"Imperfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things he was continually saying, that he became the object of ten times the ridicule which he had endeavoured to inflict upon those who had a natural impediment. What was pitied in them as a misfortune, was despised in him as an ill-acquired and consequently a vicious imperfection; and therefore every one was willing to increase the mortifying smart of it, and keep alive the conscious shame he felt of wearing a fool's cap which was entirely of his own making. This vexatious, and in some degree, vindictive ridicule to ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... the imperfection of language, we have called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... desire imparted by the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may, in individual cases, either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the class; neither in infancy ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... is an excellent maxim; but in concluding this sketch, there can be no harm in at least regretting the imperfection of human nature. If its eminent subject, instead of spending abroad upon the world her great capacity, had been able to concentrate it in some measure upon herself and family, there can be little doubt that she would have been regarded in society with less of the contempt which genius, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... among the Romans; John and Henry of France, and John of England and Scotland. One of the principal rules of this kind of divination among the Pythagoreans was, that an even number of vowels in a name signified an imperfection in the left side of a man, and an odd number in the right side. Another rule was, that the persons were the most happy in whose names the numeral letters added together, made the greatest sum; for which reason, it was alleged, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... necessarily receive a small mixture of common air, the experiment might not be judged to be quite fair; though I myself might be sufficiently satisfied with respect to the allowance that was to be made for that small imperfection. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... No more pernicious notion ever obtained lodgment in society than the common one that to "rise in the world" is necessarily to change the "condition." Let there be content with condition; discontent with individual ignorance and imperfection. "We want," says Emerson, "not a farmer, but a man on a farm." What a mischievous idea is that which has grown, even in the United States, that manual labor is discreditable! There is surely some defect in the theory of equality in our society which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... respectfully kiss your fair hands, and repay my debt with gratitude. The celebration you mention in honour of my poor abilities touched me deeply, but still not so profoundly as if you had considered it more perfect. Perhaps I may supply this imperfection by another symphony which I will shortly send you; I say perhaps, because I (or rather my brain) am in truth weary. Providence alone can repair the deficiency in my powers, and to Him I daily pray ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... beings who, in their several degrees, are in a similar predicament to myself. Perhaps they are; but if so, the moral evil with which I am directly acquainted is made all the blacker by the fact that it is thus but a drop in an infinite ocean of moral imperfection. When, therefore, Professor Flint goes on to say, "We ought to be content if we can show that what God has done is wise and right, and not perplex ourselves as to why He has not done an infinity ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... superior to myself, I could believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature, in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false, that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me because of a certain imperfection of my nature. But this could not be the case with-the idea of a nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and, because it is not less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of, and dependence on the less perfect, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... view of the ocean, the name of one—Napoleon—is specifically mentioned; that of the other is—Byron. Seldom, in the prosecution of his difficult but not ungrateful task, has the translator felt the imperfection of his art, or the arduous nature of its object, more keenly than when attempting to give something like an adequate version of the eleventh and twelfth stanzas of this majestic composition. In order to give some idea of the fidelity of his imitation, we will subjoin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... she answered, "a little. It gives me more hope. I cannot think I am totally depraved. I do not believe that God wishes me to think so. And while I am still aware of the distance between Christ's perfection and my own imperfection, I feel that the possibility is greater of lessening that distance. It gives me more self-respect, more self-reliance. George Bridges says that the logical conclusion of that old doctrine is what philosophers call determinism—Calvinistic predestination. I can't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... seized his hand, and before one o'clock on the same night he had ceased to philosophize. The words with which his pen ended its long and laborious career, are characteristic enough, both of the general imperfection of human knowledge, and of the particular quality of Schlegel's mind. The Germans have a proverb:—"Alles waere gut waere kein ABER dabei"—"every thing would be good were it not for an ABER—for a HOWEVER—for a BUT." This is the general human vice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... difference amounts to about twenty miles. It is but justice, however, to the memory of Captain Middleton to add, that several miles of this error may have been occasioned by the imperfection of nautical instruments in his day, combined with the unavoidable inaccuracy of observations made by the horizon of the sea when encumbered with much ice. On this latter account, as well as from the extraordinary terrestrial refraction, no observation can be ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... were. Her nose, too, was of that high born order we recognize in the delicate but prominent lines, and, together with her mouth and chin, were such that the most fastidious could not have detected an imperfection. And as the moonbeams played upon her features, lighting them up as it were, she seemed a creature more ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... I have supposed the ant-heap to be financially sound. I am no economist, only a writer of fiction; but even as such, I know one thing that bears on the economic question—I know the imperfection of man's faculty for business. The Anarchists, who count some rugged elements of common sense among what seem to me their tragic errors, have said upon this matter all that I could wish to say, and condemned beforehand great economical ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentle mynd Dwels in deformed tabernacle drownd, Either by chaunce, against the course of kynd*, Or through unaptnesse in the substance fownd, Which it assumed of some stubborne grownd, 145 That will not yield unto her formes direction, But is deform'd with some foule imperfection. [* Kynd, nature.