"Exactitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... announced that "a Congressman making a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives was perhaps in a little different position from a witness on the witness stand"—a frank admission that he did not consider exactitude of statement necessary when he was speaking as a Congressman. Finally he rose with great dignity and said that it was his "constitutional right" not to be questioned elsewhere as to what he said on the floor of the House of Representatives; and accordingly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... certain abnormalities of vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination, videlicet, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... regards the year, Oppolzer's dates are the "astronomical" dates, that is, the astronomical year—x is the same as the year (x 1) B.C.; or, in other words, the year of Christ's birth is, for certain astronomical exactitude purposes, interpolated between the years 1 B.C. and A.D. 1, as we vulgarly compute them: that is to say, the eclipses of the sun recorded 2,400 years ago by Confucius, from notes and annals preserved in his native state's archives as far back ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... figures with much exactitude from one or two stragglers that we captured on the land. My eyes confirm these figures. There are about seven thousand of the English regulars, and about nine ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... which devoured him. His domestics perceived, by the manner in which he approached his carriage, that their master was not in the best of humors: the result of their discernment was, that his orders were executed with that exactitude of maneuver which is found on board a man-of-war, commanded during a storm by an ill-tempered captain. The carriage, therefore, did not simply roll along—it flew. Fouquet had hardly time to recover himself during the drive; on his arrival he went at once to Aramis, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is a new self-consciousness. The man has become humble, but in proportion the soldier has become exceeding proud. The old personal whims and ambitions give place to a corporate ambition and purpose, and this unity of will is symbolized in action by the simultaneous exactitude of drill, and in dress by the rigid identity of uniform. Anything which calls attention to the individual, whether in drill or in dress, is a crime, because it is essential that the soldier's individuality ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... menial, of high Dutch extraction and, indeed, as yet only partially extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a pat of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good. Awhile ago, and H. L. S. used to find the supply of butter insufficient; but he has now learned the art to exactitude, and butter and roll expire at the same moment. For this refection he pays ten cents, or five pence sterling ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... the marechale de Mirepoix was announced. I was still much agitated, and she immediately turned towards the duke, as if to inquire of him the cause of my distress: upon which, M. de Richelieu related all that had passed with a cool exactitude that enraged me still further. When he had finished, I said, "Well, madame la marechale, and what is your opinion of all this?" "Upon my word, my dear countess," answered madame de Mirepoix, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... is a work of genius and was called by Von Bulow "the only model edition." In a few sections others, such as Kullak, Dr. Hugo Riemann and Hans von Bulow, may have outstripped him, but as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility in novel fingerings and sympathetic insight in phrasing. This edition appeared at Moscow ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... platters or the chairs. Marie Louise caught an angry look also in the eye of Nicholas Easton, though he, too, had been incisive in his comments on the theme of the dinner. His English had been uncannily correct, his phrases formal with the exactitude of a book on syntax or the dialogue of a gentleman in a novel. But he also was drinking too much, and as his lips fuddled he had trouble with a very formal "without which." It resulted first as "veetowit veech," then as "whidthout ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... on Sam, with the painful exactitude which comes only from embarrassment or the early stages ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... camel-drivers of the caravan, of course, told us that it was at the distance of one hour—Saha bas! but we found it to be three hours in a north-east direction. Time is of little consequence in the desert, and no means are possessed or desired of measuring it with exactitude. It has already been observed by a traveller, that the Bedawin will describe as near an object a hundred yards off, or a well two days' journey from you. Western Ghareeah was likewise described as grayeb, but we thought for some time that we had ventured upon an interminable desert. However, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Gonzalo had given him orders to hang up every person he might find loitering in the city with out a written permission, or who might return thither from camp without a pass. Martin executed these rigorous orders with so much exactitude, that, meeting a person who came under the foregoing predicament, he had not sufficient patience to have him hanged, but dispatched him directly with his poignard. He generally went about the streets followed by the hangman, carrying a parcel of ropes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... garniture and such play of fancy as can give charm to the history of a voyage. His book was a substantial contribution to the world's knowledge, and it is his especial virtue to have set down his facts with such exactitude that our tests of them, where they are still capable of being tested, earn him credit for punctilious veracity in respect of those observations on wild life and natural phenomena as to which we have to rely upon his written word. He never succumbs to the common sin of travellers—writing to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... you are! You have JOHN RICHARD GREEN beaten to his knees, FROUDE and GARDINER out of sight, and even the authoress of the immortal Little Arthur could not have placed EDDY I. with greater chronological exactitude. In fact there seems to be no subject on which you cannot write informatively, which makes me sorry that you will not join in the literary fray in the local paper, as it deprives the natives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... Brahma.[777] The Creator (Brahma) has described the religion of Pravritti. Pravritti implies rebirth or return. Nivritti, on the other hand, implies the highest end. The ascetic who desires to discriminate with exactitude between good and evil, who is always bent on understanding the nature of the Soul, and who devotes himself to the religion of Nivritti, attains to that high end.[778] One desirous of accomplishing this, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... name was Logan. He was the lightning calculator, the mathematical talent of Talents, Incorporated. Bors shook his hand. The tweedy man sat down. He drew out a pipe and began to fill it with conscious exactitude. He looked remarkably like a professor of mathematics who modestly pretended to be just another commuter. He dressed the part: slightly untidy hair; bulldog pipe; casual, expensive ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... their numbers and had lockers assigned them—stubs to be religiously kept for the protection of property from false claimants; the working of a slot machine, in which must be slipped a card, and the moment of the morning and midday arrival thus recorded with ruthless exactitude (twenty-five cents docked off your pay if you were late), and other odds and ends of routine information, such as the hours at which lockers might or might not be opened without the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... polished his glasses industriously for a second and replaced them with painstaking exactitude. "Now—ah—this is the situation: When the company was formed, five of us, including your husband, took up enough stock to finance the preliminary work of the undertaking. The remaining stock, seventy-five thousand dollars in amount, was left in the treasury, to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sought. A dynamo-electric apparatus, in which a new pile was employed the composition of which was still a mystery, had been bought from its inventor, a Boston chemist up to then unknown. Calculations made with the greatest care, diagrams drawn with the utmost exactitude, showed that by means of this apparatus driving a screw of given dimensions a displacement could be obtained of from twenty to twenty-two ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... of July, 1671, Philippe de la Hire went to Uraniborg in the Island of Huen, to take observations for the situation of Tycho Brahe's Observatory. In that spot he calculated with the assistance of Cassini's Tables, and with an exactitude never before obtained, the difference between the longitudes ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... occupied in these arrangements, the sentinel and his captain had stood looking at each other with great military exactitude, the former ambitious of manifesting his watchfulness, the latter awaiting the return of the marine. The captain now beckoned to Manual to advance and give ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a very hazy notion of what it means. If you have a circle of given diameter and wish to find the side of a square that shall contain exactly the same area, you are confronted with the problem of squaring the circle. Well, it cannot be done with exactitude (though we can get an answer near enough for all practical purposes), because it is not possible to say in exact numbers what is the ratio of the diameter to the circumference. But it is only in recent times that it has been ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... more than a century the Rudolphine tables were regarded as a standard astronomical work. In these days we are accustomed to find the movements of the heavenly bodies set forth with all desirable exactitude in the NAUTICAL ALMANACK, and the similar publication issued by foreign Governments. Let it be remembered that it was Kepler who first imparted the proper ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco, by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday. He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in a couple of miller-guns for the Marcos gratis—that everybody was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doubt, one of relief. The figure was the figure of a complete stranger. Nor was there anything the least threatening about his appearance. He saw a tall, white-haired gentleman, carefully dressed with military exactitude, regarding him with a benevolent and ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a particular hour—ten o'clock at night—and also of rising at six exactly. This was a rule in my father's house, as well as that of my uncle—in the latter, indeed, I was compelled to observe it with a stern exactitude. The consequence of this habit was, that whenever the hour of ten drew nigh, I naturally felt the inclination for sleep; and the habit had grown so fixed, that, notwithstanding the change of circumstances, it still continued. This ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... ground of the courtyard under his feet, Willems pulled himself up in his headlong rush and moved forward with a moderate gait. He paced stiffly, looking with extreme exactitude at Lingard's face; looking neither to the right nor to the left but at the face only, as if there was nothing in the world but those features familiar and dreaded; that white-haired, rough and severe head upon ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... second by nearly half, the estimated 600,000 tons, and for the present month also we may fairly cherish the best expectations. The technical success guarantees the economic success with almost mathematical exactitude. True, the economic results cannot be so easily expressed numerically and set down in a few big figures as the technical result in the amount of tonnage sunk. The economic effects of the submarine warfare are expressed in many different spheres ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... not so much as his talk would amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it is usually decided whether a man is to have command of his language or not. If he is slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom pull himself up to strength and exactitude in the hundredth case of writing. A person is made in one piece, and the same being runs through a multitude of performances. Whether words are uttered on paper or to the air, the effect on the utterer is the same. Vigor or feebleness results according ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... nature an omen, or prognostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and original meaning. Superstition is from the Latin superstitio, which means a superabundance of religion,[99] an extreme exactitude in religious observance. And this is precisely the sense in which the corresponding Greek term is used by the Apostle Paul. Deisidaimonia properly means "reverence for the gods." "It is used," says Barnes, "in the classic writers, in a good sense, to denote piety towards the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... document which comes to us second-hand. The narrative is more mature. The words of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more sententious. Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.[1] Writing outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,[2] the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.[3] He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives agree;[4] he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on account ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... where the physiological functions are performed with exactitude and regularity, the elimination of the various effete matters, the result of waste of tissue, is uniform, and easily carried off out of the system by the skin, the kidneys, lungs, and bowels. The nitrogenous components become oxidised, and ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... education and of her influence. Queen Blanche, though a firm believer and steadfastly pious, was a stranger to enthusiasm, and too discreet and too politic to make it the dominating principle of her son's life any more than of her own. The truth of the matter is that, by her watchfulness and her exactitude in morals, she helped to impress upon her son the great Christian lesson of hatred for sin and habitual concern for the eternal salvation of his soul. "Madame used to say of me," Louis was constantly repeating, "that if I ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... enters furtively, timidly, as if she were not the mistress of the house. She is beautiful, but she does not wish this to be noticed; she has much talent, but she disguises it by her calm and severe style of playing, which does not prevent critical ears from noting her exactitude and precision, combined with that rare spirit of abnegation which is the accompanist's ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... writes Chavannes (T'oung Pao, 1906, p. 59), n'est pas d'une exactitude rigoureuse, puisque les animaux n'y sont pas nommes a leur rang; en outre, le lion y est substitue au tigre de l'enumeration chinoise; mais cette derniere difference provient sans doute de ce que Marco Polo connaissait le cycle avec les noms ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... an earnest man, intent on executing his errand with dispatch and exactitude. 'Can you tell me the way to headquarters?' he asks as he passes. Then he disappears slowly up the street on the heels ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Montpellier journey, which he says came after the visit to Geneva, into 1738, but the letters to Madame de Warens from Grenoble and Montpellier are dated in the autumn and winter of 1737.[102] Minor verifications attest the exactitude of the dates of the letters,[103] and we may therefore conclude that he returned from Montpellier, found his place taken and lost his old delight in Les Charmettes, in the early part of 1738. In the tenth of the Reveries he speaks of having passed "a space of four or five years" in the bliss of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... people, of their character, of their habits. We desired to sketch the home life of the people in the higher and lower classes, to depict their language, their faith, their traditions, their legends. What we have sought above all is to paint after nature, and with the most scrupulous exactitude, the objects and persons brought forward. Therefore our readers will seek in vain amid our actors for accomplished heroes or consummate villains, such as are found in the romances of chivalry or in melodramas. Our ambition has been to give as true ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... coincidences. And farther: in what I relate it will be seen that between the fate of the unhappy Mary Cecilia Rogers, so far as that fate is known, and the fate of one Marie Rogt up to a certain epoch in her history, there has existed a parallel in the contemplation of whose wonderful exactitude the reason becomes embarrassed. I say all this will be seen. But let it not for a moment be supposed that, in proceeding with the sad narrative of Marie from the epoch just mentioned, and in tracing to its dnouement the mystery which enshrouded her, it is my covert design ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Emperor with military affairs, in which he exceeds most living princes, had induced him, on the preceding evening, to ascertain, with marvellous exactitude and foresight, the precise position of the enemy. In this most necessary service he employed certain light-armed barbarians, whose habits and discipline had been originally derived from the wilds of Syria; and, if I am required to speak according to the dictation of Truth, seeing she ought ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... little rocker and gave himself up to the moment's bliss, first applying his lips with careful exactitude to the dividing-line between Her licorice stick ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... private wrong. His young brother, before the day had closed, sought out Mr. Scarlett, the British charge d'affaires, and also Prince Lichtenstein, the Austrian commander-in-chief, taking with him two witnesses to testify to the exactitude of his statement, and to them he poured out in clear and emphatic language the story of the outrage committed. The conduct of these two young Englishmen, without friends in a strange city, relying on their sense of right, and sustained by their own firmness and courage, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... (the Arab strangers), went to pray this evening in the mosque set apart for strangers. I must not omit the mention of the strict and scrupulous exactitude with which all the ghafalah prayed en route. Five times a day is prescribed by the Koran. Most of them prayed the five times, but not altogether, some choosing their own time, a liberty allowed to travellers. It was a refreshing, though ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the world. Any one who has read Browning's longer poems knows how constantly a simile or figure of speech is selected, not among the large, well-recognised figures common in poetry, but from some dusty corner of experience, and how often it is characterised by smallness and a certain quaint exactitude which could not have been found in any more usual example. Thus, for instance, Prince Hohenstiel—Schwangau explains the psychological meaning of all his restless and unscrupulous activities by comparing them ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... European men of science, when coming across these facts, are absolutely unable to stand them; they can not reconcile them with a high development of tribal morality, and they prefer to cast a doubt upon the exactitude of absolutely reliable observers, instead of trying to explain the parallel existence of the two sets of facts: a high tribal morality together with the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same Europeans were to tell a savage ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... off the bank with complete assurance and superb dignity. With equal precision, moving his feet as though there were marked for them certain exact spots which he covered with infinite lightness and exactitude, he turned about and stood beside his partner ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... furniture was free from speck of dirt or particle of dust; and everything was placed either in a parallel line, or at exact right-angles with every other. Even John and Jeremiah sat in symmetry on opposite sides of the fire-place; the very smiles on their honest faces seemed drawn to a line of exactitude. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that he loved Truth; that he paid every debt with a scrupulous exactitude: money, of course; and prompt apologies for a short brush of his temper. Nay, he had such a conscience for the smallest eruptions of a transient irritability, that the wish to say a friendly mending word to the Punctilio donkey of London Bridge, softened his retrospective ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The shot, passing over the islet, fell into the sea at a distance which could not be calculated with exactitude. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... but he soon told one of them that he feared close association with the Speaker might injure his career. F. Y. Eccles was in charge of the review department. He is able to date the start of what was known as the "new" Speaker with great exactitude, for when the first number was going to press the ultimatum had been sent to Kruger and the editors hesitated as to whether they should take the risk of announcing that it was war in South Africa. They decided against, but before their second number appeared ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... you, Nettleship, as president of the mess, to interfere," exclaimed the doctor. "What do these youngsters suppose I'm sent here for, but to watch over their morals and their health; and as I find it difficult in the one case to do my duty with the exactitude I desire, I shall take care not to neglect it in the other. There's young Chaffey there, who has stowed away enough duff to kill a bull, and now he's going to increase the evil by pouring this burning fiery liquid down his throat. Do you want to be ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... wrested them to its purpose it is morally impossible that the words of ecclesiastical and religious writers should be so delicately balanced as to avoid all ambiguities and inaccuracies. Still less have we a right to look for such exactitude in the words of an anchoress who, if not wholly uneducated in our sense of the word, yet on her own confession "could no letter," i.e., as we should say, was no scholar, and certainly made no pretence ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Supply, with an application for monetary reward for his work. His request was refused, his map never returned, and strangely enough the new road followed his traverse from water to water with startling exactitude. Who was to blame I cannot say; but someone must be in fault when a man, both able and willing to do such useful work is not only neglected, but to all intents and purposes robbed. This is not the only instance of the apathy of the Government in such matters, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... details are gathered, the workman's patience and labour are truly conscientious—at times they excite admiration and surprise—but the net result is lifeless. In the way of waxwork—it would be hard to find anything more effective than the people in 'Esther Waters.' They are clothed with an exactitude of detail which would do credit to Madame Tussaud's exhibition in its latest development. They are carefully modelled and coloured and posed. They are capital waxwork, and if the author had only ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Thus the prophet, for liberty bestowed and charitable works, promises a healthy mind in a healthy body, and the glory of the Lord even after death; whereas, for ceremonial exactitude, he only promises security of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... regularity of express trains, won admiration throughout the world. Prominent among these champions was the French naval officer, Lieut. J. Conneau, who adopted in his contests the flying name of "Beaumont." His success and his exactitude, when piloting a Bleriot monoplane for long distances above unknown country, guiding himself by map and compass, gave the public an indication, for the first time, of what might be accomplished by an expert airman when flying a reliable machine. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... immediately modern indeed, as the events fall within the period of the South African war, a fact that will, of course, much increase their appeal for those whose Oxford memories belong to the same epoch. But it is naturally a book difficult for the male reviewer to appraise with exactitude. All I can say, being unconversant with the domestic politics of a ladies' college, is that I should imagine Miss WINIFRED TAYLOR to have given a remarkably true picture of existence therein; its mixture of academic ambition, sentiment, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... during the bombardment. The first commenced on August 14th at 4.15 p.m. The shell fire, directed with great exactitude, lasted two hours without interruption. After a break of half-an-hour, some 21-centimetre guns opened fire. All night, at intervals of ten minutes, they rained shells upon the fort, causing it considerable damage. The escarpment was damaged, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... French it is surprising to find of how late introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language could never have done without. 'Desinteressement', 'exactitude', 'sagacite', 'bravoure', were not introduced till late in the seventeenth century. 'Renaissance', 'emportement', 'scavoir-faire', 'indelebile', 'desagrement', were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours); 'indevot', 'intolerance', 'impardonnable', 'irreligieux', were struggling into allowance ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... matter to investigate with exactitude the means by which Mazarin obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, and one which La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches upon; but it is too interesting a point in history to be left in the dark, and thereby to altogether disregard that which first ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... chief painter. And thereon hangs a tragic tale. So great was Le Moine's pride in the honor thus done him that he determined to bring his work to still higher perfection. He resolved to finish each detail with the same exactitude as though he were painting a canvas that was to be observed at close range. But the more he applied his brush to bring out intricate effects, the less the design pleased him. In a sudden revulsion for the completed work, he effaced it and began ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... not change its form, nor grow lighter and denser like a flock of starlings; but in the seeming confusion there is perfect order, and amidst many hundreds each swift- or slow-gliding figure keeps its proper distance with such exactitude that no two ever touch, even with the extremity of the long-wings, flapping or motionless:—such a multitude, and such miraculous precision in the endless curving motions of all the members of it, that the spectator can lie ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Fontaine. Lover of the soil and desirous, in harmony with Augustus, to attract the Italians back to a taste for agriculture, he wrote the Georgics: that is, the toils of the field, describing these labours with singular exactitude and precision; then, to give the reader variety, he introduced from time to time an episode which is a fragment of history or of mythological legend. At length, desirous of attributing to Rome the most glorious past possible, he revived the old legend which claimed that the ancient kings of Rome ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... Ginsburg went home from battle to a tenement in Allen Street, there to be licked again for having been licked before; or, speaking with exactitude, for having been in a fight, his father being one who held by the theory that diplomacy ever should find the way out to peace when blows threatened to follow on disputation. With view, therefore, to proving his profound distaste for physical violence in any form he ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... order. They arranged themselves very carefully on the pedometer to be measured; when any modification was necessary in the position of the body, it sufficed to murmur a word in their ears and the almost imperceptible movement required was made with the utmost exactitude; they could control their voluntary movements and direct them; they were able to translate the words they heard into actions: this enabled them to obey, and this constituted for them a fascinating internal conquest. When the measuring was over, nothing was said; they waited expectantly ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... tangent plane and the curved surface, exactly as the engineer would calculate the distance between his tangent plane and the surface of the sea. The wonder is, that, where such infinitesimal distances are involved, Newton, with the means at his disposal, could have worked with such marvellous exactitude. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... character—in a great equation. John Smith would equal so many units of this, plus so many units of that, and so on. Such a mental inventory would express his individuality conceivably in its entirety and with great exactitude. No such list has been made for any man, much less have the exact amounts of each trait possessed by him been measured. But in certain of the traits, many individuals have been measured; and certain individuals ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and those in retreat began to carry out their orders with exactitude; the chasseurs cheered and advanced in about equal numbers, torch-bearers and musketeers with fixed bayonets, the former waving their burning brands, and all cheering loudly as in the distance they caught ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... antecedents would not stand a close scrutiny; and thus a mighty respect was engendered in them for those who had nothing to fear. Moreover, directly you got away from the vastly rich, class distinctions were observed with an exactitude such as can only obtain in an exceedingly mixed society. The three professions alone were sacrosanct. The calling of architect, for example, or of civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been accumulated, utterly without prestige; trade, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... he describes one of Mme. Acquet's toilettes, it is because it is given in some interrogation. I have seen him so scrupulous on this point, as to suppress all picturesqueness that could be put down to his imagination. In no cause celebre has justice shown more exactitude in exposing the facts. In short, here will be found all the qualities that ensured the success of his "Conspiration de la Rouerie," the chivalrous beginning of the Chouannerie that he now shows us in its decline, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... photometers, different standards of light, and different observers are concerned, it will be seen that these results are too irregular to be altogether trustworthy, and that much more work must be done on this subject before the economy of the acetylene flame can be appraised with exactitude. However, as certain fixed data are necessary, the authors have studied those and other determinations, rejecting some extreme figures, and averaging the remainder; whence it appears that on an average twin-injector burners of different sizes ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... punishments have been touched upon in chapter ii, Sec 4. Plato suggests, in his Laws, that the slave who steals a bunch of grapes should receive a blow for every grape in the bunch. This has an agreeably mathematical flavor of exactitude. But what shall be done to the man who steals half of a ham or a third of a watermelon?] Undoubtedly the same is true of the present. Can anything be said in favor of this impulse? It plays no small part in the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... or by the unconscious hand of political history, to be half-willing, half-reluctant complements to each other. English common sense, French lucidity, German idealism; English liberty, French equality, German organization; English breadth, French exactitude, German detail,—how much poorer the world would be if any one of these had been allowed to develop on its own lines without the criticism of the other two. What a special providence gave the easy-going Englishman a northern neighbour to lecture him on German metaphysics in his own ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... their Japanese colleagues was well deserved. And for that reason it may be taken as an axiom that whatever developments the present situation may bring forth, the Empire of Nippon will carry out all its engagements with scrupulous exactitude, in the spirit as well ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that we can arrange the fields of human thought and interest about the world of fact in a sort of scale. At one end the number of units is infinite and the methods exact, at the other we have the human subjects in which there is no exactitude. The science of society stands at the extreme end of the scale from the molecular sciences. In these latter there is an infinitude of units; in sociology, as Comte perceived, there is only one unit. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... all the authenticity of this chronicle, edited with great exactitude by the Brahminic, and more especially the Buddhistic historians of India and Nepaul, I desired, upon my return to Europe, to publish a ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... a glance at the various industries at which men are to-day engaged, intellectual, commercial, and mechanical, the painstaking exactitude everywhere practiced will be found to be a growing subject of wonder and admiration. The secret of this lies in the fact that perfection in any department of business not only enlarges that business but also enriches those engaged in it. For example: there are perhaps ten times as many watches ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of the book—'An Ethical Problem'—is indeed justified by its array of evidence and argument. Particularly is it shown that on this question America is still in the dark ages. Reform demands a frank exactitude as to the practices which, if Dr. Leffingwell is substantially accurate, are a disgrace to humanity. State control cannot always be avoided by ridiculing the 'sentimentality' of those who insist upon strict regulation. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... test; and if the string is too thin, or he has to use thread, he doubles it. Then he worries round to find out who has got the ink, or whether anyone has seen anything of the pen; and when he gets them, he writes the address with painful exactitude on the margin of the paper, sometimes in two or three places. He has to think a moment before he writes; and perhaps he'll scratch the back of his head afterwards with an inky finger, and regard the address with a sort of mild, passive surprise. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... that as there were no artificial objects from which it could have been abstracted, it must have been abstracted from natural objects; and that the various families of the animal kingdom chiefly furnish those natural objects which display the requisite exactitude of likeness. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... tales of davits unshipped, high seas, strong gales from the southward, and the ship driven to refuge in Kirkwall or Deer Sound. I have many a passage before me to transcribe, in which my grandfather draws himself as a man of minute and anxious exactitude about details. It must not be forgotten that these voyages in the tender were the particular pleasure and reward of his existence; that he had in him a reserve of romance which carried him delightedly over these hardships and ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more steadily thoughts and facts in the mind than the precision and constant attention required in following a lecture with the pen, especially when the words of the professor are not taken down with slavish exactitude, but when, as is most generally the case, merely the thoughts are noted in the hearer's own language. The ideas thus gained have been assimilated and become the listener's own property. There is thus generated a steady transfusion, the surest remedy against flagging mental activity. Many a foreigner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... word for Sabbath is animea geezhig, and indicates prayer-day. There is no evidence, from inquiry, that the Indians divided their days into weeks. A moon was the measure of a month, but it is questionable whether they had acquired sufficient exactitude in the computation of time to have numbered the days comprehended in each moon. The phases of the moon ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... no three crows this afternoon," added Uncle Billy gleefully, as his partner, in turn, began to shuffle the cards with laborious and conscientious exactitude. Then dealing, he turned up a heart for trumps. Uncle Billy took up his cards one by one, but when he had finished his face had become as pale as it had been red before. "What's the matter?" said Uncle Jim quickly, his own ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... immeasurable distances, and what is beyond and beyond and beyond, and all that nonsense. The great beauty of astronomy is not what is incomprehensible in it, but its comprehensibility—its geometrical exactitude. Now ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... plaster, with a little circle of rouge marked very precisely in the middle of each cheek, the mouth reddened, and a touch of gilding outlining the under lip. As they could not whiten the back of the neck on account of all the delicate little curls of hair growing there, they had, in their love of exactitude, stopped the white plaster in a straight line, which might have been cut with a knife, and in consequence at the nape appears a square of natural skin ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... a court which is absolutely unique in the world. These officials pass their days in verifying money-orders, documents, roles, registers, lists, permits, custom-house receipts, payments, taxes received, taxes spent, etc.; all of which the clerks write or copy. These stern judges push the gift of exactitude, the genius of inquisition, the sharp-sightedness of lynxes, the perspicacity of account-books to the point of going over all the additions in search of subtractions. These sublime martyrs to figures have been known to return to an army commissary, after a delay of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... mentioned here that the police of Paris are supposed to be acquainted with the names of all visitors residing in the city. The rule may be occasionally relaxed, as now, but under the despotism of Napoleon III. it was enforced with a rigorous exactitude. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... purposes of their long migration, and the actual period of their landing, and all such questions, are indefinite. And we must re-construct their chronology, in the best way possible, from a careful system of patient historical and antiquarian induction. Exactitude it cannot have, but it may reach plausibility. Granting to the Scandinavian, the Cimbrian and the Italian periods of adventure, which have been named, the fullest limits, in point of antiquity, which have under any circumstances been claimed, we cannot carry even this species of history ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... fact, presupposes the other. To separate a common element of motion from the heterogeneous shiftings upon the sphere of three or four thousand stars is a task practicable only under certain conditions. To begin with, the proper motions investigated must be established with general exactitude. The errors inevitably affecting them must be such as pretty nearly, in the total upshot, to neutralize one another. For should they run mainly in one direction, the result will be falsified in a degree enormously disproportionate to their magnitude. The adoption, for instance, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... into step and for a while discussed the local weather and local affairs. Then Mr. Manley, who had been gifted by Heaven with a lively imagination wholly untrammelled by any straining passion for exactitude, entertained Mr. Stebbing with a vivid account of his experiences as leader of the first Great Push. Mr. Manley was one of the many rather stout, soft men who in different parts of Great Britain will till their dying days entertain acquaintances ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... attempted by the painter. Another thoroughly studied design is Sophronio and Olindo on the Funeral Pyre delivered by Clorinda.[11] The action has more than usual force and movement, and the undraped figures are drawn with severe exactitude. Presiding over the whole series, in the middle of the ceiling, is an allegorical figure of Jerusalem Delivered.[12] An angel on either side unlooses the fetters of an innocent placid maiden crowned ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... exactitude of rule, I step and square my shoulders with the squad, But there are blaeberries on old Barrule, And Langness ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... heavily for must needs be of some value. I discovered my delusion the moment I came to look into the matter for myself. I found that they knew nothing perfectly: certain things they had learned by rote, and could recite with some exactitude, but of the reasons and principles that underlie all real knowledge they knew nothing. I believe this to be characteristic of almost all modern education, especially since competitive examinations have set the pace. The brain ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... little three-legged stool on which he was wont to take his humble frugal meals. It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted mere self-preservation as ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... above suggested for the beginning of the period with which we have first to deal must not be regarded as making any pretense to exactitude. We have no means of assigning a definite date to any of the most primitive-looking pieces of Greek sculpture. All that can be said is that works which can be confidently dated about the middle of the sixth century ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... nothing is more natural than differences of opinion. Bias and inequality of knowledge sufficiently account for them. For my reading of the character of George Sand, I have been held up as a monster of moral depravity; for my daring to question the exactitude of Liszt's biographical facts, I have been severely sermonised; for my inability to regard Chopin as one of the great composers of songs, and continue uninterruptedly in a state of ecstatic admiration, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... like you," returned Hamlin, with prompt exactitude. "Now, where's the 'bresh' you ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... taking or leaving it. The very ropes across the ceiling had gone down into the old "bear's" inventory, and not the smallest item was omitted; jobbing chases, wetting-boards, paste-pots, rinsing-trough, and lye-brushes had all been put down and valued separately with miserly exactitude. The total amounted to thirty thousand francs, including the license and the goodwill. David asked himself whether or ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... given this pernicious liquid to Daunton. So, while one of his masters was contemplating the stars from the mast-head, the destroyer of reefers' kits had nothing else to do but to contemplate the beauty of his own feet, placed, with a judicious exactitude, in a very handsome pair of bilboes ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... say—new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... toss their pikes so," which aroused the special enthusiasm of the worthy fellow-citizen whose own prentice was to bear the knightly ensign of the Burning Pestle, Heywood, the future object of Dryden's ignorant and pointless insult, anticipated with absolute exactitude the style of Dryden's own tragic blusterers when most busily bandying tennis-balls of ranting rhyme in mutual challenge and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... thought he. Just as he had cut a large slice out of the mutton, there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old gentleman jumped off the hob, as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm. Gluck fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts at exactitude, and ran to ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... authenticity, he has proved the extraordinary veracity, of the Memoirs. F. W. Barthold, in 'Die Geschichtlichen Personlichkeiten in J. Casanova's Memoiren,' 2 vols., 1846, had already examined about a hundred of Casanova's allusions to well known people, showing the perfect exactitude of all but six or seven, and out of these six or seven inexactitudes ascribing only a single one to the author's intention. Baschet and d'Ancona both carry on what Barthold had begun; other investigators, in France, Italy and Germany, have followed them; and two things are now certain, first, that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a declaratory act the legal existence of these common institutions, they also determined the method by which they should be administered. In doing so they carried out with great exactitude the principle of dualism, establishing in form a complete parity between Hungary on one side and the other territories of the king on the other. They made it a condition [v.03 p.0018] that there should be constitutional government ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... will be from the side edge or from the foot, and the recurrence of this mutilation puzzled me for many years. It arose from the scarcity of paper in former times, so that when a message had to be sent which required more exactitude than could be entrusted to the stupid memory of a household messenger, the Master or Chaplain went to the library, and, not having paper to use, took down an old book, and cut from its broad margins one or more slips ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... conspicuous object at the edge of the bank on the farther side; then as nearly opposite and square as possible plant a stake about five feet high, walk along the nearer margin to what you guess to be half the distance across (exactitude in this respect is not material to the result), there plant another stake, and continuing in a straight line put in a third. The stakes must be equal distances apart and as nearly as possible at a right angle to the first line. ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... immense concert-hall a group of girls were giving an informal concert among themselves. When lunch is served on the premises with chronographic exactitude, the thirty-five minutes allowed for the meal give an appreciable margin for music and play. A young woman was just finishing a florid song. The concert was suspended, and the whole party began to move humbly away at ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the intervals between the other pieces of furniture. A Fahrenheit's thermometer in a mahogany case, and with a barometer annexed, was hung against the wall, at some little distance from the stove, which Benjamin consulted, every half hour, with prodigious exactitude. Two small glass chandeliers were suspended at equal distances between the stove and outer doors, one of which opened at each end of the hall, and gilt lustres were affixed to the frame work of the numerous side-doors that led from the apartment. Some little display ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Richard Garman was appointed lighthouse-keeper at Bratvold, either because of his gifts and attainments or by reason of a timely word to the authorities. The very sameness of his existence did the old cavalier good; the few duties he had, he performed with the greatest diligence and exactitude. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Lord Byron has been heard to express, in the eccentricity of conversation, wishes for a more intense knowledge of remorse than murder itself could give. There is, however, a wide and wild difference between the curiosity that prompts the wish to know the exactitude of any feeling or idea, and the direful passions that instigate to ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... into the kitchen, and with the old thrift and exactitude prepared her patient's supper. He was sitting upright, bolstered against the head of the bed; and he looked like a great mischievous boy, who had, in some way, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... said Drew, excitedly, as the murmur of the approaching Papuans came nearer, and at the same moment there was a rushing of wings, as half a dozen large birds perched in one of the trees and gave proof of the exactitude of the botanist's imitation by answering loudly, as if to say, "Who ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the wood, none better. In the evening he played atrociously his violin—none worse—bending his great white brow forward with the wolf-glare in his eyes, swaying his shoulders with a fierce delight in the subtle dissonances, the swaggering exactitude of time, the vulgar rendition of the horrible tunes he played. And often he went into the forest and gazed wondering through his liquid poet's eyes at occult things. Above all, he worshipped Thorpe. And in turn the lumberman accorded him a good-natured affection. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White |
