"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shape,—that she appealed to the opposite sex quite generally and irresistibly as a worthy helpmate. The only trouble was that she began to bore her suitors somewhat too early in the game, and they never got far enough to propose marriage. Flaws in her apparent perfection appeared from day to day and chilled the growth of the various young loves that had budded so auspiciously. She always agreed with everybody and everything in sight, even to the point of changing her mind on the instant, if circumstances seemed to make it advisable. ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... master's cheek, the conversation fell, or more likely was led, on Foedor. The barber praised him highly, and this naturally caused his master to ask him, remembering the correction the young aide-decamp had superintended, if he could not find some fault in this model of perfection that might counterbalance so many good qualities. Gregory replied that with the exception of pride ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even I am awed when I contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. Mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand even ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... a good deal in the south from that of the north. The Arab, with a face as black as ink, thinks an enormous shock of red hair the perfection of taste; he accordingly dyes his hair with lime, and thus makes himself, unconsciously, the regular demon of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... law Shelley recognized. Unterrified by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed in nature and society, he held fast to the belief that, if we could but pierce to the core of things, if we could but be what we might be, the world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. What resolution through some transcendental harmony was expected by Shelley for the palpable discords in the structure of the universe, we hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form: and his ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... to conquer, but set quietly to work to create a new realm all his own. His Royal Academy, although presented by himself to the public as an 'artistic joke,' showed that he could not only use the brush on a large scale, but that he could compose to perfection, and after the exuberant humour of the show, nothing delighted and surprised the public more than the artistic quality and finished technique in much of the work, a finish far and away above the work of any caricaturist ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... meerschaum pipe, and paused to gaze with a smoker's admiration at the red-brown perfection of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... danger-proof, That none might track the Belial by his Hoof, Their Correspondence veil'd from prying Eyes, In Hieroglyphick Figures they disguise. Husht as the Night, in which their Plots combin'd, And silent as the Graves they had design'd, Their Ripening Mischiefs to perfection sprung. But oh! the much-loath'd David lives too long. Their Vultures cannot mount but from his Tomb; And with too hungry ravenous Gorges come, To be by airy Expectation fed. No Prey, no Spoil, before they see Him Dead. Yes, ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... lud. We have a highly-distinguished novelist before us, my lud, who, as I have reason to believe, is intimately acquainted with the French system of the construction of plots. It is a business which the French carry to perfection. The plot of a novel should, I imagine, be constructed in ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Besides, it couldn't last long," she said, thinking of his slimly powerful build as she had noticed it in his swimming costume. Smiling, amused, she wondered how long she could resist him with her own wholesome supple activity strengthened to the perfection of health in saddle ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... common law, which Lord Coke calls "the perfection of reason," women arrive at the age of discretion at twelve, men at fourteen; both sexes are of full age at twenty-one, entitled to civil rights, and if unmarried and possessed of freehold, they are equally entitled to the exercise of political rights (Blackstone, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... says, has done much for the highway robbery business, and he says we in America have arrived at absolute perfection. However, I was much interested in looking over the ground where my first heroes lived and died, and did business, and when we went to the prisons where they were confined, and were shown where Tyburn Tree stood, that so many of them were hung on, tears came to my eyes ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... of thrilling interest to her. Cowperwood took her mental measurement exactly. A girl with a high sense of life in her, romantic, full of the thought of love and its possibilities. As he looked at her he had the sense of seeing the best that nature can do when she attempts to produce physical perfection. The thought came to him that some lucky young dog would marry her pretty soon and carry her away; but whoever secured her would have to hold her by affection and subtle flattery and attention if ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... that 'perfect happiness comes only from a pleasure attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection. If we delight in pleasures of the other sort, our moral natures ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... her own appearance, and had not only the good taste to dress well, but the good sense not to dress too well. Her new coat and skirt had just come home, and, fawn-colored like herself, they fitted and suited her to equal perfection. Morna thought that she might even go to church in the coat and skirt, now and again during the summer, and she had a brown straw hat with fine feathers of the lighter shade which she made peculiarly her own; but this she had discarded as too grand for ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... She could talk, but to what end and to whom? Certainly not to her mother, who possessed in its perfection, the household art of misinterpreting everything. Margaret had tried to love her. But perhaps any affection is a habit when it does not happen to be an instinct. The habit had never been formed, the instinct had been repressed. Always her mother ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... son, more or less," interrupted the holy bonze. "You were wrong to expect perfection, and must abide by your bargain now. It is no use getting ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... consequently kept a little more to the left, in order to head it, and travelled two or three miles through a fine bloodwood and Nonda forest, the verdant appearance of which was much increased by the leguminous Ironbark, which grew here in great perfection. Two emus had just made their breakfast on some Nonda fruit when we started them, and Charley and Brown, assisted by Spring, succeeded in ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... function of removing his whiskers in order to mark him as a well-informed man is also of importance, and demands long practice and great natural aptitude. In the barbers' shops of modern cities shaving has been brought to a high degree of perfection. A good barber is not content to remove the whiskers of his client directly and immediately. He prefers to cook him first. He does this by immersing the head in hot water and covering the victim's face with steaming towels until he has him boiled to a nice pink. From time to time the barber ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... beauty in slaves so purchased was of itself sufficient to render them proper substitutes for wives, which, often on account of alliance or interest in families, men are obliged to marry, though they are not always possessed of any perfection, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... right noble Lord, liberalitie itselfe, (if in this yron age there were anie such creature as liberality left on the earth) a prince in content because a Poet without peere. Destinie neuer defames her selfe but when she lets an excellent poet die: if there bee anie sparke of Adams paradized perfection yet emberd vp in the breastes of mortall men, certainely God hath bestowed that his perfectest image on poets. None come so neere to God in wit, none more contemne the world, vatis auarus non temere est animus, sayth Horace, versus amat, hoc studet vnurn. Seldom haue you seene ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... with it," he said. "You are changed, and yet there is some of the old Frances left. In the old days you had a petulant tone when people said things which did not quite suit you; I hope—I trust—it has not gone. I am not perfect, and I don't like perfection. Yes, I see it is still there. Frances, it is good to come back to the old ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... journey of a deity. He is, accordingly, of all poets the most simple and direct. He is also the most free and genial in the movement of his verse; grateful nature seems to give to him spontaneously the perfection to which great men like Virgil and Milton had to attain only by effort intense and sustained. In the high office of drawing human character in its multitude of forms and colors he seems to have no serious rival except Shakespeare. We call him an epic poet, but he is instinct from beginning ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... took the thing up and inspected it. It was a block of crystal, imitating nature to perfection, with all the details of the eyeball, the iris, the pupil, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... again. "For years the sole aim and goal of the German house of Hohenzollern has been the perfection to a marvelous degree of her policy of militarism. Why, there is not a man in the whole German Empire, who, at the command of his country, could not take his place, a trained soldier, in the tremendous, perfected military machine that is ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of the dam crest was reached, and there was no longer any evidence of what had happened except the lowness of the water. Then, all at once, the toilers disappeared, except for one big beaver, who kept nosing over every square inch of the work for perhaps two minutes, to assure himself of its perfection. When he, at last, had slipped back into the water, both Jabe and the Boy got up, as if moved by one thought, and stretched ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... writing his tragedies, as later critics judged, as if half drunk; doing (as Sophocles said of him) what was right in his art without knowing why; following the impulses that led him to strange themes and dark problems, rather than aiming at the perfection of a complete, all-sided culture; frowning with shaggy brows, like a wild bull, glaring fiercely, and bursting into a storm of wrath when annoyed by critics or rival poets; a Marlowe rather than a Shakspeare: this is the portrait sketched by ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... other worlds, than that in which he lives, moves, and has his being; and so the man of science collects and combines the very elements themselves, either to purposes of destruction or towards the progress, improvement, and almost perfection of human nature. The Canadian could only reason from his own experience, and that was so exceedingly limited, that his backwardness in enterprise is less to be wondered at than the eagerness with which he ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the proper time, serves its purpose, and goes into nothingness. Each plays its part, however small. We can't all be included in the wonderful final chords. Our place may seem trivial to us, and yet in some sense we may be sure we are all contributors to the unity and perfection of the whole. That ought to be enough. No one note achieves individual immortality, but each does something to assure the immortality of the composition of which it forms a part. If we don't believe ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... you call hitting the head of the nail respectable only, when it's the perfection of the art? Any one the least refined and elevated in sentiment knows that the delicate touches denote the master; whereas your sledge-hammer blows come from the rude and uninstructed. If 'a miss is as good as a mile,' a hit ought to be better, Pathfinder, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... be sure of getting to Heaven if they could all enter the cloisters; but then the world would come to an end too soon. The Pope does his best to bring them near this state of monastic and ecclesiastical perfection. Students are dressed like priests, and corpses also are arrayed in a sort of religious costume. The Brethren of the Christian Doctrine were thought dangerous because they dressed their little boys in caps, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... manner were the perfection of innocence, but for some reason there was a tinge of discomfort in the manner of the ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... carving of his paddles, in the shape of his canoes, in the elegance and symmetry of his bows, in the cut of his leggings and moccasins, the sheath of his hunting-knife, and in all the little ornaments in which he delights. It is almost impossible for a settler to imitate to perfection an Indian's cherry-wood paddle. My husband made very creditable attempts, but still there was something wanting—the elegance of the Indian finish was not there. If you show them a good print, they invariably point out the most natural, and the best-executed figure in the group. They ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... needed to be Court-shows, Dramaticules, Transparencies, Feasts of Lanterns, or I know not what. Voltaire was the chosen man; Voltaire and Rameau (readers have heard of RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, and musical readers still esteem Rameau) did their feat; we may think with what perfection, with what splendor of reward. Alas, and the feat done was, to one of the parties, so unspeakably contemptible! Voltaire pensively surveying Life, brushes the sounding strings; and hums to himself, the carbuncle eyes carrying in them almost ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... admit to your circle of friends the most charming of college girls—the typical college girl for whom we are always looking but not always finding; the type that contains so many delightful characteristics, yet without unpleasant perfection in any; the natural, unaffected, sweet-tempered girl, loved because she is lovable? Then seek an introduction to Molly Brown. You will find the baggage-master, the cook, the Professor of English Literature, and the College President ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... the remaining three, the enthroned Madonna is, doubtless, the largest class, historically considered, because of the long period through which it has been represented. The pastoral and enskied Madonnas were in high favor in the first period of their perfection. ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... conqueror. He flung himself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fond we are all concerned with self. To seem selfless is but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien! What is that but a deeper concern with self? To be free of this, there is no way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget everything when I am painting. But," he added, with a sudden smile, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... closely allied to that of Touch—in fact some authorities have considered Taste as a very highly developed sense of Touch in certain surfaces of the body, the tongue notably. It will be remembered that the tongue has the finest sense of Touch, and it also has the sense of Taste developed to perfection. In Taste and Touch the object must be brought in direct contact with the organ of sense, which is not the case in Smell, Hearing, or Sight. And, be it remembered, that the latter senses have special nerves, while Taste is compelled to fall back upon the ordinary nerves ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... social and civil freedom, like all other things in common life, are variously mixed and modified, enjoyed in very different degrees, and shaped into an infinite diversity of forms, according to the temper and circumstances of every community. The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain anywhere; because extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty, too, must be limited in order to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... means an old lady yet, in spite of her flock of grandchildren, for she was only just sixty, and was as erect and vigorous, in spite of her snow-white hair, as a girl. Beauty-loving little Cricket thought her dead perfection, and adored her. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... actually firing bogus volleys from time to time in the direction of some distant Boers. Damant and his staff seem to have taken it for granted that these were Rimington's men, and the clever ruse succeeded to perfection. Nearer and nearer came the strangers, and suddenly throwing off all disguise, they made a dash for the guns. Four rounds of case failed to stop them, and in a few minutes they were over the kopje on which the guns stood and had ridden ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... things slide—the main virtue of Cabinet government has been lost. In the fourth place, in order that every minister may fully share in every important discussion and decision, it is essential that the Cabinet should be small. Sir Robert Peel, in whose ministry of 1841-6 the system probably reached perfection, laid it down that nine was the maximum number for efficiency, because not more than about nine men can sit round a table in full view of one another, all taking a real share in every discussion. When the membership of a Cabinet ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... "to neglect them, and to divert their industry into other channels; for it is not possible for the hand of man to shift from one employment to another without being injured by the change." Again: "There may be some manufactures which, being once formed, can advance towards perfection without any adventitious aid; while others, for want of the fostering hand of government, will be unable to go on at all. Legislative provision, therefore, will be necessary to collect the proper objects for ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... desirable, till one of the great wonders now to be observed among the Alps, is the ease with which even a delicate traveller may cross them. In these prospects, colouring is carried to its utmost point of perfection, particularly at the time I found it, variegated with golden touches of autumnal tints; immense cascades mean time bursting from naked mountains on the one side; cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... time to probe further, as the brougham stopped at her door. He handed her out with the deference so often met with in big men, remarking width an old-fashioned air that suited him to perfection: ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... she would render on the piano a very ancient Florentine retornello which had just been discovered. She then played "Three blind mice" and Swinburne was enchanted. He found that it reflected to perfection the cruel beauty of the Medicis—which, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... founded, it would be as distinct from all other animals as if its kind were counted by thousands. Baer approached the idea of the classes when he discriminated between plan of structure or type and the degree of perfection in the structure. But while he understands the distinction between a plan and its execution, his ideas respecting the different features of structure are not quite so precise. He does not, for instance, distinguish between the complication ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... peculiar to his age; but his natural talent is probably the same. The use and application of this talent is changing, and men continue their works in progression through many ages together: they build on foundations laid by their ancestors; and in a succession of years, tend to a perfection in the application of their faculties, to which the aid of long experience is required, and to which many generations must have combined their endeavours. We observe the progress they have made; we ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... Creator, in the distinct creation of all creatures: in all their distinct partes, properties, natures, and vertues, by order, and most absolute number, brought, from Nothing, to the Formalitie of their being and state. By Numbers propertie therefore, of vs, by all possible meanes, (to the perfection of the Science) learned, we may both winde and draw our selues into the inward and deepe search and vew, of all creatures distinct vertues, natures, properties, and Formes: And also, farder, arise, clime, ascend, and mount vp (with Speculatiue winges) ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... to lack the finishing touch;[573] which is equivalent to saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of horror without also awakening the reflection that the speaker was a ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of his new volume, Clare adopted the sensible plan of correcting and revising his writings constantly, so as to reach the greatest perfection in form. The uninterrupted study of the best poets began to have effect upon his mind by more and more developing his taste, and destroying his former notion that his verses came flowing by a sort of inspiration, and, as such, were not liable to further artificial improvement. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... regulated among men by the internal laws of the country, by the penal code, the police and in general the whole organization of the state, which, insofar as it is able, defends the weak against the strong. Although we have to confess that this organization falls far short of perfection, it does at any rate tend gradually toward the attainment of its ultimate ideal. But in the struggle of nations, where there exists an international law, the pitiful failure of which you have come to know, not only in the immediate past, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... exactness in these things exceeds any thing of the kind found amongst the moderns, and is even beyond what any practical writer on agriculture has proposed. This is an evidence that tillage is not even in this age brought to that perfection of which it is capable: and that, notwithstanding all the improvements lately introduced, we may yet receive some instruction from a proper attention to the precepts and practices of the ancients. I am desirous to add that this ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... beheld the Belvidere Apollo. This statue, in my humble opinion, surpasses every other in the collection. All the divinity of a god beams through this unrivalled perfection of form. It is impossible to impart the impressions which it inspires. The rivetted beholder is ready to exclaim, with Adam, when he first discerns the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Isaac received similar tokens of God's favor. Fifth. It is certain that Jacob, who inherited from Isaac his father, received like tokens of divine favor. Sixth. It is certain, from a fair construction of language, that Job, who is held up by God himself as a model of human perfection, was a great slaveholder. Seventh. It is certain, when God showed honor, and came down to bless Jacob's posterity, in taking them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, they were the owners of slaves that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... though only in his twenty-ninth year; his hair was noticeably thinning; his moustache had grown heavier; a wrinkle or two showed beneath his eyes; his voice was softer, yet firmer. It goes without saying that his evening uniform lacked no point of perfection, and somehow it suggested a more elaborate care than that of other men in the room. He laughed frequently, and with a throwing back of the head which seemed to express a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Rubber.%—The same year (1844) which witnessed the introduction of the telegraph saw the perfection of Goodyear's secret for the vulcanization of India rubber. In 1820 the first pair of rubber shoes ever seen in the United States were exhibited in Boston. Two years later a ship from South America brought 500 pairs of rubber shoes. They were ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... more and more to her other friend, lamented over present evils, made visionary amendments and erected dreamy worlds of perfection, till she condemned and scorned all that ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... theology did not come much in his way until he had made himself at home with the Italians and the primary French. Then it abounded. He gathered it in quantities on two journeys in 1851 and 1858, and he possessed the English divines in perfection, at least down to Whitby, and the nonjurors. Early acquaintance with Sir Edward Vavasour and Lord Clifford had planted a lasting prejudice in favour of the English Catholic families, which sometimes tinged his judgments. The neglected literature of the Catholics in England held a place in his scheme ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvellous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which in sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... most of the speeches were thoroughly good; but unquestionably the best, from an oratorical point of view, was made on the nomination of Mr. Edmunds by Governor Long of Massachusetts. Both as to matter and manner it was perfection; was felt to be so by the convention; and was sincerely applauded even by the majority of those who intended to ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. 'Giles,' says I, though he's maister. Not that I should call'n maister by rights, for his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned us ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the men who were securing the horses, and Alice stood watching her husband's movements. She was a beautiful woman of that strong, dark Celtic type, so common in Ireland. Her strong supple figure was displayed to perfection in a simple tweed suit with a jacket of the Norfolk pattern. She stood for some moments watching with deep contemplative eyes. Then she ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... difference between the two when he says: "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." This is not a contrast between the imperfections of our day and the perfection of heaven, but between the imperfection of the apostolic church and the perfection of the church of to-day. That which is perfect has come; a perfect revelation of Christian character, a perfect gospel, a perfect "law of liberty," a perfect ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... the Mahabharata, heroic poems, designed for the perpetuation of our gods and demi-gods. Such, O brethren, are the Great Shastras, or books of sacred ordinances. They are dead to me now; yet through all time they will serve to illustrate the budding genius of my race. They were promises of quick perfection. Ask you why the promises failed? Alas! the books themselves closed all the gates of progress. Under pretext of care for the creature, their authors imposed the fatal principle that a man must not address himself to discovery ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... What perfection the child expects of the mother! No human deviations! Mrs. Procter sighed. How could she live out her child's exalted ideal of her! She looked helplessly at Suzanna. The eyes lifted to hers lacked ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... country is rich alluvial soil, which produces vast agricultural wealth. The fields are divided by exceedingly thin live fences formed by a species of Euphorbia; the country being flat, it affords the perfection of ground for riding, therefore such sport as pig-sticking or coursing may be enjoyed to the fullest extent. During our visit the Guikwar had most kindly arranged every kind and style of sport, including a pack of hounds, half a dozen well-trained cheetahs (hunting leopards), and a posse ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... semi-primitive. Physical degeneration was not found. Indeed their bodily perfection was extraordinary. In mind, they were like children; happy and friendly, joyful to teach all they knew—joyful to show all they had. The days rang with clean, childish laughter; but there was no philosophy. There was no deep concern, no lasting ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing seemingly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... dance.—This is a dramatic representation of the robbing of a bee's nest. The gathering of the materials and the formation of them into a firebrand, the lighting of it, and the ascent of the tree, are all danced out to perfection. A striking part of the pantomine is the apparently fierce stinging the robber undergoes, especially on certain parts ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the Greek type, the old pure type, reappearing, as it constantly does, in the mixed modern race. But the daughter surpassed her mother. Delia's eyes, of a lovely grey blue, lidded, and fringed, and arched with an exquisite perfection; the curve of the slightly bronzed cheek, suggesting through all its delicacy the fulness of young, sensuous life; the mouth, perhaps a trifle too large, and the chin, perhaps a trifle too firm; the abundance of the glossy black hair, curling wherever it was allowed to curl, or wherever ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shabbily clad, with a pipe between his lips and a book, generally unopened, on his knee. His political views seemed to Owen to be as vague as were Toni's; and he had an irritating habit of setting aside any recognized standard of perfection as though the world's seal of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... "this is the very perfection of medicine. Neither of us is superior; henceforward we will be friends, as we are equals; and banish far off that spirit of contention which has destroyed our peace." The goat-eyed man of physic acquiesced; they lived from this time in ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... unflagging interest of the spectators, there would have been an element of high comedy in it. It was an education to join a wall group and hear the free and critical comments on the style, the dress, the physical perfection, of the charming procession. When Mrs. Farquhar and King had taken a turn or two, they stood on one side to enjoy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leads to improvement in rifling; and though it is difficult to imagine how Russia could surpass Prussia's proficiency in this art, which in civil parlance would be called robbing, yet there is no knowing to what further point of perfection it may be carried. It is only to be hoped that the industry of Europe, which offers the field for the exercise of these improvements, will continue to be piously thankful for the noble position which it is thus made to hold in the march ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... his informant. "Near the centre of the island stands a tall and very slender palm-tree, which has been growing there for hundreds of years. It bears large and handsome fruit which is something like the cocoanut; and, in its perfection, is said to be a ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... atones for the insufficiency of instinct by proportioning the number of germs in accordance with the risks of destruction. What transcendent harmony is this, which thus holds the scales between the fecundity of the ovaries and the perfection of instinct! ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... various ages in which literature has flowered forth from civilization. And if there was something in the exquisite sweetness of Leonard's voice, look, and manner, which the countess acknowledged to attain that perfection in high breeding, which, under the name of "suavity," steals its way into the heart, so her interest in him was aroused by a certain subdued melancholy which is rarely without distinction, and never without charm. He and Helen exchanged but ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... our cities and monuments. From Dante to Machiavelli, from Machiavelli to Metastasio, our classical tradition was never broken.... In the social dissolution of the last century, all disappeared except this ideal. In fact, in that first enthusiasm, when the minds of men confidently sought final perfection, it passed from the schools into life, ruled the imagination, inflamed the will. People lived and died Romanly.... The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies have a visible relation to the social state, to the fears and to the hopes of his own time. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... husband's peculiarities to perfection. She knew that no one was allowed to contradict him whenever he assumed this forbidding tone, and that it was best then not to take any notice of his moroseness, or, if ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... laughed Grace. "Elfreda just imitated her to perfection." Thereupon Grace related their recent unpleasant ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... was very fine, the season advanced, for the foliage was rapidly developing to perfection, and the sail down the broad ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... yes—that is, if the roads had been as excellent as they are now; but you must remember that in the old coaching days road-building had not reached its present perfection. Traveling by stage over a rough highway in a conveyance that had few springs was not so comfortable an undertaking as it is sometimes pictured. Furthermore you must not forget that it was also perilous, for not only was there danger from accident on these poorly constructed, unlighted thoroughfares ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... far as to connect every thing feminine with these qualities, and to believe that nothing can be feminine without them. For our parts, we confess, that, although no enemies to a pretty foot, it is by no means a sine qua non in our estimate of female perfection; being in no way disposed, where the head and heart are gems, to undervalue these in consideration of any deficiency in the heels. Captain de Haldimar probably thought otherwise; for when he had ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of Eirik's sons went out on viking expeditions as soon as they were old enough, and gathered property, ravaging all around in the East sea. They grew up quickly to be handsome men, and far beyond their years in strength and perfection. Glum Geirason tells of one of them in the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... is usquebaugh, which cannot be made anywhere in that perfection; and whereas we drink it here in aqua vitae measures, it goes down there by beer-glassfuls, being more natural to the nation." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... supposed date of this conversation, but in which there is a slight, but eloquent and affecting, view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.] deceive them when they anticipate, for future ages, a knowledge which shall bring perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and even protract to a date now utterly unknown the final destination of life: for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vestibule has been entered; nor can we guess what treasures are hid in those chambers of which the experience ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled Ralph to the heart's core, and he hated Nicholas ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... my lords, suppose a crew of gallant sailors surprised in their cruise by such a hurricane as is frequent in the American seas, which the highest perfection of skill, and the utmost exertion of industry has scarcely enabled them to escape; let us consider them now with their masts broken, their ship shattered, and their artillery thrown into the sea, unable any longer either to oppose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... Appalachians. Or, to speak more correctly, the plantation was in that indeterminate belt which neither of the great staples could claim exclusively as its own—that delectable land where every conceivable product of the temperate zone grows, if not in its rankest luxuriance, at least in perfection and abundance. Tobacco on the hillsides, corn upon the wide bottoms, cotton on the gray uplands, and wheat, oats, fruits, and grasses everywhere. Five hundred acres of hill and bottom, forest and field, with what was termed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... only daughter. Never was kitten more amiable or more seducing; as she grew up she manifested so many charms, that in a little while she became noted as the greatest beauty in the neighbourhood. Need I to you, dearest Nymphalin, describe her perfection? Suffice it to say that her skin was of the most delicate tortoiseshell, that her paws were smoother than velvet, that her whiskers were twelve inches long at the least, and that her eyes had a gentleness altogether astonishing in a cat. But if the young ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shall serve his fellow-men.... The concentration of every man on his own interests has been the danger and not the safety of democracy, for democracy contemplates that every man shall think first of the state and next of himself.... Democracy assumes perfection in human nature." But men will always continue chiefly to pursue their own private ends as long as those ends are recognized by the official national ideal as worthy of perpetuation and encouragement. If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... years the whole of the Frankfort artists,—the painter Hirt, who excelled in animating oak and beech woods, and other so-called rural scenes, with cattle; Trautmann, who had adopted Rembrandt as his model, and had attained great perfection in enclosed lights and reflections, as well as in effective conflagrations, so that he was once ordered to paint a companion piece to a Rembrandt; Schutz, who diligently elaborated landscapes of the Rhine country, in the manner of Sachtlebens; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the Inn, I informed my companions, that there was at no great distance a large iron foundry, never seen to perfection but at night, and proposed our visiting it. Mr. Coleridge felt downright horror at the thought of being again moved; considering that he had had quite enough exercise for one day, and infinitely preferring the fire of his host to the forge of the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... 26 Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... blazing being accomplished. The body of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Dana, describing the avidity with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is often a return to nature, and seen in this single instance the germ of innumerable beneficent future ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... girls 'll come telling you that they wouldn't marry so-and-so, not if he was to crown 'em; and the next thing you hear is that they are keeping company with him, and that no woman was ever so happy as them, and that the man is such a piece of perfection that the President of the Conference himself isn't fit to black ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Lecount had apologized for the little misunderstanding of the previous night; Lecount had petitioned for the excursion as a treat to herself. He thought of these concessions, and looked at Magdalen, and smirked and simpered without intermission. Mrs. Lecount acted her part to perfection. She was motherly with Magdalen and tenderly attentive to Noel Vanstone. She was deeply interested in Captain Wragge's conversation, and meekly disappointed to find it turn on general subjects, to the exclusion of science. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... common labours like a common man;" He answered him: "The world is in God's hands. This part he gives to me; for which my past, Built up on loves inherited, hath made Me fittest. Neither will He let me think Primeval, godlike work too low to need, For its perfection, manhood's noblest powers And deepest knowledge, far beyond my gifts. And for the crowds of men, in whom a soul Cries through the windows of their hollow eyes For bare humanity, and leave to grow,— Would I could help them! But all crowds are made ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... well-being of our social system as standard bread, yet when we think of the sacrifices which its hierophants undergo in order to minister to our pleasure the sturdiest Hedonist cannot escape misgivings. Still, we may find consolation in the thought that sacrifice is necessary to perfection. Such sacrifices take various forms. In the case of NIJINSKY we see a man of immense brain power specialising in a most exhausting form of physical culture to remedy his extreme delicacy. At the opposite extreme we find cases of men so extraordinarily powerful that they are obliged to abandon all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... my belief that we have witnessed a thing which has occurred in perfection but once before in the knowledge of created beings. It is a phenomenon of inconceivable importance and interest, view it as one may, but its interest to us is vastly heightened by an added knowledge of its nature ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... learn to use thy brain or die. Now, there be many perils in this land o' the woods—so many that all its people must learn to think or perish by them. A pretty bit o' wisdom it is, sor. It keeps the great van moving—ever moving, in the long way to perfection. Now, among animals, a growing brain works the legs of its owner, sending them far on diverse errands until they are strong. Mind thee, boy, perfection o' brain and body is the aim o' Nature. The cat's paw an' the serpent's coil are but the penalties o' weakness an' folly. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... fluffy morning dress of pale green, which set off her blonde beauty to perfection, laid down her racket, and, leaving the tennis-court, joined her brother Roy at the picket fence. The lad, bronzed and toughened by his trip to the Nevada desert, was leaning upon the paling, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... noting the rosy radiance in the east, turned his proud eyes towards it; and, lo! the perfection of her beauty smote upon his senses with a sharp, wistful wonder that such loveliness could be—that such worthiness could exist in the world which he despised. The setting sun sank lower, reflecting a ruddier glow on Gwâshbrâri's face; it ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... now dead. He was the most sympathetic, engaging, and attractive person I ever met; not funny at all in conversation, or ever wishing to be—except now and then for a capital story, which he told in perfection. ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... read that story of his about a painter who was always striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they found a mere mess ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... to give the words. For (although your Ladiship resolv'd to keep it private) I beg leave to declare, for my own honour, that you are not only excellent for the time you spent in the practice of what I set, but are yourself so good a composer, that few of any sex have arriv'd to such perfection. So as this Book (at least a part of it) is not Dedicated, but only brought home to your Ladiship. And here I would say (could I do it without sadness), how pretious to my thoughts is the memory of your excellent Mother (that great example of prudence ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... brought over jointly together, that they can never be separated, you have such a work which if it come over, and it get its ferment with Gold by solution according to a just measure and time appointed, and be brought to a perfect ripeness, unto the Plusquam perfection, nothing may compare therewith, for prevention of Diseases, and poverty, and to a rich excessive recreation of the Body and Goods. This is the way to obtain the Spirit of Mercury, which I have revealed as far as it is permitted me to do, ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... fruit by those experienced in these matters. This excellent exercise of judging fruits at exhibitions has gained much headway. Students of schools and colleges are trained for the "judging teams," and great technical perfection has been attained. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... praised God in the minutest things, procured his glory in the greatest. His principal care was to lead his brethren to perfection; to render them worthy imitators of Jesus crucified, capable of exciting His love in all hearts. It would be difficult to point out the founder of an order who had spoken more, taught more, or exhorted more, than St. Francis; and it may have been noticed that he instructed his disciples in ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... wreath of mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power over decisive form, you may safely—and must, in order to perfection of work—carry out your knowledge by every aid of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... survey your History shall Envy us who lived in this, and saw those charming wonders which they can only reade of, and whom we ought in charity to pity, since all the Pictures, pens or pencills can draw, will give 'em but a faint Idea of what we have the honour to see in such absolute Perfection; they can only guess She was infinitely fair, witty, and deserving, but to what Vast degrees in all, they can only Judge who liv'd to Gaze and Listen; for besides Madam, all the Charms and attractions and powers of your Sex, you have Beauties peculiar to your self, an ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West-Indian flowering shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience. I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening. I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip-roots. I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... had latterly excluded from her presence. This miscreant struck at her with his halbert. The blow removed her cap. Her luxuriant hair (as if to hide her angelic beauty from the sight of the murderers, pressing tiger-like around to pollute that form, the virtues of which equalled its physical perfection)—her luxuriant hair fell around and veiled her a moment from view. An individual, to whom I was nearly allied, seeing the miscreants somewhat staggered, sprang forward to the rescue; but the mulatto wounded him. The Princess was lost to all feeling from the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... that I was particularly observing, and apt to retain what came under my observation. But more especially, all that I heard about liberty and freedom to the slaves, I never forgot. Among other good trades I learned the art of running away to perfection. I made a regular business of it, and never gave it up, until I had broken the bands of slavery, and landed myself safely in Canada, where I was regarded as a man, and ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... of nature is divided into organic and inorganic bodies. Organic bodies possess organs, on whose action depend their growth and perfection. This division includes animals and plants. Inorganic bodies are devoid of organs, or instruments of life. In this division are classed the earths, metals, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... apply the saying of an ancient philosopher:—"A little thing gives perfection, although perfection is not a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... river Swan, in an extremely well-chosen locality. The streets are broad; and those houses which are placed nearest to the river, possess, perhaps, the most luxuriant gardens in the world. Every kind of fruit known in the finest climates is here produced in perfection. Grapes and figs are in profuse abundance; melons and peaches are no less plentiful, and bananas and plantains seem to rejoice in the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... established himself at the 'Eclipse Livery and Bait Stables,' in Pegasus Street, or Peg Street, as it is generally called, where he enacted the character of stud-groom to perfection, doing nothing himself, but seeing that others did his work, and strutting consequentially with the corn-sieves ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... head more than all Rubens and Paul Veronese together—"the mind, the mind, Master Shallow!" You think this cant, I dare say: but I say it truly, indeed. Raphael's are the only pictures that cannot be described: no one can get words to describe their perfection. Next to him, I retreat to the Gothic imagination, and love the mysteries of old chairs, Sir Rogers, etc. in which thou, my dear boy, art and shalt be a Raphael. To depict the true old English gentleman, is as great a work as to depict a Saint John, and I think in my heart I would rather have the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he examined the dark oblong at one end. "Men, you ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... The full argument is whether the full church, say Christian system, exactly as you, as we hold it, is needful to the perfection of moral observance. I don't say whether I assent, but the present question is whether the child's present belief and practice need be affected by its teacher's dogmatic or ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Senior Surgeon didn't look an atom jaded or forlorn when he came down to breakfast the next morning. He had on a brand new gray suit that fitted his big, powerful shoulders to perfection, and the glad glow of his shower-bath was still reddening faintly in his cheeks as he swung around the corner of the table and dropped down into his place with an odd little grin on his lips directed intermittently towards ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... marked yet delicate features, and the general impression produced by her dark coloring, were reasons why she seemed older than the rest. It was Jacqueline's privilege to exhibit that style of beauty which comes earliest to perfection, and retains it longest; and, what was an equal privilege, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... secure, so long as letters shall survive and history shall continue to be the guide and teacher of civilized men. The whole human race has become the self-appointed guardian of his fame, and the name of Washington will be ever held, over all the earth, to be synonymous with the highest perfection attainable in public or private life, and coeternal with that immortal love to which reason and revelation have together toiled to elevate human aspirations—the love of liberty, ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... now accomplished, and the boy devoted himself to bringing it as near perfection as possible. The principal thing to be feared was its getting out of order, since the slightest disarrangement would be sufficient to stop the progress ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... roads and railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery: "In short," said he, "every thing we look on attests the progress of mankind in all the arts of life, and demonstrates their gradual advancement towards a state of unlimited perfection." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... the assent of a whole village. Mad! Mad! He who kept in pious meditation the ritual vigil-of-arms by the well of an inn and knelt reverently to be knighted at daybreak by the fat, sly rogue of a landlord has come very near perfection. He rides forth, his head encircled by a halo—the patron saint of all lives spoiled or saved by the irresistible grace of imagination. But he was ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... "if * * * the whole proceeding is a mask—* * * [if the] counsel, jury and judge * * * [are] swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and * * * [if] the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent" intervention by the Supreme Court to secure the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... award it. Sometimes there are as many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators. One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spite of her, and while they were shut the Harvester looked steadily and intently on a face of exquisite beauty, but so marred by pallor and lines of care that search was required to recognize just how handsome she was, and if he had not seen her in perfection in the dream the Harvester might have missed glorious possibilities. To bring back that vision would be a task worth while was his thought. With the first faint quiver of an eyelash the Harvester took ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... in her unlikeness to everything they had known in the past? In Corinna, as in Stephen, two opposing spirits had battled unceasingly, the realistic spirit which accepted life as it was, and the romantic spirit which struggled toward some unattainable perfection, which endeavoured to change and decorate the actuality. More than Stephen, perhaps, she had faced life; but she had not accepted it without rebellion. She had learned from disappointment to see things as they are; but deep in her heart some unspent fire ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... Nevertheless, set beside the great masters of fiction who were to come, and who will be reviewed in these pages, they are seen to have been excelled in art and at least equaled in gift and power. So much we may properly claim for the marvelous growth and ultimate degree of perfection attained by the best novel-makers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It remains now to show what part was played in the eighteenth century development by certain other novelists, who, while not of the supreme importance of these two leaders, yet each and all contributed ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... had worked to perfection. The seven men, still unhurt, were well aft, where Hobson joined them the moment he had pressed the button; but now their troubles began. The dingy in which they had hoped to escape had been shot to pieces, and they dared not try to get their raft overboard, for the growing light ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... they are best conducted by an admixture of experts with men of what may be, called business culture. So in a government office the intrusion of an exterior head of the office is really essential to its perfection. As Sir George Lewis said: "It is not the business of a cabinet minister to work his department; his business is to see that it is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he may have occasion for, encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent of genius he may possess for that ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... was her favourite because of its rational trend. In it her husband intended to propose and to solve the following problem: "Why does Christianity exalt, as an element of human perfection, that renunciation which subjects man to fierce struggles, is of no benefit to any one, and closes the door of existence to possible human lives?" The answer was to be deduced from, the study of the moral phenomenon in its historical origins, and its ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... celebrated singer Angela——i, who at that time was playing with splendid success as prima donna at St. Benedict's Theatre. His enthusiasm was awakened, not only in her art—which Signora Angela had indeed brought to a high pitch of perfection—but in her angelic beauty as well. He sought her acquaintance; and in spite of all his rugged manners he succeeded in winning her heart, principally through his bold and yet at the same time masterly violin-playing. Close intimacy led in a few weeks to marriage, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... we went out into the great court, where the horses were fidgeting, and biting and kicking at one another, and being shouted at by the men, who were brushing away at their coats to get them into as high a state of perfection as possible. There were the bullocks too, sadly reduced in numbers, and suggesting famine if some new ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... easy of interpretation. It is a general and earnest admonition on the part of Paul, enjoining us to an increasing degree of perfection in the doctrine we have received. This admonition, this exhortation, is one incumbent upon an evangelical teacher to give, for he is urging us to observe a doctrine commanded of God. He says, "For ye know what charge [commandments] we gave you through the Lord ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... former quarrels, but to Harry none whatever. Even to Ashby he would have yielded, for prejudices die out quickly in a Castle of Spain. And so, as we have seen, the good Russell interrupted the happy lovers in a paternal way, and did the "heavy father" to perfection—with outstretched hands, moistened eyes, and "Bless you, bless you, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... with his arm on the mantel. From his superior height he looked down on her dainty insolent perfection, answering not too seriously the challenge of her eyes. No matter what she meant—how much or how little she was wonderfully attractive. The provocation of the mocking little face ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... life was to be "Freedom," and the definition of "Freedom" by a learned American is, "The power which necessarily belongs to the self-conscious being of determining his actions in view of the highest, the universal good, and thereby of gradually realising in himself the eternal divine perfection." The definition seems a little hazy, but the workings of great minds are often unintelligible to common people. "The American citizen must be morally autonomous, regarding all institutions as servants, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... different degrees of intelligence, so exactly adapted to their different conditions, and in having fitted every part of this stupendous work, not only to serve its own immediate purpose, but also to contribute to the beauty and perfection of the whole; how much more ought we to adore that goodness which has perfected the divine plan, by appointing one wide and comprehensive means of salvation: a salvation which all are invited to partake; by a means ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... wars, and to live their life without them. The Lady of Whitburn did not expect to see her husband or son again till the summer campaign was over, and she was not at all uneasy about them, for the full armour of a gentleman had arrived at such a pitch of perfection that it was exceedingly difficult to kill him, and such was the weight, that his danger in being overthrown was of never being able to get up, but lying there to be smothered, made prisoner, or killed, by breaking into his armour. The knights could not have moved at all under ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years before it was discovered that he was born dumb, the knowledge of which at first gave his mother great uneasiness, but finding soon after that he had his hearing, and all his other senses to the greatest perfection, her grief began to abate, and she resolved to have him brought up as well as their circumstances and his ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe |
