"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... working as nearly to perfection as it could be brought, and Tom, after finding out that his craft would answer equally well as a dirigible balloon or an aeroplane, let it sail along ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... chair by the window,—she obeyed, and glanced about her shyly, yet curiously. The room was not untidy, as she expected it would be without a woman's hand to set it in order,—on the contrary it was the perfection of neatness and cleanliness. Her gaze was quickly attracted by the bowl of perpetually moving fluid in ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... was very fine, the season advanced, for the foliage was rapidly developing to perfection, and the sail down the ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... you'll all break your hearts about it. Mother met the gentleman at a party the other night. She says he looks clever, but isn't at all handsome, which is a pity, for Mrs. Florence is a raving beauty in my opinion. He's an excellent preacher, we hear; and won't she manage the parish to perfection? How shall you like being left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Nipson?' Now did you ever hear any thing so droll in your life?" went on Rose, folding up her letter. "Just think of those two things coming together the same day! It's like a sum in arithmetic, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... when her beauty was at its fullest perfection, she heard all the flowers about her bending and whispering with rustling and murmuring, saying, "Who will be ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... with weakness and beset with longings. She knows how frail is the spring that regulates her strength, but also how necessary that strength is to her happiness. She has come to understand what real love means, that the union of man and woman approaches the nearer to perfection the less the two wills are fused. She has understood, above all, that, to contain, glorify and keep love, we need all the energy of our respective personalities and all ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... or dazzling of intellectual luminosity; but he is a great man, strong in the cold, steadfast nerve that he inherits from his ancestor, and respectable in the symmetry of an intellect which, like a marble masterpiece, leaves nothing to regret except the thought that its perfection excludes the blemish of a soul. John Sherman will figure creditably in history. Mankind soon forgets the sentimental acrimony of the moment, provoked by the suffering of harsh processes, and remembers only the grand ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... which did not begin to take its present admirable form in ancient days, but only in the time of Augustus, or thereabouts. In those earlier times we have but the beginnings of the art; the tree is taking root; the flower and the fruit have reached their perfection only in our own day, and it is with these that I have to do. The tongs-dance, the crane-dance, and others I pass over because they are alien to my subject; similarly, if I have said nothing of the Phrygian ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the additions or corruptions of his disciples. But we must at least suppose that Pythagoras established the main proposition of the occult properties of NUMBERS, which were held to be the principles of all things. According to this theory, unity is the abstract principle of all perfection, and the ten elementary numbers contain the elements of the perfect system of nature. By numbers the origin and the substance of all things could be explained [244]. Numbers make the mystery of earth and heaven—of the gods themselves. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Six cups of tea warm him to anguish over the peonage of Sir Thomas Lipton's coolies in Ceylon. Souls in perplexity cluster round him like Canadian dimes in a cash register in Plattsburgh, N. Y. He is a human sympathy trust. When we are on our deathbed we shall send for him. The perfection of his gentle sorrow will send us roaring out into the dark, and will set a valuable example to the ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... table gleamed with spotless linen and china. At my father's place lay the Sabbath loaf, covered over with a crocheted doily; and beside it stood the wine flask and kiddush cup of gold or silver. At the opposite end of the table was a long row of brass candlesticks, polished to perfection, with the heavy silver candlesticks in a shorter row in front; for my mother and grandmother were very pious, and each used a number of candles; while Fetchke and I and the maids had ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... this equality of position and rights we believe to have been intended by the Creator as the ultimate perfection of the social state, when he said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let THEM have dominion"; and to have been a part of our Savior's plan for a perfect Christian society, in which an Apostle says, "there is neither bond nor free, there ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... it must have been in Bactria, the common cradle of the Aryan race. There can scarcely be a doubt that twenty-five hundred years ago the daily life and social customs in the north of India, which had been under undisputed Aryan control long enough for the Sanscrit language to spring up, come to perfection and finally become obsolete, were more like ours than like those of modern India after the, many—and especially the Mohammedan—conquests and after centuries of oppression ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... art was growing to perfection. He had at last discovered that a burglary demands as diligent a forethought as a campaign; he had learnt that no great work is achieved by a multitude of minds. Before his boat carried off a goodly parcel of silk from Nottingham, he was known to the neighbourhood ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... amusements of the age were put into requisition for the entertainment of the company. Athenaeus has quoted from Charas, a list of the chief performers, which I transcribe more for the sake of the performances and of the states where these lighter arts were brought to the greatest perfection, than of the names, which are now unmeaning sounds. Scymnus from Tarentum, Philistides from Syracuse, and Heracleitus from Mytylene, were the great jugglers, or as the Greek word intimates, the wonder-workers of the day. After them, Alexis, the Tarentine, displayed his excellence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... Valentine his conqueror. He flung himself down at little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a monk, forgetting all things that were past, applied to the future, and, as if little accounting his former conversation, hastened to the height of perfection. For by incredible abstinence, by his lengthened fasts, and by the exercise of his other virtues, he afflicted himself, and continually bore in his heart and on his body the mortification of that cross which his habit displayed. But the most high Pastor, who intended ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and—the sniff. Danger—so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual—was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... poking about old Paris on a much-needed vacation, and now it stands embodied in a dozen beautiful schools on Manhattan Island, copies, every one, of the handsomest of French palaces, the Hotel de Cluny. I cannot see how it is possible to come nearer perfection in the building of a public school. There is not a dark corner in the whole structure, from the splendid gymnasium under the red-tiled roof to the indoor playground on the street floor, which, when thrown into one with the two yards that lie enclosed in the arms of the H, give the children ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... to the administration of public affairs by centralization. It was not deemed wise or necessary to constitute central boards for the direction of matters with which not a single member might, possibly, be acquainted. They did not aim at an ideal perfection, but were satisfied with doing what was practicable, and with a large average of general prosperity. To each civitas—corresponding to our phrase of "city and county"—was assigned the regulation of its own domestic policy, by means of annual magistrates, a chosen ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... lighting, already pushed to such a degree of perfection in the details of construction and installation, continually finds new exigencies that have to be satisfied. As it is more and more firmly established, it has to provide for all the comforts of existence by simple solutions of problems of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... Bassompierre, Madame de Motteville, Mlle de Montpensier, La Rochefoucauld, Villars, Cardinal de Retz, Bussy-Rabutin—to name but a few. This was the age of the memoire, always interesting, often admirably written; and, as might be expected, sometimes exhibiting the art of portraiture at perfection. The English memoir is comparatively late. The word, in the sense of a narrative of personal recollections, was borrowed at the Restoration. The thing itself, under other names, is older. It is a ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience, thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet, even if it be conceded that Germany's ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... justice of this remark, querulous as it was, to care to defend herself. It was hopeless to attempt to explain to her mother that the oscillations of her mind might arise as naturally from the perfection of its balance, like those of a logan-stone, as from inherent lightness; and such an explanation, however comforting to its subject, was little better than none to simple hearts who only could look to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... towards an infinite and a supernatural object. Every man, as prompted by the warmth of his temper, excited by emulation, or supported by his habits of hypocrisy, endeavored to distinguish himself beyond his fellows, and to arrive at a higher pitch of saintship and perfection. In proportion to its degree of fanaticism, each sect became dangerous and destructive; and as the Independents went a note higher than the Presbyterians, they could less be restrained within any bounds of temper and moderation. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... up, left the fire, advanced to the far end of the cellar, and imitated the cry of a screech owl to perfection. There was ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... persisted in his intentions of besieging the castle, for which purpose he began to rebuild the wall which had been destroyed by De Sousa.[365] This could not be prevented, though many of the workmen were killed by the cannon of the fort, and being at last brought to perfection Zofar planted upon it sixty pieces of large cannon, besides many of a small size. One of these cannons was of such extraordinary magnitude that it shook the whole island every time it was discharged, and it was managed with much expertness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... ethical either. This "totality" is neither good nor bad, but made up indifferently of all manner of components, and according to Pantheism all of them—the evil as much as the good—are {48} necessary to the perfection of the whole. Thus the pantheist's god has no moral complexion, and such a god is of no use to us. So far as religion is concerned, he—or it—might just as well be non-existent as non-moral. The only Deity whom we can worship is One who stands above the world's ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... by ice.... There are many settlers along the river upon the interval land, who get their living easily. The interval lies on the river and is a most fertile soil, annually matured by the overflowings of the river, and produces crops of all kinds with little labor, and vegetables in the greatest perfection, parsnips of great length, etc. They cut down the trees, burn the tops, put in a crop of wheat or Indian corn, which yields a plentiful increase. These intervals would make the finest meadows. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... an Italian, named Francisco Corbeta, who played with great perfection on the guitar, arrived at court. His performances excited the wonder and delight of all who heard him, and the instrument which produced such melody speedily became fashionable at court, to such an extent, that a universal strumming was heard by day and by night: ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family, very rare in their construction, and the churchyard is large and green, and bowery, with ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... enhanced, and which will always make them specially attractive. Their title expressed a personal liking. Of all the societies, charitable or self-assisting, which his tact and eloquence in the "chair" so often helped, none had interested him by the character of its service to its members, and the perfection of its management, so much as that of the Commercial Travellers. His, admiration of their schools introduced him to one who then acted as their treasurer, and whom, of all the men he had known, I think he rated highest for the union of business qualities ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... must not be too harsh. We must remember that it has been only within the last thirty-four years that the black father and mother have had the responsibility, and consequently the experience, of training their own children. That perfection has not been reached in one generation, with the obstacles that the parents have been compelled to overcome, is not to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... soon saw {101} that these visions of intellectual pleasure were "the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer"; and that, if he was to do the thing he had undertaken to do, he must set stern limits, not only to the pleasures of study, but also to the delusive quest of unattainable perfection, which is the constant parent of futility. He realized, as so many men of letters have failed to realize, that "to deliberate whenever I doubted, to inquire whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the ocean.' Thereupon Hanuman said, 'Who is that Hanuman, who had bounded over the ocean? I ask thee, O best of men. Relate if thou canst.' Bhima replied, "He is even my brother, excellent with every perfection, and endued with intelligence and strength both of mind and body. And he is the illustrious chief of monkeys, renowned in the Ramayana. And for Rama's queen, that king of the monkeys even with one leap crossed the ocean extending ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... through the formal speech of any orator whatsoever. He exhibited the virtue of charity in the highest degree; and although unable to tolerate the slightest deficiency in himself, he strove with love and prudence to effect the same perfection in others. Receiving from Rome at the end of his illness letters by which he was formally enrolled among the lay brethren, he was so penetrated with joy that he had strength to offer his vows in the church—after which, his illness increasing again, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... stopping abruptly, he asked her if she wished to divert him from any painful subject. "No, no!" she cried, "it's only that I want to feel an anchor. We are all adrift. Sandra is in perfect health. Our bodies, dear Merthyr, are enjoying the perfection of comfort. Nothing is done here except to keep ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds. The preparations of both the combatants were in every department in the last state of perfection; and he could see the rest of the Hellenic race taking sides in the quarrel; those who delayed doing so at once having it in contemplation. Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... perfection of a traveler's morning. There had been a shower during the night, and the highways lay cool, moist, and dark brown between the green of the fields and the clean-washed, red-brick pavements of the town. There would be no dust even on the railroad, and the air ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Mark knew that he was of the world's lovers. He wanted her with all the deep passion of first love—first love in an ardent and romantic and forceful nature. His dreams did not change; Julia changed to fit them. She was everything for which he had ever longed, she was perfection absolute. She became his music, his business, his life. Every little girl, every old woman that he passed in the street, made him think of Julia, and when he passed a young man and woman full of concern for, and of ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... lot abundantly contented her—she had no fault to find with her mother. The little Mummy was all that was perfection. For her mother she would have done almost as much in her own way as Kitty would do for her ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... the merits and faults of his own team. In speaking of the swift development of this year's varsity he said it was as remarkable as it had been unforeseen. He claimed it would be a bewildering surprise to Wayne students and to the big college teams. He was working toward the perfection of a fast run-getting machine. In the five games already played and won a good idea could be gotten of Wayne's team, individually and collectively. Homans was a scientific short-field hitter and remarkably sure. Raymond could not bat, but he had developed into a wonder ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... melt in love as she if she would stoop to loving—as each one prayed she might—himself. Her hands and feet, her neck, the slimness of her waist, her mantling crimson and ivory white, her little ear, her scarlet lip, the pearls between them and her long white throat, were perfection each and all, and catalogued ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... American wooden sailing-ships continued to be the glory of the seas, and the American clippers reached their highest development. The appearance of steamships on the North Atlantic and the Pacific had inspired the producers of the "wonderful American sailing-ships" to greater efforts for their perfection; and the clipper, surpassing all other types of sailers in size, sea-qualities, and speed, was the result of the intensified rivalry of canvas and steam.[GU] The American clipper-ship era fairly opened with the advent of the Collins Steamship Line.[GV] Between 1850 and 1855 ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... a year, because she produces the documents at once to show that precious little of this outlay is on her account. But I must not commence writing about Livy, else I shall never stop. There isn't such another little piece of perfection in the world ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other qualities it has become almost a fashion to speak of the "perfection" of Shakespeare's art; but in truth no word could be more out of place in such a connection. As Ben Jonson wrote in ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the tie of a common fatherland, and spoke the same French that Sebastian spoke. D'Arragon's French had the roundness always imparted to that language by an English voice. It was perfect enough, but of an educated perfection. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... doing it to perfection; and an admirable piece of horsemanship it was. The horse, suddenly checked in his impetuous gallop, upon the very brink of the zequia, and drawn back on his haunches, with head erect, starting eyeballs, and open smoking nostrils, formed a noble picture to look upon. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the Organ Cactus are a feature in the landscape of the plains, and we first saw them to perfection on the road between Mexico and Pachuca. This plant, the Cereus hexagonus, grows in Italy in the open air, but seems not to be turned to account anywhere except in Mexico for the purpose to which it is particularly suited. In its wild state it grows ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... that certain substances and actions, in reality of no avail, possess a virtue which renders them useful in producing the wished-for effect, may not the wild, untaught, unenlightened savage of Guiana add an ingredient which, on account of the harm it does him, he fancies may be useful to the perfection of his poison, though in fact it be of no use at all? If a bone snatched from the jaws of a fasting bitch be thought necessary in incantation; or if witchcraft have recourse to the raiment of the owl because it resorts to the tombs and ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... transactions of the last session, the negotiation for a second partition treaty had been carried on in London by the French minister Tallard, in conjunction with the earls of Portland and Jersey, and was soon brought to perfection. On the twenty-first day of February the treaty was signed in London; and on the twenty-fifth of the next month it was subscribed at the Hague by Briord, the French envoy, and the plenipotentiaries of the states-general. By this convention the treaty of Ryswiek was confirmed. The contracting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that Lucien had repented so many times during the last eighteen months, that penitence, however impassioned, had come to be a kind of drama with him, played to perfection, played so far in all good faith, but none the less a drama. To the cure succeeded the doctor. He saw that the patient was passing through a nervous crisis, and the danger was beginning to subside. The doctor-nephew spoke as comfortably as the cure-uncle, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... board of ordnance or theoretic engineers, but which, as is generally the case with excellent tools, was the result of the trials and experience of a race of practical men, something which had grown up to supply the needs of hunters; and with the improvements which greater mechanical perfection in gun-making has effected, it stands at this day the king of weapons, unapproached for accuracy by the work of any nation beside our own, very little surpassed in its range by any of the newly invented modifications of the rifle. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... by the pure intelligence of immortal spirits. It is indeed the fundamental defect of all imaginary polities—and how much more of such as fossilize, without even idealizing, the actual!—that even though they be perfect, their perfection is relative only to a single set of conditions; and that could they perpetuate themselves they would also perpetuate these, which should have been but brief and transitory phases in the history of ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... suspicion of the man which prevented West from indulging in more rigorous methods. As the evening progressed he became almost convinced that her principal object was to deceive this gentleman; that she really cared nothing for what the others might think, or say. And she did her part to perfection, being with West often, although never alone, speaking to him intimately, and requesting of him little acts of service most natural under the circumstances. He played opposite her in a fourhanded game of bridge; he turned the leaves of her music when she sang, and her arm rested within his as ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... such as must puzzle a fat man, before the cavern becomes spacious, and you find yourself in the vast underground cathedral that pre-historic man has chosen for his picture-gallery. This was a later stock, that had in the meantime learnt how to draw to perfection. Consider the bold black and white of that portrait of a wild pony, with flowing mane and tail, glossy barrel, and jolly snub-nosed face. It is four or five feet across, and not an inch of the work is out of scale. The same is true of nearly every one of the other fifty ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Presbyterian has ever denied to a Methodist the right to question his religious faith, and no Methodist will dispute the right of other denominations to impugn his creed. Methodists have assailed the Presbyterian doctrine of election. Presbyterians, in turn, have assailed their ideas of perfection and falling from grace. Both have controverted the Baptists' views of immersion, and all have denied the Episcopalians' doctrine of apostolic succession. These and many other points of difference have, from the foundation of our government, often been the subjects of earnest, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... unchanging ocean of everchanging waves—one deathless heaven of clouds, which to their graves roll ceaselessly: if it be so, not vainly have long years sent forth their heralds on the trackless deep, where high endeavors of exalted will which in themselves find no accomplishment, shall build at length perfection. Peacefully he[20] sleeps, who erst beheld the rifted shores of Greenland "glister in the sun, like gold:" and that deserted chief[21] whose angry moan once mingled wildly with the screaming winds and the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... against masquerades and the coming marriage of my Lord Albemarle to the rights and wrongs of Mr. Wilkes, but my lady had her say. Mrs. Manners seemed more than content that she should play the hostess, which she did to perfection. She contrived to throw poisoned darts at the owner of Strawberry that started little Mr. Marmaduke to fidgeting in his seat, and he came to the rescue with all the town-talk at his command. He knew little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... story of his about a painter who was always striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they found a mere ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... so long continuance (old Demdike) of whom our whole businesse hath such dependence, that without the particular Declaration and Record of her Euidence, with the circumstaunces, wee shall neuer bring any thing to good perfection: for from this Sincke of villanie and mischiefe, haue all the rest proceeded; as you shall haue them ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the next two rates we have the rank and file of the battle-line, two-deckers of increased size-namely, seventy-fours in the third rate, and sixty-fours in the fourth. Here, however, is a slight break in the perfection of the system, for the fourth rate also included 50-gun ships of two decks, which, during the progress of the Seven Years' War, ceased to be regarded as ships-of-the-line. War experience was eliminating small battleships, ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... will have to see to it that you are as modest as you are free in your discourse. It may well be, that in order to be able to know us well, that sagaciously clever and inscrutable minded prince pretends not to hear us, just to prove our mettle. Doubtless he knows that it belongs to that perfection which we profess to fulfil, that lesson of our Lord which tells us, 'In your patience ye shall possess your souls,' and that too of most blessed Paul, 'In all things let us shew forth ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience.' But much patience is assured in this, if ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... I must say, the young lord did great offence to his majesty, his mother, and his lady; but to himself he did the greatest wrong of all, for he has lost a wife whose beauty astonished all eyes, whose words took all ears captive, whose deep perfection made all hearts wish to serve her." The king said, "Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. Well—call him hither;" meaning Bertram, who now presented himself before the king: and, on his expressing ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... methodically checking every control as Arcot called out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working to perfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... than chivalrous Americans, particularly as I was now married and the natural prey of the hunter. But it was several years before I could think of men without a shudder, little as I permitted them to suspect it. I learned to play the subtle and absorbing game of men and women as it is played to perfection in the bolder civilizations. It was all that gave vitality to the general game of society. I had no children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little resemblance to a home. It was the brilliant artificial existence of a great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... rascally husband or two, and visits America, where she ends her adventures—a la Marble Faun—rather more obscurely than we could have wished, by 'enduring and suffering,' but on the whole happily, so far as sentiment is concerned. As the story contains to perfection every element of the most popular English novels of the day, yet in a more highly concentrated form than they usually present, we have no doubt that its sale will be very great. The volume contains a very ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the table, with a fine question whether he should take them between the cantaloupe and the broiled chicken, or wait till they had come to the corn griddle-cakes, which St. John's cook served of a filigree perfection in homage to the good old American breakfast ideal. There would be more women, if he waited, and he should need the sympathy and countenance of women; his story would be wanting in something of its supreme effect without the electrical response ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... down to table. The cloth was white, the cutlery bright, the oysters fresh; the partridge, cooked to perfection, exhaled a delightful odor. Madame was charming, and laughed at everything. Monsieur unbent his brows and stretched himself on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... exhibit the King publicly to the world as a cypher, and something less than a cypher, as an unsuccessful competitor in a political squabble, is to take from the Crown all the dignity with which it is invested by that theoretical attribute of perfection that has been so conveniently ascribed to it. Both King and Ministers have been greatly to blame, the one for the egregious folly which made him rush into this sea of trouble and mortification without calculation or foresight; the other ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... general two or three inches long, and full of small seeds, which have nearly the same taste as the leaves; but, on their being dried, the smell and taste leaves them: it is also difficult to find them in a state of ripeness, as the parroquets destroy them before they can arrive at any degree of perfection. ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... closest affinity between art and religion, as its history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our own poet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, above one-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The one draws God to man, brings perfection here, and reaches its highest form in the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed with almost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this life good because it reflects and suggests the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... people feel as if allusions to his renunciation of Groombridge were simply quite out of taste, and nothing out of taste seemed in keeping with anything connected with him. It was all so simple to Mark, and so perfect to Canon Nicholls, that the latter almost dreaded this very perfection as unlikely, and unbefitting the "second-rate" planet in which it was his lot to live. And to confirm this almost superstitious feeling of a man who had lived to know where the jolts and jars of life cause the acutest suffering to the idealist, had come this fresh aspiration ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... has succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... his virtues and in his faults, he was curiously typical of the age in which he lived. Guicciardini, who was certainly no friend to him, and regarded him as the inveterate foe of Florence, describes him as "a creature of very rare perfection, most excellent for his eloquence and industry and many gifts of nature and spirit, and not unworthy of the name of milde and mercifull;" and the Milanese doctor Arluno, the author of an unpublished chronicle in the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, says, "He had a sublime soul and ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its root, leaves, and capsule without admiration. Can that Being, thought I, who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? I started up, and, disregarding both danger and fatigue, travelled forward, assured that relief was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... his mighty youth" a little too long. There is a tentativeness of manner which seems to come from a conscious aptitude for many poetic styles and an incapacity to determine which should be definitively adopted and cultivated to perfection. Hence one too often returns from any prolonged ramble through Coleridge's poetry with an unsatisfied feeling which does not trouble us on our return from the best literary country of Byron or Wordsworth. ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... and was ready to proceed to her immediate work of overhauling domestic affairs. When Keith Macleod was struck by the exceeding neatness and perfection of arrangement in this small house, he was in nowise the victim of any stage-effect. Gertrude White was at all times and in all seasons a precise and accurate house-mistress. Harassed, as an actress must often be, by other cares; sometimes exhausted with hard work; perhaps ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... The difficulty when this happened, as it did constantly, was to keep hands steady and mind calm, as if for the performance of a delicate surgical operation; because to drop a thing, or aim it wrongly, would have been black disgrace. And to ensure perfection of aim, attention must be concentrated upon the lady's lips as she opened them to receive supplies. It was to watch the unfolding of a rosebud into a rose while forbidden to touch the rose. And even monks ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... whose happiness consists in seeing his children about him, especially when they are deserving of his tenderness, he would have been better pleased had he stayed at his court, near his person; but as he could not disapprove of his choice of the state of perfection which he had entered, he supported his absence more patiently. He made the most diligent search after Ahmed, and dispatched couriers to all the provinces of his dominions, with orders to the governors ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... regard to a just cause, the cause of a country worthy to take its place in the great family of the free nations of the world. Until I learn that you refuse to recognize nations, whenever their governors fall short of religious perfection, I need not care much about attacks on my mere personality. But one thing I can scarcely comprehend,—that the PRESS—that mighty vehicle of justice and champion of human rights—could have found an organ, and that, in the United States, which (to say nothing ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... No one claims that he was perfection. But if those who sought his destruction while he lived had had no greater faults than he, with better grace their modern representatives might indulge their genius for his defamation. At best, as we might suppose, it is the little men, the men of narrow ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... unacknowledged fear of evil chance if he should speak too soon and put the beautiful gold to the touch while the magic transmutation was still so dazzlingly fresh. The present was so immeasurably better than the past, so near a perfection of its own, that he could wait in it a while before he opened wide his arms to take in the very whole of happiness itself, wherewith the beautiful future stood full ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... hard, made no immediate rejoinder; but finally he exclaimed: "Then my dear—with such a chance—you were the perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated—or she took him to be—that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the Gardens ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... upon it, seemed almost too heavy for the delicate head and neck that supported it. Although not strictly beautiful, she had one of those intelligent and responsive faces that are often more attractive than mere perfection of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Rutherford does not mean that, as he is careful to explain. He means, as he says, 'die believing.' It will be your last act as a believer, therefore do it well. You have been practising faith all your days; show that practice makes perfection at the end. As Rutherford said to George Gillespie when he was on his deathbed, 'Hand over all your bills, paid and unpaid, to your surety. Give him the keys of the drawer, and let him clear it out for himself after ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... fortune to be senior officer during his chief's temporary absence. He fought his ship, the Brooklyn, to perfection, and, while it was not of record that he issued any orders to other commanders, his prestige and well-known battle frenzy inspired all, contributing much to the victory. The early accounts deeply impressed the public, and they made Schley the central ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... ideas; her Oroonoko has been educated by a Frenchman who "was a man of very little religion, yet he had admirable morals and a brave soul," an ancestor obviously of Rousseau himself, and a fit tutor for this black "Emile." The aborigines of Surinam live in a state of perfection which reminds Mrs. Behn of Adam and Eve before the fall: "These people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin: and 'tis most evident and plain that single nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress. 'Tis ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... appeared. "He bought another rifle the other day—paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom run across such a combination of physical perfection and child-like irresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income the other day—'inkum' in his inimitable pronunciation. I suggested that right here in this valley he could earn a considerable number ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... poetry produced in those circumstances is of a more or less artificial type, and is wanting in the spontaneous vigour of the earlier essays of the Japanese muse. Conceits, acrostics, and untranslatable word-plays hold much too prominent a place, but for perfection of form the poems of this time are unrivalled. It is no doubt to this quality that the great popularity of the Kokin-shu is due. Sei Shonagon, writing in the early years of the eleventh century, sums up a young lady's education as consisting of writing, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... confusion. Then, standing alone in the night beauty of the desert, the girl acknowledged the truth that she had denied even to herself so long. The young Indian's image returned to her endowed with all the dignity of his remarkable physical perfection. She knew now that from the first this physical beauty of his had had a strong appeal to her. She knew now that all his unusual characteristics that at first had seemed so strange to her were the ones that had drawn her to him. His strange mental honesty, his courage, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... perfection; how could he blame her? She had interpreted his suggestions as to sober, serviceable clothes, in a diabolically well-fitting suit of brown, the colour of her hair. At the wrists and neck of her brown-silk waist were spotless bands of white; and on her head was a dashing little brown ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Hawthorne's larger romances has a distinct style and quality of its own, apart from the fine individualized style of the author. Lathrop makes an excellent remark in regard to "The House of the Seven Gables," that the perfection of its art seems to stand between the reader and his subject. It resembles in this respect those Dutch paintings whose enamelled surface seems like a barrier to prevent the spectator from entering the scenes which they represent. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Major was speaking again. "For years the sole aim and goal of the German house of Hohenzollern has been the perfection to a marvelous degree of her policy of militarism. Why, there is not a man in the whole German Empire, who, at the command of his country, could not take his place, a trained soldier, in the tremendous, perfected military machine that is ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... do continue his custom, and in his speech he flewreth [Note 2] and smiles much, and a faltering, lisping, or doubling of his tongue in his speech." [Note 3.] What a picture of a Jesuit! This is the type of man who practises an art which I never saw to such perfection as once in the Principal of a ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... said my uncle in a quick businesslike way; "once more, you must remember that a gun is not a plaything, and though you are a boy in years you must begin to acquire the serious ways of a man. To handle a gun properly is an art, perfection in which means safety to yourself and friends, durability to the gun, and death quick and painless for the object at which you fire. Now then. No hesitation, boy: raise your gun quickly to your shoulder, take a sharp aim, and fire right ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... it with double ardour; the next is, that women were then introduced on the stage, their parts formerly being supplied by boys, or effeminate young men, of which the famous Kynaston possessed the capital parts. When any art is carried to perfection, it seldom happens, that at that particular period, the profits arising from it are high; and at this time the advantages of playing were very inconsiderable: Mr. Hart the greatest performer at the king's theatre, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... individuals and even communities to whom the law had been made so odious that they felt they had but little to lose by a change, but the masses of the people believed that the law was based upon just principles and desired its perfection rather than its repeal. As to the claim that railroad construction had been checked by hostile legislation, statistics prove that during the five years following the great panic of 1873 Iowa fared no worse in this respect than her sister ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... look without surprise on a place that had been prepared through so many generations, had cost so many tons of minted gold, and was maintained in order by so great a company of emulous servants. And yet of these there was no sign but the perfection of their work. The whole domain was drawn to the line and weeded like the front plot of some suburban amateur; and I looked in vain for any belated gardener, and listened in vain for any sounds of labour. Some lowing of cattle and much calling of birds alone disturbed the stillness, and even ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... watch for glances every hour From her divine and sacred eyes: Heigh ho, for Rosaline! Her paps are centres of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame, Where Nature moulds the dew of light To feed perfection with the same: Heigh ho, would she ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... and vnfertile, so are they rude and of no capacitie to culture the same to any perfection; but are contented by their hunting, fishing, and fouling, with raw flesh and warme blood to satisfie their greedy panches, which is ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... in the system of Epicurus the Power manifesting itself in the universe is not a divine Power, but a mechanical one; the gods have nothing to do with it, they cannot be active, their perfection is found in repose; they are an adjunct, an after-thought in the system. Thus all attempts to reconcile the Power with the popular religion must inevitably be failures, and more especially so in the Roman world. At best the Epicurean gods could but set an example of quietism which could not possibly ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... hurried consultation between the two women, in which Fauchette played to perfection the part of a devoted maid who is only desirous to anticipate the wishes of her mistress, it was decided to wheel the sofa on which I lay into the oratory, and to bring the wax dummy into the Princess's bedroom, to lie in ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... very blossom of civilisation triumphant and hopeful; it would fain lead men to aspire towards perfection: each hope that it fulfils gives birth to yet another hope: it bears in its bosom the worth and the meaning of life and the counsel to strive to understand everything; to fear nothing and to hate ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... (to the Crown-Prince).... I am well persuaded your Royal Highness will regulate all that to perfection, and so manage that your fair sex will be charmed to find themselves with you at Reinsberg, and you charmed to have them there. But permit me, your Royal Highness, to repeat in this place, what I one day took the liberty of saying here at Berlin: Nothing in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... very clever myself," said Mr. Weston. "It is too much a matter of fact, but here it is.—What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?" ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... she disclosed, my uncle had never seen—not even in a picture. She got into the coach, holding up her dress with one hand; and as my uncle always said with a round oath, when he told the story, he wouldn't have believed it possible that legs and feet could have been brought to such a state of perfection unless he had seen them with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... I speak is a tree of the temperate zone; and, in fact, grows to greatest perfection in the coldest parts of it. Have you noticed some tall straight trees, with thick foliage of ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... distinctions be understood and kept in mind. It is by confounding justification with sanctification, and vice versa, that all the flagrant, soul-destroying errors concerning the so-called "higher life," "sinless perfection," etc., are promulgated and believed. It is by quoting Scripture passages that speak of justification, and applying them to sanctification, that this delusion is strengthened. How often have we not heard that precious passage, 1 John i. 7, "The ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... us suppose," the Member for Sark continued, disregarding my interruption, his fine face aglow with honest enthusiasm. "I, not being an adept, feeling my way, as it were, towards the perfection of knowledge, put in the seed the wrong end up, and, instead of the carrots presenting themselves to the earnest inquirer in what is, I believe, the ordinary fashion, with the green tops showing above the generous earth, and the spiral, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... wasn't Douglas who held his eye. It was the two Lani who followed him into the room. Every line of their bodies was perfection that spoke volumes about generations of breeding for physical elegance. They moved with a co-ordinated grace that made Douglas look even more clumsy by contrast. And they were identical, twin cream-and-gold works of art. They were completely nude—and ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... first a blundering fashion, the clerks noted down their records of judicial proceedings. But practice soon brought about an orderly and mechanical method of work, and the system of procedure in the Bench rapidly attained a scientific perfection. Before long the name of the Curia Regis was exclusively applied to the new ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand expressed the ineludible gripe, in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... generally the case with neighbours, who happen to be near relations, were never on terms of more than common civility, scarcely those. She was the beau ideal of all that my youthful fancy could paint of the beautiful! and I have taken all my fables about the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination created in her. I say created, for I found her, like the rest of the sex, anything but angelic. I returned to Harrow, after my trip to Cheltenham, more deeply enamoured than ever, and passed ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... before thought her so very beautiful as many others had done—but he must now retract all he had ever said on the subject. He supposed the good taste with which she was dressed must have some effect; but it seemed as if her beauty were now in its perfection. When he last saw her, there was something almost childish in her appearance and expression, which she had now lost entirely. He was struck with the air of finish about her whole person, from the rich glossy lustre on her dark hair, to the pearly tint of her ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... would be a perfect picture of the Falls in summer, if a lady in the foreground had not moved her shawl while the pictures were taking, or in the interval between taking the two. His winter view, "Terrapin Tower, 37," is perfection itself. Both he and Evans have taken fine views of the rapids, instantaneous, catching the spray as it leaped and the clouds overhead. Of Blondin on his rope there are numerous views; standing on one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various |
