"Inexact" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and in the criticisms of pacifism, a great deal of confusion arises because of the inexact use of terms. We have already seen that pacifists of many shades of opinion are united in their refusal to participate in war. In this objection there is a negative quality. The very word "non-violence" used in the title of this study suggests this same negative ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they would be sent on the rounds of the other ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... light. Light is not a material substance, but a "mode of motion." It consists of very small undulations propagated with inconceivable velocity. Hence of it, and of it alone, it could not be correctly said that it was created. To say that God made light would be inexact. The words which are used exactly suit the circumstances of the case. But the discovery of the correlation of forces has given to these words a much more extended significance, while at the same time it furnishes a satisfactory ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... living in the past. Instead of which the fossil was what he always had been—just one too many. Though not perhaps for him. Not for Randolph F. Jeroloman. Not yet, at any rate. The points advanced were new, undigested, perhaps inexact, filled with discoverable flaws. Though, even so, how M. P. would view them was another kettle of fish. But that was as might be. He put on his hat ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... map of the moon was executed in the seventeenth century by Dominique Cassini; superior to that of Riccioli in the execution, it is inexact in the measurements. Several smaller copies were published, but the plate long kept in the Imprimerie Nationale was sold by weight ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... but is as old as the world; and it is not supernatural but is subject to the eternal laws that govern all that exists. This phenomenon has been usually defined as "intercourse with the spirit world." That definition is inexact. Under such a definition the spirit world is contrasted with the material world. But this is erroneous; there is no such contrast! Both worlds are so closely connected that it is impossible to draw a line ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... part i; vol. ii, p. 384. The quotations as given by the author are inexact. The editor has substituted correct extracts from Matthews's text. Matthews spells the name of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to identify these various regions by the inexact accounts of the direction of their sailing, by the very general descriptions of the country, by the number of days occupied in going from one point to another, with the uncertainty if the ship sailed at night, and by the length of the shortest day in Vinland—the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... a new and splendid wonder, for their descriptive phrase was now inexact. Merton was no longer in a runaway. But only for a moment did they hesitate before taking up ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... no consciousness of sex in the thought patterns. I wonder what sort of ... and to my surprise I swore! I do not ordinarily curse or use obscenities—not because they are obscene but because they are a poor and inexact means of conveying ideas or impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could so precisely describe my feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... nine or ten minutes in the estimated inclination of the entrance passage corresponds to a very considerable interval in time, certainly to not less than fifty years. (Exact calculation would be easy, but it would be time wasted where the data are inexact.) ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... sont les trois marchés principaux du pays des Noirs. Les voyageurs du Nord ne parlent pas du Niger; c'est une limite qu'ils ne franchissent pas; ils paraissent n'avoir aucunes relations avec les populations Mandingues de la rive droite:" (p. 26). This is inexact. The merchants do speak of the Niger frequently to me, calling it the Wady Neel, thinking, and which is a very ancient opinion, that it is a continuation of the Nile of Egypt. They also visit the opposite ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... DARWIN. (See Carlyle's inexact description, and the appreciations of him by his brother and others, in "Life and Letters of ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... has a great tradition—the tradition of the greatest literature in the world. I say that in ignorance, to be sure, of Chinese, but not unmindful of Athenian. It would be inexact to describe that tradition as part of the main continental tradition which, since the middle of the seventeenth century, has been predominantly French, coloured in the eighteenth century by English, in the early nineteenth by German, and in the twentieth ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... wrecked Una's little office home, and she was inspired to write to Mr. S. Herbert Ross at Pemberton's, telling him what a wise, good, noble, efficient man he was, and how much of a privilege it would be to become his secretary. She felt that Walter Babson must have been inexact in ever referring to Mr. Ross as ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... us how inexact and incomplete observations have led, through false inductions, to that great number of erroneous physical views which have been perpetuated as popular prejudices among all classes of society. Thus, side by side with a solid and ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... too flowing a pen to be careful about precision, and had too much love of the picturesque to resist the temptation of embellishing a good story. His narrative of continental transactions is in particular extremely inexact. But the chief cause of his offending also gives special value to his work; he was a man of strong views and his sympathies and prejudices colour every line he wrote. His standpoint is that of a patriotic ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... which responds to a special sense, peculiar to the human race. This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but that is an inexact term, for esthetic sense signifies a sense of the beautiful and what is esthetic is not necessarily beautiful. Sense of style ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... The usual version of the attack at Trafalgar has of late been elaborately disputed by capable critics. I myself have no doubt that they are quite mistaken; but it would be curious to investigate how far their argument derives from inexact phraseology—as, for example, the definition of "column" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the trees on the level horizon. It was then descending; and, after rising and declining a little, it sunk slowly behind the trees, I should think about or beyond Sunbury, at five minutes after one. But you know I am a very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in many miles; and you know how little I have attended to these airgonauts: only t'other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... The word "wraith" is here used in an obviously inexact sense; but the wraith seemed to be the nearest equivalent in English mythology to the Scandinavian "fylgie," an attendant spirit, often regarded as a sort of emanation from the person it accompanied, and sometimes (as in this case) typifying that ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... author of such an impious doctrine should be punished. Aristarchus left a treatise "On the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon;" and his methods to measure the apparent diameters of the sun and moon are considered theoretically sound by modern astronomers, but practically inexact owing to defective instruments. He estimated the diameter of the sun at the seven hundred and twentieth part of the circumference of the circle which it describes in its diurnal revolution, which is not far from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... play, and so was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of the little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in the inexact language of the old. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell |
