"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cause of my tears, and what, at this moment, passed within me? I said to myself: the object in my power is the masterpiece of love; her wit and person equally approach perfection; she is as good and generous as she is amiable and beautiful. Yet she is a miserable prostitute, abandoned to the public. The captain of a merchantship disposed of her at will; she has thrown herself into my arms, although she knows ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... be done with them—toss them into the fire at once and dismiss them from your mind. I make no doubt I should have burnt it within another ten minutes: as for cleansing one's mind of it so quickly, that must be a counsel of perfection. But you were shown in, and I—I made certain that you could contradict this disgraceful report and set my mind at ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... repeatedly choosing with dispassionate eye, during half a year, (he finds) that there's only you among that whole bevy of girls, who's worth anything; that in looks, behaviour and deportment, you're gentle, trustworthy, and perfection itself in every respect. His intention therefore is to ask your hand of our old lady and take you over and attach you to his quarters. You won't be treated as one newly-purchased, or newly-sought ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... at once the freest, the largest, and the most various. If the State is a "cauldron" for mingling "the vigour, the knowledge, and the capacity" of the portions of mankind—or if, to use an apter metaphor, it is a body whose perfection consists in the very variety of the functions of its several members—there has never been on the earth a political organism like the British Empire. Its 433 million inhabitants, from Great Britain to Polynesia, from India and Egypt ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... modern art the statue breathes life and action in the perfection of its every detail, representing a Rough Rider who is about to draw his weapon while reining his terrified horse as it rears in a last lunge. This is indicated by the steed's gaping mouth, distended nostrils, the bent knees, ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... boys, when he has the joy of watching the divine life in them shining out in answer to that in himself, then his happiness is indeed great. Then he has the peace of knowing that he has awakened in his boys the knowledge of their own divinity, which, sooner or later, will bring them to perfection. ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... upon those plants. Then, every little variation that, once in a hundred years perhaps, led to the preservation of some larva which was thereby rather better concealed than its fellows, would form the starting-point of a further development, leading ultimately to that perfection of imitation in details which now astonishes us. The researches of Dr. Weismann illustrate this progressive adaptation. The very young larvae of several species are green or yellowish without any markings; they then, in subsequent moults, obtain certain markings, some of which are often lost ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... be pure, for which in excuse he has pleaded his country, the Scotch dialect then being in a very imperfect state. Having mentioned the Scotch dialect, it will not be improper to observe, that it is at this time much in the same degree of perfection, that the English language was, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth; there are idioms peculiar to the Scotch, which some of their best writers have not been able entirely to forget, and unless they reside in England for some time, they seldom overcome ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the old theory of accepting salvation rather than working for it is based not so much upon the theory that in the presence of absolute and infinite perfection there is little difference between the life of the entirely virtuous and the entirely vicious man, as upon the fact that if one's limitations of circumstance and heredity are the gift of God, one's salvation ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose was to exercise a profound influence in politics, literature, science, and art. The projectors had selected for this publication a title that was almost perfection—the Forum—but which, after nearly two years' experimentation, represented about the limit of their achievement. The Forum had hardly made an impression on public thought and had attracted very few readers, although it had lost large sums ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... said, as he reached for the moustache and carefully adjusted it, "one moment while I take a glance at myself in the glass over the seat. That's better, ain't it? Quite straight, and makes me look the part to perfection. But what did that signalman shout, you ask? Well, rather an important message, and these are the words as I remember them: 'You'll stop at the station just beyond', he called to the driver; 'there are police there waiting for ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... go to make up our ideal should exist in absolute perfection in any single man of mortal birth is not to be expected. But there are names in the history of Science which recall so imposing a combination of these several gifts, that, comparing the men who bore them with the civilization of their time, we can hardly conceive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the plainsmen of the Republic can be ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, together with bodily strength, were looked upon, even more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive mankind. To overcome your adversary was the great affair of life. Courage ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but for Johnson that claim can scarcely be made. Cowper was the first to emancipate himself from the conventionality of his age, and Crabbe emancipated himself still further. He had boundless sincerity, and he is really a very great poet even if he has not the perfection of art of some later poets. Many know Crabbe only by the parody of his manner ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... certain foundation—that there will be no need of announcing to them, in the manifest danger that threatens, the arousing and quickening of the great and ardent desire that I have always had, that I might succeed in seeing this state in some condition of perfection, and in such repair and defense that it may await, with courage and confidence (after the protection of God), any attack whatever from surrounding enemies, who are known here—until, with the lapse of time, and God opening His hand more generously, and the city growing stronger with its ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... microscope will reveal to him in the tissues of any wood, of any seed, wonders which will first amuse him, then puzzle him, and at last (I hope) awe him, as he perceives that smallness of size interferes in no way with perfection of development, and that "Nature," as has been well said, "is greatest in that which is least." And more. Suppose that he went further still. Suppose that he extended his researches somewhat to those minuter vegetable forms, the mosses, fungi, lichens; suppose ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... perfection," whispered Peabody to Stevens as they left the planter. "He's a living picture of innocence. We'll push him forward and let him do the talking for the naval affairs committee. Hiding behind him, we could put through almost ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... therefore, if it has no influence upon their morals, is at least disinterested; and their expressions of adoration and reverence, whether by words or actions, arise only from a humble sense of their own inferiority, and the ineffable excellence of divine perfection. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... four miles from this house and half a mile from Broadstone Station, and have succeeded in buying three acres, chosen by myself, from Lord Wimborne at what is really a reasonable price. In its contour, views, wood, and general aspect of wild nature it is almost perfection; and Annie, Violet, and Will are all pleased and satisfied with it. It is on the slope of the Broadstone middle plateau, looking south over Poole Harbour with the Purbeck Hills beyond, and a little eastward out to the sea.... The ground is good loam in the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of Russian power, and have no wish to exaggerate the degree of perfection to which Russian industry has attained. We do not doubt that any cotton factory in the environs of Moscow might be found imperfect when contrasted with one of Manchester or Lowell. We are confident that the artisans of a New-England village very ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... intelligent and judicious practice of this more than useful art. Yet how much stronger inducements for similar establishments in this country, where we have no duty on the raw materials, or the extract;[1] and where the important article of hops is raised in as high perfection as in any part of Europe, and often for one third of the price paid in England. But a still more important consideration is the health and morals of our population, which appears to be essentially connected ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... the useful animals to whose level your laws reduce them; and I will acknowledge that the slaves of a kind owner may be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful master; but the latter condition—i.e. that of happiness—must again depend upon the complete perfection of their moral and mental degradation. Mr. ——, in his letter, maintains that they are an inferior race, and, compared with the whites, 'animals, incapable of mental culture and moral improvement:' to this I can only reply, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... had come to pass that Telson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Telson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "The English are mad after gentility," says he; "well, all the better for us; their religion for a long time past has been a plain and simple one, and consequently by no means genteel; they'll quit it for ours, which is the perfection of what they admire; with which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic abbeys, long-drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are connected; nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed in the balance ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... geological estimates), at about a million and a half years of age. Our first thought as we study this small, strikingly graceful animal, is wonder that such a high degree of specialization and perfection was reached at so early a period; our second thought is the reverence for ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were criticized—criticized for their very ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... as usual, dressed to perfection—not a minute ahead of the style, not a minute behind ... gentle-voiced and deferential, learning to be ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... dwelt without beginning in the adorable Creator must, I am afraid, have been thus common-placed in my mind; for at first it struck me as wonderful that the humble arts of the tiler and slater should have existed in perfection in the times of the Old ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... The perfection of the automobile will do much to improve human beings by taking away from their control and from brutal coercion ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... weakness, that holiness mildly blended with tenderest pity and pardoning love; that mercy which for all generations was to stretch not only to 'them that fear Him,' but to rebels, whom it would make friends. She saw but dimly and in part. We see more plainly all the rays of divine perfection meeting in, and streaming out to, the whole world, from her Son 'the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... woman better than his mother now. Nay, even a feeling of embarrassment and pain is associated with the recollection of that fond and elegant being, whom he had recognised once as the model of all feminine perfection, and who had been to him so gentle and so devoted. He drives his mother from his thoughts. It is of another voice that he now muses; it is the memory of another's glance that touches his eager heart. He falls into a reverie; the passionate past is acted again before him; in his glittering ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... steaming haze hung over it, and it seemed to reach to the world's end. But vaguely, through the attenuating upper layers of the steamy haze, they saw the outlines of a city beyond: tall towers and soaring spires, buildings of a grace and perfection of outline unknown upon the Earth. And faint golden flashes came from the walls and pinnacles of that city. They were reflections of this planet's monster sun, upon walls and roofs ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Whatever difficulty there might be in this was only so much the more evidence of the need of putting an end to the undue neglect that had made Celtic Scholarship so scarce. Nothing would ever be done by man or nation if we stayed beginning till our first act should achieve perfection. He could only say that it was full time to begin, and that the need of a right study of Celtic must be fully recognised if the study of English literature itself was to make proper advance in usefulness, and serve England ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... elaboration. Other philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let redemption take the place of innocence. The perfection with which any philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its importance in philosophic history. In an article entitled 'A world of pure experience,[2] I tried my own ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... long before the Corsicans arrive at the refinement in conducting a news-paper, of which London affords an unparalleled perfection; for I do believe an English news-paper is the most various and extraordinary composition that mankind ever produced. An English news-paper, while it informs the judicious of what is really doing in Europe, can keep pace with the wildest fancy in ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Hawkins, a past master in all that concerned ships and shipping, was presently appointed Treasurer and practically controller of the Royal Navy, and brought the Queen's ships to a high pitch of perfection. Drake became, practically if not nominally, the first of the Queen's admirals. Both, with two more among the explorers of whom we have still to speak, were to play leading parts in the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... ordinary converse, where are you now? "You are gone beyond it, and to continue where you are, is to lodge in the open fields between two inns." You have lost that which you call natural, and have not acquired the last perfection of art. It was only custom, he says, which cozened us so long; we thought because Shakspeare and Fletcher went no further, that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that because they excellently described passion without rhyme, therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. "But time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Cornaro in San Cassan, while the seasons came and went and Caterina developed into a charming maiden of seventeen—expanding in the gracious atmosphere and the wonderful new joys that it brought her, as a rose matures to its most radiant perfection in the sunshine. Her eager mind which had hitherto known only the meagre culture bestowed upon young Venetian maids of her time and estate, awoke with ardent response, growing with leaps and bounds to meet the new demands—yet always ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... utterly trust God. For when St. John and his companions (simple fishermen) beheld the glory of Jesus, the Incarnate Word, what was it like? It was 'full of grace and truth;' the perfection of human graciousness, of human truthfulness, which could win and melt the hearts of simple folk, and make them see in Him, who was called the carpenter's son, the beauty of the glory of ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... many a humble tradesman's daughter can boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments. She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music, her ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness. Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of New York; but what is the squalor of West-street to that of Limehouse or Poplar? Are our own dock thoroughfares always paved to perfection? And if we had a blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how long would its vestiges linger in the side-streets of Millwall? Even as I mark the grimness of the scene, I am conscious of a sort of hyperaesthesia against which one ought to be on guard. The ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... 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
... off to perfection the present antagonism between the rebellious younger generation and ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... that he was there—not a difficult matter, when he had in its perfection the secretarial manner of complete self-effacement. Said she reflectively, like one puzzling out ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... expect perfection," she would say; "it is so easy to find fault and pick holes in people;" but though Malcolm agreed with her, he still remained fastidious and hard to please. So he at once decided that Miss Elizabeth Templeton ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out every latent virtue and perfection, which, without such helps, are never ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... so alluringly attractive. He was a thorough American, and had not been fascinated by foreign types of beauty. In his fair countrywoman he believed that he saw his ideal. Her beauty was remarkable for a fullness, a perfection of outline, combined with a fairness and delicacy which suggested that she was not made of ordinary clay. Miss Wildmere prided herself upon giving the impression that she was remote from all that was common or homely in life. She cultivated the characteristic of daintiness. In her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... her face bared to the moonlight and her curls shaken free to the wind, Wilhelmina smiled softly as she gazed after the stranger who already had won her heart. His language had been crude when he thought she was a boy, but that only proved the perfection of her disguise; and when she had asked if it made any difference, and confessed that she was a girl, he had bridged over the gap like a flash. "Hell—no!" he had said, as men oftentimes do to express the heartiest accord; and then he had added, with the gallantry due a lady, that Wilhelmina was ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... ill-treated, are slow and dull-looking animals. The climate of England is much too cold for the ass; in the south of France and the Mediterranean, where it is much warmer, the ass is a much finer animal; but to see it in perfection we must go to the Torrid Zone in Guinea, right on the equator, the hottest portion of the globe, where the ass, in its native state and in its native country, is a handsome creature and as fleet as the wind; indeed, supposed to be, and mentioned in the Scriptures ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... that the smaller "Parrott" guns, including the thirty pounders, approach very near perfection. The large calibres have precisely the same merits, as respects range, accuracy, and simplicity of construction and manipulation. This their work against Fort Sumter shows. But the deficiency of endurance belongs to the large guns alone; since the smaller, after an immense amount of service, have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... knew where it was. If he chooses to lie hidden, he may baffle us for years. And in the meantime, the thought is too horrible, I dare not think of it even now. This I know, that if ever there was a woman who was all perfection, that one is my poor wronged darling. I loved her a thousand times more for her sweet pity of last night, a pity that made my own hate of the monster seem despicable. Surely God will not permit the world to be the poorer by the loss of such a creature. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... perfection, particularly in figure; though in the crowd of beauty that has been so profusely lavished on the youthful in this country, she would not have been at all remarked in a large assembly of young American girls. Her face was pleasing nevertheless; ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... undefended. Our Navy needed large provision for increased ammunition and supplies, and even numbers to cope with any sudden attack from the navy of Spain, which comprised modern vessels of the highest type of continental perfection. Our Army also required enlargement of men and munitions. The details of the hurried preparation for the dreaded contingency are told in the reports of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, and need not be repeated here. It is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was always somewhat of a dandy, I went to the extreme of Dyak fashion, except in the matter of putting those big rings in my ears, and chewing betel-nut; in fact I now take the lead in dress, and am looked upon as the very pink of perfection. I have learned their language, and adapted myself to their ways; but I have begun to get rather tired of this sort of life, and have been lately considering how I can best take my departure, and in what direction I shall ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... ultimately adopt their manners; so that in reality the origin, as well as the progress and improvement, of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions. No people have ever arrived at any degree of perfection in their institutions who have not possessed in a high degree the useful and refined arts. The comparison of savage and civilized man, in fact, demonstrates the triumph of chemical and mechanical ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... mind steadily fixed on May Day for a whole week beforehand, and not to allow it to relax for an instant. The drum-and-fife band, who felt themselves the pride and ornament of the occasion, had to practise new tunes and polish up "God save the Queen" to a great pitch of perfection, and the children thought themselves busier than anyone. Not only had they to wonder who would be Queen, but they must meet in the Vicarage garden and learn how to dance round the maypole, singing at the same time. Not only must they present themselves ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... my boy! How I did laugh. As a rule your letters are very tedious. You write a horrible style. I often don't read them at all, and I've one lying about to this day, unopened. I'll send it to you to-morrow. But that one, that last letter of yours was the tiptop of perfection! How I did laugh! Oh, how ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... upon the world, and the noon day of truth, reason, and virtue, will ere long be established on a firm and immutable basis. The human mind, left free to investigate, will gradually advance onward in the course of knowledge and goodness marked out by the Creator, till it attains to that perfection which shall constitute its highest glory, its ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... day-beams see, Whose music with the breeze doth blend?— To feel thy presence is to be. Thou, our soul's brightest effluence—thou Who in heaven's light to earth dost bow, A Spirit 'midst unspiritual clods— Beauty! who bear'st the stamp profound Of Him with all perfection ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... exception being that he employs thought as an illustration of the rapidity of the journey of a deity. He is, accordingly, of all poets the most simple and direct. He is also the most free and genial in the movement of his verse; grateful nature seems to give to him spontaneously the perfection to which great men like Virgil and Milton had to attain only by effort intense and sustained. In the high office of drawing human character in its multitude of forms and colors he seems to have no serious rival except Shakespeare. We call him an epic ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... state my dear departed must be in, my soul was carried out in such longing desires after this glorious state, that I was forced to retire from the family to conceal my joy. When alone, I was so transported, and my soul carried out in such eager desires after perfection, and the full enjoyment of God, and to serve him uninterruptedly, that I think my nature would not have borne much more. I think I had that night a foretaste of Heaven. This frame continued, in some good degree, the whole night. I slept ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... them. We need them all in our daily struggle for existence, and it is necessary to our physical and mental well-being, as well as to our success in life, that we preserve them all in as high a degree of perfection as possible. We must not lose sight of the fact that all our organs of sense are parts of one body, and that whatever we do to improve or preserve the health of our eyes cannot do harm to any other organ. We shall be able to "take care of our eyes" more intelligently if we know something of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... and numerous papyri have been discovered, which show some advance in literature. Astronomy was cultivated by the priests, and was carried to the highest point it could attain without modern instruments. Geometry also reached considerable perfection. Mechanics must have been carried to a great extent, when we remember that vast blocks of stone were transported 500 miles and elevated to enormous heights. Chemistry was made subservient to many arts, such as the working of metals and the tempering of steel. But architecture was the great ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Ruskin, the great artist-master of word-painting, might have produced as perfect a gem of English description as this. But who besides of our contemporaries has? To my mind, it is the proof of the perfection of the technical skill in expression to which Field arrived through arduous years, softened and refined by the emotions of affection and gratitude which swept over him as he thought of her who had been a mother to him. It has its counterpart in ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... everything! The friendly visitor said so with a real sigh as she went down-stairs after her inspection. If the young people had but been settling in Grange Lane, in good society, and with Dr Marjoribanks's practice, this marriage would have been perfection indeed! ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). And to whom did he say this? To the most ordinary people—to Peter and James and John; for all sorts of people he held up this impossible ideal of a perfection like God's. What a faith in man it implies! "All things are possible to him that believes" (Mark 9:9.3). Why should not ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... without any human ties. For all poets since the time of AEschylus, who could not write until he was too drunken to walk, have been most readily seduced by whatever stimulus most tended to heighten their imaginings; so that for the sake of a song's perfection they have freely resorted to divers artificial inspirations, and very often without evincing any undue squeamishness. . . . I spoke of AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas to definite perfection. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the swift development of this year's varsity he said it was as remarkable as it had been unforeseen. He claimed it would be a bewildering surprise to Wayne students and to the big college teams. He was working toward the perfection of a fast run-getting machine. In the five games already played and won a good idea could be gotten of Wayne's team, individually and collectively. Homans was a scientific short-field hitter and remarkably sure. Raymond could not bat, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... either. Strange insects, shaped like sticks or leaves or even bits of moss, attracted the attention of the alert boys although they passed over hundreds of such nature mimics unnoticed, owing to the perfection of their mimicry. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... mountain, whereby it was for a moment condensed into visibility and then swept on,—having postulated this fact, and disregarding the elder's remark that he believed not a word of it,—Balder went on to say that God was only a set of attributes,—in a word, the perfection of all human attributes,—and not at ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... finally his own pure will, his own mind. It would need a marvellous adjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic, dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one great perfect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection attained, the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankind was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mystically contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... undoubtedly be developed as the work proceeds. While careless work is never to be tolerated in construction any more than it would be tolerated in writing or drawing, the standard is to be only such a degree of perfection as is possible through a child's unaided efforts. It is proposed to provide him with things to do of such interest to him that he will wish to do his best, and things of such a nature that they will please him best when they are well done, and so stimulate ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... Blois, the capital of Loir-and-Cher, a small town about 110 miles south-west of Paris. Here he had two advantages. He found the French language spoken in its perfection; and as he had not a single countryman with whom to exchange a word, he was driven on his own resources. He remained there a year, and spent his time well, studying hard, rising early, having the best French masters, mingling in society, although subject, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... absent several weeks. Our tents, too, are left unwatched, and our doors unfastened, with perfect safety, though it is well-known that hundreds and thousands of dollars in gold-dust lie within. I do not mean to assert that we have attained to absolute perfection—a murder and a theft do occasionally occur, but such are the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the opposite hemisphere! But he never considers the difficulties this implies. Everywhere these canals run for thousands of miles across waterless deserts, forming a system and indicating a purpose, the wonderful perfection of which he is never tired of dwelling upon (but which I myself ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... questions the ones of most immediate interest are connected with the Silurian-Trias succession in the Kashmir valley, for here we have a connecting-link between the marine formations of the Salt Range area and those which are preserved in greater perfection in Spiti and other parts of the Tibetan highlands, stretching away to the south-east at the back of the great range of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd's coffee-house; ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... practice on a whaler tends to perfection at getting away in the boats, and at getting on board again too, if you are hungry—and faith if it ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... favourable to social reform than was the rather woolly optimism that refused to recognize evil. "The nigger-driver will be delighted to hear that God is immanent in him. . . . The sweater that . . . he has not in any way become divided from the supreme perfection of the universe." If the New Theology would not lead to social reform, the social Utopia to which the philosophy of Wells and of Shaw was pointing seemed to Chesterton not a heaven on earth to be desired, but a kind of final ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... corrugated-iron store, residence and godowns of the Dutch trader, the endless Indian-file of coco palms, the abrupt green wall of the mountain.—A twelve-year-old girl, naked as Eve and, I've no doubt, thrice as handsome, stood watching us from the mid-decks in a perfection of immobility, an empty milk tin propped between her brown palms resting on her breast. Twenty fathoms off a shark fin, blue as lapis in the shadow, cut the water soundlessly. The hush of ten thousand miles was disturbed by nothing but ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Plato has called Mathematical Demonstrations the Catharticks or Purgatives of the Soul, as being the most proper Means to cleanse it from Error, and to give it a Relish of Truth; which is the natural Food and Nourishment of the Understanding, as Virtue is the Perfection and Happiness ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... distinguishes all their actions, publish as faithful an account of their reverses as they do of their victories, and enthusiasm is with them sustained by the truth, whatever that may be. The Russians cannot yet reach that moral perfection, which is the result ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... afterwards her secluded life with the King of Spain, hindered her from obtaining any real instruction. The perspicuity she possessed, which enabled her to see the right side of everything that came under her inspection, was undeniable, and this singular gift would have become developed in her to perfection if its growth had not been interrupted by the ill-humour she possessed; which it must be admitted the life she led was more than enough to give her. She felt her talent and her strength, but did not feel the fatuity and pride which weakened ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pleasing and pretty; and to own the truth, there was an air of modest refinement about them, that was not so apparent in this new visiter; but the dazzling appearance of the latter, at first, blinded me to her faults, and I saw nothing but her perfection. The interest manifested by the master—I beg his pardon, the boss of the store—and the agitation among the clerks, very plainly proved that much was expected from the visit of this young lady, who was addressed, with a certain air of shop-familiarity, as Miss Halfacre—a familiarity ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... my apologies to the person whose life I had just compromised by my imprudence, and for the first time took a good look at her. She was young and well dressed; a black silk gown fitted her slender form to perfection; her straw hat was fastened to the saddle, and her long chestnut hair floated in disorder over her pale cheeks. As she heard my voice, she opened her eyes, which in her fright she had instinctively closed; they seemed to me ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... mankind teach him the manners of the superior. And though it may be thought that the knowledge of either may sufficiently enable him to describe at least that in which he hath been conversant, yet he will even here fall greatly short of perfection; for the follies of either rank do in reality illustrate each other. For instance, the affectation of high life appears more glaring and ridiculous from the simplicity of the low; and again, the rudeness and barbarity of this latter, strikes ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... special attendant to fill and light our pipe, and our tatoo does not require a man to cut its grass. Some of us even put on our own clothes. In short, we have not carried the art of living to such oriental perfection as prevails on the other side of India, and a man of simple tastes will find my company of fourteen a sufficient staff. There they are, Sub hazir hai, "they are all present," the butler says, except one humble, but necessary officer, who ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught, how vast was the transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between means and ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the stables at Laxton! I, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate changes. I won him easily to an interest in my ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... seventeenth century, the finer manufactures of woollen and silken goods having been carried to great perfection in France, her exports in these articles were greatly increased. In the political testament of Richelieu, we are informed that a considerable and lucrative trade in these articles was carried on with Turkey, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... private apartments at the opportune moment. In the horde of hirelings about a great man there is always one whose ear is open to temptation, and the baron's household was no exception to this rule. Coquenil (known now as Jacques and looking the stable man to perfection) found a dignified flunky in black side whiskers and white-silk stockings who was not above accepting some hundred-franc notes in return for sure information as to the master's absences from home and for necessary assistance in the way of ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... in a peculiarly elevated frame of mind. He felt that something greater and finer than himself had taken up its abode within him and would grow on to perfection there. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Lota, the seat of Frederick Rogers, Esq. I had before seen it in the highest perfection from the water going from Dunkettle to Cove, and from the grounds of Dunkettle. Mrs. Rogers was so obliging as to show me the back grounds, which are admirably wooded, and of ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... Elisabeth; but you have somehow missed the third, and without it you will never attain to your highest possibilities. You are a good woman, and you are a true artist; but, until you fall in love, your religion and your art will both lack something, and will fall short of perfection." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... or cataloguing style as it has been called, and which often occurs in the "Leaves," has been much criticised, but it seems to me in perfect keeping in a work that does not aim at total artistic effects, at finished structural perfection like architecture, but to picture the elements of a man's life and character in outward scenes and objects and to show how all nature tends inward to him and he outward to it. Whitman showers the elements of American life upon his reader until, so ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... form a solid wall with square pillars topped by round balls of living green. In the background posed two peacocks, also clipped from box. What patience, time and care had been required to bring that hedge to such perfection! Early roses were now plentiful and as Win sauntered through their fragrant mazes, he realized how much loving thought had been expended through the centuries on this old garden. Sad indeed that the present owner of Laurel Manor ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... musical perfection is a wide one; and if the standard of excellence be that wondrous brilliancy and variety of execution suggested by the Mocking-Bird, then the palm belongs, among our New-England songsters, to the Red Thrush, otherwise called the Mavis or Brown Thrasher. I have never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ecstatic praise. And though in after-years Theodore Ginniss wandered through the galleries where the world conserves her rarest gems of art, never did he find Madonna or Magdalen or saint to compare with the one picture his memory treasured as the perfection of earthly loveliness, made radiant with the ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger might well think from his utterances that he was spoiled by the freedom of his life, unprepared to sacrifice anything for a land in such a condition. Threaten that country, and with it his liberty, and you will find that his grumbles have meant less than nothing. You will find, too, that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the moths which make beautiful the summer-time, has its purpose in the world of speech, it gives one bookman whom I know the keenest pleasure to ask his fair companion whether she has read Mark Rutherford. He is proudly conscious at the time that he is a witness to perfection in a gay world which is content with excitement, and he would be more than human if he had not in him a touch of the literary Pharisee. She has not read Mark Rutherford, and he does not advise her to seek it at the circulating library, because it will not ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... interfering with the greater work of providing the necessary exercise and nourishment for the body, and instruction and education for the soul. Night and day are not long enough for the accomplishment of their perfection and consummation; and therefore to this end all freemen ought to arrange the way in which they will spend their time during the whole course of the day, from morning till evening and from evening till the morning of the next sunrise. There may seem to be some impropriety in the legislator ...
— Laws • Plato
... fashion-plates, but sadly worn at the seams and everywhere brushed near threadbare. Now sprawled, hands pocketed, in a great-chair under the lamp, indolent with accomplished grace (it seemed), one long leg thrown languidly over the other, the slender foot never at rest, he was postured with that perfection of ease and gentility into which my uncle, watchful observer of the manners of the world he walked in, had many a time endeavored to command me, but with the most indifferent success. I listened to my tutor's ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... which he is not more or less puzzled; and must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to anything like perfection; even the simplest operations of domestic life are not well performed without some experience; and the term of man's life is half wasted before he has done with his mistakes and begins to profit by ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Cora Waters had been strangely shy and reticent, so that Charles Stevens could not tell her of the interview with Mr. Parris, even if he would. Cora was a remarkable girl. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of earthly gifts—genius and beauty. No one possesses superior intellectual qualities without knowing it. The alliteration of modesty and merit is pretty enough; but where merit is great, the veil of that modesty never disguises its extent from its possessor. It is the proud ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Satrap Megabazus, was gifted with marvellous purity of feature and perfection of form; at least such was the rumour spread abroad by the female slaves who attended her, and a few female friends who had accompanied her to the bath; for no man could boast of knowing aught of Nyssia ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... each one prayed she might—himself. Her hands and feet, her neck, the slimness of her waist, her mantling crimson and ivory white, her little ear, her scarlet lip, the pearls between them and her long white throat, were perfection each and all, and ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... its arrival here, which is, perhaps, fortunate, since the sketch would otherwise have shown merely a cluster of weeds." It could be well wished that the specimen had retained the whole of its floral cloak, for then the sketch would have shown its deceptive qualities in perfection. Masquerading as a spray of seaweed, the crab eludes its enemies, the mask being of such high order that even man, with his perceptions, does not penetrate it unless he exercises his reasoning faculties. Because he knows that a spray of seaweed is not ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... becomes the Word in each heaven, so the Word is a bond of union of the heavens with each other, and a bond of union of the heavens with the church in the world. For the Word is the same everywhere, differing only in perfection of glory and wisdom according to the degrees in which the heavens are; consequently the holy Divine from the Lord flows in through the heavens into the man in the world who acknowledges the Lord's Divine and the holiness of the Word whenever he reads the Word; and so far as such a man loves wisdom ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the other night Whittle Harvey outdid himself; by all accounts it was inimitable, dramatic to the greatest degree, and acted to perfection. Peel was heavy, Stanley very smart, the Ministers were beaten hollow in the argument, but got a respectable division, of which they make the most; but it proves nothing as to their real strength, which has not yet been tested. John Russell made a wretched ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... never so desirable and important. However, he would outfit himself just as soon as a regular earning capacity justified his going into his carefully husbanded but dwindling savings. He pictured himself clad as a lily of the field, unconscious of perfection as Herbert Cressey himself, in the public haunts of fashion and ease; through which vision there rose the searing prospect of thus encountering Io Welland. What was her married name? He had not even asked when the news was broken ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... is justified, in very truth, Robert," said Willet. "I've known none other who can prepare a fish with as much tenderness and perfection as you. I suppose 'tis born in you, but you have a way of preserving the juices and savors which defies description and which is beyond praise. 'Tis worth going hungry a long while to put one's tooth into so delicate a morsel as this salmon trout, and 'tis a great ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be So brimmed with bliss, so blessed of the gods, That he shall hold thee, breathing, animate Perfection, in the hollow ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... tremendous testament of our religion there are present certain ideals that seem wilder than impieties, which have in later times produced wild sects professing an almost inhuman perfection on certain points; as in the Quakers who renounce the right of self-defence, or the Communists who refuse any personal possessions. Rightly or wrongly, the Christian Church had from the first dealt with these visions as being special spiritual adventures ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... that had been brought up by Dinah and Seth to help her in dressing for the dance and which had not been removed. Every picture in every mirror is the work of an artist—the man who makes a mirror is an artist; according to the perfection of his work is the perfection of the picture. The old cheval glass was as truthful in its way as Gainsborough, but Gainsborough had never such a ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... coat, but she wore a green hat with a gold ornament that suited her to perfection, set on her dark head at ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... sensible that many have been so foolish as to count his Plays a bare Bundle of Dialogues dress'd up in a neat Stile, and there all his Excellency to consist, or at least that they are very ordinary and mean; but such senseless Suppositions will soon vanish upon giving an Account of the Nature and Perfection of 'em. He well understood the Rules of the Stage, or rather those of Nature; was perfectly Regular, wonderful exact and careful in ordering each Protasis or Entrance, Epitasis or working up, Catastasis ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... phases of individual life, Professor Draper finds intellectual advancement to be their chief characteristic. The anatomist discovers that the human form advances to its highest perfection through provisions in its nervous structure for intellectual improvement. In like manner the physiologist ranks the vast series of animals now inhabiting the earth in the order of their intelligence. The geologist ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... brass or marble to the crowd in the lobby, less acquainted with the mode of getting through the English world; and I had my first view of national loyalty, in the handsomest theatre which I have ever seen. How often it has been burnt down and built since, is beyond my calculation. It was then perfection. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... you understand? No, not you! You have as much comprehension of the pleasure of 'that sort of thing' as in the peculiar taste of the three ladies who hung themselves in a French balloon the other day, operatically nude, in order, I conjecture, to the ultimate perfection of French delicacy in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... deftly touched with a gentle humor. It is a dainty book—daintily illustrated."—New York Tribune. "A wholesome, bright, refreshing story, an ideal book to give a young girl."—Chicago Record-Herald. "An idyllic story, replete with pathos and inimitable humor. As story-telling it is perfection, and as portrait-painting it is true to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Peterkin and me as we walked together, "it is quite evident that if we wish to see this sport in perfection we must get outside the hedge, and run along towards the pit; for there, in the natural course of things, we may expect the grand climax. What say ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... lawyers, and particularly Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, flourished under the house of Severus; and the Roman jurisprudence, having closely united itself with the system of monarchy, was supposed to have attained its full majority and perfection. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cheeks the girl was certainly a pretty picture. The plain and simple costume was of the cut of the provinces rather than that of Paris, but it set off the lithe and graceful figure that needed no artificiality of the dressmaker to enforce its petite perfection. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Comedy, and itself preferred, though with considerable alteration in the form, through all the several periods of the Greek stage; even when Tragedy, which arose out of it, was brought to its last perfection." ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... might be improved by changing some of the numbers, and yet retaining the hypotheses. To this task he applied himself with much earnestness and assiduity, and after close application and laborious study he accomplished the arduous undertaking of bringing those tables to a high state of perfection. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... were still vague, and the only well-defined pleasure that he experienced came from the young woman's fit of anger, that error of hers which brought her nearer to him, by lowering her in some degree from her pedestal of serene perfection. It was, perhaps, that seeming perfection which had made him suffer; however, he was as yet unable to analyse his feelings. That day, for the first time, he chatted with her for a little while, and when he went off he thought her very ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... supremely so. Who, finding, for five diligent days, nothing but haggle and objection on the part of the others, did by themselves meet under cloud of night, "night of April 29th-30th;" and—bring the Preliminaries to perfection. And have them signed before daybreak; which is, in effect, signing, or at least fixing as certain, the Treaty itself; so that Armistice can ensue straightway, and the War ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... and never without remarking how amiable in her manners, how condescendingly kind in her deportment towards every one about her, how charitably generous, and withal, how beautiful she was,—I looked upon her as a model of perfection. But when I found the public feeling so much at variance with my own, the difference became utterly unaccountable. I longed for some explanation of the mystery. One day I was insulted in the Tuileries, because I had alighted from my horse ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to be built or repaired, capable of service against an enemy, on a scale equal to the requirements of an army, and in a haste which permitted no delay. A transport service there must have been organized to perfection; but there were no stores sent from Italy to supply the daily waste of material. The men had to mend and perhaps make their own clothes and shoes, and repair their own arms. Skill in the use of tools was not enough without the tools themselves. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the deepest tragedy and the broadest farce, and, in language, the loftiest flights of measured rhetoric along with the closest imitation of common talk;—and all this he so used, so elaborated through it the poetic creations of his mind, in such glorious union and perfection of high purpose and art and reach of soul, that he was the greatest and most universal poet the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... youngster takes to the field as naturally as if he had been bred a Guacho. Dick Turpin was a glorious exception to the rule, and anticipated a later age. He rode wonderfully lightly, yet sat his saddle to perfection, distributing the weight so exquisitely that his horse scarcely felt his pressure; he yielded to every movement made by the animal, and became, as it were, part and parcel of itself; he took care Bess should be neither strained ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... last. Mrs. Castleton's rooms were lighted to perfection, and she herself dressed with exquisite taste, looking the fitting priestess of the elegant shrine over which she presided. Emma, with her brothers, came early—and one glance satisfied Mrs. Castleton. The simplicity ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fish. It may be about three thousand years since there appeared, in the part of Asia which we inhabit, a man named Houna, who was so great that he was surnamed Seidel-Beckir. He was a sage who possessed in perfection all those talents which acquire a general veneration. The science of talismans he possessed in so eminent a degree, that by their means he commanded the stars and the constellations. Unhappily, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... saith, Sir Launcelot began to resort unto Queen Guenever again, and forgat the promise and the perfection that he made in the quest. For, as the book saith, had not Sir Launcelot been in his privy thoughts and in his mind so set inwardly to the queen as he was in seeming outward to God, there had no knight ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... crops are rice, tobacco, cotton, and india-rubber. All European vegetables can be grown to perfection, especially cabbages, lettuces, beetroot, turnips, carrots, and onions. There were in 1897 over eighty market gardens in the neighbourhood of Buluwayo, and for the half-year ending September 1897, the value of the produce ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... angel.' The 'Soul' within you, which you may elect to keep or to lose, is the infant of Heaven. It depends on you for care,—for sustenance;—it needs all your work and will to aid it in growing up to its full stature and perfection. It shall profit you nothing if you gain the whole world, and at death have naught to give to your Maker but crumbling clay. Let the Angel be ready,—the 'Soul' in you prepared, and full-winged for flight! According to the power and purity with which you have invested and surrounded ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of the earth, spiking rails to the prairie in distant territories, or sending into Polynesian archipelagoes the rivet on whose integrity depends the safety of the iron ship. How needful to human progress is the conscientious perfection of their work! What tact they must employ in dealing with phalanxes of laborers of different nations and imperfect intelligence! What a stimulus to genius they are, with their readiness to catch at any labor-saving machine! See that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Rose, you saw that she had no right to be pretty, yet she was. Nature had defied reason when she made her, working from some obscure instinct for roundness; an instinct which would have achieved perfection in the moulding of Rose's body if Rose had only grown two inches taller. Not that the purest reason could think of Rose as dumpy. Her figure, defying nature, passed for perfect. It was her face that baffled you. It had a round chin that was a shade too large for it; ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair |