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... they stand came into being. The records themselves represent an immense amount of care and effort. Will you believe we had to make over two thousand in order to secure the one hundred needed for the present series? The slightest imperfection is enough to render an otherwise perfect record useless. Even the artists themselves would sometimes become discouraged at the enormous difficulties. It is nerve-racking work, for one must be on tension ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which are connected with the external: their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets, but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had that corruption availed so as to extinguish in ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... see that the mistake is to judge boys by the standard of grown-ups, to forget that a child is quick and mobile like a running stream; and that, in the case of such, any touch of imperfection need cause no great alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective. When stagnation sets in then comes the danger. So it is for the teacher, more than the pupil, ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... very sincerely protested that Stella and imperfection could not be named together, except as contrasts, for he truly thought so. She sighed, and then smiled, and the colonel cantering up cut short the interesting conversation—interesting to the two persons concerned, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... of her silence. He imagined at first, that she might perhaps be dumb: "But then," said he to himself, "can it be possible that heaven should forge a creature so beautiful, so perfect, and so accomplished, and at the same time with so great an imperfection? Were it however so, I could not love her with less passion than I do." When the king of Persia rose, he washed his hands on one side, while the fair slave washed hers on the other. He took that opportunity to ask the woman who held the basin and napkin, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... WANE. In timber, an imperfection implying a want of squareness at one or more of its corners; under this deficiency it ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... for instance. That it should ever have been an open question with me whether a poppy had always {90} two of its petals less than the other two, depended wholly on the hurry and imperfection with which the poppy carries out its plan. It never would have occurred to me to {91} doubt whether an iris had three of its leaves smaller than the other three, because an iris always completes itself to its own ideal. Nevertheless, on examining various poppies, as I have walked, this summer, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... delight, without the slightest attempt at resistance on her part. All the time she kept her eyes fixed on mine, as if to soothe her modesty; but when I beheld and felt all her charms I was in an ecstasy. What a body; what beauties! Nowhere was there the slightest imperfection. She was like Venus rising from the foam of the sea. I carried her gently to the bed, and while she strove to hide her alabaster breasts and the soft hair which marked the entrance to the sanctuary, I undressed in haste, and consummated the sweetest of sacrifices, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... les corps diaphanes, tels que les miroirs, les cuvettes remplies d'eau et les liquides; ceux qui inspectent les coeurs, les foies et les os des animaux, ... tous ces gens-la appartiennent aussi a la categorie des devins, mais, a cause de l'imperfection de leur nature, ils y occupent un rang inferieur. Pour ecarter le voile des sens, le vrai devin n'a pas besoin de grands efforts; quant aux autres, ils tachent d'arriver au but en essayant de concentrer en un seul sens toutes leurs perceptions. Comme la vue est le sens le ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... enabled him every evening to take a nap at a coffee-house. Thus their meeting had the importance of an adventure. They were at once drawn together by secret fibres. Besides, how can we explain sympathies? Why does a certain peculiarity, a certain imperfection, indifferent or hateful in one person, prove a fascination in another? That which we call the thunderbolt is true as regards ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... monstrous things as if they were purely normal and natural to a properly focussed eye, and as if any monstrousness they might present to me were due to some distortion imparted to them solely by the imperfection of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... lately been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... inhabilis, or inidoneus ad gerendam rempublicam,—unfit or unable to govern the kingdom; but this is no impediment to his right of reigning: he cannot either be excluded or deposed for such imperfection; for the laws which have provided for private men in this case, have also made provision for the sovereign, and for the public; and the council of state, or the next of blood, is to administer the kingdom for him. Charles the Sixth of France, (for I think we have no English examples ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and are a necessary help (as well as hindrance) to the human understanding; to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... risk the future of his passion by exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors. Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men, which always results—even with scoundrels, and how much more with honest ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... us at present, and it is well they do, inasmuch as for the reasons already given there is greater probability of degeneracy by means of such connections than among those not so related by blood. But they present an instance of the imperfection of human laws, it being impossible for any legal enactments to prevent wholly the evil thus sought to be avoided. It would be better far, if such a degree of physiological knowledge existed and such ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings, which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... productions of the arts, a skilful embroideress is employed to undo and repair whatever has been spoilt. If the princess be a musician, there are no ears that will discover when she is out of tune; at least there is no tongue that will tell her so. This imperfection in the accomplishments of the great is but a slight misfortune. It is sufficiently meritorious in them to engage in such pursuits, even with indifferent success, because this taste and the protection it extends produce abundance of talent on every side. Maria Leczinska delighted ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... geological succession of animals."[53] It will be observed that Agassiz is quoted, not as to matters of theory, but as to matters of fact. The only answer which evolutionists can make to this argument, is the imperfection of the geological record. When asked, Where are the immediate predecessors of these new species? they answer, They have disappeared, or, have not yet been found. When asked, Where are their immediate ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... alas! to balance my innumerable talents, There's a fatal imperfection and a melancholy blot: All the forms of my creating stand continually waiting For a charitable person to ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... which life begins constrains chemical affinity to work in special modes for the formation of special products: when it is spent or disappears, chemical affinity is at liberty to work in its general modes; and that is death. "Life is the co ordination of actions; the imperfection of the co ordination is disease, its arrest is death." In other words, "life is the continuous adjustment of relations in an organism with relations in its environment." Disturb that adjustment, and you have malady; destroy it, and you have death. Life is the performance of functions ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... full of dainty little gestures copied from her mother, but he had some doubts as to whether his wonderful Margaret might not be too perfect in herself, and too engrossed with the duties pertaining to perfection to be quite the proper manager of imperfection and immaturity ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Formes, notwithstandyng, are constant, vnchaungeable, vntransformable, and incorruptible. Neither of the sense, can they, at any tyme, be perceiued or iudged. Nor yet, for all that, in the royall mynde of man, first conceiued. But, surmountyng the imperfection of coniecture, weenyng and opinion: and commyng short of high intellectuall conception, are the Mercurial fruite of Dianoeticall discourse, in perfect imagination subsistyng. A meruaylous newtralitie haue these thinges Mathematicall, and also a straunge participation betwene ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... herself took the dinner upstairs—a first course of mutton chops and potatoes, cooked to a degree of imperfection only attained in an English kitchen. The sour French wine was still on the good woman's mind. "What would you choose to drink, sir?" she asked. Mr. Mountjoy seemed to feel no interest in what he might have to drink. "We have some French ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... refuse to admit as members women, slaves, persons not free-born, and persons having any maim, defect, or imperfection in their bodies; or, at least, the principles of Masonry forbid the admission of all such persons. (Masonic Constitutions, published by authority of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, Art. 3 and 4.) Moore, editor of the Masonic Review, in his Ancient Charges and Regulations ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... this method over the direct method of operating the buzzer is that any imperfection in the night-alarm contact at the drop is much less likely to prevent the flow of current of the high-voltage battery 6 than of the low-voltage battery 1, shown in connection with Fig. 274. This is because the higher voltage is much more likely to break down any very thin bit of insulation, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... we call upon him?" Yet all who came out of Egypt and had witnessed the mighty wonders God wrought among themselves and among their enemies, fell and glaringly sinned; not according to the measure of the mere weakness and imperfection of human nature, but they sinned disobediently and in willful contempt of God. Hardened in unbelief unto insensibility, they ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... discovered by means of the new arrivals which kept coming in, hurled into the midst of us without thought or question, that this was the common fate of all who were repulsive to the sight, or who had any weakness or imperfection which offended the eyes of the population. They were tossed in among us, not to be healed, or for repose or safety, but to be out of sight, that they might not disgust or annoy those who were more fortunate, to whom no injury had happened; and because ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... recognize in dramatic art as in all other human affairs; namely, that perfection, if not unattainable, is extremely rare. We have often to make a deliberate sacrifice at one point in order to gain some greater advantage at another; to incur imperfection here that we may achieve perfection there. It is no disparagement to the great masters to admit that they frequently show us rather what to avoid than what to do. Negative instruction, indeed, is in its essence more desirable ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... builders, who in other points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which there were several in every palace, and which, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... obtained, as it is often due to the deceptive indefiniteness of line and pleasant gray tone. When inked-in, in uncompromising black against the white paper, the draughtsman is apt to find that his sketch has developed many an imperfection, both in composition and in individual letter shapes, that the vague pencil lines did ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... prudent. In this particular he runs the risk of presenting himself to the public in the relation that the dumb wife in the jest-book held to her husband, when, having spent half of his fortune to obtain the cure of her imperfection, he was willing to have bestowed the other half to restore her to her former condition. But this is a risk inseparable from the task which the Author has undertaken, and he can only promise to be as little ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... reflect, that, besides the immediate pleasure attending such an occupation, philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, methodised and corrected. But they will never be tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their narrow reach, and their inaccurate operations. While we cannot give a satisfactory reason why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall or fire burn; can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... imperfect Christians as an excuse for their own weak lives; the drunkards and the liars and the oppressors of the poor; the people who heard a thousand sermons full of Gospel truth and despised them because of some imperfection in delivery or elocution; all those men who went through life the betrayers of the home; the selfish politicians, who betrayed their country; the men who read the Bible and believed only the parts that didn't hurt their sensitive ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... other devices for obtaining rotatory motion from a piston rod. Before passing on, it may be mentioned that Watt was the father of the modern—that is, the high-pressure—steam-engine; and that, owing to the imperfection of the existing machinery, the difficulties he had to overcome were enormous. On one occasion he congratulated himself because one of his steam-cylinders was only three-eighths of an inch out of truth in the bore. Nowadays a good firm would reject a cylinder 1/500 of an inch ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... "prepared" people than me not inconsiderably wince; but there was no grain of bravado in his ripest things (I've always maintained it, though often contradicted), and at bottom the poor fellow, disinterested to his finger-tips and regarding imperfection not only as an aesthetic but quite also as a social crime, had an extreme dread of scandal. There are critics who regret that having gone so far he didn't go further; but I regret nothing—putting ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... abortion, and thus removes them further than any other family from the Hesperidae and Heterocera, which all have perfect legs. Now it is a question whether any amount of difference which is exhibited merely in the imperfection or abortion of certain organs, can establish in the group exhibiting it a claim to a high grade of organization, still less can this be allowed when another group along with perfection of structure in the same organs, exhibits modifications peculiar ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... generally in one piece with the sides and hips. The whole length of the leg which is placed in advance of the other is very often connected with the pediment by a band of stone. It has been conjectured that this course was imposed upon the sculptor by reason of the imperfection of his tools, and the consequent danger of fracturing the statue when cutting away the superfluous material—an explanation which may be correct as regards the earliest schools, but which does not hold good for ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Jesus died, is an incredible supposition. No event taking place in time and space can be the condition sine qua non of divine perfection. And any struggle or conflict like that supposed implies imperfection. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... good men, while in this state of imperfection, should be surprized by temptation into sins, and even heinous sins, is neither new nor strange. Many instances occur in the history of the saints recorded in the scriptures. "Aaron, the saint of the Lord," and Moses, whose general character was that of "a servant, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... how the existing arrangement is best; although I never doubted that there must be a satisfactory reason for this seeming imperfection. To suppose otherwise, would be highly unphilosophical, since we constantly see, as the circle of our knowledge is enlarged, many mysteries in nature hitherto inexplicable, fully ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... furnished with its new dress in good time, and made quite a respectable appearance. Mr. Smith was delighted with everything; the more particularly as the cost had been so moderate. I had my own thoughts on the subject; and looked very confidently for some evidences of imperfection in our great bargains. I was not very long kept in suspense. One morning, about two weeks after all had been fitted out so elegantly, while engaged in dusting the chairs, a part of the mahogany ornament in the back of one of them fell off. On the next day, another showed the same evidence of imperfect ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... intelligence and not merely the product of force and matter, the human mind, as a part of the whole, should so chime with it, that from what is known it may reach the unknown. If this be so, the knowledge gathered should, within the limits of error which its imperfection renders unavoidable, enable us to foretell what we are likely to find in the deepest abysses of the sea." He looked, in short, for the solution of special problems directly connected with all his previous work. He believed the deeper sea would show forms of life akin to animals of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... period of confusion, of the most precious things that we possess: time, thought, and feeling refused to the realities of the world, and lavished on the figments of the imagination. Why this vagueness, this imperfection in all mediaeval representations of life? Because even as men's eyes were withdrawn, by the temporal institutions of those days, from the sight of the fields and meadows which were left to the blind and dumb thing called serf; so also the thoughts of mankind, its sympathy and intentions, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... had little patience with the Republican theory of adding amendments to the Constitution to bestow the implied powers. "Man and his language," said he, "are both defective. We cannot foresee and provide specifically for all contingencies. If you amend the constitution a thousand times, the same imperfection of our nature and our language will ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... a great deal of imperfection in what man does for man that comes from the indifference arising from the torpor of untimely food, and far more than there is any conception in what man does against man from the destruction ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... — N. inferiority, minority, subordinacy; shortcoming, deficiency; minimum; smallness &c. 32; imperfection; lower quality, lower worth. [personal inferiority] commonalty &c. 876. V. be inferior &c. adj.; fall short of, come short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c. (decrease) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... LETTER ALPHA}) The infirmity of human nature flows from four separate and distinct sources: (1) concupiscence (fomes peccati); (2) imperfection of the ethical judgment (imperfectio iudicii); (3) inconstancy of the will (inconstantia voluntatis); and (4) the weariness caused by continued resistance to temptation. In view of these agencies and their combined attack upon the will, theologians ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... found myself involved in others of a different species, some of which I have not been able to remove; but I am persuaded, that such as remain do not arise from the nature of the order I have adopted, but are rather consequences of the imperfection under which chemistry still labours. This science still has many chasms, which interrupt the series of facts, and often render it extremely difficult to reconcile them with each other: It has not, like the elements of geometry, the advantage of being a complete science, the parts ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... red-haired, but the vast majority belonged to the type that was to become familiar to Max as the true Montmartroise—the girl possessed of the dead white face, the red, sensual lips, the imperfectly chiselled nose, attractive in its very imperfection, and the eyes—black, brown, or gray—that see in a single glance to the bottom of a man's soul. Richness of apparel was not conspicuous among them, but all wore their clothes with the sense of fitness that possesses the Parisienne. Each ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... and freeborn parents, who had never been in slavery, and had never followed any menial or degrading occupation; and also that both her parents should be living. To be an orphan was considered, it seems, in some sense an imperfection. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... totally unknown. It is necessary to mention also, that what he says immediately before, in allusion to the discoveries made by Captain Furaeaux, must submit to correction. That officer committed some errors, owing, it would appear, to the imperfection of preceding accounts; and he left undetermined the interesting question as to the existence of a connection betwixt Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. The opinion which he gave as to this point, on very insufficient data certainly, viz. that there is "no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... we observe a keen struggle to unite the two, as being naturally in opposition to each other. The Grecian executed what it proposed in the utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of imperfection, is in greater danger of not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... clear, therefore, that as the discovery of the imperfection did not occur during "the current deal," the result of it becomes "a prior score," which under the terms of ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... moment's delight while gazing on a creature so exquisite,—instantly checked by a sigh, reproaching at once their own weakness, and mourning that a creature so fair should share in the common and hereditary guilt and imperfection of our nature, which she deserved as much by her guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... equivocal relation,—to the divine nature by his actual perfections, to the human nature by his participation in the same animal frailties and capacities of fleshly temptation. No other vinculum could bind the two postulates together, of an absolute perfection in the end proposed, and yet of utter imperfection in the means for ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... one man, and not a parcel [portion] to one man, and a parcel to another; that is to understand, in intent to depart [divide] thy confession for shame or dread; for it is but strangling of thy soul. For certes Jesus Christ is entirely all good, in him is none imperfection, and therefore either he forgiveth all perfectly, or else never a deal [not at all]. I say not that if thou be assigned to thy penitencer for a certain sin, that thou art bound to shew him all the remnant of thy sins, of which thou hast been shriven ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the moon or the supreme constellation; which make little men or birds come out and in theatrically. All such ornamental work is a source of friction and error; it prevents the time being marked accurately; each new wheel is a new source of imperfection. So if authority is given to a person, not on account of his working fitness, but on account of his imaginative efficiency, he will commonly impair good administration. He may do something better than good work of detail, but ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... through the telescope and the moon with the unaided eye, in such a manner that the two discs may coincide, and thus their relative apparent dimensions be at once recognised. Nor should the indistinctness and incompleteness of the view be attributed to imperfection of the telescope; they are partly due to the nature of the observation and the low power employed, and partly to the inexperience of ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... optional rhymes in the first stanza and in the first half of the third and fourth stanzas; elsewhere employing them. The result, while not flagrantly inharmonious, nevertheless gives an impression of imperfection, and tends to alienate the fastidious critic. Mr. Goodenough possesses so great a degree of inspiration, and so wide an array of allusions and imagery; that he owes it to himself to complete the excellence of his vivid ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... is like the resurrection life of the Lord. Oh, how very gradually it gains its faculties in us, grows and becomes strong, only bearing still more than the new life of the Lord the traces of earthly imperfection. I can appeal on this point to the feeling of us all, for assuredly it is the same in all. How intermittent at first are the manifestations of this new life, and how limited the sphere of its action! How long does it retain its sensitive spots, which can not be touched ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... prove a shirk; 'Tis not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances; Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; You mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... more gratitude towards the power that dispenses such afflictions. Your health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they would all have suffered, how they would all have been sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health flees before their face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses blown; and then, when the time comes, they break ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... need of great indulgence. But, as to the plan itself, I have no misgivings. Of defects in its execution I am not unconscious. I can only plead the immensity of the subject, the shortness of a single life and the imperfection of every single enterprise. I, therefore, wish this work to be estimated, not according to the finish of its separate parts, but according to the way in which those parts have been fused into a complete and symmetrical whole. This, ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... sinned, and we have pleaded, and obtained our pardon together: together shall we be, hereafter. Bless you, Henrique! pray for my soul, still clinging to its earthly love, but pardoned by him who knows our imperfection. Pure Mother of God, plead for me! Holy Saviour, who despised not the tears and contrition of the Magdalen, receive an unfaithful, but repentant spouse unto your bosom; for when I made my vow, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... people may safely lean to him for help, he having enacted no law against it, as men have. 2d, That he looks not upon his people in such undertakings, as in themselves, for then it were impossible for creatures, having the least sinful imperfection in them, to covenant with their spotless Creator, and come so near a jealous God, who is a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; but he considers his people in their covenanting with him, as in their ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... trouble has preceded death, the incoherence of the first communications does not last. They soon become as clear as the imperfection of the means which the dead man has to use permits. In the George Pelham case, which we shall examine later on, the first communications were also incoherent. Yet George Pelham was soon to become one of the most clear and lucid, ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... of agriculture in New Zealand are, in this way, rendered exceedingly toilsome, by the imperfection of the only instruments which the natives possess. Hence, principally, their extreme desire for iron. Marsden, in the "Journal of his Second Visit," gives us some very interesting details touching the anxiety which the chiefs universally manifested to obtain agricultural tools of this metal. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... give me this Father, do for me that!"? Or shall we say: "Behold, I am perfect! Imperfection, sin and suffering are only errors ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Magellan's course having seldom succeeded, and then with much pain and loss, and little fruit of their voyage; that their vessels were of a class which is now hardly used for more than coasting service; and that the imperfection of instruments and observations laid them under disadvantages which are now removed by the ingenuity of our artists. Add to this, that as the Spaniards gave out that it was impossible to repass the Straits, there remained no known way to quit the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... prevenient, "we doubt not" that books on serious subjects, even if clever, and public speech either from platform or pulpit, "do verily have the nature of sin," and the more eloquent they are the worse the offence; with it, the very incompleteness and imperfection in the mode of presentation may even stimulate others to more thought, and to make up deficiencies all ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... did, on this occasion, what you must have observed many men to do: we not only endeavour to impose on the world, but even on ourselves; we disguise our weakness, and work up in our minds an opinion that the measure which we fall into by the natural or habitual imperfection of our character is the effect of a principle of prudence or of some other virtue. Thus the Regent, who saw the Duke of Ormond because he could not resist the importunity of Olive Trant, and who gave hopes to the duke because he can refuse ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... despise it. However, let me tell you, my young friend, that he whose opinion of mankind is not too elevated will always be the most benevolent, because the most indulgent, to those errors incidental to human imperfection to place our nature in too flattering a view is only to court disappointment, and end in misanthropy. The man who sets out with expecting to find all his fellow-creatures heroes of virtue will conclude by condemning them as monsters of vice; and, on the contrary, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... willingly confess this work simple, and not worth comparison to any of theirs: for the writers of them were grave men; of this, young heads: in them is shown the perfection of their studies; in this, the imperfection of their wits. Nevertheless herein they all agree, commending virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their overthrow that suppress not their unruly affections. These things noted herein, how simple soever ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... unique in quality as it is throughout, I must confess that it leaves on my own mind a stronger impression of the unequal and imperfect than does that of any poet at all approaching Coleridge in imaginative vigour and intellectual grasp. It is not a mere inequality and imperfection of style like that which so seriously detracts from the pleasure of reading Byron. Nor is it that the thought is often impar sibi—that, like Wordsworth's, it is too apt to descend from the mountain-tops of poetry to the flats of commonplace, if ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... foundation of our inquiry; we have no right to first cut it about at our will, to omit this, to alter that, to find traces of two, three, or more original documents, and so to split up the narrative as it stands into a number of imperfect fragments, which by their very imperfection may seem to be more or ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... find even that all recently extinct plants have left memorials of their existence in the crust of the earth; and ancient archives are certainly extremely defective. To one who is aware of the extreme imperfection of the geological record, the discovery of one or two missing links is a fact of small significance; but each new form rescued from oblivion is an earnest of the former existence of hundreds of species, the greater part of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... know our duty, or knowing it and not doing it, how shall we understand that which only a true heart and a clean soul can ever understand? The power in us that would understand were it free, lies in the bonds of imperfection and impurity, and is therefore incapable of judging the divine. It cannot see the truth. If it could see it, it would not know it, and would not have it. Until a man begins to obey, the light that ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... alike deficient. The less common an idiom is, and the more obscure its terms, the more prolific is it as a source of error: a philosopher is sophistical in proportion to his ignorance of any method of neutralizing this imperfection in language. If the art of correcting the errors of speech by scientific methods is ever discovered, then philosophy will have found its ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in the indenture, being produced by the proper officer, a sufficient quantity is cut from either of them for the purpose of comparing with it the pound weight of gold or silver by the usual methods of assay. The perfection or imperfection of these are certified by the jury, who deliver their verdict in writing to the Lord Chancellor, to be deposited amongst the papers of the Privy Council. If found accurate, the Mint Master receives his certificate, or, as it is called, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... our speculation is the unfathomed mystery of the nitrate of silver. The story of this wonderful agent is not half unfolded; and every artist knows that its power is limited only by the imperfection of the materials with which it has to act. Its sensitiveness approaches that of thought itself. I have a very small quantity of highest quality which I use on rare occasions and generally for experiments. A ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... that course which my reason tells me they should hold. The man with whom it would not be so would simply be a god among men. It is in his perfection as a man that we recognise the divinity of Christ. It is in the imperfection of men that we recognise our necessity for a Christ. Yes, sir, the death of the poor lady at Barchester was very sudden. I hope that my lord the bishop bears with becoming fortitude the heavy misfortune. They say that he was a man much beholden to his wife,—prone ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... to the Harp long enough to play several airs with variations, and would nearly have exhausted all the pieces usually performed on an instrument incapable of modulation (this was not a pedal Harp), when another visit from Abel brought him back to the Viol da Gamba. He now saw the imperfection of sudden sounds that instantly die away—if you wanted staccato, it was to be had by a proper management of the bow, and you might also have notes as long as you please. The Viol da Gamba is the only instrument, and Abel the prince of musicians! This, and occasionally ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... if he could escape death he should be content and almost, if not quite, a god. For we must remember that the gods of the Greek were not all-wise, all-powerful, and all-good, as we believe our God to be. If you read their mythology you will find that with the power of the god much imperfection and weakness were mingled. They did not believe that Zeus had been the greatest god from the beginning, but that there was a time when he had no power. He was not omniscient nor omnipresent, and was himself subject to the decrees of Fate, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... carries this law into the future life, and will have none of a "joy which is crystallised for ever." Felt imperfection is a proof of a higher birthright:[400] if we have arrived at the completion of our nature as men, then "begins anew a tendency to God." This faith in unending progress as the law of life is very characteristic ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... either utility or ethics: in itself, it must be, in the negative sense of the words, at once useless and immoral. "Nature is not its standard, nor is truth its chief end."[244-1] Its spirit is repose, "the perfect form in perfect rest;" whereas the spirit of religion is action because of imperfection. Even the gods must know of suffering, and partake, in incarnations, of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... societies, as in the East, and in Europe during the middle ages, extraordinary differences in the price of the same commodity might exist in places not very distant from each other, because the want of roads and canals, the imperfection of marine navigation, and the insecurity of communications generally, prevented things from being transported from the places where they were cheap to those where they were dear. The things most liable to fluctuations in value, those directly influenced by the seasons, and especially food, were seldom ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the first Cause acts directly,—the fervent Love imprinting the clear Light of the primal Power,—there can be no imperfection in the created thing; it answers ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... serenity at the hour of death. They think such respect paid to the memory of good men is both the greatest incitement to engage others to follow their example, and the most acceptable worship that can be offered them; for they believe that though by the imperfection of human sight they are invisible to us, yet they are present among us, and hear those discourses that pass concerning themselves. They believe it inconsistent with the happiness of departed souls not to be at liberty to be where they will: ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... features had sharpened and the lines had deepened and hardened; the thin lips had a firmer compression and the lower jaw—always firm and prominent—was closer pressed to its fellow. Mr. Davis had lost the sight of one eye many months previous, though that member scarcely showed its imperfection; but in the other burned a deep, steady glow, showing the presence with him of thought that never slept. And in conversation he had the habit of listening with eyes shaded by the lids, then suddenly shooting forth at ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... methel, discourse, speech, conversation. (Bosworth.) Forby gives this word only with the meaning "a large pond;" a sense confined to Suffolk. But his vocabulary of East Anglia is especially defective in East Norfolk words—an imperfection arising from his residence in the extreme west ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... When we remember the minuteness of the bacteria, the impossibility of studying any one of them for more than a few moments at a time —only so long, in fact, as it can be followed under a microscope; when we remember, too, the imperfection of the compound microscopes which made high powers practical impossibilities; and, above all, when we appreciate the looseness of the ideas which pervaded all scientists as to the necessity of accurate observation in distinction from inference, it is not strange that the last century ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... grandmother was deaf." He had plenty of words, but bad pronunciation. William Thomas {418a} laughed many a time at him coming talking his funny Welsh to him, and said he was glad he knew a few words of Spanish to answer him with. Borrow was, apparently, unconscious of any imperfection in his pronunciation of the "ll". He has written: "'Had you much difficulty in acquiring the sound of the "ll"?' I think I hear the reader inquire. None whatever: the double l of the Welsh is by no means the terrible guttural which English people generally ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... they have full time, full scope, and a sympathetic listener:—ill, when they fear interruption and are annoyed by the impossibility of exhausting the topic during that particular talk. The partial genius is flashy—scrappy. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not every thing that should be said. He is so filled with his theme that he is dumb, first from not knowing how to begin, where there seems eternally beginning behind ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... by the solenoid and the magnet; but as the latter forms a short circuit to that of the arc, it follows that should the resistance of the arc circuit increase either through the arc becoming too long or through imperfection in the carbons or contacts, a greater percentage of current will flow through the magnet coils, and the arc will be shortened, thereby reducing its resistance and regulating it to the strength of the current. In other words, the distance between the carbons, that is to say, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... deny the reality of time and space. It is not the infinitesimal of time, but the negative of time. By the help of this invention the conception of change, which sorely exercised the minds of early thinkers, seems to be, but is not really at all explained. The difficulty arises out of the imperfection of language, and should therefore be no longer regarded as a difficulty at all. The only way of meeting it, if it exists, is to acknowledge that this rather puzzling double conception is necessary to the expression of the phenomena of motion or change, and that ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly, the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals; thirdly, Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In the next chapter I shall consider the geological succession of organic beings throughout time; in the eleventh and twelfth, their geographical distribution throughout space; in the thirteenth, their classification or ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... which he designs to be exemplary, is equally blamable and ridiculous. She follows the maxim of Clarissa, of declaring all she thinks to all the people she sees, without reflecting that in this mortal state of imperfection, fig-leaves are as necessary for our minds as our bodies, and 'tis as indecent to show all we think, as all we have. He has no idea of the manners of high life: his old Lord M. talks in the style of a country justice, and his virtuous young ladies romp like the wenches round a maypole. ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... shall begin by inquiring what light international statistics are capable of throwing on the relations between poverty and crime. At the outset of this inquiry we are at once met by the old difficulty respecting the value of international criminal statistics. The imperfection of those statistics is a matter it is always important to bear in mind, but in spite of this circumstance the light which they shed on the problem of poverty and crime is not ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... saying that a variable proportion exists in all industrial pursuits, between the effort and the result. Absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort, without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result, without any effort; and perfectibility, in the progressive diminution of the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... control as yet—that it did not swamp her sense; her spirit floated on the wide stream with harmonious waves towards the measureless immensity of music at its source. To reach that centre without a circle,—that perfection which imperfection shadows not,—that unborn, undying principle, which art tries humbly, falteringly, to illustrate,—was never given to man on earth; and tries he to attain it, some fate, of which the chained Prometheus is at once the symbol and the warning, fastens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... Experience, as to make some Men excel others in their Observations, and Deductions, almost as much as they do Beasts. By the addition of such artificial Instruments and methods, there may be, in some manner, a reparation made for the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon it self, by negligence, and intemperance, and a wilful and superstitious deserting the Prescripts and Rules of Nature, whereby every man, both from a deriv'd corruption, innate and born with him, and from his breeding and converse ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... of land title, to one or another of the Indian tribes. To determine the several tribal possessions and to indicate the proper boundary lines between individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty. This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the boundaries ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... origin of such errors; and so indulgent are we to its faults that we try secretly to hide them even from our own eyes, mostly with success; and where success is not perfect, we make a second effort to hide the imperfection. Repeated efforts of this kind, from which we but half turn away, are crowned in the end, and we soon forget what successful hypocrites we have been. Our numerous passions, the complexities of our desires, the tenacity ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided bunch of leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I had been wandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples, birches and butternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had been in sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same spirit in which it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy butternuts in my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the trees, and I found that the spared butternuts ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... it is thus with all of us. Our faculties are never more completely at the mercy of the smallest interests of our being, than when they appear to be most fully absorbed by the mightiest. And it is well for us that there exists this seeming imperfection in our nature. The first cure of many a grief, after the hour of parting, or in the house of death, has begun, insensibly to ourselves, with the first moment when we were betrayed into thinking of so little a thing ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... be,—for the master noticed once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation, when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,—just enough to be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... able to assume that of a frail and peaceable mortal, whose spiritual calling and profession ought, indeed, to induce him to make his life an example to others; but whose conduct, nevertheless, such is the imperfection of our unassisted nature, sometimes rather presents us with a warning of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor; and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that Love until you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it. And that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. Take also other spiritual principles, such as Purity and ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... she said tenderly, "when it is to that very imperfection of our enjoyment that we are indebted for its continuance? I loved thee a few minutes since, now I love thee a thousand times more, and perhaps I should love thee less if thou hadst carried my enjoyment to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... powers should be strictly interpreted. As men whose intentions required no concealment, those who framed and adopted the Constitution "must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense and to have intended what they said"; but if, from the inherent imperfection of language, doubts were at any time to arise "respecting the extent of any given power," then the known purposes of the instrument should control the construction put on its phraseology. "The grant does not convey power which might be beneficial to the grantor if retained by himself... but is an ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.' He published it with a preface modestly explaining to the public his own sense of its imperfection. Nevertheless a storm of abuse broke upon him from the critics who fastened upon all the faults of the poem—the diffuseness of the story, its occasional sentimentality and the sometimes fantastic coinage of words,[xiii:1] and ignored the extraordinary beauties ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... for life, if uniformity of temperature and means of subsistence everywhere prevailed, there would be little or no variation and no new species would arise. The causes of variation seem to be the inequality and imperfection of things; the pressure of life is unequally distributed, and this is one of Nature's ways that accounts for much that we ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... assures me that these fluctuations of feeling will by degrees give place to a calmer life, especially if I avoid, so far as I can do it, all unnecessary work, distraction and hurry. And a few quiet, resting words from her have given me courage to press on toward perfection, no matter how much imperfection I see in myself and others. And now I am waiting for my Father's next gift, and the new cares and labors it will bring with it. I am glad it is not left for me to decide my own lot. I am afraid I should never see precisely the right moment ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is simply denying imperfection. The student knows that in the history of the doctrine of attributes, the recognition of negative attributes marks a great advance in philosophic reasoning. Maimonides holds that the conception of the Deity as a pure abstraction is the only one truly ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Christian revelation he says: "The sender of the alleged message is not a sheer invention: there are grounds independent of the message itself for belief in His reality.... It is moreover much to the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences which natural theology can produce of the divine attributes removes some of the chief stumbling-blocks to the belief of revelation." Here is the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... otherwise the attitude of the learned of those days towards every new discovery seems stupid and almost insane. They had a crystallized system of truth, perfect, symmetrical—it wanted no novelty, no additions; every addition or growth was an imperfection, an excrescence, a deformity. Progress was unnecessary and undesired. The Church had a rigid system of dogma, which must be accepted in its entirety on pain of being treated as a heretic. Philosophers had a cast-iron system of truth to match—a system founded upon ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection." ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... place in the natural or providential order of things, does it not answer simply to those demands, whether well founded or not, which society makes upon each of us? M. Bergson admits this, justly enough, it appears, when he defines laughter as a social bromide. But then it is no longer mere imperfection in general, it is not even immorality, properly speaking; it is merely unsociability, well or badly understood, which laughter corrects. More precisely, it is a special unsociability, one which escapes all other penalties, which it is the function of laughter to reach. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... which all children have, can childhood escape it? Far onward and upward must be the victory over that fear. And the fear of God, and, indeed, the whole idea of religion,—must it not, in like manner, necessarily be imperfect? And are imperfection and error peculiar to our religious conceptions? What mistaken ideas has the child of a man, of his parent when correcting him, or of some distinguished stranger! They are scarcely less erroneous than ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey |
