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Perfectness   Listen
noun
Perfectness  n.  The quality or state of being perfect; perfection. "Charity, which is the bond of perfectness."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Perfectness" Quotes from Famous Books



... by your numerous testimonials as to the character of the word gradely, is one of decency, order, rightness, perfectness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various

... Lost" as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';—nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty. And this, it is not the light, changeful grace that leaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or only a soul; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectness of hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous colour. There is fire, though, too—high courage and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride through ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... one. If we have the angel aim and standard, we can consecrate the smallest acts. Don't you know that "he who aims for perfectness in a trifle, is trying to do ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... memory of the poor orange-girl, proves that she must have suffered much from the reproofs of conscience, even when her sin to all appearance most revelled in its "glory." The canker eat into the rose—soiled and marred its perfectness—chipped and wasted its beauty—but ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... tale goes on to change clouds or planets into living creatures,—to invest them with fair forms and inflame them with mighty passions,—we can only understand the story of the human-hearted things, in so far as we ourselves take pleasure in the perfectness of visible form, or can sympathize, by an effort of imagination, with the strange people who had other loves than those of wealth, and other interests than those of commerce. And, lastly, if the myth complete itself to ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that will detail exactly the condition in which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your human sympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of that Jesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, the divine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin or temptation to sin ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... assumed that the believer has recognized the perfectness of the will of God and has thrown his whole being open to His power and guidance. As a little child may avail himself of the wisdom and experience of his parents through obedience, so the believer has ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... fear of suffering. Before I knew the history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy: that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I must forsake the world: I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me to that which passeth away; I must live with my fellow-beings only as human souls related to the eternal unseen life. That need was urging me ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... influence of erroneous principles, they at first gave rise to, are either already, or soon will be, sunk in oblivion, even because from their very mistakes they contrived to advance towards greater purity and perfectness; their works will live, and in them, to say the least, we have the foundation of a dramatic school at once essentially German, and governed by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... is not a question of comparing one rule with another, it is rather of noticing which rule is as a matter of fact best observed. For even had other rules, in regard to the exterior perfectness of the life they prescribe, every advantage over that of St. Augustine, who does not know that it is safer to enter a community in which a rule of less excellence is exactly observed, rather than another where a higher kind of rule is preached but not kept? Of ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... the moat as he threatened to do with me; at least, sweetheart, you would then have lived in widowhood and I have died a glorious death in observing the law that true love enjoins. But through breaking it I am now in life, and you, through perfectness of love, are dead; for your pure, clear heart could not bear to know the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... the more physical vigor and balance, the more endurance can be made an element of satisfaction. A sick man cannot stand it. The line of enjoyable suffering is not a fixed one; it fluctuates with the perfectness of the life. That our pains are, as they are, unendurable, awful, overwhelming, crushing, not to be borne save in misery and dumb impatience, which utter exhaustion alone makes patient,—that our pains are thus unendurable, means not that they are too great, but that we are sick. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... perfect: and as a consequence the use of energy is considerable, especially so in the realm of Synthetic Chemistry. But it must be understood that the individual is taught that dependence must be placed rather on one's own dexterity, born of that God-given faculty of Intuition, than on the perfectness of a man-made machine, the creation of ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... graciousness, had culled and compacted the best of them into Eunice Goodward; which was precisely the case except that Peter through his unfamiliarity with the Best Society couldn't be expected to know that the intelligence which had put together so much perfectness was no less calculating than that which goes to the matching of a string of pearls. All that he got from it was precisely all that he was meant to receive—namely, the conviction that she couldn't have charmed him so had she ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... evolved order out of disorder, heterogeneous beauty out of homogeneous crudity, progressive individuality of being and thought out of chaotic vapor, so will they continue their evolving force through all time, till the boasted perfectness of this day of ours, perfect because it is our day, will be as primitive to the later denizens of this globe as the barbarity of the cave savages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... temper sometimes and seemed to those who were too ready to judge him to fail in the putting on of that Charity which "thinketh no evil" and which is "the bond of perfectness," he was still a good man, honest, conscientious, just, and he could never willingly have sought to harm or to alarm any helpless or suffering creature. But then neither would his conscience let him consent to suffer sin in one whom he might, through faithful dealing, ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... had been built, had it sheltered such loveliness! Bravely enough the dark, smudgy kitchen, with its scabby walls and its greasy, splintery floor, grew knots of violets. But here were flowers not made by hands: flowers which had come up out of the earth!—yet with a perfectness which was surely not of the earth; certainly not, at any rate, of this particular corner of it situated in ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... who stood at work Patient and accurate full fourscore years, Cherished his sight and touch by temperance, And since keen sense is love of perfectness, Made perfect violins, the needed paths ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... "bond of perfectness;" alluding to the girdle of the Orientals, which was not only ornamental and expensive, but was put on last, serving to adjust the other parts of the dress, and keep the whole together. It is a bond which holds all ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, 190 Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage— Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced The perfectness of others yet unseen. Conceding which—had Zeus then questioned thee, "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, 195 Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Thou wouldst have answered, "Aye, by making each Grow conscious in himself—by that alone. All's perfect else: the shell sucks fast the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... museum is to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... I cannot see her! and you are permitted that last glimpse of human perfectness; you who never loved her as I ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... even the passion of love between man and woman, and carrying men and women unwedded to their graves for sake of love of mother or father. When we realize what such friendship is, it seems incredible that parents can forego it, or can risk losing any shade of its perfectness, for the sake of any indulgence of the habit of command or of gratifying ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... that," he went on, insistently. "You make me feel like that all the time. You know," he added, leaning over her chair, "I sometimes think you have never lived. There is so much that would complete your perfectness. I should like to send you abroad or take you—anyhow, you should go. You are very wonderful to me. Do you find me at ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... energy to expressing himself forcibly and with the vital glow of an overpowering interest. An interesting thought expressed with force and suggestiveness is worth volumes of commonplaces couched in the most faultless language. The writer should never hesitate in choosing between perfectness of language and vigor. On the first writing verbal perfection should be sacrificed without a moment's hesitation. But when a story or essay has once been written, the writer will turn his attention to those small details of style. He must harmonize his language. He must polish. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... eternity in his heart, with the hunger in his spirit after an unchanging whole, an absolute good, an ideal perfectness, an immortal being—is condemned to the treadmill of transitory revolution. Nothing continueth in one stay, 'For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... fountain full, With glistening jets still rising in the midst. She rose up straight, and donning man's attire, For that the road was hard and difficult, Took horse, and towards the sunrise swiftly rode, Saying, "Thus much life lacks of perfectness, In God's name on to ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... and register the increasing change along the horizon, over which the sun sets, farther and farther toward the south, we have a genial and gentle sadness. But sadness belongs to all very deep joys. It is almost as needful to the perfectness of joy, as shadows in landscapes are to the charm of the picture. Then, too, comes the fading out of flowers,—each variety in its turn, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in its neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and circumferent stateliness of the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... needful that the most immodest word Be look'd upon and learn'd; which once attain'd, Your highness knows, comes to no further use But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, The prince will in the perfectness of time Cast off his followers; and their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live, By which his grace must mete the lives of other, Turning ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]

... of the human frame, it has expanded to the loss of its elasticity, and can expand no more. Then the general style of educated men, formed by the accumulated improvements of centuries, is far superior perhaps in perfectness to that of any one of those national Classics, who have taught their countrymen to write more clearly, or more elegantly, or more forcibly than themselves. And literary men submit themselves to ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... basis of morality is universal order. The true end of morality is life, the sum of moral laws being identical with the sum of the conditions in accordance with which the fruition of the functions of life can be secured with nearest approach to perfectness, perpetuity, and universality. The true sanctions of morality are the manifold forms in which consciousness of life is heightened by harmony with universal order or lowered by discord with it. The true law of moral sacrifice or resistance to temptation is misrepresented by the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... is the Father; if He is wise and good and forgiving, so is the Father; if the Son is long-suffering and slow to anger, yet not afraid to denounce sin and call to account the wicked, so likewise may we represent the Father. All the noble attributes which we find in the Son exist in perfectness ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... pleased companion. All is "calm and free," and "full of life," it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!—what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!—what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!—what modesty and submission! what self-possession!—what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... if I speak ill," I prayed: "Art thou the queen o' the heaven's blue, To whom earth's honour shall be paid? We believe in Mary, of grace who grew, A mother, yet a blameless maid; To wear her crown were only due To one who purer worth displayed. For perfectness by none gainsaid, We call her the Phoenix of Araby, That flies in faultless charm arrayed, Like to ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett

... second look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back—watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes—and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that they had proved to their own perfect satisfaction, which was the same thing as disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and tree, hill and dale, lake, pond, sun, air, fire, and water were all wanting in some of the perfectness of the old regions. It was plain we could never hope to reach the exalted excellence they enjoy; and while he respected the patriotism that held the contrary view, he could not, out of deference to it, afford to doubt what had been demonstrated (p. 100) ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... time—only of the dull ache, and feverish longing, and utter apathy that seized her by turns. There was a subtle difference in all things. 'Twas as if some fine spring in the delicate mechanism of her being had broken. It might run on for years, but never again with the perfectness and buoyancy with which it had ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... fair as a dream of Greece, in her serene, marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns, her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling—both under the care of that stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like brook-ripples, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... has been publicly exhibited at the South-Kensington Exhibition, before the recent meeting of the British Association, and elsewhere. The highest scientific authorities have pronounced most thoroughly in favor of its 'perfectness, beauty, and simplicity.' Whether the greater complication of the keyboard will interfere seriously with its popular use, remains to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... amusing. To see a Zouave gravely cheat a Turk, or trip up a Greek street-merchant, or Maltese fruit-seller, and scud away with the spoil, cleverly stowed in his roomy red pantaloons, was an operation, for its coolness, expedition, and perfectness, well worth seeing. And, to a great extent, they escaped scatheless, for the English Provost marshal's department was rather chary of interfering with the eccentricities of our gallant allies; while if the French had taken close ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... for life—then hour after hour, step after step, in the progress of infant destinies, had the reason of the mother grown in the child's growth, adapting itself to each want that it must foresee, and taking its perfectness and completion from the breath of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... often almost as inarticulate, these old singers, as the birds from whom they copied their notes; the thinnest chain of thought links together some bird- like refrain: but they make up for their want of logic and reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine- forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own voice; and he breaks out, with the very carol ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. But our dull wit cannot come unto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. Yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. If we want to sharpen our reason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once found the right path we may, step by step, seek, learn, comprehend, and finally reach and attain ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... wide around the great centre, but "each star differeth from another star in glory." Yet this want of sameness is what will produce the deepest harmony, such as one sees in the blending of different colours, or hears in the mingling of different notes. And I repeat it, the bond of this perfectness must be the same in heaven as on earth—love. For it is love which unites exalted rank to lowly place, knowledge to ignorance, and strength to weakness; thus bringing things opposite into an harmonious whole. See accordingly how the love which dwelt in "God manifest in the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... into the lunatic ward of the public hospital at Marseilles, whose malady seemed the result of religious depression. In that supposition, the usual means of relief were resorted to, and he was at length discharged as convalescent; when, to attest the perfectness of his cure, he went and hanged himself! A proces verbal was, as usual, made out, and the supposed fanatic proved to be the ex-executioner of Lyons! Tender-hearted people instantly ascribed his melancholy to qualms of conscience. But it appeared in evidence, that, since the accession ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... led the brotherhood to agree that "each shall regularly deduct a tenth of the net product of his labour to form a fund in his own hands for these purposes." We know nothing in the history of missions, monastic or evangelical, which at all approaches this in administrative perfectness as well is in Christlike self-sacrifice. It prevents secularisation of spirit, stimulates activity of all kinds, gives full scope to local ability and experience, calls forth the maximum of local support and propagation, sets the church at home free to enter incessantly on new fields, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... constitutional exercise of higher force over forces organized to be swayed. If law were perfectly rigid, there could be but one force; but many grades exist from cohesion to mind and spirit. The highest forces are meant to have victory, and thus give the highest order and perfectness. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... on farther and farther from man to God, from human defect to the Eternal Perfectness. Never once during those hours did Elsmere's hand fail to perform its needed service to the faint sleeper beside him, and yet that night was one long dream and strangeness to him, nothing real anywhere but consciousness, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... than the black-skinned individuals. We may assume that increased stature and breadth imply some sort of inherent physical superiority, and if such an assumption is valid we have in man evidence that albinism is correlated not with constitutional defectiveness but with greater perfectness. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... strange thing; but, as after his death it was discovered, the true secret of the wonderful calmness and sweetness which, year by year, deepened more and more in Lord Cairnforth's character, ripening it to a perfectness in which those who only saw the outside of his could hardly believe, consisted in this ever-abiding thought—that he might die to-morrow. Existence was to him such a mere twilight, dim, imperfect, and sad, that he never rested in it, but lived every day, as it were, in prospect ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... design, we have a duty enjoined, and that of no inferior sort. If charity be indeed as it is, the very bond of perfectness: and if without it all our doings, yea and sufferings too, are not worthy so much as a rush (1 Cor 13; Col 3:14). we have here a duty, I say, that a seventh day sabbath, when in force, was not too big for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the Confutation, have also cited against us Col. 3, 14: Charity, which is the bond of perfectness. From this they infer that love justifies because it renders men perfect. Although a reply concerning perfection could here be made in many ways, yet we will simply recite the meaning of Paul. It is certain that Paul spoke of ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... can adequately describe the beauty of the circulatory system. The constant vital flow through the larger vessels, and the incessant activity of those so minute that they are almost imperceptible, fully illustrate the perfectness of the mechanism of the human body, and the wisdom and goodness of Him who ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... splendour of life about her that made all her movements large and emphatic, and yet, at the same time, nothing could exceed the delicate finish of the physical structure itself. What was indeed characteristic in her was this combination of extraordinary perfectness of detail, with a flash, a warmth, a force of impression, such as often raises the lower kinds of beauty into excellence and picturesqueness, but is seldom found in connection with those types where the beauty is, as it were, sufficient in and by ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... gracefully bent over towards Treasury Bench, whereon sat his one-time revered Leader and the still faithful band of followers, he would naturally have imagined JOSEPH was complimenting him and them upon the perfectness of their measure, and the prospect of the Irish wilderness, under its beneficent influence, blossoming like the rose. Deaf man would have been mistaken; JOSEPH saying nothing of the kind; indeed, quite the reverse, as deaf man, turning his eyes on Mr. G., would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various

... rich in juices wherewithal to nourish the heart of another man, and their two lives, set together, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness of fruit; while you and he would only have languished into aridity and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... many of the Christian graces an apostle said, Above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. So charity, or rather its possessor, is no willful truth "butcherer," for charity believeth all things (or all truth); hopeth all things (promised); rejoiceth, not in iniquity, but in the truth. It has no "stock" in ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... the beauty and the sweetness of the flower. Under the same law of unconscious growth every true poem, every great work of art, and every genuine noble character, has fashioned itself and come at last to conscious perfectness and recognition. Genius is nearer Nature than talent; it is only when it strays away from Nature, and loses itself in mere dexterities, that it degenerates into skill and becomes a tool with which to work, and not a gift from heaven. The silence of the deep woods is pregnant with mighty growths. ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... truth! Each of God's laws, if but so late discerned Their faiths upgrew unsuckled in it, fills Their hearts with angry fears, perchance lest God Be dwarfed behind his own decrees, or made Superfluous through his perfectness of deed! But large increase of knowledge in these days Is come about us, fraught with ill for them Whose creeds are cut too straight to hold new growth, Whose faiths are clamped against access of wisdom; Fraught with some sadness, too, for those just souls Who, clothed in rigid ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock, was fair as the fairest woman's. I remember his putting his hand up to feel ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... she, 'save on condition that thou fast a whole month, watching by night and fasting by day for the love of God the Most High: but if thou wilt do this, they are thine, to use as thou pleasest.' The King wondered at the perfectness of her piety and devotion and abnegation and she was magnified in his eyes, and he said, 'May God make this pious old woman to profit us!' So he agreed to her proposal, and she said to him, 'I will help thee with my prayers.' ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... done so, her own perfect lips curved into a smile of purest graciousness, and in her voice as she spoke was a quality of zylophone music made the more charming by that slight French accent which years abroad had given her. Beauty is so variant of type, so often vaunted and so rarely found in true perfectness, that Carl Bristoll had accepted the newspaper reports of this girl's loveliness with a discounted credence. Now he was convinced. The quality of her coloring and expression would have made her face ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... day we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and, because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and left the pure, still, ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... for him to enjoy the moment in its flight, again possessed his mind: he had known it from a child, the ambition to follow, follow, follow, in the hope that somewhere, perhaps behind the setting sun, he might arrive at the land of perfectness for which he craved. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... he had never forgotten any thing; but the depth and perfectness of his love she could ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... specially upon one among other important laws which deserve our consideration; the law of love. Paul was quite right when, comparing the various qualities of Christian character he declared, 'The greatest of these is love'. 'Love is the bond of perfectness.' ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... sketched and painted, with a characteristic rapidity that was impatient of the slightest interruption yet patient in its perfectness of detail, the picture born of the smoke grew steadily upon ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... idea of human life which had so often bloomed in the literature of all climes and ages, but whose consummate flower appeared in the book of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher. Hence also the dramatic unity and methodic perfectness of the story. Its byways all lead to its highway; its episodes are as vitally related to the main theme as are the ramifications of a tree to its central stem. The great diversities of experience in the true pilgrims are dominated by one supreme motive. As for the others, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... perfection of the symbolism of the temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In like manner the Mysteries, says Christie, "were termed [Greek: teletai], perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled [Greek: teloume/noi], and [Greek: tetelesme/noi], that is, brought to perfection."—Observations on Ouvaroff's Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... 9:46 46 Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgments, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey to ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so juicy the stalks, and with ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... two terms. Zelem properly signifies "an image," or "figure," as when the Scripture says, Ye shall break down their images, Ex. 23, 24, in which passage the original term signifies nothing more than the figures, or statues, or images erected by men. But demuth signifies "a likeness," or "the perfectness of an image." For instance, when we speak of a lifeless image, such as that which is impressed on coins, we say, This is the image of Brutus or of Caesar. That image, however, does not reproduce the likeness, nor ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... Perfection. — N. perfection; perfectness &c. adj.; indefectibility[obs3]; impeccancy[obs3], impeccability. pink, beau ideal, phenix, paragon; pink of perfection, acme of perfection; ne plus ultra[Lat]; summit &c. 210. cygne noir[Fr]; philosopher's stone; chrysolite, Koh-i-noor. model, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!—or how far the perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... And, just because 'twas life to please, Death to repel her, truth and ease Deserted me; I strove to talk, And stammer'd foolishness; my walk Was like a drunkard's; if she took My arm, it stiffen'd, ached, and shook: A likely wooer! Blame her not; Nor ever say, dear Mother, aught Against that perfectness which is My strength, as once it was my bliss. And do not chafe at social rules. Leave that to charlatans and fools. Clay grafts and clods conceive the rose, So base still fathers best. Life owes Itself to bread; enough thereof And easy days condition love; And, kindly ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... myself. And if I had not a month's mind in another place, I would have a fling at her, that's flat; but I must set a good holiday-face on't, and go a wooing to pretty Peg: well, I'll to her, i' faith, while 'tis in my mind. But stay; I'll see how I can woo before I go: they say use makes perfectness. Look you now; suppose this were Peg: now I set my cap o' the side on this fashion (do ye see?); then say I, sweet honey, honey, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... needful, and that Mary had chosen, for while the Master does appreciate all that we undertake for him, he knows that our first need is to sit at his feet and learn his will; then in our tasks we shall be calm and peaceful and kindly, and at last our service may attain the perfectness of that of Mary when in a later scene she poured upon the feet of Jesus the ointment, the perfume of which still ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... will, then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. In the Scriptures we have vague intimations concerning God's will, growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through history to Jesus. In the dogma we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of God was from the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... an idea of the perfectness of his organization, the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies, all the trumpets, all the tambourines ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... ever by anything be brought to cease to say it. Death cannot kill love to God; and the only end of the religious life of earth is its perfecting in heaven. The experiences that we have here, in their loftiness and in their incompleteness, equally witness for us, of the rest and the perfectness that remain ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... establish our relationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule and guide our lives. These are ever operating to help us to live above the purely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement along the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls vistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding of the mysteries ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... Carleton,—"and for those duties, some of the very highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of perfectness. The wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough, should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And for her own happiness, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... quorum artes emuntur," admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression, because Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is necessary in all the higher arts; but the cost of this dexterity is incalculable. Be it great or small, the "cost" of the mere perfectness of touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of Correggio's, is inestimable ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... one of another, and put the worst construction on whatever is said or done; and they cannot walk together comfortably and profitably when these are entertained. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for all church members to be firmly united in cordial love and charity, which is the bond of perfectness to and in all other duties. God highly commends and strictly commands this love one to another, and puts it into the heart of his peculiar people, that they may ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... has accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the book:—'It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with or ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... grammarian whom Lowth compliments, as excelling all others, in "acuteness of investigation, perspicuity of explication, and elegance of method;" and as surpassing all but Aristotle, in the beauty and perfectness of his philological analysis; commences his chapter on conjunctions in the following manner: "Connectives are the subject of what follows; which, according as they connect either Sentences or Words, are called by the different Names of Conjunctions OR Prepositions. Of these Names, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... thoughts which run through all his prose and poetry may be found here. Analogy is seen everywhere in the works of Nature. "What is common to them all,—that perfectness and harmony, is beauty."—"Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole."—"No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty." How easily these same ideas took on the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the waters whose substance have formed the earth be gathered together, and let the earth and the waters stand in perfectness in their orders. And let the firmament beneath the heaven of electricity remain unmovable, and let there be a door as a gateway from the heaven to the earth remain ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen

... from the enemies; so I would have you all agree upon some one, that I may proclaim him king in my lifetime and so ye may be at ease.' Whereupon quoth they all, 'We all approve of thy son-in-law Hassan, son of the Vizier Ali; for we have seen the perfectness of his wit and understanding, and he knows the rank of all, great ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... too, which helped to increase their happiness; that still, full, green weather, which sometimes comes in the late summer, satisfying men's souls with its peaceful perfectness; when the year is too old to be disturbed by the restless hope of spring, too young to be depressed by the chilling dread of autumn, and so just touches the fringe of that eternity which has no end neither any beginning. The fine weather hastened Christopher's recovery; and, as ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... people the use of this democratizing weed, emphatically give them a 'quid pro quo?' Are not slovenliness and filth the virtues of republics, while neatness and elegance are vices of court-growth, and expand into their most ramified and minute perfectness of polish only in the palaces of kings? Furthermore, oh laurelled and triumphant PICKWICK! if expectoration be filthy, it must be because the 'thing expectorated' is unclean; and if so, is it not more decent to become rid of the 'unclean thing' by the readiest ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... same strain in the following paragraph—"The apostle Paul puts a high note of commendation upon charity, when he styles it the bond of perfection. 'Above all things (says he) put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness,' Col. iii. 14. I am sure it hath not so high a place in the minds and practice of Christians now, as it hath in the roll of the parts and members of the new man here set down. Here it is above all. With us it is below all, even below every apprehension of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... the Amyntas which makes it a thousand-fold more real to us than the Elizabethan masques is not its perfectness of form but the stamp which it bears of being the expression of personal experience and longing but thinly veiled in poetic imagery. Reading the poem at Villa d'Este we read between the lines ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... any definite image is presented in response to that vague agitation of our soul, we feel its inadequacy to our need in spite of, or perhaps on account of, its own particular perfection. We then say that the classic does not satisfy us, and that the "Grecian cloys us with his perfectness." We are not capable of that concentrated and serious attention to one thing at a time which would enable us to sink into its being, and enjoy the intrinsic harmonies of its form, and the bliss of its immanent particular heaven; we flounder in the vague, but at the same time we are ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... singing. He gave out a passage of Scripture, as a sort of text, but he did not keep to it; he followed with other passages, and his discourse was a rehearsal of these rather than a sermon. His memory in them was unerring; women who knew their Bibles by heart sighed their satisfaction in his perfectness; they did not care for the relevance or irrelevance of the passages; all was Scripture, all was the one inseparable Word of God, dreadful, blissful, divine, promising heaven, threatening hell. Groans began to go up from the people held ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... of sentiment which exists among the slave states, themselves, in relation to the system, would be disclosed to the country; and that the slaveholding interest would be found deficient in that harmony which, from its perfectness heretofore, has made the slaveholders so successful in their ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... themselves on their most holy faith, by diligent searching into the word of God, and praying in the Holy Ghost, as that this life shall be more and more a real possession and a conscious possession; to promote among all disciples the unity of the Spirit and the charity which is the bond of perfectness, and to help them to exhibit that life before the world; to incite them to cultivate an unworldly and spiritual type of character such as conforms to the life of God in them; to lead them to the prayer of faith which is both the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... who come after him need to meet; he makes the path for them. When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world's sinfulness, and looked off to the summit of His Father's perfectness, He felt a separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end it. We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the temptations He faced, from the experience in the wilderness at the outset to the anguish of His ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... Europe, have been exceeding active in this matter; and they proved to their own perfect satisfaction, which is the same thing as disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and tree, hill and dale, lake and pond, sun, air, fire and water, are all wanting in some of the perfectness of the older regions. I respect a patriotic sentiment, and can carry the disposition to applaud the bounties received from the hands of a beneficent Creator as far as any man; but that which hath been demonstrated by science, or collected by learning, is placed too far beyond ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... we account for all this? By the simplest and yet the most comprehensive answer. By declaring the stupendous fact that all creation is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of the Most High—that order in the utmost perfectness of its relation pervades His works, because it exists as in its centre and highest fountain-head in Him the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers, that Man himself, the Prince and Head of this creation, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... grows upon him. He has now no need of external evidence to prove its inspiration; it everywhere bears the impress of Divinity. And as the microscope which reveals the coarseness and blemishes of the works of man only shows more fully the perfectness of GOD'S works, and brings to light new and unimagined beauties, so it is with the Word of GOD when ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... love is the true atheism: Upward the soul forever turns her eyes: The next hour always shames the hour before; One beauty, at its highest, prophesies That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor; No Godlike thing knows aught of less and less, But widens to the boundless Perfectness. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... seen are even more spinous." Such may have been the case in those I sent: but it has occurred to me now and then to dredge specimens of C. aculeatum, which had escaped that rolling on the sand fatal in old age to its delicate spines, and which equalled in colour, size, and perfectness the noble one figured in poor dear old Dr. Turton's "British Bivalves." Besides, aculeatum is a far thinner and more delicate shell. And a third species, C. echinatum, with curves more graceful and continuous, is to be found now and then with the two former. In it, each point, instead of ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... Chia Lien to accompany her, and she also asked him to bring her back again along with him. But no minute particulars need be given of the manifold local presents and of the preparations, which were, of course, everything that could be wished for in excellence and perfectness. Forthwith the day for starting was selected, and Chia Lien, along with Lin Tai-y, said good-bye to all the members of the family, and, followed by their attendants, they went on board their boats, and set out on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... however, comprise all his notable compositions. And about these notable compositions which do not rank with his masterpieces, either because they are of less significance or otherwise fail to reach the standard of requisite perfectness, I shall first say ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... perfectness &c adj.; indefectibility^; impeccancy^, impeccability. pink, beau ideal, phenix, paragon; pink of perfection, acme of perfection; ne plus ultra [Lat.]; summit &c 210. cygne noir [Fr.]; philosopher's stone; chrysolite, Koh-i-noor. model, standard, pattern, mirror, admirable Crichton; trump, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... is due to mining and to the perfectness of man's ability to work the minerals which the mines supply. The fields of the world give men food; with food furnished, a few souls turn to the contemplation of higher things; but no grand civilization ever came to an agricultural people until their intellects were quickened ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... perfectness. The impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... other for a primary as the other has on him for a satellite; which may be aptly instanced in Justice Shallow and Justice Silence, or in Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The consequence is, that all the characters are developed, not indeed at equal length, but with equal perfectness as far as they go; for, to make the dwarf fill the same space as the giant were to dilute, not ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... added to the theory of the elements. But you approach your marble to sympathize with it, and rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly; and at the end of your day's work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same way. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round him;—still, the major part of his work is, or has been, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it)—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak—was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... Venus. I was consciously playing on her vanity for a purpose. In the thing I have done for the Agricultural Institute there is a recumbent figure, and I wanted the perfect model for it. The right woman is more difficult to get than you would imagine. Of course she agreed with me as to the perfectness of her figure, and then I began to doubt it. That settled the business. She fell into my trap and agreed to ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... deck into the shade of a great striped awning, and loitered along the side, caught by the beauty of the late summer scene. Sky and water and green wood blended into practised perfectness. The rippling water was blue as the heavens, which was very blue indeed. The sun kissed it like ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all against his direct material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful illusion, something must take ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... he ought never to have had such a feeling, and he would not have had it, if she had diffused the radiance of love, which would have made her outer perfectness mere slovenliness beside her inner charm and magnetism. Very little of all this passed through Crozier's mind, as with confused vision he looked at her. He had borne the ordeal of the witness-box in the Logan Trial with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... hands are deft; whose eyes are alert, sensitive, microscopic; whose heart is tender, broad, magnanimous, true. Indeed, the only man who can satisfy the demands of an age like this, is the man who has been rounded into perfectness by being cultured along all the lines we have indicated ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... still support gymnasia of greater or less size and perfectness. But the modern gymnasium has two great deficiencies: the lack of open air, and of the emulation arising from publicity. The first is a very grave objection. Not a tithe of the benefits of exercise can be obtained within-doors. The sallow mechanic and the ruddy farmer are the two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... stairs, had met Queed coming down, pad in hand. The impertinence of the old professor's invitation fitted superbly with the bitterness of the little Doctor's humor. It pressed the martyr's crown upon his brow till the perfectness of his grudge against a hateful world lacked nor jot ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... wielding the forces of the universe, as we believe He does, then to Him belongs the divine prerogative of imparting His nature and His character to them that love Him. Then His righteousness is not a solitary, uncommunicative perfectness for Himself, but like a sun in the heavens, which streams out vivifying and enlightening rays to all that seek His face. If it be true that Christ has risen, then it is also true that you and I, convicted of sin, and learning our weakness and our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... feeling, and smoothness of diction, they are all, without exception, good—if they are not great. If no one rises to the height which other poets have occasionally reached, they are, nevertheless, always free from those defects which sometimes mar the perfectness of far greater productions. Each portrays some human thirst or longing, and so touches the heart of every thoughtful reader. There is a sweetness running through them all which comes from a higher than earthly source, and which human wisdom can neither ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... ceased; but huge fantastic masses of cloud, tinged with lurid copper-colour by the setting sun, still towered afar off over the horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark—the beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green fields of Looe Island rose high out of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a while"—which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his touchstones of literary style—the thing that really moves the audience in the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... order, though not perhaps in every minute particular quite so well executed, and from the pen of a writer of inferior genius. It should seem that the best rule to follow would be, first, to pitch upon the sonnets which are best both in kind and perfectness of execution, and, next, those which, although of a humbler quality, are admirable for the finish and happiness of the execution, taking care to exclude all those which have not one or other of these recommendations, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... an animal to pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation around them; wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise,—it is a dressing of garden. And, therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may; vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin



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