"Precision" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few things more desolate than even the best situated "rest-camps"—the long lines of tents set out with military precision, the trampled grass, and the board walks; but the one at Taranto where we awaited embarkation was peculiarly dismal even for a rest-camp. So it happened that when Admiral Mark Kerr, the commander of the Mediterranean fleet, invited me to be his ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... give directions as to inscription and folding. He will indicate what information he wishes, such as name, class, date, etc., and where it is to be written. Each page should be numbered. If the paper is folded, it should be done with neatness and precision. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... there existed even the limited freedom to kill in vendetta, and think what would happen in our suburbs. Consider the inconvenience of two households in a modern suburb estranged and provided with modern weapons of precision, the inconvenience not only to each other, but to the neutral pedestrian, the practical loss of freedoms all about them. The butcher, if he came at all, would have to come ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... at last came on shore, and took to gardening, but as he usually pulled up the flowers instead of the weeds, he was directed to confine himself to sweeping the walks, which he did effectually, with delightful slowness and precision. He was one day in summer found sprinkling the housemaid's tea leaves over them, as he remarked, to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... more difficult than to lay down any fixed and certain rules for happiness; or indeed to judge with any precision of the happiness of others from the knowledge of external circumstances. There is sometimes a little speck of black in the brightest and gayest colours of fortune, which contaminates and deadens the whole. On the contrary, when all without looks dark ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the understanding itself abstractedly from the consideration of particulars, as in the case of geometry, numeral mathematics, universal logic, and pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our Shakspeare with happy precision calls "discourse of reason." ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the most ambitious publisher of to-day and were often far more successful. The scribe who was to make a fine manuscript chose his vellum with great care. He laid out his work with compass and ruler with the utmost precision. He was careful that his ink and his pigments should be of the most brilliant color and the finest quality. He looked well to the care of his pen and inscribed each letter with the patient care of the most ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... were obeyed with precision, and two men stopped behind, while the rest, with Twining at their head, pressed forward. They ran against another door, but it also was open, as the watching man had not had time to close it. Through this the police poured, and found themselves in a large, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the beginning of the nineteenth century. These books were written from various points of view, and some of them were extremely interesting; but in every case there was one thing for which I looked in vain. I looked in vain for anything in the nature of statistical precision, except here and there in connection with minor and scattered details. Frequent references were made, for example, to the decline of the Highland population; but no attempt had apparently been made by anyone to state by reference to extant official documents what the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... mother passed away, was with his sister in that city, and whose gentlemanly manners and kindness of heart won for him the love and confidence of his associates. An anecdote of Lieutenant Denny, characteristic of his precision of speech, his perfect self-control under the most exciting circumstances, and his strict regard to military etiquette, may be ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... to it, do you suppose that that was all that Peter was thinking about? Do you think that a wide, general, and if you leave it by itself, vague utterance like that which I have been indulging in, would give all the specific precision and fulness of the meaning of the word before us? I think not. I fancy that when this Apostle wrote these words he remembered a time long, long ago, when somebody stood by the little fishing-cobble there, and as the men were up to their knees in slush and dirt, washing their nets, said to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... careless, incogitant habits so formed in youth. But it is not systematically attempted, and the influences that continue to act upon a slave in the same direction, cultivating every quality at variance with industry, precision, ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... name was Old Charley. I was so much interested in the account of his sagacity, that I went to see him. The good animal was used for ploughing between lines of trees from three feet and a half to four feet apart, and moved with such precision and care as to run the plough and cultivator as near as possible to the trees, without ever hitting or injuring one of them. His owner told me Old Charley would go straight between the lines, turning at the end without any motion or word from the driver, with as much accuracy and skill ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... the Police Power.—Because the police power of a State is the least limitable of the exercises of government, such limitations as are applicable thereto are not readily definable. Being neither susceptible of circumstantial precision, nor discoverable by any formula, these limitations can be determined only through appropriate regard to the subject matter of the exercise of that power.