran
Vague quotes by Kahlil Gibran
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