"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... susceptibility to colds is due to abnormalities in the nose or throat. Nasal obstruction is a very common condition. The nose, like the eye, is usually an imperfect organ. These obstructions are often the result of adenoids in childhood, which interfere with the proper development of the internal nasal structures. Malformation of the teeth and dental arches in childhood ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... of its property of being easily split into planks, or pieces of light scantling, that the deodar was selected for making the sides of the ladders. To have cut down the trunks of heavy trees to the proper thickness for light ladders—with such imperfect implements as they were possessed of—would have been an interminable work for our inexperienced carpenters. The little axe of Ossaroo and the knives were the only tools they possessed available for the work. As the deodar could be split ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... account for their eccentricities; and, false as those theories might be, the position of the planets could be calculated with moderate certainty by them. The very first result of the science, in its most imperfect stage, was a power of foresight; and this was possible before any one true ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... behaved himself decently, if not devoutly, and being by his misfortunes removed from the company of those who first seduced him into his vices, he began to have some ideas of the use of life when he was going to leave it; and his thoughts had received certain ideas (though very imperfect ones) of death and a future state, when the punishment appointed by Law sent him to experience them. He died on the 23rd of August, 1726, being then upwards of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... 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 wondering ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... which I have last alluded. It must suffice to say that the devoted labors of Col. Barrows, President of the Willimantic Thread Co., have succeeded in creating, out of Irish labor, social conditions of industrial life which approach ideal perfection as nearly as the work of imperfect man can possibly do. And, better still, the high morality and intelligence of Col. Barrow's 1,600 operatives, the comfort and seemliness of their homes, the cleanly and cheerful character of the mill work, even the refinements of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts of his 'Friend' would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients. He was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can see again. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful Gilmans more than while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... it is recommended that he should not be contented with the short and necessarily imperfect exposition of the art of reading therein given. The more familiar he is with the scientific principles the more successfully will he be able to direct the studies and practices of his pupils. Works on elocution are numerous and accessible. Dr. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of the room, Miss Aldclyffe asked for writing materials, that she might at once communicate with Mr. Thorn. She indecisively played with the pen. 'Suppose Mr. Thorn's reply to be in any way disheartening—and even if so from his own imperfect acquaintance with the young creature more than from circumstantial knowledge—I shall feel obliged to give her up. Then I shall regret that I did not give her one trial in spite of other people's prejudices. All her account of herself is reliable enough—yes, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... could not thus realize all our hopes, that we should often be forced, for lack of knowledge, to employ undesirable methods; but a certitude would sustain us in our efforts—namely, that even without reaching our aim completely we should do more and better in our still imperfect work than the present school accomplishes. I like the free spontaneity of a child who knows nothing, better than the world-knowledge and intellectual deformity of a child who has been subjected to our ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... think what wonderful work is going on in the atmosphere during the formation and descent of every snow-shower; what building power is brought into play! and how imperfect seem the productions of human minds and hands when compared with those formed by the blind ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... emperor of Russia, son of the Czar Alexei, born at Moscow; succeeded his half-brother Feodor in 1682, but was forced for a time to share the throne with his half-sister Sophia, acting as regent for her brother Ivan; conscious of his imperfect education, he chose a Genoese named Lefort as his preceptor, and after some years' careful training he deposed Sophia, and entered Moscow as sole ruler in 1689; with the help of Lefort and Patrick Gordon, a Scotsman, he proceeded to raise and discipline an army on the European model, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... exclaimed Maya. "Goat Hennessey had succeeded in developing some humans who could live without oxygen in the air for a time. His experiments were imperfect, it's true, but they ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... personal friendships with men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... people to the kingdom, Made them of a wondrous matter, Moulded, fashioned, and designed them, Limbs and bodies full of senses, Some with beauties and attractions, Comely in their forms and graces, Others wanting and imperfect, And repulsive in appearance. He conveyed them unto Weemus, Left them in his care for training, Heeding not how that was ordered, But returned without delaying, Backward to his own seclusion, Homeward to his mystic working; For his only thoughts ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... things superbly than to do even small things fairly well. A brief experience of practical life gives one a great respect for some men whom one would not at one time have considered very brilliant, and for work which one would have pronounced very imperfect. There is a famous passage in Lucretius, in which he speaks of the joy of the mariner who has escaped to dry land, when he sees his shipwrecked companions still struggling in the waves. This is ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... 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 ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... the virgin and unprofaned loveliness of Nature. He felt her charm and prostrated himself before her shrine. But he rendered to that invisible spirit of which these forms were only an imperfect manifestation, a worship deeper still, and by an instinct of pure adoration lifted his face ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the whole vascular series. The greater number of the genera in the list have been observed by ourselves with more or less care; but several are given on the authority of others (whose names are appended in the list), and about these we have nothing more to say. No doubt the list is very imperfect, and several genera might have been added from the 'Somnus Plantarum' by Linnaeus; but we could not judge in some of his cases, whether the blades occupied at night a nearly vertical position. He refers to some plants as sleeping, for instance, Lathyrus odoratus and ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... have swelled it to a volume. Much of the foregoing has therefore been thrown into the form of a mere skeleton of heads, or rather a series of indices, to trains of thought and classes of proof, which, however limited or imperfect, may perhaps, afford some facilities to those who have little leisure for minute and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of each of these tiny musical "words" (or figures, as we are to call them),—small and apparently imperfect as they are,—can best be tested by concentrating the attention upon each as if it stood alone upon the page; it is such vitality of the separate particles that invests a musical masterwork with its ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... Darteneuf.—Alas! how imperfect is human felicity! I lived in an age when the noble science of eating was supposed to have been carried to its highest perfection in England and France. And yet a turtle feast is a novelty to me! Would it ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... more at liberty, at the price of his queue, which was totally lost, and of the exposure of his raw and bleeding occiput. The operation was, indeed, of a mongrel description—somewhat between a complete tonsure and an imperfect scalping, to both of which denominations it certainly presented claims. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good! Bob Casey got the making of a skull-piece for Joe, and my brother French had the pleasure of paying for it, as gentlemen in those days honored any order given by a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... or of the density, the gain is effected in the same manner, namely, by avoiding violent shocks, which strain the glass much beyond its limit of elasticity. If the frequency could be brought high enough, the loss due to the imperfect elasticity of the glass would be entirely negligible. The loss due to bombardment of the globe may, however, be reduced by using two electrodes instead of one. In such case each of the electrodes may be connected ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... popularity of the work has been shown, not only by the steady demand for it, but by the efforts of various authors to write imitations of it, and various publishers to issue mutilated and imperfect editions. Against these the present publishers would warn innocent purchasers. The present is the only edition containing the important additions and corrections made by the author during the latter years of his life; and none other ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... distinguish man from beast; if they were not unlike, we could not distinguish one man from another; all things hold by some similitude; every example halts, and the relation which is drawn from experience is always faulty and imperfect. Comparisons are ever-coupled at one end or other: so do the laws serve, and are fitted to every one of our affairs, by some wrested, biassed, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... antiquities have been preserved which would seem to indicate that the natives possessed grotesque images, half human and half animal, like Chinese gods in effect. These were wrought so rudely out of stone as hardly to convey any fixed idea; vague and imperfect, it is not safe to define them as idolatrous images. They might have been left here by a previous race, for, as we are all aware, respectable authorities hold that this part of the world was originally peopled by ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... error; 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 approaching daylight ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... dinner I read Combe's "Constitution of Man," which interested me very much, though it fails to convince me that phrenology can alone bestow this insight into human nature. At the theater "The School for Scandal;" I played pretty well, though the actors were all dreadfully imperfect, and some of them so nervous and quick, and some so nervous and slow, that it was hardly possible to ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the knights of our famous English legend—imperfect no doubt and erring, but each one of them inspired with the consciousness that his life ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... red-gold paint which hides the imperfect ironwork of its elevators does not hide the fact that they groan like lost souls, and tremble and jerk and threaten to fall. The Septimus Building is typical of at least one half of a large city. It was "run up" by a speculative builder for a "quick turn-over." It is ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... regulative, the better it would seem to be for the people. We do not desire ever to see a woman occupy the office of a hangman, nor of a prosecuting attorney, nor yet of an electioneering politician; because, these being transient accompaniments of an imperfect society, the desideratum is to have concentrated on them the interest and energy of the smallest number competent to secure the needful results of order. He who believes that a universal devotion to politics would most speedily achieve the end of politics, namely, the supersedure ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... "Loving as brethren, tenderhearted, humbleminded." The nature of the brotherly love we owe our neighbors is illustrated in the love of an affectionate mother for her child. Such love Christ has shown, and still shows, toward us. He sustains us, frail, corrupt, sinful beings that we are. So imperfect are we, we seem not Christians at all. But the love of Christ makes us ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... available for the purpose of innovation. This is an error. A conservative reasoner may urge the uncertainty of all prevision, or the fact that the actual constitution, though theoretically absurd or imperfect, works well, as reasons of some weight, though not of overwhelming weight, for leaving things as they are, but it must puzzle any sensible man to see how either the uncertainty of prevision or the fair working of existing institutions can be twisted ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... together in common, as has been already mentioned respecting the inhabitants of Hochelega, and are tolerably well provided with those things which their country produces. They are clothed in the skins of wild beasts, but in a very imperfect and wretched manner. In winter they wear hose and shoes made of wild beasts skins, but go barefooted in summer. They observe the rules of matrimony, only that every man has two or three wives, who never marry again if their husbands happen to die, wearing all their lives after a kind of mourning ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... his own death and knell, which he called 'some simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already published in his own handwriting; they had the marks of repeated correction: he was perpetually changing his epithets. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too loose and imperfect for publication, yet containing traces ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... described their charms with frank appreciation. Priest as he was, and strictly moral, he cultivated an innocent epicureanism, including the collection of manuscripts and the exposure of pretentious ignorance in high places. He felt imperfect sympathy with Luther, and his literary criticism would have made no reformation. He was indeed precisely what we now call a Broad Churchman, accepting forms as convenient, though not essential, to faith. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... combustion, of which oxygen is the prime supporter. If the supply is insufficient, the fire of life wanes. The healthy condition of the lungs also requires that they be completely expanded by the air inhaled. The imperfect breathing of many persons fails to accomplish the required inflation, and the lungs become diseased for want of their natural action. Full, deep breathing and pure air are as essential to health, happiness, and the right performance of our duties, whether individual, political, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... apron? And if not, what else should he do by angry interferences at chance times than add special vindictive impulses to those of general irritation and dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be denied: innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, in some imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experience must convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, in any attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled by the insuperable obstacles of household necessities. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... which dictated them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and by these means she smoothed away, as she read on, any harshness there might be or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and the preterite with all the sweetness which there is in generosity, all the melancholy which there is in love; guided the sentence that was drawing to an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now hastening, now slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... brotherhood—St Paul's secret hidden from the foundation of the world, to be revealed in the fulness of time in the Christian gospel. Even now we hardly realise how largely our ideas of religion are derived from the imperfect moral standards of the Old Testament. The other influence was the identification of the Papacy with the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation—the Protestant answer to the Roman excommunication of heretics. The idea of a common Christianity deeper than all national antagonisms hardly existed ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... Szech'wan has her railways now under construction (the sod was cut at Ichang in 1909)[G]—and a single train and steamer does the work of hundreds of thousands of carters, coolies, and boatmen, it is wholly natural that their imperfect and short-sighted views should lead them to rise against ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... any attempt; for, where there is no difficulty, heroism is without an object. His lordship had, therefore, not a moment to pause, with respect to his ready acquiescence in the will of their majesties; but, from his very imperfect knowledge of the Italian language, he expressed his apprehensions that he might be subject to fatal deceptions, if he should trust to the fidelity of any interpreter among a people so generally corruptible. He did not, however, state the objection, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... a living creature, whole and great, God's image, praising God whose type it is; We are imperfect worms, vile families, That in its belly have our low estate. If we know not its love, its intellect, Neither the worm within my belly seeks To know me, but his petty mischief wreaks:— Thus it behoves ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Odic Force, Magnetisms, Electricity, etc.; still not, however, Spirit in the sense of Mind, or in the Religio-Spiritual sense of the word. This is the exceptional or bastard Vowel-Sound which has but an imperfect or half claim to be inserted in the Leading Vowel Scale. When inserted, its natural position is between the E and the A (ah), although for certain reasons it sometimes changes position with the A (ah), following ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of their woodland aisles—so unlike this pillared sham—had taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come here? What if she ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... policy pursued during Isabella's lifetime has been hitherto deferred to avoid breaking the narrative of Columbus's personal adventures. I shall now endeavor to present the reader with a brief outline of it, as far as can be collected from imperfect and scanty materials; for, however incomplete in itself, it becomes important as containing the germ of the gigantic system developed ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices, his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young braves ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... with Mr. Applegath of London, the mechanical engineer of the Times newspaper* [footnote... Mr. Koeig's machines, first used at the Times office, were patented in 1814. They were too complicated and expensive, and the inking was too imperfect for general adoption. They were superseded by Mr. Edward Cowper's machine, which he invented and patented in 1816. He afterwards added the inking roller and table to the common press. The effect of Mr. Cowper's invention was to improve the quality and speed of printing, and to ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... 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 ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... view of saving this honest gentleman further time and trouble, to concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi left the stage, and that my recollections of his acting are, to my loss, but shadowy and imperfect. Which confession I now make publickly, and without mental qualification or reserve, to all whom it may concern. But the deduction of this pleasant gentleman that therefore the Grimaldi book must be bad, I must take leave to doubt. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... We have had some learned dissertations on the language of Macedonia, as to whether the Slav dialects approach more nearly the Serbian or the Bulgarian literary language. But this question remains unanswered, owing to the imperfect manner in which the grammatical and syntaxical peculiarities of the Macedonian dialects have, as yet, been examined. Some people have argued that as the Bulgarian peculiarity of the postponed article is also found in Macedonia it follows that the province really is Bulgarian. But as the postponed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... living has been able to fathom the whole power of this ring, and no one can completely explain the secret signs engraved upon it. But, even with the imperfect knowledge of its properties which I possess, I can perform many wonders which no other creature can accomplish. If I put the ring on the little finger of my left hand, I can rise in the air like a bird and fly whithersoever ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... had, moreover, observed that the locks of the outhouses were very imperfect: he might specify the coal-cellar ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... should severely enforce the duty of the procreators of children to nourish their offspring. Rich or poor, no father or mother should escape this duty, whether the child is legitimate or illegitimate. In our imperfect social condition, it is still much too easy for the man to escape and abandon his child to the mother, or to public charity. He should be compelled to provide for the life and education of his children, whether legitimate ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... conspired against him, and as if he was too weak to struggle with them; else, why did everything indoors and out-of-doors go so wrong just now, when all he could have done, had things been prosperous, was to have submitted, in very imperfect patience, to the loss of his wife? But just when he needed ready money to pacify Osborne's creditors, the harvest had turned out remarkably plentiful, and the price of corn had sunk down to a level it had not touched ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mouth, and that his surviving writings set forth no systematic array of doctrines, we have no choice left, if we desire to know what his opinions concerning the future life were, when deduced and arranged, but to exercise our learning and our faculties upon the imperfect discussions and the significant hints and clews in his extant epistles. Bringing these together, in the light of contemporary Pharisaic and Christian conceptions and opinions, we may construct a system from them which will represent his theory; somewhat as the naturalist from a few fragmentary bones ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of eternal truth? Even the apostle says, "I know in part, and I prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." The apostle declares that his sight of truth is only partial, and that everything partial is imperfect, and that everything imperfect must pass away; so that our present knowledge of truth is transient. "Whether there be knowledge, it shall pass away." If the apostle Paul declared that he had not the power of making a perfect and permanent statement of truth, how can ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... contemporary painters and critics, whose specific penetration is sometimes in curious contrast with their imperfect catholicity, he has recently come into vogue again, after having been greatly neglected since the romantic outburst. But he belongs completely to the classic epoch. Neither he nor his refined and sympathetic pupil, Flandrin, did aught to pave the way for the modern ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... current. It will flow, for instance, through an ultron wire, from the katultron to the metultron plate, as electricity will flow through a copper wire. It will short circuit between the two plates if the inertron insulation is imperfect. When the insulation is perfect, however, and no ultron metallic circuit is complete, the "current" (apparently the same that would flow through the metallic circuit) is projected into space in an absolutely straight line from the ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... those he leaves behind him; often called away before he has time to make it known, reserving the fond secret till too late; still clinging to life, and all that makes life dear to him. Often does the communication, made from the couch of death, in half-articulated words, prove so imperfect, that the knowledge of its existence is of no avail unto his intended heirs; and thus it is that millions return again to the earth from which they have been gathered with such toil. What avarice has dug up avarice ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... imaginable pains to please, find his labor abortive, and himself condemned for what he could not help. There is no exhibiting with success any entertainment of this sort without having all the necessary performers and accompaniments. It will be in a great measure perfect or imperfect in proportion as they are ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... hope he's to have some'at for his trouble. He won't have my word to vote unless he have some'at." Such is the conversation in which the candidate takes a part, while his cortege at the door is criticising his very imperfect mode of securing Mrs. Bubbs' good wishes. Then he goes on to the next house, and the same thing with some variation is endured again. Some guide, philosopher, and friend, who accompanies him, and who ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... immigration, the Christians or churches of Christ show more than double the gain of the other three bodies. We glory in this growth only as the glory of Christ is involved in it. It is an earnest of what Christian union will do even through very imperfect instruments. What will the harvest be, when the prayer of Jesus is answered and all his followers are united in one "glorious church, holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph. 5:27), going forth ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... there ensued a silence, varied only by a long and tremulous sigh from his companion; whether of relief or dejection, the visitor could not decide. But when Mr. MacGentle spoke, it was with more assurance. Either from mortification at his illusion, or more probably from imperfect perception of it, he made no reference to what had passed. Old age possesses a kind of composure, arising from dulled sensibilities, which the most ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... letter was despatched in such a hurry that I had not time to conclude it. This will be nearly as imperfect; but yet I cannot forbear writing, having the vanity to believe that you are pleased with hearing ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... imperfect narrative,[7] any persons beyond the immediate circle of my companions in misery (for within it I can safely declare that there were no indications of ridicule) should affect to despise, as contemptible or unsoldierlike, the humble devotional exercises to ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... 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 worst, from being ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... they might make by exciting competition between their covetous barterers, and the latter, each one for self-interest, are very careful not to open the eyes of those who are so ready to let themselves be cheated. Moreover, the ill-treatment to which they were once subjected, and the imperfect knowledge they still have of what the British Protectorate means, renders them timid and too much afraid of these rapacious merchants to dare resent, in any way, the ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... as though it were a necessary emanation from that delightful and overwhelming and commanding passion. In her presence there seemed to surge up within me that which forbade speech. Speech under present conditions would have seemed to me unnecessary, imperfect, and even vulgarly overt. She, too, was silent. But now that I am alone, and memory is alone with me, I am convinced that she also had been happy. No, not that exactly. "Happiness" is not the word to describe either ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... panegyrics on his instructors were to Mr Allworthy himself, as they so loudly resounded the praise of that singular plan of education which he had laid down; for this worthy man having observed the imperfect institution of our public schools, and the many vices which boys were there liable to learn, had resolved to educate his nephew, as well as the other lad, whom he had in a manner adopted, in his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... frequently converted into a grove by clearing it of undergrowth and leaving the space a grassy lawn. It may then yield us shade, coolness, and other agreeable sensations of a cultivated wood, but the individual trees always retain their gaunt and imperfect shapes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... had done its baleful work, a spirit of infidelity and of hostility either to the essentials or the details of the new religion must have impelled such as were either imperfect Christians, or no Christians at all, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... which is but an imperfect presentation of the work of our inebriate asylums, by a quotation from the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, for September, 1877. This periodical is published under the auspices of "The American Association for the Cure of Inebriates." The editor, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... upon a perfect work.[392] But contemplation on this earth is imperfect, according to the words of the Apostle: We see now through a glass in a dark manner.[393] Hence it would seem that the contemplative ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... breakings of one thread and hurried seizures of another, which though one is dreaming very distinctly, supply some vague mental comfort, since even to the sleeper they are reminders that his experiences are not solid but mere phantasies woven by imperfect consciousness and incomplete control of thought. It was not thus that Morris dreamed; his dream was of the solid ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... several letters 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 ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... for the imperfect Scotch, which we have (to use a homely phrase,) put into the mouth of one of our characters, our apology for which is that we were unaware of the error, until the work had been so far printed as not to admit of our remedying it. We are consoled, however, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... little girl who had been born to the Duke of Orleans and his wife at a time when it was a great object with them to have a son. The little girl grew up in the jailer Chiappini's house under the name of Maria Stella Petronilla. There is little doubt that she was a changeling, but the link is imperfect which would connect her with the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. She was ill-treated by the jailer's wife, but was very beautiful. Lord Newburgh, an English nobleman, saw her and married her. Her son succeeded his father as a peer of England. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... deductions drawn from these physical characters are of more value than any evidence based on the use of a common speech. But it is hard to reconcile the theory with the facts of history even in the imperfect shape in which they have come down to us, or to believe that Sakas, Yuechi, and White Huns (see historical section) have left no traces of their blood in the province. If such there are, they may perhaps be found in some of the tribes on both sides of the Salt ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... 