[105] "It is settled [however] that neither the 'contract' clause nor the 'due process' clause had the effect of overriding the power of the State ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... tangled as intricately as the bones in a kingfisher's nest—showed no more than a pretty surprise at the intrusion. She had, in fact, seen Captain Hocken pass the window some moments before; and it had not caused her to joggle the tiny ivory hook for a moment or to miss a moment's precision. What native quickness did for her, native stolidity did almost as well for Captain Hunken, who sat in an arm-chair by the fireplace smoking and watching her—and had been sitting and watching her for ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... great circle, and a combination of all such would give a representation of the shape of our stellar system. The more numerous and careful the observations, the more elaborate the representation, and the 863 gauges of HERSCHEL are sufficient to mark out with great precision the main features of the Milky Way, and even to indicate some of its ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... that troubles Miss Butterworth—Madam, I said it was not curiosity—but a laudable desire to have the whole matter arranged with precision," dropped now in his dryest tones from the ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... few men have, of close, concentrated, continuous thought, he was at the same time prompt in his decisions. His instructions to juries, and his legal judgments, usually pronounced at considerable length, were marked by that precision of statement, clearness of analysis, and felicity of language, which made them seem like the flowing of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... HERMIT OF HOLYPORT has repeated his Queries on Gray and Dodsley, I must make a second attempt to answer them with due precision, assured that no man is more disposed than himself to communicate information for the satisfaction ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... women and children almost wholly live aboard their floating homes, often never stepping ashore from one day to the other and going about their domestic duties, as well as those connected with their calling, with all the precision and cheerfulness in the world, as if there were nothing strange or ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... challenged the Papal system as Antichrist, and the Pope as "The man of sin." In his estimation the Romish Church was a fallen Church and had become "The Synagogue of Satan." He entered the field of conflict clad in the armor of God and wielded the sword of the Spirit with precision and terrible effect. In prayer lay the secret of his power. He knew how to take hold upon God, and prevail like a prince. The Queen Regent, who in those times mustered the forces of the government at her pleasure, said, "I ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... the breech-chamber of each of them was a thousand-pound shell, carrying a bursting charge of five hundred pounds of an explosive which was an improvement on blasting gelatine, and the guns were capable of throwing these to a distance of twelve miles with precision. They were the most formidable ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... in which were encased the martial lower limbs visible below the long, voluminous skirts of their double-breasted frock-coats. Flo gazed with frank animation in her eyes, but Forrest never saw her until after he had waved adieu to his German friends, standing in statuesque and superb precision at the salute beyond the foaming wake of ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... as if he had been alone in the counting-house, and wrote. I looked over his shoulder, admiring his clear, firm hand-writing; the precision, concentrativeness, and quickness, with which he first seemed to arrange and then execute his ideas. He possessed to the full that "business" faculty, so frequently despised, but which, out of very ordinary material, often makes a clever man; and without which ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... textiles, foodstuffs, motor vehicles partners: NA External debt: $NA Industrial production: growth rate NA% Electricity: 23,000 kW capacity; 150 million kWh produced, 5,340 kWh per capita (1989) Industries: electronics, metal manufacturing, textiles, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, food products, precision instruments, tourism Agriculture: livestock, vegetables, corn, wheat, potatoes, grapes Economic aid: none Currency: Swiss franc, franken, or franco (plural - francs, franken, or franchi); 1 Swiss franc, franken, or franco (SwF) 100 centimes, rappen, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... cloak, and opened her blue eyes a little wider. She was still in circumstances to defy her reverend lover, if his eyes had declined upon lower attractions than her own. She looked very straight before her with unpitying precision down the road, on which St Roque's Church and Cottage were becoming already visible. The whole party were walking briskly over a path hard with frost, which made their footsteps ring. The air was still with a winterly touch, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ground for a night, after a day's march, are very lively, often amusing, and sometimes present picturesque effects. Where the country traversed by the army is known to the commander, he is able to designate the nightly camps of the different corps with precision; if, on account of ignorance of the country, this cannot be done, places are approximately indicated upon the information given by maps or extracted from the inhabitants, or procured by reconnoitring parties. Usually, however, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Mrs. Stainforth and myself were fast fixed in an angle at the corner of the stairs, and Mr. de Luc stood in the midst of the crowd, where he began offering so many grave arguments, with such deliberation and precision, every now and then going back in his reasoning to correct his own English, representing our right to proceed, and the wrong of not making way for us, that it was irresistibly comic to see the people stare, as they pushed On, and to see ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... sketch-books were later on developed with the utmost care, being written out again and again, with fresh alterations and additions each time, until every trace of crudeness had disappeared, and the finished work stood out with such clearness and precision as to suggest that it had been but that moment created. Nothing, indeed, has struck those who have followed the gradual development of his work from the first sketches which have been preserved more ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... probably on the west side. Perrot afterwards built another fort, called Fort St. Antoine, a little above, on the east bank. The position of these forts has been the subject of much discussion, and cannot be ascertained with precision. It appears by the Prise de Possession, cited above, that there was also, in 1689, a temporary French post near the mouth ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... six tomes, folio, bound in seven, which yet might be improved. Baluze and Lupus have published some letters of this holy doctor, which had escaped Aubert and Labbe. If elegance, choice of thoughts, and beauty of style be wanting in his writings, these defects are compensated by the justness and precision with which he expresses the great truths of religion, especially in clearing the terms concerning the mystery of the Incarnation. Hence his controversial works are the most valuable part of his writings. His books against Nestorius, those ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and certain recognition of a great truth is seldom the work of a day. We often possess it in a confused and hidden way, before we can detect, to a nicety, its exact nature and limitations. It takes time to declare itself with precision, and, like a plant in its rudimentary stages, it may sometimes be mistaken for what it is not—though, once it has reached maturity, we can mistake it no longer. As Cardinal Newman observes: "An idea grows in the mind by remaining ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... eminent, modest, and persevering mechanic, Mr. Brunel; a gentleman of the rarest genius, who has effected as much for the Mechanic Arts as any man of his time. The wonderful apparatus in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, by which he cuts blocks for the navy, with a precision and expedition that astonish every beholder, secures him a monument of fame, and eclipses all rivalry. In a small building on the left, I was attracted by the solemn action of a steam-engine of a sixteen-horse or eighty-men power, and was ushered into a room, where it turned, by means ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... half-a-length—who in the hunting-field would ride the hottest, or the most phlegmatic made hunter, with equal skill, through all difficulties of ground, and over every species of fence, with admirable precision and equality of hand—or who on the exercise ground would place his broken charger on his haunches, and make him walk four miles an hour, canter six and a half, trot eight and a half, and gallop eleven, without being out in either pace a second of time, but who marred all by the besetting ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... precepts of Vitruvius, the several parts of the building, the baths, bed-chamber, the atrium, the basilica, and the Cyzicene, Corinthian, and Egyptian halls have been described with some degree of precision, or at least of probability. Their forms were various, their proportions just; but they all were attended with two imperfections, very repugnant to our modern notions of taste and conveniency. These stately rooms had neither ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a full stop and gazed steadily at the upturned paper in the typewriter in front of him. Twenty-fives times he had written that sentence, and twenty-five times with mechanical precision and true adherence to time-honored custom he had finished it by ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... arms, which she promptly did. Putting her to one side out of the reach of the train, he ran forward to receive Mrs. Mackintosh; but that good lady, being unaccustomed to such acrobatic feats, and arriving with more force than precision, completely bowled him over, and they went flying into space together. Banborough and Friend Othniel followed almost immediately, and, both trying to get out of the door at the same time, collided with considerable force, and performed a series of somersaults, landing with ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... and you must understand if you can. You belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain—maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... motionless with hands clasped across their breasts. Then, as the reading proceeded, the great crowd, in perfect unison, as if it had practiced daily for months, performed the same motions one after the other. It was a remarkable exhibition of precision. No army of well drilled troops ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... a false impression of one's virtues or powers, the insidiously growing avarice that instinctively overvalues goods for sale and disparages what is offered. It is a good vantage point from which to attack carelessness, inaccuracy, and negligence; the man who has trained himself to precision of speech, who is painstakingly honest in his statements, who qualifies and discriminates, and hits the bull's eye in his descriptions of fact, can be pretty safely depended upon to do things rightly ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... well-stored memory always enabled her to display the soundness of her judgment. She was so well acquainted with the Koran as to repeat chapters of it at pleasure, and she explained its meaning with a precision that delighted every hearer. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... We look upon the warehouses of its quadrangle with their slanting walls and dipping moss-covered roofs and try to conjure up the time long past when all was smart and imposing. In those days when the Indians brought in their precious peltries they were received and sent out again with military precision and all that goes with red tape and gold braid. Surely the musty archives of Simpson hold stories well worth the reading! We would fain linger and dream in front of this sun-dial across whose dulled ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the weighted cords about his head. At precisely the right instant, and not upset by the sudden clamor of the rising fowl, the Aleut boy straightened his arm in front of him and launched his missile with precision into the very middle of the flapping ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... said a pale little man in spectacles, who was evidently the leader of the band; and when the doctor went to his place, leaving his patient seated at the side-table, feeling as if he were in a dream, Wilkins carried out his orders with military precision; for, every time a piece was played, he conducted in regular musical fashion, flourishing a little ebony baton, and turning over the leaves of the book before him on the stand, but never once glancing ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... beings are but the different modes of expressing these formulae, and that all animals have, within the limits of their own branch of the Animal Kingdom, the same structural elements, though each branch is entirely distinct. If this be true, and if these organic formulae have the precision of mathematical formulae, with which I have compared them, they should be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... complaints were removed. But by his manner of receiving us we were disarmed in a moment, and could not utter one word of what we were going to say. He talked to us with an eloquence peculiarly his own, and explained with clearness and precision the importance of pursuing the line of conduct he had adopted, never contradicting us in direct terms, but controverted our opinions so astutely that we had not a single word to offer in reply, and retired convinced that he was in the right and that we were manifestly in the wrong." It ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Mr. Dupre did not mention this—added the weight of example to his precepts. His taste in ties was acknowledged. No member of the school eleven knotted a crimson sash round his waist with more admired precision. Nor was the success of the hero confined to the playing fields and the dormitory. Mr. Dupre noted the fact that Mannix had added other laurels to the crown of the house's glory by winning the head master's prize for ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Who of them would recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced. However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... monumental History of the United States, Bancroft says that, splendid as were the triumphs of Penn, his greatest conquest was the conquest of his own soul. Extraordinary as was the greatness of his mind; remarkable, both for universality and precision, as were the vast conceptions of his genius; profound as was his scholarship, and astute as was his diplomacy; the historian is convinced that, in the last resort, his greatest contribution to history is the development and influence of his impressive and robust ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... long block of buildings, and was elaborately fitted with bathrooms, a restaurant and a reading-room. The trapezes, bars, and all the usual appointments were of the best possible quality. The manager, a powerful-looking man dressed with the precision of the prosperous city magnate, came out of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... regiment, Prince George of Cambridge, being in the Ionian Islands. Thus, three field-marshals, and four generals, passed in review before the illustrious guests of her Majesty. The Emperor expressed himself highly gratified; as every eye accustomed to troops must have been, by the admirable precision of the movements, and the fine appearance of the men. A striking instance of the value of railways for military operations, was connected with this review. The forty-seventh regiment, quartered in Gosport, was brought to Windsor in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... The Varl had been the dominant life form there until men had come. Now they were just another animal added to humanity's growing list of pets and livestock. The little Varl with their soft-furred bodies and clever six-fingered hands made excellent pets and precision workmen. The products of those clever hands, the tiny instruments, the delicate microminiaturized control circuits, the incredibly fine lacework and tapestries, formed the bulk of ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... dome of the old Swiss shone under the gas light; the scrap of thumbed music was propped up against a bottle, and he was blowing gravely into his instrument, his fingers moving up and down and along the keys with methodical precision. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... first rally. "You have made the most of your opportunities. Your wrist is strong and supple, your eye quick. You are a match, now, for most men who have not worked hard in a school of arms. Like almost all our countrymen, you lack precision. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... other child?... For every infant who has a double supply of human milk at his disposal, there is another child who has none. The wealth in question is not an industrial product. It is apportioned by Nature with careful precision. For each new life, the ration of milk. Milk cannot be produced by any means other than the production of life. Cow-keepers know this well; their good cows are hygienically reared, and calves are sent to the butcher. Yet what distress is felt whenever the young of some animal is parted from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... through grace, to be amusing and yet artistically upright. It is normal for them to articulate nicely. High in their consciousness there flame always the commandments of clarity, of delicacy, of precision. Indeed, so repeatedly have temperaments of this character appeared in France, not only in her music, but also in her letters and other arts, from the time of the Pleiade, to that of Charles Louis Philippe and Andre Gide and Henri de Regnier, that it is difficult not to hold theirs ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the boy Marquis was taken to call at the house of his future wife, and was presented to her in the garden. Formal paths wound under a row of chestnut-trees, carefully tended flower-beds were arranged with mathematical precision, a few peacocks strutted across the lawn, and here and there a marble statue or a great stone jar from Italy gave a classic ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the momentous superiority of "sprinkling" over "immersion," or of "immersion" over "sprinkling"; that the "wax candles," "lighted" and "unlighted," appear to you alike insignificant; that even the jus divinum of any system of ecclesiastical government is sometimes not discerned with absolute precision; and, in short, that you look with contemptuous wonder on half our "great controversies." If I mistake not, things are coming to that pass amongst us, that we shall soon think of them almost with ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... have not room to record the speeches of the two gentlemen on this occasion, but they are preserved in the columns of the little blue newspaper, which is yet to be found on the file, and are said to be highly creditable to the legal formula of one of the parties, and to the military precision of the other. Everything had been previously arranged, and, as the red-coated drummer continued to roll out his clattering notes, some five-and-twenty privates appeared in the ranks, and arranged themselves in the order ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that are threatening to disintegrate our social order, that we have all followed the details of this great catastrophe in the Atlantic with such intense solicitude. It was one of those accidents that happen with a precision of time and circumstance that outdoes art; not an incident in it all that was not supremely typical. It was the penetrating comment of chance upon our entire social situation. Beneath a surface of magnificent efficiency was—slap-dash. The third-class ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... was blooming in the wood than about what the Americans were doing on the Garonne. He wished he could talk to her as Gerhardt did. He admired the way she roused herself and tried to interest them, speaking her difficult language with such spirit and precision. It was a language that couldn't be mumbled; that had to be spoken with energy and fire, or not spoken at all. Merely speaking that exacting tongue would help to rally a broken spirit, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... is to count for so much with Huysmans—in the crude malice of 'L'Extase,' for example, in the notation of the 'richness of tone,' the 'superb colouring,' of an old drunkard. And one sees already something of the novelty and the precision of his description, the novelty and the unpleasantness of the subjects which he chooses to describe, in this vividly exact picture of the carcass of a cow hung up outside a butcher's shop: 'As in a hothouse, a marvellous vegetation flourished in the carcass. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... aggression of Spain, or France, or Austria. But if we carry our view to the moral world, do we find any principle equally obvious, and a solution as satisfactory? By no means. We may, indeed, say, with apparent precision, that during the earliest part of this epoch, Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us that these names were but the badges ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... were then regarded as absurd, but which are now generally acknowledged by scientific gunners as the only means of insuring the desiderata of the rifle, i.e., high velocity, low trajectory, long range, penetration, and precision. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... mathematics he abominates; but his great forte is history, especially English history. Here his superhuman memory, which appears to have the faculty of digesting and arranging as well as of retaining, has converted his mind into a mighty magazine of knowledge, from which, with the precision and correctness of a kind of intellectual machine, he pours forth stores of learning, information, precept, example, anecdote, and illustration with a familiarity and facility not less astonishing than delightful. He writes as if he had lived in the times and among the people ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... and pyramid had mingled to form a huge trident. With the three long prongs of this trident the thing struck, swiftly, with fearful precision—JOYOUSLY—tining those who fled, forking them, tossing them from ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... this want of inflective grace that English, and more especially French, speakers lose so much of their force. Both read admirably and articulate with precision, but the unvaried straight line tone, so suited to reading, will not serve the purpose when we not only wish to make people understand, but also ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... of necessity deceive themselves, as well as others, is, that there is great want of precision and distinctness in their views and definitions. We are told by them that the will is always determined by the strongest motive; that this is invariably the cause of volition. But what is meant by the term cause? We have final causes, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... succeeded his father, who for many years had driven a coucou of capricious flight between Paris and Isle-Adam. Having married the daughter of a small inn-keeper, he enlarged his business, made it a regular service, and became noted for his intelligence and a certain military precision. Active and decided in his ways, Pierrotin (the name seems to have been a sobriquet) contrived to give, by the vivacity of his countenance, an expression of sly shrewdness to his ruddy and weather-stained visage which suggested wit. He was not without that facility ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... a gentleman handed Melinda to the piano, and there was a brief pause as she struck the instrument, and commenced going through the unintelligible intricacies of a fashionable piece of music. She could strike all the notes with scientific correctness and mechanical precision. But there was no more expression in her performance than there is in that of a musical box. After she had finished her task, she left the instrument with a few words of commendation extorted by ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... other waited awkwardly, his heart rushing out in ineffectual flood against the old man's barrier of stern restraint. For a moment he made folds in his soft hat with a fastidious precision. Finally he nerved ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... very important that the statute laws should be made as plain and intelligible as possible, and be reduced to as small a compass as may consist with the fullness and precision of the will of the Legislature and the perspicuity of its language. This well done would, I think, greatly facilitate the labors of those whose duty it is to assist in the administration of the laws, and would be a lasting benefit to the people, by placing before them in a more ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... things,—that the subject of prophetic intimation, as provided for by the Lord himself, is warranted, and, that it is beyond the power of men either to fulfil it otherwise than he has arranged, or to prevent its accomplishment. Prophecy describes, with precision, facts that will take place. Men are brought into the circumstances to which a prophecy refers, and they may be ignorant of the fact. Afterwards they know it, and attest the verity of the prediction. The descriptions afforded in prophecy concerning the circumstances ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... side of it, the three others, the silver bird, the mosaic and the mother-of-pearl arranged in a half-moon below them, in the front of the child's dress. They were placed with the greatest neatness and precision; it must have cost Molly both time and trouble to put each ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... others than such as are worn by themselves. Mr. Arnot moved rather in his own well-defined grooves, which he had deliberately furrowed out with his own steely will. In these he went through the day with the same strong, relentless precision which characterized the machinery in his several ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... soon became pretty animated on both sides, the Aurora having, however, a decided advantage over her antagonist both in rapidity and precision of fire. Thus, while at the end of half an hour only one of the schooner's shot had touched the barque, and that without doing any material damage, her own sails and rigging were pretty well cut up, several shot-holes being visible in her canvas, whilst a number of ends ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... are to let them want for nothing, and I send them plenty of ammunition." Rale says that the King allowed him a pension of six thousand livres a year, and that he spent it all "in good works." As his statements are not remarkable for precision, this may mean that he was charged with distributing the six thousand livres which the King gave every year in equal shares to the three Abenaki missions of Medoctec, Norridgewock, and Panawamske, or Penobscot, and which generally ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Babylonians in Babylonia—why should one group be assumed to be older than the other? The only ground for suggesting that these groups had not each a separate evolution, is the assumption that man was "created" once for all, and created summarily; in which case it follows with mathematical precision that the ultimate ancestry of every man living extends back to exactly the same date. That is to say, the highest and the lowest, the blackest and the whitest, only differ in this, that some men began to keep records earlier than others; for the man who keeps no records ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... worth mentioning occurred to the hunters that day, save that little Tolly Trevor was amazed—we might almost say petrified—by the splendour and precision of the trapper's shooting, besides which he was deeply impressed with the undercurrent of what we may style grave fun, coupled with calm enthusiasm, which characterised the man, and the utter absence of self-assertion ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... the news had gone out that Jaureguy had killed the Prince at Antwerp, and Gerard felt that his mission was at an end. But when the Prince recovered, his murderous enthusiasm redoubled, and he offered himself formally and with matter-of-fact precision to the Prince of Parma as heaven's minister of vengeance. The Prince, who had long been seeking such an emissary, at first declined the alliance: he had become too much the prey of soldiers of fortune who ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... thing into his head and out of his fingers is ascertained. This time is called his personal equation, and is subtracted from all of his observations in order to get at the true time; so willing are men to be exact about material matters. Can it be thought that moral and spiritual matters have no precision? Thus distances east or west from any given star or meridian are secured; those north and south from the equator or the zenith are as easily fixed, and thus we make such accurate maps of the heavens that any movements in the far-off stars—so far ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... step; Redgrave laid an arresting hand upon him. There needed but this touch. In frenzied wrath, yet with the precision of trained muscle, Hugh struck out; and Redgrave went down before him—thudding upon the door of the veranda like one who ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... from perplexity. He was seeking enlightenment before he proceeded further, so he unfolded the paper with a deliberation unusual to him, which afforded time to Dryden to remark with clear precision: ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit, its dark head half shielded by a scarlet toboggan cap very much awry. A mittened hand flung a snowball with strength and precision straight into the opposite fort, and the assailant immediately dodged down behind ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... way along, in the warm twilight, Madame Beattie was gay over the prospect of being fought for. With the utmost precision and unflagging spirit she arranged a plausible cause for combat, and Jeffrey, not in the least intending to play his allotted part, yet enjoyed the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... these attentions were addressed, is described by an anonymous emissary of the English Court, as leading a regular life,—hunting when the weather permitted, and hearing mass every day with great precision and devotion. "Il est fort maigre," adds the same writer, "assez grand; son teint est brun, son humeur et sa personne ne sont pas desagreables." In another place, it is added, "Il paroit manquer de jugement et de resolution:" an opinion, unhappily, too correct.[58] On the question being put by ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... can grow to, and will and must if England is to have a Downing Street beyond a few years longer, it is far from me, in my remote watch-tower, to say with precision. A Downing Street inhabited by the gifted of the intellects of England; directing all its energies upon the real and living interests of England, and silently but incessantly, in the alembics of the place, burning up the extinct imaginary interests of England, that we may see God's sky a little ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Their craft had nothing in common with the world's older arts, excepting those of the scribe and the scholar. The entire book-trade, now divided into so many branches, was in their hands—binder, engraver, printer and publisher, being generally the same person; and this, together with the laborious precision required in working the primitive press, made them throughout Christendom a sort of caste who acquired their trade by inheritance, and kept it as such. Two generations of their family had transmitted the types to Christopher and Hubert; but not to them alone. There ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... memorandum. "Fifteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents," he read with careful precision. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... further back we go in time and the lower the stage of civilisation submitted to investigation. Historically, indeed, there would seem to be an inverse relation between supernatural and natural knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in precision and in trustworthiness, so has the former shrunk, grown vague and questionable; as the one has more and more filled the sphere of action, so has the other retreated into the region of meditation, or vanished behind the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... There was precision, I may say dignity, in all his motions. If he turned to you, it was slowly and deliberately; there was nothing like rapidity in his movement. On the most trifling occasions, he wrapped himself up in etiquette with all the consequence of a Spanish Hidalgo; and showed in almost every action ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... read us a series of his "Sketches of his Political Contemporaries," quite admirable for the precision, distinctness, and apparent impartiality with which they were drawn, and for their happiness of expression-and purity of diction. Among them is a character of Lord Scarborough, which, if it be a faithful portrait, is perhaps the highest testimony in itself to the merit of one ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... furniture seemed to come toward me and taunt me with the fell crime I had committed. 'I was justified in the act,' said I to these dumb accusers, as though they had been, living witnesses. 'She was the bane of my existence.' And with cunning precision I arranged the disordered room, smoothed the pillows, and levelled the coverlet. 'The dead cannot speak,' said ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... "A child has no need of seizing on the exact meaning of words; on the contrary, a certain lack of precision seems to stimulate his imagination only the more vigorously, since it gives him a ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... quicksands were of great extent at low water, and had an infamous reputation in the country. Close in shore, between the islet and the promontory, it was said they would swallow a man in four minutes and a half; but there may have been little ground for this precision. The district was alive with rabbits, and haunted by gulls which made a continual piping about the pavilion. On summer days the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Note the precision and confidence of the promise. The hour of the fulfilment, and the price of flour and the cheaper barley are stated. Man's promises are vague; God's are specific. Mark, too, the entire silence of the promise as to the mode of its ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... corrected for magnetic variation, and this gives us the exact location of the tragedy. We have the altitude, the temperature, and the degree of humidity prevailing—inestimably valuable, since they enable us to estimate with precision the degree of influence which they would exercise upon the mood and disposition of the assassin at that ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... the distance before the blacks saw us, and then ensured a general scrimmage. The women and children jumped into the lagoon, and the men, snatching up their weapons, threw a volley of spears with such force and precision that, had we been twenty yards closer, it would have gone hard with both my companions and myself. As it was, the missiles nearly all fell short, seeing which the warriors dropped their arms and took ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... buzzing pests at which we constantly slapped and, crossing a tiny bridge over the brook, approached the Mission of Tai-o-hae, that once pompous and powerful center of the diffusion of the faith throughout the Marquesas. The road was lined with guavas, mangos, cocoanuts, and tamarinds, all planted with precision and care. The ambitious fathers who had begun these plantings scores of years before had provided the choicest fruits for their table. All over the world the members of the great religious orders of Europe have carried the seeds of the best varieties of fruits ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... number of electors so represented;[483] and (3) that a parliament in which the various parties are represented in proportion to their voting strength can be depended upon to know and to execute the will of the nation with more precision than can a legislative body elected after the principle of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the house best qualified for such duty should endeavour to ascertain, with as much precision as possible, the extent and position of the fire, while the others collect as much water as they can. If the fire be in an upper floor, the inmates should be got out immediately, although the lower part of the house may generally be entered with safety for some time. If in the lower part ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... an extent Rabelais' admirable style was due to conscious effort, care, and elaboration, a fact which is generally too much overlooked, and how instead of leaving any trace which would reveal toil and study, it has on the contrary a marvellous cohesion, precision, and brilliancy. It was modelled and remodelled, repaired, touched up, and yet it has all the appearance of having been created at a single stroke, or of having been run like molten wax ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... among the men who intend to stretch the law. Let me see; we have been in business together just one year, and our books balance with a most graceful precision. We are ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... melancholic lunatic, confined to his chamber by day, and wandering like a ghost by night, refusing all admission. Moreover my good Aylward had appeared hitherto a paragon of a duenna for discretion, only over starched in her precision. Little did I expect to find my young lady spending all her evenings alone with him, and the solitary hermit transformed into a gay and gallant bachelor like the Friar of Orders Gray in the song. And since matters have ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There was no hope for the ship. "Lower the boats!" Everything was done with precision and in order, indicating that there was no panic on shipboard. Up to the last moment the wireless S. O. S., St. Duneen, 48, 50 N., 10 E., repeated and repeated ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... medium is one of the most beautiful for pure line work, and its use is an excellent training to the eye and hand in precision of observation. Perhaps this is why it has not been so popular in our art schools lately, when the charms of severe discipline are not so much in favour as they should be. It is the first medium we are given ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... be replied, "are excepted cases." Certainly they are cases of which any one who maintains the opinion in question would be glad to disencumber himself; because they clearly expose the unsoundness of his principle. But it will be incumbent on such an one, first to explain with precision why they are to be exempted from its operation, and this he will find an impossible task; for sincerity, in its popular sense, so shamefully is the term misapplied, can be made the criterion of guilt and innocence on no grounds, which ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... days of Copernicus. It was, indeed, quite impossible to be certain of the real shape of the earth or the reality of its motions until knowledge became more extended and scientific instruments much greater in precision. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably lived a person who was in herself more completely a reductio ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Miss Garwood and a number of her teachers came forward to greet the cadets and those with them and invite them to the campus. Here another drill was given, the girls applauding louder than ever as each movement was executed with a precision that would have done credit to ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... opponent on the ground of corrupt influence, but, adds Mr. Rives, in his sesquipedalian measure, "for the want of adequate proof to sustain the allegations of the petition which in such cases it is extremely difficult to obtain with the requisite precision, the proceeding was unavailing except as a perpetual protest, upon the legislative records of the country, against a dangerous abuse, of which one of her sons, so qualified to serve her, and destined to be one of her chief ornaments, was the early though ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... with the same style of flowing grandeur, and revealing a breastplate of starched cambric scarcely less broad and brilliant, the uninitiated might have held the resemblance as perfect. The wristbands were turned up with not less compact precision, and were fastened by jewelled studs that glittered with not less radiancy. The satin waistcoat, the creaseless hosen, were the same; and if the foot were not quite as small, its Parisian polish was not less bright. But here, unfortunately, Mr. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... ordinary rules of propriety; but during which much also that is diverting, witty, and even instructive, is manifested, which would never be heard of without this momentary breaking up of the barricades of precision. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... which he could speed up a four-horse team on that short straight-away, his ability to postpone slowing them down for the turn, and yet to pull them in handily and in time, the deftness and precision of his short turns, the promptness with which he compelled them to gather speed after the turn, these were astonishing, enough; but far more astonishing were his grace of pose, his perfect form in every motion, the ease ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... spontaneous rapture so good to see. One night, Nance Pete appeared, and established herself, with great importance, in the first row of the ten-cent seats; but she fell asleep, and snored with embarrassing volume and precision. She never came again, and announced indifferently, to all who cared to hear, that when she "wanted to see a passel o' monkeys, she'd go to the circus, an' done with it." There, too, one night when Comedy burlesqued her own rapt self, was Dana Marden; but he ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... The precision of this gentleman's aim as he expectorated through the open window, and the marvellous rapidity with which he managed his diversion, led me to watch him. He looked tired and cold and ill. It was still dark outside, and the jolting of the train was ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... parts, and not in others—which a person of judgment (in practice) can tell, as it were, instantaneously. I say in practice, because I believe that the best judges out of practice are not able to judge with precision—at least, I am not. We say this beast touches nicely upon its ribs, hips, &c., &c., because we find a mellow, pleasant feel on those parts; but we do not say soft, because there are some of this same sort of animals which have a soft, loose ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... can personate them. In avoiding the declamatory Kembletonianism of the old school, our actors are right enough; but they cannot safely disregard the skill which sharpens and chisels, as it were, the sentences; nor forego the care, study, precision and stern adherence to rules of art, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... which has been given to, and the careful records which have been kept of certain branches of this work, in particular the Lancashire cotton industry, enable us to trace the operation of the new industrial forces here with greater precision than is the case with any other industry. As Schulze-Gaevernitz, in his masterly study, says of the cotton industry—"The English cotton industry is not only the oldest, but is in many respects that modern industry which ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... era, Pythagoras, and after him Philolaus, had suggested the movement of the earth and planets about a central fire; and, three centuries later, Aristarchus had restated the main truth with striking precision. Here comes in a proof that the antagonism between theological and scientific methods is not confined to Christianity; for this statement brought upon Aristarchus the charge of blasphemy, and drew after ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... gentleman. So, the moment he meets a more or less serious adversary, the colossus falls to pieces? Poor young man! Have a glass of water, to bring you round!" Lupin did not utter a word, did not betray a gesture of irritation. With absolute composure, with a precision of movement that showed his perfect self-control and the clear plan of conduct which he had adopted, he gently pushed Daubrecq aside, went to the table and, in his turn, took down the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc |
