vastness

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“
A solitude which no words can paint, the boundless prairie swell conveys an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature of the Plains.... The impression is not merely one of size There is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe; no patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveller wishing here to end his days To those who love the sea, there is here a double charm.

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Definitions (3)

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  1. The state or character of being vast; greatness; immensity. The unity reigning through a work upon which so many generations labored [the Bible] gives it a vastness beyond comparison, so that the greatest work of individual literary genius shows by the side of it like some building of human hands beside the Peak of Teneriffe. J. R. Seeley, Nat. Religion, p. 168.

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Examples (50)

  • It carried on its back the scent of a great cold vastness, and with it a kind of magnificence. —  F ;SF - vol 088 issue 01 - January 1995
  • The vastness, the difficulties, the attractions of that conquest of all knowledge which he dreamed of, were becoming greater every day to his thoughts. —  Bacon
  • It indicates in its very terms the vastness of His supernatural knowledge; asserting His cognizance of the fact that the angels in heaven did not know that day and hour. —  To My Younger Brethren Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work
  • But here was vastness, here was desolation, here was silence; jagged ice masses in the foreground and boundless expanse beyond, solemn and mysterious. —  Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska
  • People are lost in its solemn vastness, and even with many worshippers it is a solitude where most holy vigils could be kept, a mystic place where the southern imagination might well lose itself in such sacred ardours as Saint Theresa felt. —  Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

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