"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burn powder. Nor were they deceived in their expectations. They found the Texian militia encamped before the town, which, as well as its adjacent fort of the Alamo, was held by the Mexicans, the Texians were besieging it in the best manner their imperfect means and small numbers would permit. An amusing account is given by Mr Ehrenberg of the camp and proceedings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... manners of the Arabians before the time of Mahomet, we have few and imperfect accounts; but from the remotest ages they led the same unsettled and predatory life which they do at this day, dispersed in hordes, and dwelling under tents. It was not to those wild and wandering tribes that the superb Palmyra owed its rise and grandeur, though situated in the midst ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... forth torrents of eloquence on the Sabbath, and felt the force of a nature exceptionally rich and strong in its conception of religious truths and human needs, only to find him on the morrow floundering hopelessly in the mire of rudimentary science, or getting, by repeated perusals, but an imperfect idea of some author's words, which it seemed to her he ought to have grasped at ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... imaginable. I heard a lady there call a runaway nobleman Profugo mighty prettily; and added, that his conduct had put all the town into orgasmo grande. All this, however, the Tuscans may possibly have in common with them. My knowledge of the language must remain ever too imperfect for me to depend on my own skill in it; all I can assert is, that the Florentines appear, as far as I have been competent to observe, to depend more on their own copious and beautiful language for expression, than the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... opportunities. He had no education at all, but was naturally gifted as an orator. He was quite logical and allegorical in his manner of speaking. I have heard several white people remark, who had listened to his speeches through the imperfect interpreters, that he was as good a speaker as any orator ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... generally, because such an imitation cannot fail to have a tendency to keep the attention fixed on externals rather than on the thought within;—2ndly, because, accordingly, it leads the artist to rest satisfied with that which is always imperfect, namely, bodily form, and circumscribes his views of mental expression to the ideas of power and grandeur only;—3rdly, because it induces an effort to combine together two incongruous things, that is to say, modern feelings in antique forms;—4thly, because ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... it sees in infinite longing for some higher greatness which it has either lost or otherwise cannot reach, finds the art, and the humanity, and the creations, and the affections which seem to others so exquisite most imperfect and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... trim, athletic figure was muffled in a big, double-breasted, woolly overcoat, the collar turned up about his ears. His neat bowler hat was tilted forward so as to shade the fierce blue eyes. Indeed, in that imperfect light, little of the Chief Inspector's countenance was visible except his large, gleaming white teeth, which he constantly revealed in the act of industriously ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... are then clear: (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our passion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life. We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall be attained ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... her judgment, she would have shown a spirit in emergency better adapted to wrestle with the times than had been discovered by His Majesty. Certain it is she was generally esteemed the most proper to be consulted of the two. From the imperfect idea which many of the persons in office entertained of the King's capacity, few of them ever made any communication of importance but to the Queen. Her Majesty never kept a single circumstance from her husband's knowledge, and scarcely decided on the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... writer: one in the Royal Library at Brussels, the second in the Royal Irish Academy Collection (M. 23, 50, pp. 109-120), and the third in possession of Professor Hyde. As the second and third enumerated are copies of one imperfect exemplar it has not been thought necessary to collate both with the Brussels MS. which has furnished the text here printed. M. 23, 50 (R.I.A.) has however been so collated and the marginal references ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... the overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. Duveen found confusion, brewed tea and reported ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... like events must follow like objects, and that the course of nature will always be regular in its operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this nature they surely lie too abstruse for the observation of such imperfect understandings; since it may well employ the utmost care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe them. Animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by reasoning; neither are children; neither are the generality of mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions; ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... everywhere been expressed respecting this first dramatic production of American genius, and the pleasure which it has already afforded in the theatres of New York and Maryland, persuade Mr. Wignell that his excuses on this occasion will be acceptable to the public and that even in so imperfect a dress, the intrinsic merit of the comedy will contribute to the amusement and command the approbation of the audience." Of Wignell and his associates, an excellent impression may be had from a first hand description by W. B. Wood, in ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... great a difference, that you will be as much alarmed as if in the presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... [A very imperfect character of Princess Lieven, with whom Mr. Greville was at this time but slightly acquainted. But in after years he became one of her most intimate and confidential friends, and she frequently reappears in the course ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... to an imperfect stage of society; it has a side of pure brutality. But it is not all brutal. Wordsworth's daring line about "God's most perfect instrument" has a great truth behind it. What examples are to be found in the tales here retold, not merely of heroic ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... a part in most of the longer stories. That is because I believe dreams have a part in real life. Some of them we remember as vividly as any actual experience. These belong to the imperfect sleep. But others we do not remember, because they are given to us in that perfect sleep in which the soul is liberated, and goes visiting. Yet sometimes we get a trace of them, by a happy chance, and often their influence remains with ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... more than one battle, they had been long absent from their farms, their equipment was worn out, the enemy had been driven from Virginia, and they considered that they were fully entitled to some short repose. And amongst these, whose only fault was an imperfect sense of their military obligations, was the residue of cowards and malingerers shed by every great army engaged in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... said: "I am Destilia!" His story was so strange that I asked him a good many questions about it. He answered me quite frankly on every point, but always adhering stoutly to the main point—namely, that it was no phantom or mirage, no dream or imperfect vision in a fog. "We were four in all who saw it," he said—"three from the bridge and the Englishman, Caulfield—from the bows—whose account exactly agreed with what we saw. Captain Mirolani and Falamano and I were all awake and in good trim. We looked with ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... The angel's wings are no longer white, but many coloured as in old times, and there is a touch of humour in the fact that of the six souls in purgatory, four are women and only two men. The expression on Christ's face is very fine, but otherwise the drawing could not well be more imperfect than it is. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... the more strongly wafted ouer. And so by reason of the departure of your ambassadours, all matters remaine in suspense till such time as the sayd ambassadors shall againe meete with ours to adde perfection vnto the busines as yet imperfect. Wherefore (our friend unfainedly beloued) desiring from the bottome of our heart that the integritie of loue, which hath from auncient times taken place betweene our and your subiects, may in time to come also be kept inuiolable, we haue thought good once again to send one of our foresaid ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... flung it off, with the results upon the body of the original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the Highlanders," by Dr. James Browne, in his "History of the Highlands," and by John S. Keltie, in his "History of the Scottish Highlands." Even Lieutenant-General Samuel Graham, who was a captain in the 76th, in his "Memoirs," gives but a slight account of his regiment. So a very imperfect view can only be expected in ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... that has been wrought by war among the people. It is the populace who suffer, even in greater degree than do the fighting men. They must give way in every instance before the irresistible barrier of martial law. It is the old men, the women, the children, the babies and the physically imperfect who must bear ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... methods of striking a light were very primitive, just as they were in Europe; many families possessed no adequate means, or very imperfect ones. If by ill fortune the fire in the fireplace became wholly extinguished through carelessness at night, some one, usually a small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor, bearing a shovel or covered pan, or perhaps a broad strip of green bark, on which to ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... I gained by my laborious researches but an humbling conviction of my weakness and ignorance! Of how little has man, at his best estate, to boast! What folly in him to glory in his contracted powers, or to value himself upon his imperfect acquisitions!" ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... M. Maeterlinck's youth and a greater ghoulishness in the verse of Mr. Hardy's youth. It is of Mr. Hardy's verses that one thinks oftenest as one reads these verses of Synge, and not only because of certain likenesses in subject-matter, but because of the imperfect mastery of both over the verse forms and a certain epigrammatic gnomic quality common to both. The verses of Synge are not relatively so important in comparison with the rest of his writing as Mr. Hardy's verses are in comparison with the rest of his writing, for they are ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the jury, this document does not convict the unfortunate man at the bar; and what appears like an admission of guilt is only to be attributed to his imperfect mode of expressing himself. He admits that he partook of certain brandy stated to be the captain's, which the captain, himself, however, would lead you to suppose had been provided by me. The witness who has been examined throws ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... only be procured in England, he gave the order to a Birmingham firm, which engined his first successful boat, the "Clermont," launched on the Hudson in 1807. But for the war, perhaps, Fulton would have continued to live in Paris and made his third attempt there. He certainly never offered his imperfect steamship to the First Consul. Probably the fact that his first boat foundered when at anchor in the Seine would have procured him a rough reception, if he had offered to equip the whole of the Boulogne flotilla ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... elapsed before the first of them was even announced. When Washington, on May 1, 1789, began his duties, there was absolutely nothing of the government of the United States in existence but a President and a Congress. The imperfect and broken machinery of the confederation still moved feebly, and performed some of the absolutely necessary functions of government. But the new organization had nothing to work with except these outworn remnants of a discarded system. There were no departments, and no arrangements for ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... ordinary conventional map with dots and lines and green seas and tell him to revaluate that geographic scene in his or her own terms. The mountains will be a bit out of gear and the cities will look astonishingly mediaeval. The outlines will be often very imperfect, but the general effect will be quite as truthful as that of our conventional maps, which ever since the days of good Gerardus Mercator have told a strangely erroneous story. Most important of all, it will give the child a feeling of intimacy ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... recently dead] on whose word I wholly relay'd. But now every thing comes far short of my expectations. I am now to aquent you that Alexr. [Lochgarry] meet me here, by order, to desire my proceeding to Venice [Ld. Marshal] as every thing without that trip will be imperfect. All I can say at this distance and in so precarious a situation is that I find they play Mrs. Strange [the Highlanders] hard and fast. They expect a large quantity of the very best Brasile snuff [the Clans] from hir, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... and set them in places of honour in the day when He 'makes up His jewels'? There are cups of cold water and widows' mites and much else that a supercilious world would call 'trash' stored there. Thank God! He accepts imperfect service, faltering faith, partial consecration, a little love. Even our poor offering may be an 'odour of a sweet smell,' ministering fragrance that is a delight to Him, if it is offered with the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the manufacturer will have the double advantage of the lowest market price, and the privilege of returning those that are imperfect. In connection with the above, I am manufacturing the usual style of PENHOLDER, together with my PATENT EXTENSION PENHOLDER with PENCIL. All orders thankfully received, and punctually attended to. A. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... of the true artist for ever labors to evolve the beautiful. This is what the thought of a picture means to him—how to express beauty, which he finds underlying even the imperfect individual of Nature's decaying birth. To the high insight this is always discernible. None are so fallen that some ray of God's light may not touch them, and this possibility, the faith in light for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... inwoven with a minute study of peasant life and character, Auerbach's popular reputation was established. His plan of making ethics the chief end of a novel was here exhibited at its best; he never again showed the same force of conception which got his imperfect literary art forgiven. Another long novel, not less doctrinaire in scope, but dealing with quite different materials and problems, 'Das Landhaus am Rhein' (The Villa on the Rhine), was issued in 1868; and was followed by 'Waldfried,' ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... slow and imperfect method have been made of late years, among the earlier of which was that of Messrs. Newbery and Vautin. They placed the pulp with water in a gaslight revolving cylinder, into which the chlorine was introduced, and ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... said, men whose prison records are clear are liberated after serving two-thirds of their original sentences. But part or all of this abridgment may be lost by imperfect conduct. One man, at least, within my knowledge, was punished by the dark hole several months before the expiration of his original sentence, and was kept there until that sentence had expired. Then, out of that filthy dungeon he was thrust abruptly forth into broad daylight and the crowded ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Revolution witnessed, and it was due in a great measure to men who hastened to the spoil like vultures to their prey. If the army has not in advanced, if proper weapons are not even yet ready, let the reader reflect how much the army is still crippled owing to imperfect supplies, and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... work, and whenever the captain and his mates took an observation, I took one also, although I was, I must own, at first very far from correct. Sometimes my observation was imperfect; at other times I made mistakes in ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, Estetica di Croce, a ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Christianity do not make the precepts of the Bible their rule of life, or they do so only in a very imperfect way, and thus scandal is brought upon the name of Christ, whose servants they profess to be. But it is self-evident that he who obeys the Bible in sincerity and truth is thus made a thoroughly good man; good in his inward ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... being granted, as well as the proposition that mental phenomena are variable, and that the modifications are inheritable, the possibility of the several most complicated instincts being slowly acquired was considered, and it was shown from the very imperfect series in the instincts of the animals now existing, that we are not justified in prima facie rejecting a theory of the common descent of allied organisms from the difficulty of imagining the transitional stages in the various now most ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... propitious and suitable for the immediate consummation of the union, with the express object of letting you have a certain insight into the fact that if the condition of the abode of spirits within the confines of Fairyland be still so (imperfect), how much the more so should be the nature of the affections which prevail in the dusty world; with the intent that from this time forth you should positively break loose from bondage, perceive and amend your former disposition, devote ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as a man would struggle who is attacked by a wild dog. I think that he did not explain the cause of his hatred, though, of course, my memory as to what took place at that moment is disturbed and imperfect; but I did know in my heart why it was that he ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... fascinating trains of reflexion, what colour and substance would therewith have been deducted from it, filled as it is, apart from the more aweful associations of the Christian ritual, apart from Galahad's cup, with all the various symbolism of the fruit of the vine. That supposed loss is but an imperfect measure of all that the name of Dionysus recalled to the Greek mind, under a single imaginable form, an outward body of flesh presented to the senses, and comprehending, as its animating soul, a whole world of thoughts, surmises, greater ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... which is the rightful indulgence of a man who has written a volume on the rules of evidence, "that 'poor in spirit' undoubtedly means unassuming, rightly satisfied with what is their due, mindful of the fact that human nature is so imperfect that whatever a man obtains is probably more than he deserves. They cannot be the meek, for special allusion is made to the meek in this same group of specially designated persons. Neither can it refer to people who are usually called poor-spirited persons, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Trusting to them how imperfect must have been a reported speech! And relying on those who transferred their speeches to a different language, we have little assurance of any thing better than mutilated transcripts of the original. Need we be surprised then, to find in Red ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... Savage and the Shopkeeper at Monboddo[615], will probably impute to the spirit of contradiction, I still think that he had better have given more attention to fewer things, than have thrown together such a number of imperfect accounts. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... leader, in imperfect English, grasping the hands held out in salutation, while his actions were imitated by the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... common between the two by which God can be mediated, and so makes him wholly incomprehensible. Christianity gives us Emmanuel, God with us, equally removed from the stern despotic omnipotence of the Semitic monotheism and the finite and imperfect humanities of Olympus. We see God in Christ, as full of sympathy with man, God "in us all"; and yet we see him in nature, providence, history, as "above all" and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized religion too far. For every god and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... him go, and yet, because I am not fully in the Light, I would have him stay. All that is in my heart is plain to you—my fears, my joys, my imperfect faith. I ask for help; I ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a fly-blown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the inhabitants, and to divide them into three classes,—of moderate men, of royalists, and of parliamentarians. The design had been communicated to Lord Falkland, the king's secretary; but it remained in this imperfect state, when it was revealed to Pym by the perfidy or patriotism of a servant, who had overheard the discourse of his master.[a] Waller, Tomkins his brother-in-law, and half-a-dozen others, were immediately secured; and an annunciation was made to the two houses of "the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... description. You will understand it better, perhaps, if you experiment a little. You can easily make a pair for yourself, rude and imperfect, it is true, but good enough for all the tests you ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sat there within our own memory. There would seem to each of us to be a personal affront were a departed relative delineated with all those faults by which we must own that even our near relatives have been made imperfect. It is a general conviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of those recently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious charity which is enjoined by the de mortuis nil nisi bonum banishes truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads me at this moment to put down my pen. ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... of its property of being easily split into planks, or pieces of light scantling, that the deodar was selected for making the sides of the ladders. To have cut down the trunks of heavy trees to the proper thickness for light ladders—with such imperfect implements as they were possessed of—would have been an interminable work for our inexperienced carpenters. The little axe of Ossaroo and the knives were the only tools they possessed available for the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... three deities which the Indians represent by one idol, with three heads growing out of one body, with this mysterious signification, that they all proceed from the same principle. By which it may be inferred, that in former times they have heard of Christianity; and that their religion is an imperfect imitation, or rather a corruption ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... woman's life would pass without it—for woman's life is long, alas! if love comes not. But you were love's self, and I worshipped you and it; and to myself I said—praying forgiveness on my knees—that one woman should know love if I did not. And being so poor and imperfect a thing, what mattered if I gave my soul for you—and love, which is so great, and rules the world. Look at the doves, sister, look at them, flying past the heavenly blueness—and she said I did ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in embryo, embryonic, immature, abeyant, embryo, imperfect; atrophied, dwarfed, rudimentary, stunted, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... our globe. Even the dullest could not fail to comprehend; and well satisfied with the result of her experiment, she carefully put her planets by in one corner of the schoolroom, and proceeded with her questions. The imperfect recitation finished, Mary glanced across the room, hoping her cousin's patience was not so tried, and some brilliant coruscations in that direction fixed her attention. Florence had dropped her aching head on the desk in front, shading ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... head cook, could give no information whatever. When the alarm was given, he had rushed, with the other servants, to the scene of the murder, and in his imperfect English, accompanied by expressive French gestures, he tried to convey his horror and grief at the situation, but that ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... subject in French and German (of which a tolerably full list is appended to this treatise), so many topics of interest presented themselves for the historical student that I determined to publish a connected history of the country, however imperfect it might be, from the earliest times down to the present day. And in this I was further encouraged by the fact that the attempt has not yet been made in English, excepting in a very perfunctory manner in Consul Wilkinson's ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... where he thought he would alight if he dropped from the comet then in the sky. "Oh," said he, naming the open space nearest his own residence, "somewhere about Finsbury Circus." That man's astronomical notions were very imperfect, but they were quite as good as those of the person who seriously wrote, and of the persons who seriously believe, this fairy tale of the star which heralded ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... had stood in the centre of that close ring of jeering and humorous bystanders—a baffling text from which to have preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient sacred magnificence; and never had the mockery seemed so fine as at this ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... constrained by will and obedience in turn. Hence by the light which it has from will, matter moves toward will and desires it; but when it receives form, it lacks nothing necessary for knowing and desiring it, and nothing remains for it to seek for. For example, in the morning the air has an imperfect splendor from the sun; but at noon it has a perfect splendor, and there remains nothing for it to demand of the sun. Hence the desire for the first motion is a likeness between all substances and the first Maker, because it is impressed upon all things ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... it is therefore our duty to supply them with cheap and amusing literature, to entertain them during the few hours they are disengaged from work. And what reading can afford the Irish Catholic greater pleasure than any work, however imperfect, having for its end the exaltation and defence of his glorious old faith, and the vindication of his native land—his beloved "Erin-go-bragh"? Impress on his susceptible mind the honor and advantage of defence and fidelity to the CROSS and the SHAMROCK, and you give him ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... opportunity to relate an anecdote, connected with the drawing, in which my worthy and amiable friend, Mr. Shannon, a clergyman of Edinburgh, and a very popular preacher there, but who is now no more, took a chief part. I had lost the original drawing of the junction of the Murray, and having very imperfect vision at the time I was publishing, I was unable to sketch another. It so happened that Mr. Shannon, who sketched exceedingly well with the pen, came to pay me a visit, when I asked him to try and repair my loss, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney. For the ideal of the dog is feudal and religious; the ever-present polytheism, the whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the other, their singular difference of size and strength ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the carnation which mantled on her cheek, whilst her fair, silken, luxuriant tresses, and the peculiar limpidity of her glance, added to many other charms, made her more like an angel—so far as our imperfect nature allows of our imagining such a being—than a mere woman." Somewhat later, the smallpox, in robbing her of the bloom of her beauty, still left her all its brilliancy, to repeat the remark of that eminent connoisseur of female ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... brought into rapport or correspondence with the more elevated ideas of the spirit. The spirit, too, in frequent instances, is unable to prevent its energizing influences from being diverted by the reactive power of the medium into the channels of the imperfect types of thought and expression that are established in his mind, and it is for this simple reason that the communication is as you say often tinctured with the peculiarities of the medium, and even sometimes is nothing more than a reproduction ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... ship?" inquired Charley, in his imperfect English and little innocent fashion. "Where we got to? Why not give me hot tea? ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... literally "made in Congress." Stanton grimly made the best of it, though he unwaveringly condemned some of its most conspicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve his blunder of the previous year, and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, the Conscription Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him to replace the wastage of the Union armies and steadily to augment them. At the close of the war, the Union had on foot a million ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... sense of touch is uncultivated. When they look at things, they put their hands in their pockets. No doubt that is one reason why their knowledge is often so vague, inaccurate, and useless. It is probable, too, that our knowledge of phenomena beyond the reach of the hand is equally imperfect. But, at all events, we behold them through a golden ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... you have kept the best to the last. I have heard that song several times, but never 'listened to the mocking-bird' after all. The song in itself is beautiful, but, after hearing you whistle, I see that it is imperfect with the mocking-bird left out. This is rather a cold climate for that species of bird, Miss Sherwood, but I shall give a Halifax audience the pleasure of hearing one, if I have to import one from the South on purpose for the occasion. To-morrow at three o'clock, remember, Mr. Gurney, and ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the son of Peleus. I, too, could fight with words even with the immortals, but with the spear it is difficult, for they are far more powerful. Nor shall Achilles give effect to all his words; but one part he shall fulfil, and the other leave half imperfect. Against him will I go, even though he were like to fire as to his hands; and to shining iron, as to ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... John Duthy, Esq.; and from it large extracts were made in The History and Antiquities of Winchester, 1773. Bishop Nicolson guesses that it was too voluminous, and Bishop Kennett that it was too imperfect to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... dedicated to "Her sacred Majesty Katherine, Queen Dowager of England," by the same; another is dedicated to "Her Royal Highness Ann, Princess of Denmark;" and other plates are dedicated to various Lincolnshire worthies, some of these are rather damaged, and the fine old bible is imperfect. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... father-in-law, Agricola (cf. Sec. 3: honori Agricolae, mei soceri, destinatus). So far from apologizing for writing the life of so near a friend, he feels assured that his motives will be appreciated and his design approved, however imperfect may be its execution; and he deems an apology necessary for having so long delayed the performance of that filial duty. After an introduction of singular beauty and appropriateness (cf. notes), he sketches a brief outline of the parentage, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... had given the slip at Dundee during the night of October 22 and who was known to be endeavouring to overtake him. Erasmus was believed to be acting from the direction of Elandslaagte; but fortunately for Yule his movements were not judiciously directed and his information was imperfect. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... asked you if it was shady," I cried; and then it occurred to me that, in spite of my studies at Brandscombe and out here, my Hindustani was very imperfect, for the man smiled in a deprecatory way which seemed to mean that he hoped my lord would not be angry with him ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... such profound knowledge to discover the present imperfect condition of the sciences, but even the rabble without doors may, judge from the noise and clamour, which they hear, that all goes not well within. There is nothing which is not the subject of debate, and in which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... but that their ordering of the Fable has nothing in't of Delicacy, nor is the manner of their Writing proportionable to the dignity of the Subject. For Sannazarius he's indeed so faulty, that one can hardly with Patience read him, the whole Structure of his imperfect Piece, de partu, being built on Heathen Fable; yet he has great and vigorous Thoughts and very Poetical Expressions, tho' therein Vida far excels him, whose Thoughts are so noble, and the Air of his Stile so great, that the Elogy ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... of government Cromwell had formerly extolled as the most perfect work of human invention: he now represented it as a rotten plank, upon which no man could trust himself without sinking. Even the humble petition and advice, which he extolled in its turn, appeared so lame and imperfect, that it was found requisite, this very session, to mend it by a supplement; and after all, it may be regarded as a crude and undigested model of government. It was, however, accepted for the voluntary deed of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the approach of Satan when he fell from Heaven. Some of its features are no doubt borrowed from the legendary accounts which Pliny and others have preserved of a great mountain seen by navigators to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar; these accounts being probably based on imperfect descriptions of Atlas or Teneriffe, or both confused together. Its summit is exactly at the Antipodes of Jerusalem, a point which must be carefully borne in mind if the various astronomical indications of time given in the course of the journey are ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... mother was I have already said enough to show, as far as my imperfect words can show it, in divers passages of these reminiscences. She was the happiest natured person I ever knew—happy in the intense power of enjoyment, happier still in the conscious exercise of the power of making others happy; and this continued ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... return, he had been easily got to believe that the picture brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood's drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ribbon, and uniform of the Guard, quite ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sophistry, you say—yet listen: look you skyward, there 'tis known Worlds on worlds in myriads glisten—larger, lovelier than our own— This has been, and this still shall be, here as there, in sun or star; These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are. Man in man's imperfect nature is by imperfection taught: Add one cubit to your stature if ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Individuals embarked in various enterprises; now no longer consociated with others in mutual cooeperation, but for their individual benefit. Thus competitive industry gradually supplanted the old method of cooeperative or associated industry, as seen in its crude and imperfect form, and the inauguration of the false and selfish system ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... him, both at home and in Washington, during those years when he needed help. She had not broken down until after the birth of his daughter, but that was twenty years ago, and she had been an invalid ever since. He spoke of this long period of imperfect happiness in a matter-of-fact way, and Betty assumed that by this time he was used to it. He alluded to his wife once as "a very dear old friend," but Betty guessed that she was nearly obliterated from his life. Of his sons he expected great things, but the larger measure of his affections ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... convince us that philosophers should be content with a more modest attitude than they have sometimes adopted; give up the pretensions to framing off-hand theories of things in general, and be content to puzzle out a few imperfect truths which may slowly work their way into the general structure of thought. I wish to speak humbly as befits one who cannot claim any particular authority for his opinion. But, in all humility, I ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... could be more easily trained and incited by God's fear and commandments than by any other means. Yet where these do not help, we must endure that they do the good and leave the evil for the sake of shame and of honor, just as we must also endure wicked men or the imperfect, of whom we spoke above; nor can we do more than tell them that their works are not satisfactory and right before God, and so leave them until they learn to do right for the sake of God's commandments also. Just as young children are induced to pray, fast, learn, etc., ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... unwilling to attempt its conversion, he offered the task to Otto of Bamberg who, although an old man, undertook it with the consent of the Pope and the Emperor. He paid two visits—in 1124 and 1128—both to Western Pomerania, and established the bishopric of Wollin. The conversion was naturally imperfect, but the country never relapsed. The fierce islanders of Rgen could not then be touched, but ultimately gave way in 1168 before the combined secular and spiritual weapons of the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... hundred Dutch ships, in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times; there was no need to cruise. Coppers and boilers were fitted on the island, and little colonies about them, in the fishing season, had nothing to do but tow the ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... power, the value of the mixing-tube being no more than that of the smallest part. If the mixing-tube is upright, new sources of interference comes in; notably the varying specific gravity of the mixture. Except with one definite gas supply, the result is always more or less imperfect, and regular proportions cannot be obtained. This is now so well known that the upright form has been practically discarded for many years, and is now only used where the peculiar necessities of the case give some ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendency, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... and shapely, like a fair Greek statue, for a moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water, and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his arms and turned him deftly ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... realities which abide. Goodness has slowly proved itself in the world,—is every day proving itself,—like a light broadening in darkness!—to be that to which reason tends, in which it realises itself. And, if so, goodness here, imperfect and struggling as we see it always, must be the mere shadow and hint of that goodness which is in God!—and the utmost we can conceive of human tenderness, holiness, truth, though it tell us all we know, can yet suggest ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... meant to designate that which has no real existence. Indeed, if 114:18 a better word or phrase could be suggested, it would be used; but in expressing the new tongue we must sometimes recur to the old and imperfect, and the new 114:21 wine of the Spirit has to be poured into the old bottles of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... for a tenant, so that the tenant need not go to the landlord to thank him and feel patronised by him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks there." "The landlord," added the speaker in his imperfect English, "has entirely hided himself from the business." A third of the tenants had ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the end of a very imperfect day for Mr. Philip Kendrick. As he descended the stairs to the Canoe Club his thoughts were troubled. At that hour there was nobody about, but he let himself in with a special key which he carried for such contingencies. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Lord Glenallan, "will be at present, I fear, impossible. She is exhausted herself, and surrounded by her distressed family. To-morrow, perhaps, when she is aloneand yet I doubt, from her imperfect sense of right and wrong, whether she would speak out in any one's presence but my own. I ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that the public should be thoroughly enlightened on the subject of education. Everybody is talking about education,—the advantages of education, the necessity of education; and yet almost all have come to use the word in its narrowest and most imperfect meaning, as implying mere cultivation of the intellectual faculties, and even this is done in the most superficial manner, by cramming the mind with facts, instead of making it reflect and reason. The great majority even of those who write upon ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... variety that we draw back almost aghast at the mere list of their names. The world has grown wiser too, and where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, anatural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realizing the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition,—difficulties, not of man's own making, but, as I firmly believe, prepared for him, and not without ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... grades of assimilation of the Kayan culture. Some, which in the lives of the older men were still nomadic, still build very poor houses and boats, cultivate PADI very imperfectly, and generally exhibit the Kayan culture in a very imperfect state. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Telegraph, in all its essential points, is tested to my own satisfaction and that of the scientific gentlemen who have seen it; but the machinery (all which, from its peculiar character, I have been compelled to make myself) is imperfect, and before it can be perfected I have reason to fear that other nations will take the hint and rob me both of the credit and the profit. There are indications of this in the foreign journals lately received. I have a defender in the 'Journal of Commerce' (which I send ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ourselves, our own slowness of progress, our own feeble resolutions, our own wayward hearts, our own vacillating wills, our many temptations, our many corruptions, our many follies, we may well say to ourselves, 'Will there ever be any greater completeness in this terribly imperfect Christian character of mine than there is to-day?' Let us be of good cheer, and not think only of ourselves, but much rather of Him who works on and in and for us. If we lift up our hearts to Him, and keep ourselves near Him, and let Him work, He will work. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... exact from them, in any case, more duties than those of a contemplative life; and, in reality, there are now but few of those convents of nuns whose inmates dedicate themselves to the task of giving to persons of their own sex even the imperfect and limited education which, after all, forms no part of that useful ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... grandeur of purpose, all nobility of thought, and all beauty of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up. Then the dexterous management of a few individuals, base or dull, was the only means of success. But we live in a different age: there are popular sympathies, however imperfect, to appeal to; we must recur to the high primeval practice, and address nations now as the heroes, and prophets, and legislators of antiquity. If you wish to free your country, and make the Syrians a nation, it is not to be done by ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... man he had given a great deal of study and a great deal of hard labor. The result was that he had shaped himself into something like an old-fashioned country clergyman, without his education, his manners, his religion, or his clothes. Imperfect similitudes of these Stephen Petter had acquired, but this was as far as he had gone. A well-read man who happened also to be a good judge of human nature could have traced back every obvious point of Stephen Petter's character to some English author ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... imperfect as is the condition of barbarous states, still what is there to overthrow them? They have a principle of union congenial to the state of their intellect, and they have not the ratiocinative habit ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... most simple to the most compound, depart from the most imperfect animalcule and ascend along the scale up to the animal richest in structure and faculties; constantly preserve the order of relation in the group, then you will hold the true thread which connects all the productions of nature; you will have a just idea of its progress, and you will be convinced ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense of failure, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of the south coast properly charted, and he determined that Grant should return in the Lady Nelson and thoroughly survey it. King also made an eye-sketch of the land, for he saw that Grant's chart was imperfect. For that reason he sent Ensign Barrallier, of the New South Wales Corps, who was a competent surveyor, in the brig, and it is, chiefly, to Barrallier we are indebted for our earliest and most authentic charts of the places which the Lady Nelson ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... have been termed, by Mr. Locke, modes, substances, and relations, but they seem only to differ in their degree of abstraction from the complex ideas that were at first excited; for as these complex or natural ideas are themselves imperfect copies of their correspondent perceptions, so these abstract or general ideas are only still more imperfect copies of the same perceptions. Thus when I have seen an object but once, as a rhinoceros, my abstract ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... carpenter. Indeed there is about the whole scene the spirit of scene-shifting. It therefore touches whatever nerve in us has since childhood thrilled at all theatrical things. But the picture will be imperfect unless we realise something which gives it unity and marks its chief difference from the climate and colours of Western Europe. We may say that the back-scene remains the same. The sky remained, and in the depths of winter it seemed to be blue with summer; and so ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... speed under steam alone, at sea, was 8.6, and under sail alone, 10.1 knots; her mean performance under steam and sail, 8.226; and considering the imperfect form of boiler employed, and the small amount of fuel consumed, it may be doubted if this has since been much excelled. She worked and steered well under canvas or steam alone, or under both combined; was dry and weatherly, but pitched heavily, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... taste also for mechanics. He conceived the idea of making a timepiece, a clock, and about the year 1770 constructed one. With his imperfect tools, and with no other model than a borrowed watch, it had cost him long and patient labor to perfect it, to make the variation necessary to cause it to strike the hours, and produce a concert of correct action ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... low dispersive power of water masks, as Helmholtz has remarked, the imperfect achromatism of the eye. With the naked eye I can see a distant blue disk sharply defined, but not a red one. I can also see the lines which mark the upper and lower boundaries of a horizontally refracted spectrum sharp ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... it to him, mother?" said Jock. "I should think he was quite to be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead him away from ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been devised with a design of robbing its writings of every natural charm, as the best means of making men feel its supernatural power. The fresh sense of "letters" disappears in this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of the text. The larger divisions into chapters have been made in an ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton |
