"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given this cruise nearly in full. From the notes, unhappily imperfect, of two others, I will take only specimens; for in all there are features of similarity, and it is possible to have too much even of submarine telegraphy and the romance of engineering. And first from the cruise of 1859 in the Greek Islands and to Alexandria, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from Arthur already. They are not long, but passing sweet, and just like himself, full of ardent affection, and playful lively humour; but there is always a 'but' in this imperfect world, and I do wish he would sometimes be serious. I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don't much mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... their names. The world has grown wiser too, and where Plato could only see imperfections, the failures of the founders of human speech, we see, as everywhere else in human life, anatural progress from the imperfect towards the perfect, unceasing attempts at realizing the ideal, and the frequent triumphs of the human mind over the inevitable difficulties of this earthly condition,—difficulties, not of man's own making, but, as I firmly believe, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... in a long low hall, built of rough wood lined with shingles, having a fire at each end, the smoke of which, unable to find its way through the imperfect chimneys in the roof, rolled in cloudy billows above the heads of the revellers, who sat on low seats, purposely to avoid its stifling fumes. [Footnote: The Welsh houses, like those of the cognate tribes in Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, were very imperfectly supplied ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... a desk along with forty-seven other children of his size, neatly stacked in six aisles with eight desks to the tier. He did his best to copy their manners and to reproduce their halting speech and imperfect grammar. For the first couple of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... eagerness, and saw in the imperfect light a tall figure entirely covered by a long dark dressing-gown, a grey, tight curled lawyer's wig on the head, and the upper part of the face sheltered from the scanty rays of the lamp by ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truth—that the world should have as much truth as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world—made up of perfect people, there would be nobody to dislike, or, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... no honours, but universal admiration." Patronage, indeed, cannot convert dull men into men of genius, but it may preserve men of genius from becoming dull men. It might have afforded Dryden that studious leisure which he ever wanted, and which would have given us not imperfect tragedies, and uncorrected poems, but the regulated flights of a noble genius. It might have animated Gainsborough to have created an English school in landscape, which I have heard from those who knew him was his favourite yet neglected pursuit. But Walpole could insult that genius, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the wonderful panorama of the universe is unseen by us, or, if seen, is but partially understood or absurdly misunderstood. When it comes to the subtler things, the things of science and art, rarely indeed is there anyone who has the necessary training to get more than the crudest, most imperfect pleasure from them. What little training we have is so limping that it spoils the charm of mystery with which savage ignorance invests the universe from blade of grass to star, and does not put in place of that broken charm ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... especially indignant that he professed to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, "Besotted Being! You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring the existence of a Straight Line; but I CAN SEE Straight Lines, and infer the existence of Angles, ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,—not to speak of what perhaps is the weightiest reason—that solitude, indifferent accommodation, and imperfect means of travelling, rendered mountainous countries peculiarly disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or nature while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the attacks of robbers, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... sufficed to point out to Ferdinand that a persecution of the New Christians would flood his coffers with gold extorted from suspected misbelievers. No merely fabled El Dorado lay in the broad lands and costly merchandise of these imperfect converts to the faith. It sufficed to insist upon the peril to the State if an element so ill-assimilated to the nation were allowed to increase unchecked. At the same time, the Papacy was nothing loth to help them in their undertaking. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... been satisfactorily explained. He traced the various forms and phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and essence. The "Monad" or unit he regarded as the source of all numbers. The number Two was imperfect, and the cause of increase and division. Three was called the number of the whole because it had a beginning, middle, and end. Four, representing the square, is in the highest degree perfect; and Ten, as it contains the sum of the four prime numbers, comprehends all musical and arithmetical ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... standing in front of a tansu, or chest of drawers, that still contained her ornaments and her wearing-apparel. Her head and shoulders could be very distinctly seen; but from the waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility;—it was like an imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as a ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... got 'em. Whiskey can eat melon like a good 'un, and grapes too." Andrew now threw out the wash-up water, pitching it on to Whiskey, who went away whimpering aggrievedly, much to the delight of his master, and illustrating that even the favourite pet of a youth has something to put up with in this imperfect life. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... may be judged from the extracts, few and imperfect as they are, given in the preceding pages. It is not vehement, eloquent, or forcible; but condensed, nervous, and epigrammatic. No writer has furnished to succeeding times so many brilliant passages to quote; but there are many who can be read en suite with more satisfaction. This is not unfrequently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... it high time to intervene. During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment. Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had passed ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... impressed so many agents into its service, and subdued science itself to the condition of a bondman, war consumes gold almost as rapidly as the searches and labors of millions can produce it. The only sure, enduring source of wealth is industry,—industry as enlightened in its modes and processes as imperfect man will allow to exist. Russia is an empire that abounds with the means of wealth, rather than with wealth itself. It is a country, or collection of countries, of which almost anything in the way of riches may be predicated, should intelligent labor be directed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... opinion, that far from any exaggeration of facts having been resorted to, in presenting this Narrative to the British Public, facts have been suppressed under an idea that they might shock the feelings of Englishmen, who, in general, by God's mercy, have so imperfect an idea of the horrors of a campaign, and the unspeakable sufferings occasioned by the presence of contending armies, that, to hear more of the detail contained in the said papers, might destroy the effect of exciting compassion by creating disgust, and ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... is by the training of youth to thought, power, and knowledge in the school and college. And that group of people whose mental grasp is by heredity weakest, and whose knowledge of the past is for historic reasons most imperfect, that group is the very one which needs above all, for the talented of its youth, this severe and careful course of training; especially if they are expected to take immediate part in modern competitive life, if they are to hasten the slower courses of human development, and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... bladders, and is thence sometimes called Bladder Green. When good, it is of a dark colour and glossy fracture, extremely transparent, and a fine natural yellowish green. This gummy juice, inspissated and formed into a cake, is occasionally employed in flower painting. It is, however, a very imperfect pigment, disposed to attract the moisture of the atmosphere, and to mildew; while, having little durability in water and less in oil, it is not eligible in the one and is totally useless ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... select good seed. Many of the farmer's disappointments in the quantity and quality of his crops—disappointments often thought to come from other causes—are the result of planting poor seed. Seeds not fully ripened, if they grow at all, produce imperfect plants. Good seed, therefore, is the first thing necessary for a good crop. The seed of perfect plants only ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... the large unity of a series of particular aspects of a subject, rather than on the continuity of its expression. As thoughts surge to his mind, he fills the heavens with them, crowds them in, if necessary, but seldom arranges them, along the ground first. Among class-room excuses for Emerson's imperfect coherence and lack of unity, is one that remembers that his essays were made from lecture notes. His habit, often in lecturing, was to compile his ideas as they came to him on a general subject, in scattered notes, and when on the platform, to trust to ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... errors of the human mind, and a great experiment on the strength of the imagination." Over that vast inquiry of the influence of mind over matter,—an inquiry which the embodied intellect of mankind will never be able to fathom completely,—it will at least have thrown a feeble and imperfect light. It will have afforded an additional proof of the strength of the unconquerable will, and the weakness of matter as compared with it; another illustration of the words of the inspired Psalmist, that "we ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... animation was redoubled. Half a day of cries and wrestling had neither weakened the voices nor broken the limbs of these abominable traders. A large number of slaves still remained to be sold. The traders disputed over the lots with an ardor of which the London Exchange would give but an imperfect idea, even on a day ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... have belonged to few but Americans, he has already gained a name in his art, that posterity will pronounce in the same breath with Phidias, Michael Angelo and Thorwaldsen. I cannot describe the enjoyment I have derived from looking at his matchless works. I should hesitate in giving my own imperfect judgment of their excellence, if I had not found it to coincide with that of many others who are better versed in the rules of art. The sensation which his "Greek Slave" produced in England, has doubtless ere this been breezed across the Atlantic, and I see by the late American ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... large medals of the greatest rarity; the Marcus Aurelius with his son on the reverse side, Theodora bearing the globe, and above all the Annia Faustina with Heliogabalus on the reverse side, an incomparable treasure, of which there is only one other example, and that an imperfect one, in the world—a marvel which I would give a day of my life to see; yes, my dear, a day ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... night, accompanied by but a single comrade, in a small open boat, near one of the minor mouths of the Ganges; and he had just fallen asleep on the beams, when he was suddenly awakened by a violent motion, as if his skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the imperfect light a huge tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the neighbouring jungle, in the act of boarding the boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or foot-spars, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... fought it out in Europe. There are some things man cannot accomplish, however, our optimistic national creed to the contrary. And there would have been something low in disappointing my father for such ignoble results, such imperfect satisfaction. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... In densest volume to the earth they pour Their cataracts; no lightning could endure Such storm unquenched: though oft athwart the gloom Gleamed its pale fire. Meanwhile a watery arch Scarce touched with colour, in imperfect shape Embraced the sky and drank the ocean waves, So rendering to the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... high or of low temperatures, extraordinary falls of rain and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details, from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the agriculture and rural economy of past generations, and from other ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the nearest thing to absolute perfection that ever came into this imperfect world," he continued. "Just to think of a girl of your sheer beauty, your ability, your charm, your all-round perfection, being engaged to a thing like me, makes me dizzy—but I sure do love you, little girl of mine. I will love you as long ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of an individual with an imperfect idea of honesty. Now, that individual is the consequence of his father and mother and his environment, and his father and mother of theirs, and so backwards to the single-celled protoplasm. That individual is a result of the cosmic order, the inevitable ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... from moving out of certain bounds, without her previous concurrence and authority. The wisdom of this precaution has been sufficiently manifested by the terrible excesses which it has committed within the sphere of this circumscribed jurisdiction. If its conduct, with the possession of this imperfect degree of liberty has been atrocious, it cannot be difficult to conceive to what lengths an unlimited power of action might have tempted it to proceed. Still there can be no doubt that this state of restraint, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... be the best mode, even were they all good modes; but this even is not the case. Some are contrary to others; some are bad. But even of those that are on the whole good, some are but in part good, some are imperfect, some have much bad mixed with them; and only one is best. Only one is the truth and the perfect truth; and which that is, none know but those who are in possession of it, if even they. But God knows which ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... upon Brant. It was his own hand that had precipitated the attack. But a larger truth came to him now, like a dazzling inspiration. If he had thus precipitated the attack before they were ready, there was a chance that it was imperfect, and there was still hope. But there was no trace of this visible in his face as he fixed his eyes calmly on hers, although his pulses were halting in ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... King. Who else, then? The new world needs to be bound by a tradition, and none can speak of one to the other as you can. Thus there will be no gap between the two humanities. The perfect will proceed from the imperfect, and your lips will tell the new world its origin. You will relate to the new humanity all the ancient good and evil. And thus will you live anew like the tree whose dead branches are lopped off, only the flourishing ones being preserved, but here ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... many ungauged forces on the side of the greater settlement. Cynicism is never more than a half-truth, and because man is imperfect it does not follow that he must be futile. Russia is a land of strange silences, but it is manifest that whatever the innermost quality of the Czar may be, he is no clap-trap vulgar conqueror of the Wilhelm-Napoleon pattern. He began his reign, and he may yet crown his reign, with an attempt to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conspicuously, as the reverberation of the shock began to travel back from the provinces to the capital. On every great road in the kingdom, continual arrests were made of vagrants and 'trampers,' who could give no satisfactory account of themselves, or whose appearance in any respect answered to the imperfect description of Williams ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Society of intentionally perverting the truth or deliberately imposing upon the credulity of the public. Some—perhaps all of them, are men of sincerity and probity; but, deluded themselves, they help to delude others. Their vision is imperfect; and 'if the blind lead the blind,' we may expect to find them in the ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... In the adult state the male is correctly garbed in wing-cases, like the true Beetle that he is. The female is an ill-favoured thing who knows naught of the delights of flying: all her life long she retains the larval shape, which, for the rest, is similar to that of the male, who himself is imperfect so long as he has not achieved the maturity that comes with pairing-time. Even in this initial stage the word "worm" is out of place. We French have the expression "Naked as a worm" to point to the lack of any defensive covering. Now the Lampyris is clothed, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad, is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other, would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both love and admiration ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dwell on such shortcomings, and will rather pass on to what we had designed as the purpose of our present introduction; namely, to supplement the information which the biographical form of our work has necessitated us to leave imperfect, respecting the Missions as well as ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... author, Matthew Arnold, has been finding fault with General Grant's English. That would be fair enough, maybe, if the examples of imperfect English averaged more instances to the page in General Grant's book than they do in Arnold's criticism on the book—but they do not. It would be fair enough, maybe, if such instances were commoner in General ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said Cortlandt, "you will some day be setting the axis of heaven right, for in order to do work there must be work to be done—a necessary corollary to which is that heaven is still imperfect." ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... thro' the alphabet; and it has 2 main gaps, besides many small ones from the tops of leaves being burnt in the Cotton fire. All these gaps (save the A BC) have been fild up from the Stowe MS. 952 (which old John Stowe completed) and from the end of the other imperfect MS. Cotton, Tiberius Avii. Thanks to the diligence of the old Elizabethan tailor and manuscript-lover, acomplete text of Lydgate's poem can be given, though that of an inserted theological prose treatise is incomplete. The British Museum French MSS. (Harleian ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... of the world has always gone out as to the noblest of its children. Solitary in the possession of some new conception of duty or of truth, separated from the mass of their fellows by that lack of sympathy which springs from imperfect comprehension of higher aims or deeper insight, these sublime strugglers against ignorance, prejudice, caste, and power, become the heroes and martyrs of the race; they announce the advent of new conceptions of social ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... brilliantly conducted, the short, energetic cruise in narrow seas, so near the British naval stations, gave Jones a great reputation for gallantry in Paris. The delays and difficulties, however, incidental to the wretched state of the American finances abroad, and the imperfect relation of his country with the French court, were well calculated to cool any enthusiasm excited by his conquest; and a man of less vivacity and perseverance than Jones might have dropped the service. He persevered. His lieutenant, Simpson, after various refractory proceedings, had sailed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... causes of the revolutions of nations is more imperfect and less satisfactory than when [end of page xi] directed to those of individuals, and of single families, if, ever it should be rendered complete, its application will, at least, be more certain. Nations are exempt from those accidental vicissitudes which derange ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... antiquated turn of argument and metaphor, but it only served to give zest and peculiarity to the style of elocution. The sermon was not read—a scrap of paper containing the heads of the discourse was occasionally referred to, and the enunciation, which at first seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher warmed in his progress, animated and distinct, and although the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the most remarkable and most difficult figures of the Maya manuscripts, and shows, at the same time, how imperfect must be the information we have received in regard to the Maya mythology, since from the frequency of his representations he is obviously one of the most important deities and yet can be identified with none of the representations of ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... soul. I was His,—His disciple, His servant, entirely, and forever. And I wanted no other treasure but to share His love, and no other employment but to share His work. I was, though but very imperfectly enlightened on many things, and exceedingly weak and imperfect in many respects, most blessedly and indissolubly wedded to Christ ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the plates, and indeed, could only manage a selection of twenty of the best. He says, too, that even in England, lithography is found a process of considerable difficulty. They are executed in a very rough and imperfect way, and not very faithfully by an artist who signs himself "Tiz." The poor, but spirited publisher adds that the expense has been enormous—"greater than was originally contemplated," but he comforts himself with the compliment that "if any publication ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... mechanical heavens of this age. I still read him. I still find new things, quite new, because they are so very, very old, and quite true; and with his help I seem in a measure to look back upon our thoughts now as if I had projected myself a thousand years forward in space. An imperfect book, say the critics. I do not know about that; his short paragraphs and chapters in their imperfect state convey more freshness to the mind than the thick, laboured volumes in which modern scholarship ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... any countervailing evil. But the presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... writing to so simple a system that the inventor must have regarded it with sheer delight. On the other hand, the conservative scholar doubtless thought it distinctly ambiguous. In truth, it must be admitted that the system was imperfect. It was a vast improvement on the old syllabary, but it had its drawbacks. Perhaps it had been made a bit too simple; certainly it should have had symbols for the vowel sounds as well as for the consonants. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be shown, in the career of nations not altogether nomad or barbarous, of so total an absence of invention,—of any material representation of the mind's inward yearning and desire, seen, as soon as shaped, to be, though imperfect, in its essence good, and worthy to be rested in with contentment, and consisting self-approval—the Sabbath of contemplation which confesses and confirms the majesty of a style. All but ourselves have had this in measure; the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders had already reached a high degree of culture in comparison with those ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... while, on the other, was the curious fact that no such island—not even a rock, or indeed shoal water—appeared on the chart in the position indicated. This circumstance, coupled with my knowledge of the imperfect character of the instruments in use by navigators of the period at which the cryptogram had been written, caused me now to experience no little curiosity and anxiety as to what the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... miles lie between us there is no alternative but the hastily written and imperfect scribble which will shortly be presented you, if the elements have not conspired ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... be sharpened from time to time on the stone or hone. This should be done with great care, so as to preserve a proper angle at the edge and great evenness in every part, otherwise, the planing will be very imperfect. ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... open space, plums, peaches and apricots, they had grown with the freedom of the oaks and beeches in the forest, whose breadth and thickness they seemed to envy. The sap, completely absorbed by the branches which were many and vigorous, produced but little fruit, and that imperfect. By the rustle of the tall grass, Sir John and Roland divined that the lizards, those crawling offsprings of solitude, had established their domicile there, from which they fled in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... in overhanging ivy, brambles, long grass, and a tapestry of plants, and beneath the tower is a small, dark dungeon. To the left, across the quadrangle and along the western wall, are a number of rooms more or less imperfect that belonged to the Pomeroys' castle. They lead one into another, and contain enormous fireplaces and chimneys. Opposite the gateway the ruins are much more broken down, in parts hardly more than fragments and tall trees ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... addressed as members thereof, together with the spirits of just men made perfect, who are enrolled in heaven as the general assembly and church of the firstborn. Thus the {113} Church, or Society of Saints includes the imperfect, and those who are made perfect; those who are alive there, and those who are alive here. The condition of membership is briefly described in Acts ii. 38, 42 Repentant, Baptized, having the Gift of the Holy Ghost, Apostolic Doctrine ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... take care of themselves,"—a maxim that when put into practise has frequently led to the breaking-down of vowel values—the writer feels that the common custom of allowing "the consonants to take care of themselves" is pernicious. It leads to suppression or to imperfect utterance, and ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... and acknowledged benefactors of mankind. Will you deny a spirit of wisdom in Lord Bacon, because in particular facts he did not possess perfect science, or an entire immunity from the positive errors which result from imperfect insight? A Davy will not so judge his great predecessor; for he recognises the spirit that is now working in himself, and which under similar defects of light and obstacles of error had been his guide and guardian in the morning twilight of his own genius. ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... imperfect attempt to picture forth some scenes of the most brilliant period of my country's history might naturally suggest their dedication to the son of him who gave that era its glory. I feel, however, in the weakness of the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and Asia Minor, with his friend Mr. Hobhouse, and had become a great amateur of smoking: he was conducted to this shop for the purpose of purchasing a few pipes. The indifferent Italian, in which language he spoke to his Cicerone, and the latter's still more imperfect Turkish, made it difficult for the shopkeeper to understand their wishes, and as this seemed to vex the stranger, I addressed him in English, offering to interpret for him. When his Lordship thus discovered me to be an ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... The yet imperfect understanding of the war and of the nature of the German in the United States, especially at Washington—more especially in the White House—herein ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... not talking about the imperfect code of human justice under which we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the Consolidated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "I ordered you to leave one of the four and twenty windows of this hall imperfect, and you executed my command punctually. Now make ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Imperfect technique, indeed, is to be deprecated, if merely for the reason that it may debar a singer from interpreting accurately the composer's ideas. How seldom, if ever, even in the best lyric theatres, is the following passage heard as the ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... not infrequently ends with the unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner self. It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and each little imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a wise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered defeat, and had then withdrawn himself silently from the field to die. But if he had been embittered he could have relieved himself in this little book. There is no trace of such a feeling. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... him to linger over, the various objects indicated to his gaze. In a city where change is so constant and the housebreaker's pick so active, any work dealing with monuments of the past must needs soon become imperfect. Since the publication of Paris and its Story in the autumn of 1904, a picturesque group of old houses in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, including the Hotel des Mousquetaires, the traditional lodging of Dumas' d'Artagnan, has been swept away and a monstrous mass of engineering is now reared on ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of perfection at praying, that with the assistance of young and powerful lungs, I was fully able to distance him at any English prayer in which we joined. But in Latin, I must allow, that owing to my imperfect knowledge of its pronunciation, and to some twitches of conscience I felt on adventuring to imitate, him by overleaping this impediment, he was able to throw me back a considerable distance in his turn; so that when we both started for a De Profundis, I ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... were recently forced with a neighboring nation is the demonstration it has afforded of the military strength of our country. Before the late war with Mexico European and other foreign powers entertained imperfect and erroneous views of our physical strength as a nation and of our ability to prosecute war, and especially a war waged out of out own country. They saw that our standing Army on the peace establishment did not exceed 10,000 men. Accustomed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... hand, and showing no trace of the use of the potter's wheel. The body consists of a mixture of clay mixed with fine pebbles, or pounded flint, and sometimes ground chalk or shells. For finer work sharp sand has been employed. The firing is most primitive and imperfect. After drying in the sun the vessel was probably baked in the ashes of a fire of brushwood piled over and about it. The decoration, like the other processes, bespeaks a simple culture. It is usually in the nature of lines, or dots, varied now and then by thumb marks, many exhibit the impress ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... became lambs—such transformations occur in last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is difficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the different sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless, even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 5. The imperfect distinction divydes the partes of a period, and is marked with tuoe punctes, the one under the other, thus : and is red with half the pause of a perfect punct; as, al have synned, and fallen from the glorie of god: but are justifyed frelie ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... cooperation with Nations which did not see and think exactly as we did. We gave up the hope of gradually achieving a better peace because we had not the courage to fulfill our responsibilities in an admittedly imperfect world. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... almost vertical position under the magnetic influence; if the centre of attraction was not immediately under the needle, it could only be at a trifling distance. The doctor made the experiment carefully, and found that the imperfect instruments of James Ross had given his vertical needle an inclination of 89 degrees 59 minutes, making the real magnetic point at a minute's distance from the spot, but that his own at a little distance gave him ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... an hour or more. By this time it was nearly one o'clock, and, selecting a restaurant, he entered and ordered luncheon. Once more it came over him, as he looked around the place, that he had, after all, only a very imperfect hold upon his own identity. It seemed impossible that he, Philip Romilly, should be there, ordering precisely what appealed to him most, without thought or care of the cost. He ate and drank slowly and with discrimination, and when he left the place he felt stronger. He sought out ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... country about 'Castle Boterel' is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was progressive ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... was meager, narrow, and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more serious than the consequences of Hamilton's inadequate conception of American nationality. In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. He conceived a democratic society to be composed ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... clear: (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our passion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life. We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall be attained hereafter. Our destiny, the God within us, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... found that condescension might enable him to fleece some play-loving plebeian, or when affairs of gallantry were concerned. In these matters no one could be more condescending than Lord Spoonbill. We should leave but an imperfect impression on the minds of our readers if we should omit to speak of his lordship's outward and visible form. This was an essential part of himself which he never neglected or forgot; and it should not be neglected or forgotten by his historian. He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... same disease. Elspeth, who, in the midst of many struggles, and without the outward show of more than ordinary affection, was attached to her husband, now became fixed to his bedside. Forgetting the weakness consequent on her own imperfect recovery, and fearful of allowing hands less careful than her own to approach him, she attended him, night and day, with a solicitude which none save those who have all they value in the world at stake, can comprehend. Medical advice was promptly procured. But, in spite of medical ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... sort of endless band of bottles sliding along an inclined glass trough made slippery with running water. At one end a girl held them up to the light, put aside any that were imperfect and placed the others in the trough; the filling was automatic; at the other end a girl slipped in the cork and drove it home with a little mallet. Each tank, the little one for the vivifying ingredients and the big one for distilled water, had a level indicator, and inside I had a float arrangement ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... a very ingenious little apparatus, by means of which, in one of his lectures, he demonstrated this fact to his audience. It will be easily understood from the above explanation that, if the closure of the nasal cavities is sufficiently imperfect to allow any considerable amount of air to pass through the nose, the result will be ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... nay, they should be highly esteemed and regarded as the loose pages which others have copied from the book of truth as it is imparted by the spirit of the world. But they are pages which must needs be imperfect, and can never replace the real living voice. Still less can this be so when we reflect that life, or the book of truth, speaks differently to us all; like the apostles who preached at Pentecost, and ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not occur in the one imperfect known copy of 1613. Conceivably the words, 'as now it is' refer to the edition of 1619, which might have been emended by Walton's advice. But there are no emendations, hence it is more probable that Walton revised the poem in 1613, when ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... shall not look at your slates to-day. You can all see, I have no doubt, how you can considerably improve them in mechanical execution in your next lesson; and I suppose you would a little prefer that I should not see your first imperfect efforts. In fact, I should rather not see them. At the next recitation they ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... intimate knowledge of her friend might unquestionably be made useful to him under these circumstances; and Blanche's discretion was to be trusted in any matter in which Miss Silvester's interests were concerned. On the other hand, caution was imperatively necessary, in the present imperfect state of his information—and caution, in Sir Patrick's mind, carried the day. He decided to wait and see what came first of his investigation at ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... activity, which converted everything into knowledge, doubtless drew from me, as it did from other sources, many of its materials. What I owe, even intellectually, to her is, in its detail, almost infinite; of its general character a few words will give some, though a very imperfect, idea. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... upright with safety; perhaps three inches intervened between his head and the plaster, which was cracked, grimy, cobwebby. A small scrap of weedy carpet lay in front of the fireplace; elsewhere the chinky boards were unconcealed. The furniture consisted of a round table, which kept such imperfect balance on its central support that the lamp entrusted to it looked in a dangerous position, of three small cane-bottomed chairs, a small wash-hand-stand with sundry rude appurtenances, and a chair-bedstead which the tenant opened at the hour of repose and spread with certain primitive trappings ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... [Footnote: 32] of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your Colonies, and disturbs your government. These are—to change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes; to prosecute it as criminal; or to comply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration; I can think of but these three. Another has indeed been started,—that of giving up the Colonies; but it met so slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... the Seas gang dry, my Dear. And then comes some weaker stuff about Rocks melting in the Sun. All Imperfect; but that red, red Rose has burned itself into one's silly Soul in spite of all. Do you know that one of Burns' few almost perfect stanzas was perfect till he added two Syllables to each alternate Line to fit it to the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the peasant boy merely as her protege, her pet, her fine, intelligent dog! they believed Claudia secure in her pride and Ishmael absorbed in his studies. They were three-quarters right, which is as near the correct thing as you can expect imperfect human nature to approach; that is, they were wholly right as to Claudia and half right as to Ishmael. Claudia was secure in her pride; and half of Ishmael's soul—the mental half—was absorbed in his studies; his mind was given to his books; but his heart was devoted to Claudia. And in this ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... against the exhibition of nude statuary in art museums, the display of pictures so inoffensive as Leighton's "Bath of Psyche" in shop windows, and the demand for the draping of the naked personifications of abstract virtues in architectural street decoration. So imperfect is still the education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. Such a state of things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. Even from the religious point of view, prurient ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... plain colors or decorated only with rosettes and similar designs. Ezekiel(6) refers to the figures of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion on the walls of their palaces, and the composite creatures of Babylonian mythology who were believed to represent the first imperfect attempts at creation were depicted on the walls ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... little boy's eyes with his hands for an instant, significantly, till the baby pushed them down, saying in his imperfect way— ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... peasant and the workman three copies, more or less imperfect, remain to us. At Berlin are two papyri, Nos. 2 and 4, containing parts of the tale, published in fascimile in the "Denkmaler" of Lepsius vi. 108-110 and 113; while portions of another copy exist in the Butler papyrus; and lately fragments ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... to be five different sources for the original deposition of young Robinson. Thomas D. Whitaker, History ... of Whalley (3d ed., 1818), 213, has an imperfect transcript of the deposition as given in the Bodleian, Dodsworth MSS., 61, ff. 45-46. James Crossley in his introduction to Potts, Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the countie of Lancaster (Chetham Soc.), lix-lxxii, has copied the deposition given by ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Man is imperfect; yet, in his literature, he must express himself and his own views and preferences; for to do anything else is to do a far more perilous thing than to risk being immoral: it is to be sure of being untrue. To ape a sentiment, even a good one, is to travesty a sentiment; that will not be helpful. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disease dropsy is due to a weak heart. The heart is unable to supply the arteries with enough blood to maintain the normal pressure, or to damming up of blood in the venous system as the result of imperfect emptying of the heart cavities. In kidney trouble the dropsy depends more on the lack of proper nourishing processes in the capillary walls and upon changes in the blood and blood pressure. If the kidneys are diseased, they may ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... consequently in which there are heavens and hells: and as that world has been heretofore unknown, and mankind have been in total ignorance that the angels of heaven are men, in a perfect form, and in like manner infernal spirits, but in an imperfect form, therefore it was impossible for anything to be revealed concerning marriages in that world; for if it had it would have been objected, "How can a soul be joined with a soul, or a vapor with a vapor, as one married partner with another here ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of life; she had desired that particular marriage but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain, and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly affectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that her young friend had been subject to the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... who knew Winslow's Journal only by imperfect extracts, erroneously states that the men put on board the vessels were sent away immediately. They remained at Grand Pre several weeks, and were then sent off ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... what may be regarded as the chief sanctuaries of the land, to the number of thirty-one. Numerous other similar and more extensive lists, enumerating every shrine and temple in the country, also exist, though in a very imperfect state, and in addition to these, many holy places are referred to in the bilingual, historical, and other inscriptions. All the great cities of Babylonia, moreover, were sacred places, the chief in renown and importance in later ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... there again that the really fine and poignant irony came in. Through her intercourse with Jane and Laura, Rose offered herself for comparison, and showed flagrantly imperfect. But for that, owing to Tanqueray's superhuman powers of abstraction, she might almost have passed unnoticed. As it was, he owned that her incorruptible simplicity preserved her, even at her ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... true that, in 1772, Dermott prefixed a note to his edition of the Ahiman Rezon, in which he asserts that "Past Masters of warranted lodges on record are allowed this privilege (of membership) whilst they continue to be members of any regular lodge." And it is, doubtless, on this imperfect authority, that the Grand Lodges of America began at so early a period to admit their Past Masters to seats in the Grand Lodge. In the authorized Book of Constitutions, we find no such provision. Indeed, Preston records ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... so cautious of publishing any thing in my whole book that is generally known that I have denied myself the pleasure of paying the due honours to Your Lordship's name in the Dedication. I am ashamed, My Lord, to offer you so imperfect a present, having not time to set down all the memoirs of my last voyage: but, as the particular service I have now undertaken hinders me from finishing this volume, so I hope it will give me an opportunity of paying my respects ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... the question deliberately in my mind; at length I concluded that he had come by them by one of those numerous casualties which occur upon the roads, of which I, being a young hand upon the roads, must have a very imperfect conception; honestly, of course—for I scouted the idea that Slingsby would have stolen this blacksmith's gear—for I had the highest opinion of his honesty, which opinion I still retain at the present day, which is upwards of twenty years from ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... unsung— Unlettered all of mind and tongue; Unmastered, unmolested—made Most wholly frank and unafraid: Untaught of any school—unvexed Of law or creed—all unperplexed— Unsermoned, aye, and undefiled, An all imperfect-perfect child— A type which (Heaven forgive us!) you And I do tardy honor to, And so, profane the sanctities Of our most sacred memories. Who, growing thus from boy to man, That dares not be American? Go, Pride, with ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... her feet and looked at him hard. His eyes by this time were accustomed to the imperfect light, and he could see that if she was urgent she was yet beseechingly kind. She shook her head impatiently and came near enough to lay her fan on his arm with a strong pressure. "If that were so it would be a weary world. ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... Moreover it is evident that the realization by actors is needed for the photoplay too. But we may disregard that. What we have in mind is that the work which the scenario writer creates is in itself still entirely imperfect and becomes a complete work of art only through the action of the producer. He plays a role entirely different from that of the mere stage manager in the drama. The stage manager carries out what the writer of the drama prescribes, however much his own skill and visual imagination ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... juries, that functionaries were not appointed by universal suffrage, that there was no fixed term of revision, that the popular sanction of laws was reduced to a mere form. Condorcet believed that nearly all inequality of fortune, such as causes suffering, is the effect of imperfect laws, and that the end of the social art is to reduce it. There were others who objected that the Constitution did not benefit the poor. In regard to property, as in other things, it was marked by a pronounced Conservatism. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... in him perhaps the same depth of feeling as the illustrious author of "Conrad Wallenrod" and the "Pilgrims," [FOOTNOTE: Adam Mickiewicz.] but his means of expression were too limited, his instrument too imperfect; he could not reveal his whole self by means of a piano. Hence, if we are not mistaken, a dull and continual suffering, a certain repugnance to reveal himself to the outer world, a sadness which shrinks out of sight under apparent gaiety, in short, a whole individuality ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... think the distinction has arisen entirely from confusing a transitory imperfection with an essential character. So long as our information concerning them is imperfect, we class all objects together according to resemblances which we feel, but cannot define: we group them round types, in short. Thus, if you ask an ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, he will probably say, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. Ask ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all disguises of manner. We ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... slow and imperfect method have been made of late years, among the earlier of which was that of Messrs. Newbery and Vautin. They placed the pulp with water in a gaslight revolving cylinder, into which the chlorine was introduced, and atmospheric air to a pressure of 60 lb. ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... upon the human species as having two kinds of individuals, males and females, and it is for them that the sociologists and legislators frame their schemes. This, however, is but an imperfect view to {184} take of ourselves. In reality we are of four kinds, male zygotes and female zygotes, large gametes and small gametes, and heredity is the link that binds us together. If our lives were ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... indeed, claim her dower—her hire, as it is called in the too plain language of the Koran; but the knowledge that the wife can make this claim is at the best a miserable security against capricious taste; and in the case of bondmaids even that imperfect check is wanting. The power of divorce is not the only power that may be exercised by the tyrannical husband. Authority to confine and to beat his wives is distinctly vested in his discretion.[72] "Thus restrained, secluded, degraded, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... to draw upon it, until it all disappeared. He was then troubled with the apprehension that the money might be demanded. Bitter were the quarrels which arose between him and John Collins. His standard of morality which was perhaps not less elevated than that which the majority of imperfect professing Christians practice, was certainly below that which the religion of Jesus Christ enjoins. Had he been a true Christian according to the doctrines and precepts of Jesus, he would have escaped ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... would have grown to womanhood—what then? What is the usual fate that falls to even the best woman? Sorrow, pain, and petty worry, unsatisfied longings, incompleted aims, the disappointment of an imperfect and fettered life—for say what you will to the contrary, woman's inferiority to man, her physical weakness, her inability to accomplish any great thing for the welfare of the world in which she lives, will always make her more or less an object of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... devised with a design of robbing its writings of every natural charm, as the best means of making men feel its supernatural power. The fresh sense of "letters" disappears in this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... of the L.U.-Y.B.L. redaction in both MSS., we could at least be sure concerning the possible variations introduced during the two centuries that elapsed between the writing of the Yellow Book (early fourteenth century) and that of L.U. (late eleventh century). But most unfortunately both MSS. are imperfect, the Yellow Book at the opening, L.U. at the close of our tale. Thus of the special episode under consideration, the "Combat at the Ford," the older redaction is only extant in the fourteenth-century MS., and it is always ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be found which supports ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... original in his possession. It was presented to his Lordship by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom it was given by the son of Mr. Richardson the painter, the person to whom it is addressed. I have transcribed it with minute exactness, that the peculiar mode of writing, and imperfect spelling of that celebrated poet, may be exhibited to the curious in literature. It justifies Swift's epithet of 'paper-sparing Pope[405]' for it is written on a slip no larger than a common message-card, and was sent to Mr. Richardson, along ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... are too busy living their own parts in that story, to pause long enough to be its chroniclers. For to be part of a movement is more absorbing than to write about it. Whom then shall we ask? To whom shall we turn for even an imperfect knowledge of the story, at once noble and sordid, tragic and commonplace, of woman's side of the labor movement? To whom, you would say, but to the worker herself? And where does the worker speak with such clearness, with such unfaltering steadiness, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Mahomet and his prudence is especially founded in this, that whereas the Roman monarchy, except that of Israel, was the most imperfect, the Turkish is the most perfect that ever was. Which happened in that the Roman (as the Israelitish of the Sanhedrim and the congregation) had a mixture of the Senate and the people; and the Turkish is pure. And that this was pure, and the other mixed, happened not through ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of this judgment as a whole must not blind us to the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and the French, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... you as your wedded wife. To-night, the time will be propitious and suitable for the immediate consummation of the union, with the express object of letting you have a certain insight into the fact that if the condition of the abode of spirits within the confines of Fairyland be still so (imperfect), how much the more so should be the nature of the affections which prevail in the dusty world; with the intent that from this time forth you should positively break loose from bondage, perceive and amend your former ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... life a proportion of pain and jarring that is inevitable, probably, to the imperfect conditions with which the experience on earth is temporarily invested; and because of this, all the range of friendship should be held apart as divine, and any interchange of material gifts should not receive this ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... him take courage and persevere. Demosthenes now withdrew awhile from public life, and devoted himself perseveringly to remedy his defects. They were such as might be lessened, if not removed, by practice, and consisted chiefly of a weak voice, imperfect articulation, and ungraceful and inappropriate action. He derived much assistance from Satyrus the actor, who exercised him in reciting passages from Sophocles and Euripides. He studied the best rhetorical treatises ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... plan or invention, be it a statue or picture; and the way they think it over and anticipate it—very often actually seeing the picture in a finished state in imagination—all amounts to foresight and hypnotic preparation in a crude, imperfect form. If any artist who is gifted with resolution and perseverance will simply make trial of the method here recommended, he will assuredly find that it is a ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland |