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 Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... except he fall to work again, to find out the same centre, so, though setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I have gone so far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from thee, my centre, all is imperfect. This proceeding to action, therefore, is a returning to thee, and a working upon myself by thy physic, by thy purgative physic, a free and entire evacuation of my soul by confession. The working of purgative physic is violent and contrary to nature. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... is never much thronged at that hour. The moment is sacred to dinner. As I paused at the corner of Twelfth Street, by the church, you remember, I saw an apple-woman, from whose stores I determined to finish my dessert, which had been imperfect at home. But, mindful of meritorious and economical Prue, I was not the man to pay exorbitant prices for apples, and while still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage approaching, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... the physician called hallucination of mind, and a general feebleness of body, were all the apparent consequences of this stroke. She was not herself sensible of the nature of the attack, or clear in her ideas of any thing that had passed immediately previous to it. She had only an imperfect recollection of her daughter's illness, and of some hurry about Mr. Vivian's going away. She was, however, well enough to go into her dressing-room, where Vivian went to pay his respects to her, with Lord Glistonbury. By unremitting exertions, and unusual cheerfulness, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... nobility of thought, and all beauty of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up. Then the dexterous management of a few individuals, base or dull, was the only means of success. But we live in a different age: there are popular sympathies, however imperfect, to appeal to; we must recur to the high primeval practice, and address nations now as the heroes, and prophets, and legislators of antiquity. If you wish to free your country, and make the Syrians a nation, it is not to be done by sending secret envoys to Paris or London, cities ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... with the drawing, in which my worthy and amiable friend, Mr. Shannon, a clergyman of Edinburgh, and a very popular preacher there, but who is now no more, took a chief part. I had lost the original drawing of the junction of the Murray, and having very imperfect vision at the time I was publishing, I was unable to sketch another. It so happened that Mr. Shannon, who sketched exceedingly well with the pen, came to pay me a visit, when I asked him to try and repair my loss, by drawing the junction ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... good and bad cookery is particularly discernible in the preparation of forcemeats. A common cook is satistified if she chops or minces the ingredients and moistens them with an egg scarcely beaten, but this is a very crude and imperfect method; they should be pounded together in a mortar until not a lump or fibre is perceptible. Further directions will be given in the proper place, but this is a rule which must be strictly attended to by those who wish to attain any excellence in ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... his irregular habits, Beethoven accomplished. His untiring industry in developing the rough jottings which formed the foundations of his compositions has been mentioned; but without following his life from year to year we can have only a very imperfect conception of the actual amount of labour which was involved in bringing to perfection the long list of works that we see appended to the biographies of the composer. When we follow the story of his life in detail, we are ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... they had conceived and attempted was premature. The establishment of a free government demands either spontaneous and simple virtues, such as may be found in a young and small community, or the lights, the scientific method, and the wisdom, painfully acquired and still so imperfect, of great and civilized nations. France of the fifteenth century was in neither of these conditions. But it is a crown of glory to have felt that honest and patriotic ambition which animated Masselin and his friends at their exodus from the corrupt and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Baldinucci (ch. iv. p. 83), who says, "Raphael gave great testimony of his esteem when, in after years, he employed his own brush in Rome to finish a work begun by Fra Bartolommeo in that city and left imperfect." ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... the vagrant had stood in the centre of that close ring of jeering and humorous bystanders—a baffling text from which to have preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... scholars of the medieval universities seem to have studied grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology, and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes it may be in caricature, what ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... times when a woman, despite her imperfect education, acquires after marriage the knowledge which fits her for the duties appertaining to wifehood. But where nature yields to such training, the woman fails both in filling her sphere and in fulfilling ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... recollected, are only intellectually defective traits, and maybe remedied by knowledge. The latter, it is to be presumed, belongs rather to individuals than to the society at large. But whatever drawbacks may be made from the perfect by the imperfect qualities that have been stated, there is a great preponderancy on the side of virtue. And where, when we consider the evil propensities of our nature, and the difficulty of keeping these in due order, are we to took for a fairer character? That men, as individuals, may be more perfect, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... likely to forget that, seeing that Dick's love for him was his safeguard from all evil, and his love for Dick was the mainspring of his life. But—though his development was stunted and imperfect—there were certain facts of existence which he was beginning slowly but surely to grasp. And one of these—before but dimly suspected—he had realized fully to-night, a fact beyond all questioning learnt from Dick's ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... arms), and when his Continental allies had been crushed at Bouvines in the summer of 1214, the rebels in England found their opportunity. The great lords, especially those of the north, took oath in the autumn to combine. The accounts of this conspiracy are imperfect, but its general truth may be accepted. John, who from this moment lay perpetually behind walls, held a conference in the Temple during the January of 1215—to be accurate, upon the Epiphany of that year—and he struck ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... for instance, wears out several saddles; and the flesh of a child, though very delicate and tender, wears out many clothes, whilst it daily grows stronger. If this renewing of spirits were perfect, it would be real immortality, and the gift of eternal youth. But the same being imperfect, the animal insensibly loses his strength, decays and grows old, because everything that is created ought to bear a mark of nothingness from which it was ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... dwindles almost to a point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other and greater empire of which even this wonderworking Nile-land is but a faint and imperfect copy. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... Ralph's curiosity as to the manner in which he obtained this provender. Luckie Morrine bestowed it upon him for services rendered, he said; which was a true, though somewhat abbreviated and imperfect account of the transaction. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... regret inexcusable escape of livestock. While petting same, one of our children monkied (sp?) with airlock. Will not happen again. Regret also imperfect grasp of language, learned through what you term Television etc. Animal not dangerous, but observe some accidental damage caused, therefore hasten to enclose reimbursement, having taken liberty of studying your highly ingenious methods of exchange. Hope same ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn
... this imperfect sketch we would point once more to the warranty of its imperfections and sketchiness offered in the beginning. We hope for it no more than that it may serve to direct those inclined to bestow upon the Morris a closer study, to at least the beginnings ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... not yet found fit expression. And this is even more the case with regard to moral operations of a quieter and less signal, though hardly less important kind; forces which do not so much suddenly change the world, as keep it (in some poor and imperfect way) sweet and pure, and perhaps, in the course of ages, urge it a little nearer the throne of God. Is the faith of Christendom sustained from generation to generation by the succession of heroes and saints, to whose achievements all men look up with despairing admiration, and ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... of Mamma's lady friends in the drawing-room, they might spare us the announcement of what it hardly needs gold eyeglasses to discover—that we really grow every day. Blushes come heavily enough to hands and cheeks when to the shyness of youth are added the glows and chills of imperfect circulation: it does not need the stare of strangers, nor the apologies of Mamma, to stain our doubtful complexions with ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... more frequently the result of bad habits of speaking and imperfect training than of incapacity of the vocal organs. Mr. Murdock, the well-known actor and elocutionist, tells us that, by appropriate vocal training, he gained, within the space of some months, to such an extent, in power and depth of voice, as to add to its previous range ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and faces you see in the crowd! What a vast field for the exercise of meditation! A half-seen glance, or a few words caught as the speaker passes by, open a thousand vistas to your imagination. You wish to comprehend what these imperfect disclosures mean, and, as the antiquary endeavors to decipher the mutilated inscription on some old monument, you build up a history on a gesture or on a word! These are the stirring sports of the mind, which finds in fiction a relief ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... a right to watch over you, and as you take advantage of my weak compliance with your caprices, I mean to put an end to what has lasted too long, and tell you my irrevocable resolutions for the future, in presence of friends of the family. And, first, you have hitherto had a very false and imperfect notion of my ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... charge, black as hell, and big with death, witness Pershing's charge, reported loosely by a French boy, with his imperfect knowledge of English, translated out of the French newspapers on July 18, 1917. Pershing's brief address comes ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that caught the illumination of the fire, he presently noticed something lying on the ground that bore an uncanny likeness to a human skeleton! He said nothing about it, however—having no wish that Flora's shaken nerves should be subjected to any further shock just then, especially as the imperfect view of the object that had been afforded him by the flickering light of the flames left him quite uncertain as to its identity—but at once went to work again with his tomahawk in a vigorous onslaught upon the bushes, managing, in another ten minutes or ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... home. It was long before any one answered his summons at the gate. Not till he had thrice rung did he hear a heavy step on the gravel walk within; then the wicket within the gate was partially drawn aside, a dark eye gleamed out, and a voice in imperfect English asked who ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... criticism of the imperfect application of service race policies—some service-wide, others confined to certain bases—the committee reported to the President that the services had made "an intelligent and far-reaching advance toward complete integration, and, with some variations from service ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the present state of horticulture among us is quite imperfect, affording but an indistinct glimpse of the ample field which invites our view, it would scarcely be pardonable, were we to overlook a branch of rural industry in which horticultural success is interested, and without which the practical pleasures and family-comfort of rural homes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Jacob Kurtz's, where I have the pleasure of meeting again the dear family that showed me so much kindness two years ago. Stay fifteenth and sixteenth nights here. If the meeting with those we love, and a brief stay with them, can give us so much joy here in our imperfect state, what will be the measure of our joy when we meet in that world where all is perfection, and partings are known no more! "In his presence there is fullness of joy: and at his right ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... upon her imperfect abilities, but expressed her strong desire to do all the good she possibly could effect for the invalid, and made little doubt but that she should at least be able to attend her. So, with this hope, Mrs. Waugh ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the earth was flat, and Asia lay east of Europe, it was madness to sail west to reach it. But they argued from a wrong premise, so their judgment was imperfect—for they did not yet know ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... fancy as plain argument could not have done, and the Republican party came to be called "Robbie Miller's Hoe "—an imperfect means of reaching a great end, and one that any one might use without becoming responsible for ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... But so imperfect is the world that it often leaves no time for mourning—that in the midst of our sorrow it causes us to hear the prosaic voices of reality and necessity, compelling us to dry our eyes and turning our thoughts from painfully-sweet ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... so often that I never completed my work. I might, in the proudly modest spirit of the old sculptors, have inscribed on the vase the words: Abel was doing this. For was not my ideal beautiful like theirs, and the best that my art could do only an imperfect copy—a rude sketch? A serpent was represented wound round the lower portion of the jar, dull-hued, with a chain of irregular black spots or blotches extending along its body; and if any person had curiously examined these spots he would have discovered that every other one ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... an imperfect narrative of the relief. What the deliverers saw on Thursday morning was a little white town lying in the midst of a wide shallow basin of green moorland; and it reminded one of a town that had been long deserted ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... course it is magnificent to see a streak of the divine turning up again and again in human nature—but you have got to wash the dirt to find the diamond. Believe in the beauty behind and in and beyond us all—but don't worship the imperfect thing. This sort of book is like selling the dirt out of which the diamonds have been washed, and which would appear to have gained holiness by contact. I hate to see people stopping short on the symbol and the illustration, instead of passing on to the truth behind—it's ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his arms the friend so long and ardently desired, Dantes almost carried him towards the window, in order to obtain a better view of his features by the aid of the imperfect light that ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Tasso enough to form an opinion: in some future letter you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... tribe at a great festival of Bacchus. This statue has been variously christened. Some believe it to be the fragment of a Niobe; others of a Diana. It is generally allowed to be a noble sample of Greek sculpture. Hereabouts, also, is the well-known imperfect statue of Icarus (113), brought in fragments from the Acropolis. The urn marked 122 is a sepulchral vessel, with figures in bas-relief; 123 is a sepulchral column, with an Athenian name upon it; and then the visitor will pass rapidly the fragments of Doric and Ionic columns ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the poet, on the other hand, dashed with the imagination of the man of science, revealed to Goethe the prophecy of the flower in the leaf. No other than an artistic imagination, however, fulfilled of science, could have attained to the discovery of the fact that the leaf is the imperfect flower. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... the ground. Near the right temporal was another break in the skin, which here appeared much decayed. All the teeth were present, but they were not particularly white nor good. The left forearm and hand were wanting, and the right was imperfect; the lower limbs were well preserved even ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... is said to be an imperfect incarnation of Cupid, as she keeps her beau, and not her arrows, in ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... from below between the pericardium and the stomach, and forms a transverse partition, which is the first structure of the primary diaphragm (Figure 2.380 d). This important muscular partition, which completely separates the thoracic and abdominal cavities in the mammals alone, is still very imperfect here; the two cavities still communicate for a time by two narrow canals. These canals, which belong to the dorsal part of the head-coelom, and which we may call briefly pleural ducts, receive the two pulmonary sacs, which develop from ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... Stormberg there were other difficulties to contend with. The map of the ground was utterly unreliable. The configuration of the hills was incorrectly presented and the distances badly judged. The general knowledge of the direction was so imperfect that none was sufficiently well informed to put a check upon the movements of the guide, nor had the position been reconnoitered by any of those engaged against it. In this way the winding and circuitous route more than doubled the march, knocked up the troops, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... contingency except in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek: katt' exochaen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... linguistic tact, and can hardly be judged with any confidence by foreigners. But I think we can see Euripides here, as in other places, reaching out at an effect which was really beyond the resources of his art, and attaining a result which, though clearly imperfect, is strangely moving. He gets great effects from the use of children in several tragedies, though he seldom lets them speak. They speak in the Medea, the Andromache, and Suppliants, and are mute figures in the Trojan Women, Hecuba, Heracles, and Iphigenia in Aulis. We may notice that ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... disappointment. Walpole not only maintained but added to the power he enjoyed under George I. By what means this was accomplished the writer of this piece attempts to hint. Sir Walter Scott thinks the piece was probably left imperfect, "when the crisis to which the Tories so anxiously looked forward terminated so undesirably, in the confirmation ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... refuge in an inner kitchen, which, when the door was not open, was only lighted by a fire burning somewhat dimly on the hearth. An elderly female sat beside it in her chair, telling her beads: there was something singular and extraordinary in her look, as well as I could discern by the imperfect light of the apartment. I put a few unimportant questions to her, to which she replied, but seemed to be afflicted to a slight degree with deafness. Her hair was becoming grey, and I said that I believed she was older ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and pointed to some marks on his arm as a result of hypodermics. Facial expression denoted perfect satisfaction; said he felt fine and did not worry about anything, as he is not of the worrying kind. Said he had been treated well here. Insight was imperfect. When asked directly if he had been insane, he replied "No." When the various symptoms which he manifested on admission were described to him he was inclined to agree that if he did show these symptoms he must have been out of his ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... in the study of languages, together with the imperfect material and the complicating conditions that have arisen by the spread of civilization over the country, combine to make the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... advocated the assumption. His words are the following: "The sun's heat, acting on the original miry earth, produced filmy bladders or bubbles, and these, becoming surrounded with a prickly rind, at length burst open, and as from an egg, animals came forth. At first they were ill-formed and imperfect, but subsequently they elaborated and developed." This has the genuine ring of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... that the obligations I refer to are imperfect obligations in the sense that no sanctions are provided for against any party which shall have failed loyally and effectively to co-operate in protecting the Covenant and resisting every act of aggression. It should, however, be emphasised that such a State would have failed in the fulfilment ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... his admirer, after Athens was abandoned, and Decelea fortified by the enemy—the admirer of one whose sole aim in life was tyranny? But, as the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then, giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... book, Gough admits,* as indeed he was obliged to admit that, "as a general history of the Church in its earlier ages, Foxes work has been shown to be partial and prejudiced in spirit, imperfect and inaccurate in execution," and Leach** asserts that, while its compiler had recourse to some early documents, even here he depended largely on printed works, such as Crespin's Actiones et Monuments Martyrum, which was published at Geneva in 1560. He notes, moreover, that ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... wrist, and the general faulty touch of his pupil, gives some wonderful etude or a piece with great stretches and arpeggios for the left hand, and gives himself unwearied trouble over it, it is a proof of abundant painstaking; but it is labor thrown away, and only makes the imperfect mode ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... very imperfect in this respect, they ventured to use their lips without sound—to speak, as it were, in dumb show—and the contortions of visage thus produced ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... Question is not whether I am guilty of this Indictment, but whether this Indictment be legal. It is too general and imperfect an Answer, to say it is the Common Law, unless we knew both where, and what it is: For where there is no Law, there is no Transgression; and that Law which is not in being, is so far from being Common, that it is no ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... Grace Darling, and Florence Nightingale, for not one of these women, noble and brave as they were, has shown more courage, and power of endurance, in facing danger and death to relieve human suffering, than this poor black woman, whose story I am endeavoring in a most imperfect way ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... inimitable,—a turn of the eye here and a curl of the lip there, which have seemed to denote a power almost divine. There have been marvels on the canvas so beautiful that one approaches the work of remodelling it with awe. But not only is the picture imperfect,—a thing of snatches,—but with years it becomes less and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... admit, Sir, that this bill is in its details superior to the former bill, I must say that the best parts of this bill, those parts for the sake of which principally I support it, those parts for the sake of which I would support it, however imperfect its details might be, are parts which it has in common with the former bill. It destroys nomination; it admits the great body of the middle orders to a share in the government; and it contains provisions ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the time of Hengist: and, as I had only learned the true original tongue, in which Homer, Pindar, the Evangelists, and other great men of antiquity wrote, it could not be supposed that I should know anything of an imperfect Gothic dialect that rose on the ruins of the former, and scarce retained any traces of the old expression: but, if Doctor Mackshane, who pretended to be master of the Greek language, could maintain a conversation ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... carefully observed; the old church fasts were given up; prayers to saints and to the virgin had ceased; pictures for adoration had disappeared from their houses; and it was remarkable that in these changes the women were more zealous than the men. Still their knowledge in all cases was very imperfect, and it was uncertain how well they would endure persecution. Nearly all the members of the mission were there at different times; as also Tannus el Haddad, and Butrus el-Bistany, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... the presence of Omniscience; Think on the punishments with which the church Threatens imperfect and reserved confessions This is the sin to everlasting death, For this is sinning 'gainst his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... tells us, that the antient Songs were loose and not ty'd up to any strict numbers, and afterwards by certain laws and acknowledged rules were confin'd to such and such measures: for this is the method of Nature in all her works, from imperfect and rude beginnings things take their first rise, and afterwards by fit and apposite additions are polish't, and brought to perfection: such were the Verses which heretofore the Italian Sheapards and Plough-men, as Virgil says, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... burning with zeal, and filled with that confidence which proverbially results from the hasty assimilation of imperfect and erroneous information, found in the Transvaal question a great opportunity of making a noise: and—as in a disturbed farmyard the bray of the domestic donkey, ringing loud and clear among the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... mortified over her failure, stood long with the white rosary in her hand. "Maybe I ought to count the poah pie as I would an imperfect lesson," she thought, hesitating, with a bead in her fingers. Then she said, defiantly: "But I did my best, and the day has certainly been disagreeable enough to ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... character) was the only just law, which everyone ought to obey. But is it so with us? we know and cannot help knowing that the law of our country is not the one eternal law; that it is only one of the many laws of different countries, which are equally imperfect, often obviously wrong and unjust, and are criticised from every point of view in the newspapers. The Jew might well obey his laws, since he had not the slightest doubt that God had written them with his finger; the Roman too might well obey the laws which he thought had been dictated ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... how it embraces all that is true in the other bases suggested, is their summation, and rationalises their precepts. He will find that Morality is no longer dependent on the maxims of great Teachers—though indeed they proclaimed its changeless laws—nor on the imperfect resultant of individual experiences, nor on the happiness of some only of the great human family, but that it inheres in the very nature of things, an essential law of happy life and ordered progress. Then indeed is Morality founded on a basis that cannot be moved; then indeed ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... a succession of men, and a succession of churches." Mr. Faber is also correct in the main when he says,—"The two witnesses signify the spiritual members of the catholic church:" but his notion of two churches, the "Old and New Testament churches," betrays his imperfect conception of the essential unity of the church of God. Both he and the Bishop overlook too often the important fact that civil magistracy is a divine ordinance, which, as corrupted, constitutes the first beast of the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they have never had harmony until since they began to learn it from ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... substitute a soft steel plate in the place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting power, but our compound plate then becomes virtually an all-steel one, only differing in process of manufacture. The greatest faults of the compound plate are the imperfect welding of the parts and the lack of solidity of the iron. When fired at, the surface has a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... a small portion of the addresses which were called forth by this national calamity, and these, no doubt, have suffered injustice by imperfect reporting. But we have shown, as we wished to show, the standard by which our people estimate an heroic character, and how the South loves and honors the memory of her ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and Cork. But why are those so neglected and imperfect? and why are not similar or better institutions in Belfast, Derry, Galway, Waterford, and Kilkenny? Why is there not a decent collection of casts anywhere but in Cork, and why are they in a garret there? ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... copulating with other creatures shall perish as the brute beasts by whom they were begotten, not having a reasonable soul nor any breath of the Almighty infused into them; and such can never be capable of resurrection. And the same is also true of imperfect and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... influence, but simply because the city has grown much larger, and in some respects has outgrown a certain simplicity of manners it once possessed, and which was its chief safeguard. For, in spite of a vast number of writers of all nations who have attempted to describe Italian life, and who, from an imperfect acquaintance with the people, have fallen into the error of supposing them to live perpetually in a highly complicated state of mind, the foundation of the Italian character is simple—far more so than that of his hereditary antagonist, the northern ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... sat conversing for some time before the fire, and then the latter pointed out to him which was his bed—one made up near the fire, for the sake of its warmth; and then the ferryman retired to the next room, a place which was merely divided by an imperfect partition. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... particularly between Malta and Alexandria, I often conversed with the brave and unfortunate Admiral Brueys. The intelligence we heard from time to time augmented his uneasiness. I had the good fortune to obtain the confidence of this worthy man. He complained bitterly of the imperfect manner in which the fleet had been prepared for sea; of the encumbered state of the ships of the line and frigates, and especially of the 'Orient'; of the great number of transports; of the bad Outfit of all the ships and the weakness of their crews. He assured me that it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... as a trace of any gas will destroy the usefulness of your most sensitive vacuum tubes, and just as imperfect shielding will allow interfering waves to enter sensitive electrical apparatus—in that same fashion will even the slightest ether vibration interfere with the operation of the extremely sensitive fields and lenses of force which must ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... and Russia remonstrates with Austria. Her representations will be of no use: you may stake all you have on that; and eventually, since she will be unable to draw back she, too, will begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by those immense distances and her imperfect railway system, to mobilise also. Then will Germany, already quite prepared, show her hand. She will demand that Russia shall cease mobilisation, and again will Russia refuse. That will set the military machinery of France going. All the time the governments of Europe ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson |
