"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon a bench, and proceeded to light a couple of lamps which stood on wall brackets. While he was doing this his visitors were busily engaged in noting the contents of the shop, so far as the imperfect light afforded by the single candle permitted. The most prominent objects, and those which therefore first arrested their attention, were half a dozen complete suits of very fine armour, two of them being black ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... practically retired from the held of art, to omit him from such a volume as this would be an unpardonable omission. In connection with the personal lives of the artists sketched in this volume, the attempt has been made, in a general, though necessarily imperfect, manner, to trace the gradual development of the art of playing from its cruder beginnings to the splendid virtuosoism of the present time. The sources from which facts have been drawn are various, and, it is believed, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... church the only contemporary pictorial representations we have are those on early, and somewhat imperfect, seals dating from the end of the eleventh century. The first has a church with cresting of fleurs-de-lis on a hipped and tiled roof, two gable crosses, flanking pinnacles, an arcaded clerestory, and a double door with ornamental hinges, on each side of which is a quatrefoil opening. ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... history, and illustrated the character of that brilliant and heroic people. Your cordial encouragement confirmed me in my design of visiting the East, and making myself familiar with Oriental life; and though I bring you now but imperfect returns, I can at least unite with you in admiration of a field so rich in romantic interest, and indulge the hope that I may one day pluck from it fruit instead of blossoms. In Spain, I came upon your track, and I should hesitate to exhibit my own gleanings ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... for personal friendships with men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... whole and great, God's image, praising God whose type it is; We are imperfect worms, vile families, That in its belly have our low estate. If we know not its love, its intellect, Neither the worm within my belly seeks To know me, but his petty mischief wreaks:— Thus it behoves us to be circumspect. Again, the ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... knew that my long woman's life would pass without it—for woman's life is long, alas! if love comes not. But you were love's self, and I worshipped you and it; and to myself I said—praying forgiveness on my knees—that one woman should know love if I did not. And being so poor and imperfect a thing, what mattered if I gave my soul for you—and love, which is so great, and rules the world. Look at the doves, sister, look at them, flying past the heavenly blueness—and she ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... related the particulars with an attention to detail which left little to be desired. His version filled in the gaps of Phil's imperfect narrative, and enabled the detective to visualize the murder with greater mental distinctness. The two stories agreed in their essential particulars, but they varied in some degree in detail. Colwyn, however, was well aware that ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... in which the Committee acted naturally brought about very imperfect results. The logical consequences of the issue being, for instance, that the Minister for Foreign affairs was debarred from giving instructions directly to the different consuls; his 'wishes' were first to be communicated to the Norwegian Consular administration, on whom ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... to work, and whenever the captain and his mates took an observation, I took one also, although I was, I must own, at first very far from correct. Sometimes my observation was imperfect; at other times I made mistakes ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... England,—if Boswell's gossip may be trusted,—Dr. Johnson was peculiar in his hatred of the infamy—a hatred which is obsequious biographer mollifies to an "unfavorable notion," and officiously ascribes to "prejudice and imperfect or false information." The anti-slavery work of England was originally inspired from America, and the action of the British Parliament was really so directed as to make the prohibition of the slave-trade correspond in time with that prescribed in the Federal Constitution. The American wits and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... reports that they attended the Earl of Shaftesbury, and received from him the account which they had put in writing. The Earl of Shaftesbury denieth that he ever saw an Altar in Mr. Pepys's house or lodgings; as to the Crucifix, he saith he hath, some imperfect memory of seeing somewhat which he conceived to be a Crucifix. When his Lordship was asked the time, he said it was before the burning of the Office of the Navy. Being asked concerning the manner, he said he could not remember whether ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Texas" is a perfect induction, but it forms no basis for argument. All the cases must be known for a perfect induction; there is no unknown to argue to. This, then, is only a short statement of many individual truths, and has but little of value. Induction that is imperfect is more valuable; for with many cases the probability becomes so strong that it is a practical certainty. It is the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... a little bread is left for them to eat, but they get nothing more till the mother returns about half-past four, when, woe be to the girl if the fire is not lit, and the kettle on. The girl has to fetch the water—often a hard and tedious task, for many villages have a most imperfect supply, and you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the operation till ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... experiment everywhere. Almost no one wished to "make out a case." This expressed sense of candor and cooeperation on both sides seemed to the present writer more stirring and vital than the gains in wages and hours, far more serious even than the occasional strain on health which the imperfect installation of Scientific Management ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... applies not only to material, but also to living beings, and involves the ability to withstand the wasting effects of operations, whether due to fatigue, hardship, disease, worry, wounds, or other causes. Here again, it is obvious that the commander will often have only an imperfect idea of the condition of the enemy in this respect. His experience will lead him to form an accurate estimate of his own condition. Definitely, unless he has positive information to the contrary, he assumes that the condition of the enemy is no worse ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... favoured with in France, I presume to lay myself at the feet of the adorable Monimia, as the most faithful of admirers, whose happiness or misery wholly depends upon her nod. Believe me, madam, these are not the professions of idle gallantry—I speak the genuine, though imperfect, language of my heart. Words, even the most pathetic, cannot do justice to my love. I gaze upon your beauty with ravishment; but I contemplate the graces of your soul with such awful veneration, that I tremble while I approach you, as ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... hardly understands the mass of distinctions and of subtle reasons with which society is nourished concerning this subject. I have observed the infancy and the development of my son and my daughter. My son was myself, therefore much more woman, than my daughter, who was an imperfect man. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... by her at the time of the London negotiations. The demand was put forth originally as a security against the avowed ambitions of Bulgaria; it was a strategical necessity, but at the same time a political mistake from the point of view of future relations. The Treaty of Bucarest, imperfect arrangement as it was, had nevertheless a great historical significance. 'Without complicating the discussion of our interests, which we are best in a position to understand, by the consideration of other foreign, interests,' remarked the President of the Conference, 'we shall have ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel - who but thou? So now, in the end, if this the least be good, If any deed be done, if any fire Burn in the imperfect page, the praise ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prince Charles was somewhat embarrassed in making all these new acquaintances, in circumstances, too, of so much ceremony and parade, and the more so, as his knowledge of the French language was imperfect. He could understand it when spoken, but could not speak it well himself, and he appeared, accordingly, somewhat awkward and confused. He seemed particularly at a loss in his intercourse with Anne Maria. She ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... did not escape Pao-yue's notice. "I myself am aware," he speedily resumed, "that I'm worth nothing now; but, however imperfect I may be, I could on no account presume to become guilty of any shortcoming with you cousin. Were I to ever commit the slightest fault, your task should be either to tender me advice and warn me not to do it again, or ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... produced what seems to be a larger amount of scribble than either of my former romances, 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 ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... papers and periodicals, even in books, are great multitudes of verses, unexceptionable in sentiment and helpful in influence, which bear so little of the true poetic afflatus, are so careless in construction or so faulty in diction, so imperfect in rhyme or rhythm, so much mingled with colloquialisms or so hopelessly commonplace in thought, as to be unworthy of a permanent place in a book like this. They would not bear reading many times. They would offend a properly educated ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... is so imperfect in this case that it is not given. The usual forms and variations are shown in plate LXVI, 50 to 54. The last two, which show the widest variation, are ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... but the stranger was bowed over, and might have seemed bowing for the purpose of picking up something, were it not that, as arrested in the imperfect posture, he for the moment so remained; slanting his tall stature like a mainmast yielding to the gale, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... and learn, To learn in error and correct in pain, To learn through effort and with ease forget, Building of rough and slippery stones a House, Long schemed, and falling from us, and at the last Imperfect. Knowledge not the aim, so much As pleasure in the toil that leads to knowledge, We shall build, although the house before our eyes Crumble, and we shall gladden in the toil Although it never leads to habitation— Building our goal, though never a ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... John Duthy, Esq.; and from it large extracts were made in The History and Antiquities of Winchester, 1773. Bishop Nicolson guesses that it was too voluminous, and Bishop Kennett that it was too imperfect to be published. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... these two parted, to go to the opposite ends of the earth, not satisfied with each other, and yet each feeling that he should like to meet his new acquaintance again. But Persia and England, in the present imperfect state of civilization, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... went away inexpressibly sad. She felt that two battle scenes had been presented to her mind; and the conflict that had been waged silently, patiently, and unceasingly in a strong man's soul had to her the higher elements of heroism. It was another of those wretched problems offered by this imperfect world for which there seems ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... An increase of wages has enabled the workman to gratify his inclination for the indulgence of a species of luxury; and, by a sort of instinct, he now and then takes a peep at those scenes of which he before entertained, from hearsay, but an imperfect idea. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But—and as also I have heard it said, by men practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... these very imperfect and miscellaneous observations on the agriculture and products of Liberia, it may be remarked that the farmer's life and modes of labor are different from those of the same class, in other countries; inasmuch as there is here no spring, autumn, or winter. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698) ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... altering her will, but had reminded Miss Marsh that she should be grateful to her late employer for having had such kindly intentions toward her, vaguely ending her remarks with the statement that as her dear husband had always said in this imperfect world one had often to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... indicate that the natives possessed grotesque images, half human and half animal, like Chinese gods in effect. These were wrought so rudely out of stone as hardly to convey any fixed idea; vague and imperfect, it is not safe to define them as idolatrous images. They might have been left here by a previous race, for, as we are all aware, respectable authorities hold that this part of the world was originally peopled by Carthaginians, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... many others, the whole list containing what may be regarded as the chief sanctuaries of the land, to the number of thirty-one. Numerous other similar and more extensive lists, enumerating every shrine and temple in the country, also exist, though in a very imperfect state, and in addition to these, many holy places are referred to in the bilingual, historical, and other inscriptions. All the great cities of Babylonia, moreover, were sacred places, the chief in renown and importance in later days being the great city of Babylon, where E-sagila, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... the German body-politic will reveal symptoms unlike those to be found in any other nation. German nationalism is over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect in other directions. Apply our three tests to the German nation, and it will be found to fail in them all. National boundary and State frontier do not coincide because there are still some twelve million Germans living outside ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... born cultivated. A singular fruit, we thought, of our shaggy democracy,—as interesting a phenomenon in that regard as it has been our fortune to encounter. Where is the rudeness of a new community, the pushing vulgarity of an imperfect civilization, the licentious contempt of forms that marks our unchartered freedom, and all the other terrible things which have so long been the bugaboos of European refinement? Here was a natural product, as perfectly natural as the deliberate attempt ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the chapel, and the imperfect light gave a greater solemnity to the scene. Chicot was glad to find that he was not the last, for three monks entered after in gray robes, and placed themselves in front of the altar. Soon after, a little monk, doubtless a lad belonging to the choir, came and spoke to one of these ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... murmurings against the proclamations of God. Not so: I have long since submitted myself, resigned myself, nay, even reconciled myself, perhaps, to the great wreck of my life, in so far as it was the will of God, and according to the weakness of my imperfect nature. But my wrath still rises, like a towering flame, against all the earthly instruments of this ruin; I am still at times as unresigned as ever to this tragedy, in so far as it was the work of human malice. Vengeance, as a mission for me, as a task for my hands in particular, is ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the truth, we apprehend, such the character, that Andersen had indistinctly in view. He drew from himself, but he had not previously analysed that self. It is, therefore, not so much a false as a confused and imperfect representation that he has given, which the reader, if he thinks it worth his while, must explain and complete for himself. Perhaps, too, a fear of the ridicule which an exhibition of modesty in man might draw down from certain slender witlings, from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 293: Any reference to the opinions of past writers would be imperfect which should omit Fuller's; he had access, it should seem, to little if any other data than Fox supplied him with, and yet the conclusion to which he came is this: "For mine own part, I must confess myself ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... youthful love, the caressing grace of the language which describes the spiritualised beauty of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description of a style si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer. Emily's father, Mr. Hood, is an essentially pathetic figure, almost grotesquely true to life. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... taste also for mechanics. He conceived the idea of making a timepiece, a clock, and about the year 1770 constructed one. With his imperfect tools, and with no other model than a borrowed watch, it had cost him long and patient labor to perfect it, to make the variation necessary to cause it to strike the hours, and produce a concert of correct action ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... English very badly,) was well situated for holding a midnight council of (Rebecca) war, being lonely, at the confluence of two roads, and this proved to be the nature of this late assemblage. We were just in bed, (having secured the door as well as we could,) when we heard through the imperfect flooring a very animated melee of Welsh tongues all astir at once, and I fancied I recognized the voice of the pious Christian in the dark, who had been moved by the spirit (of religion of course) to hint or betray his dissent from the Saxon "stranger's" rebuke of perjury and murder-screening. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the genus Santalum, of which the sandel wood, used as a perfume in the East, is also one; but this affinity to so valuable a tree being not known at the time, from the description of the genus being imperfect, no examination was made of it with that object ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Here ends an imperfect narrative of the relief. What the deliverers saw on Thursday morning was a little white town lying in the midst of a wide shallow basin of green moorland; and it reminded one of a town that had been long deserted and in ruins. I am not exaggerating when I say that by far the greater number ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... glad that you have got the next door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his father and mother. I again write the direction for your next: George Borrow, Esq., Post Office, ...
— Letters to his wife Mary Borrow • George Borrow
... that finding the God of the Law imperfect, he concludes this is not the supreme God. After a wordy harangue of Peter, Simon is said to have been worsted by Peter's threatening to go to Simon's bed-chamber and question the soul of the murdered boy. Simon flies to Tyre (H.) or Tripolis (R.), ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... industry chiefly to agriculture and navigation. But rude and imperfect are their implements for field labor, as well as their nautical vessels. To a stranger nothing can appear more extraordinary than their mode of ploughing. As to a regular plough, I do not believe such a thing is known in Chiloe. If a field is ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... could say what her future might have been? She would have grown to womanhood—what then? What is the usual fate that falls to even the best woman? Sorrow, pain, and petty worry, unsatisfied longings, incompleted aims, the disappointment of an imperfect and fettered life—for say what you will to the contrary, woman's inferiority to man, her physical weakness, her inability to accomplish any great thing for the welfare of the world in which she lives, will always ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... 5. The imperfect distinction divydes the partes of a period, and is marked with tuoe punctes, the one under the other, thus : and is red with half the pause of a perfect punct; as, al have synned, and fallen from the glorie of god: but are ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... blessing. Can it be that the service rendered by the church as a body is acceptable to God? It is not according to that she hath—it forms an immense and inconceivable contrast to that measure of effort which lies fully within her power. Is it not, then, as though an imperfect sacrifice were offered to the Lord—a lamb full of blemish? If the church were weak, and it were really beyond her ability to do more than she does at present, then God would accomplish great victories by the feeble ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... when he had done so (as he had willed to do), I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers. But who art thou that goest with open eyes, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... manner attempted in M. Galland's translation, I doubt whether they would have been tolerated, certainly not read with the avidity they are, even in the dress with which he has clothed them, however imperfect that dress maybe." But in Morier's day the literal translation was so despised that an Eastern book was robbed of half its charms, both of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a vindictive spirit," he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of small imperfect mortals. "Anne, go and stand on the platform in front of the blackboard for ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a difference, that you will be as much alarmed as if in the presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... (or by one choir) be heard by the other companion or choir. There is no necessity for a priest at such recitation to say one verse in a loud voice and to say his companion's verses in a low, inaudible voice. Some priests do this with distressing results. Imperfect vocal recitation often leads to doubts and scruples in old age when remedies either cannot be applied ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... was less annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday morning, that, in the midst of her lesson, carried off the chief of her scholars to practise their chants. Moreover, the blame of all imperfect lessons was laid on the "singing for the parson," and all faults in the singing by the tasks for Miss Rachel; and one night, the excellent Zack excused his failure in geography by saying that Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all this yet existed, Scripture is right in calling the earth "without form." We could also say of the heavens that they were still imperfect and had not received their natural adornment, since at that time they did not shine with the glory of the sun and of the moon, and were not crowned by the choirs of the stars. These bodies were not ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... for prophecies they shall come to an end. As for tongues they shall cease. As for knowledge it also shall come to an end; for we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect shall come ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... assails. Forgetting that the Lord has declared, "judgment is mine," it hesitates but little to pass its condemnations upon those who differ from itself; and if Christian commandments are urged against it, it passes them by with a sneer, or openly sets them aside as too narrow and imperfect for the present age. While shrinking from the dangers that lie in wait for those who devote themselves to one idea in morality or reform, we should beware of falling into the opposite extreme of indifference on these same points; and should be sure to give them ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... organism of this humble animal whose study would not lead us into regions of thought as large as those which I have briefly opened up to you; but what I have been saying, I trust, has not only enabled you to form a conception of the scope and purport of zoology, but has given you an imperfect example of the manner in which, in my opinion, that science, or indeed any physical science, may be best taught. The great matter is, to make teaching real and practical, by fixing the attention of the student on particular facts; but at the same time it should ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... for the education of the white as well as the colored in the public schools. The South is exceedingly sensitive as to the opinion of the North. A trifle of published criticism, for example, goes through the Southern papers with rebuttals enough to break down a national constitution. An imperfect and incorrect report of an interview, which lived just long enough to be printed, has been lately passionately confuted in certain Southern newspapers with a profusion of epithets which were out of all proportion to the harmless nonsense committed to the press by an untrained reporter—a new illustration ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... children at a grave disadvantage compared with Dutch-speaking children; either they would have to devote a great deal more time to the study of Dutch in the first three years so as to be able to receive all instruction in that tongue, or they would suffer in the higher standards through their imperfect knowledge of the medium of instruction. It was not to be supposed that the Uitlanders, after an experience extending over a decade and a half of all sorts of promises, not one of which had been kept in the spirit in which it was intended to be construed, would consent to abandon their ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... animal and vegetable kingdom. We shall find it impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it tending? What will be its upshot? To give a few imperfect hints towards a solution of these questions is the object of the ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... the princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the crimson ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... Mizzi, his favourite kellnerin. So taciturn was he, in truth, that his rare utterances were carefully entered in the archives of the cafe and are now preserved there. By the courtesy of Dr. Adolph Himmelheber, the present curator, I am permitted to transcribe a few, the imperfect German of the ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... better. That is distinctly better." The Marquis took snuff delicately, dusting the fragments from the fine lace at his throat. "You realize that with an imperfect understanding of these matters, not being yourself a landowner, you may have rushed to unjustifiable conclusions. That is indeed the case. May it be a warning to you, monsieur. When I tell you that for months past I have been annoyed by similar ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... of life that was left to her she might have been allowed the delight of loving, and had been vain enough to think that her lover might be true to her and yet not suffer himself! Her sacrifice had been altogether imperfect. With herself she was angry,—not with him. Angry with him, whose very footfall was music to her ears! Angry with him, whose smile to her was as a light specially sent from heaven for her behoof! Angry with him, the very energy ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... justice, where a man, taking things in a certain light, may often seem to be a loser by his integrity. And though it is allowed that, without a regard to property, no society could subsist; yet according to the imperfect way in which human affairs are conducted, a sensible knave, in particular incidents, may think that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union and confederacy. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... fatality, yet there was another and higher state of being in which the soul would rise above the laws of the lower world. This higher state, he taught, had laws of its own, as yet unknown to man, which tended to work out the imperfect laws of the material world, establishing harmony, justice, and equality, to supply the apparent deficiencies manifested in the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... hides the imperfect ironwork of its elevators does not hide the fact that they groan like lost souls, and tremble and jerk and threaten to fall. The Septimus Building is typical of at least one half of a large city. It was "run up" by a speculative ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... twelve-grooved rifle will carry a conical ball of two ounces and a half, and can be loaded as quickly as a smooth-bore. Some persons prefer the latter to rifles for elephant-shooting, but I cannot myself understand why a decidedly imperfect weapon should be used when the rifle offers such superior advantages. At twenty and even thirty paces a good smooth-bore will carry a ball with nearly the same precision as a rifle; but in a country full of various large game there is no certainty, when the ball is rammed down, at what object ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... lusts in copulating with other creatures shall perish as the brute beasts by whom they were begotten, not having a reasonable soul nor any breath of the Almighty infused into them; and such can never be capable of resurrection. And the same is also true of imperfect and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... only when they were in the train that Percy became, for the first time, rather communicative. One day while they were eating lunch in the dining-car and discussing the imperfect characters of several of the boys at school, Percy suddenly changed his tone and made an ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was doubtless irregular, imperfect and careless, as is proved by other and far richer discoveries which were made in 1544. Unfortunately, if the accounts we have of these are complete, no drawings were made before the dispersion of the objects. The only sketches which have reached ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... thought it best to encumber the book with references and foot-notes, for the reason that statistics and opinions on this subject are conflicting and imperfect, and the results after all must rest on a broad scientific understanding of life and the laws that control human action. Although the conclusions arrived at are in variance with popular opinions and long-settled practice, I am convinced that they are old truths and are in keeping with the ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the Sefi at El Wasta, he looked round him. In the far distance was the Maydoum Pyramid, "the Imperfect One," unexplored by man these thousands of years, and all round it the soft yellowish desert, with a mirage quivering over it in the distance, a mirage of trees and water and green hills. A caravan lounged its way slowly into the waste. At the waterside, here ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not their only ground for encouragement and hope. For this description of the outward extension of the Kingdom, taken by itself, gives a very imperfect idea of its character. He taught them that "The Kingdom of Heaven" would exert a spiritual power over the hearts of men. It would be like leaven working in the meal. It would change the hearts of its subjects. The effect would be such as was afterwards ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... "that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye, to one complex and perfect, can be shown to exist, such gradation being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case" (certainly?), "if further," he continues, "the eye varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case" (most ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... for Paris, in September, 1843, did not mean for him what Heine's settlement there twelve years before had meant for Heine—the beginning of a new life. Hebbel's knowledge of French was very imperfect, and he was as much isolated in Paris as he had been in Munich; he did not seek stimulus from without so much as freedom to develop the ideas that were teeming in his mind. When he left Hamburg, however, he was destined never to return thither ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... has some 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 ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... give a list of the reforms which ought to be accomplished before the throne was filled, the list was absurdly long. If, on the other hand, the committee meant to give a list of all the reforms which the legislature would do well to make in proper season, the list was strangely imperfect. Indeed, as soon as the report had been read, member after member rose to suggest some addition. It was moved and carried that the selling of offices should be prohibited, that the Habeas Corpus Act should be made more efficient, and that the law of Mandamus should be revised. One gentleman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bowed and smiled. The Great Man stared, With look half puzzled and half scared; Then seemed to recollect, turned round, And mumbled some imperfect sound: A moment more, his coach of state Dipped on its springs beneath his weight; And DICK, who followed at his heels, Heard but the din of ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... finished his problem and its solution. The man hereupon in a rage drew his sword and killed him. Others say that the Roman fell upon him at once with a sword to kill him, but he, seeing him, begged him to wait for a little while, that he might not leave his theorem imperfect, and that while he was reflecting upon it, he was slain. A third story is that as he was carrying into Marcellus's presence his mathematical instruments, sundials, spheres, and quadrants, by which the eye might measure the magnitude of the sun, some soldiers met with him, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... is from Microfiche. All copies that I've found are marked "Photographed from an imperfect copy." Printer errors have been left as is, but noted. We cannot account for the accuracy in some of the numbers, where the original was exceptionally difficult to read. Where applicable, any changes are noted with a [TR]. Any other inconsistencies were left as in the original. A Table of Contents ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... Mediterranean end of the Canal, which extended over several days, suggested either doubts as to the reality of his rumored destination, or a belief that the equipment and preparation—in coal especially—for so distant an expedition had been imperfect. This contributed to postpone Watson's departure, and the first passage of the Canal (July 2nd) by the Spaniards coincided in date very closely with the destruction of their other division under Cervera. After the action ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... difference in two distinct lives between constant victory and frequent victory. But that one little difference constitutes a world of success or failure. The one is the Divine, the other is the human; the one is the everlasting way, the other the transient and the imperfect. God wants to lead us to the way everlasting, and to establish us and make us immovable as He. We little know the seriousness of the slightest surrender. It is but the first step in a downward progression, and God only ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... The more imperfect a thing is, the more weakened is the divine being in it by non-being and contingency. The entrance of the naught into the divine reality takes place by degrees. First God projects from himself the ideal or archetypal world (mundus archetypus), i.e., ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... imperfect ideals the Orient has endured, while we of the Occident are fast becoming decadent. We, by learning something of the art of love, and of the natural life of married people, from the Hindoos, may perpetuate our civilization. They, by adopting the best of our transcendentalism, ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... printed in the folio of 1623. The play, however, was registered at the Stationers', January 18, 1602, as "an excellent and pleasant-conceited comedy of Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor." In pursuance of this entry, an imperfect and probably fraudulent edition was published in the course of the same year, and was reprinted in 1619. In this quarto edition, the play is but about half as long as in the authentic copy of 1623, and some of the prose parts are printed so as to look like verse. It is in doubt whether the issue ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the dawn of history until the seventh century. During this period the system of government was that of rude feudalism. The conquering tribe of Yamato, having gradually obtained a rather imperfect supremacy over the other tribes in the middle and southern portions of the country now called the Empire of Japan, ruled them in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... extent to which groups of ancient rocks, each of which may in their turn have formed continents and oceanic basins, have been disturbed, folded, and denuded even in the course of a few out of many of those geological periods to which our imperfect records relate. It is not easy for us to overestimate the effects which causes in every day action must produce when the multiplying power of time is taken ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... made a brief extract, in pleading the cause of his country, charges bad faith against the United States in the acquisition of both Louisiana and Texas, but in both arguments he fails to make out a case. By the treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, France acquired an imperfect title to Louisiana; by the treaty of Paris in 1803, she conveyed all her title to the United States. But, before the United States would pay over any money on account of the treaty of 1803, she required Spain to confirm the treaty of San Ildefonso by putting France ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... where he thought he would alight if he dropped from the comet then in the sky. "Oh," said he, naming the open space nearest his own residence, "somewhere about Finsbury Circus." That man's astronomical notions were very imperfect, but they were quite as good as those of the person who seriously wrote, and of the persons who seriously believe, this fairy tale of the star which heralded the birth ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... blending softness of union which is the last perfection of strength - less of it than even his conduct manifested. With words he had not learned to make music - it was by deeds of love or heroic valor that he spoke freely. Nevertheless, though in imperfect articulation, the same voice, if we listen well, is to be heard also in his writings, in his poems. The one entitled Ein' Feste Burg, universally regarded as the best, jars upon our ears; yet there is something in ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... human nature begins with description, but it goes on from that point to explanation. If the descriptions which we have thus far had of human nature are imperfect and lacking in precision, it is equally true that the explanations thus far invented have, on the whole, been inadequate. One reason for this has been the difficulty of the task. The mechanisms which control human behavior are, as might be expected, tremendously complicated, and the problem ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics. ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to hide it from those dead eyes.... But his deep repentance for the misery he had brought upon his parent ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... upon which I have had to mainly depend have been:—A very imperfect Official War Diary; my own letters; my memory; and a few contributions from former comrades. These last have been received from Major E. G. Glyde, Captains A. M. P. Montgomery, A. S. Isaac, N. W. Sundercombe, G. D. Shaw, T. O. Nicholls, and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... resident, who had visited Ireland, that he had often sought for this substance, but had never been able to find any. He showed me, as the nearest approach to it which he had discovered, a black peaty soil, so penetrated with roots as to allow of an extremely slow and imperfect combustion." ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the rude huts of old had, in many instances, been replaced by large and costly buildings of brick. Weddings were generally celebrated by balls that lasted for a week. Hospitality was unstinted, and most men of means thought their establishments imperfect until provided with a private race course. With hound and horn, there was great diversion, for game was abundant and the sport open to all who could get ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... size and fill up the cavity of the old cell, which is in time resorbed. Cell-development always takes place within existing cells, and either one or many new cells may be formed within the mother-cell. Schleiden's views on cell-formation were drawn from some rather imperfect observations on the embryo-sac and pollen-tube, but he extended his theory to cell-formation in general. Though wrong in almost all respects the theory had at least the merit of fixing attention upon the really important constituents of the cell, the nucleus ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... literature in 213 B.C. This being so in the matter of a dozen eclipses, there still remain two dozen for specialists to experiment upon, not to mention comets and other celestial phenomena. From this collateral evidence, imperfect though it be, we are reasonably entitled to assume that the three expanded versions of Confucius' history are trustworthy, or at the very least written ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... all. The art of political persuasion was at this time raised to a point—especially by the Venetian ambassadors of which northern nations first obtained a conception from the Italians, and of which the official addresses give a most imperfect idea. These are mere pieces of humanistic rhetoric. Nor, in spite of an otherwise ceremonious etiquette was there in case of need any lack of rough and frank speaking in diplomatic intercourse. A man like Machiavelli appears in his 'Legazioni' ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Columbus had to rely on an imperfect knowledge of astronomy and on those practical observations of wind and weather and water that he had made during his own voyages. Such slender equipment, plus the tub-like little caravels, would not have invited many men to try unknown waters, unless such men had Christopher's ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a fly-blown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... introduced into Japan along with almanac-making in the fifth century were without question very primitive sciences. At this time even in Europe the knowledge of these sciences was not advanced beyond the imperfect notions of the Greeks. It was not until the sixteenth century, when the discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards and the English had revealed the shape and the divisions of the earth, and the Jesuits had carried this knowledge to China and Japan, that anything like a correct ...
— Japan • David Murray
... Imperfect, poorly lovely things On all sides round she sighing sees; She flies, nor for her flying wings Finds any ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... "are twenty-five years of study in vain? Am I to learn the imperfect language of men when I have the key to the heavenly tongue? Oh, if you are right,—I ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... fail of proving a respectable and prosperous member of society; nay, more, I believe every one would, at the close of life, find admission into the world of endless peace and love. I say this solemnly, deliberately, and with the full belief that I am upheld by such imperfect experimental trials as I have made, or seen made by others; but, more than this, that I am sustained by the authority of Heaven, which sets forth this grand palladium of education, 'Train up a child in the way he ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... 243. of his work "that not one of the books of the New Testament, nor all of them together, were intended to be a forensic defence of Christianity. On the contrary, the historical books are brief, and imperfect memoirs, which were not designed, nor supposed to contain all the faces, and which do not set forth, nor profess to set forth the evidences of the religion. The Epistolary parts are the counsels, instructions and affectionate sentiments which the occasions of the infant churches, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... grants originated in the Lower House, they were ineffectual without the concurrence of the Upper House. There was no precedent of addresses to the House of Lords, or Commons, separately, by a single branch of the Colonial Legislature. He conceived the addresses to be unprecedented, imperfect in form, and founded upon a resolution of the House of Assembly, which, until sanctioned by the Legislative Council, must be ineffectual, except as a spontaneous offer on the part of the Commons of Canada. The resolutions were premature. He regretted that he could not take it upon himself ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... with what the physician called hallucination of mind, and a general feebleness of body, were all the apparent consequences of this stroke. She was not herself sensible of the nature of the attack, or clear in her ideas of any thing that had passed immediately previous to it. She had only an imperfect recollection of her daughter's illness, and of some hurry about Mr. Vivian's going away. She was, however, well enough to go into her dressing-room, where Vivian went to pay his respects to her, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... disease and all subsequent diseases—are they not perhaps the capital element of progress? Arthritis, for example, infects the blood and introduces into it scoriae, a kind of refuse, of an imperfect organic combustion; but may not this very impurity happen to make the blood more stimulative? May not this impure blood promote a more active cerebration precisely because it is impure? Water that is chemically pure is undrinkable. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... thoughts as clearly as they can perceive their own reflection; while the crystal ball is an emblem of purity. Great store is set by the latter, especially if of large size and without flaw; but to my mind the imperfect ones are the best, as they refract the light and do not ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... heritage of the last few centuries that makes the English workman more tolerant of wrong than most foreign workmen would be. But this only slightly modifies the main fact of the moral responsibility. To take an imperfect parallel, if we said that negro slaves would have rebelled if negroes had been more intelligent, we should be saying what is reasonable. But if we were to say that it could by any possibility be represented as being the negro's fault that he was at that moment in America and not in ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... speedily marshalled and marched to the scene of action; but the young women were not so fortunate in getting off to places in the hospitals before the first ardor of excitement had cooled. Indeed, all hospital organization was in such an imperfect state that no definite plan could be made for ladies desiring to enter upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... we go to the plantation-houses for our meals, camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of William Washington,—William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern of house-servants, William the noiseless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... borrowing such words is that they often come to be used in a different sense from their use in their native language; and people with an imperfect knowledge of these languages will say rather vulgar or shocking things when using them in the English manner in those languages. Thus, to speak of a person of a certain "calibre" in French is exceedingly vulgar; ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... spirits, and were accustomed to use the word שאלה (which ought invariably to be translated grave, or hades, and not hell,) something in the same manner as my friend the Shereef, for a dreary shadowy region of imperfect beings or non-entities, a nether ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the forms, the imperfect first proofs of circulars and placards that had been placed on hook files. AVISO! stared up at him in big, black type from the top of many small sheets, with the following notices of sales, penalties attached for violations of certain ordinances, and what not. But there was ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Laws of the Nation. Introduced New and Republican Usages. Moses' Law in Advance of Modern Social Science. Testimony of the Jewish Nation. Testimony of Christ. The Lost Books. The Law Abolished by the Gospel. The Imperfect Morality of Old Testament. Polygamy, Slavery, and Divorce. The Education of the World a Gradual Process. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... colander and pour cold water over them. Drain and chill, and arrange prettily on dish. Always be sure to remove the imperfect grapes. ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... Finding how imperfect was my knowledge of English I set to work reading through some English books with the help of a dictionary. From my earliest years it was my habit not to let any want of complete comprehension interfere with ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... ingenious little apparatus, by means of which, in one of his lectures, he demonstrated this fact to his audience. It will be easily understood from the above explanation that, if the closure of the nasal cavities is sufficiently imperfect to allow any considerable amount of air to pass through the nose, the result will be ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... the matter of Fact in this Compendious History, for Confirmation of what he has here written, quotes a tedious and imperfect Epistle (as he styles it) beginning and ending anonymous withal, containing the Cruelties committed by the Spaniards, the same in effect as our Author has prementioned, now in regard that I judge such reiterated Cruelties and repeated Barbarisms are Offensive ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... concerning Piers Ploughman," and written by an obscure monk whose name was probably William Langland—was the greatest poem and the most popular that had ever been written in England, and yet that it failed in many ways of being true English poetry: its metre was irregular, and its rhythm was imperfect; its verses instead of rhyming were constructed in accordance with certain rules of alliteration; its subjects, while interesting, no doubt, to those for whom it was written, were not such as bring into play the highest powers of the imagination ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... have, blundering and imperfect as it is, an answer to your Requests, with my best wishes that it may be of any service to the Purpose for which it was made—But must rely upon it that Nothing I have written be made public in my Name.[B] Wishing you long ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much a law of nature as the law of gravity—the Italian nation (the only one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political development and a superior civilization, though it presented the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades of culture in the west—Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans—by means of its settlers; just as England ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... because God has said that earnest, believing prayer availeth much; but you must pray for yourself—you must not trust to others praying instead of you. God will hear your prayers, though they may be very weak and imperfect, just as He heard the prayer of the poor publican who smote on his breast and said, 'God be merciful to me ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... adopted by all classes of people for habit formation. It is because of the recognition of the value of repetition that the old maxim of "Practice makes Perfect" has been so blindly adhered to. Practice may make perfect, but it also may make imperfect. All that practice can do is to make more sure and automatic the activity, whatever it is. It cannot alone make for improvement. A child becomes more and more proficient in bad writing or posture, in incorrect work in arithmetic and spelling, with practice just as truly as under other conditions ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... keep things clean in the country, and Rosa had a high standard, which her two servants could never quite attain. This annoyed her, and she began to scold a little. They answered civilly, but in other respects remained imperfect beings; they laid out every shilling they earned in finery; and, this, I am ashamed to say, irritated Mrs. Staines, who was wearing out her wedding garments, and had no excuse for buying, and Staines ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... previously travelling in Epirus and Asia Minor, with his friend Mr. Hobhouse, and had become a great amateur of smoking: he was conducted to this shop for the purpose of purchasing a few pipes. The indifferent Italian, in which language he spoke to his Cicerone, and the latter's still more imperfect Turkish, made it difficult for the shopkeeper to understand their wishes, and as this seemed to vex the stranger, I addressed him in English, offering to interpret for him. When his Lordship thus discovered me to be an Englishman, he shook me cordially by the hand, and assured me, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... dear Campbell, imperfect as we all are, I do not believe that many could have made a better use of ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... found in the wild have not been entirely satisfactory. The trees vary greatly in fruitfulness and the nuts in thickness of shells, size, shape, and kernel quality. A strong tendency to produce nuts with imperfect kernels is common among the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... I not perfect myself: No, I am greatly imperfect. Yet will I not allow, that my imperfections shall excuse those of my wife, or make her think I ought to bear faults in her, that she can rectify, because she ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the Pateo was being built, the great entrance to the Imperfect chapels, one of the richest as well as one of the largest doorways in the world, was begun, and it must have taken a long time to build and to carve, for the lower part, on the chapel side especially, seems to be rather earlier in style than the upper. The ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... eyes with his hands for an instant, significantly, till the baby pushed them down, saying in his imperfect way— ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... them how imperfect must have been a reported speech! And relying on those who transferred their speeches to a different language, we have little assurance of any thing better than mutilated transcripts of the original. Need we be surprised then, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... indeed, gain an approximate knowledge of things we have never seen. For example, I have an imperfect notion of a banian-tree, though I have never seen one; but it is only by having seen other trees, and by having also had the perceptions to which appeal is made in describing the peculiarities of the banian. So he who is born blind may learn so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... months, but Tolson's reply was wholly unprofitable. He merely avowed that he had discovered nothing at all of Phoebe's intention, and could throw no light whatever upon her disappearance. The letter was laboriously written by a man of imperfect education, and barely covered three loosely written sides of ordinary note-paper. It arrived when Fenwick's own researches were already at a standstill, and seemed to leave nothing more to hope for. The police inquiries which had been initiated went on intermittently for a while, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can mercifully apply a perfect law to imperfect humanity, and if He had a "beloved disciple," might not Hemstead have ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... it seemed that the divine plan was made to take the imperfect little life back into its keeping. A sudden chill, a sudden cold, and then the grim word, pneumonia! For days, Beatrix and the nurse hung over the child, struggling almost against hope to conquer the disease. Then it was that Beatrix realized how truly she had loved her ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... long extract, by which we have endeavoured to do justice to Mr. Gell's argument, we cannot allow room for any farther quotations of such extent; and we must offer a brief and imperfect analysis of the remainder of the work. In the third chapter the traveller arrives at the capital, and in the fourth he describes it in an agreeable manner. We select his account of the mode of celebrating a Christian festival in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... half-sword in both hands, so as to put his whole weight behind it, and made a lunge in the direction of a muttered curse. The curse gave way to a roar of pain and rage, and Colden's second follower dropped, spurting blood in the darkness, his shoulder gashed horribly by the blunt end of Peyton's imperfect weapon. Harry now ran back to the parlor, to deal with Colden in the light, the latter's greater length of weapon giving a greater searching-power in the darkness. In the parlor Elizabeth stood waiting in suspense. Sam was sitting ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... forehead, arched a little, not without a look of habitation, though whence that comes it might be hard to say. There are no great clouds on that sky of the face, but there is a soft dimness that might turn to rain. She has a straight nose, not too large for the imperfect yet decidedly Greek contour; a doubtful, rather straight, thin-lipped mouth, which seems to dissolve into a bewitching smile, and reveals perfect teeth—and a good deal more to the eyes that can read it. When the mouth smiles, the eyes light up, which is a good sign. Their shape ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... their excellence is that they are not yet wholly superseded by the more detailed surveys of modern times. Like all first surveys of a practically unknown shore, and especially when that shore abounds in rocks and shoals, and is much indented with bays and creeks, they are imperfect, in the sense of having many omissions; but when the amount of the ground covered, and the impediments of fogs and bad weather on that coast is considered, and that Cook had at the most only one assistant, their accuracy is truly astonishing. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... allotted on the good old rule: "No prey, No pay," so that all had a keen incentive to bestir themselves. They were also "very civil and charitable to each other," observing "among themselves, very good orders." They sailed together like a company of brothers, or rather, since that were an imperfect simile, like a company of jolly comrades. Locks and keys were forbidden among them, as they are forbidden in ship's fo'c's'les to this day; for every man was expected to show that he put trust in his mates. A man caught thieving from his fellow was ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield |
