"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... articles characteristic of this especial period. What a dream of Science that, interstellary communication established, some being of knowledge and capacities as infinitely excelling our own as our faculties excel those of the lowly monad, wandering on this terrestrial globe, and culling from the imperfect archives of these bygone years a corkscrew, an opera-glass, or, perchance, a pot of long since petrified marmalade, preserved intact by some protecting incrustation of stalagmite from the ravages of time, may dart a penetrating gleam of intelligence through the dark abysses of innumerable ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... It was not, however, until five hours after the time assigned by Kepler that the transit of Mercury actually commenced. Gassendi's preparations had been made with all the resources which he could command, but these resources seem very imperfect when compared with the appliances of our modern observatories. He was anxious to note the time when the planet appeared, and for this purpose he had stationed an assistant in the room beneath, who was to observe the altitude of the sun at the moment indicated by Gassendi. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Europe, prior to his time, to investigate the history of man according to those exhaustive methods which in other branches of Knowledge have proved successful, and by which alone empirical observations can be raised to scientific truths, the imperfect state of the Physical Sciences necessarily rendered the execution of such an undertaking extremely defective. It was not, indeed, until the vast mass of Facts which make up the body of the various Sciences had been included within appropriate formulae, and until the elaborate Classification ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... still imperfect," said the third blind man. "He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... purchased ripe and sound; it is poor economy to buy imperfect or decayed kinds, as they are neither satisfactory nor healthy eating; while the mature, full-flavored sorts are invaluable ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... self-hypnotized subjects is that they carry out perfectly their own ideals of the personality with whom they believe themselves to be possessed. If their own ideals of the part they are playing are imperfect, their impersonations are ridiculous in the extreme. One man I remember believed himself to be controlled by the spirit of Charles Sumner. Being uneducated, he used the most wretched English, and his language was utterly devoid of sense. While, on the other hand, a very intelligent ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... of the rough, careless, imperfect record which I have kept of my life. As I run my fingers through the pages of the limp morocco-covered volume, I almost wonder at my wasted labour;—the random notes, jotted down now and then, sometimes with long intervals between their dates, make such a mass of worthless literature. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... progress was about sixty miles a day. I could not help contrasting this with journeys I have made on the Mississippi at the rate of two hundred miles in twenty-four hours. A government boat has no occasion to hurry like a private one, and the pilot's imperfect knowledge of the Amoor operates against rapidity. In time I presume the Siberian boats will increase ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... but one thing. His recollections of that time are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He won finally and duly delivered the eighteen copies—letter-perfect. Probably five hundred other and imperfect examples of the Weekly Eagle found ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... higher revelation which He has given of Himself in the Gospel." (Is this meant as an insult to "the Divine Being?" or simply as a slur on Revelation? Either way, we reject the charge with indignation[229].)—"It is not inconsistent with imperfect or opposite aspects of the Truth, as in the Book of Job or Ecclesiastes:" (Nothing which comes from GOD should be called "imperfect:" but why different aspects of the Truth should not be brought out, by different writers, as by St. Paul and by James,—it is hard to see.)—"With ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... plates. They might have an eye to life, as well as capital, in buying heavy grindstones. I have traced the death of one grinder to the master's avarice: he went to the quarry and bought a stone for thirty-five shillings the quarry-master had set aside as imperfect; its price would have been sixty shillings if it had been fit to trust a man's life to. This master goes to church twice a Sunday, and is much respected by his own sort: yet he committed a murder for twenty-five ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave but an imperfect attention to the ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... viscera are sometimes found in their graves in the Sixth Dynasty, but are, as a rule, empty, being mere dummy vases. Even in the Middle Empire, the preservation of the bodies of the better classes was extremely imperfect. The bundles of wrappings have kept their form to the present day and it seems as if the mummy were still intact; but an examination of the interior shows only loose bones. Successful mummification appears among better-class ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... years, been working against a problem that I recognized called for all—yes, and more, than—I had to give it. For I have been endeavoring, through my own imperfect attainments, to translate into undeniable language on the Labrador Coast, the message of God's personal fatherhood over and love for the humblest of His creatures. During these years, often of overwork, I have considered it worth while ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... decreased twelve per cent. But whatever may be the variations in the mere quantity of urine voided under the influence of alcohol, the alterations in quality pretty uniformly show an increase in the products of imperfect internal metamorphosis or oxidation, such as uric acid, oxalates, casts, leucocytes, albumen and potassium, with less of the normal products, as ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... and an outsider than it would be to a resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little—it has been often said—of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; he leaves out less; he is disturbed by no apprehensions ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... constructed. How he conceived this process has never been satisfactorily explained. He traced the various forms and phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and essence. The "Monad," or UNIT, he regarded as the source of all numbers. The number TWO was imperfect, and the cause of increase and division. THREE was called the number of the whole, because it had a beginning, middle, and end; FOUR, representing the square, is in the highest degree perfect; and TEN, as it contains the sum of the first three prime numbers (23510. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... "land-sharks"—shrewd adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides. Most of the purchases were either altogether fictitious, or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices. Many of the deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, "no consideration specified"! A hundred acres were bought for a farthing. Boundaries were inserted ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... 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, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... get him to talk of it to the eager listener—he passes from the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French. But as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques make a quick expression of dissent. He smiled. He had made some mistake in detail. Now, Jacques had been in his young ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Although I hated myself even for thinking such a thing, still, while I looked at the woman before me, the idea would force itself into my mind that one sad change, in the future, was all that was wanting to make the likeness complete, which I now saw to be so imperfect in detail. If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie's face, then, and then only, Anne Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance, the living ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... generation makes upon another in the observance of its precepts. One who has read the old Penitential books and observed the evidences they afford of the vitality of heathen practices and rites among the people in England in the early Middle Ages will not be too harsh in characterizing the still imperfect fruits of the Catholic missions of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... the civilization of the heathen. Had he been a Presbyterian merchant, of a religious turn, it is probable a quantity of tracts would have been made to answer the purpose; but, belonging to a sect whose practice was generally as perfect as its theory is imperfect, Friend Abraham White's conscience was not to be satisfied with any such shallow contrivance. It is true that he expected to make many thousands of dollars by the voyage, and doubtless would so have done, had not the accident befallen the ship, or had poor Captain Crutchely drank less in honour ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... art descends as a tradition from father to son, or of the mere trade-guild. Of these early industries we know little but the stray notices of Pausanias, often ambiguous, always of doubtful credibility. What we do see, through these imperfect notices, is a real period of animated artistic activity, richly rewarded. Byzes of Naxos, for instance, is recorded as having first adopted the plan of sawing marble into thin plates for use on the roofs of temples instead of tiles; and that his name has come down to us at all, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the Syndicate there was great satisfaction. The news received was incorrect and imperfect, but it was evident that, so far, everything ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... Judging from the imperfect report of the debate upon the subject, it would seem that the bargain relative to the slave trade, made in the Constitutional Convention of two years before between New England and the two southernmost States, might still hold good. Or there may have been a new ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Not adequately, only by imperfect hints. These two faced each other, Rosa and the apparition. She uttered no word. But I, in my stupor, knew that she was interceding with the spectre for my life. Her lovely eyes spoke to it of its old love, its old magnanimity, and in ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... in broken Persian and blushing deeply: "Blessed be the gods, who have caused me to find favor in thine eyes. I am not ignorant of the speech of my lord, for the noble Croesus has instructed me in the Persian language during our long journey. Forgive, if my sentences be broken and imperfect; the time was short, and my capacity only that of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to Himself the possibilities of His being God must limit that being. There is no other way in which the fullest self-realisation can be attained. Thus we get two modes of God,—the infinite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being; and the finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited being of which we are ourselves expressions. And yet these two are one, and the former is the guarantee that the latter shall not fail in the purpose for which it became limited. Thus to the question, Why a finite universe? I should ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... even if it were unique, it ought to be accounted for. It is far easier to indulge in broad generalizations than to devote oneself to a close study of nature or man. It is not the rules, it is the exceptions which ought to retain our attention, for only exceptions will teach us how imperfect ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... into rebellion; and in this has lain perpetually a delusive encouragement to the hostility of Spain and France, whilst to her own children, it is the one great snare which besets their feet. This great evil of imperfect possession—if now it is almost past healing in its general operation as an engine of civilization, and as applied to the social training of the people—is nevertheless open to relief as respects any purpose of the Government, towards which there may be reason to anticipate a martial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... bronze monument to Lord Nelson, the joint production of Wyat and Westmacott. Death is laying his hand upon the hero's heart, and Victory is placing a fourth crown on his sword. Ever since I read Southey's Life of Nelson, I have felt an interest in every thing relating to this great; yet imperfect man. You know that illustrated work on Nelson that we have so often looked at it contains a large engraving of this monument. As Yankee boys, we found our way to the top of the Exchange, to look at the cotton sales-room. This same room has more ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... I misdoubt my pen of its task, and fear that, when you shall have read these pages, you shall, at best, have caught but a very imperfect reflection of Charmian ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... c[oe]lum." "Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinae." At another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. He will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with the next best. He must shake hands with the imperfect, as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. In obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "Rem si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." In ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... it, if I could," said the other prince, in much slower, and more imperfect English. "It grieves me much. My purse has little, but here ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hind-leg off. He began to tell me about Peter of Lombardy and the great adept Zacharias, and of the blessed Terra Foliata, or Land of Leaves, where Gold is sown to be radically Dissolved in order to its Putrefaction and Regermination in a Fixation which has Power over its Brethren the Imperfect Metals, and makes them like unto itself; and this process (which I believe to have been only a story about a Cock and a Bull) he called Re-incrudation. In fact my Gentleman almost talked me out of my Senses: and as I thought him a monstrous clever Man, I lent him (although ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of Delvile were as vehement as had been his entreaties, which yet, however, were not at an end; the concession she had made was imperfect, unless its performance were immediate, and he now endeavoured to prevail with her to be his before the ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... about the imperfect code of human justice under which we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the Consolidated Tractions Company—I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but imperfect information as to the formalities in use in the Vehmic tribunals. But we know that the sittings were invested with a certain solemnity and pomp. A naked sword—emblematical of justice, and recalling ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... independence ... but Christianity tended somewhat, from the very first, to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted these rules concerning the position of woman which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization.... No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions, is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... you, though I wish them to tell the truth. They will make me out an ass or a madman. I am neither. For eighteen years I have scarcely spoken as many words. A word or two of Sanscrit now and then has met my needs, thank God! There is an interior language for which speech is an imperfect medium. Through that interior language thought is communicated directly and truthfully. I used it long before I came here—imperfectly, to be sure, but with a small degree of satisfaction to myself. Through it I was able to heal the sick when others failed. I knew how they ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... than to do a penance which may do violence to some of his cherished convictions. In this world we ofttimes have to choose, not between absolute right and wrong, but between two courses, neither of which is perfect; and then we are forced to consider which is the less imperfect of the two. I trow that Anthony has made a wise choice; but if to you it seems not so, I pray you blame me rather than him, for I did plead with him more than once, and right earnestly, to take this way. I did use your name also, and begged ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... plums, peaches and apricots, they had grown with the freedom of the oaks and beeches in the forest, whose breadth and thickness they seemed to envy. The sap, completely absorbed by the branches which were many and vigorous, produced but little fruit, and that imperfect. By the rustle of the tall grass, Sir John and Roland divined that the lizards, those crawling offsprings of solitude, had established their domicile there, from which they fled in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... could surely spell Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply By sweet affinities to human flesh, Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,— O, that were much, and I could be a part Of the round day, related to the sun And planted world, and full executor Of their imperfect functions. But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... imperfect attempt to put together some of the teachings of our holy religion, to help a troubled world, in this day of its necessity, "to ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the Chinese ke. They have also many other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they have never had harmony until since they began to learn it ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... grief. But in the case at Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements of the guide, nor had the position been reconnoitered by any of those engaged against it. In this way the winding and circuitous route ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... passages and impressive phrases; they are speeches which even now one cannot read without interest. But it would seem that Shippen often marred the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, careless, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been one of the men who wanted nothing but a clear {290} articulation and effective utterance to be great Parliamentary debaters, and whom that single want condemned to comparative ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Rowley, I directed General Robinson's division to remain in reserve at the Seminary, and to throw up a small semicircular rail intrenchment in the grove in front of the building. Toward the close of the action this defence, weak and imperfect as it was, proved to ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... individual and racial variations of the external sexual organs is still extremely imperfect. A few monographs and collections of data on isolated points may be found in more or less inaccessible publications. As regards women, Ploss and Bartels have devoted a chapter to the sexual organs of women which extends to a hundred pages, but remains ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... emphatically from the views of all preceding historians. On some of these disputed questions we may make up our minds after studying the evidence; but many historical problems are in truth insoluble; the evidence is imperfect and untrustworthy. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... That's debatable. Some come from bad fermentations, due to dirty fermentaries, abnormal temperatures, or unripe cacao.[7] Some come from smoky or imperfect artificial drying. Some come from mould. Unfermented cacao is liable to go mouldy, so is germinated or over-ripe cacao with broken shells. Some cacao unfortunately gets wet with sea water. There always seems to me something pathetic in the thought of finely-cured ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... longitude from Greenwich. In the original the longitude is said to be 170 deg. W. from the first meridian of the voyagers, being Seville in Spain, which would give 174 deg. E. from Greenwich; no great error, considering the imperfect way in which the longitude was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... measure upon the skill with which they are arranged, he is bound also by the rhythm of the original. If you would copy Raphael, you must not give him the coloring of Titian. The calm dignity of the "School of Athens" conveys a very imperfect idea of the sublime energy of the sibyls and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... schools in Dublin and Cork. But why are those so neglected and imperfect? and why are not similar or better institutions in Belfast, Derry, Galway, Waterford, and Kilkenny? Why is there not a decent collection of casts anywhere but in Cork, and why are they in a garret there? ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... example of imperfect and arrested knowledge in some of the common affairs of life, let him collate the statements of scientific experts concerning the physiological effects upon mankind, of tea. He will then admit that "in a multitude of counsellors there ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... the problems from another angle. The power developed in the combustion of one pound of coal is theoretically equal to 11,580,000 foot pounds. But by our imperfect methods of utilization, not more than 1,500,000 foot pounds are made available. This is about the amount of physical power exerted by a man of ordinary strength during a day's work. Hence 300 pounds of coal will represent the labor of a man for a year. The current production of ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... delight follows upon a perfect work.[392] But contemplation on this earth is imperfect, according to the words of the Apostle: We see now through a glass in a dark manner.[393] Hence it would seem that the contemplative life ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... should not only be revered by his disciples as a sage and a prophet, but that he should be adored as a God. The Polytheists were disposed to adopt every article of faith, which seemed to offer any resemblance, however distant or imperfect, with the popular mythology; and the legends of Bacchus, of Hercules, and of AEsculapius, had, in some measure, prepared their imagination for the appearance of the Son of God under a human form. But they were astonished that the Christians should abandon the temples of those ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fifteen feet apart each way, which will allow two hundred trees to the acre. The larger trees ought to be planted somewhat thinner.... Cherries are packed largely in eight-pound baskets and in strawberry quarts. Each basket is filled with carefully assorted fruit, every imperfect specimen being taken out, after which they are faced by placing the stems downward so that the cherry shows in regular rows upon the face. Girls and women do this work. The Eastern fruit grower must bear ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... government and 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 of their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... and pity, he thought of poor Coira O'Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. The girl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was not a cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown, gorgeous flower, imperfect at telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark perfection, good blood that had shaped her long and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... advice was not listened to. He was displeased with everything. He found that all the orders he had given had been disregarded. He found the siege works bad, imperfect, very wet, and very ill-guarded. He tried to remedy all these defects, but he was opposed at every step. A council of war was held. M. d'Orleans stated his views, but all the officers present, with one honourable ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... devil to tempt, though the saints will yet be imperfect, and come short of a glorified state, yet they, by his absence, will be delivered from many dreadful, vexing, and burning, and hellish darts, that will otherwise confound and afflict the soul like arrows whose heads are poisoned. Christians have a great deal of ease, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I recollected the imperfect communication of Fleta, who had heard the gipsy say that "he was dead;" and also the word horse made use of, and I now felt convinced that I had found out Melchior. "Sir Henry, if I recollect right, has no family," ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... That, however, is scarcely the case; we have to look into the matter a little more closely. And, when we do so, we find that, not only is the statement of a supposed connection between a high birth-rate and a high degree of prosperity an imperfect ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... is a very unpoetical, if not unphilosophical, mode of viewing antiquities. Your philosophy is too literal for our imperfect vision. We cannot look directly into the nature of things; we can only catch glimpses of the mighty shadow in the camera obscura of transcendental intelligence. These six and eighteen are only words to which we give conventional ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... of Nala. Under the sanction of Mr. Wilson's revision, I may venture to hope that the translation is, at least, an accurate version of the original; and I cannot too strongly express my gratitude for the labour which Mr. Wilson has been so kind as to expend on my imperfect and unpretending work. ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... perfection in all things leads him to complain of grimy pictures and tarnished frames and faded frescos, distressing beyond measure to eyes that never failed to see everything before him with the keenest apprehension. The usual careless observation of people both of the good and the imperfect is much more comfortable in this imperfect world. But the insight which Mr. Hawthorne possessed was only equalled by his outsight, and he suffered in a way not to be readily conceived, from any failure in beauty, physical, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of species (about a quarter of a million) already noticed by naturalists. Linnaeus succeeded, however, in finding a common character on which to unite most of his classes; but the Mammalia, that group to which we ourselves belong, remained very imperfect. Indeed, in the earlier editions of his classification, he does not apply the name of Mammalia to this class, but calls the higher animals Quadrupedia, characterizing them as the animals with four legs and covered with fur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... arrested by some conflict at the door, where Aunt Hominy, notwithstanding her imperfect wits, was striving to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... wall tents; now, line officers and enlisted men were to occupy shelter tents, which they were to carry on their shoulders; and although a small number of wall tents could be carried in the wagons for field and staff officers, yet so imperfect was the understanding, in or out of the quartermaster's department, of what could or ought to be done, that most regimental field and staff officers were left without ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... 1412, John I. sent forth a few vessels, to explore the western shores of Africa, while he prepared a great armament to attack the moors of Barbary, the art of navigation was still very imperfect, nor had the Portuguese ever ventured to sail beyond Cape Non. But what most powerfully contributed to give impulse and direction to the national ardour, was the enlightened enthusiasm, with which prince Henry of Portugal, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and that portions of it interested me a good deal while I was writing them; but I have had so many interruptions, from things to see and things to suffer, that the story has developed itself in a very imperfect way, and will have to be revised hereafter. I could finish it for the press in the time that I am to remain here (till the 15th of April), but my brain is tired of it just now; and, besides, there are many objects that I shall ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... had been guilty of that crime for which he had formerly been transported, but denied that he lived in such a course of wickedness and debauchery as most malefactors do. On the contrary, he said he was heartily sorry for his sins, and hoped that God would accept his imperfect repentance. ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... large medals of the greatest rarity; the Marcus Aurelius with his son on the reverse side, Theodora bearing the globe, and above all the Annia Faustina with Heliogabalus on the reverse side, an incomparable treasure, of which there is only one other example, and that an imperfect one, in the world—a marvel which I would give a day of my life to see; yes, my dear, a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... If visitors stayed at the manse, it would be George Bradford, whom Hawthorne respected in the highest degree which his appreciation of others ever reached, or Frank Farley, the half-crazy Brook Farmer, whom he gave himself to in a more self-sacrificing way to aid and comfort in his bewildered and imperfect state; or else Hillard would arrive, with much cheerfulness and news from Longfellow or others of the Cambridge men. But Hawthorne still kept the social world at a distance from his private and intimate self; these men, though he maintained kindly intercourse with ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Italy, ravaging the country as they passed over it, and sat down before Rome, not content with stripping the land, they forced their way into the catacombs, searching for treasure, and seeking also, it seems likely, for the bodies of the martyrs, whom their imperfect creed did not prevent them from honoring. After they retired, in the short breathing-space that was given to the unhappy city, various popes undertook to do something to restore the catacombs,[D]—and one of them, John III., [A.D. 560-574,] ordered that service should be performed at certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... did the rest, even though the latter did not fit him as well as Gregorios had expected. Gregorios is a deceptive man and is larger than he looks, for his coat was too broad for Alexander, and hung loosely over the latter's shoulders and chest. But in spite of the imperfect fit, the change in the man's appearance was so great that I started in surprise when he entered the sitting-room, taking him for an intruder who had walked ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... that she lived in his soul, as much as he did in hers, that his existence without her must be barren and imperfect. She did not ask when and how, she only prayed that she might become his, expecting it as confidently as light in the morning, spring after winter. Nothing appeared so irrefutable as this faith; it was the belief of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which I have just given an imperfect sketch, has for its object to show how a nebula endued with a general movement of rotation must eventually transform itself into a very luminous central nucleus (a sun) and into a series of distinct spheroidal ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." This view is the more appropriate as we have known in the history of God's providence with Israel, which presents them as a people prepared (so far as imperfect material could be prepared) to receive the model which God might desire to impress upon the nation. They were bound to each other by all the ties of which human nature is susceptible, and thus rendered compact and united, so that every thing national, ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... this we have the chronicles of quaint old Vasari and Rosini; besides Baldinucci (ch. iv. p. 83), who says, "Raphael gave great testimony of his esteem when, in after years, he employed his own brush in Rome to finish a work begun by Fra Bartolommeo in that city and left imperfect." ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... Then, gentlemen of 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 no further light upon the matter; and though the prisoner ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... thing as more or less perfect, we commonly mean that it is more or less perfect in its kind. A good saw makes a poor razor; a good chair, a more than indifferent bed. A bee crushed by a blow, a bird with a broken wing, we regard as imperfect. But it scarcely occurs to us to ask ourselves whether the bee is more or less perfect than the bird, or the bird than the spider. Swift's Houyhnhnms at their best could not be either perfect horses or perfect men. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... ever attain to understand and find his proper place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... promptness with which Dr. Nichol's enthusiasm awakens itself upon every road that leads to things elevating for man; or to things promising for knowledge; or to things which, like dubious theories or imperfect attempts at systematizing, though neutral as regards knowledge, minister to what is greater than knowledge, viz., to intellectual power, to the augmented power of handling your materials, though with no more materials than before. In his geological and cosmological inquiries, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... inconvenience of a meeting of different gauges (even if we could assume their practicability, which in the present state of experience we should not be warranted in doing,) as anything better than partial and imperfect ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... time could determine latitudes almost as accurately as it is now done, but they had very imperfect means of determining longitudes. These pirates, of course, had no chronometer. The best they could do was to keep account each day of the courses and estimated distances that they sailed, to reduce this to numbers of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the unfinished saloons and imperfect courts and roofless rooms, and by half erected obelisks, and columns pierced and chipped, of the palace of his building. And he was bewildered at the words spoken by Shahpesh; but now the King exalted him, and admired the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... $58,362,136. While these sums were devoted to increasing the resources and improving the condition of the country, and in discharging its pecuniary obligations, those claims which were derived from what are termed the imperfect obligations of gratitude and humanity were ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... imperfect or erroneous idea of the amount of the immense sums Spain has paid to our Government in loans, in contributions, in donations, and in subsidies. Since the reign of Bonaparte, or for these last five years, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... were full of growth. But for long the Christianity which was nominally triumphant was imperfect indeed. Chlodowech died in 511; his race went on ruling, Catholic in name but very far from obedient to the Church's laws. The tale of their successors, their wars and their crimes, is one which belongs to social or political history, not to the history of the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... was Milton's conception of his own function. Of the fashionable verse, such as was written in the Caroline age, or in any age, he disapproved, not only because it was imperfect art, but because it was untrue utterance. Poems that were raised "from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite," were in his eyes treachery ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Middle things are each and all things of the vegetable kingdom, such as grasses and herbs of every kind, plants and shrubs of every kind, and trees of every kind. The uses of these are for the service of each and all things of the animal kingdom, both imperfect and perfect. These they nourish, delight, and vivify; nourishing the bellies of animals with their vegetable substances, delighting the animal senses with taste, fragrance, and beauty, and vivifying their affections. The endeavor towards this is in these also from life. ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... more properly, and might be said to be the last right of slaves. Who ever heard of petition in the free States of antiquity? We had borrowed our notions in regard to it from our British ancestors, with whom it had a value for their imperfect representation far greater than it has with us; and it is owing to that that it has a place at all in our Constitution. The truth is, that the right has been so far superseded in a political point of view, that it has ceased ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... look at this deep pessimism at its darkest. The imperfect, that is everywhere. That is all that you can see or work at. That is the warp and woof of all your occupations and institutions, your politics, your science, your religion. They are all nearly as bad as they are good. Your science has forever to disown its past. Your politics demands that ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... account of the various processes for working peat by machinery, such data as I have been able to find have been given as to cost of production. These data are however very imperfect, and not altogether trustworthy, in direct application to American conditions. The cheapness of labor in Europe is an item to our disadvantage in interpreting foreign estimates. I incline to the ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... we can have nothing but sympathy. Some of its expressions are wonderfully touching, but their pathos must not blind us to the maimed character of the world-view on which they rest. Grant that the sphere of sense is limited and therefore imperfect, let it at any rate be valid up to the limit it does actually attain. The rippling weir and the mill-wheel did produce some sort of effect upon the beholder, and therefore must have been to that extent real. What do we gain by flinging away the chance to learn, even though ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... little learning is dangerous is one of our surest maxims. If knowledge does not produce the effect of ameliorating our imperfect condition, it were, without question, better let alone altogether; it is not to be made merely an appendix to the mind, but must be incorporated and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... the matter which is peculiar to Caxton's form of the dialogues may be confidently ascribed to his original, on account of the frequent occurrence of passages in which, while the French is quite correct, the English translation shows imperfect understanding ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... broad line of wood, composed in the lower part of Eucalyptus dumosa, a straggling tree, growing to an inconsiderable height, rising at once from the ground with many slender stems, and affording but an imperfect shade. About the latitude of 34 degrees the character of the Murray belt changes—it becomes denser and more diversified. Pine trees on sandy ridges, Acacia, Hakea, Exocarpi, and many other shrubs form a thick wood, through which it is difficult to keep a correct course. Occasionally a low brush ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... waist, cut open in front to a point, was filled in with white satin, over which it was laced together with a thin silk cord of the same colour as the dress. A small lace collar completed the toilet, and for the occasion, it was perfect; anything added to it would have made it imperfect. ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was imperfect or declined, then the decorations were all rude, and the embroideries shared in the general rudeness or poverty; but as these crafts rose again, adding to themselves grace and beauty by study and experience, then needlework in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford |
