"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hemlock Baths, Radium Baths, Light Baths, Heat Baths, Bran and Needle Baths, Tar and Birdsdown Baths,—all sorts of baths; and he devoted his mind to the development of that system of curative treatment that was still imperfect when he died. And sometimes he would go down in a hired vehicle and a sealskin trimmed coat, and sometimes, when his feet permitted, he would walk to the Pantiles, and there he would sip chalybeate water under the eye ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... authoritative features and thoughtful forehead;—these and more than a score more of the brethren stood eying their visitor, questioning him earnestly and trying to make out his meaning from his imperfect English gruntings. And they spoke one to another of the action that should be taken on his message, or commented with pious exclamations on the mercy of the Lord in thus raising up for them protectors even in the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Greek to the Indian, owing to his imperfect knowledge of English. But he understood that the law would lay hold of him if he did not obey this Sahib, and so sat still. "I know not anysing," he ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... the moribund will exclaim with a shudder; such is the ever- present horror of their dreadful and dreary times of sickness, always aggravated by suspicions of witchcraft, the only cause which their imperfect knowledge of physics can assign to death— even Van Helmont asserted, "Deus non fecit mortem." The peoples, who, like those of Dahome, have a distinct future world, have borrowed it, I cannot help thinking, from Egypt. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in bicycle bearings. And among the twenty or more operations used in making steel balls, perhaps the most important was that of inspecting them after final polishing so as to remove all fire-cracked or otherwise imperfect balls ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... you fine, man," I cried; "I would sooner go tramping the glens with you any day than Master Gordon; but that's a weakness of the imperfect and carnal man, that cares not to have a conscience at his coat-tail every hour of the day: you have your own parts and he his, and his parts are those that are not very common on our side ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Greek writer of the 3rd century, wrote a curious miscellany of a book entitled "Deipnosophistae, or the Suppers of the Learned," extant only in an imperfect state. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... very imperfect translation of Father Vincent de Paul's quaint narrative, is published at the request of the leading clergy of Antigonish County, that section of Eastern Nova Scotia in which the holy Trappist so long ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... that she was to be the wife of his transcendently gifted and desirable self, could stoop to look at a Sicilian music-master, would have struck him as superlatively comic, though his sense of humour was imperfect, to say the least ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... to observe these Rules of proving the Quality of the AETHER, as the imperfect Sorts have been found to disagree with the Stomach, and produce other bad Effects, besides disappointing the Patient's Expectation. The AETHER that has the foremention'd Properties, (for there are Preparations ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... are as full of food, not for the understanding only, but far more for the heart and the will, to-day as ever they were. The world may think that it has left the teaching of Jesus behind, but in reality the teaching is far ahead, and the world's practise is but slowly creeping towards its imperfect attainment. The Gospel is the guide of the race, and each generation gathers something more from it, and progresses in the measure in which it follows Christ; and as for the race, so for the individual. Each of Christ's scholars finds his own ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nothing more. A difficulty does not destroy a thesis that is solidly founded. Once a truth is clearly established, not all the difficulties in the world can make it an untruth. A difficulty as to the truth revealed argues an imperfect intelligence; it is idle to complain that we are finite. A difficulty regarding the infallible Church should not make her less infallible in our mind, it simply demands a clearing away-Theological difficulties should not surprise a novice in theological matters; they are only misunderstandings ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... statistics the average product is about two thousand pounds to the acre, which is double the average quantity produced in the cotton-growing States of this Union. The modes of cultivation are very crude and imperfect, especially at any distance from the large and populous centres, but the amazing fertility of the soil insures good and remunerative returns to the farmer or planter even under these unfavorable circumstances. Water is the great, we may say the only, fertilizer—none other is ever used, and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Dermott prefixed a note to his edition of the Ahiman Rezon, in which he asserts that "Past Masters of warranted lodges on record are allowed this privilege (of membership) whilst they continue to be members of any regular lodge." And it is, doubtless, on this imperfect authority, that the Grand Lodges of America began at so early a period to admit their Past Masters to seats in the Grand Lodge. In the authorized Book of Constitutions, we find no such provision. Indeed, Preston ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the night, the ramparts had been raised to the height of six or seven feet, with a small ditch at their base, but it was yet in a rude and very imperfect state. Being in full view from the northern heights of Boston, it was discovered by the enemy, as soon as daylight appeared; and a determination was immediately formed by General Gage, for dislodging our troops from ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on a definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the scientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect microscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whose existence had yet been proved to them by the logic of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... everything that has been invented to advance civilization is now being used to destroy it. Our one consolation is that however imperfect we may have been as a nation, we know that our cause is just and because of this we believe that in the end we will and must win. The right has always been more powerful than the wrong, even more powerful than might and it will ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... said, laughing; "that's as bad as Galli! Poor Grassini has quite enough sins of his own to answer for without having his wife's imperfect housekeeping visited upon his head. As for the tea, it will be ready in a minute. Katie has been making some Devonshire ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... ire, his sandy locks he tore, Our from his lips flew such a sound confused, As lions make in deserts thick, which roar; Or as when clouds together crushed and bruised, Pour down a tempest by the Caspian shore; So was his speech imperfect, stopped, and broken, He roared and thundered when he should ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... working classes of this country. But I need not tell honourable gentlemen present, who are so practically acquainted with this district, that that loss of seven millions in wages per annum is a very imperfect measure of the amount of suffering and loss which will be inflicted on this community three or four months hence. It may be taken to be 10,000,000 pounds; and that 10,000,000 pounds of loss of wages before the next spring is by no means ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... have said, appeared that obscure first volume at Bhowanipore. The "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" is certainly the most imperfect of Toru's writings, but it is not the least interesting. It is a wonderful mixture of strength and weakness, of genius overriding great obstacles and of talent succumbing to ignorance and inexperience. That it should have been performed ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... If the human mind were to attempt to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it astray and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has recourse to an imperfect but necessary expedient, which at once assists and demonstrates his weakness. Having superficially considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... was standing on the planks a woman plainly but neatly dressed came from the house. She addressed me in very imperfect English, saying that she was the mistress of the house and should be happy to show me about. I thanked her for her offer, and told her that she might speak Welsh, whereupon she looked glad, and said in that tongue that she could speak Welsh ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... convent was their greatest object in life. But Violante was not aware that if the beauty had been there the devotional aspirations would not have been there! That, which causes more deeply implanted in her nature than she knew of were impelling her to desire and to yearn for, the imperfect teaching of the world around her had led her to imagine to be unattainable save by the gifts of personal beauty. And, knowing that if that were so there was no hope for her, her bruised heart had sought the only refuge which seemed to be ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... community spirit in the schools and the introduction of the direct teaching of citizenship. The methods are not mutually exclusive; their operations are distinct. The school which does not develop community spirit, which does not fit into its place in the work of training the complete man, is obviously imperfect. The same cannot be said of the school which does not provide direct instruction in citizenship; for teaching may be given in so many indirect ways. Some consideration of what has happened in this connection both in England and America will perhaps ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... to trace to their sources some of the chief currents and cross-currents of the great confused movement which is stirring the stagnant waters of Indian life—the steady impact of alien ideas on an ancient and obsolescent civilization; the more or less imperfect assimilation of those ideas by the few; the dread and resentment of them by those whose traditional ascendency they threaten; the disintegration of old beliefs, and then again their aggressive revival; the careless diffusion ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... not the God in whose image he is made possess the same power? If the old theological rule be true - "There is nothing in man which was not first in God" (sin, of course, excluded) - then why should not this imperfect creative faculty in man be the very guarantee that God possesses it ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... "This old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul Rather than that gray King, whose name, a ghost, Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him Of Geoffrey's book, or ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... be bought ripe and sound; it is poor economy to buy imperfect or decayed kinds, as they are neither satisfactory nor healthy eating; while the mature, full flavored sorts are invaluable ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... religion, who, she learned from Urfried, had penetrated into this godless castle. She watched the return of the supposed ecclesiastic, with the purpose of addressing him, and interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with what imperfect success the reader has ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... imperfect notice I trust you will not deem unworthy of being communicated to the highest military authority, and I shall esteem myself fortunate indeed if I shall be instrumental in the remotest degree ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... come from within and not through the instrumentality of imperfect individuals, such as ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... woman; but really methinks they that disturb their heads with any other rule of Playes besides the making them pleasant, and avoiding of scurrility, might much better be employed in studying how to improve men's too imperfect knowledge of that ancient English Game which hight long Laurence: And if Comedy should be the picture of ridiculous mankind I wonder anyone should think it such a sturdy task, whilst we are furnish'd with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... workman to gratify his inclination for the indulgence of a species of luxury; and, by a sort of instinct, he now and then takes a peep at those scenes of which he before entertained, from hearsay, but an imperfect idea. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... me, my dear boy; why not go to Madame? I am the most ignorant, the most imperfect, the least spiritual of our number. For the last three days," he added, with a shrewd little glance, "Madame and my other friends have read ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... but on experiment and in practice; yet I like to have it well before me here that, after all, The Tragic Muse makes it not easy to say which of the situations concerned in it predominates and rules. What has become in that imperfect order, accordingly, of the famous centre of one's subject? It is surely not in Nick's consciousness—since why, if it be, are we treated to such an intolerable dose of Sherringham's? It can't be in Sherringham's—we have for that altogether an excess ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary: by the recluses were written the famous Greek and Latin grammars, and by the nuns, the famous Memoirs of the History of Port-Royal and the Image of the Perfect and Imperfect Sister; a model farm was cultivated, and here the peasants were taught improved methods of tillage. During the time of the civil wars the convent became a resort where charity and hospitality were extended to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of heart—for nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting to such extraordinary talents an imperfect moral sense—nor from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open hand for the relief of distress; and no mind was ever more formed for enthusiastic admiration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... verb and dormiebat below are in the imperfect tense to denote a state of things existing at the past time indicated ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... Emperor to destroy all historical literature in 213 B.C. This being so in the matter of a dozen eclipses, there still remain two dozen for specialists to experiment upon, not to mention comets and other celestial phenomena. From this collateral evidence, imperfect though it be, we are reasonably entitled to assume that the three expanded versions of Confucius' history are trustworthy, or at the very least written in ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... experiments of Dewar—the idea that the phenomenon of the liquefaction of air would not be, owing to certain peculiarities, the exact converse of that of vaporization—led to the employment of very imperfect apparatus. M. Claude, however, by making use of a method which he calls the reversal[8] method, obtains a complete rectification in a remarkably simple manner and under extremely advantageous economic conditions. Apparatus, of surprisingly reduced dimensions but of great ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... walked with it into the house; her comprehension of Gregoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he was liable to "raise Cain" during her absence—a proceeding which she could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension of ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Scholar suggests that he also lived some time in Rome. He seems to have known some Latin, since he could converse with boatmen on the Po; but his only clear reference (A Slip of the Tongue,) implies an imperfect knowledge of it; and there is not a single mention in all his works, which are crammed with literary allusions, of any Latin author. He claims to have been during his time in Gaul one of the rhetoricians who could command high fees; and his descriptions of himself as resigning ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... mail does not leave until tomorrow afternoon. I left Paris only day before yesterday noon, but it seems to me a week. I have seen very beautiful castles—Chambord, of which the enclosure (torn out of a book) gives only an imperfect idea, corresponds, in its desolation, to the fate of its owner (I hope you know it belongs to the Duke of Bordeaux). In the wide halls and magnificent rooms, where so many kings kept their court, with their mistresses and their hunting, the Duke's only furniture consists now of the children's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... satisfactorily explained. He traced the various forms and phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and essence. The "Monad," or UNIT, he regarded as the source of all numbers. The number TWO was imperfect, and the cause of increase and division. THREE was called the number of the whole, because it had a beginning, middle, and end; FOUR, representing the square, is in the highest degree perfect; and TEN, as it contains the sum of the first three prime numbers (23510. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the present state of horticulture among us is quite imperfect, affording but an indistinct glimpse of the ample field which invites our view, it would scarcely be pardonable, were we to overlook a branch of rural industry in which horticultural success is interested, and without which the practical pleasures and family-comfort of rural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... down his forehead from its effects. The men had stripped off the leg of his trousers, and revealed bones protruding near the knee. But little blood flowed from the wound where the ball had penetrated, and I considered it, with my imperfect knowledge of surgery, as looking decidedly bad for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... It were a shame to us if one so radiantly lofty in intellect, so devoted to human liberty and well-being, so ready to dare and to endure for the upraising of her sex and her race, should perish from among us, and leave no memento less imperfect and casual than those we now have. We trust the more immediate relatives of our departed friend will lose no time in selecting the fittest person to prepare a Memoir, with a selection from her writings, for the press.[A] America ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... friend. Friendship is the communion of such souls, although they may be absent from one another. The highest friendship may grow more perfectly when friends are separated, then it is unmixed with the alloy of imperfect thought and action. Then it is nourished by the past, for only the past buries all faults; it is encouraged by the future, for only the future veils the awkwardness and shortcomings of the present. The character of friendship is determined by ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... left incomplete, and Mozart's widow entrusted to Suessmayer the task of finishing the imperfect portions. But the greatest part of it is the ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... bless you, my dear brother. Nothing would be such a satisfaction to me as to be able to talk all this over with you, instead of this slow and imperfect communication. ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... thou the writing: thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel - who but thou? So now, in the end, if this the least be good, If any deed be done, if any fire Burn in the imperfect page, the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but what man that has studied women will not own that there is, at least while the down of first youth is not brushed away, in the eye and cheek of zoned and untainted Innocence, that which survives not even the fruition of a lawful love, and has no (nay, not even a shadowed and imperfect) likeness in the face of guilt? Then, too, had any worldlier or mercenary sentiment entered her breast respecting me, would Isora have flown from the suit of the eldest scion of the rich house of Devereux? and would she, poor and destitute, the daughter ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... capsized right on top of you; multiply the quantity of falling water a million times, and suppose the descent of the water to be continued for from three to six or seven minutes, and you will then have an imperfect conception of the sort of drenching that we received on the occasion of which I am now speaking. The decks were flooded in an instant, and before I could wriggle into my oil-skins I was soaked to the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... General Robinson's division to remain in reserve at the Seminary, and to throw up a small semicircular rail intrenchment in the grove in front of the building. Toward the close of the action this defence, weak and imperfect as it was, proved to be of ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... 1846. He had not come to America without some prospect of employment beside that comprised in his immediate scientific aims. In 1845, when his plans for a journey in the United States began to take definite shape, he had written to ask Lyell whether, notwithstanding his imperfect English, he might not have some chance as a public lecturer, hoping to make in that way additional provision for his scientific expenses beyond the allowance he was to receive from the King of Prussia. Lyell's answer, written by his wife, was ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... matter what the land be now, Greece—our Greece—must live for ever. Her language lives; the children of Europe learn it, even if they halt it in imperfect numbers. The greater the scholar, the humbler he still bends to learn the words of wisdom from her school. The poet comes to her for all his fairest myths, his noblest mysteries, his greatest masters. The sculptor looks at the broken fragments of her statues, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... part which comes next of this true and wonderful history has nothing to go upon but the confused and imperfect recollections of a ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... else do indulge their sins?—A. They that choose rather to walk by the imperfect lives of professors than by the holy Word of God: or thus, they that make the miscarriages of some good men an encouragement unto themselves to forbear to be exact in self-denial, these eat up the sins of God's people as men eat bread ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... worse doubt which has occurred to me. Do you think, Dr. Hamilton, that the mind is as imperfect as the body? In short, is it not likely that the poor child may turn ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... interpret the imperfect utterance, now further choked by tears and agitation, knew that there was a medley of broken rejoicings, blessings, and weepings, in the midst of which the soldier, glad perhaps to end a scene where he became ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that was making her great. Then would she care utterly for God and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would God appear to her not only true, but real—the heart of the human, to which she could cling, and so rest. The corruption of all religion ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... wanton, nor indeed would any woman indulge for its own sake in such folly with a stranger who hung between life and death. What she had done was done because irresistible impulse, born of knowledge, or at least of memories, drove her on, though mayhap the knowledge was imperfect and the memories were undefined. Who save Ayesha could have known anything of Leo in the past? None who ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... imperfect circle before the gateway of the church, and realized that it was Smithfield, where all those martyrs had perished by fire that the faith of the world might live free. There can be no place where the past is more august, more pathetic, more ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... as imperfect humanity may, Average Jones appeared to be smiling indulgently at the end of ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... last few score years. The classical composers, almost down to our own time, were restricted in the use of them because they were merely natural tubes, and their notes were limited to the notes which inflexible tubes can produce. Within this century, however, they have all been transformed from imperfect diatonic instruments to perfect chromatic instruments; that is to say, every brass instrument which is in use now can give out all the semitones within its compass. This has been accomplished through the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... telling you to come and study with me, or go and act in some second-rate theatre at once, I advise you to go back to school and finish your education. That is the first step, for all accomplishments are needed, and a single talent makes a very imperfect character. Cultivate mind and body, heart and soul, and make yourself an intelligent, graceful, beautiful, and healthy girl. Then, at eighteen or twenty, go into training and try your powers. Better start for the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... eyes, half thought that the speaker wished that John would fail—that he grudged him a triumph. None the less, the first verse, sung feebly, with wrong phrasing and imperfect articulation, revealed the quality of the boy's voice; and this quality Desmond recognized, as he would have recognized a fine painting or a bit of perfect porcelain. All his short life his father had trained him to look for and acclaim quality, whether ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of being, as it were, to another, is a very slow process, during which the body and brain are gradually correlated with the subtler form which is essentially that of the Soul, and that my own experience of it, still so imperfect, so fragmentary, when compared with the experience of the highly trained, is like the first struggles of a child learning to speak compared with the perfect oratory of the practised speaker; that consciousness, so far from ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... it,—to save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and learn something of your fellows of both sexes, before settling into a state that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate. My System with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have felt the effects of it. It is over now. You are a man. The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray God to conduct and strengthen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... By-and-bye, she sent me to a second-hand clothes shop, where I rigged myself out in a sort of la-di-dah style, my habiliments comprising a pair of white linen trousers, a double-breasted frock coat, with military peak cap, and a few other little accessories, so that I was a perfect (or imperfect) swell again, despite the fact that my wardrobe did not amount in value to more than 5s of lawful ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... eye, it appeared that, as he had once thought, this Caro family—though it might not for centuries, or ever, furbish up an individual nature which would exactly, ideally, supplement his own imperfect one and round with it the perfect whole—was yet the only family he had ever met, or was likely to meet, which possessed the materials for her making. It was as if the Caros had found the clay but not the potter, while other families whose daughters might ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... slightest apprehension of being many months deprived of his property merely to satisfy injured justice. And, too, the evidence upon which Nicholas was convicted in Fetter's court, of an attempt to create an insurrection—the most fatal charge against him—was so imperfect that the means of overthrowing it can be purchased of any of the attendant constables for a mere trifle,—oaths with such fellows being worth about sixty-two ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... ship?" inquired Charley, in his imperfect English and little innocent fashion. "Where we got to? Why not give me hot tea? ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices, his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which men must differ; of which Guizot writes as follows, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... imperfect attempt to picture forth some scenes of the most brilliant period of my country's history might naturally suggest their dedication to the son of him who gave that era its glory. I feel, however, in the weakness of the effort, the presumption of such a thought, and would simply ask of you to accept ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... wreaths of honeysuckle; colours began to show themselves; purple iris and tree peony started out in detached patches from the shade; birds began to be restless; here and there one fluttered forth with a few sudden, imperfect notes; and the cold curd-like creases in the sky took on faint lines of gold. And there was Emily—Emily coming down the garden again, and Giles Brandon with her. Something in both their faces gave him courage ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... physician gives becomes responsible to herself, and is much more likely to carry them out than is one who is cautioned without receiving a satisfactory explanation. At best, however, the advice which the physician is able to offer will be imperfect, for it must not be imagined that everything is known concerning the causation and prevention of miscarriage. While our knowledge is so imperfect we must be content to make the most of what we possess. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... help remarking that Mr. Shaw, who has come now to gloat upon his victims, alter having sworn away their lives—that man has sworn what is altogether false; and there are contradictions in the depositions which have not been brought before your lordships' notice. I suppose the depositions being imperfect, there was no necessity for it. As to Mr. Batty, he swore at his first examination before the magistrates that a large stone fell on me, a stone which Mr. Roberts said at the time would have killed an elephant. But not the slightest mark ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... demonstrated twelve significant facts: (1) That the original authors of the different books never suspected that their writings would have the universal value and authority which they now rightfully enjoy. (2) That they at first regarded them as merely an imperfect substitute for verbal teaching and personal testimony. (3) That in each case they had definite individuals and conditions in mind. (4) That the needs of the rapidly growing Church and the varied and trying experiences through which it passed were all potent factors in ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... cellar, and there the manuscripts remained for nearly a century and a half, exposed to injury from damp and worms. At length they were sold to Apellicon, a resident at Athens, who was attached to the Peripatetic sect. Many of the manuscripts were imperfect, having become worm-eaten or illegible. These defects Apellicon attempted to remedy; but, being a lover of books rather than a philosopher, he performed the work somewhat unskilfully. When Athens was taken by Sylla, 86 B.C., the library ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... by fluctuating between shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that this same man is a maimed god.... ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... must be good and fresh, if the bread is to be digestible and nice. Stale yeast produces, instead of vinous fermentation, an acetous fermentation, which flavours the bread and makes it disagreeable. A poor thin yeast produces an imperfect fermentation, the result being a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the Russian Bear has a heavy paw, and when he puts it into the scale, all other weights kick the beam. It will be a long and wary struggle, and no man can prophecy the result. The Turks are a people easy to govern, were even the imperfect laws, now in existence, fairly administered. They would thrive and improve under a better state of things; but I cannot avoid the conviction that the regeneration of the East will never ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... alone in so dreary a place, adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and trying her ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... but it was to be exempt from the hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property and, encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies, to animate society. But in those ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... if I live to a good old age, which is improbable, as many years lie behind me as before me. I have lived half my life, and perhaps more than half my life. I have realised part of my worldly ambition. I have made many good resolutions, and kept one or two of them in k more or less imperfect manner. I cannot, as a commonsense person, hope to keep a larger proportion of good resolutions in the future than I have kept in the past. I have tried to understand and sympathise with my fellow creatures, and though I have not entirely failed to do so, I have nearly failed. I am not happy ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... grievous yet the weight Sits on us of imperfect fate. From wounds of other days and deeds Still this day's breathing body bleeds; Still kings for fear and slaves for hate Sow lives of men on earth like seeds In the red soil they saturate; And we, with faces eastward set, Stand sightless of the ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... like a fair Greek statue, for a moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water, and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his arms and turned him deftly over on ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... time could determine latitudes almost as accurately as it is now done, but they had very imperfect means of determining longitudes. These pirates, of course, had no chronometer. The best they could do was to keep account each day of the courses and estimated distances that they sailed, to reduce this to numbers of miles eastward and westward in different latitudes (their "eastings" ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... search its silent recesses. It was Androvsky. He looked bowed and old and guilty. The two lines near his mouth were deep. His lips were working. His thin cheeks had fallen in like the cheeks of a man devoured by a wasting illness, and the strong tinge of sunburn on them seemed to be but an imperfect mark to a pallor that, fully visible, would have been more terrible than that of a corpse. In his eyes there was a fixed expression of ferocious grief that seemed mingled with ferocious anger, as if he were suffering from some dreadful misery, and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... choice of words, and harmony of numbers. Now, the words are the colouring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be considered: the design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it; where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life, which is in the very definition of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise, and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Imperfect co-ordination, whether by procrastination or by worry, brings discord. The parts of life are at variance with each other. The procrastinator looks on past indulgence with remorse and disgust; for that past indulgence is now loading him down with present ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Chichester and of Lewes and of Arundel, and of the steadings of the Weald, and of the wealden markets also, Christian men; for he showed them that it was a mean thing to go about in a hairy way like pagans, unacquainted with letters, and of imperfect ability in the making of raiment or the getting of victuals. Indeed, as I have written in another place, it was St. Wilfrid who taught the King of Sussex and his men how to catch fish in nets. They revered him everywhere, and when ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... could never deter the mind of Lord Nelson from any attempt; for, where there is no difficulty, heroism is without an object. His lordship had, therefore, not a moment to pause, with respect to his ready acquiescence in the will of their majesties; but, from his very imperfect knowledge of the Italian language, he expressed his apprehensions that he might be subject to fatal deceptions, if he should trust to the fidelity of any interpreter among a people so generally corruptible. He did not, however, state the objection, without proposing a remedy. If, his lordship ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... consist of about 160 men and boys, with very imperfect military training, and of whom about forty are officers. They are organized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens enrolled as a reserve guard, who may be called upon in case of an emergency, and about 150 police. We can fully rely upon the assistance of all the police and from one-quarter ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... of the obvious," said the King, calmly, "is as near as we can come to ritual with our imperfect apparatus. Lead on." ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... consequent upon the frailties and vices of mankind encounters much to soften or harden his humanity, which may have remained normal but for such contact. His sworn duty to administer the law as he finds it often conflicts with a sense of justice implanted in the human soul, of which the law, imperfect man has devised is often the imperfect vehicle for his guidance; but nevertheless to which his allegiance must be paramount, even when attempting to ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... him, "Wherefore, O my son, hast thou done thus, and why sufferedst thou not the jewellers complete the lattice-work of the oriel, [530] so there might not remain a place in thy palace [531] defective?" "O King of the Age," answered Alaeddin, "I left it not imperfect but of my free will, nor did I lack of ableness to complete it. However, I could not brook that Thy Grace should honour me [with thy presence] in a palace [532] wherein there was somewhat lacking; wherefore, so thou mayst ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... could barely count at all, or counted in perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers. Then there was the phase when he struggled with the development of number, when he began to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers, until at last he developed complex superstitions about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers, about threes and sevens and the like. The same was the case with abstract forms; and even to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... may devote himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence. Mr. Godwin gives no quarter to the amiable weaknesses of our nature, nor does he stoop to avail himself of the supplementary aids of an imperfect virtue. Gratitude, promises, friendship, family affection give way, not that they may be merged in the opposite vices or in want of principle; but that the void may be filled up by the disinterested love of good, and the dictates ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the stable with which, in his poor, dull, narrow mind, there are pleasant associations. I would give a good deal to know what a horse is thinking about. There is something very curious and very touching about the limited intelligence and the imperfect knowledge of that immaterial principle in which the immaterial does not imply the immortal. And yet, if we are to rest the doctrine of a future life in any degree upon the necessity of compensation for the sufferings and injustice of the present, I think the sight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... shelves of books in three stages, and lighted by handsome cupolas. Round the sides, under glass, are displayed richly-illuminated manuscripts, while down the centre are other glass cases containing medals and antiquities, many belonging to prehistoric times. Among the MSS. is a Bible (imperfect) translated into French by Raoul de Sestre in 1377 by order of CharlesV.; also a New Testament, 12th cent., and another in Vaudois, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Imperfect description of this wonderful steam man, as it appeared on its first visit to the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... the one hand and human conscience and duty on the other. In that direction the Stoics, and after them the Roman Jurists, went further than Aristotle. By reason of this deficiency, Aristotle, peerless as he is in Ethics, remains an imperfect ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... about myself and everything else that I can never be sure of anything again. Mr. Eltinge, I have been so unfortunate as to give my whole heart's love to a man who despises me. At first he seemed somewhat attracted, but he soon discovered how imperfect and ignorant I was, and coldly withdrew. He is now paying his addresses, I believe, to another lady, and I must admit that she is a lovely girl, and every way worthy of him. I think she will return his regard, if she does not already. But whether she does or not ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... gods, who have caused me to find favor in thine eyes. I am not ignorant of the speech of my lord, for the noble Croesus has instructed me in the Persian language during our long journey. Forgive, if my sentences be broken and imperfect; the time was short, and my capacity only that of a poor and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... revelation of poor children swarming in feverish activity like vivid ants in alleys of red sand. From the tenement windows leaned rotund, moon-shaped mothers, as constellations of this sordid heaven; women like dark imperfect jewels, women like vegetables, women like great bags of abominably ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... incurable, or meet to be condoned. They are due, not to sex, but to the subtle, far-reaching effects of early training; and the general remedies, therefore, as I shall endeavour to indicate in subsequent chapters, lie to hand. They seem to me to be traceable either to an imperfect development of the sense of order, or to a certain lack of self-control. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... French service, would be made Marshals. Four or five colonels who had been at Steinkirk took part in the debate. It was said of them that they showed as much modesty in speech as they had shown courage in action; and, from the very imperfect report which has come down to us, the compliment seems to have been not undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against the Dutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did full justice to the valour and conduct ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of, or majesty can be very nervous, or very spiteful. And now, when he is about to enter Naples——but why do we presume to relate M. Dumas's personal adventures in any other language than his own? or language as near his own as we—who are, we must confess, imperfect translators—can hope to give. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Pujol was a man—one of many in this imperfect world—who had not found his proper place in life. His father had intended to take him, as a partner, into business, toward which he had a natural leaning, so soon as he was of sufficient age; but Senor Pujol suffered reverses which swept away his ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... council in the time of King Edward the Sixth,' was in the possession of Archbishop Whitgift: see his Defence of the Answer to the Admonition, A.D. 1574, p. 25. But its existence was unknown (see Ridley's Life of Bishop Ridley, Lond. 1763, p. 315.) in later years, till a copy, slightly imperfect, was discovered in 1844, in the extensive collection of MSS. belonging to Sir Thomas ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... lines, or verses. This work has found admirers, and not a few; for, of these, nothing written by so distinguished a scholar could fail: but, surely, not many of the verses in question exhibit truly the feet of the ancient Hexameters; or, if they do, the ancients contented themselves with very imperfect rhythms, even in their noblest heroics. In short, I incline to the opinion of Poe, that, "Nothing less than the deservedly high reputation of Professor Longfellow, could have sufficed to give currency to his lines as to Greek Hexameters. In general, they are neither one ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in horror. A dim, red haze made her vision imperfect. There was a sickening riot ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... cloud of gray atoms to float up and out into the room. Julius was perhaps absurdly open to impressions. It took him some seconds to recover from his sense of repulsion and to untie the rusty ribbon around the little books. They proved all to be ragged and imperfect copies of the same work. The woodcuts in them were splotched with crude colour. The title-page was printed in assorted type—here a line of Roman capitals, there one in italics or old English letters. The inscription, consequently, was difficult to decipher, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the perpendicular as to shed their water into the gutter, thus enabling the passers-by on the pavement to walk unharmed. I cannot give chapter or verse for this comfortable theory; which of course preceded the ingenious Jonas Hanway's invention of the umbrella. In a small and very imperfect degree the enactment anticipates the covered city of Mr. H.G. Wells's vision. A Dutch friend to whom I put the point tells me that more probably the preservation of bricks and mural carvings was intended, the dryness of the wayfarer being ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... to be a humorous Patritian, and one that loues a cup of hot Wine, with not a drop of alaying Tiber in't: Said, to be something imperfect in fauouring the first complaint, hasty and Tinder-like vppon, to triuiall motion: One, that conuerses more with the Buttocke of the night, then with the forhead of the morning. What I think, I vtter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... measurements (R. 74 d). The textbook by Rhabanus Maurus On Reckoning, issued in 820, is largely in dialogue (catechetical) form, and is devoted to describing the properties of numbers, "odd, even, perfect, imperfect, composite, plane, solid, cardinal, ordinal, adverbial, distributive, multiple, denunciative, etc."; to pointing out the scriptural significance of number; [9] and to an elaborate explanation of finger reckoning, after the old Roman plan (see p. 65). ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... bird is it?" eagerly asked Kinlay, whose knowledge of our native birds was as imperfect as his knowledge ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... occupied another week, and but for Eiulo's skill and dexterity, we should never have accomplished this nice and difficult operation, except after a very bungling and imperfect fashion. Arthur understood very well how it should be done, but his knowledge was theoretical rather than practical, while Eiulo had acquired considerable skill in the art, by building and thatching miniature houses in the woods, an amusement which he and his young ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... me, as a favour, that I would attend her to the place of execution, and I consented. Poor creature! she, as well as I, had but an imperfect idea of what she was to endure. The punishment was to take place in the great square, and the troops were out, and a large concourse of people were assembled. She appeared on the raised platform upon which she was to suffer, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be modified in many ways if we attempted to treat the unofficial fragments of customary law in the same way as the paragraphs of royal codes, and even more so if we were able to tabulate the indirect evidence as to legal rules. But, imperfect as such statistics may be, they give us at any rate some insight into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... ideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittle to the world's opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard the lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at one with himself, his life alone was a ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... began. It was a revelation to these poor fellows. They sat open-mouthed, gasping. Then those that were nearest me began to edge away, and at the very next station they all bundled out of the carriage before the train stopped, as though I had some infectious disease. And the thing was just a rough imperfect rendering of some mere commonplaces, passing the time of day as it were, with which the heathen of Aleppo used to favour the servants of the American missionary. Indeed," said Professor Gargoyle, "if it were not for women there would be nothing in ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... a sheltered spot by the chimney-stack, where no one could see me from below, and proceeded to dress myself—assisted in my very imperfect toilet by the welcome discovery of a pool of rain in a depression of the lead-covered roof. But alas, before I had finished, I found that I had brought only one of my shoes away with me! This settled the question I was at the moment ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... says, "the prudence and philosophical reserve shown by M. Arago in resisting the temptations to give a theory of the effect he had discovered, so long as he could not devise one which was perfect in its application, and in refusing to assent to the imperfect theories of others." Now, however, the time for theory had come. Faraday saw mentally the rotating disk, under the operation of the magnet, flooded with his induced currents, and from the known laws of interaction between currents and magnets he hoped to deduce the motion observed ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... on into anything. I don't suppose he ever gave a thought to the O'Moores, anywhere further back than those kings. He had a vague idea that they must have been going on, simply because it must have seemed to him that a world without an O'Moore in it would be necessarily imperfect. It was Bob Repton's questions, as to what they were doing at the time of the flood, that brought him suddenly up; then he didn't hesitate for a moment in taking them back to Adam, or before him. Just on the ancestry ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... but a student," Sergius replied; "still to my imperfect perception the Unity of the Church ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... gratified my picturesque and antiquarian propensities, from this elevated situation, I retrod, with more difficulty than toil, my steps down the stair-case. A second stroll about the area, and along the skirts of the wall, was sufficient to convince me only—how slight and imperfect had been my survey! ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,—to be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as it is received in evidence, tends to show that some, at least, who have long been dead, may enjoy a kind of secondary and imperfect, yet self-conscious life, in these bodily tenements which we are in the habit of considering exclusively our own. There are many circumstances, familiar to common observers, which favor this belief to a certain extent. Thus, at one moment we detect ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... simplest things, wherein to be everlastingly confounded. Might one just look up and reach out overhead, instead of looking around one and trying to grope at one's level. Truths made intangible by the impenetrable meshes of faulty creeds and imperfect reasoning." ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... led to another, and another; and though the mode of communication was imperfect, the artist was enabled to perceive that the captive maiden was a tall, queenly figure, with a rich profusion of sunny hair, indicating a fair and fresh complexion. The result was a promise to paint the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... much boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected, is granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... John Buford reported: "Many had burst; many cones were blown out; many locks were defective; many barrels were rough inside from imperfect boring; and many had different diameters of bore in the same barrel. ... At target practice so many burst that the men became afraid to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the senate not formally embodied in a decree, senatus consultum. Cicero, in Invent. 2, 52 says Flaminius carried his law contra voluntatem omnium optimatium. — DIVIDENTI: 'when he tried to divide'. The participle is here equivalent to cum with the imperfect indicative (dividebat). So in 54 lenientem A. 290, a; ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... live up to the best human standards. Wherever the ideal leads him, there he follows. After his brother John's death he said he did not wish ever to see John again, but only the ideal John—that other John of whom he was but the imperfect representative. Yet the loss of the real John was a great blow to him, probably the severest in his life. But he never allows himself to go on record as showing ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... I did what I never had done in all my life: I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon him in the day of trouble, he would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco, which was so strong and rank of the tobacco, that indeed I could scarce get it down. Immediately upon this I went to bed, and I found presently it flew up into my head violently; but I fell into a sound sleep, and waked ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... ancestral record is bad, whose environmental conditions are faulty, whose education has been neglected, who is in all probability physically and mentally deficient, will be capable of conforming to the standards of the other individual? From an imperfect whole, may we not naturally expect bad parts? From a diseased body and mind, may we not look for a low standard of thought and action? And may not these conditions account for the greater part of the little, as as the big, troubles that mar the peace and progress ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... she can, indeed, claim her dower—her hire, as it is called in the too plain language of the Koran; but the knowledge that the wife can make this claim is at the best a miserable security against capricious taste; and in the case of bondmaids even that imperfect check is wanting. The power of divorce is not the only power that may be exercised by the tyrannical husband. Authority to confine and to beat his wives is distinctly vested in his discretion.[72] "Thus restrained, secluded, degraded, the ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... considerable reputation among his patients in the neighbouring by-streets. But his practice was not wholly confined to the poorer classes, for he was often consulted by well-dressed members of the foreign colony—on account, probably, of his linguistic attainments. A foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of English naturally prefers a doctor to whom he can speak in his own tongue. Therefore, as Weirmarsh spoke French, Italian and Spanish with equal fluency, it was not surprising that he had formed quite a ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... is suggested that the position in which we do actually find ourselves, is that of men who have a real, though imperfect perception of a real Good, and who are endeavouring, by practice, to perfect that perception. In this respect an analogy is drawn between our perception of Good and our perception ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... people have imperfect sensibilities, and cannot judge of the psychology of others, they appraise everything by their own standard—and so cannot calculate correctly ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... by a brief and somewhat imperfect summary of early discoveries; a biographical sketch of Magalhaes, with proofs, citations, etc., by way of authentication thereof—these citations being drawn from the authors Fray Antonio de San Roman, Herrera, Gomara, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... they were in the train that Percy became, for the first time, rather communicative. One day while they were eating lunch in the dining-car and discussing the imperfect characters of several of the boys at school, Percy suddenly changed his tone and made an ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at the entrance of the passage, each of us took a lighted torch, and advanced at a slow pace. Sumichrast and the Indian skirted the wall to the left, while I walked along the wall to the right. Our smoky torches gave but an imperfect light, and we could scarcely see beyond three yards in front of us. A little farther on, the ground was strewn with fallen stones; before venturing on this dangerous ground, I cast a glance towards my companions; they were not in ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... into planks, or pieces of light scantling, that the deodar was selected for making the sides of the ladders. To have cut down the trunks of heavy trees to the proper thickness for light ladders—with such imperfect implements as they were possessed of—would have been an interminable work for our inexperienced carpenters. The little axe of Ossaroo and the knives were the only tools they possessed available for the work. As the deodar ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... matter with him, my dear," said Dr. Brown, grimly. "His eyes have been troubling him, you know, ever since he had the measles in the winter. I've kept one eye on the child, knowing that his mother was a perfect idiot, or rather, an imperfect one, which is worse. Yesterday she sent for me in hot haste: Ned was going blind, and would I please come that minute, and save the precious child, and oh, dear me, what should she do, and all the rest of it. I went down mad enough, I can tell you; found the ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... not claimed that the imperfect foot was on the same side of the body as in the parent, and where parents had lost all the toes of a foot, or the whole foot, the few offspring affected usually had lost only two toes out of the three, or only a part of one or two or three toes. Sometimes the offspring had toes missing on both ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... art and literature. So each person has to devise a scale of his own and do his measuring for himself; he has to apply to the things he sees and reads the acid test of his own intellect. And however imperfect this measuring and testing may be, it is the only sort which has any value for that particular person. In other words, unless you yourself find a poem or a painting great, it isn't great for you, however critics may extol it. So all the books about art and literature ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. She ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... This being, so, the only question remaining to be asked is: 'What beings should we then conceive that God would create?' Now, He cannot create perfect beings, 'since, essentially, perfection is one'; if He did so, He would only be adding to Himself. Thus the conclusion is obvious: He must create imperfect ones. Omnipotent Righteousness, faced by the intolerable impasse of a solitary existence, finds itself bound by the very nature of the cause, to create the hospitals at Scutari. Whether this argument would have satisfied the artisans was never discovered, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... suffrage, of course, is intelligence and virtue; but as we can not define those, as we can not draw the line that shall mark the amount of intelligence and virtue that any individual possesses, we come as near as we can to it by imperfect conditions. It certainly will not be contended that the feminine part of mankind are so much below the masculine in point of intelligence as to disqualify them from exercising the right of suffrage on that account. If it be asserted and conceded that the feminine intellect is less ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only the headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the Times, and it is needless to say that such an article in the leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... variations of color seen in ancient paper writings, as already stated, were due not only to possible imperfect admixtures of the component parts of the inks, but to the use of vegetable gums in their preparation. In the course of time these have been absorbed by moisture which hastened disintegration, causing a gradual disappearance of their original blackness and gloss and finally a return to the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... common, as well as offences against chastity; while, on the other hand, crimes of violence are almost unknown. From the last census it appears that more than half of the children born in the island are illegitimate. This sad condition of morals Mr. Sewell attributes principally to the imperfect education of the lowest classes,—the schools being mostly church-schools, and somewhat expensive. These schools, however, have increased from 27 in 1834, with 1,574 children, to 70 with 6,180 in 1857, and an infant school with 1,140; the children ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... enough to dine with deliberation, young and healthy enough to sauce with appetite the dishes he thoughtfully selected. You perceived in him the imperfect epicure. His club had no culinary fame; the dinner was merely tolerable; but Rolfe's unfinished palate flattered the second-rate cook. He knew nothing of vintages; it sufficed him to distinguish between Bordeaux and Burgundy; yet one saw him raise his glass and peer at the liquor ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... that was wonderful in a first experience of the festival was gone; but though the novelty had passed away, the cause for wonder was even greater. If on the first day the crowd was immense, it was now something which the imperfect state of the language will not permit me to describe; perhaps awful will serve the purpose as well as any other word now in use. As you looked round, from the centre of the building, on that restless, fanning, fluttering multitude, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... coming back, that I rather thought never to have returned at all, and I gave them all my books, among which were many of Plato's and some of Aristotle's works: I had also Theophrastus on Plants, which, to my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it, and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no books of grammar but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus with me; nor have ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... his confidence that one having for his vehicle the horse (Uchchaisrava), (Indra), patting me on the head with his hand, said these words, "Now even the celestials themselves cannot conquer thee,—what shall I say of imperfect mortals residing on earth? Thou hast become invulnerable in strength, irrepressible, and incomparable in fight." Then with the hair of his body standing on end, he again accosted me saying, "O hero, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bright aureole has encircled his head, it is not because he had not in him perhaps the same depth of feeling as the illustrious author of "Conrad Wallenrod" and the "Pilgrims," [FOOTNOTE: Adam Mickiewicz.] but his means of expression were too limited, his instrument too imperfect; he could not reveal his whole self by means of a piano. Hence, if we are not mistaken, a dull and continual suffering, a certain repugnance to reveal himself to the outer world, a sadness which shrinks out of sight under apparent ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his Excellency, with an air of relief. "Then that sufficiently accounts for my very imperfect recollection of the affair"—with a glance at George to direct the latter's attention to the explanation. "Proceed, Senor Montalvo," continued the Governor; "tell us all that you ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... greatest rarity; the Marcus Aurelius with his son on the reverse side, Theodora bearing the globe, and above all the Annia Faustina with Heliogabalus on the reverse side, an incomparable treasure, of which there is only one other example, and that an imperfect one, in the world—a marvel which I would give a day of my life to see; yes, my dear, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin |
