"Inexact" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... born. Habits of the expensive King, hours of rising, modes of dressing, and so forth, are to be found in Pollnitz; [Pollnitz, Memoiren zur Lebens-und Regierungs-Geschichte der Vier letzten Regenten des Preussischen Staats (Berlin, 1791). A vague, inexact, but not quite uninstructive or uninteresting Book: Printed also in FRENCH, which was the Original, same place and time.] but we charitably omit them all. Even from foolish Pollnitz a good eye will gather, what was above intimated, that this feeble-backed, heavy-laden old King was of humane ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... say, in reply, first of all, that the proposed system tends to prevent those abuses which have been hitherto regarded as incapable of prevention; but, the calculations of our statistics, inexact as they are, have invariably pointed out a widely prevailing social sore, and our moralists may, therefore, be accused of preferring the greater to the lesser evil, the violation of the principle on which society is constituted, to the granting of a certain liberty to girls; and dissoluteness in ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... me; and this spoiled the joy of life for me. This was probably the reason why I particularly delighted in the opposite of this in other people; namely, directness of egoism. That is what I especially loved in Seryozha, though the word 'loved' is inexact. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... that our fond dreams are on that account shattered is inexact, and is the sort of language which ought to be addressed to the promoters of intelligence through public meetings and a commendable interest in politics, when they fail in their designs, and not to us. For we are fond stickers to no machinery, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... its reliance on the correctness of its own views can be permitted without a total forgetfulness of self-respect. In the sentence quoted from M. Serurier's letter no exception is taken to the assertion that the complaints of this Government are founded upon allegations entirely inexact, nor upon that which declares the explanations given here or in Paris appeared, not to have left even the possibility of a misunderstanding on such delicate points. The correctness of these assertions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... inexact, if ferment cells did require for their growth or for their increase in number or weight, as all other vegetable cells do, the presence of oxygen, whether gaseous or held in solution in liquids, this new theory would lose all value, its very raison d'etre would be gone, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... possible to suppose this with the inexact heathen definition of good; but with the clear Christian definition of good and evil, it is ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... be said, are incomplete and inexact to a degree that will shock any person with a scientific knowledge of Polish pronunciation. In the present instance brevity seemed of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... was not applied to other things;[18] it grew obsolete with that which it had helped to make popular. Some of the material—Huon of Bordeaux, the Four Sons of Aymon, and others—retained a certain vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to. But the chanson de geste itself was never, so to speak, "half-known"—except to a very few antiquaries. After its three centuries of flourishing, first alone, then with ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Inexact phrasing throughout: Health is first in every line of activity. A man who has it does not hold it with enough respect, and make efforts enough to ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... observant of men in all matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out of the old ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... strong a statement, and Morga's knowledge is inexact, as Magalhaes had sailed the eastern seas while in the ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... may be omitted, as tautological[15] in English. Cf. our inexact idiom 'he promised to come' (Lat. 'that ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... become his play, and so was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of the little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in the inexact language of the old. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... intelligence which they consider superior to their own. Reading nothing except what pertained to their career, they used to speak with consternation of the numerous books that filled Ferragut's stateroom, many of them upon matters which appeared to them most mysterious. Some even made inexact statements in order to enlarge the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that, while Washington achieved a great victory in the ratification of the Jay Treaty, that event broke up the Federalist Party. That is probably inexact, but the break-up of the Federalist Party was taking place during the last years of Washington's second administration. The changes in Washington's Cabinet were most significant, especially as they nearly all ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... was something theatrical in the delivery of Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... that she preened herself; the word is inexact. She rather stood bathing in the light, motionless but for the lifting of her face into it that she might dip, or for the bending of her head that the warmth behind her might strike upon the nape of her neck. Those were all her movements, slowly rehearsed, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... by the gentle uncomplainingness with which she waited upon Theodora, for whose existence she regarded herself as entirely to blame. Had she not, without consulting her parents, applied to high heaven for an increase in live stock, and was not the answer to this application, however inexact, manifestly ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... chief of the inexact sciences!" interrupted Denoisel, who delighted in muddling M. Bourjot's brain with paradoxes. "But I grant that," he went on. "I grant that the lives of the people have been prolonged, and that they eat more meat ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... motion will be accurately contrasted with the theories of occult powers which are at present cherished by the Universities and Royal Associations throughout Europe".—220. Churchyard: St. Giles churchyard where Capt. Borrow was buried on the 4th of March previous.—220. A New Mayor: Inexact. Robert Hawkes was mayor of Norwich in 1822. Therefore he was now ex-mayor—220. Man with a Hump: Thomas Osborn Springfield, was not a watchmaker so far as is known in Norwich, but "carried on the wholesale silk business, having ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the universe more lovely by expressing in poetry his acute and subtle sense of its beauties—by lavishing on it (as we say) 'the colours of his imagination,' He was then an 'individual mind'—according to the current, but (as Shelley held) inexact terminology. He has now, by death, wholly passed out of the class of individual minds; and he forms a portion of the Universal Mind (the 'One Spirit') which is the animation of ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... and wounded, twelve, must have been largely by grapeshot or musketry. The British had twenty-one men hurt. It has been said that this difference in loss is nearly proportionate to the difference in force. This is obviously inexact; for the "Enterprise" was superior in gun power by twelve per cent, while the "Boxer's" loss was greater by seventy-five per cent. Moreover, if the statement of crews be accurate, that the "Enterprise" had one hundred and twenty ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... which responds to a special sense, peculiar to the human race. This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but that is an inexact term, for esthetic sense signifies a sense of the beautiful and what is esthetic is not necessarily beautiful. Sense of style ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... 7.45. In the meantime it had grown dark. The range finders on the Scharnhorst used the fire on the Monmouth as a guide for a time, though eventually all range finding, aiming and observations became so inexact that fire was stopped at 7.26. At 7.23 a column of fire from an explosion was noticed between the stacks of the Good Hope. The Monmouth apparently stopped firing at 7.20. The small cruisers, including the Nuremburg, received by wireless at 7.30 the order to follow the enemy and to attack his ships ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... his seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they would be sent on the rounds of the other English-speaking residents of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the great railway centres, certain early taverns inaugurate the business of the day. It was into one of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming companion disappear. To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment behind him. Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace enchantress. She had scarce been gone a second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... "On the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon," and his methods to measure the apparent diameters of the sun and moon, are considered sound by modern astronomers, [Footnote: Lewis, p. 193.] but inexact owing to defective instruments. He estimated the diameter of the sun at the seven hundred and twentieth part of the circumference of the circle, which it describes in its diurnal revolution, which is not far from the truth; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord |
