"Exactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will not expect his own ideal Evangeline or Sir Launfal to appear before him on the page, but every reflective mind will find, we think, such a parallelism between poetry and picture as is not only consistent with exactness, but will further serve to illuminate and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... interested in the suggestion. It was impossible then, however, to obtain any evidence for the truth of this speculation, and it was abandoned as unfounded, and even forgotten completely, until revived again about the middle of the 19th century. During this century of wonder a sufficiency of exactness was, however, introduced into the study of microscopic organisms to call for the use of names, and we find Muller using the names of Monas, Proteus, Vibrio, Bacillus, and Spirillum, names which still continue in use, although commonly with ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... Dick joined me. Now I could see that the ring was not continuous. Its broken circle was made of sharply edged cubes about an inch in height, separated from each other with mathematical exactness by another inch of space. I counted ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... enjoyed a real picnic. Every little event of that delightful past was gone over again with exactness; and all of them pronounced the day one of the happiest of the calendar. The shack was still in serviceable condition, and the girls were pleased to pretend that they might still have need of a shelter whenever a cloud as big as a boy's ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... operation with all possible exactness, immersing the bees was not enough. You know, Sir, that the contact of water stiffens their organs, that it produces a certain alteration of their external figure: and, from the resemblance of small queens to workers, the slightest alteration of shape would prevent us from distinguishing ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... relation to these objects, on horticulture, agriculture, on building houses and hydraulic works, on mining, on the chase, and forestry, they are all confined within very limited spaces which may be soon explored with sufficient exactness. But the Commander in War must commit the business he has in hand to a corresponding space which his eye cannot survey, which the keenest zeal cannot always explore, and with which, owing to the constant changes taking place, he can also seldom become properly acquainted. Certainly the enemy ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... is to express by rhythmic movements and without hesitation rhythms perceived by the ear. The exactness of such expression will be in proportion to the number of movements of which the pupil has acquired automatic control. There is not time to analyse the music heard; the body must realize before the mind has a clear ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... and wooded promontories grew increasingly familiar as Sir John was borne toward Lihua, the scene of his boyish folly. He looked ashore in wonder, surprised at the vividness and exactness of his recollection. He might have landed anywhere and found his way through those tangled, scented paths with no other guide but memory. There was Papaloloa with its roaring falls; there, the ti'a a Peau where he had shot his ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the story of the cashing of the president's check, circumstantially, and with the exactness of a man trained in ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... were the remarks passed in the parlour upon the new married couple has not reached the writer of these memoirs with as much exactness as the foregoing circumstances; but they may in part be imagined from the sketch already given of the characters which formed the Glenfern party. The conciliatory indulgence of Mrs. Douglas, when aided by the good-natured Miss Grizzy, doubtless had a favourable ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... were therein further ordered, "that, in transacting the business of their department, they should enter with the utmost perspicuity and exactness all their proceedings whatsoever, and all dissents, if such should at any time be made by any member of their board, together with all letters sent or received in the course of their correspondence; and that broken sets of such proceedings, to the latest period possible, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... account for the fact that the subjects are not treated with any degree of scientific exactness, as essays might require; but in a manner intended to suggest useful thoughts to ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... himself by the Son of Man, and was introducing an entirely unparalleled and new element into the delineation of this supernatural figure. But did he use these words? In the description of the passion, death, and resurrection it is generally recognised that the exactness of the prediction probably owes something to the disciples' later knowledge of the actual course of events. Their conduct at the arrest of Jesus, and the entire absence of any sign of expectation of the resurrection, render ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... appointing commissioners to inspect into Bedlam and the parts adjacent, who shall be empowered to send for persons, papers, and records, to examine into the merits and qualifications of every student and professor, to observe with utmost exactness their several dispositions and behaviour, by which means, duly distinguishing and adapting their talents, they might produce admirable instruments for the several offices in a state, . . . civil and military, proceeding in such methods as I shall here humbly propose. ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... frigates or by privateers, into the King's prisons, and we are determined to treat such prisoners precisely as our countrymen are treated in England, to give them the same allowance of provisions and accommodations and no other. We, therefore, request you to inform us with exactness what your allowance is from the government, that we ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... the aids of religion in the hour of death. A single monk therefore was chosen, either by lot or by some other fair appeal to destiny. Being thus singled out, he was to go forth into the plague-stricken city, and to perform with exactness his priestly duties; then he was to return, not to the interior of the convent, for fear of infecting his brethren, but to a detached building (which I remember) belonging to the establishment, but at some little distance from the inhabited rooms. He was provided with a bell, and at a certain ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... springs from (1) vividness and (2) exactness of thought, and from a corresponding (1) vividness and (2) exactness in the use ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... expensive ventures. It had the advantage of pooling the resources of more than one individual, and of distributing the risk, and the Virginia adventure had depended upon joint-stock methods of finance from the beginning. It is impossible to speak with exactness regarding the financial arrangements of the first years. A provision in the first instructions directing the settlers to live, work, and trade together in a common stock through a period of five years suggests the possibility of a five-year terminable stock, i.e., ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... consistent spirit, shown an implacable enmity to all those who are raised to a condition above want and dependence. And though you kick against the parallel drawn between you and the Cataline of antiquity, you have in this point proved its exactness; he haranguing in the circle of his conspirators, exasperates them against the opulent citizens of Rome; you, in your pamphlet, labor to create invidious distinctions, would pervert the order of well regulated society, and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... which was committed to her care, she resigned a week before her death, into the hands of Mrs. Hickman, according the direction of the will, and all the accounts and disbursements with it; which she had kept with such an exactness, that the lady declares, that she will follow her method, and only wishes to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Knight observes in her Journal: "There are also Dutch and divers conventicles, as they call them, viz., Baptist, Quaker, etc. They are not strict in keeping the Sabbath, as in Boston and other places where I had been, but seemed to deal with exactness as far as I ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... continue to speak of myself with the same truthfulness I speak of others, and with as much exactness as possible. According to the terms on which I was with Monseigneur and his intimates, may be imagined the impression made upon me by this news. I felt that one way or other, well or ill, the malady of Monseigneur would soon terminate. I was quite at my ease at La Ferme. I ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to a class, which class is composed of those laws whose object is to distribute burthens or benefits on the principle of equality. No one of these laws can ever be practically administered with that exactness which can be conceived of in the mind. A tax law . . . will be a dead letter if no one will be compelled to pay until it can be shown that every other one will be compelled to pay in precisely the same proportion according to value; nay, even it will be a dead letter if no one can ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Cicero.— Simylus.—Stob.—Horat.—Aristot.—But that which we especially require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity of reading, which maketh a full man, not alone enabling him to know the history or argument of a poem and to report it, but so to master the matter and style, as to show he knows how to handle, place, or dispose of either with elegancy ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... nothing but strengthen my trust in his statements and my admiration of his laborious truthfulness, yet in one respect I have not found him so accurate as I had expected. 'I have,' he says, 'been extremely careful as to the exactness of my quotations[8].' Though in preparing his manuscript he referred in each case 'to the originals,' yet he did not, I conjecture, examine them once more in revising his proof-sheets. At all events he has allowed errors to slip in. These I have pointed out in my ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Tuskegee are known to do excellent work, and a few of the smaller schools are to be classed as efficient; but in the great majority of negro schools the old curriculum is still followed, and the students gladly submit to its exactness. Why study something so plebeian as carpentry when one may study such scholarly subjects as Latin ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exactness, but with very slight inexactness I can ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... exactness of requisition appeared to me to be going rather too far; and I exhibited my feeling on the subject, in the tone in which I replied, that I had stated every thing that was necessary for the satisfaction of a "man of sense, but that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... softened the cynicism of the lips without concealing it. It was the face of a man accustomed to "see through" other men—to "see through" life—compelling its favors from the world rather than asking them. The detailed exactness and unobtrusive costliness of everything about him, from the pearl in his tie to the polish on his boots, were indicative of a will rigorously demanding "the best," and taking it. The refusal of it now in the person of the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... views upon glaciers and their attendant phenomena, on this new ground, but I have completed my examination of a number of details, and have had besides the satisfaction of convincing one of my most severe opponents of the exactness of my observations, namely, M. Studer, who accompanied me on a part of these ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... second gathering sewed to the edge, so as to form a full hem. You may make a double hem, if you please, by gathering three times instead of only twice; and one of the hems may be straight, while the other is drawn to one side a little. This requires much exactness, in the execution; but if properly done, it gives a pleasing ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... thither about the stage to catch them. Then he was back at the table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions, and each article as it descended was caught with an astonishing dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph and yet on the edge of instant failure. The house howled with excited laughter and applause, and Paul ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... attractive is the excitement of great actions to those who are capable of performing them. But even the first class of duties is not without interest, and carries credit as it is performed with justice and exactness; and I hope that for the second the necessity of great exertions will not arise. But it is always well that the possibility of their being called for should be borne in mind; and, while you follow the peaceful avocations of your station, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... very close to them they appeared enormous, but their magnitude was not fully appreciated until some hours later, after we had tramped through the sand around the four sides of great Cheops. After that walk, a distance of more than half a mile, we could judge with greater exactness the immense proportions of the extensive base. The slope of the sides prevented a fair conception of their height when looking upward at them; but after reaching the top of Cheops, panting with the exertion of the laborious climb in which we had been ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... urging seriousness in reflection. Seriousness in action, too, is one of his lessons—an emphasis on doing, but on doing with a clear sense of what one is about, and why. A part of action is clear thought; always exactness, accuracy; you must think the thing out, he says, and then act or let it alone. The artistic temperament, we all know, is very much in evidence to-day. In "The Comments of Bagshot" we are told that the drawback is that there is so much ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work—manual labor—he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... however, had given "Joe" precept upon precept, "here a little, and there a little," as to how he should act in the presence of master white people, or slave colored people, and thus he was prepared to act his part with due exactness. Before the evening grew late, the Dr., fearing some accident, intimated, that he was feeling a "little languid," and therefore thought that he had better "retire." Furthermore he added, that he was "liable to vertigo," when not quite well, and for this reason he must have ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... smiled nor spoke, but simply bowed his head gravely, and sitting down, arranged with slow exactness his napkin over his ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... secret, their example gains not many followers. That nation which reckons itself infinitely superior to us "poor barbarians," the Chinese, also observe stated seasons of fasting and prayer. The Mahomedans likewise strictly observe fasting and prayer, and the exactness with which the dervishes perform them, and the lengths of time of their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... good to Marry with the best Spaniard), which endeared him to them exceedingly. Otherwise it is death for any Stranger to visit these Caves and Bodies. The Corps are sew'd up in Goatskins with Thongs of the same, with very great curiosity, particularly in the incomparable exactness and evenness of the Seams; and the skins are made close and fit to the Corps, which for the most part are entire, the Eyes clos'd, Hair on their heads, Ears, Nose, Teeth, Lips, and Beards, all perfect, onely discolour'd and a little shrivell'd. He saw about three or four hundred in several Caves, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... ts for Zadde was already established in Milton's time, while the letter Yod appears regularly as j, which Milton must have sounded as y. On the whole, it is quite clear that Milton read his Hebrew with minute precision. To see how just this verdict is, let anyone compare Milton's exactness with the erratic and slovenly transliterations in Edmund Chidmead's English edition of Leon Modena's Riti Ebraici, which was published only two years later than Milton's paraphrase of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... to the imagination as numerical estimates; they speak a volume in themselves, saving a world of periphrasis and argument; nothing is so difficult to form with exactness, or even probability, when they relate to an early period; and nothing more carelessly received, and confidently circulated. The enormous statements of the Jewish exiles, and the baseless ones of the Moorish, are not peculiar to Llorente, but have been repeated, without the slightest ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... our line ten thousand times, yet find it just perceivable on the border land of our test by white light. Do not presume I am so foolish as to even think that the human hand, directed by the human brain, can ever work the material at his command to such a high standard of exactness. No; from the very nature of the material we have to work with, we are forbidden even to hope for such an achievement; and could it be possible that, through some stroke of good fortune, we could attain this high ideal, it would be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... Oprichnina, who carried out his barbarous commands, and committed an infinity of murders and robberies on their own account. He was like a distorted caricature of Henry VIII, and, like him, united violence and cruelty with great exactness about religious worship, carrying his personal observances to the most ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... none; coming home defeated once more, now, minus his ship —resigned, uncomplaining, being used to this." "What a rattling chapter Howells would make out of the small boy Alfred, with his alert eye and military brevity and exactness of speech; and out of the old landlady; and her sacred onions; and her daughter; and the visiting clergyman; and the ancient pianos of Hamilton and the venerable music in vogue there —and forty other things which we shall leave untouched or touched but lightly upon, we not being worthy." "Dam Howells ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... this last feudal atrocity can be made out with some degree of exactness, because in 1692, Don Diego Vargas with a military force visited Tusayan and mentions Awatubi as a populous village at which he made some halt. The Hano (Tewa) claim that they have lived in Tusayan for five or six generations, and that when they arrived there was no Awatubi ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... of any complaint must be described with the most minute exactness, and so far as possible in the patient's own words. To illustrate the kind of circumstances the patient is expected to record, I will mention one or two from the 313th page of the "Treatise on Chronic Diseases,"—being the first one at which ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the ticket for a railway or a diligence may have been paid for by his friends. On many occasions he walked the distance between the several places, and thus saved the cost of his conveyance. But every item of expense was set forth in his "Note" with the most scrupulous exactness. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... glowing strains, like the pompous glory of the crowning movement of a Beethoven symphony, to loving yet deferential homage to Turner. His works and life are traced out and lingered over, not with biographical exactness, but with some effort to make them explicable of the character of the great painter. 'Much of his mind and heart I do not know—perhaps never shall know; but this much I do, and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... walked by my side, a tall figure in a long overcoat. The collar of dark brown fur brought out the premature whiteness of his hair. He held a cane in his gloved hand, and struck away the pebbles with it impatiently. Why does his image return to me at this hour with an unendurable exactness? It is because, as I observed him walking along the wintry road, with his head bent forward, I was struck as I had never been before with the sense of his absolute unremitting wretchedness. Was this due to the influence of our conversation of that afternoon, to the dejection which ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the formation of a Latin philosophical vocabulary, by which the language was enriched and fitted for the part it has since taken as the Language of the Learned. While on many points Cicero's own views can hardly be determined with perfect exactness, the exalted sentiments and the exquisite literary finish of his philosophical writings have always won admiration; and through them he has exerted no small influence on the literature and ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... showed that a right angle can be formed without the contrivances of the artisan. Thus, the result which carpenters reach very laboriously, but scarcely to exactness, with their squares, can be demonstrated to perfection from the reasoning and methods of his teaching. If we take three rules, one three feet, the second four feet, and the third five feet in length, and join these rules together with their ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... you were to have some round body, I should think it would correspond to the different parts of the sky, and you might place your stars with more exactness. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... Quixote and Sancho were shut up together, they had a discussion which the history records with great precision and scrupulous exactness. Sancho said to his master, "Senor, I have educed my wife to let me go with your worship wherever ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ashamed to have it thought that he did not know how to observe for, and compute the time at sea; though, but a short while before these voyages were set on foot, such a thing was scarcely ever heard of amongst seamen; and even first-rate astronomers doubted the possibility of doing it with sufficient exactness.[54] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... life, and say that they are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners,—he can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true representation of the matter. Human nature is built up by these powers; we have the need for them all. When we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness, and righteousness with wisdom. This is ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... are any apparently hollow places; if so, fill them out with a little more tow. See that the back is nicely sloped, that the breast is full enough, and especially if it be even and narrow between the legs. Having observed all these points with great exactness, proceed to nicely sew up the skin with the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... assault with only ten horsemen, against whom an equal number of Portuguese were detached: these fired with so much exactness that nine of the Moors fell and the king was wounded in the leg by Peter de Sa. In the melee which ensued, the Moslems, dismayed by their first failure, were soon broken by the Portuguese muskets and artillery. Mohammed preserved his life with difficulty, he however rallied his men, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... speaks unhesitatingly of two planks of salvation.[228] Moreover, if we consider that in any particular case the decision as to the deadly nature of the sin in question was frequently attended with great difficulty, and certainly, as a rule, was not arrived at with rigorous exactness, we cannot fail to see that, in conceding a second expiation, the Church was beginning to abandon the old idea that Christendom was a community of saints. Nevertheless the fixed practice of refusing whoremongers, adulterers, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... interest in all relating to their welfare. Some time after he came to live at Down he helped to found a Friendly Club, and served as treasurer for thirty years. He took much trouble about the club, keeping its accounts with minute and scrupulous exactness, and taking pleasure in its prosperous condition. Every Whit-Monday the club used to march round with band and banner, and paraded on the lawn in front of the house. There he met them, and explained to them their financial position in a little speech seasoned with a few well worn jokes. He ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... never attain, here were the sophistai, the experts—wise men, who proposed to make other people as wise as themselves, wise in that sort of wisdom [100] regarding which we can really test others, and let them test us, not with the merely approximate results of the Socratic method, but with the exactness we may apply to processes understood to be mechanical, or to the proficiency of quite young students (such as in fact the Sophists were dealing with) by those examinations which are so sufficient in their proper place. It had been as delightful as learning a new game, that instruction, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... present Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company entered office he determined to reduce chaos to a methodical exactness, and framed a time-table covering every movement in the northward traffic. When it was shown by the local representative to the Cree boatmen at The Landing, old Duncan Tremble, a river-dog on the Athabasca for forty years, looked admiringly at the printed ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... inhabitants whom the Spaniards encountered at their arrival in these islands is not known with exactness, but it is calculated by some historians as below two millions; and it will not be imprudent to affirm that they all scarcely reached one and one-half millions—whether idolaters, who admitted the plurality of gods; or Moros, who although they professed (as they still profess) ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... am calculating with all the exactness possible under conditions in Russia," said Smolin, impressively. "The manufacturer should be as strictly practical as the mechanic who is creating a machine. The friction of the tiniest screw must be taken into consideration, if you wish to do a serious thing seriously. I can let ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... disparages Dante by comparing his Lucifer with Milton's Satan. He seems to have forgotten that the precise measurements of Dante were not prosaic, but absolutely demanded by the nature of his poem. He is describing an actual journey, and his exactness makes a part of the verisimilitude. We read the "Paradise Lost" as a poem, the Commedia as a record of fact; and no one can read Dante without believing his story, for it is plain that he believed it himself. It is false aesthetics to confound the grandiose ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... and of ours in particular. And in the drawing the tables for that work, which was Lloyd's province, he looked further into a natural purity and simplicity of style, than any man I ever knew; into all which he led me, and so helped me to any measure of exactness of writing, which may be thought to belong to me.' The above was originally designed to have followed the words, 'I know from them,' vol. i. p. 191, 1. 7, fol. ed. near the end of A.D. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... urged by one writer that we should not prefer the huge disproportioned Colossus to the Doryphorus of Polycletus. But (to give one out of many possible answers) in art we admire exactness, in the works of nature magnificence; and it is from nature that man derives the faculty of speech. Whereas, then, in statuary we look for close resemblance to humanity, in literature we require ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... is natural, for the heroine is my small daughter Susy, whom we lost. It was not intentional—it was a good while before I found it out, so I am sending you her picture to use —& to reproduce with photographic exactness the unsurpassable expression & all. May you find an artist ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... pass. As I left them I heard one say, "Just caught—marks of the dogs' teeth in his heels, I warrant you." I did not stop to make any reply, but sneaked away, mortified and crest-fallen, and certainly obeyed this the first order which I had ever received in the service, with more exactness than I ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not accident alone, nor an adverse fortune, which caused the loss of the three airships. The position of the British Isles, on the edge of the Atlantic, enabled British weather forecasters to tell with almost unfailing exactness when a storm was to be expected. The French also had an excellent service in this direction. Realizing that bad weather was the worst foe of the Zeppelin, aside from its own inherent clumsiness, the two governments agreed to suppress publication of weather reports, thereby keeping from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... indeed, it is most largely absent from its speculation. In its political ideas this is necessarily and especially the case. For the State is at no time an unchanging organization; it reflects with singular exactness the dominating ideas of its environment. That division into government and subjects which is its main characteristic is here noteworthy for the narrowness of the class from which the government is derived, and the consistent inertia ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... to see him without immediately loving him. When he spoke, he expressed himself in terms proper and well chosen, with a new and agreeable turn, and his voice charmed all that heard him: he had besides so much wit and judgment, that he thought and spoke of all subjects with admirable exactness. He was so reserved and modest, that he advanced nothing till after he had taken all possible care to avoid giving any ground of suspicion that he preferred his own opinion ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... therefore, the business of a man of letters. For all these there is not often equal opportunity; excellence, therefore, is not often attainable; and most men fail in one or other of the ends proposed, and are full without readiness, or without exactness. Some deficiency must be forgiven all, because all are men; and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in the greater part of the world, because none can confer upon himself abilities, and few have the choice of situations proper for the improvement of those ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... be all, for the borders of the inscription are covered with Syrian names in fine estranghelo characters. The forgers must, then, have been not only acquainted with these characters, but have been able to get engraved with perfect exactness ninety lines of them, and in the ancient writing, known ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... places in the front pews. The moment the entire wedding party is at the church, the doors between the vestibule and the church are closed. No one is seated after this, except the parents of the young couple. The proper procedure should be carried out with military exactness, and is as follows: ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... not know how to enamel (for enamel is not used in China), in other respects they produce marvelous work in gold and silver. They are so skilful and clever that, as soon as they see any object made by a Spanish workman, they reproduce it with exactness. What arouses my wonder most is, that when I arrived no Sangley knew how to paint anything; but now they have so perfected themselves in this art that they have produced marvelous work with both the brush ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... primed propellers, the four mighty wings whirred—and four Minims were hurled head over heels a foot away, snapped from their positions. The sound of the wings was almost too exact an imitation of the snarl of a starting plane—the comparison was absurd in its exactness of timbre and resonance. It was only a test, however, and the moment the queen became quiet the upset mechanics clambered back. They crawled beneath her, scraped her feet and antennae, licked her eyes and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... suppose, was partly due to the discipline of the Navy. I fancy that a man trained in habits of exactness gets into the way of keeping his mind ship-shape—no loose ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... employed hours which should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tints must be those which prevail in a natural landscape. So far the painter is bound down by the rules of his art, to a precise imitation of the features of Nature; but it is not required that he should descend to copy all her more minute features, or represent with absolute exactness the very herbs, flowers, and trees, with which the spot is decorated. These, as well as all the more minute points of light and shadow, are attributes proper to scenery in general, natural to each situation, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... such as might have been expected from one of his mathematical exactness, Professor Featherwit gave a cry of dismay, while hurriedly moving to and fro in their contracted quarters, for the time being forgetful of all other than ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... drink, and firing cost seven hundred and ninety-six pounds eleven shillings and twopence, more than two thirds of the whole; in a modern family it is not above a third, (p. 157, 158, 159.) The whole expense of the earl's family is managed with an exactness that is very rigid, and, if we make no allowance for ancient manners, such as may seem to border on an extreme; insomuch that the number of pieces which must be cut out of every quarter of beef, mutton, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... other places of strength in it, but particularly those strong towers which the tyrants in their mad conduct had relinquished, for when he saw their solid altitude, and the largeness of their several stones, and the exactness of their joints, as also how great was their breadth and how extensive their length, he expressed himself after the manner following: "We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... it is clear that he was marked by a talent for invective, was given to sharp censure, and loved the bitter part of truth. He introduced precision and detail into his art, and is credited with being the first to realize the importance of chronology and to seek exactness in it. He never saw again his lovely birthplace, and I easily forgive to the exile and the son of Andromachus the vigour with which he depicted the crimes of Agathocles and others of the tyrants. In our city, meanwhile, the Greek genius waning ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... in honor, in justice, and by the Constitution. All the stipulations, contained in the Constitution, in favor of the slaveholding States which are already in the Union, ought to be fulfilled, and so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter."!!! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... impossible to apply the European system here with anything like the exactness that attaches to it in the old countries, because we have not the means of knowing the true worth of forest soil or of forest crops, but the principle is applicable anywhere. Even in the hands of non-expert assessors it gives a fairer basis of valuation than our present method, and in the long ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... number of hours each day; and when, also, the products of each operative can be counted in number, weighed by the pound, or measured by the yard or cubic foot, then it is perfectly practicable to determine, with arithmetical exactness, the productions of one individual and class as compared with those of another ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... him. The "Nibelungen" strophe is presumably much older, and, having become popular in Austria through the poem, was adopted by Kurenberg for his purposes. As to the date of the poem, in its present form it cannot go back further than about 1190, because of the exactness of the rhymes, nor could it have been written later than 1204, because of certain allusions to it in the sixth book of "Parzival", which we know to have been written at this date. The two Low German poems which probably form the basis of our epic may have been united about 1150. It was revised ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... terror that makes a man kill people, and "the terror that makes him lie down and beg." We remember, too, his dissection of St. Arnaud, as before all things a type of his nation; "he impersonated with singular exactness the idea which our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of what they called 'a Frenchman;' for although (by cowing the rich and by filling the poor with envy), the great French Revolution had thrown a lasting gloom on the national character, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... automatically and are simply bolted together. First of all the units are assembled in their several departments. The rear axles, the front axles, the frames, the radiators, and the motors are all put together with the same precision and exactness that marks the operation of the completed car. Thus the wheels come from one part of the factory and are rolled on an inclined plane to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some mysterious force to the same spot; as ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... in a position to speak with authority or exactness of the events which will shortly take place in the British fleet. I am a mere soldier, you understand. But let us suppose a case. King William sails early to-morrow, with Rear-Admiral Rooke's squadron, for the Maese. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the universal creature settled down in his accustomed course, having authority over all other creatures, and following the instructions of his God and Father, at first more precisely, afterwards with less exactness. The reason of the falling off was the disengagement of a former chaos; 'a muddy vesture of decay' was a part of his original nature, out of which he was brought by his Creator, under whose immediate guidance, ...
— Statesman • Plato
... Victoria took a more prominent part, being an older man, and representing the larger and more important constituency. But when Sir John began to ask questions, the Victoria delegate was soon beyond his depth. The premier showed such an exactness of knowledge and comprehensiveness of grasp that before long Ranald was appealed to for information in regard to the resources of the country, and especially the causes and extent ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so, in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order. extent, and variety of ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... apparently suffering from any lingering illness, yet who bears, as he tells me, a secret disabling wound in his side from a spent shell, and who is certainly a prey to the most acute form of shiftlessness. I do not recall with exactness the date of our acquaintance, but it was one of those pleasant August afternoons when a dinner eaten in peace fills the digester with a millennial tenderness for the race too rarely felt in the nineteenth century. At such a moment it is a more natural action to loosen than ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... third frightened attendant gathered up the flowers and the basket and carried them out of the apartment, She came to herself after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her delirium she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with such exactness of circumstance that Helen could not doubt at all that she had some such retreat among the rocks of The Mountain, probably fitted up in her own fantastic way, where she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and of the entrance to which ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... insurrection. Around me had spontaneously formed an efficient service for information, the runners of the various sections coming to me at Kalepa with the earliest information on every event of importance, and I communicated with the legations at Athens and our own minister at Constantinople. The exactness of my news was so well recognized that even the grand vizier sent regularly to our minister for information, remarking that he got nothing reliable from his own officials. Now happened one of those curious cases of mysterious transmission of news which have often been known ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated in ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... observed to be familiar with his brother servitors, and shrunk with proud humility from the notice of his superiors. The servile offices exacted from those of his degree were performed with scrupulous exactness, but Herbert frequently beheld at such times a flush of suffering mount into his cheek, and when his task was done, he would fold his arms in his gown, and drop his head upon them, as if his spirit ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... new will, nor was there any appreciable alteration in the disposition of the property. As far as we can make out, the new will was drawn with the idea of stating the intentions of the testator with greater exactness and for the sake of doing away with the codicil. The entire property, with the exception of two hundred and fifty pounds, was, as before, bequeathed to Stephen, but the separate items were specified, and the testator's brother, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... concealing his joy at the mention of this last amusement, which had been one of his chief studies, and in which he had made such progress, that he could calculate all the chances with the utmost exactness and certainty. However, he made shift to contain himself within due bounds, and, with seeming indifference, consented to pass away an hour at hazard, provided the implements could be procured. Accordingly, the landlord was consulted, and their desire gratified; the dice ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... them which have been preserved. These traces, it is true, are directly observed by the historian, but, after that, he has nothing more to observe; what remains is the work of reasoning, in which he endeavours to infer, with the greatest possible exactness, the facts from the traces. The document is his starting-point, the fact his goal.[57] Between this starting-point and this goal he has to pass through a complicated series of inferences, closely interwoven with each other, in which ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... belong to the type known as Aryan or Indo-European, the language of the higher or white races whose original habitat was once taken to have been near or among the Himalayas, but is now located with much less exactness than heretofore. To this class belong the Sanscrit, with its multitude of Indian derivatives; the Persian, ancient and modern; the Greek, the Latin with all its descendants, the Lithuanian, the Slavonic, the Teutonic ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness, and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the innocent or faultful simplicity of ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... haste to subordinate them to the laws of physics. Boyle's law and the rest had to be discovered before the kinetic theory of gases became possible. But in psychology we are hardly yet at the stage of Boyle's law. Meanwhile we need not be held up by the bogey of the universal rigid exactness of physics. This is, as yet, a mere hypothesis, to be tested empirically without any preconceptions. It may be true, or it may not. So far, that ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... up this record, and the dates being given with each case, the reader is enabled to verify the same, and the few particulars which the compass of the Tract allows to be given with each. With all the effort which has been made to secure a good degree of completeness and exactness, the present record must of necessity be an imperfect one, and fall short of exhibiting all the enormities of the Act ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the footman's duty to carry messages or letters for his master or mistress to their friends, to the post, or to the tradespeople; and nothing is more important than dispatch and exactness in doing so, although writing even the simplest message is now the ordinary and very proper practice. Dean Swift, among his other quaint directions, all of which are to be read by contraries, recommends a perusal of all such epistles, in order that you may be the more able to fulfil your duty to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the Princess, "to hear that imputed to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent and various in their parts. When we see or conceive the whole at once, we readily note the discriminations and decide the preference, but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... President of the United States at public receptions was provided with forty-two buttons for the different States, and others for the principal cities of the Union, so that a caller, by proper manipulation, might, while shaking a handle, be addressed in regard to his home interests with an exactness of information as remarkable as that of the traveling statesmen who rise from the gazetteer to astonish the inhabitants of Wayback Crossing with the precise figures of their town valuation and birth rate, while the engine ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... telegraphic item is a remarkable instance of the exactness with which news can be ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... which was resplendent with shining pans and a glistening stove, all the work of the thrifty but blind housewife, she began to entertain us in her simple manner, and described a model of a full-rigged ship that rested on a table, though she had never seen it, with an exactness that would have done credit to many a sailor: even the ropes and rigging were pointed out, and all their uses dwelt upon with a tenderness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... also, the formation of a calendar, not with absolute exactness, yet not without some scientific knowledge. During the reign of Romulus, they had let their months run on without any certain or equal term; some of them contained twenty days, others thirty-five, others more; they had no sort of knowledge ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... suffer his image to be made,) those peculiarities which many of his successors afterwards and his friends used to affect to imitate, the inclination of his head a little on one side towards his left shoulder, and his melting eye, having been expressed by this artist with great exactness. But Apelles, who drew him with thunderbolts in his hand, made his complexion browner and darker than it was naturally; for he was fair and of a light color, passing into ruddiness in his face and upon his breast. Aristoxenus in his Memoirs tells us that a most agreeable odor exhaled ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with precision in preparing their medicines, as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in Latin nor with cabalistic marks—the asbestos stomachs and colossal minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut," "enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling," "enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haslenut," "as great as a charger," "the bigth of a Turkeys Egg," "a pretty draught," "a pretty bunch of herbs," "take a little ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Every baker and tailor knows more in his own conceit of bleeding than a barber of fifteen years' experience like myself. They are able to pass judgment as to the question of too much or too little without hesitation and with the utmost exactness. It is a story as old as King Ad—the more ignorant they are the more sure they be. Presently they will discover that men should never be let blood at all, forgetting that we bleed our horses also,[2] and find it does ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound,[224-1] Holmes, the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately presented itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... a safe and life-preserving plan of treating one of the most talked about, and (because of bad—decidedly bad—treatment) one of the most fatal maladies of this age. To do this it is necessary to point out and teach these few how to reason on the subject, and how to weigh with something like exactness the various important symptoms that present themselves under varying ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... up a marking gauge, and set the marking point to half the thickness of the wood. The distance may be measured, and its exactness tested, by pricking a small hole from each side of the wood with the marking gauge and carefully noting that the pricked holes coincide. The gauge mark is clearly shown in the various illustrations. Now, take a pencil ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... i, nor any other such as I am, come up to the wisdom of the blessed and renowned Paul; who being himself in person with those who then lived, did with all exactness and soundness teach the word of truth; and being gone from you wrote an epistle ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too. Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will dictate. I am ready ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... villages as existed, and obstruct the frequent reconnaissances from Merawi. Yunes, however, preferred to do otherwise, and remained on the left bank opposite Berber until, at length, his master recalled him to Omdurman to explain his conduct. Meanwhile, determined with mathematical exactness by the rise of the Nile and progress of the railway, the moment of the Egyptian ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... make any further mention of this kind, it is well known that this person managed all his affairs with such exactness, as if he had made it his study, above all other things, not to give occasion of offence, but rather suffer many inconveniences, to avoid being never heard to reproach or revile any, what injury soever he received, but rather to rebuke those ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... an error on the part of the Buddhists is easily possible. [Footnote: According to Jacobi's supposition, S.B.E. Vol. XXII, p. xvi, the error was caused, by the only disciple of Vardhamana, who outlived his master, Sudharman being an Agnive['s]yayana.] It is quite to be understood that perfect exactness is not to be expected among the Buddhists or any other sect in describing the person of a hated enemy. Enmity and scorn, always present, forbid that. The most that one can expect is that the majority and most important of the facts given ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... partly to the sublimity of the truths which that mixed style frequently conveys. But those truths apart, his verse was just that of the folksongs of the peasants among whom he was reared—sometimes of an exquisite exactness of tone and delicacy of feeling, but sometimes full both of what are metrical irregularities according to modern standards, and of coarse images and similes. To reduce the metrical irregularities, by such arbitrary methods as Duhm's, may ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... very prolix, may be all summed up under one head, namely, the absence of preventing or counteracting causes. The convenience of this mode of expression is mainly grounded on the fact, that the effects of any cause in counteracting another cause may in most cases be, with strict scientific exactness, regarded as a mere extension of its own proper and separate effects. If gravity retards the upward motion of a projectile, and deflects it into a parabolic trajectory, it produces, in so doing, the very same kind of effect, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... great irregularity in the old Scotch songs, a redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness of accent and measure that the English poetry requires, but which glides in, most melodiously, with the respective tunes to which they are set. For instance, the fine old song of "The Mill, Mill, O,"[153] to give it a plain prosaic reading, it halts prodigiously out of measure; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... merits our sincere regret; for M. Valz's ingenious hypothesis has laid down the law of variation of the bulk of the nebulosity, as well for the short-period comet as for that of 1618, with a truly wonderful exactness." Now, if we make the calculation, we shall find that the diameter of the nebulosity of a comet is inversely as the force of the radial stream. This force is inversely as the 2.5 power of the distances ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the 'license of the time', or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... this Old World family is found in America. It is a brown, much mottled bird, that creeps spirally around and around the trunks of trees in fall and winter, pecking at the larvae in the bark with its long, sharp bill, and doing its work with faithful exactness but little spirit. It uses its tail as a prop in climbing, like ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... which my father had pointed out, with exactness, and soon with pleasure. I sacredly observed my hours of reading, and devoted myself to the study of the lives of what my father considered really great men—that is to say, men of great energies, and violent volition, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... function of a romance to relate, with the exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,—no place for an innocent and unselfish ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... foolish, ignorant, weak, effeminate. It has now come to mean exact, fine, finished, exciting admiration on account of skill or exactness; as nice proportions, nice workmanship, a nice distinction in philosophy. It is loosely and colloquially used in application to what is ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... public, from his copper-plate handwriting to his speckless dress, but especially by an inhuman and absolutely sinful punctuality. No one with a heart within him and some regard to the comfort of his fellow creatures, especially boys, had any right to observe times and seasons with such exactness. During all our time, except on the one great occasion I wish to record, he was never known to be ill, not even with a cold; and it was said that he never had been for a day off duty, even in the generation before us. His erect, spare ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... of the Lord stand for ever, yet unto none is it possible to follow them in exactness, and therefore is there none that may attain unto supreme enlightenment in these last days of the ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... necessary in every investigation in the field of science, and that such accuracy must be extended to the construction of the instruments used in these investigations and observations. In astronomy it is obvious that instruments of delicate exactness are most essential; yet Tycho Brahe, who lived in the sixteenth century, is credited with being the first astronomer whose instruments show ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... speed, and are relieved at certain distances on the road by relays of others, who push on in the same manner, on receiving their orders, which they transfer from one to the other with the greatest exactness. The general officers in the Dahomian army are distinguished by large umbrellas, and when any of that class are killed in action, they say figuratively, that, on such an occasion, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the mayor. His candidates failed. Those of Dr. Barbesol were equally unlucky, in spite of the exactness of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... mistaken. He dressed in all haste, and had been ten minutes at his post when the Emperor, descending the staircase with Marshal Duroc, perceived him. His Majesty usually took pleasure in showing that he remarked exactness in fulfilling his orders; therefore he stopped a moment, and said to M. Colas, "Ah! already awake, Colas?"—"Yes, Sire; I have not forgotten that valets should be on foot when the masters are awake."—"You have a good ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Biblioteca Americana, MS., speaks of Zarate's work as "containing much that is good, but as not entitled to the praise of exactness." He wrote under the influence of party heat, which necessarily operates to warp the fairest mind somewhat from its natural bent. For this we must make allowance, in perusing accounts of conflicting parties. But ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular, following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high—originally it must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts. The wall of the first enclosure is fifteen feet across the top and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... down from the shelves of a worm-eaten wardrobe a quantity of frouzy garments, one by one; to subject each to a careful and minute inspection by holding it up against the light, and after folding it with great exactness, to lay it on one or other of two little heaps beside him. He never took two articles of clothing out together, but always brought them forth, singly, and never failed to shut the wardrobe door, and turn the key, between each visit to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... measurement of the Illimani, by Pentland, in 1838, the elevation of this mountain is given at 23,868 feet, varying only 133 feet from the measurement taken in 1827. The elevations have been given in this note with minute exactness, as erroneous numbers have been introduced into many maps and tables recently published, owing to incorrect reductions of the measurements. [In the preceding note, taken from those appended to the Introduction in the French translation, rewritten by ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... is clearness—make your meaning plain. Look to the individual words; use them in the simplest way— distinctive words to give exactness of meaning and familiar words to give strength. Words are the private soldiers under the command of the writer and for ease of management he wants small words—a long word is out of place, unwieldy, awkward. The "high-sounding" words that are dragged in by main force for the sake of effect weigh ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... as a thorough disciplinarian. No enemy being near them, the men, when put on guard, perhaps relaxed even ordinary vigilance; but they were soon brought up sharply by the general, with the direction that every part of camp duty must be done with as much exactness as if the British were in their front, for bad habits once contracted, they are told, "are difficult to get over, and doing duty in a slovenly manner is both disgraceful and dangerous to officers and men." They were sure ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... reputation of the Colchester bays in foreign markets, where to open the side of a bale and show the seal has been enough to give the buyer a character of the value of the goods without any further search; and so far as they abate the integrity and exactness of their method, which I am told of late is much omitted; I say, so far, that reputation will certainly abate in the markets they go to, which are principally in Portugal and Italy. This corporation is governed by a ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... competence, the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absence of temptation to mis-state the truth; these things may secure general credibility, but they are no guarantee for minute and circumstantial exactness. Two historians, though with equal gifts and equal opportunities, never describe events in exactly the same way. Two witnesses in a court of law, while they agree in the main, invariably differ in some particulars. It appears ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the cruel exactness of the living, breathing truth, he related the scene which had just taken place at ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the point of satisfying the most critical research, that John wrote down the words, "the only-begotten God." The contrast in his mind is not between "God," and the "only begotten Son." It is a contrast whose verbal terms fit with much nicer exactness than that. It is a contrast between ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... apartment, Meg Merrilies descended to the kitchen to secure her share of the groaning malt and the 'ken-no,' [Footnote: See Note i.] and Mannering, after looking at his watch, and noting with great exactness the hour and minute of the birth, requested, with becoming gravity, that the Dominie would conduct him to some place where he might have a view of the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in a clean white gown, which she had that day redeemed, and was, indeed, dressed all over with great neatness and exactness; with the glow therefore which arose in her features from finding her husband released from his captivity, she made so charming a figure, that she attracted the eyes of the magistrate and of his wife, and they both agreed when ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Yes!) that his entrance has not attracted her notice—not at all! One shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender ankle, and a glimpse of black above the leather. The desire for exactness alone compels a reference to the fact that the boundary lines of this silhouetted black area diverge perceptibly as they recede from the shoe. It is only a detail, but even Florian notices it, and thinks about it afterward. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... phrase "internal improvements"? What does it embrace and what exclude? No such language is found in the Constitution. Not only is it not an expression of ascertainable constitutional power, but it has no sufficient exactness of meaning to be of any value as the basis of a safe conclusion either of constitutional law or of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... on improvising in the style of the piece, and after about four minutes the remainder of the composition came back to him and he played it to the end correctly. This annoyed him greatly and he played the next number upon the program with the greatest exactness, but, strange to say, it lost the wonderful charm of the interpretation of the piece in which his memory had failed him. Rubinstein was really incomparable, even more so perhaps because he was full of human impulse and his playing very ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... had scarcely even by now become accustomed to this extraordinary device invented a century ago and perfected through all those years to this precise exactness—that device by which with the help of a stick, a bundle of wires, and a box of wheels, something, at last established to be at the root of all matter, if not at the very root of physical life, spoke across the spaces of the world to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... the stalks, pound, sift out the coarse pieces, put the powder in bottles, and cork tight. Label with exactness every bottle. If, for the convenience of instant use in gravies, soups, etc., you wish different herbs mixed, pound the leaves together when you make them into powders. Celery seed, dried lemon-peel, and other spicy things can thus be combined and ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... was another of the benign reasons which had been assigned for continuing the trade. That famines had occurred there, he did not doubt; but that they should annually occur, and with such arithmetical exactness as to suit the demands of the Slave Trade, was a circumstance most extraordinary; so wonderful, indeed, that, could it once be proved, he should consider it as a far better argument in favour of the divine approbation of that trade, than any which ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... and in the somewhat free society of America was regarded as constrained. Every movement was quick and decisive; his articulation was rapid, but distinct and emphatic, and often made the impression of curtness. He practised a military exactness in all the courtesies of society.... His brow was fair and expansive; his eyes blue-gray, large, and expressive; his nose Roman and well-chiselled, his cheeks were ruddy and sunburned; his mouth, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... The sons, we find, supplied the place of their fathers: hence the body itself never became extinct, being kept up by a regular succession. As to the Cunocephali giving to Hermes the first hint of dividing the day into twelve parts from the exactness, which was observed in their [64]evacuations, it is a surmise almost too trifling to be discussed. I have shewn that the Cunocephali were a sacred college, whose members were persons of great learning: and their society ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant |
