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More "Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the verb standing alone is indefinite. It may be present, imperfect, present or past, &c., according to the context; as dia ada, he is; tatkala sahaya ada di sana, when I was there; kalau sahaya ada d[)e]kat, if I am, should be, were, or had been near. This ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... aware that the opinions I express in regard to Sheridan's strategy at the Battle of Winchester are not those generally entertained. But I give reasons. His own account of the battle is sadly imperfect. To capture but five guns and nine battle flags at a cost of four thousand six hundred and eighty killed and wounded, and leave almost the entire rebel army in shape to fight two great battles within a month, was not the programme he had planned. Early said "Sheridan ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... miles lie between us there is no alternative but the hastily written and imperfect scribble which will shortly be presented you, if the elements have not conspired ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... indeed, generally at issue with the other observers of Mars. He finds the canals extremely narrow and sharply defined, and he attributes the blurred and hazy appearance, which they have presented to other astronomers, to the unsteady and imperfect atmospheric conditions in which their observations have been made. He assigns to the thinnest a width of two or three miles, and from fifteen to twenty to the larger. Relatively to their width, however, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... this ship during the attack on the 4th, but from what I observed in regard to the other vessels—that nothing beneficial to His Imperial Majesty's service could be effected by any attempts to combine the whole squadron in an attack against the enemy—but, on the contrary, from the imperfect and incongruous manner in which the vessels are manned— consequences of the most serious nature would ensue from any further attempt of the kind. I have therefore determined to take the squadron to Moro San Paulo, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... was there again that the really fine and poignant irony came in. Through her intercourse with Jane and Laura, Rose offered herself for comparison, and showed flagrantly imperfect. But for that, owing to Tanqueray's superhuman powers of abstraction, she might almost have passed unnoticed. As it was, he owned that her incorruptible simplicity preserved her, even at her worst, from ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... wrong!" exclaimed Maya. "Goat Hennessey had succeeded in developing some humans who could live without oxygen in the air for a time. His experiments were imperfect, it's true, but they were able to ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... blood being up, he told me a story of his uncle, the great Dr. Black the chemist; no one will grudge the reading of it in my imperfect record, though it is to the reality what reading music ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the body of the original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... epistolary imperfect, representing the time of the action when the words would be read by ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... SIR,—In answering your questions concerning the palace of Inquisition at Rome, I should say that I can give only a few superficial and imperfect notes. So short was the time that it remained open to the public, So great the crowd of persons that pressed to catch a sight of it, and so intense the horror inspired by that accursed place, that I could not obtain a more exact ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... production of Wyat and Westmacott. Death is laying his hand upon the hero's heart, and Victory is placing a fourth crown on his sword. Ever since I read Southey's Life of Nelson, I have felt an interest in every thing relating to this great; yet imperfect man. You know that illustrated work on Nelson that we have so often looked at it contains a large engraving of this monument. As Yankee boys, we found our way to the top of the Exchange, to look at ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Colony. He had to be content with lithography for the plates, and indeed, could only manage a selection of twenty of the best. He says, too, that even in England, lithography is found a process of considerable difficulty. They are executed in a very rough and imperfect way, and not very faithfully by an artist who signs himself "Tiz." The poor, but spirited publisher adds that the expense has been enormous—"greater than was originally contemplated," but he comforts himself with the compliment ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... second cup of tea, when it seemed to undergo a slight clouding over—a something we should rather indicate by saying that it slowed down passing through a station, than that it was modulated into a minor key. Of course, we are handicapped in our metaphors by an imperfect understanding of the exact force of the word ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... here to apologize for many of the subsequent conjectures on some articles of natural philosophy, as not being supported by accurate investigation or conclusive experiments. Extravagant theories however in those parts of philosophy, where our knowledge is yet imperfect, are not without their use; as they encourage the execution of laborious experiments, or the investigation of ingenious deductions, to confirm or refute them. And since natural objects are allied to each other by many affinities, every kind of theoretic distribution of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... principles in the necessary dependence of effects on general causes, and we have shown that, impelled by the same motives, and circumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve in a circle; and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science of moral and political prediction, in an intimate but a discriminative ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... at Gedre to visit the Cascade of Saousa, but Gavarnie beckoned onwards to greater attractions; so again we pursued our route, and I speedily lost all thought for other wonders in the tremendous passes which bear the name of Chaos, and of which the best description can give but a faint and imperfect idea. The huge masses of rock, looking like fallen buildings, which are strewn along the valley in inextricable confusion, defy calculation. There they lie, the consequence of some terrific deboulement, which must have shaken the mountains to their centre when the mighty ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... is so calm that Uncle doesn't mind being on deck now, and he even came close to the bulwarks, which he wouldn't do all the way across. He stood there in quite an attitude with his imperfect hand folded into his coat. He looked something, but not quite, as he used to look on the deck of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... personal beauty, than a correct appreciation of her heart and understanding. Not that it is to be inferred that she prided herself unduly upon this latter, but because it was by that standard of conduct chiefly, that she was enabled to judge of the minds of those who evinced so imperfect a knowledge of the female heart, when, emerging from the gaiety of girlhood, it passes into the earnestness ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... endures, it must be the most famous of them all, though perchance Aphrodite has shattered it in her jealous rage. You shall tell me of these statues afterwards; mine had a mark on the left shoulder like to a mole, but the stone was imperfect, not my flesh, as I can prove if you ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the Calenture is sketched from an imperfect recollection of an admirable one in prose, by Mr. Gilbert, Author of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... together with other MSS., was presented to the King of Denmark, Frederick. III., and placed in the royal library at Copenhagen, where it now is.[3] As many of the Eddaic poems appear to have been orally transmitted in an imperfect state, the collector has supplied the deficiencies by prose insertions, whereby the integrity of the subject is to a certain ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... you, my dear brother. Nothing would be such a satisfaction to me as to be able to talk all this over with you, instead of this slow and imperfect communication. ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"—a test which they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing between every sentence ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... opera." Napoleon was wrong in his estimate of Romilly's age. Romilly was sixty-one when he died. He was one of the greatest legal and social reformers of his age. His father was a Huguenot watchmaker who had settled in London, and the young Samuel Romilly had only an imperfect education to begin with. By intense study he became possessed of wide and varied culture. He studied for the bar, became distinguished in Chancery practice, made his way in public life, sat in the House of Commons for several years, and finally represented Westminster. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... passage to the bottom along its projecting surface. Voices of men were also heard in stifled converse below; it seemed as if the pursuers had not discovered the narrow path which led to the top of the rock, or that, having discovered it, the peril of the ascent, joined to the imperfect light, and the uncertainty whether it might not be defended, made ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... already made experiments which fully illustrate this point. He found that the brush generally had a sensible duration, but that with his highest capabilities he could not detect any such effect in the spark[A]. I repeated his experiment on the brush, though with more imperfect means, to ascertain whether I could distinguish a longer duration in the stem or root of the brush than in the extremities, and the appearances were such as to make me think an effect ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... henceforward united to the cause of the Spanish insurrection by a solemn declaration, published on the 15th December, and everywhere the objects of Napoleon's most persistent hatred, had not yet undergone the shock of his arms. Having only imperfect information as to Sir John Moore's operations, the emperor had reckoned with certainty upon the retreat which that general began at the moment of the attack upon Madrid, when he found that it was absolutely impossible to concentrate his forces ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... The Iowa law was imperfect in detail, and yet its enactment proved one of the greatest legislative achievements in the history of the State. It demonstrated to the people their ability to correct by earnestness and perseverance the most far-reaching public abuses and led to ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... free, in a free association, regulated by love alone. Neither Theophile Morin with the doctrines of Proudhon and Comte, nor Bache with those of St. Simon and Fourier, had been able to satisfy his desire for the absolute. All those systems had seemed to him imperfect and chaotic, destructive of one another, and tending to the same wretchedness of life. Janzen alone had occasionally satisfied him with some of his curt phrases which shot over the horizon, like arrows conquering the whole earth for the human family. And then ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... studied the lay of the land intently, he slipped noiselessly out at the door and around behind the cabin, and from there crept on his hands and knees to the bottom of the cliffs. And there he discovered what he had been unable to see in the imperfect light. The grass there was quite tall, where it had not been trampled by the feet of the motley crew that infested the place, and he found that by lying at full length and pulling himself slowly along on his ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope — These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail In life or art that but a hair's more scope Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale? — Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument. ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Billardiere, "at the exactitude with which the latitude had been determined by this navigator, at a time when instruments were very imperfect. The same remark applies to nearly all Leuwin's discoveries ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... advance of this epoch, we may mention the appearance of pottery made on the potter's wheel, and baked in an improved kind of furnace. Previous to this epoch all the pottery had been moulded by hand and baked in an imperfect manner in the open air. This may be thought to be but a small improvement. Our civilization, however, depends upon small improvements. Only during the early part of this age, while iron was scarce, and therefore valuable, would it be used for the purpose of ornaments. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... when they were in the train that Percy became, for the first time, rather communicative. One day while they were eating lunch in the dining-car and discussing the imperfect characters of several of the boys at school, Percy suddenly changed his tone and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... my lecture on geography, which, though very imperfect, has yet exceeded the usual limits of our lessons; many interesting circumstances relating to the various countries I have mentioned, have been entirely omitted, as I was fearful that by telling you too much on the subject I should prevent ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... region as the far, bleak North: but that would be a lengthened subject; and we must content ourselves at present with the fact. And, instead of branching out into general vague illustrations of what I mean by this lyric joyousness, I shall localise it, and embody the meaning in a sketch, light and imperfect it must be, of a real place and a real life—such as mine own eyes witnessed when a boy—and in the fond resuscitation of which, amidst the usual struggles and anxieties allotted to middle age, memory and feeling now find one of their most ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The story did not interest my father quite so much as I expected, and he did not understand all the complexities of Vivian's character,—how could he?—for he answered briefly, "I should think that, for a young man apparently without a sixpence, and whose education seems so imperfect, any resource in Trevanion must be most temporary and uncertain. Speak to your Uncle Jack: he can find him some place, I have no doubt,—perhaps a readership in a printer's office, or a reporter's place on some journal, if he is fit for it. But ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hurried and imperfect report I must not omit to say that Brigadier-General Twiggs, in passing the mountain range beyond Cerro Gordo, crowned with the tower, detached from his division, as I suggested the day before, a strong ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... researches of his to which reference has already been made. This eminent observer and mathematician, suspecting that the old-fashioned instruments, which only told what the wind had been doing every hour, or at best every minute, gave but a most imperfect record, constructed delicate gauges, which would respond to every impulse and give readings from ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... on high as a judge within us, and intended by our Maker as a just and equitable one too, takes often such imperfect cognizance of what passes, does its office so negligently, often so corruptly, that it is not to be trusted alone, and, therefore, we find there is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... for his livelihood or for the expression of his personality, and to blast the reputation of another—thereby destroying what may be called his social existence. And it also follows that a society is morally most imperfect, the conditions of which are such that many lives are indirectly sacrificed because of the lack of sufficient food, and that many persons are deprived of their property through cunning and fraud. The life ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... a very imperfect report of an important interview, but, as I collected from Lord Stanley, that nothing was really settled in his conference on Tuesday with Lord Derby and the Lord Chancellor, I have thought it my duty, without loss of time, to forward ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... except he fall to work again, to find out the same centre, so, though setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I have gone so far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from thee, my centre, all is imperfect. This proceeding to action, therefore, is a returning to thee, and a working upon myself by thy physic, by thy purgative physic, a free and entire evacuation of my soul by confession. The working of purgative physic is violent and contrary ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... wishes to appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning-fork, and her eyes were sharp as talons in their ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... friend amid the most lovely surroundings the friend himself may be having experiences of a very different description. I am, of course, speaking now of persons who have passed over in a very high state of development and with a very considerable, though still imperfect, knowledge of the Law of their own being. Probably the majority take their dream-life for an external reality; and, in any case, all who have passed over without carrying their objective mentality along with them must be ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... if I may trust to my imperfect memory for dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing—for my success had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at that time upon my first work of fiction—I ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... book, Gough admits,* as indeed he was obliged to admit that, "as a general history of the Church in its earlier ages, Foxes work has been shown to be partial and prejudiced in spirit, imperfect and inaccurate in execution," and Leach** asserts that, while its compiler had recourse to some early documents, even here he depended largely on printed works, such as Crespin's Actiones et Monuments Martyrum, which was published at Geneva in 1560. He notes, moreover, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... more specimens of Klaus Groth's poetry, which I have ventured to turn into English verse, in the hope that my translations, though very imperfect, may, perhaps on account of their very imperfection, excite among some of my readers a desire to become ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... a more formidable front to the imperial authorities. When Prince Kung learned from Lord Elgin the full extent of the success of the Taepings on the Yangtse, of which the officials at Pekin seemed to possess a very imperfect and inaccurate knowledge, the Manchu authorities realized that it was a vital question for them to reassert their authority without further delay, but on beginning to put their new resolve into practice they soon experienced that the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... blundering and imperfect as it is, an answer to your Requests, with my best wishes that it may be of any service to the Purpose for which it was made—But must rely upon it that Nothing I have written be made public in my Name.[B] Wishing you long Life and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... significancy of what he says. Let us therefore see how this celebrated author describes the general or abstract idea of a triangle. 'It must be (says he) neither oblique nor rectangular, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenum; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is somewhat imperfect that cannot exist; an idea, wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together' ESSAY ON HUM. UNDERSTAND. B. iv. C. 7. S.9. This is the idea which he thinks needful for the enlargement of knowledge, which is the subject of mathematical demonstration, ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... soul-likings and longings, he has found another self, he has found a friend. Friendship is the communion of such souls, although they may be absent from one another. The highest friendship may grow more perfectly when friends are separated, then it is unmixed with the alloy of imperfect thought and action. Then it is nourished by the past, for only the past buries all faults; it is encouraged by the future, for only the future veils the awkwardness and shortcomings of the present. The character ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... this place. The name or sound of the character is placed immediately after it, expressed in such others as are supposed to be most familiar; and, in the method made use of for conveying this information, the Chinese have discovered some faint and very imperfect idea of alphabetic writing, by splitting the monosyllabic sound into a dissyllable, and again compressing the dissyllable into a simple sound. One instance will serve to explain this method. Suppose the name of the character under consideration to be ping. If no single ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... original deed in possession of Frank Sherman Benson, Esq. There is an imperfect copy in Ranger's ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... same," she remarked with indignation, when with forced facetiousness he had given her an extremely imperfect and bowdlerized account of his evening. "It's always the same. As soon as I'm laid up in bed, everything goes wrong. My poor boy, I cannot imagine what you've been doing. I suppose I'm very silly, but ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... suited to a foreigner and an outsider than it would be to a resident and a native. In the attitude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little—it has been often said—of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; he leaves out less; ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... German engineer, a dark-haired, round-faced, middle-aged man, came forward, and, recognising the pair as visitors of the previous day, greeted them warmly in rather imperfect English, and bowed them into where, ranged on a long table, the whole length of the left-hand wall, stood a great quantity of mysterious-looking electrical appliances with a tangle of connecting wires, while below the tables stood a row ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... and imperfect sketch of that family whose name is prefixed. Many events, of thrilling interest, connected with their revolutionary services, have, no doubt, sunk into oblivion; but enough has been presented to stimulate the rising generation to imitate their heroic example and admire ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... with care, To guard the sex from ev'ry latent snare. Tales I'll detail, and these relate at ease: Narrations clear and neat will always please; Like me, to this attention criticks pay; Then sleep, on either side, from night till day. If awkward, vulgar phrase intervene, Or rhymes imperfect o'er the page be seen, Condemn at will; but stratagems and art, Pass, shut your eyes, who'd heed the idle part? Some mothers, husbands, may perhaps be led, To pull my locks for stories white or red; So matters stand: a fine affair, no doubt, And ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... frail body, which is the natural victim of pain, disease, and death, should not always be able to follow the mind in its aspiring flights, but should be as imperfect as if it belonged only ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... that one is a bookman because he has many books, for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which a gentleman's library is not complete. And in the present imperfect arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved author in some becoming dress, and his fastidiousness to ignore a friend in a fourpence-halfpenny ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... given you the trouble of walking to this spot, Captain Waverley, both because I thought the scenery would interest you, and because a Highland song would suffer still more from my imperfect translation were I to introduce it without its own wild and appropriate accompaniments. To speak in the poetical language of my country, the seat of the Celtic Muse is in the mist of the secret and solitary hill, and her voice in the murmur of the mountain ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... discerneres, 'it was not easy to determine whether she was less concerned about her money or her reputation,' since she was reckless in regard to both. Respecting the imperfect subjunctive, see Zumpt, S 528, note 2. [140] Praeceps is used of steep and precipitous places, and of persons who fall or throw themselves headlong down from or into anything. Hence Sempronia praeceps abierat is, 'she had ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... may be termed sufficient, imperfectly—i.e. in the acceptation of him who is content with it, even though it is not condign, and in this way the satisfaction of a mere man is sufficient. And forasmuch as every imperfect presupposes some perfect thing, by which it is sustained, hence it is that satisfaction of every mere man has its efficiency from ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... we are; we should be shamed out of much baseness—for nothing so purifies and exalts the soul as the actual or imaginary companionship of the pure and exalted; no man who purposed to create a noble picture would choose an imperfect model; no one who seeks virtue and cherishes honor and honorable things, will endure the degradation of ignoble persons or ignoble thoughts; no one ever achieved a great purpose who did not plant his standard on ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that you have got the next door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his father and mother. I again write the direction for your next: George Borrow, Esq., Post Office, ...
— Letters to his wife Mary Borrow • George Borrow
... out in a little disappointment; and he turned again to his paper. Imperfect sympathies! Flint took up his paper also, and read until the sudden shutting off of light warned him that the train had entered the tunnel. Through the checkered darkness, he made his way back; his flat, square package under his arm, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... toward the north, the northeast and the northwest, we had seen at a distance some of these great red regions, and had perceived the curious network of canals by which they were intersected. But that was a far-off and imperfect view. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... character. How much there is of apparently needless pain and waste! And John Stuart Mill has urged that either we must suppose the Creator wanting in omnipotence or wanting in kindness to have left His creation so imperfect. The answer usually given is that our knowledge is partial, and, could we see the whole, the objection would probably disappear. But what force and clearness is given to this answer by the doctrine of Evolution which tells us that we are looking at ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... on her pillows and sobbed convulsively. Anne pressed her hand in an agony of sympathy—silent sympathy, which perhaps helped Ruby more than broken, imperfect words could have done; for presently she grew calmer ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Vernatty's knavery, and so parted, and then I homeward and met Mr. Povy in Cheapside, and stopped and talked a good while upon the profits of the place which my Lord Bellasses hath made this last year, and what share we are to have of it, but of this all imperfect, and so parted, and I home, and there find Mrs. Mary Batelier, and she dined with us; and thence I took them to Islington, and there eat a custard; and so back to Moorfields, and shewed Batelier, with my wife, "Polichinello," which I like the more I see it; and so home with great ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his manuscript papers, that he had designed to publish some of the Speeches which he delivered in those discussions, and with that view had preserved the following Fragments and detached Notes, which are now given to the public with as much order and connection as their imperfect condition renders them capable of receiving. The Speeches on the Middlesex Election, on shortening the Duration of Parliaments, on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament, on the Bill for explaining the Power of Juries in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect things—and there had been many imperfect things—he had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself young. But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all done with. Not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... unto them.' This law, I am persuaded, is of God. Long have I lived, and never before have I seen it acted on till these Christians came amongst us. They do not, indeed, always practise as they teach; but they are imperfect, therefore they cannot practise fully as they teach, because they teach perfection. This law I shall henceforth follow as I best can. I follow it to-day. If I were in thraldom to you, Heika, just now, I would wish you to set me free, therefore I now set you and your ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... imperfect being, an unfinished sketch—he is a man. Watch him closely, follow every one of his movements; they will reveal to you a logical sequence of ideas, a marvellous power of imagination, such as will not again be found at any period of life. There is more real poetry in ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... other printed copy of the A.-S. Orosius than the very imperfect edition of Daines Barrington, which is perhaps the most striking example of incompetent editorship which could be adduced. The text was printed from a transcript of a transcript, without much pains bestowed on collation, as he tells us himself. How much it is to be lamented that the materials for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... men, the flatterer is likely to be an enemy to the gods, and especially to Apollo, for he always sets himself against that famous saying, "Know thyself,"[350] implanting in everybody's mind self-deceit and ignorance of his own good or bad qualities, thus making his good points defective and imperfect, and his ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... party was either unusually tall or unusually short. A middle-sized man was perfectly safe from recognition, so long as he did not speak and could keep his equipments. Those who did speak altered their voices, as we soon found, using a jargon that was intended to imitate the imperfect English of the native owners of the soil. Although neither of us had ever seen one of the gang before, we knew these disturbers of the public peace to be what in truth they were, the instant our eyes fell on them. One could not well be mistaken, indeed, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... should come from within and not through the instrumentality of imperfect individuals, such as your religious ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... the imperfect code of human justice under which we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken the trouble to find out, from unquestioned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the waters of which I was just beginning to thirst; and I wished him to understand, too, how welcome would be the companionship of the other boys, after so lonely a life as mine had been. But to make all this clear to him through my imperfect method of expressing myself would have involved quite a long speech on my part; and, as my eager glance fell on his unsympathetic face, the words failed me, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... week's visit in town where she was fully occupied, and he did not well know what to do with himself—or a hurried rapid meeting at school, where Jock's pride in introducing his tutor to his sister was a somewhat imperfect set-off to the loss of personal advantage to himself in thus seeing Lucy always in the company of other people—his being was greatly moved with diverse thoughts. Lucy was all he had in the world to represent the homes, the fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of his companions. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... and country about 'Castle Boterel' is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... (Comcomly), an intelligent and communicative young man, I put to him several questions touching their religious belief, and the following is, in substance, what he told me respecting it: Men, according to their ideas, were created by a divinity whom they name Etalapass; but they were imperfect, having a mouth that was not opened, eyes that were fast closed, hands and feet that were not moveable; in a word, they were rather statues of flesh, than living men. A second divinity, whom they call Ecannum, less powerful, but more benign than the former, having seen men in their state of imperfection, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... from it was weak and feeble, so that the air as it moved was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth which penetrated it, and the fruits withered and fell off when they were half ripened and imperfect on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. But chief of all, the phantom that appeared to Brutus showed that Caesar's murder was not pleasing to the gods; and it was after this manner. When Brutus was going to take his army over from Abydus[620] to the other ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... countenance of Lord Marney bespoke the character of his mind; cynical, devoid of sentiment, arrogant, literal, hard. He had no imagination, had exhausted his slight native feeling, but he was acute, disputatious, and firm even to obstinacy. Though his early education had been very imperfect, he had subsequently read a good deal, especially in French literature. He had formed his mind by Helvetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, and in whom alone he had faith. Armed with the principles of his great master, he believed he could ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... declare himself his admirer, after Athens was abandoned, and Decelea fortified by the enemy—the admirer of one whose sole aim in life was tyranny? But, as the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then, giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than lovers of wisdom? However, it is not my intention to speak evil of distinguished ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... find new things, quite new, because they are so very, very old, and quite true; and with his help I seem in a measure to look back upon our thoughts now as if I had projected myself a thousand years forward in space. An imperfect book, say the critics. I do not know about that; his short paragraphs and chapters in their imperfect state convey more freshness to the mind than the thick, laboured volumes in which modern scholarship professes to describe ancient philosophy. I prefer the imperfect original records. Neither can ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a physical or visible body, an atom of the physical or visible earth. He has a soul the exact counterpart of his body, but invisible and subjective; incomplete and imperfect as the external man, or ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... didn't confide your—your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can't be polite and keep peace with Cora—at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe," she finished with imperfect gravity, "that it—it ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... side of Japan, and includes the indicated latitude, the nearest sea-port town being named Nocea, thirty-five miles farther north. But as we have hardly any intercourse with Japan, our maps of that country are very imperfect.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... it is wise to spend your time in studying the imperfect copies, without looking at the perfect pattern? You would not take the child's careless imitation as a proof that his teacher could not write. I thank you for helping me to-day. I wish you would help my boys when you can; and I wish you would ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... and who, consequently, will not be satisfied with any note, emendation, or restoration which does not make the passage into which it is introduced "one entire and perfect chrysolite." But this is unreasonable. We have direct evidence of the imperfect character of much that Shakspeare wrote. When told that Shakspeare had never blotted a line, Ben Jonson—no mean critic, and no unfriendly one—wished he had "blotted a thousand." Would rare Ben have uttered such a wish ignorantly and without cause? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... fire stolen from heaven, animated it with a living soul. Spontaneous generation once held its sway, and now the idea of natural evolution is popular. Some believe that the inpenetrable mystery of life is evolved from the endowments of nature, and build their imperfect theory on observations of her concrete forms and their manifestations, to which all our investigations are restricted. But every function indicates purpose, every organism evinces intelligent design, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... vague and unsatisfactory. They will tell you that Christ died for men, and that He is the Saviour of the World, but they do not seem to comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity, nor the full extent of the requirements and application of the law of Christian love. These imperfect views may not be entertained by all Christian Indians, but they were very common amongst those with whom I conversed. Their ignorance upon theological, as well as upon other subjects, is, of course, extreme. One Indian asked me very innocently ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the floor of Congress is not due to them and to the character of our Government. No portion of our citizens should be without a practical enjoyment of the principles of freedom, and there is none more important than that which cultivates a proper relation between the governors and the governed. Imperfect as this must be in this case, yet it is believed that it would be greatly improved by a representation in Congress with the same privileges that are allowed to the other ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... he never used, or when he did it was only to obscure his vision; but the money was not lost, as it aided in persuading the world he was a colonel and was afflicted with that genteel defect, an imperfect vision. These extremes of extravagance and meanness were not unusual in his practice. The one, in truth, being a consequence ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of concrete practical consequences. It contains, moreover, conditions that make imperfect knowledge equivalent to complete ignorance, for in delivering sentence every "no'' may each time mean, "We know that he has not done it'' or again, "We know that it is not altogether certain that he has done it.'' Our knowledge in such cases is limited to the recognition ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... an Indian, twenty-one years of age, one of the Six Nations. His mode of locomotion was by a large wooden bowl, in which he sat and moved forward by advancing first one side of the bowl and then the other, by means of his hands. The nodules or "adventitious joints" were the result of imperfect ossification, or, in other words, of motion before ossification ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... forehead, and worked by a spring-lever, left the damnable mark upon the skin in deep, rich purple characters. The surface of the branding instrument was peculiarly soft and yielding, so that when, by the automatic inking, the mark was made, there was never an imperfect sign, but every character was truly formed. The ink used, claimed to be absolutely indelible, and those who had tried it, more than two years before, had found no break in any single line or curve if either of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... of soon coming back, that I rather thought never to have returned at all, and I gave them all my books, among which were many of Plato's and some of Aristotle's works. I had also Theophrastus on Plants, which, to my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid it carelessly by, while we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it, and in many places torn out the leaves. They have no books of grammar but Lascares, for I did not carry Theodorus with me; nor have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscorides. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the passengers upon the Buzz Buzz things would say the same. Day by day," added the Lion in an aggrieved tone, "I hear them shout out the expressions—'Olloway, 'Igate, 'Arrow. The Board Schools," continued the Lion in his wisest tones, "are responsible for a most imperfect system of education." ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... star is generally determined from measurements of the diameter of the star on the plate. A simple mathematical relation then permits us to determine m'. The diameter of a star image increases with the time of exposure. This increase is due in part to the diffraction of the telescope, to imperfect achromatism or spherical aberration of the objective, to irregular grinding of the glass, and especially to variations in the refraction of the air, which produce an oscillation of the image ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... capital and innumerable mines and plants everywhere in the United States, can't they beat the other fellows in the market? Partly because they are carrying too much. Partly because they are unwieldy. Their organization is imperfect. They bought up inefficient plants along with efficient, and they have got to carry what they have paid for, even if they have to shut some of the plants up in order to make any interest on their investments; or, rather, not interest on their ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... remarked here that the so-called species of Rhizomorpha are imperfect fungi, being entirely devoid of fructification, consisting in fact only of a vegetative system—a sort of compact mycelium—(probably of species of Xylaria) with some affinity ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... well-marked character of a more thoroughly ground-down conglomerate than the great conglomerate on which it reposes. The underlying bed is composed of broken fragments of the rocks below, crushed, as if by some imperfect rudimentary process, like that which in a mill merely breaks the grain; whereas, in the bed above, a portion of the previously-crushed materials seems to have been subjected to some further attritive process, like that through which, in the mill, the broken grain is ground down ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... was apparent from his reluctance to quit the spot; from the tardy steps with which he often left it, still looking over his shoulder at the same window; and from the precipitation with which he as often returned, when a fancied noise or the changing and imperfect light induced him to suppose it had been softly raised. At length, he gave the matter up, as hopeless for that night, and suddenly breaking into a run as though to force himself away, scampered off at his utmost speed, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... ancestral and individual education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the accomplishment of which, consequently, we can not help attaching a certain shame, do not in the least shock the still imperfect conscience of the primitive man." From somewhat this standpoint we must judge of the Negro. Two or three illustrations will suffice. Talking last summer to a porter in a small hotel, I asked him if he had ever lived on a farm. He replied that he had and that he often thought ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... OVER LEGISLATION.—In addition to performing the customary duties of a presiding officer, the Speaker possesses important powers over legislation. The imperfect organization of the House, and its lack of effective leadership, as well as the vast amount of business coming before it, have tended to centralize much of the legislative power of the House in the hands ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... although the human intellect can by itself (provided it be not overruled by the sway of sensual appetites) recognise summarily the excellence of such principles, and give them unreservedly its sanction, yet its perceptions with respect to their specialities remain very imperfect, for several reasons: first, because it finds itself unable to rebut and conquer one by one all the objections which the infidel may bring forward; secondly, in consequence of the doubts which its own limited powers sometimes suggest, impairing its own sense of the truth; and lastly, because ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... much alarmed as if in the presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders had already ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... replied the Sage, with unaccountable bluntness; "truth to tell, these orations about nothing in particular, spouted by persons with an imperfect knowledge of, I should say, almost any subject, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... never bold: Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush'd at herself; and she,—in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, everything,— To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on! It is judgement maim'd and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature; and must be driven To find out practices of cunning hell, Why this should be. I therefore vouch again, That with some mixtures powerful o'er the ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... to observe these Rules of proving the Quality of the AETHER, as the imperfect Sorts have been found to disagree with the Stomach, and produce other bad Effects, besides disappointing the Patient's Expectation. The AETHER that has the foremention'd Properties, (for there are Preparations sold by the same name, which ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... For this labor the time had been estimated, and the publishers had made him an allowance, which, if he had worked like other men, would have amounted to eight dollars a day. But Percival would let nothing go out of his hands imperfect; a typographical error, even, I have heard him say, sometimes depressed him like actual illness. He translated and revised so carefully, he corrected so many errors and added so many footnotes, that his industry actually devoured its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... falls of rain and snow, and unusual floods or droughts. Our knowledge of the meteorological condition of the earth, at any period more than two centuries before our own time, is derived from these imperfect details, from the vague statements of ancient historians and geographers in regard to the volume of rivers and the relative extent of forest and cultivated land, from the indications furnished by the history of the agriculture ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... analysis on direct observation and carefully controlled experiments. As the latter cannot be made feasibly on man, a number of students have taken up the problem by using small animals which are easily handled in laboratories. Many of these experiments are so imperfect in method that, when carefully examined, they are found to possess little or no value as evidence on the ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description of a style si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer. Emily's father, Mr. Hood, is an essentially ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... many, we know, and it is an absurd optimism which would ignore such facts because they are abnormal. The world is full of human abnormality, because it is not yet above the juvenile age of its growth, which is the age of feebleness and folly, disease and crime. The imperfect organism of childhood is incapable of resisting either temptation or disease. The twenty-five millions destroyed by the black death, in the fourteenth century, and the countless millions destroyed by war in all centuries, including the present, show how little we ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... as for instance the experimental, and again the philosophical; but that is because it is theology, not because of the gift of infallibility. But, as far as this goes, I think it could be shown that physical science on the other hand, or again mathematical, affords but an imperfect training for the intellect. I do not see then how any objection about the narrowness of theology comes into our question, which simply is, whether the belief in an infallible authority destroys the independence of the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... practice was not wholly confined to the poorer classes, for he was often consulted by well-dressed members of the foreign colony—on account, probably, of his linguistic attainments. A foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of English naturally prefers a doctor to whom he can speak in his own tongue. Therefore, as Weirmarsh spoke French, Italian and Spanish with equal fluency, it was not surprising that he had formed quite a large practice among ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... that knowledge that is acquired by the Actual Building of great Fabricks. These Two Parts are so necessary, that never any came to any great Perfection without them both. The one being lame and imperfect without the other, so they must walk ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... will not always be perfect literature; often it will be imperfect, especially in form. Yet the tale should be selected with the standards of literature guiding in the estimate of its worth and in the emphasis to be placed upon its content. Such relating of the tale to literary standards would make it quite impossible later in the primary grades when ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... hot fit of fever all the parts, which had acquired too great irritability, or associability, regain their natural degree of it; the disease is removed, and health restored. But if some of these parts do not regain their natural degree of these sensorial powers, the actions of those parts remain imperfect, and are more or less injurious to the system, according to the importance of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his books, De Usu Partium, as in Suarez's Meta- physicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... "Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: By Sinol's death, I know I am thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and, to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of bitterness, fight, faction and jealousy is creating an opposition that will hold him and all others like him in check. And this opposition is well, for even a very imperfect society is forced to protect itself against dissolution and a condition which is worse. To take over the monopolies and operate them for the good of society is not enough, and not desirable either, so long as the ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... the freedom of the human will that it is inconsistent with God's foreknowledge of future events, and thus represents the Supreme Being as not omniscient, and in that particular finite and imperfect. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... phantasia]. Ut Carneades: see Sext. A.M. VII. 166 [Greek: ten te pithanen phantasian kai ten pithanen hama kai aperispaston kai diexodeumenen] (R. and P. 411). As the trans. of the latter phrase in Zeller 524 "probable undisputed and tested" is imperfect, I will give Sextus' own explanation. The merely [Greek: pithane] is that sensation which at first sight, without any further inquiry, seems probably true (Sext. A.M. VII. 167—175). Now no sensation is ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in this volume, were written for the pulpit, in the usual manner of preparation for such labor, without any expectation of their appearing in print. The author is but too sensible that they are imperfect in many features, both in matter and style. It is only in the hope that they will be of some benefit to the class to whom they are addressed, that he has consented to submit them to public perusal. He has aimed at nothing ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... 250 Patten Greening, 300 Northwestern Greening, 1,000 Wealthy. Were I to set another commercial orchard of the same size it would contain 500 Duchess and the balance Wealthy. While the Patten Greening is an ideal tree and an early and prolific bearer, there is with us a much larger per cent of imperfect and diseased fruit than of any other variety. Tree for tree, I believe the Duchess will ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... attacks of neighbours who had not advanced beyond that early stage of humanity in which warfare was chronic and normal. During the historic period, the wars of Europe have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society, or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of large political aggregates. There have been three ways in which great political bodies have arisen. The earliest and lowest method was that of conquest without incorporation. A single powerful ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... B is merely A turned upside down and viewed with the imperfect appreciation of the mere ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Jacob Kurtz's, where I have the pleasure of meeting again the dear family that showed me so much kindness two years ago. Stay fifteenth and sixteenth nights here. If the meeting with those we love, and a brief stay with them, can give us so much joy here in our imperfect state, what will be the measure of our joy when we meet in that world where all is perfection, and partings are known no more! "In his presence there is fullness of joy: and at his right hand there are ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and the flesh of a child, though very delicate and tender, wears out many clothes, whilst it daily grows stronger. If this renewing of spirits were perfect, it would be real immortality, and the gift of eternal youth. But the same being imperfect, the animal insensibly loses his strength, decays and grows old, because everything that is created ought to bear a mark of nothingness from which it was ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... much to ask whether I still consider my philosophy as sufficient, and whether it be so, as whether or not I am still a man, and therefore a mixed and imperfect being. But if you desire the assurance, I can answer you, and say that I am but a man, and therefore notwithstanding my philosophy subject to infirmity and to assaults from the body, which undoubtedly occasion me some distress. But ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Royal Library at Brussels, the second in the Royal Irish Academy Collection (M. 23, 50, pp. 109-120), and the third in possession of Professor Hyde. As the second and third enumerated are copies of one imperfect exemplar it has not been thought necessary to collate both with the Brussels MS. which has furnished the text here printed. M. 23, 50 (R.I.A.) has however been so collated and the marginal references initialled B are to that imperfect copy. The latter, by the way, is in the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... best possible way, and in a logical sequence. Such evils do not invalidate or destroy the force of our assertion that social order is derived from and is based upon the order of nature. Although savage passions, excited by an imperfect understanding of the truth, do from time to time cause the overthrow of given societies, and arouse the horror and alarm of pessimist votaries of myth, nature is not thereby overcome; she still triumphs, and restores the order which has been interrupted, so far as ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... as quasi-psychical, or in some measure similar to the mental part of ourselves; and I have gone on to conclude that this Power may be identical with what men have, in all times and by the aid of various imperfect symbols, endeavoured to apprehend as Deity. [12] We are thus led to a view of things not very unlike the views entertained by Spinoza and Berkeley. We are led to the inference that what we call the material universe is but the manifestation of infinite ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the dumfounded, hysterical crowd. Here some one was shouting command to imaginary militia; there an aged crone was offering, without price, simnels and black butter, as a sort of propitiation for an imperfect past; and from a window a notorious evil-liver was frenziedly crying that she had heard the devil and his Rocbert witches revelling in the prison dungeons the night before. Thereupon a long-haired fanatic, once a barber, with a gift for mad preaching, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man who had not been a good man because he had never had a chance, who had never really earned his spurs as a Western badman, because he was of too small calibre, who was after all a vessel that had come imperfect from the hands of the potter. Now Jimmie answered, his voice hushed, his eyes wide, his ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... had seen no machine in the air above them. The use of machines for more local needs, such as artillery ranging, hastened the recognition of the services rendered by the Flying Corps, and brought it into closer touch with the other arms. Photographic cameras and fittings were still very imperfect, and photography from the air was not much practised, but sketch-maps of enemy trenches and gun-pits, as located by air reconnaissances, were issued by Headquarters during the battle of Ypres. Good work was done in directing the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... external world, and proceed straight to the object of our desires, without almost ever thinking of this medium, our own material frame, unaided by which none of these things could be accomplished. In this sense we may properly be said to be spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are enabled to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... clear, shallow eyes, 'I think Lisa has earned her freedom, and the right to ask a Christmas gift of you. Stand on the other side of the cot and put your hand in mine. I ask you for the last time, will you give this unfinished, imperfect life into my keeping, if I promise to be faithful to it unto the end, whatever it ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... love, the caressing grace of the language which describes the spiritualised beauty of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description of a style si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer. Emily's father, Mr. Hood, is an essentially ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... glittering and imperfect brightness, about four bells in the first watch we made our third atoll, Raraka. The low line of the isle lay straight along the sky; so that I was at first reminded of a towpath, and we seemed to be mounting some engineered and navigable stream. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the purport and effect of the communications which passed between Her Majesty and myself, in respect to certain appointments in the household, which are held by Ladies. Now, whatever blame may attach on account of imperfect explanations, I am content to bear it; whatever consequences may result from misconception, let them be visited on me; but, as to my intentions in regard to the Ladies of the household, I must not only state them, but I must prove them by ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... had but an imperfect knowledge of this part of the world, imagined here those "vast insular tracts" mentioned in the beginning of this treatise. Hence Pliny, also, says of the Baltic sea (Codanus sinus), that "it is filled with islands, the most famous of which, Scandinavia (now Sweden and Norway), is of an undiscovered ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... necessary to plan a social order in which all men shall work without overworking and support all women during the best years of the child-bearing and child-rearing span. If men had been clever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to protect women without independent means from the terrors of life, say by taxing themselves, they would not be pestered to-day with the demand for equal rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of the remunerative industries ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from those in other cases where the conditions had been ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... coating may also act, by reason of its conductivity, as a sort of equalizer or dampener of the bombardment against the stem. To be explicit, I assume the action as follows: Suppose a rhythmical bombardment to occur against the conducting tube by reason of its imperfect action as a screen, it certainly must happen that some molecules, or atoms, strike the tube sooner than others. Those which come first in contact with it give up their superfluous charge, and the tube is electrified, the electrification instantly spreading over its ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... Sage, with unaccountable bluntness; "truth to tell, these orations about nothing in particular, spouted by persons with an imperfect knowledge of, I should say, almost any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... wholesome want the fancy of man conceives, have a striking instance in the case of orchids. At the beginning of this century, the science of floriculture, so far as it went, was at least as advanced as now. Under many disadvantages which we escape—the hot-air flue especially, and imperfect means of ventilation—our fore-fathers grew the plants known to them quite as well as we do. Many tricks have been discovered since, but for lasting success assuredly our systems are no improvement. Men interested ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... them out of the produce of the land. Without entering here upon the important effect of the corn supplies from America, and of the depreciation of the value of the Norwegian timber, owing to the increased competition of America and other countries, we may sum up this imperfect prefatory sketch by stating that, from a general point of view, the Gamle Norge (Old Norway) of Mr. Laing's days has for many years been passing through a process of transformation, the latest results of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... than the pistol and binoculars were his books, an oddly assorted library that included the child's pictorial history already mentioned, Dryden's translation of the Iliad, an imperfect copy of The Three Musketeers, and The Descent of Man. These, indeed, made up the full list of books belonging to the keep, and Constans had been permitted to appropriate them, nobody else caring to waste time over ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... it, if I could," said the other prince, in much slower, and more imperfect English. "It grieves me much. My purse has little, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nobility of thought, and all beauty of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up. Then the dexterous management of a few individuals, base or dull, was the only means of success. But we live in a different age: there are popular sympathies, however imperfect, to appeal to; we must recur to the high primeval practice, and address nations now as the heroes, and prophets, and legislators of antiquity. If you wish to free your country, and make the Syrians a nation, it is ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Latin nationalities conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand on a footing of equality—restricted, it is true, and imperfect— with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter. The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will pass into a bilingual state and the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... opportunities and possibilities throughout the entire course of life. The mere acquisition of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again, intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men of scholarly ability and of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... with our extracts from Miss Mannering's letters, which throw light upon natural good sense, principle, and feelings, blemished by an imperfect education and the folly of a misjudging mother, who called her husband in her heart a tyrant until she feared him as such, and read romances until she became so enamoured of the complicated intrigues which they contain as to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were as vehement as had been his entreaties, which yet, however, were not at an end; the concession she had made was imperfect, unless its performance were immediate, and he now endeavoured to prevail with her to be his before the expiration of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of the above-mentioned conditions is the nature of the crop itself. Our knowledge of the requirements of the different farm crops is still very imperfect. A very wide experience, however, of the effect of different manures on different crops, has conclusively proved that their manurial requirements differ very considerably. The subject is complicated by other considerations, such as the nature of the soil, &c.; but ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Gulf of Carpentaria? Then there was that piece of country discovered by the Dutchman Tasman, and named Van Diemen's Land. Was it an island, or did it join on to New Holland? There were also many islands of the Pacific still to be explored and correctly charted, the map of Eastern Asia was imperfect, and the whole of the coastline of North-Western ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... this qualification was so slight that it excluded very few people, and no one who had any consideration in the city. Aristocratic families should belong to the people as much as possible. The more an aristocracy resembles a democracy, the more perfect it is. The most imperfect of all is that in which the lower classes are ground down ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the movements of this class of armed craft. An immense number of anecdotes of their prowess is current, and some few such narratives will be repeated in this chapter; but, as a rule, they are based only upon tradition, or the imperfect and often incorrect reports in the newspapers of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to mark how trifling a thing will sometimes connect, arrange, and render clear as day to the mind all that has before been vague, imperfect, and indistinct. It is like the touch of lightning on an electric chain, link after link starts up till we see the illumined whole. We have said Nigel had never heard the particulars of the tradition; but he looked on that misshapen plank, and in an instant ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the empire have made visible progress in their educational system, although it is yet in a very imperfect state. In the middle of the last century a body of Armenian monks formed a society for promoting the educational interests of their countrymen. These pious and benevolent men dwell alone on the little island of San Lazzaro, and publish works on literature, science, and religion, which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... influence of no worse motives or passions than usually actuate man in a civilised state, we ought in fairness to suppose that sufficient provocative for retaliation has been given in those few instances of revenge, which, our imperfect knowledge of the circumstances attending them does not enable us satisfactorily to account for. In considering this question honestly, we must take into account many points that we too often lose sight ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... manner described." So far, Pennant versus Pownall! "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The opinion of both these antiquarians is liable to demur. Governor Pownall might probably be a better judge of military defences than Pennant; but he evidently forms his notions of defence with imperfect knowledge of the forts, which would have amply sufficed for the warfare of the ancient Britons; and moreover, he was one of those led astray by Bryant's crotchets as to "High places," etc. What appears most probable is, that the place was both carn and fort; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster's jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... beneath a tree in Adventure Bay, were found by Captain Bunker, of the Venus, in 1809, to which he was directed by the words, still legible, "dig underneath;" and supposed, from his imperfect knowledge of the language, that they were left by Perouse. In this he was mistaken: they were deposited by D'Entrecasteaux, at his second visit. Bent's Almanack, 1828, adopted Bunker's mistake: it was copied by Mr. Widowson, who adds—"these letters were dated one month after his departure ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... seems to be quoted from the first imperfect edition of "The Spanish Tragedy;" in the later (corrected) impression it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... interesting subject will probably engage your [the Assembly's] deliberations.... Considered merely as an instrument denning the powers and duties of magistrates and rulers, the Charter may justly be considered as unprovisional and imperfect. Yet it ought to be recollected that what is now its greatest defect was formerly a pre-eminent advantage, it being then highly important to the people to acquire the greatest latitude of authority with an exemption from British ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with $200 in his pocket, joined the Carpenter's Union, and tried to make a living at that trade. Between dull business, lock-outs, tie-ups, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... devised against Atheists by Des Cartes, and drawn from the Idea's of our Mind, examin'd and found imperfect and invalid. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... One has an impression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three inches wide, on the map; Switzerland only a few more inches away. These sizable masses of salt are described in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 3-3-239, as "essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt." As to occurrence with hail—that can in one, or ten, or twenty, instances be ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... improving the social condition of rabbits, some time before he could conveniently raise himself to a level with the hutch in which three of them, jointly belonging to himself and his brother, abode. His theory was consummate; in practice, however, it proved imperfect,—and great wrath on the part of Richard Gray, and much confusion and disappointment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... repeated the verses, he laid a sharp accent upon every word and every imperfect rhyme; scanned every line with stern precision. Sometimes when he came to a false Alexandrine, he gave himself the appearance of being absolutely unable to force his lips to utter such barbarisms; and then his eyes glowed with malicious fire, and a contemptuous smile ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... exits; it is generally covered by a few feet in thickness of sandy earth; and in some places, according to M. Parchappe, by beds of clay two yards thick. (M. d'Orbigny "Voyage" Part Geolog. pages 47, 48.) On the banks of the Sauce, four leagues S.E. of the Ventana, there is an imperfect section about two hundred feet in height, displaying in the upper part tosca-rock and in the lower part red Pampean mud. At the settlement of Bahia Blanca, the uppermost plain is composed of very compact, stratified tosca-rock, ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... negatively. Thus, the birth-mark of creation must have been an inclination towards folly, and from purity. The mere idea of creatures would involve, as its great need-be, the qualifying clause that these emanations from perfection be imperfect; and that these children of purity be liable to grow unpure. They must either be thus natured, or exist of the essence of God, that is, be other persons and phases of the Deity: such a case was possible certainly; but, as we have already shown, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I am sorry to say, has been interrupted and imperfect, very necessarily the last from the ignorance I have just confessed of more than one segment of the great illuminated field of early religious art, to which the writer most wisely has directed equal ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... turn the light of common sense on to these most imperfect, confused and few facts which Gildas gives us. What sort of thing would a middle-aged man, writing in the decline of letters and with nothing but poor and demonstrably distorted verbal records to go by, set down with regard to a piece of warfare, if (a) that man were a monk and a man of peace, (b) ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... was disappointed too. At any rate, many complaints of smashed dishes, imperfect wiping, and inadequate sweeping of corners reached Miss Bowes, who urged patience, harangued the culprit, and shook her head, half laughing and half sighing, over the domestic catastrophes. Though strictly confined to the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... travel alone in so dreary a place, adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and trying her courage ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... not unlike other municipal councils—its members honest for the greater part, but many of them men who followed old traditions, and believed that quiet things should not be moved. For many years they had lived under a system of accepting the imperfect, and never attempting to make it more perfect. Of these easy-going, self-satisfied gentlemen Councillor Garnett was ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or right ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... book to Theophilus whose title, "most excellent," indicates that he is a man of rank and official position, one to whom an author would not venture to present hasty, imperfect, and inaccurate work, especially when the one addressed had been instructed already in reference ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... conscious that while I have taxed your patience, I have given but an imperfect presentation of the subject. If this endeavor shall serve to incite members of the Club to investigate the subject for themselves, my object will have ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect. The first (Galland's) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140. The stories are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... up the group better than the conventional nimbus could have done. The fair-haired Virgin, draped entirely in blue with a white veil, recalls vividly the same figure in the Paumgaertner altarpiece. Aerial and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in Duerer's best pictures of the later period. The outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... teach him to change it are generally almost fruitless. The entire race are any thing but docile. They are tamed, so as to obey the bridle, only with great difficulty; and their obedience is rather imperfect, at best. Bingley mentions one which was brought from the Cape of Good Hope to the tower of London, in 1803, who was more docile and kindly disposed than most of the species. When in pretty good humor, this ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... greatly obliged if I could obtain through "N. & Q." when, where, and by whom an imperfect black-letter copy of the New Testament, lately come into my possession, was printed, and also who was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... malignity, until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the case to himself, without being chilled with horror, at circumstances so extremely shocking?—Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description is, of the sufferings sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless true; and so far from being exaggerated, falls infinitely short of a thousand circumstances of distress, which have been recounted by different writers on the subject, and which contribute to make their situation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... carelessness in not altering her will, but had reminded Miss Marsh that she should be grateful to her late employer for having had such kindly intentions toward her, vaguely ending her remarks with the statement that as her dear husband had always said in this imperfect world one had often to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... mean there is no necessity of our perfection, of our personal perfection, as to our justification, and that we are justified without it; yea, that that, in justified persons, remains. Again; when I say that justification will stand with imperfection, I do not mean that in our justification we are imperfect; for in that we are complete; 'we are complete in him' who is our justice. (Col 2:10) If otherwise, the imperfection is in the matter that justifieth us, which is the righteousness of Christ. Yea, and to say so would conclude that wrong ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. "Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I'm glad I've said it. The things he knows about and doesn't know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sufficiently obvious. It was to honor the memory of the writer's excellent father-in-law, Agricola (cf. Sec. 3: honori Agricolae, mei soceri, destinatus). So far from apologizing for writing the life of so near a friend, he feels assured that his motives will be appreciated and his design approved, however imperfect may be its execution; and he deems an apology necessary for having so long delayed the performance of that filial duty. After an introduction of singular beauty and appropriateness (cf. notes), he sketches a brief outline of the parentage, education, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... will not undertake to answer your theology, but since I am more ready to apprehend evil than to believe in good, I will entreat you to address to me no more such words as lead you to esteem but lightly those who are wont to believe them. I very well know that I am a woman like any other and imperfect, and that virtue would do a greater thing by transforming me into itself than by assuming my form—unless, indeed, it would fain pass unrecognised through the world, for in such a garb as mine its real nature could never be known. Nevertheless, my lord, with all my imperfections, I have ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... did Stubbs, with a good ear and voice, but an imperfect acquaintance with the music. Leon and the guitar were equal to the situation. The actor dispensed his throat-notes with prodigality and enthusiasm; and, as he looked up to heaven in his heroic way, tossing the black ringlets, it seemed to ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the rough, careless, imperfect record which I have kept of my life. As I run my fingers through the pages of the limp morocco-covered volume, I almost wonder at my wasted labour;—the random notes, jotted down now and then, sometimes with long intervals between their dates, make such a mass of worthless literature. This diary-keeping ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... is! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, when they're new to the business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes that out of 'em. Why, I originally come into ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Austria. Her representations will be of no use: you may stake all you have on that; and eventually, since she will be unable to draw back she, too, will begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by those immense distances and her imperfect railway system, to mobilise also. Then will Germany, already quite prepared, show her hand. She will demand that Russia shall cease mobilisation, and again will Russia refuse. That will set the military machinery of France going. All the time the governments of Europe will be working for peace, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top—the tops of several trees—and all in full song. Suddenly—in a moment—at absolutely the same instant—all spring into the air and fly away. How? They ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... emperor of Russia, son of the Czar Alexei, born at Moscow; succeeded his half-brother Feodor in 1682, but was forced for a time to share the throne with his half-sister Sophia, acting as regent for her brother Ivan; conscious of his imperfect education, he chose a Genoese named Lefort as his preceptor, and after some years' careful training he deposed Sophia, and entered Moscow as sole ruler in 1689; with the help of Lefort and Patrick Gordon, a Scotsman, he proceeded to raise and discipline an army on the European model, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... youths between sixteen and nineteen came up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"—a test which they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seem faintly to greet her ear. How she longed for her mate to return, that he might enjoy, with her, this new happiness! When husband and wife love each other, as they should, all pleasure must be shared, or it will still be imperfect. She waited, almost impatiently for his coming; and when he alighted on the honeysuckle, she looked so full of grateful joy, that he knew that something more than usual must have occurred. He affectionately kissed her bill, and then, ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... powerful disposition in Bob Corkey and Simon O'Rook to argue. Though the arguing never quite degenerated into quarrelling, and the quarrelsome men never absolutely came to blows, their tendencies made this coral paradise imperfect. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Cecilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the wise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to complete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we should otherwise have desired. For instance, here ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the imperative mood; self, first person singular; mind, imperfect tense; eyes, positive; voice, in the superlative degree; ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... freely under her imperfect sail and with the roof she carried, and a moment of painful anxiety succeeded. Paul managed, however, to get a part of the sail aback, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... that their gods belonged to a finite race. The AEsir had had a beginning; therefore, it was reasoned, they must have an end; and as they were born from a mixture of the divine and giant elements, being thus imperfect, they bore within them the germ of death, and were, like men, doomed to suffer physical death in order to attain ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698) that they ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions; nor could he of himself discover any solution ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... easily got to believe that the picture brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood's drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... martyr St. Vitus. We may therefore ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus's dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly-coloured descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... knowledge of a future Life, than they were without it, to seek to attone the Divine Wrath by such ways as would inevitably draw on a neglect of conformity to his Law. Whereas Christianity doth provide against both these Mistakes, in that it assures us that God will accept of our imperfect Obedience for the sake of his Son, if we believe in him, and withal sincerely indeavour to obey him; whereby Faith does plainly not make void, but establish the Law, it laying the highest Obligation as well as Encouragement that is possible upon Men to do their ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... enamel was cracked, and I followed every crack as well as every figure of the hours. Then I began to wonder what I could do with it next. I was not satisfied. Possession I found was not bliss: it had not rendered me content. But it was as yet imperfect: I had not seen the inside. Grannie had told me not to open it: I began to think it hard that I should be denied thorough possession of what had been given to me, I believed I should be quite satisfied if I once saw what made it go. I turned it over and over, thinking I might at least find ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... must trust to sense, to furnish the data of knowledge, and reason will suitably combine them. In this the affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is plainly seen. Every appetite, lust, desire, springs from imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon us by Fate, but we must learn to control our passions, and live free, intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... situated within five minutes' walk of the Great Pyramid, and happily possessed of a golfing-ground and a marble swimming- bath. That ubiquitous nuisance, the "amateur photographer," can there have his "dark room" for the development of his more or less imperfect "plates"; and there is a resident chaplain for the piously inclined. With a chaplain and a "dark room," what more can the aspiring soul of the modern tourist desire? Some of the rooms at the Mena House are small and stuffy; others large and furnished with sufficient ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... I have observed before, delighted in discrimination of character, and having a masterly knowledge of human nature, was willing to take men as they are, imperfect and with a mixture of good and bad qualities, I suppose though he had said enough in defence of his friend, of whose merits, notwithstanding his exceptional points, he had a just value; and added no ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... which these events are said to have occurred was some sixty or eighty years ago, according to the imperfect chronology of my informant. At first, I hesitated to believe that such horrible deeds as those recorded could have taken place almost within the memory of men. My Indian narrator replied—"Indians, no Christians in those days, do worse ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the author extend to irreligious and immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law; to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will be obliged to register; and, recognized ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... on the presence of Omniscience; Think on the punishments with which the church Threatens imperfect and reserved confessions This is the sin to everlasting death, For this is sinning 'gainst ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... If, on reading this imperfect narrative,[7] any persons beyond the immediate circle of my companions in misery (for within it I can safely declare that there were no indications of ridicule) should affect to despise, as contemptible or unsoldierlike, the humble devotional ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... risk, and the authority which he was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who was proving false to a similar sacred charge,—all these admirable traits are most miserably transmitted to you by my imperfect account; and when I assure you that his own narrative, full as it necessarily was of the details of his own heroism, was as simple, modest, and unpretending, as it was interesting and touching, I am sure ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of 4 feet becomes an almost certain failure. As to the longitudinal fracture, not only is the tile subject to be broken by one of those slips which are so troublesome in deep draining, and to which the lightly-filled material, even when the drain is completed, offers an imperfect resistance, but the constant pressure together of the sides, even when it does not produce a fracture of the soil, catches hold of the feet of the tile, and breaks it through the crown. When the Regent's Park was first ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... till it hit the Mark, And all the Truth was told. Then Sage and Shah Struck out with Hand and Foot in his Redress. And First with Reason, which is also Best; Reason that rights the Retrograde—completes The Imperfect—Reason that unties the Knot: For Reason is the Fountain from of old From which the Prophets drew, and none beside. Who boasts of other Inspiration lies— There are no other ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unusually tall or unusually short. A middle-sized man was perfectly safe from recognition, so long as he did not speak and could keep his equipments. Those who did speak altered their voices, as we soon found, using a jargon that was intended to imitate the imperfect English of the native owners of the soil. Although neither of us had ever seen one of the gang before, we knew these disturbers of the public peace to be what in truth they were, the instant our eyes fell on them. One could not well be mistaken, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... long and justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... and inability even to read the Greek alphabet were hindrances, he picked up a little mathematics and heard the lectures of the great Dr. Beattie. His powers of talk and his knowledge of London life atoned for his imperfect education. He saw something of Aberdeen society; admired and danced with the daughters of baillies, and was even tempted at times to forget his passion for Anne Stent, who had sent a chilling answer to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... with Dutch-speaking children; either they would have to devote a great deal more time to the study of Dutch in the first three years so as to be able to receive all instruction in that tongue, or they would suffer in the higher standards through their imperfect knowledge of the medium of instruction. It was not to be supposed that the Uitlanders, after an experience extending over a decade and a half of all sorts of promises, not one of which had been kept in the spirit in which it was intended to be construed, would consent to abandon their scheme ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... As for prophecies they shall come to an end. As for tongues they shall cease. As for knowledge it also shall come to an end; for we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect shall ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... those which we have mentioned. The sources of our information on the subject are so few and scanty, and the notices from which we derive our knowledge for the most part so casual, that we may be sure what is preserved is but a most imperfect record of what was—fragments of wreck recovered from the sea of oblivion. It may have been a Phoenician caravan route which Herodotus describes as traversed on one occasion by the Nasamonians,[993] which began in North Africa and terminated with the Niger ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... vegetation, formed a boundary to the view. The shore is lined by a barrier of sharp rocks, covered with species of ostrea and nerita, but although these were the only living testaceous animals that were found, the beach was covered with a multitude of dead and imperfect shells ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... occasions, but it was to be exempt from the hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property and, encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies, to animate society. But in those dark ages, force was necessary to defend the claims of industry; ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... supposed that an impression from plate would [v.03 p.0320] be more easily photographed than one from surface where only a film of ink is spread upon the top of the raised lines. But surface-printing being much less sharp and distinct than plate-printing, imperfect copies of notes for which that process is used are the more likely to escape detection. The plates upon which the early notes were engraved being of copper quickly wore out and had to be constantly replaced. The result was great difference ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... you off, and by a noble resolution have freed this slave within' (striking her breast) 'from a tyranny which it should disdain to suffer under:' with that she raged about the chamber with broken words and imperfect threatenings, unconsidered imprecations, and unheeded vows and oaths; at which Antonet redoubled her petition to know the cause; and she replied—'Philander! The dear, the soft, the fond and charming Philander is now no more the same. O, Antonet,' ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... any of his predecessors, whose productions, on religious themes especially, striking as many of them are, with situations and motives of the deepest effect, are not sustained at the same impressive elevation, nor disposed with that consummate judgment which leaves nothing imperfect or superfluous in the dramas of Calderon. 'The Constant Prince' and 'The Physician of his own Honour', which Mr. Mac-Carthy has translated, are noble instances representing two extremes of ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... by the curate, and Rachel was with difficulty withheld from an explosion; but even this was less annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday morning, that, in the midst of her lesson, carried off the chief of her scholars to practise their chants. Moreover, the blame of all imperfect lessons was laid on the "singing for the parson," and all faults in the singing by the tasks for Miss Rachel; and one night, the excellent Zack excused his failure in geography by saying that Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and said that it was no better than sacrilege, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tire you, look around you! What contrasts of figures and faces you see in the crowd! What a vast field for the exercise of meditation! A half-seen glance, or a few words caught as the speaker passes by, open a thousand vistas to your imagination. You wish to comprehend what these imperfect disclosures mean, and, as the antiquary endeavors to decipher the mutilated inscription on some old monument, you build up a history on a gesture or on a word! These are the stirring sports of the mind, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Father, beholding Ubi nos in filii sui communionem us in the body of His Son Christ semel recepit, opera Jesus, accepts our imperfect nostra grata acceptaque habet, obedience as it were perfect. non quod ita promereantur sed quia condonata eorum imperfectione, nil in illis intuetur, nisi quod a Spiritu suo profectum, ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... was wholly unconscious of having given offence. It would have been difficult to make him understand what there was objectionable in his remark, and indeed the offence lay more in the tone than in the words. Flint's sympathies were imperfect, and he had no gift for discerning the sensitiveness which lay outside his sphere of vision. To all that came within that rather limited range, he was kind and considerate; beyond, he saw nothing and therefore ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... writer of the 3rd century, wrote a curious miscellany of a book entitled "Deipnosophistae, or the Suppers of the Learned," extant only in an imperfect state. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... after my business among his people. After listening, through my interpreter, to my answers to his questions, he turned from me and honored me no further. I call the Seminole communicative, because most with whom I spoke were eager to talk, and, as far as they could with the imperfect means at their disposal, to give me the information I sought. "Doctor Na-ki-ta" (Doctor What-is-it) I was playfully named at the Cat Fish Lake settlement; yet the people there were seemingly as ready ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... not a human being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical poem like Faust, but in a purely human drama like Othello he would be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in Othello: he is a product of imperfect observation and analysis. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... bottles for the new wine." The opening prayer is recited by everybody present standing. It is rather an act of adoration and faith than a prayer, properly so called. It represents, in fact, the placing of the soul in the presence of God. The mortal turns to the eternal; the ignorant and imperfect look away from themselves to the knowledge and perfection of the All-Holy. It is Elsmere's drawing up, I imagine—at any rate it is essentially modern, expressing the modern spirit, answering to modern need, as I imagine the first Christian ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... elements. These lowest forms of animal life then entered upon a series of evolutionary growth, each lower form evolving one a little more complex, each series gaining the use of and developing organs which existed essentially in the lower form but were small, imperfect, and useless, because not needed. Thus the hand and arm in man are structurally or essentially the same as the leg of the brute, the wing of the bird, the flipper of the whale, and the fin of the fish; and the endeavor to adapt itself ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... afraid I have sometimes neglected it, mother," he acknowledged with a sigh, "and at others performed it in a very halting and imperfect way. But as you know—for I could not keep from you such gladness as the knowledge of that fact brought me—I have been privileged to win some souls to Christ—smooth some dying pillows—and to lead some recovering ones to devote their spared lives and ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... hands rushed to the sides. Some leaped into one boat, some into another. Almost immediately the boats were swamped, and I had the misery to see the poor fellows drowned before my eyes. I alone remained on deck. The ship floated longer than I expected, and I had time to lash together the imperfect raft on which you found me, get it overboard, and to leap upon it, and with only a few biscuits which I stuffed into my pockets and a bottle of water. Had I not taken them I must have perished. How I could have existed for a whole week, as I did, I know not; but I must have been ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... among the people the men of energy who incite the masses to insurrection. By opening out in this way to the public ambition paths that are at once difficult and easy, easy for strong wills, difficult for weak or imperfect ones, a State averts the perils of the revolutions caused by the struggles of men of superior powers to rise to their proper level. Our long agony of forty years should have made it clear to any man who has brains that social superiorities are ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Burke, who were not only passing their lives in governing and taxing people who were unrepresented, but who were quite impenitently determined to resist any attempt to get them represented even in the most imperfect fashion. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the state of his manuscript papers, that he had designed to publish some of the Speeches which he delivered in those discussions, and with that view had preserved the following Fragments and detached Notes, which are now given to the public with as much order and connection as their imperfect condition renders them capable of receiving. The Speeches on the Middlesex Election, on shortening the Duration of Parliaments, on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament, on the Bill for explaining the Power of Juries in Prosecutions for libels, and on the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... relations. Very little information that could be depended upon respecting their manners and customs was obtained through this intercourse; and it was observed, that they conversed with us in a mutilated and incorrect language formed entirely on our imperfect knowledge and improper application of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... upon her monopoly of the most lucrative traffic in the world, as we have already seen,—upon her exclusive privileges in foreign countries, upon the enlightened zeal of her government, and upon men's imperfect knowledge of geography, and the barbarism of the rest of Europe, as well as upon the indefatigable industry and intelligent enterprise of her citizens. America was still undiscovered; the overland route to India was the only one known; the people of the continent outside of Italy were unthrifty ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... I could discover a cause for the imperfect success of great writers when dealing with classic fiction, in the fact of their endeavoring to be too learned, of their aiming too much at portraying Greeks and Romans, and too little at depicting men, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... our language by "Lycidas", and in the point of passionate eloquence even superior to Milton's youthful lament for his friend. "The 'Adonais', in spite of its mysticism," he writes to Ollier, "is the least imperfect of my compositions." "I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion." "It is a highly wrought PIECE OF ART, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written." "It is absurd in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... otherwise, we are compelled to confess that God understands an infinite number of creatable things, which he will never be able to create, for, if he created all that he understands, he would, according to this showing, exhaust his omnipotence, and render himself imperfect. Wherefore, in order to establish that God is perfect, we should be reduced to establishing at the same time, that he cannot bring to pass everything over which his power extends; this seems to be a hypothesis most absurd, and most ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... were quartered in wall tents; now, line officers and enlisted men were to occupy shelter tents, which they were to carry on their shoulders; and although a small number of wall tents could be carried in the wagons for field and staff officers, yet so imperfect was the understanding, in or out of the quartermaster's department, of what could or ought to be done, that most regimental field and staff officers were left without any shelter ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... all our interests. We care most about extremes of importance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance are tainted with fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love. Extremes of unimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are well disposed towards them; the means may come to do so, therefore we do not love them. Hence we pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch with pleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under no conceivable ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the inscriptions upon any of these Butsu-soku- seki will be found of more significance than the above imperfect attempts at an explanation of the emblems. The inscriptions upon the monument at Dentsu-In are typical. On different sides of the structure,—near the top, and placed by rule so as to face certain points of the compass,—there ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... have set down for one of the causes of the Dissolutions of Common-wealths, their Imperfect Generation, consisting in the want of an Absolute and Arbitrary Legislative Power; for want whereof, the Civill Soveraign is fain to handle the Sword of Justice unconstantly, and as if it were too hot for him to hold: One reason whereof (which I have ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... was one of those who did not understand a word of English, and he was indebted to the gestures of Deerslayer, and to the expression of an eye that did not often deceive, for an imperfect comprehension of his meaning. Perhaps, too, the sight of the rifle that lay so near the hand of the white man quickened his decision. At all events, he crouched like a tiger about to take his leap, uttered a yell, and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... remain where he is," replied Mr Sudberry, whose imperfect hearing led him to suppose that his spouse had said, "Jacky's inside, my dear!" whereas the real truth was that the boy was neither out ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... a common means of communication therefore has long been recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... quite another order of royalty, and another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But—and as also I have heard it said, by men practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the world should have as much truth as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world—made up of perfect people, there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there were, the whole ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... century may run wild, as youth often does. I see clearly that none of you will ever really be anything worth notice, however you may now fancy it. But do as you like, I shall not imitate you. I mean to keep clear of all these things, and criticize what you do. In every action something imperfect may be discovered, something not right, which I shall make it my business to find out and expose; that will be something, I fancy." And he kept his word, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... characteristic of this especial period. What a dream of Science that, interstellary communication established, some being of knowledge and capacities as infinitely excelling our own as our faculties excel those of the lowly monad, wandering on this terrestrial globe, and culling from the imperfect archives of these bygone years a corkscrew, an opera-glass, or, perchance, a pot of long since petrified marmalade, preserved intact by some protecting incrustation of stalagmite from the ravages of time, may dart a penetrating gleam of intelligence through ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... women, noble and brave as they were, has shown more courage, and power of endurance, in facing danger and death to relieve human suffering, than this poor black woman, whose story I am endeavoring in a most imperfect way to give you. ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... propositions in Line Print, or having them spelled into my hand; and somehow, although the propositions were right before me, yet the braille confused me, and I could not fix in my mind clearly what I was reading. But, when I took up Algebra, I had a harder time still—I was terribly handicapped by my imperfect knowledge of the notation. The signs, which I had learned the day before, and which I thought I knew perfectly, confused me. Consequently my work was painfully slow, and I was obliged to read the examples over and over before I could ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... week of October, 1846. He had not come to America without some prospect of employment beside that comprised in his immediate scientific aims. In 1845, when his plans for a journey in the United States began to take definite shape, he had written to ask Lyell whether, notwithstanding his imperfect English, he might not have some chance as a public lecturer, hoping to make in that way additional provision for his scientific expenses beyond the allowance he was to receive from the King of Prussia. Lyell's answer, written by his wife, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... would, of course, have to be modified in many ways if we attempted to treat the unofficial fragments of customary law in the same way as the paragraphs of royal codes, and even more so if we were able to tabulate the indirect evidence as to legal rules. But, imperfect as such statistics may be, they give us at any rate some insight into the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... clear: (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our passion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life. We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... in Spinoza's thought, identical with the real and the unreal. The perfect is the completed, the perfected; the imperfect, the uncompleted, the unperfected. These terms have, in their first intention, no specifically ethical significance. Nature is perfect, that is, absolutely real or completed; but in no intelligible sense is Nature ethically good. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the local "Eminence," but did not succeed in winning the election when first presented as "the humble" candidate for the State Senate. He stood upon his "imperfect education," his not belonging "to the first families, but the seconds"; and his shunning society as debarring him from the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... annual average cost of cultivating a quarree in cacao, and manufacturing the produce therefrom, is 35 dollars, in the imperfect manner it is carried on at present, thereby giving only 10 ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... connection of Judaism and Christianity is that men are not always ripe for the highest religion; that there is a fulness of time which it may take four thousand years to produce. The Mosaic religion, imperfect as it was, compared with Christianity, was better for Israel during its period and preparation than the religion of Christ would have been." Then, referring to the Mohammedan religion, he says: "It is not denied ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... water tea-tree, and other shrubs—whilst here and there appear a few isolated patches of open grassy plains, scattered at intervals among the scrub. The surface rock is invariably an oolitic limestone, mixed with an imperfect freestone, and in some places exhibits fossil banks, which bear evident marks of being of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... told her that she lived in his soul, as much as he did in hers, that his existence without her must be barren and imperfect. She did not ask when and how, she only prayed that she might become his, expecting it as confidently as light in the morning, spring after winter. Nothing appeared so irrefutable as this faith; it was the belief ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the tze and substituting sem or sen, as nenrsem, I am continually talking, from nehren, I speak; the future, nenrtze; biquesen, I am thus singing, from biquen, I sing; future, bequetze, for which there appearing to be no perfect, the imperfect, bquesenru may be used, and the same is the case with the words that end in hon, as merihon, go running; nenerhon, be speaking; biquehon, be singing, of which the future ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... few and simple; and rude as the results of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles: A forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden implement ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... Purchas cast upon it. Nor is it relieved from suspicion by the fact that it is in accord with his sworn testimony, and with the sworn testimony of his fellows, before the High Court of Admiralty when he and they were on trial for their lives as mutineers. The imperfect record of this trial merely shows that Prickett and all of the other witnesses—with the partial exception of Byleth—told substantially the same story; and—as they all equally were in danger of hanging—that story most naturally was in their own favor and in ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... soon as you reach the left side or head end of the bolt, feed the wire towards the right. If at any time the layers become rough on account of one turn slipping down between turns of the previous layer, fasten a piece of paraffine paper around the coil as soon as the imperfect layer is completed. Wind on 8 layers, and count the number of turns in one or two of them, so that you can tell about how many turns in all you have around the core. Make a "half-hitch" (see Sec. 110) with the wire when the last layer ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... announcement of what it hardly needs gold eyeglasses to discover—that we really grow every day. Blushes come heavily enough to hands and cheeks when to the shyness of youth are added the glows and chills of imperfect circulation: it does not need the stare of strangers, nor the apologies of Mamma, to stain our doubtful ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... youth, if he is not to be bound for a certain number of years, but to go away as soon as he has learnt a trade? The father, in some cases, may be able to pay for his son learning the trade, and this experiment has sometimes been tried, but generally with very imperfect success. The youth, for the most part, in those cases, considers himself as independent of the master, and gives himself very little trouble ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... matter of evidence. The third illustration of poisoning was poisoning by strychnine. Here again the power of the drug for undergoing oxidation was illustrated. It was noted that although our knowledge of the precise modus operandi of the poison was imperfect, nevertheless that the coincidence of the first fit in the animal after its exhibition with the formation of reduced haemoglobin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... walk awhile and then find a cafe where we may have something to drink?" asked the duke, his English so imperfect that no writer could ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Antonio, where they expected first to burn powder. Nor were they deceived in their expectations. They found the Texian militia encamped before the town, which, as well as its adjacent fort of the Alamo, was held by the Mexicans, the Texians were besieging it in the best manner their imperfect means and small numbers would permit. An amusing account is given by Mr Ehrenberg of the camp and proceedings of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Haliburton, who knew Winslow's Journal only by imperfect extracts, erroneously states that the men put on board the vessels were sent away immediately. They remained at Grand Pre several weeks, and were then sent off at ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... science, revealed to Goethe the prophecy of the flower in the leaf. No other than an artistic imagination, however, fulfilled of science, could have attained to the discovery of the fact that the leaf is the imperfect flower. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... did, indeed, seem to all present crowned with a perfect nimbus of glory. Dr. Pemberton led him back to my presence with his arm encircling his shoulder; Captain Wentworth shook his hand mutely but long, with his eyes dimmed with tears, and words that found imperfect utterance, at last ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... responsibility of any disaster that might occur where it properly belonged. On the 1st of the month he made a full report to his next superior officer, General Wool, at Troy, New York, to be forwarded to the Secretary of War, in relation to the dangers that threatened us, and our imperfect means of defense. He notified them that our provisions would be exhausted by the 20th of the month, and that we were very deficient in ammunition and military supplies generally. The secretary, in his answer to this communication, simply expressed his regret that ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly to the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... which, when pressed against the forehead, and worked by a spring-lever, left the damnable mark upon the skin in deep, rich purple characters. The surface of the branding instrument was peculiarly soft and yielding, so that when, by the automatic inking, the mark was made, there was never an imperfect sign, but every character was truly formed. The ink used, claimed to be absolutely indelible, and those who had tried it, more than two years before, had found no break in any single line or curve ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... they cannot be persuaded that this is an inferior Government, incapable of any duty Providence (through the acts of a wicked Administration, if you choose) may send its way—duties which other nations could discharge, but we cannot. They do not and will not believe that it was any such maimed, imperfect, misshapen cripple from birth for which our forefathers made a place in the family of nations. Nor are they misled by the cry that, in a populous region, thronged by the ships and traders of all countries, where their own prosecution of a just ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... narrow forehead and glasses, two undistinguished women in plain skirts and blouses, and a middle-aged couple, very fat and alike in black, Mr. and Mrs. Alderman Dunstable, of the Borough Council of Marylebone. These were seated in an imperfect semicircle about a very copper-adorned fireplace, surmounted by a ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... sufficient for our purpose to recognize the existence of this the most universal—the most powerful—of human passions, when venturing to offer our counsel and guidance to those of both sexes who, under its promptings, have resolved to become votaries of Hymen, but who, from imperfect knowledge of conventional usages, are naturally apprehensive that at every step they take, they may render themselves liable ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... consciousness with thoughts of the strong, and the health of life; we shut out the diseased, the dwarfed, the imperfect. We force the pictures of hospitals and sanatoriums out of our mind; we look at our bodies no matter how they look, or how much of disease they are then expressing, and we see only the whole, ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... be an imperfect incarnation of Cupid, as she keeps her beau, and not her arrows, in ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... few grammars mention it, one of the uses of the present and imperfect subjunctive in an independent verb is when the verb is accompanied by some word meaning 'perhaps,' usually quizs or tal vez. One can supply an expression of possibility and que, but the fact remains that ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Yet no great number of persons can attain to this science. And hence follows an important result. The true political principle is to assert the inviolability of the law, which, though not the best thing possible, is best for the imperfect ...
— Statesman • Plato
... were corrupt they were so on a smaller scale. Traditions which are deprecatingly called Balkan, but which were at that time suited to a Balkan country, should not be allowed to spread across a country which is so much more than Balkan. Merit does not everywhere in this imperfect world advance you automatically, but an effort is required in Yugoslavia to resist the calls of friendship in appointing men to offices. The army of officials is too numerous; yet many of them are so badly paid ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... pity, have mercy, sir!" said Van Baerle, "don't take me away! Let me look once more! Is what I see down there the black tulip? Quite black? Is it possible? Oh, sir, have you seen it? It must have specks, it must be imperfect, it must only be dyed black. Ah! if I were there, I should see it at once. Let me alight, let me see it close, I ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... one after another the centuries that have rolled over tide-worn Rouen. Let it be said at once that the "Old Rouen" you will first see is almost completely a French Renaissance city of the sixteenth century. Of older buildings you will find only slight and imperfect remnants, and as you pass monstrosities more modern you will involuntarily close your eyes. But the remnants are there, slight as they are; and they are worth your search for them, as we try together to reconstruct the ancient city of which they ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... often have so much difficulty in learning to know their own characters, it is because most men are scornful mirrors, occupied with nothing smaller than the universe and never dreaming of reflecting women except in a grudging and imperfect fashion." ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... The sun may not rise to-morrow, though it has never failed up to this time. Still it is by this observation of many individual cases that the truth of the propositions that men do believe has been established. We realize that our inductions are often imperfect, but the general truths so established will be found to underlie every process of reasoning, and will be either directly or indirectly the basis upon which ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Mitford remarks, obscure and poor make "a very imperfect rhyme;" and the same might be said ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... telling you that I have found it impossible to put up with the impertinence of that woman"—and now, as he spoke, there came a distorted fire out of his imperfect eye—"impossible! If you knew what I have gone through in attempting it! But that's over. I have the greatest respect for him in the world; a very thorough esteem. He is a hard-working man, and though I do not always approve the style of his wit,—of which, by-the-bye, he thinks too much ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... that (though not so old as to witness the riots of 1768) I am old enough to experience that Time has laid his hand not only on my head to whiten my locks, but in this instance compels me to acknowledge that even the memories of my early days are, like the present, imperfect. The failure is with me, not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... upon this wide continent. One was the gentleman to whom certain letters on literature have been openly addressed, and who has made a library by a process which involves wise selection and infinite self-restraint. This priceless little collection contains no volume which is imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense of repose begotten in one at the sight of lovely books becomingly clothed, and no volume which is not worthy the name of literature. And there is matter for reflection ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... men and women, you will, I know, extend a kindly greeting, if only because of their nationality. To your courtesy, possibly, you will add the leaven of interest, when you perceive—as you must—that their qualities are all their own, their defects being due solely to my own imperfect presentment. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... calling cynical or shameless, he has told the whole story of this lifelong depravation. In the present state of knowledge, which in the region of the human character the false shamefacedness of science, aided and abetted by the mutilating hand of religious asceticism, has kept crude and imperfect, there is nothing very profitable to be said on all this. When the great art of life has been more systematically conceived in the long processes of time and endeavour, and when more bold, ffective, and far-reaching advance has been ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Lake Major, and the wide luxuriant estuary of the vale. There lay before me a long straight road for miles at the base of high hills; then, far off, this road seemed to end at the foot of a mountain called, I believe, Ash Mount or Cinder Hill. But my imperfect map told me that here it went sharp round to the left, choosing a pass, and then at an angle went down its ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... surprise the reader to be told that Joseph made no reply to this speech, having a very imperfect acquaintance with the English language, especially the peculiar dialect of that tongue in which Tom Whyte was wont to express his ideas, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... The piece was Tito Manlio Torquato, taken from the well known anecdote in the Roman history. The scenery, decorations and costume were good and appropriate, not so the acting; for the actors as usual were imperfect in their parts. I fully agree with Alfieri that Italy must be united and enjoy a free popular government before one can expect to see tragedies well performed. It is very diverting to see the puppet shows at Naples and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... kinds of happiness for mortal men: there is that which is carnal and imperfect and hangs on circumstances and the health of the body and such like things; and there is that which is spiritual and perfect, which hangs on nothing else than the doing of the will of God Almighty so far as it is known, so that a man ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... dpend de la faon que notre sang circule.' This have I learnt from a pretty hard course of experience, and would, from sincere benevolence, impress upon all who honour this book with a perusal, that until a steady conviction is obtained, that the present life is an imperfect state, and only a passage to a better, if we comply with the divine scheme of progressive improvement; and also that it is a part of the mysterious plan of Providence, that intellectual beings ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... little boy's eyes with his hands for an instant, significantly, till the baby pushed them down, saying in his imperfect way— ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reveal my private woe, The secret blots of my imperfect heart, Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert, Nor beautify nor hide. For this I know, That even as I am, thou also art. Thou past heroic forms unmoved shalt go, To pause and bide with me, to whisper low: "Not I alone am weak, not I apart ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... misfortunes removed from the company of those who first seduced him into his vices, he began to have some ideas of the use of life when he was going to leave it; and his thoughts had received certain ideas (though very imperfect ones) of death and a future state, when the punishment appointed by Law sent him to experience them. He died on the 23rd of August, 1726, being then upwards ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.' This law, I am persuaded, is of God. Long have I lived, and never before have I seen it acted on till these Christians came amongst us. They do not, indeed, always practise as they teach; but they are imperfect, therefore they cannot practise fully as they teach, because they teach perfection. This law I shall henceforth follow as I best can. I follow it to-day. If I were in thraldom to you, Heika, just now, I would wish you to set me free, therefore I now set you and your ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... and complexity of the sense organs of sight render them liable to a number of imperfections, or defects, the most frequent and important being those of focusing. Such defects not only result in the imperfect vision of objects, but they throw an extra strain upon the nervous system and may render the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... saying, but only to afford employment to their tongue. And if these people expect to be heard and regarded—for there are some content merely with talking—they will invent to engage your attention: and, when they have heard the least imperfect hint of an affair, they will out of their own head add the circumstances of time and place and other matters to make out their story and give the appearance of probability to it: not that they have any concern about being believed, otherwise than as a means of being heard. The ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... therefore of a Common-wealth, I will reckon in the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution, and resemble the diseases of a naturall body, which ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... proceeding of them both; to all which is added the word One, to signify that these three are Indivisible. But this mystery shall not be revealed until the coming of Messiah." The Zohar gives also an imperfect illustration of this great Truth, by saying that the Trinity in unity is like "the human voice, which is composed of three ...
— Hebrew Literature
... a paper is a matter of which most people have a very vague and imperfect knowledge. I believe I am very near the truth when I state the gross proceeds of The Times at 45,000l., a year. The present proprietor of The Morning Chronicle gave for it, I believe, 40,000l. The absolute property of The Courier, according ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... Federalist Senate would not confirm the nomination. The Federalists could never forget that Gallatin was a Swiss by birth—an alien of supposedly radical tendencies. The partisan press never exhibited its crass provincialism more shamefully than when it made fun of Gallatin's imperfect pronunciation of English. He had come to America, indeed, too late to acquire a perfect control of a new tongue, but not too late to become a loyal son of his adopted country. He brought to Jefferson's group of advisers not only a thorough knowledge of ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... efforts, in its little journeys from one patch of grass to another, by a hundred obstacles, which, trifles though they might be to animals of a higher species, were yet of fatal importance to creatures constituted like itself, he began to find an imperfect, yet remarkable analogy between his own destiny and that of this small unit of creation. He felt that, in its petty sphere, the short life of the humble animal before him must have been the prey of crosses and disappointments, as serious to it, as the more ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in 131/2 months. It must be admitted that the inclination of the ice-sheet is not sufficient to cause this, and the old idea that the glacier streams flowing down from Inland Plateau provide the necessary impetus is imperfect. It was Simpson's suggestion that "the deposition of snow on the Barrier leads to an expansion due to the increase of weight." Some admittedly vague ideas as to the extent and character of the inland ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... kind are perfect hermaphrodites, while in the other kind the stamens are smaller and shorter than the pistil and eventually bent down and curved under. The two kinds of stamens are shown in Figs. 53 and 54. These may be called imperfect hermaphrodites since they are seldom as fruitful as the perfect hermaphrodites unless fertilized from another plant. Examined with a microscope, it is found that self-sterile plants usually bear abortive pollen and that the percentage of abortive ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... that this was obvious. A critic of great ingenuity, my friend Mr. Andrew Lang, has, with his usual humour, suggested that critics and reviewers are two different kinds, and have nothing to do with each other essentially, though accidentally, and in the imperfect arrangements of the world, the discharge of their functions may happen to be combined in the same person. As a matter of practice, this is no doubt too often the case; as a matter of theory, nothing ought much less to be the case. I think that if I were dictator, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Carpentaria? Then there was that piece of country discovered by the Dutchman Tasman, and named Van Diemen's Land. Was it an island, or did it join on to New Holland? There were also many islands of the Pacific still to be explored and correctly charted, the map of Eastern Asia was imperfect, and the whole of the coastline of North-Western America ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... "to be just us two together for a little while." And, "What good does it do to keep on?" when Lewisham was pressing. Lewisham wanted very much to keep on at times, but the good of it was a little hard to demonstrate. So his knowledge of the situation remained imperfect ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Inquiry into the causes of the revolutions of nations is more imperfect and less satisfactory than when [end of page xi] directed to those of individuals, and of single families, if, ever it should be rendered complete, its application will, at least, be more certain. Nations are exempt from those accidental vicissitudes which ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... further efforts to penetrate into the interior. He, however, obtained from one of the Shereefs some particulars respecting the countries to the south of Tripoli, and a memoir from his notes was drawn up by Mr. Beaufoy, which, though in many respects imperfect and erroneous, nevertheless threw a little additional light upon the condition of Africa. No correct information was ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... made a mistake in displaying so much cleverness. The commissary regarded me with astonishment, and I thought a slight suspicion entered his official mind....Oh! scarcely that, for the photographs distributed broadcast by the police department were too imperfect; they presented an Arsene Lupin so different from the one he had before him, that he could not possibly recognize me by it. But, all the same, he was troubled, ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... foundry (then the only one south of Philadelphia), cannon were cast for the American troops during the War of 1812. The artillery and indeed all the military arms of this country were then very imperfect. Foxall was the only founder in America who understood the proper mode of manufacture. Here began the first manufacture of bored cannon in this country, being vastly superior to the old ordnance. The abandonment and recasting of the old-style ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... one view of human life, but it is a transitional and imperfect one,—neither that of the first healthy unconsciousness of childhood, nor of the full consciousness of a soul which has risen to that height of divine wisdom which feels the meaning of all suffering, of all life. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... who continued to write at the same time with himself, we can discover resemblances to his style and traces of his art, still it will always remain doubtful whether we are to consider these as the feeble model, or the imperfect imitation. Shakspeare appears to have had all the flexibility of mind, and all the modesty of Raphael, who, also, without ever being an imitator and becoming unfaithful to his sublime and tranquil genius, applied to his own advantage all ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... trains of reflexion, what colour and substance would therewith have been deducted from it, filled as it is, apart from the more aweful associations of the Christian ritual, apart from Galahad's cup, with all the various symbolism of the fruit of the vine. That supposed loss is but an imperfect measure of all that the name of Dionysus recalled to the Greek mind, under a single imaginable form, an outward body of flesh presented to the senses, and comprehending, as its animating soul, a whole world of thoughts, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... man, addressed to the woman at his side, whom he loves and by whom he is loved, over the imperfection and innocent inconstancy of his love. The two can never quite grow to one, and he, oppressed by the terrible burden of imperfect sympathies, is for ever seeking, realising, losing, then again seeking the spiritual union still for ever denied. The vague sense of the Roman Campagna is distilled into exquisite words, and through all there sounds the sad and weary undertone of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... only ones we know much about. The immense interval of time that preceded, and the no less vast stretch of time that separated them, is represented in the record of Dinosaur history by a multitude of tracks and a few imperfect skeletons assigned to the close of the Triassic period, and by a few fragments from formations which may be intermediate in age between the Jurassic-Comanchic and the late Cretacic. Consequently we cannot expect to trace among the Dinosaurs, ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... [gamma] lies the wonderful ring-nebula 57 M, of which an imperfect idea will be conveyed by the last figure of Plate 3. This nebula was discovered in 1772, by Darquier, at Toulouse. It is seen as a ring of light with very moderate telescopic power. In a good 3-1/2-inch telescope the nebula exhibits a mottled appearance and a sparkling light. Larger instruments ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... not irremediably lost," said Mr. Phoebus. "Fortunately, you have received the admirable though partial education of your class. You are a good shot, you can ride, you can row, you can swim. That imperfect secretion of the brain which is called thought has not yet bowed your frame. You have not had time to read much. Give it up altogether. The conversation of a woman like Theodora is worth all the libraries in the world. If it were only for her sake, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... but imperfect faith. There was unquestionable confidence in Christ's power, and very genuine desire for healing. But it was a very ignorant faith. She believes that her touch of the garment will heal without Christ's will or knowledge, much more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... graces and charms of the little Roger Stephen Osborne Hamley. She let the squire exhaust himself in wondering as to the particulars of every event, helping him out in conjectures; and both of them, from their imperfect knowledge of possibilities, made the most curious, fantastic, and improbable guesses at the truth. And so that day passed ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and geography introduced into Japan along with almanac-making in the fifth century were without question very primitive sciences. At this time even in Europe the knowledge of these sciences was not advanced beyond the imperfect notions of the Greeks. It was not until the sixteenth century, when the discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spaniards and the English had revealed the shape and the divisions of the earth, and the ...
— Japan • David Murray
... that the really fine and poignant irony came in. Through her intercourse with Jane and Laura, Rose offered herself for comparison, and showed flagrantly imperfect. But for that, owing to Tanqueray's superhuman powers of abstraction, she might almost have passed unnoticed. As it was, he owned that her incorruptible simplicity preserved her, even at her ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... bold: Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blush'd at herself; and she,—in spite of nature, Of years, of country, credit, everything,— To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on! It is judgement maim'd and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err Against all rules of nature; and must be driven To find out practices of cunning hell, Why this should be. I therefore vouch again, That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood, Or with some dram conjur'd to this ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... our family; a feat on which few would have ventured; and I even arrived to such a pitch of perfection at praying, that with the assistance of young and powerful lungs, I was fully able to distance him at any English prayer in which we joined. But in Latin, I must allow, that owing to my imperfect knowledge of its pronunciation, and to some twitches of conscience I felt on adventuring to imitate, him by overleaping this impediment, he was able to throw me back a considerable distance in his turn; so that when we both started for a De Profundis, I was always ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... of circumstances entirely beyond my control, I abandoned the study of the violin in order to become a pianist, I was forced to realize, in view of my very imperfect technical equipment, that in order to take advantage of the opportunities that offered for public performance it would be necessary for me to find some means of making my playing acceptable without spending months ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... this period, show no trace of such treatment. The receptacles for the viscera are sometimes found in their graves in the Sixth Dynasty, but are, as a rule, empty, being mere dummy vases. Even in the Middle Empire, the preservation of the bodies of the better classes was extremely imperfect. The bundles of wrappings have kept their form to the present day and it seems as if the mummy were still intact; but an examination of the interior shows only loose bones. Successful mummification appears ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... frock-coat that covered his heart, and bowed profoundly. It was obvious that he resented our presence and desired to wipe us out of our hostess's consideration. I glanced ironically at Dale's disgusted face, and smiled at the imperfect development of his sense of humour. Indeed, to the young, humour is only a weapon of offence. It takes a philosopher to use it as defensive armour. Dale burned to outdo Mr. Papadopoulos. I, having no such ambition, laid my hand on his arm and went ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and with the imperfect means of Gibbie for the embodiment of his thoughts, Ginevra ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... that many of the flavoring herbs now in use were similarly employed before the erection of the pyramids and also that many then popular no longer appear in modern lists of esculents. Of course, this statement is based largely upon imperfect records, perhaps, in many cases only hints more or less doubtful as to the various species. But it seems safe to conclude that a goodly number of the herbs discussed in this volume, especially those said to be natives of the Mediterranean region, overhung and perfumed the cradle of the human race ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... a plant must have its proper surroundings before germinating; and it was believed that the action of the philosopher's stone was to hasten this process, as man may hasten the growth of plants by artificial means. Gold was looked upon as the most perfect metal, and all other metals imperfect, because not yet "purified." By some alchemists they were regarded as lepers, who, when cured of their leprosy, would become gold. And since nature intended that all things should be perfect, it was the aim of the alchemist to assist her in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... principle. They thought that when they died, that was the last of them. The Catholic missionaries who undertook the unpromising task of converting them to Christianity, were at first obliged to depend upon the imperfect translations of half-breed interpreters. These "made the idea of soul intelligible to their hearers by telling them they had a gut which never rotted, and that this was their living principle!" Yet ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... actuating in a proper manner:—those organs, which are the vehicles, through which its meanings shoot forth into action, being either shrivelled, abraded by long use, or clogged up with humours, shew the soul but in an imperfect manner, often disguise it wholly, and it is for want of a due consideration only, that we are so apt to condemn the mind, for what, in reality, is nothing but the incumbrances laid on it by ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... what people called the conventionalities were a device of the far-seeing eye of the Most High to regulate the relations of His children. If any of these appeared to escape the ends for which they were made, she put down the failure to the imperfect construction of the human organism, the constant aberrations of which necessitated the restraints imposed by religion ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... is too recent to require much detail. It took its origin, as is well known, in a reservoir of water for the use of the mills, formed by a dam across the valley. This had been constructed in 1838, and in an imperfect manner. The embankment, eighty feet in height, sloped outwards and inwards, with facings of masonry, thus obeying the proper rule as to form; but the puddling, or clay-casing of the interior, was defective, and it is believed that a spring existed underneath. Some years ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... Jesus made mistakes, he is not necessarily compelled to become an atheist. All other Gods that have been worshipped by men have been found imperfect. The oft exposed errors of Jehovah do not prevent Christians and Jews from professing belief in God. Those who require support from outside themselves cling to the symbol of deity though not thoroughly crediting any personality ever described in ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... his eyes open. Yet his moral sense, though blunted, was never obliterated; and many traits of generosity and good feeling mingled with his excesses. Choosing satire as the field of his Muse, was partly the cause and partly the effect of an imperfect morale. We are far from averring that no satirist can be a good man, but certainly most satirists have either been very good or very bad men. To the former class have belonged Cowper, Crabbe, &c.; to the latter, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... birth nor alliances unworthy of their relation, whatever I may be and am of their admirable daughter: of whom they, every one of them, are at least as unworthy!—These, Madam, I call sufferings: justly call so; if at last I am to be sacrificed to an imperfect reconciliation—imperfect, I say: for, can you expect to live so much as tolerably under the same roof, after all that has passed, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... flung it off, with the results upon the body of the original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... eminence on which it stands, yet enough, in this level country, to give it a prospect of a score or two of miles in all directions. The Conqueror fell in love with the situation at first sight, and gave a stolen monastery in exchange for it. The home so won has provided a shelter—at times very imperfect, indeed—to British sovereigns for eight centuries. From the modest erection of William it has been steadily growing—with the growth of the empire, we were near saying, but its chief enlargements occurred before the empire entered upon the expansion of the past three centuries. It is more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... on papers. The machine which does this is perhaps one of the most ingenious ever constructed. Quantities of pins are thrown from time to time into a rapidly vibrating hopper, which causes them to pass, one by one, into a trough-like slide, that holds the pins by the head; consequently the imperfect ones are automatically rejected. They then slide along a groove to the main body of the machine, where they fall into slits properly distanced, and are pressed into the paper in rows, twelve in all, containing ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... conscious of so much kindly feeling towards them. The tide of friendship does not rise high on the bank of perfection. Amiable weaknesses and shortcomings are the food of love. It is from the roughnesses and imperfect breaks in a man that you are able to lay hold of him. If a man be an entire and perfect chrysolite, you slide off him and fall back into ignorance. My friends are not perfect—no more am I—and so we suit each other admirably. Their weaknesses keep mine in ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... rise of Christianity, his attitude to which resembled that of Renan. [140] Of Christ he says: "He had given an impetus to the progress of mankind by systematizing a religion of the highest moral loveliness, showing what an imperfect race can and may become." He then dilates on St. Paul, who with a daring hand "rent asunder the ties connecting Christianity with Judaism." "He offered to the great family of man a Church with a Diety at its ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Jan. 24, Feb. 12, May 29, June 4 and 6, 1862; and by Renan in the Etudes de l'Hist. Relig. p. 189, &c. Salvador's view is both Jewish and sceptical. Magnifying the Jewish system, he regards Christianity as an offshoot of it, imperfect in its kind; and looks to the spirit of Judaism as the future hope for the world. He professes a creed which is called by Franck Infinitheism. Whatever in his opposition to Christianity is not derived from the eclectic school is the result of his ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould. With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and began ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... her advances have been such as to make a more forward state, it is in science." After remarking that the two obstacles to the literary advancement of Scotland had hitherto been her deficiency in the art of printing and her imperfect command of good English, and that the first of these obstacles had been removed entirely, and the second shown by recent writers to be capable of being surmounted, it proceeds: "The idea therefore was that ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... said the Older Man, "to keep my advice to you in the note to which I think such advice should be set. I will not burden it with anything awful, nor weight an imperfect diction with absolute verities in which I do indeed believe, but which would be altogether out of place at this hour of the evening. I will not deny that from eleven till one, and especially if one be delivering an historical, or, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... deed in possession of Frank Sherman Benson, Esq. There is an imperfect copy in Ranger's Deeds of ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... have got the next door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his father and mother. I again write the direction for your next: George Borrow, Esq., Post Office, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland. God bless you and Hen. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... desire. Devotion wafts the mind above, But Heaven itself descends in Love; A feeling from the Godhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A ray of Him who formed the whole; A Glory circling round the soul! 1140 I grant my love imperfect, all That mortals by the name miscall; Then deem it evil, what thou wilt; But say, oh say, hers was not Guilt! She was my Life's unerring Light: That quenched—what beam shall break my night?[ei] Oh! would it shone ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... absurd to hold that the Creator would have given us the faculty of reason, or that the Redeemer would in so many varied forms of argument and persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been useless or impotent. I believe that the imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and aidances supplied by ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... was said above, if the train of facts or those in the pleading is imperfect, the modern spirit is to allow them to be made perfect. The only theory of law that is contrary to this spirit is what is known as the theory that every man is entitled to his day in court and the day being had it is unfair ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... so handsome, who cures our diseases, and loves us to so great an extent as to bear our image near her breast, must be superior to a human being." They, therefore, had a kind of veneration for her, and they would have offered their homage to her instead of to the Deity of whom they had only an imperfect knowledge. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... is infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use this word in the common sense which circumstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which aspires. These brief reasons show that the analogy is imperfect, and that therefore, although an ideal animal—a horse, a dog, a lion—must die, it does not follow that an ideal man must. He has a body possessed of exceptional recuperative powers, which, under proper conditions, continually repairs itself. He has a mind by which he can select remedies, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... said, "who are present now heard this morning from this pulpit words which must have sunk deep into the heart of every man and woman who feels an earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of the Master as closely as imperfect human nature will permit you. It is not for me to tell you to what extent those words must be taken literally. They were spoken earnestly and from the inmost depths of the preacher's own soul—may they sink into the inmost depths of yours! They put the most vital ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... set to work, and whenever the captain and his mates took an observation, I took one also, although I was, I must own, at first very far from correct. Sometimes my observation was imperfect; at other times I made ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... long as self-love reigns in their souls, almost without control, this will often blind and deceive them, and will easily infect even their good works, and their devotion will be liable to a thousand illusions, and always very imperfect. Hence religious persons, after many years spent in the rigorous observance of their rule, still fail upon the least trial or contradiction which thwarts their favorite inclination, and are stopped in their spiritual progress as it were by every grain of sand ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... peasant boy merely as her protege, her pet, her fine, intelligent dog! they believed Claudia secure in her pride and Ishmael absorbed in his studies. They were three-quarters right, which is as near the correct thing as you can expect imperfect human nature to approach; that is, they were wholly right as to Claudia and half right as to Ishmael. Claudia was secure in her pride; and half of Ishmael's soul—the mental half—was absorbed in ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... own faculty of the humanities. But there are some men who are born cultivated. A singular fruit, we thought, of our shaggy democracy,—as interesting a phenomenon in that regard as it has been our fortune to encounter. Where is the rudeness of a new community, the pushing vulgarity of an imperfect civilization, the licentious contempt of forms that marks our unchartered freedom, and all the other terrible things which have so long been the bugaboos of European refinement? Here was a natural product, as perfectly natural as the deliberate attempt ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... York office of the Syndicate there was great satisfaction. The news received was incorrect and imperfect, but it was evident that, so far, ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... at once, even in that imperfect light, for the moment Senior and myself stood up she tried to raise herself into a sitting posture; in an instant Suka sprang to her aid and pillowed her head upon his knees; weak as she was, she put out her hand to us, and then let it lie in the mate's broad palm, her deep, mysterious ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... were going to leave him.' The heart's apex beat in the sixth interspace in the nipple line, and the precordial dulness was somewhat increased. The pulse numbered 80 to 84. The muscles supplied by the ulnar nerve were very weak, but not much wasted, and ulnar sensation was imperfect. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... conversation. As may be easily supposed, the delicate and sensitive spirit of Emma was deeply wounded by the above conversation; and it was with much difficulty that she maintained her composure for the remaining portion of the day. For once her lessons were imperfect; and with a heavy heart she returned to her home. That evening she, for the first time, mentioned to her mother the daily annoyances she suffered from her companions at school; and concluded by relating the conversation she had that day chanced ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... European could expect or approve. But the assumption is wrong. In no country with which I am acquainted are logic and co-ordination of ideas more wanting than in the British Isles. This is not altogether a fault, for human systems are imperfect and the rigorous application of any one imperfect system must end in disaster. But the student of Asiatic psychology must begin his task by recognising that in the West and East alike, the thoughts of nations, though not always of individuals, are a confused mosaic where the pattern ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... charge of the province, wrote to the King, but his letter was written in imperfect English and was not understood. Matters were in a bad state, and were daily becoming worse, when the King appointed Henry Sloughter Governor ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... does. I see clearly that none of you will ever really be anything worth notice, however you may now fancy it. But do as you like, I shall not imitate you. I mean to keep clear of all these things, and criticize what you do. In every action something imperfect may be discovered, something not right, which I shall make it my business to find out and expose; that will be something, I fancy." And he kept his word, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... divisions that Jesus made. He puts folks into two classes, and only two. There were two gates, one was broad and the other narrow. There were two foundations on which a man might build, one was of sand and the other of rock. Mark you, He did not divide men into the perfect and the imperfect, but into those that had life and those that did not have it. And it was He that said, "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." So this question, if it means anything, means that there is such a thing as being saved and there is such a thing as being lost. That ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... God for redeeming the world, for "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." This view is the more appropriate as we have known in the history of God's providence with Israel, which presents them as a people prepared (so far as imperfect material could be prepared) to receive the model which God might desire to impress upon the nation. They were bound to each other by all the ties of which human nature is susceptible, and thus rendered compact ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... observances of the people, and the progress of civilization under a despotic system of government. Of these I have endeavored to give you such impressions as may be derived from a sojourn of a few weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg—necessarily imperfect and superficial, but I trust not altogether destitute ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... perfectly himself what he does without the deliberation of reason, since the principal part of man does nothing therein: wherefore such is not perfectly a human act; and consequently it cannot be a perfect act of virtue or of sin, but is something imperfect of that kind. Therefore such movement of the sensuality as forestalls the reason, is a venial sin, which is something imperfect in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... must be conceded, and such men as I have spoken of were the first to admit it, that lives such as these are necessarily imperfect. The stunting or the atrophy of the religious instinct, the hunger and thirst for something beyond the sphere of sense when left totally unsatisfied, produces at length a restless, tormented feeling, which turns ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... quantity dissolves slowly into a clear colorless glass, which, when cold, remains clear, and cannot be rendered opaque with an intermittent flame. If a saturated bead, which has been allowed to cool, be reheated to incipient redness, it loses its rounded form and exhibits imperfect crystallization. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... holding the bridles of the horses, which were attempting to escape. They were still confused, when they were fully restored to their waking senses by a second roar of the lion still nearer to them; and by the imperfect light of the stars they could now distinguish the beast at about one hundred yards' distance. Omrah put the bridles of their two horses in their hands, and motioned them to go on in the direction ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... understands an infinite number of creatable things, which he will never be able to create, for, if he created all that he understands, he would, according to this showing, exhaust his omnipotence, and render himself imperfect. Wherefore, in order to establish that God is perfect, we should be reduced to establishing at the same time, that he cannot bring to pass everything over which his power extends; this seems to be a hypothesis most absurd, and ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... hundreds of 'em, specially seductive pocket ones, with just the very streets that one wants to discover as short cuts to great centres carefully omitted. What is wanted is a correct map of London, divided into pocketable sections, portable, foldable, durable, on canvas,—but if imperfect, as so many of these small pocket catch-shilling ones are just now, although professedly brought up to date '91, they are worse than useless, and to purchase one is a waste of time, temper and money. We could mention an attractive-looking little map—which, but no— ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... and the agents of the diffusion of those religions, {25} it tells us nothing of the reasons for their adoption by the Romans. We perceive the how, but not the why, of their sudden expansion. Especially imperfect is our understanding of the reasons for the difference between the Orient and the Occident ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... reasoning, by which he concludes that like events must follow like objects, and that the course of nature will always be regular in its operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this nature they surely lie too abstruse for the observation of such imperfect understandings; since it may well employ the utmost care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe them. Animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by reasoning; neither ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... as editors upon the unhappy journal which it was intended that this article should redeem, no less than sixteen pickpockets, hoping they would steal him; but with an acute intelligence of which their writing conveyed but an imperfect idea, they shunned the glittering bait, as one walks to windward of the deadly upas tree. We have given him away to friends until we haven't a friend left; we have offered him at auction-sales, and been ourselves knocked down; we have ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... me to conclude my letters respecting those eventful days of October, which must ever be so deeply impressed upon the memories of us all. What may be called the military part of my narrative may be imperfect; the names of the generals who commanded, the positions of particular corps, and other circumstances of minor importance, may perhaps be incorrect; yet the circumstantial details which I have given ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... garret on the sixth story, and it had been expected among them that in a day or so he would present himself for inspection. But this he did not do, and when he encountered any of their number in his out-goings or in-comings he returned their greetings gently in imperfect French. He spoke slowly and with difficulty, but there was no coldness in his voice or manners, and yet none got much ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "I have only heard imperfect reports of it; but it is said that she gave offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had held an office of trust in the family, and who, after some incoherent threats, disappeared. This peculiar affection followed soon after. But ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... north, the northeast and the northwest, we had seen at a distance some of these great red regions, and had perceived the curious network of canals by which they were intersected. But that was a far-off and imperfect view. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... his story was to Basil like waking from a state of imperfect consciousness in which dream and reality had indistinguishably mingled. Since the fight with the brigands he had never been himself; the fever in his blood made him incapable of wonted thought or action; restored ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... been able to carry his point, matters might have moved more expeditiously. But pending the struggle between him and Shelburne no advance could be made at Paris. Grenville and Oswald could not work in unison. Franklin and de Vergennes became puzzled and suspicious, having only an imperfect inkling by report and gossip concerning the true state of affairs. They suspected, with good show of evidence, that the real object of English diplomacy was to drive in a wedge between the allies. Amid these perplexities, on April 22, Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Browne, in his "History of the Highlands," and by John S. Keltie, in his "History of the Scottish Highlands." Even Lieutenant-General Samuel Graham, who was a captain in the 76th, in his "Memoirs," gives but a slight account of his regiment. So a very imperfect view can only be expected in ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... all things have the character of emptiness; they have no beginning, no end, they are faultless and not faultless, they are not imperfect and not perfect. Therefore, O Sariputra, in this emptiness there is no form, no perception, no name, no concepts, no knowledge. No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, objects.... There is no knowledge, no ignorance, no destruction ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... I. sent forth a few vessels, to explore the western shores of Africa, while he prepared a great armament to attack the moors of Barbary, the art of navigation was still very imperfect, nor had the Portuguese ever ventured to sail beyond Cape Non. But what most powerfully contributed to give impulse and direction to the national ardour, was the enlightened enthusiasm, with which prince Henry of Portugal, a younger son of John I., espoused ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... book then being printed in Irish, the Bible. But my asking, timid with the fear of mockery, was unheeded. Yet I missed but by a little an opportunity that might have made me a real Irish scholar, and not as I am, imperfect, stumbling. For a kinsman learned in the language, the translator of the wonderful Silva Gaedelica had been sometimes a guest in the house, and would still have been welcomed there but that my mother, who ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... manifest correspondence with each other, and are such as may be credited, we necessarily attach to them a degree of belief, which we cannot extend to those of an opposite character. The evidence from this source is, however, exceedingly imperfect, since many narratives, almost entirely fictitious, appear so natural, as to impose upon the reader with all the strength of unvarnished truth. Robinson Crusoe has deceived thousands, and Damberger's Travels in Africa were not suspected to be otherwise than true, for a considerable time ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Pao-yue's notice. "I myself am aware," he speedily resumed, "that I'm worth nothing now; but, however imperfect I may be, I could on no account presume to become guilty of any shortcoming with you cousin. Were I to ever commit the slightest fault, your task should be either to tender me advice and warn me not to do it again, or to blow me ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he says, "that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye, to one complex and perfect, can be shown to exist, such gradation being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case" (certainly?), "if further," he continues, "the eye varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case" (most modern ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never vulgar, nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... be as much alarmed as if in the presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders had ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... of a very imperfect day for Mr. Philip Kendrick. As he descended the stairs to the Canoe Club his thoughts were troubled. At that hour there was nobody about, but he let himself in with a special key which he carried for such contingencies. He found the suitcase undisturbed where ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... complete confession. He spoke of his youth and marriage, spoke with all possible forbearance and love of his wife. "There was no hope for her ever getting well again. I have nothing to reproach myself with in regard to her, except that I was a man merely of good intentions and imperfect achievement. But I may not have been the right husband for her in so far as I could not give her the repose of spirit that she needed and I myself lacked. When the collapse finally occurred and other misfortunes—they seldom come singly—and in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... lambs—such transformations occur in last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is difficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the different sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless, even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling of the soul. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... them.' This law, I am persuaded, is of God. Long have I lived, and never before have I seen it acted on till these Christians came amongst us. They do not, indeed, always practise as they teach; but they are imperfect, therefore they cannot practise fully as they teach, because they teach perfection. This law I shall henceforth follow as I best can. I follow it to-day. If I were in thraldom to you, Heika, just now, I would wish you to set me free, therefore I now ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear to have struck him very favourably. 'They learn French and history and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.' This was said from the standard of Rugby and Balliol, and the method that Clough calls imperfect had merits of its own. The pupil lost much in a curriculum that had a certain rawness about it, compared with the traditional culture that was at that moment (1820) just beginning to acquire a fresh ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... might wish to convert the Grand Signor to the Christian faith; but when I considered that I should probably be put to death without effectuating my purpose in any degree, I should keep myself quiet.' JOHNSON. 'Sir you must consider that we have perfect and imperfect obligations. Perfect obligations, which are generally not to do something, are clear and positive; as, 'thou shalt not kill.' But charity, for instance, is not definable by limits. It is a duty to give to the poor; but no man can say how much another should give to the poor, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Standard of Scotland, apparently a piece of venerable antiquity, for the field of gold had degenerated into a field of drab, and the figure in the centre showed less of leonine nobleness than of art in that imperfect state in which men are fain to content themselves with semblances doubtful and inexpressive, and less than half the result of chance. The entire pageant was such a one as Sir Walter himself could perhaps have improved. He would not have fired so many guns in the hollow, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the substance that had contain'd or enwrapp'd one of those Shels, on both which, the perfect impression either of the inside or outside of such Shells seem'd to be left, but for the most part, those impressions seem'd to be made by an imperfect or broken Shell, the great end or mouth of the Shell being always wanting, and often times the little end, and sometimes half, and in some there were impressions, just as if there had been holes broken ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... help besides mine, so I learned a good deal about general housework. A girl's preparation for life was, in those days, considered quite imperfect, who had no practical knowledge of that kind. We were taught, indeed, how to do everything that a woman might be called upon to do under any circumstances, for herself or for the household she lived in. It was one of the advantages ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... close of the octave, and the thought pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browning, but rigorously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with his more scrupulous ideal of sonnet construction. This imperfect transition is seen again in the fourth, fifth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sonnets. Its boldness certainly amounts to a technical fault in the two sonnets on King's ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Rio Grande, and spoke very highly of the Christians. He sent me in the evening some boiled rice and milk. I now endeavoured to procure information concerning my route to the westward, from a slave merchant who had resided some years on the Gambia. He gave me some imperfect account of the distance, and enumerated the names of a great many places that lay in the way; but withal told me, that the road was impassable at this season of the year. He was even afraid, he said, that I should find great difficulty in proceeding any farther, as the road crossed ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Christ; without thee I can do nothing! Christ is the true vine! O let me be a branch of that vine! What poor worms are we! O dear father, how lame and halting do we go on in the ways of God and salvation! We know but in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is imperfect shall be done away. O that I had attained to that now! But what are we ourselves? Not only weakness and nothingness, but wickedness: for the thoughts and imaginations of a man's heart are only evil, and that continually. ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... might be used with overmastering effect. It sufficed to point out to Ferdinand that a persecution of the New Christians would flood his coffers with gold extorted from suspected misbelievers. No merely fabled El Dorado lay in the broad lands and costly merchandise of these imperfect converts to the faith. It sufficed to insist upon the peril to the State if an element so ill-assimilated to the nation were allowed to increase unchecked. At the same time, the Papacy was nothing loth to help them in their undertaking. Sixtus V., one of the worst of Pontiffs, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the most useful of human beings—doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics—is confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect organization. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... whole, owing to the circuits, the obstacles, and the imperfect observations, the journey had been extended by fully one-fifth, and now that they had reached Mount Ikirangi, they ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... traveller, and much of his geographical information is the result of his own observations. It is probable he was much indebted to Eratosthenes, who preceded him by three centuries. The authorities of Strabo were chiefly Greek, but his work is defective from the imperfect notions which the ancients had of astronomy; so that the determination of the earth's figure by the measure of latitude and longitude, the essential foundation of geographical description, was unknown. The enormous strides which all forms ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... handicapped for five weeks certain, is the foreseen consequence of the decision of the Cabinet to postpone the measures necessary for the defence of the British colonies and for attack upon the Boer States. This decision is not attributable to imperfect information. It was regarded as certain so long ago as December last, by those in a position to give the best forecast, that the Boers of both States meant war with the object of establishing Boer supremacy. The Cabinet, therefore, ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... Herbert wreaking vengeance upon my supposed son, is really bringing destruction upon his own, which seems but justice. If he show mercy to me and mine, he is bestowing the blessed balm thereof on himself and his house. In this imperfect world, few events are ordered with such admirable equity as the capture of young Lord Wilhelm, by that haughty and bloodthirsty warrior, his father. Let us then await with patience the outcome, taking care not to interfere with the designs ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... there had been a tremendous cataclysm in that valley, the bottom of it having fallen out apparently, whereby the entire valley was submerged in the waters of the river. As nearly as he could ascertain from their imperfect methods of reckoning time, this occurred in 1851; and in that year, while in the town of Sonora, Screech and many others remembered to have heard a huge explosion in that direction which they then supposed was caused ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude. Green, true historian as he was, made more mistakes than Froude, and the mistakes he did make were more serious. He trespassed on the preserves of Brewer, who criticised him severely without deviating ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... one-room rural schools in the county which were of faulty construction, with poor equipment, and with imperfect teaching facilities, were largely responsible for the retardation found in ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... railways now under construction (the sod was cut at Ichang in 1909)[G]—and a single train and steamer does the work of hundreds of thousands of carters, coolies, and boatmen, it is wholly natural that their imperfect and short-sighted views should lead them to rise against a seeming ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... honest with us, because it is imperfect, and unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of bony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal of the guard. His hand went ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting power, but our compound plate then becomes virtually an all-steel one, only differing in process of manufacture. The greatest faults of the compound plate are the imperfect welding of the parts and the lack of solidity of the iron. When fired at, the surface has a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... strides down the yard, waited within a foot or two of the man, who now proceeded to lift himself up by the window ledge preparatory to opening the barn window. With the aid of a claspknife he could very easily push back the quaint and imperfect fastening; then it was but to push in the glass, and he could enter the barn. He sat on the window ledge with his back to Nora. His huge, gaunt form looked larger than ever, intensified now by the light of the moon. He breathed quickly; his breathing ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... even availed himself of the corrections given in the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent, and has allowed some of the most extraordinary blunders to stand. These facts certainly favor the theory that Zckert himself had little or nothing to do with the second edition and its imperfect revision. This supposition finds further evidence in the fact that the ninth part of Shandy, as issued by Lange in the second (1772) and third (1774) editions, was still a translation of the spurious English volume, although the fraud was well known and the genuine volume ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... This very imperfect account is written more with a view to assist my own memory than to give information to others. I am neither a botanist nor a naturalist; and have not words to describe the productions of nature, either in the one branch of knowledge or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... your genius and respect your character, the enclosed sum of money, which I send you with my warmest wishes for your health and happiness. I know the sensitive edge of your temperament; but do not speak or think of obligation. It is only paying, in a very imperfect measure, the debt we owe you for what you have done for American Literature. Could you know the readiness with which every one to whom I applied contributed to this little offering, and could you have heard the warm expressions with which some accompanied ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Stuart was immersed in that too common mixture of law and politics in which the former jealous mistress is apt to take the traditional revenge upon her half-hearted suitor. Such happened in this case; and these two partners, both making the same blunder of yielding imperfect allegiance to their profession, paid the inevitable penalty; they got perhaps work enough in mere point of quantity, but it was neither interesting nor lucrative. Such business, during the four years which he passed with Stuart, did not wean Lincoln from his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... finish my lecture on geography, which, though very imperfect, has yet exceeded the usual limits of our lessons; many interesting circumstances relating to the various countries I have mentioned, have been entirely omitted, as I was fearful that by telling you too much on the subject I should prevent you from remembering ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... though no longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the thought, perhaps, occurred to him, that her soul, no longer dependent on the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He started from the bedside, and covered his face with his hands, as if to hide it from those ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... depression at the junction of the floor and external wall of the nasal cavity, 22 mm. from the external nares. This patient had all her teeth; they were placed somewhat far from each other. The tooth resembled a milk canine; the end of the imperfect root was covered with a fold of mucous membrane, with stratified epithelium. The speaker suggested that part of the mucous membrane of the mouth with its tooth-germ had become impacted between the superior and premaxillary bones and thus cut off from the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... downe to her hammes; having most amorous cole-black eyes, a sweet and pleasant round face, with lips as red as a cherry; her cheekes of a rose colour, her mouth small, her neck white like a swan; tall and slender of personage; in summe, there was no imperfect place in her: she looked round about with a rolling hawkes eye, a smiling and wanton countenance, which neere-hand inflamed the hearts of all the students; but that they perswaded themselves she was a spirit, which made them ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power. For it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. And therefore he obtains ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... essay—the only one in "The Essays of Elia" volume which had not appeared in the "London Magazine"—is a pretty bit about "Valentine's Day." This is followed by an inquiry into the existence of "Imperfect Sympathies," the writer declaring that he had been trying all his life—without success—to like Scotsmen, and that he had the same imperfect sympathy with Jews. The Scotsmen are too precise, too matter of fact at once in their own statements and those to which alone they will attend. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of the Pharisee and Publican is invaluable. It is clear and perfectly intelligible to every candid and prayerful inquirer. When our author is proving the impossibility of a sinner's recommending himself to the divine favour by any imperfect good works of his own, he draws a vivid picture. A lord invites his friends to a sumptuous banquet, the provision is bountiful and in rich abundance, when some of the guests take a few mouldy crusts out of their pockets and lay them on their plates, lest the prince had not provided a sufficient ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... For it will not do to dismiss the Northern poems on the Volsung story as a mere set of popular variations on common themes. The more carefully they are examined, the less will be the part assigned to chance and imperfect recollection in producing the variety of the poems. The variation, where there are different presentations of the same subject, is not produced by accident or the casual and faulty repetition of a conventional type of poem, but by a ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... soul in the universe? But it would be absurd to say that the energies of every irrational soul are not the energies of that soul, but of one more divine; since they are infinite, and mingled with much of the base and imperfect. For this would be just the same as to say that the irrational enemies are the energies of the rational soul. I omit to mention the absurdity of supposing that the whole essence is not generative of its proper energies. For if the irrational soul is a certain essence, it will have peculiar ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly that the two figures seemed fused into one as they glided together over the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction rested on her lips. The young fellow's face ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... comfortable word. We have seen that Irish history is what the dramatists call an internal tragedy, the secular disclosure and slow working-out of certain flaws in the English character. I am not to be understood as ascribing horns to England and a halo to Ireland. We Irish are not only imperfect but even modest; for every beam that we detect in another eye we are willing to confess a mote in our own. The English on the other hand have been not monsters ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... his campaign, say that he ought to have marched at once toward Jerusalem before Saladin should have had time to organize any new means of resistance. But it is impossible for those who are at a distance from the scene of action in such a case, and who have only that partial and imperfect account of the facts which can be obtained through the testimony of others, to form any reliable judgment on such a question. Whether it would be prudent or imprudent for a commander to advance after a battle ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Amulet now,' said the beautiful, terrible voice, 'to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is not of time ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... political grounds. But throughout the four years' controversy Government never betrayed an inkling of the appalling extent to which inferior secondary education had been allowed to degenerate in second-and third-rate schools with second-and third-rate masters into a mere teaching machine, clumsy and imperfect at that, for the passing of examinations that tested memory rather than intelligence, and character least of all. The unfortunate youths who could not stand even that test were left hopelessly stranded on the road, equally disqualified for a ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... stayed the coming of Islam at Tours? The brilliant career, the shining courage, best seen always where the dead were lying thickest, the heroic death of Charles Lowell, are good for us all to know and to remember. Yet this imperfect story of his life has not been placed here for these things alone. Many thousand others, officers and soldiers alike, in the great Civil War gave their lives as freely as he, and brought to the service of their country ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... To what better use could he put them than to make them light him as far as possible on his way? He struck one of them, it blazed up, and with it he lighted the stick of the imperfect one which he had not thrown away. He held them up before him, and, shielding the blaze with his hand, he moved ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems'. The 'poems' however were confined to 'The Traveller,' 'The Deserted Village,' 'Edwin and Angelina,' 'The Double Transformation,' 'A New Simile,' and 'Retaliation,'—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of 'Retaliation', with which he included 'The Hermit' ('Edwin and Angelina'), 'The Gift,' 'Madam Blaize,' and the epilogues to 'The Sister' and 'She stoops to Conquer'*; while to an edition of 'The Haunch of Venison', also ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... it high time to intervene. During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment. Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had passed between ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... cattle in the stalls and styes of many a country Squire. And this is certainly our ultimate ambition, but for the present distress something might be done on the lines of district nursing, which is only in very imperfect operation. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... usually told that this unfortunate decline in the express powers of the brain is due to the wide and imperfect education of the populace ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... only by the junction of all three. For if any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both natural ability and training is imperfect. For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. I should therefore ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... On his workers he bestows the instruments for their work. Wherefore let us hope in the Lord. He makes the King's cause his own. Those who support it he will inspire with the wisdom necessary to make it triumphant. God leaves no work imperfect." ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... born capable of learning, but knowing nothing, perceiving nothing. The mind, bound up within imperfect and half grown organs, is not even aware of its own existence. The movements and cries of the new-born child are purely reflex, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... sound of which the faithful fall upon their knees. When, therefore, he learnt that the Republic had just been proclaimed in France he fancied that the whole world would enjoy a life of celestial beatitude. His knowledge, though imperfect, made him see farther than other workmen; his aspirations did not stop at daily bread; but his extreme ingenuousness, his complete ignorance of mankind, kept him in the dreamland of theory, a Garden of Eden where universal justice reigned. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... If we believe in democracy, we must recognize in politics the instrument, however imperfect, through which democracy works. Brand Whitlock knew politics, first as a political reporter, then as candidate for mayor in four campaigns, in each of which he was successful. Under his administration the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the contrary, beseems a perfect being. It is, therefore, evident, adds the same profound thinker, that reasoning bears the same relation to knowledge that motion does to repose, or as acquisition to possession. The one is of an imperfect nature, and the other of a perfect nature. Boethius compares the intellect to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... ingenious instrument, by means of which ellipses of all proportions, as well as circles and right lines, might be geometrically drawn on paper or on copper. He took his idea of this instrument from the trammel used by carpenters for drawing imperfect ellipses; and when he had succeeded in avoiding the crossing of the points, he proceeded to invent the straight-line motion. For this invention the Society of Arts awarded him their gold medal in 1818. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... by the Incas for the improvement of their territory; and, although imperfect, they must be allowed to show an acquaintance with the principles of agricultural science, that gives them some claim to the rank of a civilized people. Under their patient and discriminating culture, every inch of good soil ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation of our race. What were they about, to let him do all this with such consummate ease? ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... empty. So were all the rooms of the house, he soon enough found out. Not a sound but that of the steeple clock on the kitchen shelf, waddling on at its imperfect gait, loud for a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... for the Morse paper on the cylinder of the machine. On speaking to the tympanum, as the cylinder was revolved, a record of the vibrations was indented on the paper, and by re-passing this under the indenting point an imperfect reproduction of the sounds was heard. Edison 'saw at once that the problem of registering human speech, so that it could be repeated by mechanical means as often as might he desired, was solved.' [T. A. Edison, NORTH AMERICAN ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... executed a whole, which indeed I saw with my eyes, but did not comprehend, and how an individual object, which I had neither skill nor patience to follow out? My father's mode of training me in this respect was really to be admired. He kindly asked for my attempts, and drew lines round every imperfect sketch. He wished, by this means, to compel me to completeness and fulness of detail. The irregular leaves he cut straight, and thus made the beginning of a collection, in which he wished, at some future time, to rejoice at the progress ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... or two which may render clear any after-evidence which you may call upon me to give. At the time when certain gentlemen tendered their evidence on Shetland truck before the Commission at Edinburgh, I read the brief, necessarily imperfect, and probably inaccurate reports of the same which appeared in the Edinburgh weekly papers. I also read some articles and letters which appeared in the newspapers at the time. About seven months ago I read, as printed I think in a Parliamentary ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... revisiting the Wye, manly reflection and human associations had given both variety, and an additional interest to natural objects, which, in the passion and appetite of the first love, they had seemed to him neither to need nor permit. The occasional obscurities, which had risen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language, had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once hackneyed and fantastic, which hold so distinguished a place in the technique of ordinary poetry, and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... believe that there is no such thing in heaven as a one-legged or a club-footed soul—no such thing as an ugly or a misshapen soul—no such thing as a blind or a deaf soul—no such thing as a soul with tainted blood in its veins; and that out of these imperfect bodies will spring spirits of consummate perfection and angelic beauty—a beauty chastened and enriched by the humiliations that were ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... beyond an imperfect knowledge of their alphabet, enabling me to spell out here and there a word of little meaning; but the great ocean's never-ceasing speech was ever plain to me, and many a midnight hour I have paced the cool sands that girt my island home, and listened ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Gascoyne is more difficult of entrance than its southern one, being narrower and more shoal. I still however think that at high water it could be entered by small craft; but as my examination of it was hurried and imperfect from our being pressed for provisions at the time I was there, the opinion I have given above ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... good Americans presented at court, among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beauty in the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in the reports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions. No news comes of her. And so imperfect are our means of communication in this world that, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cheerful recklessness, as was ever his way with odds against him, and he guessed that the odds were with Gering in the matter of Jessica,—he bent across the table and repeated them with an exasperating turn to his imperfect accent. "Foolish boy!" he said, and awaited, not for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... premise that Mr Bland takes three but little-known Oriental manuscripts as the groundwork of his observations; one of them, in the Persian character, is said to be 'probably unique,' though, unfortunately, very imperfect. It bears no date or author's name, these being lost with the missing portions, but the treatise itself contains internal evidence of very high antiquity. The author, whoever he was, tells us that he had travelled much through ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle on their subsequent annals; and, so imperfect were the records employed by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century of the Spanish conquest.16 At first, the progress of the Peruvians seems to have ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... education which does nothing for the faculties of observation, which trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter ignorance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably regarded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the instruction and training which are lacking are exactly those which are of most importance for the great mass of our population, the fault becomes almost a crime, the more so in that there is no practical difficulty in ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... man or woman agree with it? Ask the man in the street. Turn the pages of our literature. Refer to Chaucer or Spenser, to Shakespeare or Milton, refer to Fielding or Burns or Scott or Tennyson. Some of these men were very imperfect; but they all knew the difference between lust and love; and it is because they can tell us at least something of that which is precious, enduring, ethereal, and divine in love that we read their pages and honour their names. Not one of these men ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... but one apology for the production of a metrical essay, composed chiefly of imperfect and immature pieces:—the ambition to contribute towards the fund of Christmas entertainment, in which agreeable labour I see many popular names engaged,—and among them, one, the most deservedly popular in the literature of the day. The favour with which an influential portion ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... various metaphors to express what is meant by death. The principal ones are, extinction of the vital spark, departing, expiring, cutting the thread of life, giving up the ghost, falling asleep. These figurative modes of speech spring from extremely imperfect correspondences. Indeed, the unlikenesses are more important and more numerous than the likenesses. They are simply artifices to indicate what is so deeply obscure and intangible. They do not lay the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... perhaps be thought overcharged, still gives a very imperfect idea of what is taking place in the new states of the west and southwest. At the end of the last century a few bold adventurers began to penetrate into the valleys of the Mississippi, and the mass of the population very soon began to move in that direction: communities ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... kindly; and though his ignorance of Latin and inability even to read the Greek alphabet were hindrances, he picked up a little mathematics and heard the lectures of the great Dr. Beattie. His powers of talk and his knowledge of London life atoned for his imperfect education. He saw something of Aberdeen society; admired and danced with the daughters of baillies, and was even tempted at times to forget his passion for Anne Stent, who had sent a chilling answer to a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was, Renshaw could not avoid the reflection that the old man was right. What, indeed, could he say to her with his present imperfect knowledge? How could she write to him if that ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... have been connected with finance. He still found time for study, straining every power of his mind, he says, at one time in investigating Roman history, sure 'that the representations of all the moderns, without exception, are but mistaken, imperfect glimpses of the truth.' This Copenhagen life allowed him time but for one visit to his parents; and a disappointment which annoyed him considerably, in what, he thought, a just expectation of preferment, disposed him, in 1806, to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... the harmonium, and, leaning against the Communion-rails, he allowed the music to absorb him. He could hear it so distinctly in his mind that he refrained from going up into the gallery and playing it, for in his playing he would perceive how much he had forgotten, how imperfect was his memory. It were better to lose himself in the emotion of the memory of the music; it was in his blood, and he could see her hands playing it, and the music was coloured with the memory of her hair and her eyes. ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... were in the train that Percy became, for the first time, rather communicative. One day while they were eating lunch in the dining-car and discussing the imperfect characters of several of the boys at school, Percy suddenly changed his tone and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of music composed for this little instrument, which, in spite of its inaccuracies of pitch, arising from imperfect construction, are not without ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... them on earth, although she was deeply grieved, yet the thought did not seem so intolerable to her as to him. She had, indeed, hoped that from time to time she should see Ida again; still, her life was mostly past, and it was chiefly upon the communion they would enjoy in heaven, not momentary and imperfect as here, but perennial and complete, that ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... thick, dark hair hanging in a braid far below her slender waist, and a faint rose tint in her dusky cheeks. She and Half-a-Woman were of a size, although the little Moro was full two years the older, and a very pretty picture the children made, struggling through the medium of their imperfect Spanish to arrive at a starting-point of mutual interest—dusky daughter of the East and fair little maid ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... the most thoughtless to the subject of religion, till all acknowledged its importance and beauty. He explained to us, to the best of his power, the truths of Christianity, of which most of us had before a very slight and imperfect knowledge. He also proposed that we should unitedly offer up our prayers to Heaven every morning and evening; and from that time we never ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... read many Tales," she says, "how true, in my small Experience, I know not, of the aptitude of Women, particularly those young women whose characters are in a state of most Imperfect Development, to yield in matters essential to their best Happiness to the Opposing Wishes of Parents and Guardians. I speak of those Matters, perhaps not the most fitting for the Speculations of a but Partially-schooled Maiden—Love, and the Choosing of a Husband. ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... has increased in size and in perfect adaptation of feet and teeth to a life on open plains, and has reached its highest perfection in the horse, the ass, and the zebra. In birds, also, we see an advance from the imperfect tooth-billed and reptile-tailed birds of the secondary epoch, to the wonderfully developed falcons, crows, and swallows of our time. So, the ferns, lycopods, conifers, and monocotyledons of the palaeozoic and mesozoic rocks, have developed into the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... The imperfect attempt to picture forth some scenes of the most brilliant period of my country's history might naturally suggest their dedication to the son of him who gave that era its glory. I feel, however, in the weakness of the effort, the presumption of such a thought, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... friendships with men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... far greater majority than two-thirds against him, because while his arguments would be admirable if the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes had no neighbours, they must be—and the vast majority of Yugoslavs feel that they must be—superseded on account of this imperfect world. By all means let each one of the three retain every single custom that will not interfere with the national security and will not interfere too much with the national welfare. If Mr. Tomi['c], who ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... attending this species of intimate direction, when wisely and skilfully managed, cannot be doubted. Grovelling and imperfect natures have often thus been lifted up and carried in the arms of superior wisdom and purity. The confession administered by a Fenelon or a Francis de Sales was doubtless a beautiful and most invigorating ordinance; but the difficulty in its actual working is the rarity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... enough to dine with deliberation, young and healthy enough to sauce with appetite the dishes he thoughtfully selected. You perceived in him the imperfect epicure. His club had no culinary fame; the dinner was merely tolerable; but Rolfe's unfinished palate flattered the second-rate cook. He knew nothing of vintages; it sufficed him to distinguish between Bordeaux and Burgundy; yet one saw him raise his glass and peer at the liquor with eye ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... chapel, and the imperfect light gave a greater solemnity to the scene. Chicot was glad to find that he was not the last, for three monks entered after in gray robes, and placed themselves in front of the altar. Soon after, a little monk, doubtless a lad belonging to the ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... the full. For it is scandalous that a bird of the crow's cloth should be a thief; and so, although I reckon him among my friends,—in truth, because I do so,—I am always able to take it patiently when I see him chastised for his fault. Imperfect as we all know each other to be, it is a comfort to feel that few of us are so altogether bad as not to take more or less pleasure in seeing a neighbor's character improved under a course of ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... be the case. A vice, like detraction, so congenial to our imperfect natures, is not to be confined to one channel, and only resorted to, as a political weapon, when required. It is a vice which when once called into action, and unchecked by the fear of punishment or shame, must exist and be fed. It becomes a confirmed habit, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rubbed his eyes, and looked hard. Groves of rigging were about the chains; and there, peering from behind a great stay, like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture towards the balcony, but immediately as if alarmed by some advancing step along the deck within, vanished into the recesses of the hempen ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Rezon, in which he asserts that "Past Masters of warranted lodges on record are allowed this privilege (of membership) whilst they continue to be members of any regular lodge." And it is, doubtless, on this imperfect authority, that the Grand Lodges of America began at so early a period to admit their Past Masters to seats in the Grand Lodge. In the authorized Book of Constitutions, we find no such provision. Indeed, Preston records that in 1808, at the laying of the foundation-stone ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... were gathered and a treaty was concluded. At this meeting there developed the unusual condition that Hatch had spent so much time with the Indians that his English was very imperfect and broken, while Colonel Kane's language was of cultured sort, unfamiliar and almost unintelligible to Hatch. So a third person (Amasa M. Lyman) had to interpret between Kane and Hatch and the latter then interpreted to ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... being and no need—society, democratic from end to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle." ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... earth. There is always something new to be discovered. And it is essential for the whole world that the chronicle should be full. I am in great joy because it was but just now that our Lord told me about that child. Everything was imperfect without him, but now it ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... with Paul we may exclaim: "Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness." If Israel had been able to contribute so much of Christianity to the world, and evolve in her imperfect state such an equitable form of government, what will her contribution be when gathered, restored, and once again put into a theocratic relation to God? "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... soundly against the bounties that are supplied by the hand of nature. These forward looking ones, impatient with the mistakes and injustices of to-day, preach wisdom and justice for the morrow. So imperfect does the present seem to them, and so obvious are the possibilities of the future, that they look forward confidently to the overthrow of the old social forms, and the establishment, in their places, of a new society, ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. "Ah!" said he, mistaking me; "the retirement reminds you of the country. So it ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... can pass through the Amulet now,' said the beautiful, terrible voice, 'to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... of honour I understand there has been from first to last always something that no one in the army could quite make out," declared the chasseur with the imperfect nose. "In mystery it began, in mystery it went on, in mystery it ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... receiving that which God knows we need. We must not forget that our poor little plea for help and blessing does not exhaust the possibilities of prayer. Our words go upward to God's throne twisted by our imperfect thinking, narrowed by our outlook, sterilized by the doubts of our hearts, and we do not know what is good for us. His word comes downward into our lives laden with the quiet certainty of the Eternal, ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... present state of horticulture among us is quite imperfect, affording but an indistinct glimpse of the ample field which invites our view, it would scarcely be pardonable, were we to overlook a branch of rural industry in which horticultural success is interested, and without which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... our needs. Conroy was enthusiastic, and somewhat loquacious, but I cut his conversation off rather sharply, and ordered the men into their saddles. With brain clarified by sleep I realized the importance of the work before us, and how imperfect my plans were. I could merely ride forth to Elmhurst, hoping to pick up some clew to aid me. As we rode rapidly along the deserted road leading to Farrel's I reviewed over and over again every remembered detail, only to conclude that I must get hands on Grant, and by threats, or any other available ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... not if I could. Whatever assimilates, whether of mind or matter, can not be sundered. I would only destroy false conditions, and build up in their places those of peace and harmony. While I fully appreciate the marriage covenant, I sorrow over the imperfect manhood which desecrates it. I question again and again, why persons so dissimilar in tastes and habits, are brought together; and then the question is partly, if not fully answered, by the great truth of God's economy, which brings the lesser unto the greater ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... originated in the Lower House, they were ineffectual without the concurrence of the Upper House. There was no precedent of addresses to the House of Lords, or Commons, separately, by a single branch of the Colonial Legislature. He conceived the addresses to be unprecedented, imperfect in form, and founded upon a resolution of the House of Assembly, which, until sanctioned by the Legislative Council, must be ineffectual, except as a spontaneous offer on the part of the Commons of Canada. The resolutions were premature. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... you that Christ died for men, and that He is the Saviour of the World, but they do not seem to comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity, nor the full extent of the requirements and application of the law of Christian love. These imperfect views may not be entertained by all Christian Indians, but they were very common amongst those with whom I conversed. Their ignorance upon theological, as well as upon other subjects, is, of course, extreme. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... every event, we have to consult the far-off mother country, which often must approve or reject our propositions with blind justice. If in Spain itself, with the advantage of everything near and familiar, all is imperfect and defective, the wonder is that all here is not revolution. It is not lack of good will in the governors, but we must use the eyes and arms of strangers, of whom, for the most part, we can know nothing, and who, instead of serving their country, ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... list of the reforms which ought to be accomplished before the throne was filled, the list was absurdly long. If, on the other hand, the committee meant to give a list of all the reforms which the legislature would do well to make in proper season, the list was strangely imperfect. Indeed, as soon as the report had been read, member after member rose to suggest some addition. It was moved and carried that the selling of offices should be prohibited, that the Habeas Corpus Act should be made more efficient, and that the law of Mandamus should ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that which is a stumbling-block to the wise, and which yet, to him who seeketh knowledge with humility, extends a lesson so clear that he who runs may read. Hath not Art, thinkest thou, the means of completing Nature's imperfect concoctions in her attempts to form the precious metals, even as by art we can perfect those other operations of incubation, distillation, fermentation, and similar processes of an ordinary description, by which we extract life itself ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... that the cause of those evils was the aristocratic principle in our government,—the subjection of the many to the control of a comparatively few, who had an interest, or fancied they had an interest, in perpetuating those evils. These inquirers looked still farther, and saw, that, in the present imperfect condition of human nature, nothing better than this self-preference was to be expected from a dominant few; that the interests of the many were sure to be in their eyes a secondary consideration to their ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... alone, at sea, was 8.6, and under sail alone, 10.1 knots; her mean performance under steam and sail, 8.226; and considering the imperfect form of boiler employed, and the small amount of fuel consumed, it may be doubted if this has since been much excelled. She worked and steered well under canvas or steam alone, or under both combined; was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Imperfect enunciation is due to lack of attention and to lazy lips. It can be corrected by resolutely attending to the formation of syllables as they are uttered. Flexible lips will enunciate difficult combinations of sounds without slighting any of them, but such flexibility ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... work for a glorious future," said he, "which we are not destined to see—the golden age which has not been, but will yet be. We are only morning-stars shining in the dark, but the glorious morn will break, the good time coming yet. For this time we work; may God accept our imperfect service." ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Architecture is that Knowledge of this Art which is acquired by study, travelling and discourse. The Practick is that knowledge that is acquired by the Actual Building of great Fabricks. These Two Parts are so necessary, that never any came to any great Perfection without them both. The one being lame and imperfect without the other, so they must walk hand ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... occurs. Celsus gives the principal characteristics, and adds that the disease is scarcely known in Italy, but is very common in certain other countries. Galen supplies us with several particular but imperfect cases—histories of elephantiasis graecorum, with a view to demonstrate the value of the flesh of the viper, and in another review he adds that the disease is common in Alexandria. Aretaeus has left a very accurate picture of the symptoms of elephantiasis graecorum; and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... S. Maria Maggiore. Next, being summoned to Pisa, he made the Evangelists in the principal apse of the Duomo, with other works that are there, assisted by Andrea Tafi and by Gaddo Gaddi, and using the same manner wherein he had done his other works; but he left them little less than wholly imperfect, and they were afterwards finished ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Dowager of England," by the same; another is dedicated to "Her Royal Highness Ann, Princess of Denmark;" and other plates are dedicated to various Lincolnshire worthies, some of these are rather damaged, and the fine old bible is imperfect. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... of meeting again the dear family that showed me so much kindness two years ago. Stay fifteenth and sixteenth nights here. If the meeting with those we love, and a brief stay with them, can give us so much joy here in our imperfect state, what will be the measure of our joy when we meet in that world where all is perfection, and partings are known no more! "In his presence there is fullness of joy: and at his right hand ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... careful examination of the German body-politic will reveal symptoms unlike those to be found in any other nation. German nationalism is over-developed in one direction because it is under-developed and imperfect in other directions. Apply our three tests to the German nation, and it will be found to fail in them all. National boundary and State frontier do not coincide because there are still some twelve million Germans living outside Germany, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... represent the wants of the citizens of this District on the floor of Congress is not due to them and to the character of our Government. No principles of freedom, and there is none more important than that which cultivates a proper relation between the governors and the governed. Imperfect as this must be in this case, yet it is believed that it would be greatly improved by a representation in Congress with the same privileges that are allowed to the other ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... practical eye, it appeared that, as he had once thought, this Caro family—though it might not for centuries, or ever, furbish up an individual nature which would exactly, ideally, supplement his own imperfect one and round with it the perfect whole—was yet the only family he had ever met, or was likely to meet, which possessed the materials for her making. It was as if the Caros had found the clay but not the potter, while other families whose daughters might attract ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque, an open canopy of solemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead, looped at the curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparent tapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... escaped without her knowledge. Before day the young ladies awoke, and, to their astonishment, heard Tom playing one of their pieces. He continued to play until the family at the usual time arose, and gathered around him to witness and wonder at his performance, which, though necessarily very imperfect, was marvellously strange; for, notwithstanding this was his first known effort at a tune, he played with both hands, and used the black as ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... alliances unworthy of their relation, whatever I may be and am of their admirable daughter: of whom they, every one of them, are at least as unworthy!—These, Madam, I call sufferings: justly call so; if at last I am to be sacrificed to an imperfect reconciliation—imperfect, I say: for, can you expect to live so much as tolerably under the same roof, after all that has passed, with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... not uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed. In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness of Mary. The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose—a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of penetrating that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... prayers of all good Christians, for us." This was all the exposition be made of the chapter in these very words, and no more. I was much pleased with Bates's manner of bringing in the Lord's Prayer after his owne; thus, "In whose comprehensive words we sum up all our imperfect desires; saying, 'Our Father,'" &c. I hear most of the Presbyters took their leaves to-day, and that the City is much dissatisfied with it. I pray God keep peace among men in their rooms, or else all will fly a-pieces; for bad ones will not go down ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... did speak, to remonstrate, in the sweetest, most imperfect Hindustani in the world, when the man followed her at a quite ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... of the imperfect communication between the colonies. Aitken's magazine, throughout its life of eighteen months, is overshadowed by the war, and the grave news successively reported from both sides ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... to the pig standard, but the people did not live up to the best human standards. Wherever the ideal leads him, there he follows. After his brother John's death he said he did not wish ever to see John again, but only the ideal John—that other John of whom he was but the imperfect representative. Yet the loss of the real John was a great blow to him, probably the severest in his life. But he never allows himself to go on record as showing ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... as this must necessarily be imperfect, yet they are of value. The top of the Trunk is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the Roman style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome was already beginning to be felt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... care, To guard the sex from ev'ry latent snare. Tales I'll detail, and these relate at ease: Narrations clear and neat will always please; Like me, to this attention criticks pay; Then sleep, on either side, from night till day. If awkward, vulgar phrase intervene, Or rhymes imperfect o'er the page be seen, Condemn at will; but stratagems and art, Pass, shut your eyes, who'd heed the idle part? Some mothers, husbands, may perhaps be led, To pull my locks for stories white or red; So ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... in the dust-covered manuscripts of the scholar became a powerful, life-determining movement. The men of that time believed that the state rested upon a contract, and they put their belief into practice. More recent theory of public law with only an imperfect knowledge of these events frequently employed them as examples of the possibility of founding a state by contract, without suspecting that these contracts were only the ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... and then the latter pointed out to him which was his bed—one made up near the fire, for the sake of its warmth; and then the ferryman retired to the next room, a place which was merely divided by an imperfect partition. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... of words and idioms depends in a great measure upon the skill with which they are arranged, he is bound also by the rhythm of the original. If you would copy Raphael, you must not give him the coloring of Titian. The calm dignity of the "School of Athens" conveys a very imperfect idea of the sublime energy of the sibyls and prophets of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... unfamiliar to the face, though it by no means failed in pleasantness. The lips had the look of being frequently gnawed in intense thought or strong feeling. In the cheeks no healthy colour, but an extreme sallowness on all the features. Smiling, he showed imperfect teeth. Altogether, a young man upon whom one felt it difficult to pronounce in the earlier stages of acquaintance; whose intimacy but few men would exert themselves to seek; who in all likelihood was chary of exhibiting his true self save ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... you know that it fits the need, not only for light but for satisfaction to the eyes after the light comes. And the bath tub—may I speak of a bath tub in a bread-and-butter letter?—the bath tub is not too long—do you ever suffer from the long, long stretch into the cold water at your back and the imperfect support to the head which imperils your entire submergence?—your bath tub is not too long, and I grab it on both sides to get out. And as I dry myself I look down into that garden of precise, trimmed and varied green upon ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... a Common-wealth, I will reckon in the first place, those that arise from an Imperfect Institution, and resemble the diseases of a naturall body, which ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... of the Old and New Testament are, and shall remain, the only rule of our faith and practice"; and that principle has been repeatedly reaffirmed. They revere the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God; they acknowledge no other canon or rule of doctrine; they regard every human system of doctrine as imperfect; and, therefore, they stand to-day for the position that Christians should agree to unite on a broad Scriptural basis. Thus the Moravians claim to be an Union Church. At the Synod of 1744 they declared that they had room within their borders for three ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... was defeated for Senator, he said in the cloak room, in my hearing, that he did not propose to be a martyr. He was the author or a beautiful poem, entitled "Opportunity," which I think should accompany this imperfect sketch. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... that I would hold sacred the confidences of that shattered heart compels me to leave my narrative imperfect. Two days later I embarked on board the steamer St. Nicholas, gazing with inexpressible regret at the shores of the Tauric peninsula as they gradually blended with the horizon, their broken outline melting finally ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... woman than a man till "Boot and saddle" was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the floor. No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date of their formation have ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards with imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see through fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but to men who have a live philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient thought, he is as ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... which the musical reader may feel on hearing that James Ollerenshaw was equal to performing the Hallelujah Chorus on a concertina (even one inlaid with mother-of-pearl) argues on the part of that reader an imperfect acquaintance with the Five Towns. In the Five Towns there are (among piano scorners) two musical instruments, the concertina and the cornet. And the Five Towns would like to see the composer clever enough to compose a piece of music that cannot be arranged for either of these instruments. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... rebellious murmurings against the proclamations of God. Not so: I have long since submitted myself, resigned myself, nay, even reconciled myself, perhaps, to the great wreck of my life, in so far as it was the will of God, and according to the weakness of my imperfect nature. But my wrath still rises, like a towering flame, against all the earthly instruments of this ruin; I am still at times as unresigned as ever to this tragedy, in so far as it was the work of human malice. Vengeance, as a mission for me, as a task for my hands in particular, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and gentle. Even in the imperfect light her appearance suggested something cold and monachal. The thought of what she might have been saying, or, in the subtle way of women, making Seraphina feel, in there, made me violently ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... probable that many of the flavoring herbs now in use were similarly employed before the erection of the pyramids and also that many then popular no longer appear in modern lists of esculents. Of course, this statement is based largely upon imperfect records, perhaps, in many cases only hints more or less doubtful as to the various species. But it seems safe to conclude that a goodly number of the herbs discussed in this volume, especially those said to be natives of the Mediterranean region, overhung and ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... its infancy. In such matters the New Republic will entertain no superstition of laissez faire. Money and credit are as much human contrivances as bicycles, and as liable to expansion and modification as any other sort of prevalent but imperfect machine. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... shores, reached Green Bay at the end of September, after an absence of about four months, during which they had paddled their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles. [Footnote: The journal of Marquette, first published in an imperfect form by Thevenot, in 1681, has been reprinted by Mr. Lenox, under the direction of Mr. Shea, from the manuscript preserved in the archives of the Canadian Jesuits. It will also be found in Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, and the Relations Inedites, of Martin. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... saints and to the virgin had ceased; pictures for adoration had disappeared from their houses; and it was remarkable that in these changes the women were more zealous than the men. Still their knowledge in all cases was very imperfect, and it was uncertain how well they would endure persecution. Nearly all the members of the mission were there at different times; as also Tannus el Haddad, and Butrus el-Bistany, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Ahriman and the Devs.[11] ... We will not deny that some of these doctrines may have been handed down by oral tradition to the pontiff-chieftains of the Scandinavian tribes, and that the Skalds who composed the mythic poems of the elder Edda may have had an obscure and imperfect knowledge of them. Be this as it may, we must not forget that the higher doctrines of the Scandinavian system were confined to the few, whereas those of the Zendavesta were the religious belief of the whole nation.[12] ... The Persian system was ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... into a beautiful fly. But there is yet one other operation to go through ere it assumes its final and complete form; you see at present it is a heavy flier, for the wings are scarcely dry, and the muscles as yet unequal to great exertion; so in their present imperfect form they are constantly dropping for a second or two in the water, and are often sucked down the throat of some roach, trout, or other fish on the look-out. You should remember that the Ephemera, or May-fly, in this its ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... accurately known either of the finer structure of the brain, or of the physiological functions of its separate parts; its elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells, were almost unknown, as was also the cell-soul of the Protista; very imperfect ideas were held as to ontogenetic development, and as to phylogenetic there were none ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... Congress." Stanton grimly made the best of it, though he unwaveringly condemned some of its most conspicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve his blunder of the previous year, and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, the Conscription Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him to replace the wastage of the Union armies and steadily to augment them. At the close of the war, the Union had on foot a million men with an enrolled ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... At length—'All that you have uttered,' said he, 'I despise as the dastardly subterfuge of monkish cunning. Your new insults add to the desire of recovering my daughter, that of punishing you. I would proceed to instant violence, but that would now be an imperfect revenge. I shall, therefore, withdraw my forces, and appeal to a higher power. Thus shall you be compelled at once to restore my daughter and retract your scandalous impeachment of my honor.' Saying this, the turned his horse from the gates, and his people following him, quickly withdrew, ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... boycott its neighbours. A Yorkshire man might boycott a Lancashire man, or Lincoln might boycott Nottingham. It would require much teaching;—many books would have to be written, and an infinite amount of heavy slow imperfect practice would follow. But County Mayo and County Galway rose to the requirements of the art almost in a night! Gradually we Englishmen learned to know in a dull glimmering way what they were about; but at the first whisper of the word all Ireland ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... or it is moved by something else, as, for instance, by the whole rational soul in the universe? But it would be absurd to say that the energies of every irrational soul are not the energies of that soul, but of one more divine; since they are infinite, and mingled with much of the base and imperfect. For this would be just the same as to say that the irrational enemies are the energies of the rational soul. I omit to mention the absurdity of supposing that the whole essence is not generative of its proper energies. For if the irrational soul is a certain essence, it will have peculiar ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... safe criterion. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily believe there could dwell such animation in his lyre? Suidas says that our poet wrote hymns, and this perhaps is one of them. We can perceive in what an altered and imperfect state his works are at present, when we find a scholiast upon Horace citing an ode from the third book ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... forth like the knights of our famous English legend—imperfect no doubt and erring, but each one of them inspired with the consciousness that his life is a ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Second, the imperfect form of a verb. Third, the ablative form of a noun signifying a portion of the body. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... still find new things, quite new, because they are so very, very old, and quite true; and with his help I seem in a measure to look back upon our thoughts now as if I had projected myself a thousand years forward in space. An imperfect book, say the critics. I do not know about that; his short paragraphs and chapters in their imperfect state convey more freshness to the mind than the thick, laboured volumes in which modern scholarship professes to describe ancient philosophy. I prefer the imperfect original records. Neither ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... would be favourable he never doubted for a moment; but he recalled the speech of Benedict to Beatrice, "By my troth I take thee for pity," and fancied Sally's response might be of the same complexion. His recollection of these words produced a mental recurrence, a distressing and imperfect one, connected with the earlier time he could not reach back to, of the words being used to himself by a girl who ascribed them to Rosalind in As You Like It, and a discussion after of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... have been proposed for obviating the inconvenience of a meeting of different gauges (even if we could assume their practicability, which in the present state of experience we should not be warranted in doing,) as anything better than partial and imperfect ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... operation. Individual effort was pronounced, but it lacked method. The Germans have, however, profited from the lessons taught by their antagonists, and now are emulating their tactics, but owing to their imperfect training and knowledge the results they achieve appear to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... maturing in his mind for the last twenty-four hours. On the road before the tents of the Prussians another regiment, the 5th of the line, was drawn up in readiness for departure. Great confusion prevailed in the column, and an officer, whose knowledge of the French language was imperfect, had been unable to complete the roster of the prisoners. Then the two friends, having first torn from their uniform coat the collar and buttons in order that the number might not betray their identity, quietly took their place in the ranks and soon had the satisfaction of crossing ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... G. Wilder, of Ithaca, and T. Jefrie Parker, of New Zealand Institute, have proposed a new nomenclature for macroscopic encephalic anatomy, which, while seemingly imperfect in many respects, has, at least, the merit of stimulating thought, and has given an impulse to a reform which will not cease until something has been actually accomplished in this direction. The object being to substitute ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
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