"Imperfectly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct. At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is not ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... instalments occurred at another saleroom a few months later; and perhaps there is yet more to come. But in a bibliographical respect the dispersion proved of interest, as many of the items, formerly Sir John Fenn's, had remained imperfectly known and described; and it was not absolutely ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... foreground, connect it most definitely with the death of Christ, and in some passages seem to have a conception of that connection, which reminds us of Paul. But this just shews that they are dependent here on Paul (or on 1st Peter), and on a closer examination we perceive that they very imperfectly understand Paul, and have no independent insight into the series of ideas which they reproduce. That is specially plain in Clement. For in the first place, he everywhere passes over the resurrection (he mentions it only twice, once as a guarantee of our own resurrection, along with ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... consideration, we may mention in this connection that a self-inductive coil for currents of one direction must be constructed differently from one to be used with alternating currents. The former must have in its magnetic circuit a section of air or the like, or be an imperfectly closed circuit, as it were. The latter should have as perfectly closed a magnetic circuit as can be made. We see here also the futility of constructing a Ruhmkorff core coil on the closed iron magnetic circuit plan, because the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... opinion. And in the brilliant final despatch of Sir Douglas Haig which appeared on April 12th, after six letters had been written and sent to America, will be found, I venture to suggest, the full and authoritative exposition of some at least of the main lines of thought I have so imperfectly ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... competition, and are much more universally subject to it, than rents. The wholesale trade, in the great articles of commerce, is really under the dominion of competition. But retail price, the price paid by the actual consumer, seems to feel very slowly and imperfectly the effect of competition; and, when competition does exist, it often, instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gains of the high price among a greater number of dealers. The influence of competition is making itself felt more and more through the principal branches of retail ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... threatened with punishment as pirates, any vessel attempting to enter them. Derby desired information as to what the Government had done about this remarkable American proclamation. Russell, "who was very imperfectly heard," answered that undoubtedly it was embarrassing that no "regular communication" had been received from America giving notice of the end of the war, but that the two Confederate cruisers still at sea and the entrance ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... perhaps no great social question so imperfectly understood among us at the present day as that which refers to the line which divides sanity from insanity. That this man is sane and that other unfortunately mad we do know well enough; and we know also that one man may be subject to various ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... like a dream. But only a grave reality could have brought so many women together. Need we wonder that the beneficent designs of Providence have been so imperfectly carried out when only one-half the intellect and heart of the nation have hitherto been called into action, and the powers of the other half have been almost wholly suppressed? Women are learning along with good men that politics in the true sense has to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... description; they are conical, red, and hard; after a while, they become white, and yellow at the point, then discharge a thick, yellow-coloured matter, mingled with a whitish substance, and become covered by a hard brown scab, and lastly, disappear very slowly, sometimes very imperfectly, and often leaving an ugly scar behind them. To these symptoms are not unfrequently added considerable pain, and always much unsightliness. When these little cones have the black head of a 'grub' at their point, they constitute the variety termed spotted acne. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... infancy, had not collected that experience, taken that expansion, made those strides towards improvement, which distinguishes the present from the past. Savages dispersed, erratic, thinly scattered up and down, knew the course of nature either very imperfectly or not at all; society alone perfects human knowledge: it requires not only multiplied but combined efforts to unravel the secrets of nature. This granted, all natural causes were mysteries to our wandering ancestors; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... is so necessary that he cannot be shut out. But the walls are beginning to narrow. White immigration is coming in. The industrial training of the old plantation is no longer given, and industrial schools are yet very imperfectly developed. Some trades are being lost to the negroes; they have fewer carpenters, masons, and the like; they find no employment in cotton mills, and are engaged only in the least skilful parts of iron manufacture. The trade unions, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... of spermatozoa continues with greater or less rapidity from puberty to old age, though at the two extremes of existence they are imperfectly developed. When not discharged from the body, they are said to be absorbed. Some physiologists claim that they are composed of a substance identical with nerve tissue, and that by absorption they play a very important part in the development ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... that is, in this life we know imperfectly, for it is of faith and not of sight. And we "prophesy in part"; that is, imperfectly, for the substance of our prophecy is the Word and preaching. Both knowledge and prophecy, however, reveal nothing short of what the angels see—the one God. "But when that which is perfect is come, that which ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... fact, by a long course of disobedience growing to utter disuse of conscience, arrived nearly at non-individuality. In regard to what was outside him he was but a mirror, in regard to what was inside him a mere vessel of imperfectly interacting forces. And now his capacities and incapacities together had culminated in a hideous plot, in which it would be hard to say whether the folly, the crime, or the cunning predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... followed, laden with the baggage that was to be transported over barren mountains and through morasses; and often, after all their exertions and deprivations, they got very few rein-deer. The main design of his journeys too, was but imperfectly obtained, as his people were so very much occupied in the hunt that they could pay but little attention to the preaching of the word; and their heathen companions disliked the presence of a missionary, as it caused those to keep back who believed in their superstitious ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... throbbed like a pulse in her emaciated bosom, which only the extreme smallness of her bones kept still lovely in its low-cut evening gown. She was devoured, consumed by the agony of restlessness which shook through her, directing and controlling her slender judgment like a perpetual and imperfectly subdued ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... days afterwards Mrs. and Mr. Farrow presented themselves at the vicarage. It was a lovely evening, and so clear that the outline of the constellations was obscured by the multitude of small stars, which usually are not seen, or seen but imperfectly. In the south was Jupiter, mild, magnificent, like a god amongst ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... returned that night, his face wore a look of satisfaction very imperfectly concealed ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... succeeded, as we human creatures commonly do, in supposing that we have destroyed an evil, when we have only changed its name. We have contrived to withdraw from the slave just that fiction of property relation which made it for the interest of some one to care for him a little, however imperfectly; and, having destroyed that, we turn him out defenseless to shift for himself in a community every member of which is embittered against him. The whole South resounds with the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive wrath ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on the shore—and all Farlingford was there by this time—only laughed curtly. Some of the women exchanged a glance and made imperfectly developed gestures, as of a tolerance understood between mothers for anything that is ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... tender romance of love and loss, pride and grief and peerless memorial, will not sometimes amidst enchanted recollections of Nala and Damayanti, Haroun Al Raschid and Zobeide, Shahriar and Scheherazade in his recurring thoughts allow a place for the imperfectly known but fascinating story of Shah Jehan and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... kinds of stuffs, both cotton and silk, of various colours, and that they understood Arabic; and adds, that they informed De Gama there were white people to the eastwards, who sailed in ships like those of the Portuguese. Osorius likewise says, that one of the natives spoke Arabic very imperfectly, and that De Gama left two of his convicts at this place, which he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... might be supposed characteristic of the Great Lakes having been mentioned to a Publisher, the latter obtained something like a pledge from the Author to carry out the design at some future day, which pledge is now tardily and imperfectly redeemed. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... assaults of the mountaineer; and they were subjected to a new and complicated species of discipline, well adapted, perhaps, to the use of regular troops, who could be rendered completely masters of it, but tending only to confuse the ranks of citizen soldiers, by whom it was rarely practised, and imperfectly understood. So much has been done in our own time in bringing back tactics to their first principles, and in getting rid of the pedantry of war, that it is easy for us to estimate the disadvantages under which ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... passed his hand repeatedly over his eyes, and again listened for the repetition of that voice, the identity of which he had as yet failed utterly to distinguish. The sounds were repeated, and the words grew more and more distinct. He now caught in part the tenor of the sentence, though imperfectly heard. It seemed to convey some warning of danger, and the person who spoke appeared, from the tremulous accents, to labor under many apprehensions. The voice proceeded with increased emphasis, advising his instant departure from the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of astonishment to themselves and to the Greeks. The copious energy of her language sinks under the efforts of the princess Anne: [76] the images of locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands of the sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly represent what she had seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius exclaims, that Europe was loosened from its foundations, and hurled against Asia. The ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the same doubt of a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to believe, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... he thanked him, and then with a careless air, under which he very imperfectly concealed ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away, and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt what I have thus imperfectly described?—if so, you can understand what our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were rarely dull, but Langerac was a simpleton. They were renowned for political experience, skill, familiarity with foreign languages, knowledge of literature, history, and public law; but he was ignorant, spoke French very imperfectly, at a court where not a human being could address him in his own tongue, had never been employed in diplomacy or in high office of any kind, and could carry but small personal weight at a post where of all others the representative of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... short the speech of the ex-coast-guard—as if he had fallen by the bullet—while no voice of Fabian was heard to make reply. A profound and frightful silence followed the last shot, which was broken only by the voice of the mock-bird, who appeared imperfectly to imitate the words that had been spoken, and then commenced chanting a plaintive song—as if mourning the death of those who had fallen by ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... for the poet, here is a land that is waiting for its singer. Such a singer Gordon was not. He remained thoroughly English, and the best that we can say of him is that he wrote imperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and wind-parched, is probably at the right inflammable point.—As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to think, might be but imperfectly paid,—he cannot make two words about his Images. The Wax-bust of Necker, the Wax-bust of D'Orleans, helpers of France: these, covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or after the manner of suppliants appealing to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a lad of fourteen, was not exactly an idiot, but what, in the old country, is very expressively termed by the poor people a "natural." He could feed and assist himself, had been taught imperfectly to read and write, and could go to and from the town on errands, and carry a message from one farm-house to another; but he was a strange, wayward creature, and evidently inherited, in no small degree, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... enumerated in the census,[9] 21.5 per cent were reported able to speak well; 15.8 per cent imperfectly; and 62.7 per cent not at all. In other words, somewhat over a third of the deaf can speak more or less, one-fifth being able to speak well, and one-sixth imperfectly, while over three-fifths do not speak at all. The dependence ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... of Khanyunis is formed by two streets lined with wretched Turkish shops, with mud or clay projections for seats. The doors are made to flap upward, but they close imperfectly; the roofs are, as usual, made of the Artemisia shrub. The goods exposed in these shops come for the most part from Gaza and Jaffa; but the caps of camel's hair and of cotton, as well as the white and black Syrian mantles, are made by the villagers ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... a country very imperfectly known in Europe. The Portugueze, from political motives, have been sparing in their accounts of it. Whence our descriptions of it, in the geographical publications in England, are drawn, I know not: that they are miserably erroneous ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... that Nancy—with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience—should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... his paper in the last number of the Contemporary,[122] that he considers the Christian life itself virtually impossible, may I recommend his examination of the manners of the Pre-Christian? For I can certify him that this important subject, of which he has only himself imperfectly investigated one side, had been thoroughly investigated on all sides, at least seven hundred years before Christ; and from that day to this, all men of wit, sense, and feeling have held precisely the same views on the subjects of economy and charity, in all nations under the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... an harangue consisting of an incoherent arrangement of imperfectly-remembered facts and misunderstood principles; all gleaned by his Highness from the enlightening articles of the Reisenburg journals. Like Brutus, the Prince of Little ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... never be a refined judge; never what the comic poet calls elegans formarum spectator. The excellence and force of a composition must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect on the minds of any, except we know the temper and character of those minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts are but in a very low and imperfect state. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... range of topics, and the thread which binds them more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly expressed in the title "The Evolution ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... areas alone there are 1258 forms of life which occur nowhere else upon the globe—not to speak of the peculiar aquatic species, nor of the presumably large number of peculiar species of all kinds not hitherto discovered in these imperfectly explored regions. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... joy is, that we read outwardly, spelling by parts imperfectly, in our own and others' mortal experience; there is the content of homes, the beauty of love, the delight of friendship,—not shut in to any one or two, but making the common air that all souls breathe. No one ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the former Campanian, southern Picentine, and Bruttian communities, that had been in alliance with Hannibal,(25) belonged. To these were added the Celtic tribes tolerated on the south side of the Alps, whose position in relation to the Italian confederacy is indeed only known imperfectly, but is sufficiently characterized as inferior by the clause embodied in their treaties of alliance with Rome, that no member of these communities should ever be allowed to acquire ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of ten ships, under the command of Admiral Byng, was sent out to the Mediterranean. With his squadron but imperfectly manned, he sailed from Spithead on the 7th of April. When off Minorca, then held by the English, and besieged by the Spaniards, a French fleet appeared in sight. The next day, the weather being hazy, the French fleet was not seen till noon, when Admiral Byng threw out an order to ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... who have sense and strength to assert their own place and supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation, like Turner and Blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'Liber Studiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect, carrying it forward to what it is,—monumental, nevertheless, in landscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic series of designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's work but coarsely ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... inflamed with resentment, not because so many people were guillotined every day, but because the objects of his own enmity were not among them. He was chagrined at the miscarriage of his scheme; but the chagrin had its root in his desire for order, and not in his humanity. A good man—say so imperfectly good a man as Danton—could not have endured life, after enacting such a law, and seeing the ghastly work that it was doing. He could hardly have contented himself with drawing tears from the company in Madame Duplay's little parlour, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... a quiet and well-ordered family seated at their evening meal, after dark, of a somewhat gloomy day, the apartment imperfectly lighted by the glowing fire, and according to such conveniences for the purpose as old times ordinarily afforded; the conversation, perhaps, turning on such unexciting topics as the weather, past, present, and to come, or the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... can do no harm; the addition is homogeneous and chemically combines with the grape-juice; but when potato-spirit and cane-rum are substituted for alcohol distilled from wine, the result is bad. The vintage is rarely ripened by time, whose unrivalled work is imperfectly done in the estufa or flue-stove, the old fumarium, or in the sertio (apotheca), an attic whose glass roofing admits the sun. The voyage to the East Indies was a clumsy contrivance for the same purpose; ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... mind, though no women appeared. Several stragglers looked at me, as they passed by, one after another, and at last one of them stopped to examine me. I told him as well as I could, for I spoke German very imperfectly, that I was a British officer, and had been plundered already; he did not desist, however, and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... structure built upon it, as above described in the case of the Iroquois, seem to have existed all over ancient North America, with agreement in fundamental characteristics and variation in details and degree of development. There are many corners as yet imperfectly explored, but hitherto, in so far as research has been rewarded with information, it all points in the same general direction. Among the tribes above enumerated as either in savagery or in the lower status of barbarism, so far as they have been studied, there seems ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... what I did, heard what I said, read what I thought, punishing me for everything amiss, while I could reach Him only by the uncertain telephony of what I understood as prayer. Even then my telephone worked imperfectly. Either the help I implored wasn't good for me, or my voice couldn't ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... now referred to. It tells the story of a period of humiliation and distress, concerning which it is easy to understand that even in the days of his fame and prosperity Crabbe may well have refrained from speaking with his children. After relating in full his early struggles as an imperfectly qualified country doctor, and his subsequent fortunes in London up to the day of his appeal to Burke, Crabbe proceeds—"It will perhaps be asked how I could live near twelve months a stranger in London; and coming without money, it is not to be supposed I was immediately credited. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... its Treaty aspect in a recent speech. He lays emphasis on the fact that the full significance of the German dye industry was not realised during the war. Referring to its chameleon-like nature in peace and war, Lord Moulton says: "All this was imperfectly present to my mind throughout the war, and I was aware of the gravity of the matter, but until I learnt what had passed in Germany I could not appreciate it fully. I have spoken to you of the extent to which the Germans turned their chemical works ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... always took possession of the far end of the platform, and was so savage when any one approached thyt even Belle was afraid of him. His wife, for a wonder, was a slattern German, and she spoke English very imperfectly. With her several small children she lived in a chaotic way, keeping up a perpetual whining and fault-fnding, half under her breath from fear of her irascible husband, that was like a "continual dropping on a very rainy ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... mingled astonishment, awestruck wonder, and delight, immediately followed by a perfectly deafening clamour of exclamations and laughter from at least fifty women—if their number might be gauged by the volume of sound that they created—amid which might be imperfectly caught, at intervals, the deep tones of Lomalindela's voice, raised apparently in remonstrance, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... no need for me to attempt to set out, however imperfectly, any statement of the evil case of the sufferers what we wish to help. For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of the "Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with pictures of "Horrible Glasgow," and the like. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... columns of The Live Stock Journal on the nature and history of the great Irish Wolfhound. The chief disputants in the discussion were Captain G. A. Graham, of Dursley, Mr. G. W. Hickman, Mr. F. Adcock, and the Rev. M. B. Wynn, and the main point as issue was whether the dog then imperfectly known as the Irish Wolfdog was a true descendant of the ancient Canis graius Hibernicus, or whether it was a mere manufactured mongrel, owing its origin to an admixture of the Great Dane and the dog of the Pyrenees, modified and brought to type by a cross with the Highland ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... thereof before the Fifteen at Edinburgh, yea, even to the House of Lords at London; so I gave the offending parties notice, as well as those who, from motives of personal friendship, might be disposed to overlook the insult that had been given to the constituted authority of the king, so imperfectly represented in my person, as it would seem, by the audacious conflict and misdemeanour ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... well as I do how imperfectly my task has been performed, nor the difficulties with which it has been surrounded, and there are one or two matters of which I should like to unburden myself to the reader. He will probably enquire why I have put the cart before the horse, giving a sketch of the present ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... the Mexican. "No shoota!" And then he continued to talk in Spanish, which Dan and his friend understood, but imperfectly. ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... by myself. But the leading function of both must be supposed this—not to tell you any thing absolutely new, that was done by the actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own lurking thoughts—hidden for the moment or imperfectly developed, and to place before you, in immediate connexion with groups vanishing too quickly for any effort of meditation on your own part, such commentaries, prophetic or looking back, pointing the moral or deciphering the mystery, justifying Providence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... design, as its title implies, and as is stated indeed by the author in his preface, is to elucidate the influence of intellect and passion upon the health and endurance of the human organization; an influence which has been but imperfectly understood and appreciated in its character and importance, by mankind at large. The volume under notice is divided into two parts. Under the first are considered the intellectual operations in respect ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... what kind of thing the church is, and never enter it but for the purpose of committing sacrilege. They do not know the prayers; for I examined them myself, males and females, and they knew them not, or if any, very imperfectly. They never partake of the Holy Sacraments, and though they marry relations they procure no dispensations. (35) No one knows whether they are baptized. One of the five whom I caused to be hung a few days ago ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... determination to make the best of their situation, but there was a general feeling among them that the Government had not acted fairly by them in not sending help. It was evident that the Indian and British Governments were imperfectly informed as to the strength of the enemy's forces and of the means whereby they could fill up the ranks when depleted by battle. This is the only explanation or excuse that could be made. At no time ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... flies to arms to secure the precious privilege of owning and entertaining its knowledge and its national advantages. And in proportion as any war has ever been leavened with the fine excitement of religion or humanity, however imperfectly, and though tyrannized over by political selfishness, we can see that the honest feeling has done something to obliterate the traces of violence, to offer the comfort of worth in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... of charm. But this is not the case with 'Hudibras.' Its merits are obvious. That they should have appealed to a generation sick of the reign of the "Saints" is precisely what we should have expected. But to us, who are not sick of the reign of the Saints, they appeal but imperfectly. The attempt to reproduce artificially the frame of mind of those who first read the poem is not only an effort, but is to most people, at all events, an unsuccessful effort. What is true of 'Hudibras' is true also, though in an inconceivably smaller degree, of those great works of imagination ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... whole tenor of his descriptions, where he throws himself back, as it were, into the feelings peculiar to Indian life. And, indeed, after hearing at a council the broken fragments of an Indian harangue, however imperfectly rendered by an ignorant interpreter, or reading the few specimens of Indian oratory which have been preserved by translation, no one can fail to remark a perpetual and earnest reference to the power and goodness of the Deity. "Brothers! we all belong to one family; ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Men are not permitted to deal with their fellow-creatures in these methods. Cinna and the tribunes fled, but fled only to be received with open arms by the Italians. The wounds of the Social war were scarcely cicatrized, and the peace had left the allies imperfectly satisfied. Their dispersed armies gathered again about Cinna and Sertorius. Old Marius, who had been hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen again; and six thousand of his veterans flocked ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... either fabulous or extinct, which are at once its melancholy trophies and its physiological attesters. And it is from Senor Velasquez alone that the public can receive any further intelligence upon this ardently interesting subject, beyond that which his manuscript imperfectly affords. ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... on leaving, was so little satisfied with my copy that I had not the heart to say anything about it. But, after an interval, and a little more work upon it, I begin to think that, after all, when in town, it perhaps may remind you imperfectly of the fresh skies and blue waters left out of town. So I return to my original intention, and herewith send you the little drawing for your acceptance. With best remembrance to Mrs. and Miss Reeve, yours ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... confined himself to one or two characters. A zeal to preserve the memory of great men, and to extend the influence of such noble examples, made me undertake more than I could accomplish in the first degree of perfection; but surely the characters of my illustrious men are not so imperfectly sketched that they will not stand forth to all ages as patterns of virtue and incitements to glory. My reflections are allowed to be deep and sagacious; and what can be more useful to a reader than a wise man's judgment on a great man's conduct? In my writings you ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... bursted, &c. (Vol. ii., p. 505.).—The general effect of melancholy: digestion is imperfectly performed, and melancholy patients generally complain of being "blown up." BODVAR'S "blowing up," on the contrary, is the mere effect of the generation of gases in a dead body, well illustrated by a floating ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... form any opinion on these questions, without some preliminary acquaintance with the range of variation exhibited by human structure in general—a subject which has been but imperfectly studied, while even of what is known, my limits will necessarily allow me to give ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley
... shadowy into the silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst. Without warning was I wrested from my place, hurled onto the stage, and before my dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found myself enmeshed in intolerable drama. I was unprepared. I knew my part imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage. I came to Verona and find I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... was one of uncommon difficulty; one of the most abstruse and difficult which antiquity presents to us; the information to be obtained concerning it must be collected from a vast number of incidental passages, observations and assertions scattered through antient authors, who being themselves but imperfectly acquainted with their subject, it is next to impossible to reconcile. This, however, our author has attempted; and though, in doing this, the exuberances of fancy and imagination are conspicuous, and some may ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... proposal of her faithful guide; but, somewhat to his surprise, said nothing further on the subject, which left Wayland under the disagreeable uncertainty whether or no she had formed any plan for her own future proceedings, as he knew her situation demanded circumspection, although he was but imperfectly acquainted with all its peculiarities. Concluding, however, that she must have friends within the castle, whose advice and assistance she could safely trust, he supposed his task would be best accomplished by conducting her ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... word he turned and rode back, while the serf strode off towards the chateau. During this conversation, which the boys imperfectly understood, they had difficulty in restraining the count's faithful retainer, who, furious at hearing the details of the plot against his master, would have leaped up to attack the speakers, had not the boys kept their restraining hands ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... and others, all the territory running southwest from Narragansett river, to the distance of one hundred and twenty miles along the coast, and reaching back, through the whole breadth of the country, from the Western Ocean to the South Sea. The geography of these regions was then very imperfectly known. No one had any conception of the vast distance between the Atlantic Ocean and the shores of the Pacific. The trading post, which the Dutch had established on the Connecticut, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... of the street-lamps had very imperfectly revealed the person of Jem Mace. Now that Mrs Butt saw him slouching in all his native hideousness against her mantelpiece in the full blaze of a paraffin lamp, she inwardly congratulated herself that Mr Brooke was such a big strong man—almost a ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... been the cry for some time that Schools of Art turned out only academic students. And one certainly associates a dead level of respectable mediocrity with much school work. We can call to mind a lot of dull, lifeless, highly-finished work, imperfectly perfect, that has won the prize in many a school competition. Flaubert says "a form deadens," and it does seem as if the necessary formality of a school course had some deadening influence on students; and that there was some important part of the artist's development which it has ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... from God alone; for no man ever can bestow faith upon himself. Here, then, the light of faith and the Light of glory resemble each other, inasmuch as they both come immediately from God, and elevate man above himself. But they vastly differ in intensity; for by faith we see God imperfectly and unsatisfactorily, whereas by the Light of glory we see God as he is in himself. Faith, therefore, is as the first faint blush of the morning, while the Light of glory is as the sun shining ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... Anthropology, which, to complete its fulness, requires only the study of the soul as an entity distinct from the brain, and of the body as an anatomical and physiological apparatus. The latter had already been well accomplished by the medical profession, and the former very imperfectly by spiritual psychologists. But neither the physiology, nor the pneumatology had been placed in organic connection with the central ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... whiskers" was the burden of them, and this was indeed the chief trophy, the chief spoil of war which the average soldier pictured for himself. It was strange to think that this army of Liliput which tramped and cried down there conceived its mission so vaguely and imperfectly that ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... be imagined that this undertaking is a thing unreasonable in its nature; or that it is a work necessarily beset with any unsurmountable difficulty; for, however imperfectly we may fulfill this end proposed, yet, so far as it is to natural causes that are to be ascribed the operations of former time, and so far as, from the present state of things, or knowledge of natural history, we have it in our power to ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... and not only seemed but was, quite a different being, inspired with energy, and quickness, and presence of mind: she forgot herself, and her illness, and her prudery, and her love, and every other consideration, in the sense of her mother's danger. Lady Glistonbury had but imperfectly recovered her recollection. At one moment she smiled on Vivian, and tried to stretch out her hand to him, as she saw him standing beside Lady Sarah. But when he approached Lady Glistonbury, and spoke to her, she seemed to have some painful recollection, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of an imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know, and that from his own lips, tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a 'tight place,' he went ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Shellu, Kushshu, Hulukku, and Zinu seem to be Semitic; at any rate they occur frequently, or in cognate forms, well known among the Assyrians and Babylonians. The others are all very unfamiliar. We are as yet so imperfectly acquainted with the onomastics of the nations surrounding the Semites that it is hazardous to attempt to locate these people. Supposing them to be all of one race, they may belong to a colony settled near Sippara, but the whole style of the language is so unlike ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... longed for, then, never to be found? Yes! it has been found, though perhaps but seldom, and somewhat imperfectly. That is a state of rest for the soul when all man's powers work harmoniously together, none conflicting with another, none hindering another. This rest is complete when every special power in man's nature is active, and works towards some noble end, free ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... a beginning of utter poverty. But in his last years he came to a sense of its worthlessness, such as few men who have made their money ever have. He was a common man, in a great many ways; he was imperfectly educated, and he was ungrammatical, and he never was at home in society; but he had a tender heart and an honest nature, and I revere his memory, as no one would believe I could without knowing ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... to acquire from France the city of New Orleans and the Floridas, of which he believed France either then was, or was about to become, the actual owner. Indeed, the treaty by which France had acquired Louisiana was but imperfectly understood; and, in the slowness and difficulty of communication, Mr. Madison could not accurately know the full extent of the cession made at San Ildefonso. But Mr. Jefferson did not wait to learn the exact provisions ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 30 seconds, is a projection which, at Mr. Cunningham's request, was called after Mr. William Anderson of the apothecaries' garden at Chelsea. The coast to the northward of Point Anderson is higher than to the southward and falls back to the North-East, but was very imperfectly seen on account of the thick haze that enveloped it. At a quarter before seven o'clock we hauled to the wind for the night with a fresh gale ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... supposed that the Penobscot flowed from a lake into which streams flowed from both the objective points, viz. St. Croix and Quebec: but this was a mistake not at all unnatural, as he had never been over the ground, and obtained his information from the Indians, whose language he imperfectly understood. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... government is endeavoring to lessen the influence of the curas, in order to strengthen the civil authorities; but that will be only very imperfectly accomplished, however, unless the tenure of office of the alcaldes be lengthened, and the office be so assigned that the alcaldes will have no temptation to make money on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... main ends of government, which are the security of the subjects and the improvement of the nation, the latter has never been seriously attempted, scarcely indeed taken into consideration; and the former imperfectly attained. ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... responsibilities attached to the command of an expedition of exploration;—the incessant toil, the sleepless hours, the anxious thoughts that necessarily fall to the share of the leader of a party under circumstances of difficulty or danger, are but imperfectly understood and less appreciated by the world at large. Accustomed to judge of undertakings only by their results, they are frequently as unjust in their censure as they are excessive in their approval. The traveller who discovers a rich and well watered ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... miles off and bore South, the shores fall back and form two bays; the land was however so enveloped by the smoke of the natives' fires that the greater part was very indistinctly seen and therefore very imperfectly described. After dark a light breeze sprang up from the South-West, and we stood off shore; but not being able to find an anchorage we continued ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... comparisons which, in their songs, make our natural companion in turn a rose, a violet, a tulip, or something of that order. The need of tenderness which seizes us at dusk, when the evening mist begins to roll in from the hills, and when all the perfumes of the earth intoxicate us, is but imperfectly satisfied by lyric invocations. Monsieur Patissot, like all others, was seized with a wild desire for tenderness, for sweet kisses exchanged along a path where sunshine steals in at times, for the pressure of a pair of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, his words produce absolutely no effect upon us in comparison, whereas the very fragments of you and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes within hearing of them. And if I were not afraid that you think me drunk, I would have sworn to as well as spoken of the influence which they have always and still have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... to him that he should go to some other place in the mine. The poisonous gases must still be entering through the crevices of his imperfectly built and rudely plastered wall, and it would be wise for him to get farther away. His oil had nearly burned out again, and he refilled his lamp from the can. Then he arose and went ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... engaged for me in the country, where I spent a few days in learning French, &c. In taking a retrospect of our long journey I feel a large degree of peaceful satisfaction in having been desirous to fulfil (though very imperfectly) a religious duty; and these feelings of gratitude excited a wish that the remainder of my few days might be more faithfully devoted to the service of ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not be upset so easily—no, it cannot be the war; so I must try and think what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five o'clock, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... less and less able to communicate that sympathy to his students. The difficulties are so great that it has taken me many years even to partly guess how great they are. That they can be removed at the present day is utterly out of the question. But something may be gained by stating them even imperfectly. At the risk of making blunders and uttering extravagances, I shall make the attempt. I am impelled to do so by a recent conversation with one of the cleverest students that I ever had, who acknowledged his total inability to understand some of the commonest facts in Western life,—all those ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... had been visible from daybreak, and appears to be the top of the imperfectly formed Ile de Remarque of D'Entrecasteaux's chart. and from it I measured with a sextant the angles of most of the other objects. The long reef of rocks called La Chaussee (The Causeway) was four or five miles distant to the southward; and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... duties. He presented some petitions on the 1st of February, and spoke at some length about the Famine on the 8th; his speech, the last he ever made, occupying about one hundred lines of a newspaper column. He was imperfectly heard. One report says, "Mr. O'Connell rose, but spoke very indistinctly, and directed his voice very much to the lower part of the house." The opening remark in Hansard is,—"Mr. O'Connell was understood to say." He was very ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... will be remembered, was but imperfectly appreciated by Homer's contemporaries. Milton's "Paradise Lost" was so lightly regarded when first written, that the author received but twenty-five pounds for it. Ben Jonson was for some time blind to ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... In person, or by means of his lieutenants, he successfully reduced the nations, tribes, or hordes of Tartary or Scythia, from China to the Volga, and established his undisputed authority over the whole pastoral world. He afterwards subjugated the five northern provinces of China, which were long imperfectly known under the name of Kathay; and successively reduced Carisme or Transoxiana, now great Bucharia, Chorassan, and Persia: and he died in 1227, after having exhorted and instructed his sons to persevere in the career of conquest, and more particularly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... this much: I was no longer dependent for music on the playing of others; from this time forth I used to try and play, albeit very imperfectly, everything I wanted to know. I also tried Mozart's Don Juan, but was unable to get any pleasure out of it, mainly because the Italian text in the arrangement for the piano placed the music in a frivolous light in my eyes, and much in it seemed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... crystalline lens lies, a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, giving way behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power of refraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or the microscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly, we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, with that perfect compound microscope and telescope invented by the Former of the human eye. Surely, in giving us an instrument so admirably fitted for observing ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... its precincts, at a little distance from the course of the stream, the towering and lordly castle to which it gave the name. The mist which continued to encumber the valley with its fleecy clouds, showed imperfectly the rude fortifications which served to defend the small town of Douglas, which was strong enough to repel a desultory attack, but not to withstand what was called in those days a formal siege. The most striking feature was its church, an ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... been seen that seem to have been constructed with this object in view, for a slight pole, of the same kind as those used in the lintels, is built into the masonry of the jambs a few inches below the lintel proper. Openings imperfectly closed against the cold and wind were naturally placed in the lee walls to avoid the prevailing southwest winds, and the ground plans of the exposed mesa villages were undoubtedly influenced by this circumstance, the tendency being to change them ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... having a French newspaper, the 'Siecle,' left with us every evening. Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship, which is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears very imperfectly, I am delighted to find him at all, and shall dun the bookseller for the 'Instruction criminelle,' which I hope discharges your Lucien as a 'forcat'—neither man nor woman—and true poet, least ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... one of two equal parts, is much used in composition; and, often, merely to denote imperfection: as, half-sighted, seeing imperfectly. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... I had restored peace to the country, I thought that it would be advisable to reform the constitution. I had some slight difficulty in comprehending its principles, especially as I only as yet imperfectly understood the language. My notions were, however, so opposed by the sages of the country, and so great was the commotion created, that it was with no slight satisfaction I saw the Lady Stiggins approaching ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... woman might be dazzled by the light, the youngest of the heirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood near that bed so that the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the deathbed, from which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like a figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of tarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a crackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber, where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolled from the fire ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... vacuum created by the change of volume in the aqueous vapour of the cloud, regard only the perfect conductors prepared to receive it, however deeply they may be concealed beneath the surface of the non-conducting or imperfectly-conducting soil and vegetable surface? If it were not so, would not the stroke always affect the higher objects, or prefer palpable conductors in moderately elevated sites? In this instance 200 degrees of the horizon were more elevated than the place attacked, while the destruction proves ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... are to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown away upon the stupid vulgar gaze; no 'graces snatched beyond the reach of art'; nothing but what the merest pretender may note down in good set terms in his common-place book, just as it is before him. Place one of these half-informed, imperfectly organised spectators before a tall canvas with groups on groups of figures, of the size of life, and engaged in a complicated action, of which they know the name and all the particulars, and there are no bounds to their burst of involuntary ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of some affairs of their own, from which Miss Milray returned to Clementina with the ache of an imperfectly satisfied intention. If she had meant to urge her brother to seek justice for the girl from Mrs. Lander, she was not so well pleased to have found justice done already. But the will had been duly signed and witnessed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... longer in Amsterdam. Harlem had fallen; Alkmaar was relieved; and Leyden—destined in its second siege to furnish so signal a chapter to the history of the war—was beleaguered, it was true, but, because known to be imperfectly supplied, was to be reduced by blockade rather than by active operations. Don Francis Valdez was accordingly left in command of the siege, which, however, after no memorable occurrences, was raised, as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... consequences of every such institution and are the ingenious and elaborate work of men, who, with almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... "Recently I read that imperfectly developed ovaries might be a reason why some women do not have children. I have the symptoms which the article said indicated imperfect development. Does this necessarily mean that I never can have a baby? I seem to be healthy. I am twenty-one years old. I was ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... Wendover's antecedents; that the man who had nursed those sick children could forgive Mile End. All in all as they were to each other, she felt for the first time that she often understood her husband imperfectly. His mobility, his eagerness, were sometimes now a perplexity, even ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... But imperfectly, indeed, have I described the splendid manuscript which is now lying, in all its charms, before me. And as I mark its fine old illuminations, so bright in color, and so chaste in execution, the accuracy of its transcription, and the uniform beauty of its calligraphy, ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... These lineaments, however imperfectly drawn, may help the reader's imagination to conceive what sort of persons those were, who had the boldness to encounter the Queen and ministry, at the head of a great majority of the landed interest; and this upon a point where the quiet of Her Majesty's reign, the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... withdrew, to confer with Toast on the subject, and Captain Truck proceeded to give his orders for the night to Mr. Leach. The proud ship did indeed present a sight to make a seaman melancholy; for to the only regular sail that stood, the foresail, by this time was added a lower studding-sail, imperfectly rigged, and which would not resist a fresh puff, while a very inartificial jury-topmast supported a topgallant-sail, that could only be carried in a free wind. Aft, preparations were making of a more permanent nature, it is true. The upper part of the mainmast had been cut away, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the voyage there occurred an accident which, from our point of view, must be regarded as the most fortunate incident of the voyage. The tender, very imperfectly victualled, parted company in a thick shower of rain. At this date Fiji, the most important group in the South Pacific, was practically unknown. Tasman had sighted its north-eastern extremity: Cook ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... entire concord among all intelligent Englishmen as at this conjuncture: and never had concord been more needed. Legitimate authority there was none. All those evil passions which it is the office of government to restrain, and which the best governments restrain but imperfectly, were on a sudden emancipated from control; avarice, licentiousness, revenge, the hatred of sect to sect, the hatred of nation to nation. On such occasions it will ever be found that the human vermin which, neglected by ministers of state ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... drawn therein, a broken tin soldier, some Hong-Kong coppers with holes in them, and a quantity of little cogged wheels from the inside of a watch; while a further search was rewarded by an irregular lump of toffee imperfectly ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Though I perchance am vicious in my guess, As, I confess, it is my nature's plague To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy Shape faults that are not,—that your wisdom yet, From one that so imperfectly conceits, Would take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble Out of his scattering and unsure observance:— It were not for your quiet nor your good, Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom, To let you know ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... will afterwards speak at more length; they are curiously—often barbarously—much by Providence,—but assuredly not without Shakspeare's cunning purpose—mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly adopted, and languages which he imperfectly knew. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed. Desdemona, "[Greek: dysdaimonia]," "miserable fortune," is also plain enough. Othello is, I believe, "the careful;" all the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently collected ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin |
