"Precise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was aged enough to be called "venerable." How old was he—for he died suddenly last September at his home somewhere in southeastern Europe? I don't know. His grandson, a man already well advanced in years, wouldn't or couldn't give me any precise information, but, considering that he was an intimate of the early Liszt, I should say that Old Fogy was born in the years 1809 or 1810. No one will ever dispute these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... extremely systematic and precise in all his transactions. Method ruled in every department of his store, and for every delinquency a penalty was rigidly enforced. His eye was upon his business in all its various branches; he mastered every ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... "Not those precise cases, perhaps," he said; "but cases very like them—cases not a whit less ridiculous. And can you wonder that Germany finds Alsace and Lorraine restless? Do you wonder that our hearts ache for our compatriots? Do you wonder that we dream of the day when we may remove those mourning wreaths ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... The little man was really one arshin high, and his beard was seven arshins long. An arshin is 0.77 of a yard, so any one who knows decimals can tell exactly how high the little man was and the precise length of ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... in every two years, in the Michaelmas Term, a fresh selection and distribution shall be held of every book which is not chained in the Library—the precise day to be fixed by the Master ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... limits of the right of selfdefence? All our jurists bold that a certain quantity of risk to life or limb justifies a man in shooting or stabbing an assailant: but they have long given up in despair the attempt to describe, in precise words, that quantity of risk. They only say that it must be, not a slight risk, but a risk such as would cause serious apprehension to a man of firm mind; and who will undertake to say what is the precise amount of apprehension which deserves to be called serious, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... see most of the merits and defects of his early poetry. It is a story which is hardly a story at all, told by comment, evasion, and recurrence, by 'little images, recollections, and circumstances of past pleasures' or distresses; with something vague and yet precise, like a dream partially remembered. Here and there is the creation of a mood and moment, almost like Coleridge's in the Ancient Mariner; but these flicker and go out. The style would be laughable in its simplicity if there were not ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... memory of a single detail of our stay in this welcome house of refuge, but the telling of what was moving and charming to me would, I fear, bore others. There was a ham, two indeed, and flitches beside, in the rack hanging from the ceiling, and there were eggs —three, to be precise—in the larder, to which, by equal good luck considering the time of the year, I added two more by a raid into the hen-house. It was all natural and simple enough, but Mistress Waynflete hailed their production almost as amazedly as if I had indeed drawn them out of my hat. But ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... The precise date of Wishart's return to Scotland is very doubtful. Knox, (supra, page 125,) places it in 1544, but joins this with an explanation which might carry it back to July 1543, and with the defeat of the Governor, which ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... in midst of the pupils he harried to brains awake, trod into union; lo, These are his Epic's tutored Dardans, yon that Rhapsode's Achaeans to know. Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the weaker's flashed device; Headless is offered a breast to beaks deliberate, formal, assured, precise. Ruled by the mathematician's hand, they solve their problem, as on a slate. This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly hazarded date. His helmeted ranks might be draggers of pools or reapers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... negotiations were first cautiously opened with the Guards, and they readily acceded to the proposals made to them. A committee of three persons was appointed to draw up the address to Sophia, and the precise details of the movements which were to take place on the arrival of the Guards at the gates of Moscow were all arranged. The Guards, of course, required some pretext for leaving their posts and coming toward the city, independent ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... mournful story from the wife's lips only; the husband never speaks, and is but once present. All we actually see are the moods of nine separate days—spread over what precise period of time we are not clearly shown, but it was certainly a year. These nine revealings show us every stage from the first faint pang of apprehension to the accepted woe; then the battle with that—the hope that love may yet prevail; ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... as well as lightness of a bridge of this material, compared with one of stone and lime, is of great moment where headway is ofimportance, or the difficulties of defective foundations have to be encountered. The metal can be moulded in such precise forms and so accurately fitted together as to give to the arching the greatest possible rigidity; while it defies the destructive influences of time and atmospheric corrosion with nearly as much certainty ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Constitution itself. I remember [he means he has forgotten] a most captivating eulogium on its charms, by Lord Bolingbroke, where he recommends his readers to contemplate it in all its aspects, with the assurance that it would be found more estimable the more it was seen, I do not recollect his precise words, but I wish that men who write upon these subjects would take this for their model, instead of the political pamphlets, which, I am told, are now in circulation, [such, I suppose, as Rights of Man,] pamphlets which I have not read, and whose ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... describing his visits to the caves of the Brezon and the Valley of Reposoir. In order to explain the phenomena presented by those caves, M. Pictet adopted De Saussure's theory of the principle of caves-froides, rendering it somewhat more precise, and extending it to meet the case of ice-caves. It is well known that, in many parts of the world, cold currents are found to blow from the interstices of rocks; and these are utilised by neighbouring proprietors, who build sheds over the fissures, and so secure a cool place for keeping ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... "That's the precise bearing of the one you mean, Flix; but this isn't that one at all, at all," said the ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... public audience. Him shall I engage in business matters while you carry off your beloved. In this you cannot fail, for God, the Lord of the Universe, pitying and helping you, has long years ago prepared the precise means for the ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... in his supposition that both the lady of the feathers and the doctor would accept his invitation, but he did not understand the precise motive which prompted their acceptance. Nor did he much care to understand it. Cuckoo, Doctor Levillier! After all, what were they to him now? Spectators of his triumph. Interesting, therefore, to a certain extent, as an unpaying audience may be interesting to an ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... that every parent and teacher should have a distinct and clear conception of the true nature of punishment, and of the precise manner in which it is designed to act in repressing offenses. This is necessary in order that the punitive measures which he may employ may accomplish the desired good, and avoid the evils which so ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... were decided to vote against an amendment offering salvation to the four most loyalist counties, what would be their position if ultimately driven to take up arms? Except as to a matter of detail concerning the precise area proposed to be excluded from the Bill, would they not be told that they were fighting for what they might have had by legislation, and what they had deliberately refused to accept? And if they so acted, could they expect not to forfeit the support of the great ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... is an extraordinary fact that man in himself, so far as he avails himself of his sound mind, is the greatest and most precise physical apparatus that can be. And it is in fact the greatest evil of the newer physics that experiments are, as it were, separated from man himself, so that nature is recognised only in what is ascertained by artificial instruments. It is exactly so with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... understood that success in selling ideas is not achieved by going through a machine-like process. We follow a regular sequence in these chapters, but it is unlikely that you will ever complete a sale of your services by taking the various steps of the selling process in the precise order of ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... The precise words have escaped me, but the above is the substance of the sense, and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... after she had ridden backward a long way, and at last, within an hour of Leipsic, had got a seat confronting him. The darkness had now hidden the landscape, but the impression of its few simple elements lingered pleasantly in their sense: long levels, densely wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests, and checkered with fields of grain and grass, soaking under the thin rain that from time to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... difficult to understand what is the precise meaning of the expression twamrite. Literally it means without thee. Whether however, the speaker means that all the princes will meet with destruction except thee or that they will be destroyed without thy being present among them, or that such destruction will overtake them without thyself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... established for an indefinite period, would have offered no security for the early suppression of discontent; would have divided the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished; and would have envenomed hatred rather than have restored affection. Once established, no precise limit to their continuance was conceivable. They would have occasioned an incalculable and exhausting expense. * * * The powers of patronage and rule which would have been exercised, under the President, over a vast and populous and naturally wealthy region, are greater than, under a ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... are any who pant after independence is the greatest slander on the Province." Sparks, in a note entitled "American Independence," in the second volume of the Writings of Washington, remarks: "It is not easy to determine at what precise date the idea of independence was first entertained by the principal persons in America." Samuel Adams, after the events of the 19th of April, 1775, was prepared to advocate it. Members of the Provincial Congress of New Hampshire were of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Philo; the Latin writers rhetorical, practical, realistic; the Greek authors idealistic and fervent, apt to see deep moral significance in all human life. And this is really the manner and mental attitude of all the famous Latin fathers: of Lactantius, the clear, precise Ciceronian, whose every page shows the perennial value of the Latin tongue; of Tertullian, the subtle and acute rhetorician, more gifted with imagination than his fellows; of Arnobius, another Roman African, the reputed ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... received its permanent name, "Raso" and, although only the east coast of Newfoundland is named, there is no possibility of mistaking the easternmost point of Cape Breton. Just opposite (ex adverso) is laid down and named the island of Sam Joha, in latitude 46 deg., the precise latitude of Scatari Island. Here, then, in 1505, is in this island of St. John an independent testimony to the landfall of 1497—not off Cape North, which does not yet appear, nor inside the gulf, for it is not even indicated—but in the Atlantic Ocean, at the cape of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... lately to Maria Louisa. During her stay at Schonbrunn, her chatouille, with several things of value in it, bijouterie, etc., was stolen from her. She caused enquiries to be made, and researches to be set on foot. Nobody has been able to find out who took it; but it was put back in the precise place from whence it was taken, and not a single article of the bijouterie or things of value was missing. It is supposed this theft was made for political purposes, in order to discover the nature of her epistolary ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... normal results, for there is falsity at the very foundation of it. Compromise between the Church and State in such questions as, for instance, jurisdiction, is, to my thinking, impossible in any real sense. My clerical opponent maintains that the Church holds a precise and defined position in the State. I maintain, on the contrary, that the Church ought to include the whole State, and not simply to occupy a corner in it, and, if this is, for some reason, impossible at present, then it ought, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... disease, nor any disturbance of the functions may take place: but this has its limits, beyond which if the excitement be brought, on either side, it is evident that an uneasy or unpleasant exercise of the functions must take place. There is not, however, any precise line or boundary between this state, and that in which the functions begin to be disturbed; on the contrary, the law of continuity and gradation seems to extend throughout every part of nature. This departure from the healthy ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... at the precise moment when this thought rose to counteract the hope revived by the changed attitude of the men that Joan looked out to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between his lips, blue blotches on his white face, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... AT SANS-SOUCI. "This same day," April 17th, it appears, [Preuss: in OEuvres de Frederic, xxv. 328 n.] "the King saw Mirabeau, for the second and last time. Mirabeau had come to Berlin 19th January last; his errand not very precise,—except that he infinitely wanted employment, and that at Paris the Controller-General Calonne, since so famous among mankind, had evidently none to offer him there. He seems to have intended Russia, and employment ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to us a word that has no precise equivalent in our tongue, therefore we have accepted it, body unchanged—it is the word tempo, and means rate of movement, as measured by the time ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... beseech you, madame, with all submission, to call now to mind the commands you were pleased to honour me with a little before your departure from Paris, that I should give you a precise account of every circumstance and accident of my life, and conceal nothing. You see, by what I have already related, that my ecclesiastical occupations were diversified and relieved, though not disfigured, by other employments of a more diverting nature. I observed a decorum in all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Seekusten zu gebrauchen, printed in the town of Ulm, in the Holy Roman Empire, by Jonam Saurn, in 1629. Any one could construct a galley from the numerous plans and elevations and sections and finished views (some of which are here reproduced) in this interesting and precise work.[55] Furttenbach is an enthusiastic admirer of a ship's beauties, and he had seen all varieties; for his trade took him to Venice, where he had a galleasse,[56] and he had doubtless viewed many a Corsair fleet, since he could remember the battle of Lepanto and the death ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... scenery of her childhood, Marcella did not yet adequately know, though she had some theories and many suspicions in the background of her mind. But at any rate this first image of memory was succeeded by another precise as the first was vague—the image of a tall white house, set against a white chalk cliff rising in terraces behind it and alongside it, where she had spent the years from nine to fourteen, and where, if she were set down blindfold, now, at twenty-one, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seemed capable of speech. Tallente's cool, precise manner of telling his story seemed to have an almost paralysing ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... big centrifugal bilge pump. "I had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I've used you for that more than once. I forget the precise number in thousands of gallons which I am guaranteed to pump in an hour; but I assure you, my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. By my biggest delivery, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... crisis than any discussed; whether indeed, as when a timepiece neglects to strike the hour which is, by the reckoning of natural impatience, past, the capital charge of 'crazy works' must not be brought against a nobleman hitherto precise upon business, of a just disposition, fairly humane. For though he was an absentee sucking the earth through a tube, in Ottoman ease, he had never omitted the duty of personally attending on the spot to grave cases under dispute. The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by little thrust up toward the surface, and is about to emerge. What will be the successive phenomena, geological and biological, which are likely to occur before ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... from the translation of Dom Thuillier. Livy does not state the precise number of Roman combatants. He says nothing had been neglected in order to render the Roman army the strongest possible, and from what he was told by some it numbered eighty-seven thousand two hundred men. That is the figure of Polybius. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... the precise locality, is given by himself in xii. 308-313, and confirmatory evidence is afforded by his familiarity, of which he gives numerous instances, with many natural features of the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... a devotee that, unable to go to Benares, the man had nevertheless received precise KRIYA initiation in a dream. Lahiri Mahasaya had appeared to instruct the chela in answer ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Ralph said; "it is time for you to change your suits, for these London citizens are, I have heard, precise as to their time, and the merchant would deem it a slight did you not arrive a few minutes before ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... the later apostle of Sterne-worship in Germany. Bode was a resident of Hamburg at this time, was exceptionally proficient in English and, according to Jrdens[13] and Schrder,[14] he was in 1762-3 the editor of the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent. The precise date when Bode severed his connection with the paper is indeterminate, yet this, the second number of the new year 1764, may have come under his supervision even if his official connection ended exactly with the close of the old year. To be sure, when ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... Osgood Guide-books are much the best we have ever had in this country, and they can challenge comparison with Baedeker's, which is the best in Europe. The volume devoted to the White Mountains is full, precise, compact, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... is that makes a book, a picture, a piece of music, a poem, great. When any of these things has become a part of one's mind and soul, utterly and entirely familiar, one is tempted to think that the precise form of them is inevitable. That ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which would stop for a day or two at this port and at that, taking in coal while the Dalloways saw things for themselves. Meanwhile they found themselves stranded in Lisbon, unable for the moment to lay hands upon the precise vessel they wanted. They heard of the Euphrosyne, but heard also that she was primarily a cargo boat, and only took passengers by special arrangement, her business being to carry dry goods to the Amazons, and rubber home again. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... and one after another challenged me, till they got down to fifth cousins; and I laid out fifteen of them—I think it was fifteen; I don't remember the exact number, but I could tell by referring to my diary. You are so precise and particular, that I want to give you the facts just as ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... every day to receive the dreaded notice. Nay, they were not sure that their exclusive privilege might not be taken away without any notice at all; for they found that they had, by inadvertently omitting to pay the tax lately imposed on their stock at the precise time fixed by law, forfeited their Charter; and, though it would, in ordinary circumstances, have been thought cruel in the government to take advantage of such a slip, the public was not inclined to allow the Old Company any thing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... At what precise period the speculative began to predominate over the operative element of the society, it is impossible to say. The change was undoubtedly gradual, and is to be attributed, in all probability, to the increased number ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Koran, in addition to the repeated assurances of Paradise to the martyr who falls in battle, contains the regulations of a precise military code. Military service in some shape or other is exacted from all. The terms to be prescribed to the enemy and the vanquished, the division of the spoil, the seasons of lawful truce, the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his shirtcuffs, and not infrequently his finger-nails, some nasty remark or some slanderous thoughts about the man whose amiable consideration for him was notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his diary, and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this precious book, down they went ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Dandolo was a very old man is certain, but there is doubt as to his precise age, as also as to the cause of his blindness. According to one account he had been blinded, or all but blinded, by the Greeks, and in a treacherous manner, when sent, at an earlier date, on an embassy to Constaritinople-whence ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... soft and precise, made answer. "Indeed I think he has behaved most generously in the matter. As you say, it would have been but a gentleman's duty to make an offer of marriage, considering all the circumstances. But he went further than that. He actually insisted upon the arrangement. I suppose he felt bound ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... always blended with the metaphysical. It is curious that, as one result of the change of manner, this should have even been made a reproach to them—that the ecstasy of their ecstasies should apparently have become not an excuse but an additional crime. Yet if any grave and precise person will read Carew's Rapture, the most audacious, and of course wilfully audacious expression of the style, and then turn to the archangel's colloquy with Adam in Paradise Lost, I should like to ask him on which side, according to his honour ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a theory of the solar system could not fail to captivate astronomers, but it is generally rejected to-day, in the precise form which Laplace gave it. What the difficulties are which it has encountered, and the modifications it must suffer, we shall see later; as well as the new theories which have largely displaced it. It will be better first to survey the universe from ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... censorship was exercised with grotesque stupidity. It was still the aim of Government to isolate Austria from the ideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectual world of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which tradition prescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. In poetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, where custom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; in history and political literature, the leading ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... slightly, again looking out the window at the femme and her soldier, who were as contented with the seclusion offered by a lamp-post as though it were seclusion indeed. As she watched them, "hard" did not seem the precise word ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... automobile insurance; though he made seemingly earnest efforts to do so. But he learned the precise location of each garage; the cars therein; and the easiest way to the highroad, and any possible obstacles to a hasty flight thereto. Usually, he succeeded in persuading his reluctant host to take him to the garage to look at the cars and to estimate the insurable value of each. While there, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... on mechanically, with the precise step of those who seek exercise. The rim of the sun cut the edge of the ocean and a long trail of light made the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... in light before us; and, however grotesque or mysterious, simple or subtle, may be the modes of thinking and feeling in relation to the life beyond death revealed in our subsequent researches, we shall know at once where to refer them and how to explain them. The precise object, therefore, of the present chapter is to set forth the comprehensive theories devised to solve the problem, What becomes of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... grave. I did not dare look at Lucy, though I could have toasted her all night, had it been in rule to drink a person who was present. We began to chat again, and I had answered some eight or ten questions, when Mrs. Bradfort, much too precise to make any omissions, reminded us that we had not yet been honoured with Miss Lucy Hardinge's toast. Lucy had enjoyed plenty of time to reflect; and she bowed, paused a moment as if to summon resolution, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... is tired, I expect," Gerald replied; "or that he does not know the exact spot upon which he is likely to meet the band; and that he has taken us, so far, along the one path which was certain to lead in the right direction, but for the precise spot he ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... age of twelve his imagination, stimulated by the perpetual exercise of his faculties, had developed to a point which permitted him to have such precise concepts of things which he knew only from reading about them, that the image stamped on his mind could not have been clearer if he had actually seen them, whether this was by a process of analogy or that he was ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... results. Not only did the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple virtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not only cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the receipt of the British ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... many other rooms. But at any rate there was abundance of it; a carpet much worn, but still useful, covered the floor; and Ellen had lit the fire without being summoned to do it. Laura recognised that Mr. Helbeck must have given a certain number of precise orders on the subject ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the idea expressed in this and the five following lines has been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it; but it is not original—at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of "Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.—[The following is the passage: "'Deluded prince!' said the Genius, addressing the Caliph ... 'This moment is the last, of grace, allowed thee: ... give ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... her soft cheek and the small convoluted conch of her rosy ear! To pull her needle she kept the little finger apart from the others; it seemed a waste of power to see her sewing—eternally sewing—with that industrious and precise movement of her arm, going on eternally upon all the oceans, under all the skies, in innumerable harbours. And suddenly I heard Falk's voice declare that he could not marry a woman unless she knew of something in his life that had happened ten ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... employed Americans throughout the United States in the capacity of press-agents in order to keep American public opinion favourable to him, hoping to invoke their assistance against his life-enemy— Japan—should that be necessary. The precise details of this propaganda and the sums spent in its prosecution are known to the writer; if he refrains from publishing them it is solely for reasons of policy. England it was not necessary to deal with in this way. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... was so precise that it might almost be pronounced a mathematical art. The disturbances arising from atmospheric conditions were eliminated, and the variations, as connected with the supply of river-water, ascertained in advance. The priests proclaimed how the flood ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... voice screaming, and could hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt uneasy and full of forebodings; all my faith and philosophy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I should probably be well punished, though for what I had no precise idea. If it had not been so dark, and if the wind had not howled so despairingly, I should have paid little attention to the threats issuing from the pulpit; but, as it was, I fell to making good resolutions. This is always a bad sign,—only ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... experts proved as dubious and uncertain as if the court had confined itself to the original witness. It seemed to be generally agreed that the data for determining the time of death of any body were too complex and variable to admit of very precise inference; rigor mortis and other symptoms setting in within very wide limits and differing largely in different persons. All agreed that death from such a cut must have been practically instantaneous, and the theory of suicide was rejected by all. As a whole the medical evidence ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... younger captains to the elder, instructions for masters, pilots, ketches, hoys, and smacks attending the fleet, and the usual instructions for the encouragement of captains and companies of fireships, small frigates and ketches. Now this is the precise form in which all fleet instructions were issued, with scarcely any alteration, up to the conclusion of the War of American Independence,[1] and the peculiar importance of this set of articles therefore is, that in them we have the first known example of those stereotyped ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... and the precise location of the hotel are immaterial. If you happened to be there that night you know very nearly all that occurred; if not, you have in all probability never heard of it, for I understand that the proprietors ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... saw that my brother had left behind him one coin that lay gleaming on the long bench by the window. It was a bronze coin, and the colour, combined with the exact curve of the Roman nose and something in the very lift of the long, wiry neck, made the head of Caesar on it the almost precise portrait of Philip Hawker. Then I suddenly remembered Giles telling Philip of a coin that was like him, and Philip wishing he had it. Perhaps you can fancy the wild, foolish thoughts with which my head went round; I felt as if I had had a gift from the fairies. It seemed to me that if I could ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... years old, methodical in his habits, punctilious in his dress, polite in his demeanour, and precise in his language. He wore a high collar of such remarkable stiffness that his shoulders had to turn with his head whenever it was necessary to alter his position. This gave an appearance of respectability to the head, not to be acquired ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... pledging the lives of its children, pledging its very existence, to protect a little nation that seeks for its defence. God made man in His own image—high of purpose, in the region of the spirit. German civilization would re-create him in the image of a Diesler machine—precise, accurate, powerful, with no room for the soul to operate. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... into specific channels of work, through the intermediary of individual personality without which the infinite potentialities of the Creative Law cannot be brought to light. Therefore, however various our opinions as to its precise form, Resurrection as a principle is a necessity of the creative process. But such a return to more active life will not mean a return to limitations, but the opening of a new life in which we shall transcend them ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... the Poor has claimed kinship. How can I remember the precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the course of a long discussion, to keep the attention fixed on the precise point at issue. I therefore sum up in a few words the argument ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... find no further record of her, but inquiries were easy, and they guided me to Northampton. There I made the acquaintance of a Mr. Rooke, a manufacturer, in whose house Miss Tomalin is resident, and has been for a good many years; to be precise, since she was nine years old. Without trouble I discovered the girl's history. Her grandfather, Joseph Tomalin, died ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... power of resistance to formative evils, and that as a negative condition it may hold the balance of power in focusing the forces. Thus, heredity, in disease, can be understood as in no sense implying a specific force, but rather an atonic or susceptible condition, varying in its precise character and producing a pars minoris resistentiae—a special weakness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... OF CASSIUS.—The anxiety of the plebeians to be rid of the restrictions upon the holding and enjoyment of land, led to the proposal of a law for their relief by the consul Spurius Cassius (486 B.C.). Of the terms of the law, we have no precise knowledge. We only know, that, when he retired from office, he was condemned and put to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a rough, rude night; about this time of the year.—Apropos—now I think of it, last night was the anniversary of her visit. I may well remember the precise date, for it was a night not to be forgotten by our house. There is a singular tradition concerning it in our family." Here the Marquis hesitated, and a cloud seemed to gather about his bushy eyebrows. "There is a tradition—that a strange ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Philosophy began by considering what it sought and hoped to reach as pre-eminently knowledge in some distinctive sense, and having so begun it turned to reflect once more upon what it meant by so conceiving it and to make this meaning more precise and clear. So it came to present to itself as its aim or goal a special kind or degree of knowledge, to be inspired and guided by the hope of that. Practical as in many ways was the concern of ancient philosophy—its whole bent was towards the bettering of human life—it sought to achieve this ...
— Progress and History • Various
... vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the earth, lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense, hypnotised by the weaving maze of things in which he found himself involved. To keep his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the precise interval, to run his furrows as closely as possible to those already made by the plough in front—this for the moment was the entire sum of his duties. But while one part of his brain, alert and watchful, took cognisance ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the episode of the cloak, omitting, however, Senan's jest of carrying it secretly. A glossator has added in LA the marginal note "Priests formerly wore cowls." There are slight discrepancies between the versions as to the precise garment given by ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... key of the little Cabinet was or was not enchanted, for our reserve does not imply that we are in any uncertainty, and therein resides its merit. But where we find ourselves in our proper domain, or to be more precise within our own jurisdiction, where we once more become judges of facts, and writers of circumstances, is where we read that the key was flecked with blood. The authority of the texts does not so far impress us as to compel us to believe this. It was not flecked with blood. ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... in the first place, the approach was to be at utmost speed, not under "battle canvas" but with all sail spread. In the second place, the advance of Nelson's division in column, led by the flagship, left its precise objective not fully disclosed to the enemy until the last moment, and open to change as advantage offered. It could and did threaten the van, and was finally directed upon the center when Villeneuve's presence there ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... world, not its redemption. Indeed, Mr. Judson appeared to think that anything drawn from the Bible was good, whether he made any moral application of it or not. I have heard him preach a whole sermon, giving the most precise and detailed description of the building of the Tabernacle, without one word of comment, [16] inference, or instruction. But he was a good and kindly man; and when, as I was going to college at the age of eighteen, he ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... do not admit of a precise answer. The rate of exchange ought by no means to be under four fifths; indeed I could wish that it were higher, and am not without hopes of raising it; but that must depend on circumstances, which I cannot command. The sum, which can be furnished to the French army monthly by the sale ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... elbow would be difficult to find, and the construction of the waist and hips is uncertain; the drawing does not speak like Mr. Sargent's. Look across the room at his portrait of a lady in white satin and you will see there a shadow, so exact, so precise, so well understood, that the width of the body ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Transatlantic novelists would have done with the same material. In fine, here is as pleasant and likeable a treatise on l'art d'etre Grand'-mere as anyone need wish to read. I am uncertain as to the precise significance of the title, which may refer to the fact that you have only to ask a grannie and get what you want, or to the equal truism that grandmotherly devotion is often accepted as a matter of course. However it doesn't really matter. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... taxed her works with hostility to social institutions. Without entering into the vexed question of the right of the artist in search of variety to exercise his power on any theme that may invite to its display, and of the precise bearing of ethical rules on works of imagination, it is permissible to doubt that Jacques, however bitter the sentiments of the author at that time regarding the marriage tie, ever seriously disturbed the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... had gone by. In fact, the presence of Titmouse, suggesting such thoughts and recollections, became intolerable to Huckaback; and Titmouse's perceptions (dull as they naturally were, but a little quickened by recent suffering) gave him more and more distinct notice of this circumstance, at the precise time when he meditated applying for the loan of a few shillings. These feelings made him as humble towards Huckaback, and as tolerant of his increasing rudeness and ill-humor, as he felt abject towards Messrs. Quirk, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... however, have seen him forthwith, for at that precise and particular moment, the Unspeakable Perk was in plain sight of her window, on a bench in the corner of the plaza, engaged in light conversation with a legless and philosophical beggar whom he had just astonished by the presentation of a whole ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... enemy's position over the whole of his military zone, which stretches back for a distance of 30 miles or so from the outer line of trenches, is of incalculable value to a commander who is contemplating any decisive movement or who is somewhat in doubt as to the precise character of ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and try to love it. Let us strive and pray that the love of holiness may be created within our hearts; and then acts will follow, such as befit us and our circumstances, in due time, without our distressing ourselves to find what they should be. You need not attempt to draw any precise line between what is sinful and what is only allowable: look up to Christ, and deny yourselves every thing, whatever its character, which you think He would have you relinquish. You need not calculate and measure, if you love much: you need not perplex yourselves with points of ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... self-betrayal, and, from the place where he stood, unable ever to express anything of his own nature in easy speech, he wondered at them, with almost childlike astonishment. Fitzgibbon, garrulous and loose of tongue, Atkins, precise and easily heated to wrath, conscious of some hidden fear that his dignity was not sufficiently respected, and Hartley, who had something to say, but who oversaid it, losing grip because of his very insistence. Not ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... that he was, to use Livingston's language, "a thundering preacher." In that town George Gillespie was born; but, as the earlier volumes of the Session Register of Births and Baptisms have been lost, the precise year of his birth cannot be ascertained from that source. It could not, however, have been earlier than 1612, in which year his father was chosen to the second charge in Kirkcaldy, as appears from the town records, nor later than 1613, as the existing Register commences January, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... some other of foreign countries we see daily to happen, where the students are enforced for want of such houses to dwell in common inns, and taverns, without all order or discipline. But in these our colleges we live in such exact order, and under so precise rules of government, as that the famous learned man Erasmus of Rotterdam, being here among us fifty years passed, did not let to compare the trades in living of students in these two places, even with the very rules and orders of the ancient monks, affirming ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... undeniable that no elderly gentleman, of whatsoever position or condition, loves to be butted violently upon a generous lunch as he makes his placid way to his arm-chair, cigar, book, and ultimate pleasant doze. If he be pompous by profession, precise by practice, dignified as a duty, a monument of most stately correctness and, to small boys and common men, a great and distant, if tiny, God—he may be ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... not," said Winthrop. "I am the District Attorney of New York." His tones were cold, precise; they fell upon the superheated brain of Dr. Rainey like ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... that Cicero called logic a contracted and close mode of eloquence. That observation is fully explained by Quintilian. Speaking of logic, the use, he says, of that contentious art, consists in just definition, which presents to the mind the precise idea; and in nice discrimination, which marks the essential difference of things. It is this faculty that throws a sudden light on every difficult question, removes all ambiguity, clears up what was doubtful, divides, develops, and separates, and then collects the argument ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... tradition, it is impossible to be sure quite how they begun, and by quite what means they sifted through the centuries into the forms at last securely theirs, in the final rigidity of print. In this collection of American ballads, almost if not quite uniquely, it is possible to trace the precise manner in which songs and cycles of song—obviously analogous to those surviving from older and antique times—have come into being. The facts which are still available concerning the ballads of our own Southwest ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... "Sure. That was the indicated course, in any event. It was routine for both the press and the police. There was nothing suspicious about his story; it was straightforward enough, except for one or two little details. He never did give us any precise address; he just mentioned Detroit once. I called up a friend on one of the papers there and put him up to looking up Thaddeus McIlvaine; the only young man of that name he could find appeared to be the same man as the present ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... keep from vagueness, and uses few words in order not to say too much, enervates and blunts thought in order not to wound the reader who is not on his guard—genius gives to its expression, with a single and happy stroke of the brush, a precise, firm, and yet perfectly free form. In the case of grammar and logic, the sign and the thing signified are always heterogenous and strangers to each other: with genius, on the contrary, the expression gushes forth spontaneously from the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... virtue as a whole. It does not enter into their hearts to conceive of the beauty of that growth in grace which results in the complete stature of a man,—that is, of an angel. In their haste to produce great growth in some particular direction, they overlook the fact, that in precise proportion to such growth must be the dwarfing of the other members of the soul. Man was created in the image and likeness of God; and he becomes truly a man only so far as, through the grace of God, his whole ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... it with a vernier scale, graduated to hundredths of an inch. On the inner end of the slide a branch projects at a right angle, sufficiently long to reach across the muzzle face, and, when in contact with it, to indicate the precise length obtained from that point to the end of the measuring-point on the other end of the staff. A half disk of wood, made to fit the bore, with a groove for the staff to rest in, placed just inside of the muzzle, is useful in preventing any ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... painting as a profession,—and I really believe that he would have made his fortune as a painter; but when I heard of him next, he had gone abroad—to the colonies, some one said. I could never learn anything more precise than that." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... desperate conflict ensued in the river. The combat was too unequal to last long. The Spaniards, waist deep in the rapid stream, had difficulty in retaining their feet, they were ignorant of the width or precise direction of the ford, and were hampered by their own masses; the cavalry, on the other hand, were free to use their weapons, and the weight and impetus of their charge was alone sufficient to sweep the Spanish from their footing into ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... true that the cause may then seem beyond our grasp. Already the finalist theory of life eludes all precise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential: can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... equal effrontery and vehemence, insisted that the papers thus secretly burnt could be no other than the registers and documents of the correspondence of the Austrian committee. M. de Laporte was ordered to the bar, and there gave the most precise account of the circumstances. Riston was also called up, and confirmed M. de Laporte's deposition. But these explanations, however satisfactory, did not calm the violent ferment raised in the Assembly by this affair.—"Memoirs of Bertrand ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... literary character I am happily acquainted with. The oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... was coming to pass, especially if it was of an unpleasant, disturbing nature, was, so his mother considered, an undeniable fact. But sometimes the gift lay in abeyance for weeks, even for months. That had been the case, as Mrs. Tosswill had told Dr. O'Farrell, for a long time now—to be precise, since March, when, to the dismay of those about him he had predicted an accident in the hunting field ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... I could give numberless examples in Cobbett's case, but I will give only one. Anyone who finds himself full in the central path of Cobbett's fury sometimes has something like a physical shock. No one who has read "The History of the Reformation" will ever forget the passage (I forget the precise words) in which he says the mere thought of such a person as Cranmer makes the brain reel, and, for an instant, doubt the goodness of God; but that peace and faith flow back into the soul when we remember that he was burned alive. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... as to Michael Angelo, we do not pretend to assign the precise key to the practice which he adopted. And to our feelings, after all that might be said in apology, there still remains an impression of incongruity in the visual exhibition and direct juxtaposition of the two orders of supernatural existence so potently ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... anticipated with each improvement of the plates in this respect. Apparatus for testing plates, which is believed to be much more accurate than that ordinarily employed, is in course of preparation. It is expected that a very precise determination will be made of the rapidity of the plates employed. Makers of very rapid plates are invited to send specimens ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... a word of general and daily use, without any precise meaning being attached to it. Nevertheless, there exist two distinct kinds of centralisation, which it is necessary to ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... one. The people whom I see often and whom you designate cultivate all that I scorn and are indifferently disturbed about what torments me. I regard as very secondary, technical detail, local exactness, in short the historical and precise side of things. I am seeking above all for beauty, which my companions pursue but languidly. I see them insensible when I am ravaged with admiration or horror. Phrases make me swoon with pleasure which seem very ordinary to them. Goncourt is very happy when he has seized upon ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... more memorable than a good one? Why should a crime have so much longer lodgment in our minds, and be of consequences so much more lasting than the sort of action which is the opposite of a crime, but has no precise name with us? Was it because the want of positive quality which left it nameless, characterized its effects with a kind of essential debility? Was evil then a greater force than good in the moral world? ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... belief been established by Moses, or some later prophet—then, according to the views of the supranaturalist, they might—nay, they must—be admitted to be correct. But it is in the Maccabaean Daniel and in the apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves that they brought the names of the angels with them from ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... another instance of neglect it would be impossible to find in history, after due warning given. Long ago, Albany Fonblanque said, "The sign of the fool with his finger in his mouth, and the sentiment, 'Who'd have thought it?' is the precise emblem of English jurisprudence." The same sign would seem to be applicable to some other branches of the English public service, as well as to that of the law. Perhaps it was because of the warning that nothing was done,—that being the usual course with governments; while it was thought a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... scholar nor novelist. On the contrary, until they buried me in the cells of silence for half a decade, I was everything that the missionary forecasted not—an agricultural expert, a professor of agronomy, a specialist in the science of the elimination of waste motion, a master of farm efficiency, a precise laboratory scientist where precision and adherence to microscopic fact are ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... measures he had ordered seemed, on cool reflection, to be the very measures likely to defeat his ends. For beyond doubt Leyden had not made this voyage without a definite object in view; he had been to the trading post surreptitiously, often before, knew the country around, probably knew the precise location of the gold-bearing sands, and was intimate with Gordon. Knowing Houten's clear title to the trading concession, he was scarcely likely to bring his vessel up the river on an avowed piratical errand; and there was, too, the matter more ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... thine ear," has been suggested as a substitute. It is in the words of Holy Scripture, it is the precise metrical equivalent of "O Lord, save the queen," and it is directly antiphonal to ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... courage and perseverance in carrying my plan into execution, by which I mean to effect a permanent and radical cure; that is to say, I mean that you shall be rendered as perfectly free from any future attack of the sort, as you were when you were born. I know the precise nature of your complaint well, and I am confident of the remedy, although I have no particular precedent, because I never knew any one act up to the rules I have laid down for you. I know that you have had a violent pressure of blood upon the brain; I ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel, perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire further;' so this writer ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... account of the religious tenets, &c., of this society, in the precise words of his worthy friends and ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... distinguish between them. They moved silently about, without one being able to see by what means, for their skirts touched the carpet all round; they glided here and there, receded, approached, rigid in black and white, with precise gestures, and no life in their faces, like a pair of marionettes in mourning; and their air of wooden unconcern struck him as unnatural, suspicious, irremediably hostile. That such people's feelings or judgment could affect one in any way, had ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Bismarck biographer, has replied in a way which increases my admiration for the German Foreign Office; for it would appear that he found in the archives of that department a most exact statement of the conversation between Bucher and myself, and of the action which followed it. So precise was his account that it even recalled phrases and other minutiae of the conversation which I had forgotten, but which I at once recognized as exact when thus reminded of them. The existence of such a record really ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... amazed me. Afterwards it occurred to me that probably I had seen him as I was lifted aboard; and yet that scarcely satisfied my suspicion of a previous acquaintance. Yet how one could have set eyes on so singular a face and yet have forgotten the precise occasion, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the way into the room opening from the rear of his own. It was a large apartment with a long table in the center. Mr. Kuhn, brisk and business-like, was already there. He shook hands with his client. As he did so, Graves, dignified and precise as ever, entered, carrying a small portfolio ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Shrig parted the kindly leaves and I beheld the form of my servant Clegg, as neat and precise in death as he had ever ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the precise period when they were first introduced, is involved in obscurity; but that they were in use several centuries prior to the Christian era is indisputable. The invention of them, however, has been attributed to the scholars of Linus, who, according to Diogenes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... attempt a precise description or boundary of the territory ceded. In the treaty of San Ildefonso general terms only are used. It speaks of Louisiana as of "the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... no inner line of sentries. Even as he wondered, he emerged from a copse into a field, and received the usual challenge—spoken this time in so quick, machine-like a manner, and accompanied by so prompt and precise a levelling of the musket, that he knew 'twas a British regular he had to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable somebodies, whose precise ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of this plain the botanist would perhaps discover several unknown species of trees and plants; the reports of the Arabs on this subject are so vague and incoherent, that it is almost impossible to obtain any precise information from them; they speak, for instance, of the spurious pomegranate tree, producing a fruit exactly like that of the pomegranate, but which, on being opened, is found to contain nothing but a dusty powder; this, they pretend, is the Sodom apple-tree; other persons however deny its existence. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... cabin clock to ascertain what the time might actually be. It was on the stroke of two o'clock! Therefore if, as I had assured myself, the sounds were imaginary, it was at least a singular coincidence that they should have reached me just at that precise moment. I walked to the fore end of the poop, upon the rail guarding which the ship's bell was mounted, and sharply struck four bells, after which I again called to the crew forward to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... which he highly disapproved. In some other instances, the criticks have been equally wrong as to the true motive of my recording particulars, the objections to which I saw as clearly as they. But it would be an endless talk for an authour to point out upon every occasion the precise object he has in view. Contenting himself with the approbation of readers of discernment and taste, he ought not to complain that some are found who cannot or will not understand him.] I took my host's advice, and drank some brandy, which I found an effectual cure for my head-ach. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... luxuriantly thick, almost as long, completely covered the face, from every part of which it sprang, growing shaggy and rank at the eyebrows, which served to ambush two sharp little eyes: so that the whole bore a precise resemblance to an ill-natured Skye terrier. It is superfluous to add that this was at once the face and the fortune of Toto, the Dog-faced Man, known in private life, to as many intimates as a jealous profession can tolerate, as Mr. Poddle: for the present disabled from public appearance by the ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... such attempts have only been made among abnormal classes of people, or have been conducted in a manner scarcely likely to yield reliable results.[289] Still there is a certain significance in the more careful investigations which have been made to ascertain the precise ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it was a small matter—a common little word of three letters. In all the messages sent him by the schoolma'am, it was the precise, school-grammar wording of them which had irritated him most and impressed him insensibly with the belief that she was too prim to be quite human. The Happy Family had felt all along that they were artists in that line, and they knew that ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... himself looked in the lists, and how well he tilted? But perhaps Lord Henry was even better aware than Denis of the important part played by intellectual male conflict in the presence of women; and he moreover realised more certainly than Denis could possibly have guessed, the precise effect on the female mind of repeated victories in this modern and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... fifth brother, "There is something very precise about him; he has a good head-piece, but he does nothing." And on that very account they ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... precise man of science, was tensely vehement. "Seize it! Why not? Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a Robot! Then we'll seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can operate it. If not, with it in our possession we'll ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... others were taken for recruits, while the skipper and all the rest were cast into the sea by the method of walking the plank. It was the first time I had seen this done; my heart died within me at the spectacle; and Master Teach or one of his acolytes (for my head was too much lost to be precise) remarked upon my pale face in a very alarming manner. I had the strength to cut a step or two of a jig, and cry out some ribaldry, which saved me for that time; but my legs were like water when I must get down ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the ether. Optics is a branch of electricity. Outstanding problems in optics are being rapidly solved now that we have the means of definitely exciting light with a full perception of what we are doing and of the precise mode of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... was indeed of my precise stature, nor were his eyes and features unlike mine; but his hair was a mass of flowing yellow locks, like those of the two I had killed, while mine is black and ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Comtesse does not believe that. Well—who knows?—perhaps she is right. Possibly she knows more of the nature and habits of the criminal classes than we, sharing as she does, no doubt, the apparently accurate and precise sources of information ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... black hair, his moustache, the easy small-talk of the staff officer, a certain freedom which was elegant as well as trifling, his bright eyes, contrasted favorably with the faded graces of his uncle. I arrived at the precise moment when the young countess was teaching her newly found relation to play backgammon. The proverb says that "women never learn this game excepting from their lovers, and vice versa." Now, during a certain game, M. de Noce had surprised ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... years ago, developed many facts respecting their origin and economy. Subsequent observers have added still more to the stock of our knowledge respecting these wonderful creatures. The different stages of growth, from the minute egg of the queen to a full grown bee, and the precise time occupied by each, are well established. The three classes of bees, in every perfect colony, and the offices of each; their mechanical skill in constructing the different sized and shaped cells, for honey, for raising drones, workers, and queens, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... unpleasant event has long been hanging over one's head, sure to come at some time, though the precise date is unknown, people of a certain disposition find it quite possible to live on pretty comfortably through the waiting time. But when at length the date is fixed, when you know that that which you dread will happen upon such and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... have had to-night would not have been made without your good will. It is to be presumed, therefore, that if I can convince you that it is better to turn the Emperor's mind in another direction, you will refuse to make yourself the medium of further communications of that precise character." ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... available for about 815 individuals who either participated in Project TRINITY activities or visited the test site between 16 July 1945 and 1 January 1947. The listing does not indicate the precise military or unit affiliation of all personnel. Less than six percent of the Project TRINITY participants received exposures greater than 2 roentgens. Twenty-three of these individuals received exposures greater than 2 but less than 4 roentgens; another ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer
... virtue?' ('Statura, fateor non sum procera, sed quae mediocri tamen quam parvae propior sit; sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace turn bello viri fuere—quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis magna est?') This is precise enough; but we have Aubrey's words to the same effect. 'He was scarce so tall as I am,' says Aubrey; to which, to make it more intelligible, he appends this marginal note,—'Qu. Quot feet I am high? Resp. Of middle stature': ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a little curiosity in Harry. He glanced with his old wariness at Neeld. But what could he see save a kindly precise old gentleman, who was unimportant to him but seemed interested in what he said. He turned back to ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope |
