"Perfectness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gracefully bent over towards Treasury Bench, whereon sat his one-time revered Leader and the still faithful band of followers, he would naturally have imagined JOSEPH was complimenting him and them upon the perfectness of their measure, and the prospect of the Irish wilderness, under its beneficent influence, blossoming like the rose. Deaf man would have been mistaken; JOSEPH saying nothing of the kind; indeed, quite the reverse, as deaf man, turning his eyes on Mr. G., would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... had supplied. When a being was born to lean on her alone—dependent on her providence for life—then hour after hour, step after step, in the progress of infant destinies, had the reason of the mother grown in the child's growth, adapting itself to each want that it must foresee, and taking its perfectness and completion from the breath ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the "bond of perfectness;" alluding to the girdle of the Orientals, which was not only ornamental and expensive, but was put on last, serving to adjust the other parts of the dress, and keep the whole together. It is a bond ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it)—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till day-break—was there no pleasure in being a poor man? ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... spinous." Such may have been the case in those I sent: but it has occurred to me now and then to dredge specimens of C. aculeatum, which had escaped that rolling on the sand fatal in old age to its delicate spines, and which equalled in colour, size, and perfectness the noble one figured in poor dear old Dr. Turton's "British Bivalves." Besides, aculeatum is a far thinner and more delicate shell. And a third species, C. echinatum, with curves more graceful and ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... 46 Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgments, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... class a richness, a force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so juicy the stalks, and with such skillful ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the Scriptures we have vague intimations concerning God's will, growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through history to Jesus. In the dogma we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of God was from ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... like that," he went on, insistently. "You make me feel like that all the time. You know," he added, leaning over her chair, "I sometimes think you have never lived. There is so much that would complete your perfectness. I should like to send you abroad or take you—anyhow, you should go. You are very wonderful to me. Do you find me at all ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... I cannot see her! and you are permitted that last glimpse of human perfectness; you who never loved her as I did; ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wherewithal to nourish the heart of another man, and their two lives, set together, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness of fruit; while you and he would only have languished into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of disciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And, in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the great schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... among other important laws which deserve our consideration; the law of love. Paul was quite right when, comparing the various qualities of Christian character he declared, 'The greatest of these is love'. 'Love is the bond of perfectness.' ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... editing the English Grammar of Urcullu, made great improvements by the addition of what he modestly calls "notillas," (little notes,) but which greatly add to the perfectness of the book. The important table of the verbs of the language by Hernandez and the officers of the Spanish academy, and the chapter on terms of courtesy in the United States, are most valuable additions. This book is most valuable as a supplement to the Spanish Grammar, and the moderate price ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... in among the stars Fit home for gods if men were only kind - Do thou thy part to shape it to those ends, By shaping thine own life to perfectness. Seek nothing for thyself or thine own kin That robs another of one hope or joy, Let no man toil in poverty and pain To give thee unearned luxury and ease. Feed not the hungry servitor with stones, That idle guests may fatten on ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life: The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 110 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness: The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad: Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: 115 No storms deform the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that earnestness has accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the book:—'It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with or subjection ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... yashmak, {6} she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty. And this, it is not the light, changeful grace that leaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or only a soul; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectness of hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous colour. There is fire, though, too—high courage and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back—watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes—and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his will. But if in this respect he falls both in his earlier and later poems below Shakspere or Spenser, the deficiency is all but compensated by his nobleness of feeling and expression, the severity of his taste, his sustained dignity, and the perfectness and completeness of his work. The moral grandeur of the Puritan breathes, even in these lighter pieces of his youth, through every line. The "Comus," which he planned as a masque for some festivities which the Earl of Bridgewater ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... him need to meet; he makes the path for them. When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world's sinfulness, and looked off to the summit of His Father's perfectness, He felt a separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end it. We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the temptations He faced, from the experience in the ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... back again along with him. But no minute particulars need be given of the manifold local presents and of the preparations, which were, of course, everything that could be wished for in excellence and perfectness. Forthwith the day for starting was selected, and Chia Lien, along with Lin Tai-y, said good-bye to all the members of the family, and, followed by their attendants, they went on board their boats, and set out on their ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... lifts it, growth by growth, to the beauty and the sweetness of the flower. Under the same law of unconscious growth every true poem, every great work of art, and every genuine noble character, has fashioned itself and come at last to conscious perfectness and recognition. Genius is nearer Nature than talent; it is only when it strays away from Nature, and loses itself in mere dexterities, that it degenerates into skill and becomes a tool with which to work, and not a gift from heaven. The silence of the deep woods is pregnant ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... although his worlds lie scattered like grains of golden dust on the blue field of heaven,—the open infinite. When the light of moral life went out in one of his worlds, he missed its wonted shining in the aggregate of glory that surrounds his throne. With equal perfectness of knowledge he misses one human being who has been formed by his hand, but fails to hang by faith upon his love. The Bible speaks of falling "into the hands of the living God," and calls it "a fearful thing" (Heb. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the lively examples of the holy fathers, in whom shone forth real perfectness and religion, and thou shalt see how little, even as nothing, is all that we do. Ah! What is our life when compared to theirs? They, saints and friends of Christ as they were, served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... dreaded humiliation among her inferiors; but that which she feared most of all was the barrenness of a lot into which would enter none of the passionate joys of existence. Speak to Clara of renunciation, of saintly glories, of the stony way of perfectness, and you addressed her in an unknown tongue; nothing in her responded to these ideas. Hopelessly defeated in the one way of aspiration which promised a large life, her being, rebellious against the martyrdom it had suffered, went forth eagerly ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... fair wage can be rightly claimed. There is far too much scamping work in the present day, working simply for money and not for any interest in the work itself. Money should not be a man's test of success, but the perfectness of his work. Men used once to work for love of their art, and so long as the picture was painted or the sculpture wrought, they cared little for the money they were to gain by it, or the hardship of their lives, but now ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... perfect satisfaction, which was the same thing as disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and tree, hill and dale, lake, pond, sun, air, fire, and water were all wanting in some of the perfectness of the old regions. It was plain we could never hope to reach the exalted excellence they enjoy; and while he respected the patriotism that held the contrary view, he could not, out of deference ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... confusion; and if any definite image is presented in response to that vague agitation of our soul, we feel its inadequacy to our need in spite of, or perhaps on account of, its own particular perfection. We then say that the classic does not satisfy us, and that the "Grecian cloys us with his perfectness." We are not capable of that concentrated and serious attention to one thing at a time which would enable us to sink into its being, and enjoy the intrinsic harmonies of its form, and the bliss of its immanent particular heaven; we flounder in the vague, but at the same time we are ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... to the Fault, whether 'tis in the Action, or out of it, is of no moment to the Perfectness of a Pastoral. Tho' I must needs say, I am for what Aristotle call's the Peripatie, or change of Fortune in Pastoral; but I think the Action that produces the Change may be either in the Poem, or have happen'd ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... men and women unwedded to their graves for sake of love of mother or father. When we realize what such friendship is, it seems incredible that parents can forego it, or can risk losing any shade of its perfectness, for the sake of any indulgence of the habit of command or of gratifying ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... brought, to perfection. And, if God so made the productions of the earth, that it is only by our constant attention and labour that they can be brought to perfection, would He, think you, have us give less care to that far more important product, our children's minds? They may be trained to perfectness, or they may be allowed to run to waste ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... darkness as the darkness of the blue-bottle fly that his fly-flapping maid smashed and disrupted in mid-flight of the air?—as the darkness into which passed the mosquito that knew the secret of flying, and that, despite its perfectness of flight, with almost an unthought action, he squashed with the flat of his hand against the back of his ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Brunehaut, no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!—or how far the perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... absorbing herself in the pride and delight of each tiny step, one after the other. Child that she is, she is even capable of confounding change with improvement—beginning over again, with growth in perfectness. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which makes life a riddle, the prudential motives and worship of happiness which hide its divinity, these meet him here as they meet him in life, untransmuted, unidealised. Yet the charm of art overcomes him. The perfectness of the representation, the skill with which the incidents are combined to result in a crowning happiness behind which no sorrow seems to lie, make him find a pleasure in the copy which he cannot find in actual life, when in personal and painful collision with it. But meanwhile he gains no real ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... religion,—the ineffable meaning of the All-Love and Wisdom; the nearness, the perfectness, the absoluteness of the Divine; the kinship of souls, the fraternity of spirits,—never in all this realm was there a thought, or teaching of thought, separate from a ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... up the stairs, had met Queed coming down, pad in hand. The impertinence of the old professor's invitation fitted superbly with the bitterness of the little Doctor's humor. It pressed the martyr's crown upon his brow till the perfectness of his grudge against a hateful world lacked nor jot ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[23] in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... clearly set forth, but it may be surmised that in general there were two lines of thought that led to this inference: first, a metaphysical conception of unity as something that was demanded by the sense of perfectness in the world; and, secondly, observation of facts that appeared to characterize the world as a unit. Among several different peoples, and apparently in each independently, the idea arose that the divine manifests itself in the world of phenomena and is recognizable only ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... been found by actual experience to be superfluous. Redundancy and unnecessary repetition are to the discredit of a book that enjoys such an unrivalled reputation as the Common Prayer. They are blemishes upon the face of its literary perfectness. Who has not marvelled at the strange duplication of the Litany and the Office of the Holy Communion in the Ordinal, when the special petitions proper to those services when used in that connection might easily have been printed by themselves with a direction that they be inserted ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... use of energy is considerable, especially so in the realm of Synthetic Chemistry. But it must be understood that the individual is taught that dependence must be placed rather on one's own dexterity, born of that God-given faculty of Intuition, than on the perfectness of a man-made machine, the creation ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... love constitutes "the bond of perfectness" between God and rational creatures. Communion with God is the supreme felicity and highest honor of which angels and men are capable. The first emanation of divine love revealed to us was displayed in the covenant of works; although ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... ago I should have died, if it were possible To die in gazing on that perfectness Which I do bear within me; I had died But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb, Thine image, like a charm of light and strength Upon the waters, pushed me back again On these deserted sands of barren life. Tho' from the deep vault, where the heart of hope Fell into dust, and crumbled ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... no need of external evidence to prove its inspiration; it everywhere bears the impress of Divinity. And as the microscope which reveals the coarseness and blemishes of the works of man only shows more fully the perfectness of GOD'S works, and brings to light new and unimagined beauties, so it is with the Word of ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... stood at work Patient and accurate full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance, And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the needed paths For ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all against his direct material ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... believer has recognized the perfectness of the will of God and has thrown his whole being open to His power and guidance. As a little child may avail himself of the wisdom and experience of his parents through obedience, so the believer has become willing to do whatever the infinite wisdom and love of God may choose for him. When thus ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... young woman who, knowing the large world, had suddenly awakened to a consciousness that encounters with strange young men by starlight were not to be prolonged forever. In the luminous dusk he noted anew the delicate perfectness of her face, the fine brow about which her hair had tumbled from her late exertions. Her eyes searched his face with honest curiosity—for an ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... lowly,—and through all the services she sat in a sort of dream of rapture. How lovely this reception into the Holy City! how sweet thus to be taken to the arms of the great Christian family, bound together in the charity which is the bond of perfectness! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... recorded, nay perceived, Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, 190 Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage— Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced The perfectness of others yet unseen. Conceding which—had Zeus then questioned thee "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Thou wouldst have answered, "Ay, by making each Grow conscious in himself—by that alone. All's perfect else: ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... the silent reign of Love, there are none of them. There are two forces working upon these and against each other, yet each is like the other either a unifying or a separating force, as one pleases to regard them; and in the eternal silence, the ideal perfectness, there is no warfare at all. There is joy in Love which creates, and in creating destroys; there is joy in the eternal Stillness, nay, this is itself the ultimate joy. There are two forces working, Love and Hate, yet is there but one force, and that force is Necessity. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... was one of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if anything goes wrong it is their fault, and you are pure ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual Cattle Shows and Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a great show of fair ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... conscientious scruples as to the rights of property was most amusing. To see a Zouave gravely cheat a Turk, or trip up a Greek street-merchant, or Maltese fruit-seller, and scud away with the spoil, cleverly stowed in his roomy red pantaloons, was an operation, for its coolness, expedition, and perfectness, well worth seeing. And, to a great extent, they escaped scatheless, for the English Provost marshal's department was rather chary of interfering with the eccentricities of our gallant allies; while if the French had ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... with its perfectness Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals, half divined, as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... in honor and good conscience we had effected it, but somehow, methought our part in this sickening warfare was accomplished, and we were home again. Oh the joy of it! oh the joy of it! Even amid my dream, methought we questioned its reality, so unearthly in its perfectness, it seemed. We stood upon the college-green, and the sun was going down with a strange, darkling splendor; and from afar, ever and anon came the thunder roll of battle; but we had nought to do with ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one,[5] the plowshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, the putting of two or more pieces together is curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical work of Daedalus,—inlaying,—becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... "figure," as when the Scripture says, Ye shall break down their images, Ex. 23, 24, in which passage the original term signifies nothing more than the figures, or statues, or images erected by men. But demuth signifies "a likeness," or "the perfectness of an image." For instance, when we speak of a lifeless image, such as that which is impressed on coins, we say, This is the image of Brutus or of Caesar. That image, however, does not reproduce the likeness, nor exhibit every ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... ungloved hand touch place after place on the railing, watched her slightly bent head with its long braid of gold and the knot of blue ribbon. At the turning to the lower flight, he caught a glimpse of her profile, and felt that he would not readily forget its perfectness. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... The third degree is the perfection of the symbolism of the temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In like manner the Mysteries, says Christie, "were termed [Greek: teletai], perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled [Greek: teloume/noi], and [Greek: tetelesme/noi], that is, brought to perfection."—Observations on Ouvaroff's Essay on ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... blood, and that they sit down to devise me mischief. Be thou good thyself, and let people speak evil of thee; it is better than to be wicked, and that they should consider thee as good."—But, on the other hand, behold me, of whose perfectness all entertain the best opinion, while I am the mirror of imperfection.—Had I done what they have said, I should have been a pious and moral man.—Verily, I may conceal myself from the sight of my neighbor, but God knows what is secret ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... morality of life, as completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride, and the likeness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, in private and household economy, you may judge always of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions. You will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables, and its fragrant flowers; you will see the good housewife taking ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... wastes, little one. If we have the angel aim and standard, we can consecrate the smallest acts. Don't you know that "he who aims for perfectness in a trifle, is trying to do that ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... I fear for the realm, after me, from the enemies; so I would have you all agree upon some one, that I may proclaim him king in my lifetime and so ye may be at ease.' Whereupon quoth they all, 'We all approve of thy son-in-law Hassan, son of the Vizier Ali; for we have seen the perfectness of his wit and understanding, and he knows the rank of all, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... for all this? By the simplest and yet the most comprehensive answer. By declaring the stupendous fact that all creation is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of the Most High—that order in the utmost perfectness of its relation pervades His works, because it exists as in its centre and highest fountain-head in Him the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers, that Man himself, the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... my enemies, as well as the better part of mankind, and gather all my students, in the bonds of love and perfectness, into one grand family ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... song, while in fact he is only listening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the great paradox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits; it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude every moment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness; finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are but completeness manifested in ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Pardon if I speak ill," I prayed: "Art thou the queen o' the heaven's blue, To whom earth's honour shall be paid? We believe in Mary, of grace who grew, A mother, yet a blameless maid; To wear her crown were only due To one who purer worth displayed. For perfectness by none gainsaid, We call her the Phoenix of Araby, That flies in faultless charm arrayed, Like to the ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... emuntur," admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression, because Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is necessary in all the higher arts; but the cost of this dexterity is incalculable. Be it great or small, the "cost" of the mere perfectness of touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of Correggio's, is inestimable ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... given by your numerous testimonials as to the character of the word gradely, is one of decency, order, rightness, perfectness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... on deck into the shade of a great striped awning, and loitered along the side, caught by the beauty of the late summer scene. Sky and water and green wood blended into practised perfectness. The rippling water was blue as the heavens, which was very blue indeed. The sun kissed it ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... towns and cities still support gymnasia of greater or less size and perfectness. But the modern gymnasium has two great deficiencies: the lack of open air, and of the emulation arising from publicity. The first is a very grave objection. Not a tithe of the benefits of exercise can be obtained within-doors. The sallow mechanic and the ruddy farmer are the two points of comparison. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... thought and energy to expressing himself forcibly and with the vital glow of an overpowering interest. An interesting thought expressed with force and suggestiveness is worth volumes of commonplaces couched in the most faultless language. The writer should never hesitate in choosing between perfectness of language and vigor. On the first writing verbal perfection should be sacrificed without a moment's hesitation. But when a story or essay has once been written, the writer will turn his attention to those small details of style. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... would fill her fountain full, With glistening jets still rising in the midst. She rose up straight, and donning man's attire, For that the road was hard and difficult, Took horse, and towards the sunrise swiftly rode, Saying, "Thus much life lacks of perfectness, In God's name on to ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... foreshadowing of their ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy: that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I must forsake the world: I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me to that which passeth away; I must live with my fellow-beings only as human souls related to the eternal unseen life. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';—nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... gathering themselves into graceful companionship with the fairest arts and serenest life of man; and providing not only the sustenance and the instruments, but also the lessons and the delights, of that life, in perfectness of order, and unblighted fruition ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... himself to the same brief admonition, he replied that "no more was necessary." [172:6] Such a narrative is certainly quite in harmony with the character of the beloved disciple, for he knew that love is the "bond of perfectness" and "the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... exhibition, as from many. The praise of a poet, therefore, is to be determined not by the nature of the work which he undertakes, but by the kind of mastery which he shows; not by the breadth of surface over which he toils, but by the perfectness of the result which he attains. Mr. Wordsworth has vindicated the capacity of the sonnet to be a casket of the richest gems of fame. We have no doubt that the song may give evidence of a genius ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... is not a question of comparing one rule with another, it is rather of noticing which rule is as a matter of fact best observed. For even had other rules, in regard to the exterior perfectness of the life they prescribe, every advantage over that of St. Augustine, who does not know that it is safer to enter a community in which a rule of less excellence is exactly observed, rather than another where a higher kind of rule is preached but not kept? ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek;—but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... erroneous principles, they at first gave rise to, are either already, or soon will be, sunk in oblivion, even because from their very mistakes they contrived to advance towards greater purity and perfectness; their works will live, and in them, to say the least, we have the foundation of a dramatic school at once essentially German, and governed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... as a dream of Greece, in her serene, marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns, her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling—both under the care of that stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like brook-ripples, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... removed from the scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be uniform and universal, and not varying and partial, as it would be if acting only upon general and secondary laws; because such perfect justice flows of necessity from perfectness of knowledge to conceive, perfectness of love to will, and perfectness of ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... smoothness of diction, they are all, without exception, good—if they are not great. If no one rises to the height which other poets have occasionally reached, they are, nevertheless, always free from those defects which sometimes mar the perfectness of far greater productions. Each portrays some human thirst or longing, and so touches the heart of every thoughtful reader. There is a sweetness running through them all which comes from a higher than earthly source, and which human wisdom can ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the religious men of his day (Fleming), himself a native of a mountain country, casting about for some reason to explain to himself the existence of mountains, and prove their harmony with the general perfectness of the providential government of creation, can light upon this reason only, "They are inhabited ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the lower class was admitted into the lunatic ward of the public hospital at Marseilles, whose malady seemed the result of religious depression. In that supposition, the usual means of relief were resorted to, and he was at length discharged as convalescent; when, to attest the perfectness of his cure, he went and hanged himself! A proces verbal was, as usual, made out, and the supposed fanatic proved to be the ex-executioner of Lyons! Tender-hearted people instantly ascribed his melancholy to qualms of conscience. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. But our dull wit cannot come unto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. Yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. If we want to sharpen our reason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once found the right path we may, step by step, seek, learn, comprehend, and finally reach and attain unto something ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... like gross terms, The Prince will, in the perfectness of time, Cast off his followers; and their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live By which his Grace must mete the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... one sort of food Hath satiated, and of another still The appetite remains, that this is ask'd, And thanks for that return'd; e'en so did I In word and motion, bent from her to learn What web it was, through which she had not drawn The shuttle to its point. She thus began: "Exalted worth and perfectness of life The Lady higher up enshrine in heaven, By whose pure laws upon your nether earth The robe and veil they wear, to that intent, That e'en till death they may keep watch or sleep With their great bridegroom, who accepts each vow, Which to his gracious pleasure love conforms. from ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... replied she, 'save on condition that thou fast a whole month, watching by night and fasting by day for the love of God the Most High: but if thou wilt do this, they are thine, to use as thou pleasest.' The King wondered at the perfectness of her piety and devotion and abnegation and she was magnified in his eyes, and he said, 'May God make this pious old woman to profit us!' So he agreed to her proposal, and she said to him, 'I will help thee with my prayers.' Then she called for a gugglet of water and muttered ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... and claws gave them a great advantage over their not quite blind but really visionless and comparatively defenceless neighbors, and they must have wrought terrible extinction of lower and older forms. But while we cannot over-estimate the importance of these eyes, we can easily exaggerate their perfectness. They were of short range, fitted for seeing objects only a few inches distant, and the image was very imperfect in detail. But the plan or fundamental scheme of these eyes is correct and capable of indefinitely greater development than the organs of touch ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the perfectness of his own character. And think how different the divine and the human standards of perfection! Not the outward fair colour and proportion merely, not the perfect fitness and adaptation, not the most utilitarian employment of every ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and, because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and left the pure, still, clear, long ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... went up in the air, with the Indian clinging to his side, the astonishing leap was executed with perfect ease, precision and perfectness, his figure rising above the mass of struggling animals and standing out for ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... always made it impossible for him to enjoy the moment in its flight, again possessed his mind: he had known it from a child, the ambition to follow, follow, follow, in the hope that somewhere, perhaps behind the setting sun, he might arrive at the land of perfectness for which ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... our design, we have a duty enjoined, and that of no inferior sort. If charity be indeed as it is, the very bond of perfectness: and if without it all our doings, yea and sufferings too, are not worthy so much as a rush (1 Cor 13; Col 3:14). we have here a duty, I say, that a seventh day sabbath, when in force, was not too big for it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sense of the word, by the most brilliant display of great qualities of all kinds; and the hero of the Faerie Queene seems to be the personification of the splendid attributes of the age. A prevailing sentiment, in the mind of Spenser, was the perfectness of character to which the gentlemen of his time aspired, and on this model he fashioned his hero. He observes that "the general end, therefore, of all the books is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in gentle and virtuous discipline." And again, "I labor to pourtraict in Arthure, before ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... is Love. Which art in heaven, God is a spirit. Hallowed be Thy Name, God's Holiness. Thy Kingdom come, God's Power. Thy Will be done, God's Perfectness. In earth as it is in heaven, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Give us this day our daily Every good gift is from bread, above. Forgive us our trespasses, The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... particular quite so well executed, and from the pen of a writer of inferior genius. It should seem that the best rule to follow would be, first, to pitch upon the sonnets which are best both in kind and perfectness of execution, and, next, those which, although of a humbler quality, are admirable for the finish and happiness of the execution, taking care to exclude all those which have not one or other of these recommendations, however striking they ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the question, 'What good thing shall I do?' when Jesus set the eager young soul who asked it, to justify to himself his courteous and superficial application to Him of the abused and vulgarised title of 'Good,' and pointed him to God as the only Being to whom that title, in its perfectness, could be given. If 'there is none good but one, that is God,' man's goodness must be drawn from Him, and morality without religion will in theory be incomplete, and in practice a delusion. If, then, men are made to need God, and capable of possessing Him, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Son is long-suffering and slow to anger, yet not afraid to denounce sin and call to account the wicked, so likewise may we represent the Father. All the noble attributes which we find in the Son exist in perfectness in the Father. ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... of Mrs. Stuart. There was a vigour and splendour of life about her that made all her movements large and emphatic, and yet, at the same time, nothing could exceed the delicate finish of the physical structure itself. What was indeed characteristic in her was this combination of extraordinary perfectness of detail, with a flash, a warmth, a force of impression, such as often raises the lower kinds of beauty into excellence and picturesqueness, but is seldom found in connection with those types where the beauty is, as it were, sufficient ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... historic testimony which tells of the Divine plan for human redemption: leading them from the sense of sin to Him who saves from sin; from the inward to the outward; from Christ to Christianity; from Christian doctrine to the perfectness of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... "and for those duties, some of the very highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of perfectness. The wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough, should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And, for her own ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... condition in which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your human sympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of that Jesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, the divine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin or temptation to sin ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... The Duet Little Queen Wherefore? Delilah Love Song Time and Love Change Desolation Isaura The Coquette Not Quite the Same New and Old From the Grave A Waltz-Quadrille Beppo Tired The Speech of Silence Conversion Love's Coming Old and New Perfectness Attraction Gracia Ad Finem Bleak Weather An Answer You Will Forget Me The Farewell of ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... an idea of the perfectness of his organization, the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies, all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... but there should be one! There should be one. And there's the bitterness Of this unending torture-place for men, For the proud soul that craves a perfectness That might outwear the rotting of all things Rooted in earth. [Footnote: Josephine ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... two have come into their very own. They walk by sight; and yet the eye of faith Sweeps out to future time and distant space And leads them on and on. They lay their plans And execute these plans to perfectness. Eternal Glory-land is their abode, So beautifully clothed in Nature's best, And basking in the pleasing smile of God; No need of light of sun or moon or stars; The glory of the Father and the Son Eclipses all ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... seemed to please the master more than to point out illustrations of the ingenuity of his artisans. He took up a rivet, and expatiated on the skill with which it had been fashioned by the workman's hand—its perfectness and truth. He was always proud of his workmen and his pupils; and, while indifferent and careless as to what might be said of himself, he fired up in a moment if disparagement were thrown upon any one whom he ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... can have a rival, is Jean Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conception of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt and indifference. One ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... vital enfolding of that old pilgrim idea of human life which had so often bloomed in the literature of all climes and ages, but whose consummate flower appeared in the book of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher. Hence also the dramatic unity and methodic perfectness of the story. Its byways all lead to its highway; its episodes are as vitally related to the main theme as are the ramifications of a tree to its central stem. The great diversities of experience in the true pilgrims are dominated ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... against the personality of God; the drift, indeed, of the present reasoning would be towards an opposite conclusion, inasmuch as it insists upon the fact that what is most true and best known is often least susceptible of demonstration owing to the very perfectness with which it is known; nevertheless, the fact remains that many men in many ages and countries—the subtlest thinkers over the whole world for some fifteen hundred years—have hunted for a demonstration of God's personal existence; yet though ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... a freely willing being cannot be foreknown, the ignorance of them does not detract from the perfectness of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot make two and two five. Omnipotence cannot do what is intrinsically impossible. No more can Omniscience know what ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... people that were standing around Him but to teach us that wide as men's necessity was His sympathy, and that broad as the sympathy of Christ were the help and healing which He brought? And so, with like width of compassion, with like perfectness of self- oblivion, with equal remoteness from consciousness of superiority or display of condescension, Christian men should go amongst the sorrowful and the sad and the outcast and do their miracles—'greater works' than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... swayed. If law were perfectly rigid, there could be but one force; but many grades exist from cohesion to mind and spirit. The highest forces are meant to have victory, and thus give the highest order and perfectness. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... pleased companion. All is "calm and free," and "full of life," it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!—what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!—what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!—what modesty and submission! what self-possession!—what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty, so the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... one virtue among many. It is the quality in which all the virtues have their setting and unity. From a Christian point of view every excellence of character springs directly from love and is the manifestation of it. It is, as St. Paul says, 'the bond of perfectness.' The several virtues of the Christian life are but facets ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander |
