"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things, but I had become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything from them, or of believing them to exist. There was my great and inconsolable grief! I neither perceived nor conceived any longer the existence of happiness or perfection. An abstract heaven over a naked rock. Such was my ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of his own upon most subjects, and no one suspected him of it, because he never sought to force them upon others. What he loved above all in men was that species of audacious and gentlemanly coolness which is found in greater perfection in the ranks of the British aristocracy than anywhere else ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... gentlemen are afraid of them. Dickens was never more right than when he made the new people, the Veneerings, employ a butler who despised not only them but all their guests and acquaintances. The admirable person called the Analytical Chemist shows his perfection particularly in the fact that he regards all the sham gentlemen and all the real gentlemen with the same gloomy and incurable contempt. He offers wine to the offensive Podsnap or the shrieking Tippins with a melancholy sincerity ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... perfection have been produced by Messrs. Alvan Clark, of Cambridgeport, Boston, Mass. One of their most famous telescopes is the great Lick Refractor now in use on Mount Hamilton in California. The diameter of this object-glass is thirty-six inches, and ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... that is a Round Robin." But it was not so easy when you began to do it. First the circle was too large, and then it was too small, then there were mistakes in the spelling, and then there were too many blots; but at last, after wasting four sheets of cardboard, the Round Robin approached perfection. Aunt Katharine came in to see it, and smiled, and said ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... the precious stones with which women love to deck themselves, are to be found in greater perfection, more beautiful, and more splendid, set in the immensity of Heaven! In the telescopic field, we may watch the progress of armies of majestic and powerful suns, from whose attacks there is naught to fear. And these vagabond comets and shooting stars and stellar nebulae, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... American is, "The power which necessarily belongs to the self-conscious being of determining his actions in view of the highest, the universal good, and thereby of gradually realising in himself the eternal divine perfection." The definition seems a little hazy, but the workings of great minds are often unintelligible to common people. "The American citizen must be morally autonomous, regarding all institutions as servants, not as masters. So far man has been for the most part a thrall. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... to me that one of thy nature winneth praise only so long as his able foe bideth his time. Renouncing all sin, even as a serpent casteth off its worn out slough which it cannot any longer retain, the heroic Ajatasatru shineth in his natural perfection, leaving his load of sins to be borne by thee. Consider, O king, thy own acts which are contrary to both religion and profit, and to the behaviour of those that are righteous. Thou hast, O king, earned a bad repute in this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it, and gave it to his escort to kill. More than this, many champions of tried prowess were at the same time of his life vanquished by him singly; of these Attal and Skat were renowned and famous. While but fifteen years of age he was of unusual bodily size and displayed mortal strength in its perfection, and so mighty were the proofs of his powers that the rest of the kings of the Danes were called after him by a common title, the SKIOLDUNG'S. Those who were wont to live an abandoned and flaccid life, and to sap their self-control by wantonness, this man vigilantly ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... men, in a boiling rocky torrent surrounded by heathery mountains, where the shadow of a rod has seldom been reflected in the stream, and you cease to think the former fish worth catching; still he is the same size, showed the same courage, had the same perfection of condition, and yet you cannot allow that it was sport compared with this wild stream. If you see no difference in the excitement, you are not a sportsman; you would as soon catch him in a washing tub, and you should buy your fish when you require him; but never use a rod, or you would ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... WILFRID CATES-DARBY. He is a high-bred, sporting Englishman. His manner, his dress and his diction are the perfection of English elegance. His movements are quick and graceful. He talks lightly and with ease. He is full of life ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... always carried the kettle to the well; and when she came back, Daisy could hear the iron clink of the stove as the kettle was put on. Presently Juanita came in then from her kitchen, and began the work of putting the house in order. How nicely she did it! like the perfection of a nurse, which she was. No dust, no noise, no bustle; still as a mouse, but watchful as a cat, the alert old woman went round the room, and made all tidy, and all clean and fresh. Very likely Juanita would change the flowers in a little vase which stood on the mantelpiece ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Everything was working to perfection. The three horsemen drove the eland toward the cameras—not directly at them, but a little to one side, at an angle, as Kearton wanted it done. At the proper moment Loveless roped the animal by the forelegs and neck, and threw it down. Loveless jumped from his ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... this similarity is especially observable in birds. As Agassiz says, "Compare all the sweet warbles of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... no reply, for her attention was occupied by the loveliness of Rose's little girl. The child inherited, in its perfection, the beauty of her family, and a grace and spirit peculiarly her own. Rose could not find it in her heart to deprive her cousin of the child's society, which seemed to interest and amuse her, and the little creature ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... himself, with a lawyer's blind confidence; but under our English law he need never at least fear that the suspicion will be permanent. For lawyers repeat their own incredible commonplaces about the absolute perfection of English law so often that at last, by a sort of retributive nemesis, they really almost come to ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... religious temper holds it a duty to repress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any lower development of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious application to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. The saint, and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at least understand each other better than either would understand the mere man of the world. Carry their respective positions a point further, shift the terms a little, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... out of sheer contempt for them. When they come to thank him on his birthday, he spurns their gratitude and scolds them, having made up his mind never to be duped again by any show of human emotion. He has brought up his beautiful and dutiful daughter to be an angel of mercy and a paragon of perfection, but he insists that she too shall be a misanthrope like himself. He makes her swear that she will never marry, but she shrewdly tacks on the proviso, 'except with papa's consent'. The exposition shows her duly in love with a cheerful and estimable youth named Rosenberg; and the problem is: ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the "Donkey's Skin" brought us together very often. And little by little the project assumed gigantic proportions; it grew as the months sped, and amused us in ever increasing measure; indeed, in proportion to the degree of perfection to which we were able to bring our conception did we enjoy it. We manufactured fantastic decorations; we dressed, so that they might take part in the processions, innumerable little dolls. It will be necessary for me to speak often ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... so. How step by step was worn, As each man gained on each securely!—how Each by his own strength sought his own Ideal,— The ultimate Perfection leaning bright From out the sun and stars to bless the leal And earnest search of all for Fair and Right Through doubtful forms by earth accounted real! Because old Jubal blew into delight The souls of men with clear-piped melodies, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... impregnation but also during the period intervening between conception and the birth of the offspring. The ancients regarded courage as the principal virtue. By us, purity is so estimated. Moral purity is an essential requisite to the growth and perfection of the character. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... picture-writing of the Aztec and the alphabetical system of the Greek. The speech of Logan—the most celebrated of Indian harangues—even if genuine,[20] is but a feeble support to the theory of savage eloquence. It is a mixture of the lament and the song of triumph, which may be found in equal perfection among all barbarous people; but, so far as we are aware, was never elsewhere dignified with that sounding name. The slander of a brave and honorable man,[21] which it contains, might be the result of a mistake easily made; the wrongs ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... this return in the simplest and crudest way. He should live like the beasts, like primeval men, like barbarians. Were not the beasts blessed, rheia zoontes like the Gods in Homer? And so, though in less perfection, were primitive men, not vexing their hearts with imaginary sins and conventions. Travellers told of savages who married their sisters, or ate human flesh, or left their dead unburied. Why should they not, if they wished to? No wonder Zeus punished Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... really have developed? Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of other men—all this was precious to her beyond everything. If she inherited from him that fastidious sense of form, she also inherited ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you into my confidence," I said, as we passed several naked cedar-trees, and halted in the shelter of some fine peppers that grew to perfection in this valley, where I related the trouble I had had to bring the old lady round to the idea of Dawn's singing lessons, and mentioned the girl's ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... sort of sovereign lord of music. His work appeared the climax toward which music had aspired through centuries, and from which it must of necessity descend again. Other, and perhaps purer work than his, existed, we knew. But it seemed remote and less compelling, for all its perfection. New music would arrive, we surmised. Yet we found ourselves convinced that it would prove minor and unsatisfactory. For Wagner's music had for us an incandescence which no other possessed. It was the magnetic spot of music. Its colors blazed and glowed with ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... vein For silver, and a secret bed for gold Which man discovers. Where the iron sleeps In darkest chambers of the mine he knows, And how the brass is molten. But a Mind Deeper than his, close-hidden things explores, Searching out all perfection. Earth unveils The mystic treasures of her matron breast, Bread for her children, gems like living flame, Sapphires, whose azure emulates the skies, And dust of gold. Yet there's a curtain'd path Which the unfettered denizens of air Have not descried, nor even the piercing ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... recognized as legitimate and more, is welcomed; is given every advantage of education, of healthful body, of right moral training, rest assured that the women of the future will seek only to rival each other in the quality and the perfection of their motherhood. ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... his at least respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one's burden; in a word, it lacks charity, the great Christian virtue. To his mind perfection lies in personal nobility, and not in love. His keynote is aesthetic and not moral. He ignores sanctity, and has never so much as reflected on the terrible problem of evil. He believes in the opportunity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... feel grateful for the kindness of his friend Murty; but he was too well practised in Christian perfection to indulge in any thing like excessive joy, and too well accustomed to refer every thing to God to claim any merit, or take any pleasure, in the flattering eulogies of all his ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Chapter IX.) he said: "I have heard it stated that when once you get south of the Hwai River the oranges are good. In the same way, we northerners produce but sorry rogues; the genuine article reaches its perfection in Ts'u." Thus, even at this date, the Yang-tsz was regarded much as the Romans of the Empire regarded the Danube—as a sort of vague barrier between civis and barbarus. In no sense was the Ts'u capital—at no time ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... presumed, and I think rightly so, to be the perfection of the naval architect's art, yet sunk in a few hours by an accident ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, and a hundred times, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... French wit, no longer that of the boor, or of the student, or of the burgess, but of the court and good society. Good society, in poesy, was born with Marot, with Francis I., and his sister Marguerite, with the Renaissance: much will still have to be done to bring it to perfection, but it exists and will never cease again. . . . Marot, a poet of wits rather than of genius or of great talent, but full of grace and breeding, who has no passion, but is not devoid of sensibility, has a way of his own of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... human race would, when it became a question of a flood, have turned to the aero, for from the commencement of aerial navigation French engineers had maintained an unquestionable superiority in the construction and perfection of that ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... this time, Nellie Dawson was growing fast. Her beautiful mind kept pace with the expansion of her body. Her natural grace and perfection of figure would have roused admiration anywhere. Her innocence and goodness were an ever present benison to the rough miners, who had long since learned to check the hasty word, to restrain the rising temper and to crush the wrongful thought in ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... gaze, and, for a few minutes, the travellers regarded it in profound silence. Mountains, crags, gorges, snowy peaks, dark ravines, surrounded them, spread out below them, rose up above them everywhere in the utmost confusion. It was the perfection of desolation—the realisation of chaos. At their feet, far down in the gorge below, lay a lake so dark that it might have been ink; but it was clear and so very still that every rock in the cliffs around it was faithfully portrayed. ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the way you feel about it. You stand pat then, and pull the injured innocence? But you're not much good at it, Jepson; nothing like some people he has working for him. That fellow Buckbee is a corker. You're too honest, Jepson; you can't act the part, but Buckbee could do it to perfection. You should've been there to see him trim me, when I tried that little flier in Navajoa. Not an unkind word ever passed between us, and yet he busted me down to a dollar. He was a great fellow—you ought to know him—you could take a few ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... of the pigeon, &c. We have analogous cases with mankind in the inheritance of tricks or unusual gestures, to which we shall presently recur. To those who admit the gradual evolution of species, a most striking instance of the perfection with which the most difficult consensual movements can be transmitted, is afforded by the humming-bird Sphinx-moth (Macroglossa); for this moth, shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... some horses, which were rather terrible quadrupeds. They were not ill-bred cattle to look at, and I should think of a race that, with care and attention, might be brought to considerable perfection; but they are never properly broken for the saddle. The Americans who have spoken to me about riding say that they do not like a horse to have what we consider proper paces, but prefer a shambling sort of half-trot, half-canter, which they judiciously call a rack, and which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... bring the school into its present condition; and how much it grieved him to find that, with all the pains he had taken, there was so much to correct and arrange. The Doctor, however, knew the world, and that in no human institutions can perfection be attained—nor can it be expected that they should be without faults; but he knew also that by care and attention those faults may be decreased, if not altogether got rid of, and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... much more than this. It must provide for getting at results, and it is in this respect that the perfection of the system is reached. While the store space is divided up into little stores or departments, under different heads, who are given every possible leeway in the buying of goods and management of stocks, yet each head is made ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips
... of a conflict of widespread dimensions; in other words, a conflagration. The leading idea is probably that it would be necessary to start before Russia has completed the great improvements of her army and railways, and before France has brought her military organization to perfection. But on this point there is no unanimity in high circles; Count Berchtold and the diplomatists desire at the most localized operations against Serbia. But everything must ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... and of which only a single volume appeared, Nageli insists on the only sound basis for classification being "development as a whole." The "Entstehung und Begriff" (1865) was his first real evolutionary paper. He believed in a tendency of organisms to vary towards perfection. His idea was that the causes of variability are internal to the organism: see his work, "Ueber den Einfluss ausserer Verhaltnisse auf die Varietatenbildung. Among his other writings are the "Theorie der Bastardbildung," 1866, and "Die ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... their sabbaths, or about virtues and vices embodied in misconceptions of the characters of pagan divinities, and in legends about them which scholars had just begun to translate with great difficulty and very ill. It is the astonishing assurance of the central human will for perfection that awes us; this perception that flinches at no difficulty, this perception of how greatly beauty deserves to be embodied in human ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... very hard and rather unfairly. Still, the counsel of perfection would have been to refrain from the comment that, if I were a celibate and vegetarian, it was not the text I should have chosen with ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... proposals which he had once or twice made suggest the spirit in which he would have felt his way along this new path. In the Inaugural address which he now delivered that spirit is none the less perceptible because he spoke of the past. The little speech at Gettysburg, with its singular perfection of form, and the "Second Inaugural" are the chief outstanding examples of his peculiar oratorical power. The comparative rank of his oratory need not be discussed, for at any rate it was individual and unlike that of most other great speakers in history, though perhaps ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... altogether of any evil spirits, as existences, warranted by Scripture, that is, as beings whose principle was evil ["evil, be thou my good:" P. L.]; others, again, believing in the possibility that spiritual beings had been (in ways unintelligible to us) seduced from their state of perfection by temptations analogous to those which had seduced man, acquiesced in the notion of spirits tainted with evil, but not therefore (any more than man himself) essentially or causelessly malignant. Now, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... size; her figure was moulded with rare perfection; her movements had a softness and an elasticity which gave to her walk something ethereal, without diminishing the majesty of a sovereign. Her very expressive physiognomy mirrored all the emotions of her soul without losing aught of the enchanting gentleness which was the very ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... dress is uniform. It consists of a riding-habit of black or dark blue, with bodice and skirt smoothly molded to the form by one of the two celebrated habit-makers, Youss or Creed. The personal presence alone varied, according to the degree of perfection of the model. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... man has only to direct. The greatest ingenuity next to finding new uses for this almost omnipotent fluid has been displayed in inducing the forces of Nature, and even the sun, to produce it. Before describing the features of this perfection of civilization, let us review the steps by which society and the political world reached their ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... is a religious man entirely dependent on God for his spiritual life; he lives in community for the greater security of his own salvation and perfection, and to meet more efficiently the pressing needs of the Church and of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... faults than did the King in this Campaign.... The conduct of M. de Traun is a model of perfection, which every soldier that loves his business ought to study, and try to imitate, if he have the talent. The king has himself admitted that he regarded this Campaign as his school in the Art of War, and M. de Traun as his teacher." ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... unprolific are constantly weeded, and regularly disappear; and he thus comes to the conclusion, that the peers are 'an eminently prolific class!' Just as though a farmer should compute the rate of increase; not from the quantity of seed sown, but from that part of it only which comes to perfection, entirely omitting all which had failed to spring up or come to maturity. Upon this principle the most scanty crop ever obtained, in which the husbandman should fail to receive 'seed again,' as the phrase is, might be so 'counted' as ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not as worship mostly is, a cold and lifeless abstraction; a merging of human nature into one far nobler and higher the spiritual existence of the supernal world. For perfect love is perfect happiness, and the only perfection of man; and what is a demon but a being without love? And what makes man's love truly divine, is the fact that it is bestowed upon such ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... not only Saturday for Dan, but the most important Saturday that ever figured on the calendar. In his heroic efforts to conform to Mrs. Purdy's standard of perfection he had studied the advice to young men in the "Sunday Echo." There he learned that no gentleman would think of mentioning love to a young lady until he was in a position to marry her. To-day's pay envelope would hold the exact amount to bring his bank account ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... over when I shook hands with him: I think he must have seen it, but he said nothing. What a wonderful thing this thing they call high breeding is! One feels it in a moment, and yet it seems intangible, indescribable. He has it, I should think, in perfection, and he is the only person I have ever known who possessed it, except, perhaps that young girl, his cousin, whom he presented to me at the party. For a while we talked—at least he did—easily and pleasantly, and then suddenly he said, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... him waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour. When at last she entered, he found himself lost in admiration of the marvelous simplicity of her muslin gown and her perfect figure. There was about her some sort of exquisite perfection, a delicacy of outline and detail almost cameolike, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... perfection, regardless of the cost, has hindered rather than facilitated access in some instances, and in the digital environment, where no real standards exist, has brought an ironically ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... me of trains," and overcome with a Schumann-like longing and melancholy I took her in my arms, overcome by her beauty. She was perfection. No Chelsea or Dresden figure was ever more dainty, gayer, or brighter. She was Schumann and Dresden, but a Dresden of an earlier period than Schumann; but why compare her to anything? She was Doris, the very embodiment of ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... flower, slowly woven through the long, weary days, only to be united afterward in the precious web by other workers who never saw its beginning. There is a pretty lesson in the thought that to the perfection of each of these little pieces the beauty of the whole is due—that the rose or leaf some humble peasant woman wrought carefully, helps to make the fabric worthy the adorning of a queen or the decoration of an altar, even as the sweetness and patient perfection in any life makes all ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... of the magnificence of all these costumes, the Swiss with their halberts, the Knights of Malta, the Chamberlains like so many Rubenses or Frans Halses, the Prelates and cardinals, each with his little train of purple priestlets; particularly of the perfection in wearing these clothes, something analogous to the brownish depth of the purple, the carnation vividness of the scarlet, due to all these centuries of tradition. At the same time, an impression of ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... to which I have referred was swimming in the surf. But as this is an amusement in which all engage, from children of ten to grey-headed men of sixty, and as I had an opportunity of witnessing it in perfection the day following, I shall ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... All creatures also have their beginning, their continuation and end, filling up the period of their existence. When this order ceases, every creature will cease to exist. That which has a beginning and grows but does not attain its end, does not reach perfection, is nothing. To sum it all up, everything must be of God. Nothing can exist without origin in him. Nothing that has come into being can continue to exist without him. He has not created the world as a carpenter builds a house and, departing, leaves it to stand as it may. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane contains, and as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... we of thee desire, Which in thyself hast all perfection, Accomplished with all integrity, And needest no help to do what pleaseth thee; Which holdest fame and fortune both thy slaves, And dost compel the Destinies draw the coach, To thee we sue, sith power thou hast thereto, To set those ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... letter-carriers and air-balloons, they were always able to maintain a partial though one-sided and imperfect communication with the provinces, and the aerostatic art was developed and brought to perfection on this occasion in a manner which had never before ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... been all that he had said he would be. He was kindly, he was chivalrous, he had proved that. She wondered how he looked. And what had she now to offer for perfection in a man? Was she not reduced to the bargain counter, in the very basement of life? If so, what must be ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... perfect poetic setting the play went on with a stately slowness—that yet was all too fast for the onlookers—and with the perfection of finish that such actors naturally gave to their work amidst surroundings by which they were at once stimulated and inspired. Even the practical defects of the ruinous theatre were turned into poetical advantages which made the tragic action still more real. The woeful entrance ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... co-ordinated together; it is a better instrument. We do wrong to genius in connecting it with mental aberration; it is more normal, more perfectly human, than we are; more human in its virtues, in its faults, in its follies, above all, in its consummate beauty; only with its greater perfection the organism becomes more delicate, and is more easily injured. For genius is exposed to heavier strains than we are, because it is in uncongenial surroundings. If one part happen to be imperfect, if, as we say, "a screw be loose," the injury is more serious than in ordinary ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... it will pinch him severely enough, and is better than sending him to an ill-kept jail, where he would be idle and drunk from morning to night. I had a dreadful headache while sitting in the Court—rheumatism in perfection. It did not last after I got ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... ideal for yet another hundred and fifty years. The vital forces it had developed still carried Europe from one material perfection to another; the art of government, the suggestion of letters, the technique of sculpture and of painting (here raised by a better vision, there degraded by a worse one), everywhere developed and grew ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... and who had procured for us the Duc de Choiseul's box at the Theatre Francais, when the house was to be uncommonly crowded to see Mademoiselle Duchenois in Athalie "avec tous les choeurs," and a most striking spectacle it was! I had never seen Mademoiselle Duchenois to perfection before. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Point amateur sport flourishes in its perfection, and a very high standard of accomplishment has been attained in football. There are no cross-cuts to the kind of football success West Point has worked for: it is all a question of merit based on competency, ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... been hard for her too," said Aunt Barbara; "but we must like different friends for different reasons. Just try to remember that you cannot find perfection. I used to know a great many girls when I was growing up, and some of them are my friends still, the few who are left. To find one true-hearted friend is worth living through a great ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... traveling there is nothing like dissecting people's statements, which are usually colored by their estimate of the powers or likings of the person spoken to, making all reasonable inquiries, and then pertinaciously but quietly carrying out one's own plans. This is perfection, and all the requisites for health are present, including plenty of horses and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... not yet been fixed with precision in the Psalter and the Antiphoner: it was the incomparable Pope Gregory of holy memory, himself a zealous observer of the rule of St. Bennet and an imitator of his monastic perfection, who afterwards regulated the arrangement of it under the direction of the ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... never intended to be fitted to the closer requirements of vocal harmony. They deal with all subjects and have few requirements of form, though form is an essential element and a matter of great importance, for to the perfection of form much of the intense effect of the lyric is due. Like the essay the lyric is a subjective composition; it is confessedly the expression of the poet's personal emotion and his own experiences. His mind, his soul, speak to us; he does not interpret the thoughts ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the one perfect moment of my existence. After having eaten that one tart, my craving for other tarts has disappeared. I shall live with the memory of that first tart before me forever, or die content, having tasted true perfection. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... mousse, ou elles se conservent a l'abri du soleil, et sont alors autant de petites bouches qui pompent les sucs, que l'air, les pluies, et les rosees y deposent. Ces premieres plantes sont foibles, quelque fois meme elles ne parviennent pas a leur perfection: mais elles ont contribue a fixer la terre vegetable. En sechant et se decomposant, elles se transforment en cette terre, qui tombe au fond de la mousse, et qui prepare ainsi de la nourriture pour de nouvelles plantes qui ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... and perfection more particularly explained-New birth as real from "the spiritual seed of the kingdom" as that of plants and vegetables from their seeds in the natural world—and goes on in the same ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of which are extremely rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection (London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell (1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from the French (1536), and various other tracts and homilies. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... worked its will upon the tongue of the Caesars. Under its influence the loose Latin construction disappeared; articles and prepositions took the place of the inflectional terminations brought to a high state of artificial perfection in Latin; and the wholesale suppression of unaccented syllables had so contracted the Latin words that they were often scarcely recognizable. The modification of vowel sounds increased the efficacy of the disguise ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the poet Gray, and were approved by the professor Blair, for they were exactly modelled on the practice and theory of these two critics. All the fashionable doctrine of that age concerning the history of poetry was borne out by these works. Poetry, so it was held, is to be found in its perfection only in primitive society, before it is overlaid by the complexities of modern civilization. Its most perfect, and therefore its earliest, form, is the epic; and Dr. Blair must have been delighted to find that the laws of the epic, which he so often explained to his class in Edinburgh ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... perfection!" said Felix Gussing, on the day following. "I have to thank you, and here are twenty ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... can ever imitate our lieutenant, and in this war of masses and technical perfection it is still the value of individual personality which will decide the issue. We may affirm that this value stands very high in our army—both as regards officers ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... good girl, do. I'm so anxious you should have all your clothes the exact pink of perfection, Popsy. Though I'm afraid I'm a very poor critic in that matter—if you were only a problem in space of four dimensions, now! Yet, after all, every man or woman is more of a problem than anything in x square plus y square you can ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... fact, sanctions the family, and the Holy Fathers of the Church, in fact, blessed the family; but the highest perfection really demands the renunciation ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... Lizard Point and the open sea, over which hung red and lurid clouds, which betokened the approach of a storm, although, at the time, all nature was quiet and peaceful. Yes, the scenery was admirably painted, and nothing could exceed the perfection of the acting. It was ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... checked this impropriety on her entrance) she asked herself what they would have to show twenty years later for the frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe and noble, the perfection of human culture? The contrast was before her again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning of the word) that she had felt at Plash—the way the genius of such an old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of ice made by this system depends evidently on the price of coal in each country, on the perfection of the boiler and motor, as well as on the power of the freezing machine. Putting the coal at 20 francs per ton, and the consumption at 2 kilogrammes per horse and per hour, ice may be obtained at a cost of about half a centime ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... and dress for some half-past eight dinner, or some ten o'clock "at home;" and present yourself in spotless attire, with every hair arranged to perfection. How great the difference! The enjoyment seems in the inverse ratio of the preparation. These figures, got up with such finish and precision, appear but half alive. They have frozen each other by their primness; ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... attached to their officers and devoted to their marshal, till the latter, adored by the army, is become completely dictator of Portugal, his word is law, and the regency is little better than the shadow of Government. Moreover, the marshal acts his part to perfection, riding about the town in semi-regal state, surrounded by a brilliant staff. The man who has accomplished all this may not be a genius, but he has a right to be considered an extraordinary man, a man of the highest ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... all thinkers, even for his opponents, the greatest name in human philosophy. He is the supreme authority of the idealistic philosophy—that is, of all philosophy which believes that ideas govern the world, and that the world is progressing towards a perfection which is somewhere and which directs and attracts it. For those even who are not of his school, Plato is the most prodigious of all the thinkers who have united psychological wisdom, dialectical strength, the power of abstraction and creative imagination, which last ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... black and white stripes. When the paint dried, which it soon did, he completed his toilet, met his sweetheart and went to Ranelagh. No one observed the difference, except, indeed, that he was complimented on the perfection of the fit, and was asked "where he bought his stockings?" Of course he evaded the question, and left the gardens without any ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... say), it was quite right that men should be created, but they should not have been made in our likeness. And what better model could I have taken than this, whose perfection I knew? Was I to make them brute beasts without understanding? Had they been other than they are, how should they have paid you due honour and sacrifice? When the hecatombs are getting ready, you think nothing of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... observes, "is the ability to do some slight thing better." But such was the exactitude of his senses, so alive was he in every fibre, that it seems as if the maxim should be changed in his case, for he could do most things with unusual perfection. And perhaps he had an approving eye to himself when he wrote: "Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, BUT ARE FOR EVER ON THE ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imitating the marshal's voice to perfection, "I see it's no use picking and choosing among such a trashy lot. Give me the first crown that comes to hand, and we'll ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... handsome face was deeply flushed. He was laughing boisterously; but there was that in his aspect which made his sister turn away with a look of repulsion, though his mother's glance rested on him with a look of admiring pride that savoured of adoration. In her fond and foolish eyes he was perfection, and the more he copied the vices and the follies of the gallants about the person of the King, the prouder did his vain and weak ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... requisite to fashion the Bones, Veines, Arteries, Nerves, Tendons, Feathers, Blood, and other parts of a Chick; and not only to fashion each Limbe, but to connect them altogether, after that manner that is most congruous to the perfection of the Animal which is to Consist of Them? For to say, that some more fine and subtile part of either or all the Hypostatical Principles is the Director in all this business, and the Architect of all this Elaborate structure, is to give one occasion to demand again, what proportion and way ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... description. But the great point of Gulliver is that, like Defoe's work, though in not quite the same way, it is interesting—that it takes hold of its reader and gives him its "peculiar pleasure." When a work of art does this, it is pretty near perfection. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Religion" with an effectiveness that was heightened by the hectic brightness of his gentle, spiritual eyes; and he preached a beautiful sermon from the beautiful text, "Suffer little children," teaching us that they were the types, not the models, of Christian perfection. There was first a prayer, which he read; then a hymn, and one of the Psalms; then the sermon, very simply and decorously delivered; then another hymn, and prayer. Here, and often again in Switzerland, the New England that is past or passing was recalled to me; these Swiss ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... his path; but before taking her to the altar, the angels came and took her to their homes, beyond the reach of blight or death; and since then his thoughts often wandered away to the regions of perfection; and with the memory of his loved one in heaven, he never coupled a thought of a second love ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... her of secretly cooking eggs, in the night, between her toes, in order to support her austerities. But these were scandals, invented to tarnish this great sanctity of which all the other nunneries were jealous. Our sister was piloted in the way of salvation and divine perfection by the Abbot of St. Germaine-des-Pres de Paris—a holy man, who always finished his Injunctions with a last one, which was to offer to God all our troubles, and submit ourselves to His will, since nothing happened without His ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of reading is laid down this definition: "If I understand the necessity or use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said or proclaimed before. Hence, letters, characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfection they possibly can be, to show how certain language has been spoken by the, original author. Now, to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that no one standing out of sight could tell the reading from the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in metal manufactories proper. Thus there gradually grew up," says Jevons, "a system of machine-tool labour, the substitution of iron hands for human hands, without which the execution of engines and machines in their present perfection would be impossible."[81] ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... order, and measure square out the true course of knowledge; where discretion in the temper of passion brings experience to the best fruit of affection; while both the Theory and Practice labour in the life of judgment, till the perfection of art show the honour of understanding. She is the key of knowledge that unlocketh the cabinet of conceit, wherein are laid up the labours of virtue for the use of the scholars of wisdom; where every gracious spirit may find ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... like Whittier, and was hampered by his tendency to think too much instead of giving free expression to his emotion. [Footnote: Most good poems are characterized by both thought and feeling, and by a perfection of form that indicates artistic workmanship. With Emerson the thought is the main thing; feeling or emotion is subordinate or lacking, and he seldom has the patience to work over his thought until it assumes beautiful or perfect expression.] ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... urged, that in each kind of machinery a maximum of perfection may be imagined, beyond which it is impossible to advance; and certainly the last advances are usually the smallest when compared with those which precede them: but it should be observed, that these advances are generally made when the number of machines ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... to them upon occasion, he asked me, if I had learned any whereby I might get a livelihood, and not be burdensome to others? I told him that I understood the laws, both divine and human; that I was a grammarian and poet; and above all, that I could write with great perfection. "By all this," said he, "you will not be able, in this country, to purchase yourself one morsel of bread; nothing is of less use here than those sciences; but if you will be advised by me, dress yourself in a labourer's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... enter on the controversy about 'The Cuckoo,' intimating, however, our belief, founded partly upon Logan's unscrupulous character and partly on internal evidence, that it was originally written by Bruce, but probably polished to its present perfection by Logan, whose other writings give us rather the impression of a man of varied accomplishments and excellent taste, than of deep feeling or original genius. If Logan were not the author of 'The Cuckoo,' there was ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... stomach needs but the contact with food in order to begin digesting, and the new-born lungs need but the contact with air in order to begin to breathe. The capacity for performing these perpetually repeated visceral actions is transmitted in perfection. All the requisite nervous connections are fully established during the brief embryonic existence of each creature. In the case of lower animals it is almost as much so with the few simple actions which make ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... which has surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made to order, if I may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be drafted. Hume says on this point with great wisdom, "To balance the large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... be in every sense of the word an arduous training, for the first regiment of Guards being considered all the world over as the crack corps of the German army, and as the embodiment of military perfection in every sense of the word, its officers, realizing that it is, so to speak, the star phalanx of Germany, are engaged, morning, noon and night, in maintaining it at its proper standard, and there are no officers anywhere in Europe who are so hard worked as those of the first regiment of ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... only pure content; For it, like angels, needs no nourishment. To eat and drink can no perfection be; All appetite ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... passions, which are all melted down, or extinguished, in his love of wealth. That liberality which nature has denied him, with respect of money, he makes up by a great profusion of promises: but this perfection, so necessary in courts, is not very successful in camps among soldiers, who are not refined enough to understand or to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... interested legislation, of want of public spirit, of vulgar boasting and chauvinism, of snobbery, of class prejudice, of respect of persons, and of a preference of the material over the spiritual. In a word, America has not attained, or nearly attained, perfection. But below and behind, and beyond all its weakness and evils, there is the grand fact of a noble national theory founded on reason and conscience." The reader will remark in the foregoing quotation that Mr. Muirhead is equally emphatic in his approval ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... has two organs, both of which are noteworthy, viz., the old organ in the choir, of which the interest is historical, and the Grove organ in the north transept, the chief interest in which, apart from its tone, is the perfection of its many ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... just finished the first act with such perfection that enthusiasm broke forth. For several minutes, the noise of clapping, stamping, and bravos swept like a storm through the theater. In all the boxes the women clapped their gloved hands, while the men standing behind ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... better authority than the above to convince simple-minded people of the truth of the observation made by Blackstone that "law is the perfection of human reason." But if law is great, those ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Greek or Roman examples. But the artists who were interested in architecture and sculpture were likewise naturally interested in painting; and painting, bound by fewer antique traditions, reached a higher degree of perfection in the sixteenth century than did any ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... with ourselves she showed that exquisite nicety of discrimination in studying our characters, habits and tastes which comes by instinct with women, and which even the longest practice rarely teaches in similar perfection to men. She saw at a glance all the underlying tenderness and generosity concealed beneath Owen's external shyness, irresolution, and occasional reserve; and, from first to last, even in her gayest moments, there was ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... oppressors of thought which quickens the world, the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of human dignity, they shall be haunted. As to the destroyers of my mere body, I ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the beauty of his character, as his actions were ever in accord with evangelical perfection. There is wonderful power of mercy, compassion, and love, in all. He had been weak himself, hence he treated weakness with gentleness. Two things rendered him indulgent; a sad experience of the infirmities of human ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... did great offence to his majesty, his mother, and his lady; but to himself he did the greatest wrong of all, for he has lost a wife whose beauty astonished all eyes, whose words took all ears captive, whose deep perfection made all hearts wish to serve her." The king said, "Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. Well—call him hither;" meaning Bertram, who now presented himself before the king: and, on his expressing deep sorrow for the injuries he had done to Helena, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... had observed in the East. Its use and development in the churches and other edifices of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were without previous example. The Gothic style was carried to its perfection in France, and spread over England and Germany. The cathedrals erected in this form are still the noblest and most attractive buildings to be seen in ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... had done his work well. His system for breaking the spirit of unruly boys, and making them perfectly tame, seemed to have reached perfection. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Octavia, he returned to Egypt, where the most wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are told of eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each being begun a little later than the last, that one might be in perfection when Antonius should call for his dinner. Cleopatra vowed once that she would drink the most costly of draughts, and, taking off an earring of inestimable price, dissolved it in vinegar ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors. His attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection. The young woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he felt sure that ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... youth of America ever wish to prove that they are of a distinct race from the sable sons of Africa, their only chance is to become paragons of perfection, and give ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... principles of morality, the ontological conception of PERFECTION, notwithstanding its defects, is better than the theological conception which derives morality from a Divine absolutely perfect will. The former is, no doubt, empty and indefinite, and consequently useless for finding in the boundless field of possible reality the greatest amount suitable for ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... knew that the love existing between her and his friend was of the kind that nothing could alter, but he felt that she had unwittingly given him a great gift. Often thereafter in his lonely hours he had imagined that dream-home, and nothing less than its perfection would ever ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... was natural, Antipas always manifested the greatest devotion. Her little black mare was always groomed to perfection, he never being satisfied until he took a white linen handkerchief that he kept for the purpose, and, passing it over the mare's shining coat, saw that no stain or loose black hair ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
