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More "Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pale elongated face, his granite complexion, and the meditative character of his countenance. During the second part of his life it was possible to paint or to chisel his broadened forehead, his admirably defined eyebrows, his straight nose, his close-pressed lips, his chin modelled with rare perfection, his whole face, in short, like a coin of Augustus. But that which neither his bust nor his portrait could render, which was utterly beyond the domain of imitation, was the mobility of his look; that look ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... time; but by and by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, and other things, like the thorns in the parable, choked the Word in their hearts, so that they brought forth no fruit unto perfection. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... that the world had ever witnessed. Never before had there been such a union of the material and intellectual elements of civilization at the seat of empire. Literature and art had been carried to the utmost perfection possible to human genius. Art was represented by the inimitable creations of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was illustrated by the incomparable tragedies of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the comedies of Aristophanes, while ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... (protected by layers of white crochet-work) said as plainly as if in words, "Sit on me if you dare!" Mr. Troy retreated to a bookcase at the further end of the room. The books fitted the shelves to such absolute perfection that he had some difficulty in taking one of them out. When he had succeeded, he found himself in possession of a volume of the History of England. On the fly-leaf he encountered another written warning:—"This book belongs to Miss Pink's ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... jamb thereof with a grace that had lost its youthful repose. He was looking out, across a sloping lawn, over the Solent, and for that purpose he had caused himself to be clad in a suit of blue serge. He looked the veteran yachtsman to perfection—he could look anything in its season—but he did his yachting from the shore—by preference from ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... I are experts in changing residences and we listened with the amusement of experts to the talk of theorists. For it was so constantly assumed that on one side of a choice is disaster, on the other perfection. Actually perfection does not belong to this earthly state: if you go to Rome, as Gilbert himself once said, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life at Wimbledon. Newman writing of a far greater and more irrevocable ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... with those of numerous shopkeepers in Cork that he rarely entered a shop over whose door Dalrymple & Co. might not have figured on the sign-board. His stables were filled with a perfect infirmary of superannuated chargers, fattened and conditioned up to a miracle, and groomed to perfection. He could get you—only you—about three dozen of sherry to take out with you as sea-store; he knew of such a servant; he chanced upon such a camp-furniture yesterday in his walks; in fact, why want for anything? His resources were inexhaustible; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... succeeded crisis, and events, each of themselves epoch-making in character, crashed one upon another throughout the progress toward Black Saturday. We know now that much of this fury of haste which was so bewildering at the time, which certainly has no parallel in history, was due to the perfection of Germany's long-laid plans. Major-General Farquarson, in his "Military History of the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... ancient civilized art. The last generation has brought to light evidence which shows that the Negroes of the West Coast of Africa were producing hundreds and even perhaps thousands of years ago objects of art which, from the point of view of technique and artistic perfection, equal some of the best works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and compares favorably with the best masterpieces of the Solons of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... spiritual work which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Art and Athletic Perfection," replied Ozma. "I had it built quite recently, and the Woggle-Bug is its president. It keeps him busy, and the young men who attend the college are no worse off than they were before. You see, in this country are a number of youths who do not like ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... gone from the station at Trenton to Trenton Falls in a close, lumbering, heavy coach, which is of very ordinary use in America. But yesterday morning we went over the same ground in an omnibus, which allowed us to see the great beauty of the country to perfection; and, although we had occasional heavy showers, the day was, on the whole, much more propitious for travelling, as the atmosphere was very clear, and the sandy dust was laid. We returned to Utica, or "Utikay," as they call it, and, having an hour to spare, went and saw the State Lunatic Asylum; ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... music should by no means be estimated by technical complications. To play a Mozart concerto well is a colossally difficult undertaking. The pianist who has worked for hours to get such a composition as near as possible to his conception of perfection is never given the credit for his work, except by a few connoisseurs, many of whom have been through a similarly exacting experience. Months may be spent upon comparatively simple compositions, such as the Haydn Sonatas or the Mozart Sonatas, and the musical public is blind to the additional ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... reflection, and not to gratify, or rather pacify Pauline, as to convince Mr. Grey. Whether she was able to attain this point is somewhat doubtful, although the capacity people have for self deception is amazing. And to what perfection Mrs. Grey may have reached in the happy art, we are ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... insistence as to Hugh Renwick's pursuit—the belief that Renwick would go at once to the Hotel Europa! The power of suggestion! And she had followed it blindly—unawares, leading Hugh Renwick into this deadly trap which Goritz had laid. She read the plan now in all its insidious perfection. There was something malign—hypnotic—in an influence which could so easily compel compliance. And Hugh? She had written him to come here—to the door in the court below, where men would be waiting—perhaps to take his ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... thy nature winneth praise only so long as his able foe bideth his time. Renouncing all sin, even as a serpent casteth off its worn out slough which it cannot any longer retain, the heroic Ajatasatru shineth in his natural perfection, leaving his load of sins to be borne by thee. Consider, O king, thy own acts which are contrary to both religion and profit, and to the behaviour of those that are righteous. Thou hast, O king, earned a bad repute in this world, and wilt reap misery in the next. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... inhabitants of cities, who live in mansions, and read novels stored with unreal pictures of life and the heart, are apt to imagine that love, with all its golden illusions, is reserved exclusively for them. It is a most egregious mistake. A model of ideal beauty and perfection is woven in almost every youthful heart, of the brightest and most brilliant threads that compose the web of existence. It may not be said that this forest maiden was deeply and foolishly smitten at first sight. All reasonable time ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the angelic order was, by original constitution, inferior to man; but this original precedency had been reversed for the present, by the fact that man, in his higher nature, was morally ruined, whereas the angelic race had not forfeited the perfection of their nature, though otherwise an inferior nature. Waiving a question so inscrutable as this, we know, at least, that no allegiance or homage is required from man towards this doubtfully superior ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... I am told, writes indexes to perfection, makes essays, and reviews any work with a single day's warning.—Goldsmith, A Citizen of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... several cinchonaceous trees also in the country; and some of the wild fruits are so good as to cause a feeling of regret that they have not been improved by cultivation, or whatever else brought ours to their present perfection. Katosa lamented that this locality was so inferior to his former place at Pamalombe; there he had maize at the different stages of growth throughout the year. To us, however, he seemed, by digging holes, and taking advantage of the moisture ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... very cautious, though," said Rhodopis, "lest they become contentious, and quarrelsome. Do you see those melons lying on the black soil yonder, like golden balls? Not one would have come to perfection if the sower had been too lavish with his seed. The fruit would have been choked by too luxuriant tendrils and leaves. Man is born to struggle and to work, but in this, as in everything else, he must know how to be moderate if his efforts are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its development is just this:—Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical art,—just as Nicholas Jenson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it. Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations, in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,—great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,—but look over to Florence and see who lie in Santa Croce, and ask out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... down Kennington Road, walking at a leisurely pace, smiting his leg with his doubled dog-whip, and looking about him with his usual wideawake, contented air. He had in perfection the art of living for the moment, no art in his case, but a natural characteristic, for which it never occurred to him to be grateful. Indeed, it is a common characteristic in the world to which Mr. Gammon belonged. He and his like take what the heavens send them, grumbling or rejoicing, ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... propriety, which in an English community would be the first thing to notice, there was an implied invitation to the spirit to relax. In the slap-dash, go-as-you-please methods of building, paving, and cleaning she saw a tacit assumption that, perfection being not of this world, one is permitted to rub along without it. Rodney Lane, which in Colonial days had led to Governor Rodney's "Mansion," had long ago been baptized Algonquin Avenue by civic authorities with a love of the sonorous, but it still ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... beautiful, shrill, voluble termagant, who exercised marvellous ingenuity in rendering him wretched and contemptible. Reared in a stately school of old-world politeness, the unhappy man was a model of decorum and urbanity. He took reasonable pride in the perfection of his tone and manner; and the marchioness—whose malice did not lack cleverness—was never more happy than when she was gravely expostulating with him, in the presence of numerous auditors, on his lamentable want of style, tact, and gentlemanlike bearing. It is said that, like ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... was far from having attained that perfection which it reached later. Masks had not yet been invented, and in consequence play was necessarily stiff and slow, as the danger of the loss of sight, or even of death, from a chance thrust was very great. When Rupert first began his ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... does every one good. It is to the soul like a refreshing bath to a child; he laughs, and wonders, and is content. Not every day, I assure you, do we composers hear ourselves sung with such purity and simplicity—with such perfection!" and he seized her hand and kissed it heartily. Mozart's amiability and kindness, no less than his high appreciation of her talent, touched Eugenie deeply, and her eyes filled with tears ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... now by the sunny window, idly intent on her vision, without warning the face of Shiela Cardross glimmered through the dream, growing clearer, distinct in every curve and tint of its exquisite perfection; and she stared at the mental vision, evoking it with all the imagination of her inner consciousness, unquiet yet curious, striving to look into the phantom's eyes—clear, direct eyes which she remembered; and a thrill of foreboding touched her, lest the boy she loved might find in ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... insects, sober and industrious, ugly, mischievous, destructive, all have revelled—and the butterfly brings the art of inconsequent revelling to the acme of perfection—in the comparatively dry air, in the glowing skies, and in the succession of serene days. Moreover there has been no off-hand, untimely destruction of the nectariferous blossoms of millions of trees and shrubs. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the next, that she should have the wit of an angel; the third, that she should have a wonderful grace in everything she did; the fourth, that she should dance perfectly well; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale; and the sixth, that she should play all kinds of music to the utmost perfection. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... photography will perhaps do its best work for the astronomer. The trial star map by the brothers Henry, of a portion of the Milky Way, which they felt unable to observe satisfactorily by the ordinary methods, is so near absolute perfection that it alone proves the immense superiority of the photographic method in the formation of star maps. Fortunately this subject, which is as vast as it is fundamental, is being taken up vigorously. The Henries are producing a special ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the pleasure of myself preparing fine specimens of the Birds of Paradise, but I now learnt that they are all at this season out of plumage, and that it is in September and October that they have the long plumes of yellow silky feathers in full perfection. As all the praus return in July, I should not be able to spend that season in Aru without remaining another whole year, which was out of the question. I was informed, however, that the small red species, the "King Bird of Paradise," retains its plumage at all seasons, and this ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... who are to get out of the cars can philosophically amuse ourselves with the passions and sufferings of those who are to return in our places. You must choose the time between five and six o'clock in the afternoon, if you would make this grand study of the national character in its perfection. Then the spectacle offered in any arriving horse-car will serve your purpose. At nearly every corner of the street up which it climbs stands an experienced suburban, who darts out upon the car, and seizes a vacant ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... years of his life, has made either military or political tactics or exploits his only study, certainly cannot excel equally in the Cabinet and in the camp. It would be as foolish to believe, as absurd to expect, a perfection almost beyond the reach of any man; and of Bonaparte more than of any one else. A man who, like him, is the continual slave of his own passions, can neither be a good nor a just, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... words as 'They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy'; or, 'Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation'; or, 'Thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' If people would only think of heaven less carnally, and would regard it as the perfection of holiness, there would be no difficulty in the notion of reward. Men get there what they have made themselves fit for here. 'Their works ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... them. On one of the days of this festival, the vizier's daughter from a latticed balcony of the palace, in which she sat to view the sports, was so struck with the manly figure and agility of a young nobleman named Ins al Wujjood (or the perfection of human nature), that love took possession of her mind. She pointed him out to a female confidant, and gave her a letter to convey to the object of her affections. The young nobleman, who had heard her praises, was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... old lady looked from mother to child a great pity filled her heart for the dear son of her late master who had staked his happiness on a creature so ethereal that the first wind might blow her away; such delicate perfection as that, if her experience did not deceive her, was hardly adapted to the needs of an everyday German husband. But then did Melchior look like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... castle reminded me of the "Arabian Nights;" every costly thing from all parts of the world, such as fine woods and choice works of art, is to be seen here in the greatest perfection and splendour. There are state apartments in Oriental, Chinese, Persian, and European styles; and, above all, a garden saloon, which is quite unique, for it not only contains the finest and rarest flowers but even the tallest ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... about this time to Hanover, where his father sent him to take a view of that court in his tour of travelling. He was in his first bloom of youth and vigour, and had so strong an appearance of that perfection, that it was called beauty by the generality of women: though in my opinion there was a coarseness in his face and shape that had more the air of a porter than a gentleman; and, if fortune had not interposed her almighty power, he might by his birth have appeared in that figure; his father ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... thus be attained. Such methods of combustion as this, though valuable, are plainly of limited application; but for the great bulk of fuel consumption some gas-making process must be looked to. No crude combustion of solid fuel can give ultimate perfection. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger might well think from his utterances that he was spoiled by the freedom of his life, unprepared to sacrifice anything for a land in such a condition. Threaten that country, and with it his liberty, and you will find that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... was speaking again. "For years the sole aim and goal of the German house of Hohenzollern has been the perfection to a marvelous degree of her policy of militarism. Why, there is not a man in the whole German Empire, who, at the command of his country, could not take his place, a trained soldier, in the tremendous, perfected military machine that is the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Age, from Cicero (81 B.C.) to the death of Augustus (14 A.D.). In this period the language, especially in the hands of Cicero, reaches a high degree of stylistic perfection. Its vocabulary, however, has not yet attained its greatest fullness and range. Traces of the diction of the Archaic Period are often noticed, especially in the poets, who naturally sought their effects by reverting to the speech of olden times. ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... that preexistent sphere which, in Plato's opinion, furnished the key to all the enigmas of this? There they beheld the complete and original souls, the compound of male and female, dual and yet one, so happy and so haughty in their perfection of beauty and of power that Jupiter could not tolerate his godlike rivals, and therefore cut them asunder, sending the dissevered halves tumbling down to earth, bewildered and melancholy enough, until some good fortune might restore to each the alter ego which constituted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of youth, sensibility, a love of beauty, intelligence, esprit, fantasy, eloquence, graceful converse—these were Musset's gifts. He lacked ideas; he lacked the constructive imagination; with great capacities as a writer, he had too little of an artist's passion for perfection. His longest narrative in prose, the Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle, has borne the lapse of time ill. "J'y ai vomi la verite," he said. It is not the happiest way of communicating truth, and the moral of the book, that debauchery ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... heavily armed troopers in his ranks gave him a strength in defence, and an impetuosity in attack, which made it a simple matter to break up the undisciplined squadrons opposed to him. Bannockburn rang the death-knell of the tactics which since Hastings had been regarded as the perfection of military art. The political lessons of the victory were of not less importance. It is almost too much to say that Bannockburn won for Scotland its independence, for Scottish independence had already been vindicated. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Isleworth.—I hope that this letter will reach you before you set out for Cumberland, because I am impatient to tell you that the Perfection of Nature is at this instant the Perfection of Health. I came over here in my boat to write my letter from a place where I am sure that your thoughts carry you very often, and to make my letter from that local circumstance more welcome to you. I brought ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... publicly; every detail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct spiritual creation. There is no straight line in it; no two measurements are the same; but by a divine and direct intuition, every difference is inevitable, and an essential factor in the perfection of the whole. As if the same creative force had made it, as makes of the sea and mountains an inescapable ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... on the instant. His cigar was flung aside. A moment later he was on his feet, and his arms, full of vital impulse, came near to destroying the perfection of her toilet. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the fact that sugar improves the flavor of Perfection Salad, why is it a valuable ingredient of the salad ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... when any minute the County men might turn up? Who could be bothered with dactyls and spondees when goal-posts and touch-lines were far more to the point? And who could be expected to fix his mind on hexameters and elegiacs when the height of human perfection lay in a straight drop-kick or a fast double past the enemy's half-backs? However, the Doctor had made up his mind Latin verses should get their share of attention that morning, and the two head forms were compelled to submit ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... we found it,— motives eminently such as are called social,—come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and preeminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good. As, in the first ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... instruct her how they might be fully realized in the attainment of divine knowledge, and the experience of Christian love. No wonder, then, that Henrich held already the first place in her heart and imagination, and was endowed by her lively fancy with every quality and every perfection, both of mind and body, that she could ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... will consist of physical training by the latest and most approved methods, with the special intention of developing the body and mind, so that the best possible results may be obtained looking to perfection of base-ball playing. Daily instruction will be had in the theory and practice of ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... from which the eye had a noble prospect of the plains. All down the glen were little copses, half moons of green edging some silvery shore of the burn, or delicate clusters of tall trees nodding on the hill brow. The place so satisfied the eye that for the sheer wonder of its perfection we stopped and stared ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... oblige her brother, sew on the button, or take his book to the library; Wolf must always protect the girls, and consider them. Wolf firmly believed his sister and cousin to be the sweetest girls in the world; Rose and Norma regarded Wolf as perfection in human form. They rarely met without embraces, never without ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... chorus, as, standing in the bows with one hand upon his gun, the other upon his right hip, he looked the very perfection of a British man-of-war's man, ready to lead or be led, wherever ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... Experimentall, to the chief and finall power of Naturall and Mathematicall Artes. Of two or three men, in whom, this Description of Archemastry was Experimentally, verified, I haue read and hard: and good record, is of their such perfection. So that, this Art, is no fantasticall Imagination: as some Sophister, might, Cum suis Insolubilibus, make a florish: and dassell your Imagination: and dash your honest desire and Courage, from beleuing ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... perfection about her lithe, graceful person, an ease and subtlety of line, an allure which was satisfying—from her trim little feet gloved in suede, to the slender nape of her neck, from which sprang, back of the loveliest of little ears, the exquisite sheen ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... England, for the mule pines in mud and rain, and thrives best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were—oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the wind; there were—goodliest sight of all—certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha!—how distinctly do ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... views of his own upon most subjects, and no one suspected him of it, because he never sought to force them upon others. What he loved above all in men was that species of audacious and gentlemanly coolness which is found in greater perfection in the ranks of the British aristocracy than anywhere else ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... Arabs. They claim to have used gunpowder as far back as the eleventh century. In the year 706 paper was made at Mecca and from there its manufacture spread all over the western world. To them we owe many of the useful arts and practical inventions which were later brought to perfection by ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... be in every sense of the word an arduous training, for the first regiment of Guards being considered all the world over as the crack corps of the German army, and as the embodiment of military perfection in every sense of the word, its officers, realizing that it is, so to speak, the star phalanx of Germany, are engaged, morning, noon and night, in maintaining it at its proper standard, and there are no officers ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... storming the citadel of Russian Jewry, the Government took good care to keep it meanwhile in its normal state of siege. The resourcefulness of the administration brought the technique of repression to perfection. The officials were no longer content with inventing cunning devices for expelling old Jewish residents from the villages. [1] They now made endeavors to reduce even the area of the urban Pale in which the Jews were huddled together, panting for breath. In 1890, the provincial authorities, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... they should be reconciled. That God's justice and mercy should have been in a state of antagonism down to A.M. 4034, when Jesus died, is an incredible supposition. No event taking place in time and space can be the condition sine qua non of divine perfection. And any struggle or conflict like that ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of the present day. It was a species of rude pantomime, in which dancing and movements of the body were accompanied by mute gestures of the hands and face, or by singing and music. Subsequently, dialogue was added, and the art of theatrical representation was brought to great perfection. Elaborate treatises were written which laid down minute regulations for the construction and conduct of plays, and subjected dramatic composition to highly artificial rules of poetical and rhetorical style. For example, the Sahitya-darpana divides Sanskrit plays into two great ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... not understand the inability of a supreme artist like Tolstoy to appreciate his greatness. Though he has written a noble sonnet in homage to Shakespeare's genius, Matthew Arnold once permitted himself to say that "Homer leaves Shakespeare as far behind as perfection leaves imperfection." Paul wrote in a marginal note, "Bosh! to put it bluntly." He would say with Goethe, "The first page of Shakespeare made me his for life, and when I had perused an entire play I stood like one born blind, to whom ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the whole alphabet of smart costumers, was aware of the sophisticated perfection of that fluff of jade green tulle. The touch of gold at the girdle, the flash of gold for the petticoat. She guessed the price, a stiff one, and wondered that Mary should speak of it casually as "one ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... word,' resumed the other, 'I do not find and cannot believe and therefore will not allow, that we are a model of wisdom, and an example to the world, and the perfection of human reason, and a great deal more to the same purpose, which you may hear any hour in the day; simply because we began our political life with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the world had not your lord been. And if I had done so at that time, with my heart, will, and thought, I had passed all the knights that were in the Sancgreall, except Sir Galahad, my son. And therefore, lady, sithen ye have taken you to perfection, I must needs take me unto perfection of right. For I take record of God, in you have I had mine earthly joy, and if I had found you so disposed, I had cast me for to have had you into mine own realm. But sithen I find you thus disposed, I ensure you faithfully that I will take me to penance, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... as possible; indeed an Englishman of genius usually lacks the national characteristics, and is great abnormally. Even the great sailor, Nelson, was unlike his countrymen in the qualities that constituted him a hero; he was not the perfection of an Englishman, but a creature of another kind,—sensitive, nervous, excitable, and really more ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her breast and jewelled stars in her gray hair. Although not young, she was a wonderfully well-preserved woman, and her arms and neck were white, gleaming and beautifully shaped. From the top of her head to the sole of her rather large but well-shod foot, she was dressed to perfection, and waved a languid fan as she welcomed Paul, who was presented to her by the host. "I am glad to see you, Mr. Beecot," she said in her deep voice; "we had rather an unhappy interview when last we met. How is ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... time I conceived," says Franklin, "the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his blots diminished. This self-examination, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Several laborers were busy under the trees assorting the gathered apples, and carefully packing in boxes the choicest of them—really splendid specimens of this fruit, which attains its utmost perfection in Oregon. As soon as the doctor perceived us he came down from the ladder, and asked somewhat sharply what our business there might be. My companion handed him the letters of introduction he had brought with him, which the doctor read attentively through: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... required of a garden here as in some other parts of the world. Excellent apples, none finer, are exported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoes is said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here. I should think that oats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those who care for it, may be satisfactory. I should judge that the other products of this garden are fish and building-stone. But we anticipate. And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and the hemlocks"? ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fanciers. The principal breeders of certain animals such as rabbits, pigeons or poultry, form an association or club and agree to an imaginary type of the animal called the ideal or "Standard of Perfection." ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... been pursuing this method for over fifty years, and are still, apparently, content to go on, each devoting attention to the symmetrical perfection of his own little section of the puzzle, quite indifferent to the fact that our neighbour is in possession of an equally neatly trimmed fragment, which entirely refuses to ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... 18th. His "city get-up" was slightly distracting, for it had a perfection of style that Mrs. Joe was not accustomed to; but his delight at his return to the Bad Lands was so frank and so expressive that her anxiety began to dissolve in her wonder at this vehement and attractive ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... vacancy is left for any being, or any thing but Oro. Hence, Oro is in all things, and himself is all things—the time-old creed. But since evil abounds, and Oro is all things, then he can not be perfectly good; wherefore, Oro's omnipresence and moral perfection seem incompatible. Furthermore, my lord those orthodox systems which ascribe to Oro almighty and universal attributes every way, those systems, I say, destroy all intellectual individualities but Oro, and resolve the universe into ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... completed his work, then indeed he may sell it in the best market. But the least preliminary paltering with the spirit of commerce is a degradation. Does this seem an ideal demand? Let us remember, then, ideals are goads and goals, counsels of perfection. No one expects people to come quite up to them, but it is better for human nature that they should be there. For there is something in hero-worship, despite Carlyle's grandiosities, provided you choose your hero wisely. We do, in this valley ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the three are sent thee: Onward must alone content thee— Weary, thou must not stand still Wouldst thou thy perfection fill! Thou must spread thee wider, bigger, Wouldst thou have the world take figure! To the deep the man descendeth Who existence comprehendeth. Leads persistence to the goal; Leads abundance to precision; Dwells ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... inefficiency. The hammock protects one from the dangers of the outside world, but like any man-made structure, it shows evidences of those imperfections which are part and parcel of human nature, and serve, no doubt, to make it interesting. But one may at least strive for perfection by being careful. Therefore tie the ropes of your hammock yourself, or examine and test the job done for you. The master of hammocks makes a knot the name of which I do not know—I cannot so much as ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... resembling a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. But his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... the early zeal had cooled; he worked out the problem of life for himself with great independence and entire good sense. After a few vagaries and some wholesome buffeting, he determined that "moral perfection" was the only satisfying aim. But instead of proclaiming his discovery as a gospel, he quietly utilized it for his personal guidance. He had a keen eye for all utility; he carved out his own fortune; he early identified his own happiness with that of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... originally promulgated by the heretics, became at length a portion of the creed of the Church. The Manichaeans, as well as the Gnostics, rejected the doctrine of the atonement, and as faith in the perfection of the cleansing virtue of the blood of Christ declined, a belief in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... entertainment; but if any carelessness could be detected about his dress or in his appearance, the expense was to fall upon him. Upon the appointed evening the gentlemen and the Judge met at the place agreed upon, and to the surprise of all, the Judge's dress seemed faultless. He appeared the very perfection of neatness and taste. The supper followed, the Judge being in high glee over his victory. Near the close of the repast, however, one of the guests, who sat next to Judge Marshall, chanced to drop his napkin, and stooping down to pick it up, discovered ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... changes are determined in large measure by the moral ideals of its members. For its unity we must look to an end—an ideal—of which its actual forms can offer indications only. Both man and society are factors in a universal order; and their perfection cannot be independent of the purpose of this order. When the consciousness of it fills man's life, morality is ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... Brain," Judge Ledue was saying, to reassure himself and draw agreement from the others. "It was capable of combining data, and scanning and evaluating all its positronic memories, and forming association patterns, and reasoning with absolute perfection. It was more than a positronic brain—it ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... the haunts of men, in a boiling rocky torrent surrounded by heathery mountains, where the shadow of a rod has seldom been reflected in the stream, and you cease to think the former fish worth catching; still he is the same size, showed the same courage, had the same perfection of condition, and yet you cannot allow that it was sport compared with this wild stream. If you see no difference in the excitement, you are not a sportsman; you would as soon catch him in a washing tub, and you should buy your fish when you require him; ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Vishnu, their dismal dreams and apprehensions, which embody themselves in the horrid worship of Siva, and in invocations to propitiate the destroyer; so the followers of Buddha, unsatisfied with the vain pretensions of unattainable perfection, struck down by this internal consciousness of sin and insufficiency, and seeing around them, instead of the reign of universal happiness and the apotheosis of intellect and wisdom, nothing but the ravages of crime and the sufferings ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Printing, Faustus thought he had at length opened the door to riches, honour, and enjoyment. He exerted himself to the utmost, in order to bring the art to perfection, and he now laid his discovery before mankind; but their lukewarmness quickly convinced him that, although the greatest inventor of his age, he and his family would soon perish with hunger unless his genius continually displayed itself in some ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... strictly and literally true. The consequence of such strange blunders is what might be naturally expected; the voice, forced out of its natural compass, prematurely gives way, and at a period of life when the vocal organ, if properly trained and developed, should have arrived at maturity and perfection, the singer's powers are gone, and, in the prime of life, he is compelled to abandon his profession, and subsides into the mere singing-master, to misinstruct the rising generation, and to mar the prospects of others who succeed him, as his own hopes were blighted by the errors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... proper. Thus there gradually grew up," says Jevons, "a system of machine-tool labour, the substitution of iron hands for human hands, without which the execution of engines and machines in their present perfection would be impossible."[81] ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... from his shirt; and the meal being mixed with this water, (salt was not even hinted at, the market price of that article being four dollars a pound at Andersonville,) it was placed on a strip of wood before the fire, to bake up to the half-raw point, that being the highest perfection attainable in Drake's kitchen: for a range and a steady heat find the baking of meal, so mixed, no easy matter. Eight ounces of meal make a cake six inches long, five broad, and half an inch thick: that is to say, Drake's dinner and supper for that day, and his breakfast and dinner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... must surely have been Evelyn's "Sculptura, or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper," published in 1662. The translation of Freart's "Idea of the Perfection of Painting demonstrated" was not ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... marriage, and whom I adopted as my son. You know that he possesses experience and every virtue becoming a prince. He found Austria in a state of disorder, and he has restored it to tranquillity. He is now of an age in which judgment and experience attain their perfection, and he is sovereign of Austria, which, lying between Hungary and Bohemia, forms a connecting link ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... frowned, and said sharply "That's hardly likely. I don't think that your Grace realizes to what a perfection constant practice brings one's power of observation. The inspector and I will cheerfully eat anything we've missed—won't we, inspector?" And he laughed heartily at ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... Cowper was the first to emancipate himself from the conventionality of his age, and Crabbe emancipated himself still further. He had boundless sincerity, and he is really a very great poet even if he has not the perfection of art of some later poets. Many know Crabbe only by the parody of his manner ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... in other portions of this district, appear to possess the same properties of soil; and where, I have no doubt, the finest cotton will soon be extensively raised and brought to its highest state of perfection by ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... this manner, and after much reasoning, came to the conclusion that ignorance was misery. He gave himself up to study, and at last came to believe that he had reached the perfection of wisdom. The tree under which he sat when he reached this result was then called Bodhidruma, or the tree of intelligence; and the Buddhists believe the spot where it grew to be the centre of the earth. A tree that passes for this ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... trees nor plants of any kind; unless when irrigated by means of canals, when it produces almost every vegetable in astonishing abundance. By these artificial means of cultivation, the fruits and grains of Europe thrive with extraordinary perfection, and come a month earlier to maturity than in Chili; and the wines produced in Cujo are very ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... evils of the system served a purpose in Bibb's life. Denied education of a normal kind he became observant and his mind was enlightened by what he saw and heard. "Among other good trades," he says, "I learned the art of running away to perfection. I made a regular business of it and never gave it up until I had broken the bonds of slavery and landed myself in Canada where I was regarded as a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... September 18th.—We had gone from the station at Trenton to Trenton Falls in a close, lumbering, heavy coach, which is of very ordinary use in America. But yesterday morning we went over the same ground in an omnibus, which allowed us to see the great beauty of the country to perfection; and, although we had occasional heavy showers, the day was, on the whole, much more propitious for travelling, as the atmosphere was very clear, and the sandy dust was laid. We returned to Utica, or "Utikay," as they call it, and, having an hour to spare, went and saw the State Lunatic Asylum; ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... raising his hand. "Let not the groping man thank the lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am but the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... of education can claim an approach to perfection, we must have attached to each school a professor who thoroughly comprehends the wants of the body, and knows practically the means by which it may be made symmetrical, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... patent granted to a Birmingham inventor is dated May 22, 1722, it being granted to Richard Baddeley for having "with much pains, labour, and expense, invented and brought to perfection 'An Art for making streaks for binding Cart and Wagon Wheels and Box Smoothing Irons' (never yet practised in this our kingdom) which will be more durable and do three times the service of those made of bar iron," ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... felt that the aim of research does not consist in the knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or understand more completely—in the peace of mind which passeth all understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by which over effort is felt instinctively to be as vicious and contemptible as indolence. He knew this too well to know the grounds of his knowledge, but we smaller people who know it less completely, can see that such felicitous ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... how it should be played, before a step was taken or a weapon drawn. When he himself, or any of his parties, left the island, upon an expedition, they advanced along no beaten paths. They made them as they went. He had the Indian faculty in perfection, of gathering his course from the sun, from the stars, from the bark and the tops of trees, and such other natural guides, as the woodman acquires only through long and watchful experience. Many of the trails, thus opened by him, upon these expeditions, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... down to rest some soldier told him something of interest. Gunners explained the watch-like perfection of their guns. Snipers told thrilling tales of long shots. The cooks showed him how cleverly the big field stoves came apart, and how they could be assembled ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... to his Maiesty, his Mother, and his Ladie, Offence of mighty note; but to himselfe The greatest wrong of all. He lost a wife, Whose beauty did astonish the suruey Of richest eies: whose words all eares tooke captiue, Whose deere perfection, hearts that scorn'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... they could find them. We have not yet found them all, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint. We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... in England. Those who have not seen the starting of the mail-coaches from the General Post-Office can never understand the magnificence and excitement of that scene. The coaches were clean, trim, elegant, and glittering; the blood-horses were the finest that could be procured, groomed to perfection, and full of fire; the drivers and guards were tried and trusty men of mettle, in bright scarlet costume—some of the former being lords, baronets, and even parsons! It was a gay and stirring sight when the insides and outsides ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... warriors, orators, historians, physicians, poets, critics, painters, sculptors, architects, and, last of all, philosophers, that one can hardly help considering that golden period, as a providential event in honour of human nature, to show to what perfection the species might ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... proposed marriage with Claire de Kergouet, his father had said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "Mon ami, you cannot expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... healthy interest in her own appearance, and had not only the good taste to dress well, but the good sense not to dress too well. Her new coat and skirt had just come home, and, fawn-colored like herself, they fitted and suited her to equal perfection. Morna thought that she might even go to church in the coat and skirt, now and again during the summer, and she had a brown straw hat with fine feathers of the lighter shade which she made peculiarly her own; but this she had discarded as too grand for an informal call, for Hugh had been ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... doubtless, like the moths which make beautiful the summer-time, has its purpose in the world of speech, it gives one bookman whom I know the keenest pleasure to ask his fair companion whether she has read Mark Rutherford. He is proudly conscious at the time that he is a witness to perfection in a gay world which is content with excitement, and he would be more than human if he had not in him a touch of the literary Pharisee. She has not read Mark Rutherford, and he does not advise her to seek it at the circulating library, because it will not be there, and if ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence beside that perfection of possession. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... that it lifted my hair. Then the howl was cut off as sharp and neat and sudden as I've seen a Chinaman's head struck from his body by the executioner at Canton—Big Wan—ever seen him work? Very pretty. Got to perfection what ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... ambassador's dinner "was of a different description. Perfection in cuisine, wine, and attendance. Sumptuousness in liveries and lights; the company, about thirty, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... unwholesome, as to make it a residence fitter for snakes than men. But, on my draining off the waters, the air mended, and people resorted to it so fast, and increased to such a degree, that it soon acquired the perfection in which it now appears: hence, I may say with truth, that I have offered this place, an alter and a temple to God, with souls to adore him: these are things which afford me infinite pleasure, comfort, and satisfaction, as often as I go to ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... be safer to bring in cash, and I will deal well with you, as is our custom with each other. You have done excellently throughout; your cables and letters for exhibition concerning those famous oil wells have been perfection; and I shall of course not deduct what was taken by these thieves of poker players from the sum of profits upon which we shall estimate your commission. I have several times had the feeling that the hour for departure had arrived; now I shall delay not a moment after receiving your ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... then in safety you—communicate."{39} "Sanctity"—the quality of awfulness and mystery—rather than divinity or personality, may have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40} When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility that at the origin of these customs there ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... with our debased standards are incapable of conceiving how dear to them this reward will be. It is because I believe that this love of one's fellows under Socialism will be a joy far exceeding in intensity any pleasure known to us, that I look for dramatic art to reach under Socialism a perfection and influence ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... be alive, vital, vivacious? Why not be alert, keen, energetic, enthusiastic, ambitious, bubbling over with fiery ardor? The possession of these pulsating, vibratory forces proves that one's physical development has closely approached to perfection. To such vital individuals life opens up opportunities ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... aspires to be, the more carefully should the author avoid any such effects as call for the active collaboration of the stage-carpenter, machinist, or electrician. Even when a mechanical effect can be produced to perfection, the very fact that the audience cannot but admire the ingenuity displayed, and wonder "how it is done," implies a failure of that single-minded attention to the essence of the matter in hand which the dramatist would strive to ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... fleet was back in Plymouth replenishing as hard as it could. Howard behaved to perfection. Drake worked the strategy and tactics. But Howard had to set the tone, afloat and ashore, to all who came within his sphere of influence; and right well he set it. His dispatches at this juncture are models of what such ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... yet, perhaps, fully estimated, and certainly not yet fully recovered, what was lost in that unfortunate struggle. The arts were rapidly advancing to perfection under the fostering wing of a monarch who united in himself taste to feel, spirit to undertake, and munificence to reward. Architecture, painting, and poetry were by turns the objects of his paternal ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the dining-room, at the farther end of which there is still another grand fireplace, with a stained-glass window above it. These three rooms—four, if we count the conservatory—are just as near perfection as possible. Then see the long line of chambers, closets and dressing-rooms running around the south and east sides, every one with a southern window, and all communicating with the corridor that ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... speaking again. "For years the sole aim and goal of the German house of Hohenzollern has been the perfection to a marvelous degree of her policy of militarism. Why, there is not a man in the whole German Empire, who, at the command of his country, could not take his place, a trained soldier, in the tremendous, perfected military machine that is ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 'Well, if my perfection prove worth seventy pounds a-year when I go out into the world, I shall be satisfied,' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... genuine check torn in two, for as both checks had been torn together, the curves of one fit the grooves of the other piece to perfection. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... and the precious ingredients were entrusted to his care. When they were well mixed, an unforeseen difficulty arose about a bag to boil it in; but that was met by the sacrifice of a haversack, and at last it was consigned to the gipsy kettle which was to bring it to perfection. If it were literally true that a watched pot never boils, this would have had a poor chance, for when off drill or duty next day every man ran to have a look at it; but the proverb happily fell through, and it bubbled away famously. Christmas-day dawned, and would have ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. 'Giles,' says I, though he's maister. Not that I should call'n maister by rights, for his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... is weary of the ills That stern reality presents, to dwell On beauteous forms: they smooth The ruffled sense, and sooth The heart with soft perfection; till a spell Blends with its troublous pulse, and ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... one would think the sculptor must have had some soft material to work upon, rather than a rock almost hard enough to defy the chisel; the command over it is so complete that the difficulty of the work is forgotten in the perfection of the result. The dreamy expression of his face, however, did not prevent Harmhabi from displaying beyond Egypt, as ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Coleridge's definition of poetry; it is also the essence of Thackeray's prose. In these Letters to Mrs. Brookfield the style is precisely the style of the novels and essays. The style, with Thackeray, was the man. He could not write otherwise. But probably, to the last, this perfection was not mechanical, was not attained without labour and care. In Dr. John Brown's works, in his essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof- sheet on which the master has made corrections, and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... with different hearts," said Detricand. "There is the difference between us—between your cause and mine. You are all for logic and perfection in government, and to get it you go mad, and France is made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the silk-lined, London-made overcoat, holding his hat firmly on his head lest the January wind send its expensive perfection into the gutter, paused to ask his way of the man with no overcoat, his hands shoved into his ragged pockets, his shapeless headgear crowded down over his eyes, red and ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and kindness. There was never any sin or fault in him; he always kept the law of God perfectly. But his perfection was not something startling. There was no halo about his head, no transfiguration, that awed men. We are told that he grew in favor with men as well as with God. His religion made his life beautiful and winning, but always so simple and natural ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... playlet that will embody all of these characteristics in one perfect example. [1] But the fact that a few playlets are absolutely perfect technically is no reason why the others should be condemned. Remember that precise conformity to the rules here laid down is merely academic perfection, and that the final worth of a playlet depends not upon adherence to any one rule, or all—save as they point the way to success—but upon how the playlet as a whole succeeds ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... soon shattered the perfection of the form. Even in Shakespeare we can see the beginning of the end. It shows itself by the gradual breaking-up of the blank-verse in the later plays, by the predominance given to prose, and by the over-importance assigned ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... lure her beauty had been to her—the most terrible temptation that could come to a woman. "I walk into a brilliant room, and I feel the thrill of admiration that goes through the crowd. I have a sudden sense of my own physical perfection—a glow all over me! I draw a deep breath—I feel a surge of exaltation. I say, 'I am victorious—I can command! I have this supreme crown of womanly grace—I am all-powerful with ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... among its quaint kind! As I picked out the design of the gold-work, that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere was belted with the signs of the Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection. All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy—magic, in short. It contained ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... this equality of position and rights we believe to have been intended by the Creator as the ultimate perfection of the social state, when he said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let THEM have dominion"; and to have been a part of our Savior's plan for a perfect Christian society, in which an Apostle ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the Demon, more gravely, "we approach the subject of an electrical device so truly marvelous that even I am awed when I contemplate the accuracy and perfection of the natural laws which guide it and permit it to exercise its functions. Mankind has as yet conceived nothing like it, for it requires full knowledge of electrical power to understand ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... all that time, and if they had all seen it, all the Fieldings and John Severn, how was it that she had never seen it? She had seen nothing but a perfect friendship, and she had tried to keep it for them in all its perfection, so that neither of them should miss anything because Jerrold had married her. She remembered how happy Anne had been when she first knew her, and she thought: If she was happy then, why is she unhappy now? If she loved Jerrold all her life, if she had done without ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... shoes, nor white spats. He refused—the little white linen margins which the clerk wished to affix to the V of his waistcoat. That, he felt, was the ultra touch which would spoil all. The just less than perfection, how perfect it is! ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... same authority we learn that according to some of the annals "the best wheat grew to perfection in the valleys; the forests were extensive; flocks and herds were numerous and very large and fat." The Cloister of St. Thomas was heated by pipes from a warm spring, and attached to the cloister was a ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... contrast, much more pleasing than that referred to above, of domestic familiarity with a most poetical transcendence of style in published work. Yet, as was the case with the novel, the letter, to gain perfection, still wanted something easier than the grand style of the seventeenth century and more polished than ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection,—when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... opening short cross-cuts in the most unexpected places, not without a suggestion of peril, to make eye and foot alert, and to infuse a certain wild pleasure into the exercise. The multiplicity of these paths is a great boon to the lover of beauty, for here one charm of Italian landscape exists in perfection. Every few moments the scene rearranges itself in new combinations, as on the Riviera or at Amalfi, and makes an endless succession of lovely pictures. The infinite variety of these views is not to be imagined unless it has been witnessed; and besides the magic wrought by mere change of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... the lattice of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in every tone; and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the patient hands had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in passionate prayer for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought their blessed influence on the willing strings until the tone was laden with spiritual harmony. One might indeed have sung of this little red violin—that looked to Lyddy, in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered with rubies—all that Shelley ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... important individual differences in ability to profit by experience. In the tables of labyrinth tests (38, 39, 40) individual differences are too numerous to mention. It required forty-nine tests to establish in No. 50 a labyrinth-C habit which was approximately equal in degree of perfection to that which resulted from twenty-two tests in the case of No. 52. The figures in this and other instances do not exaggerate the facts, for repeatedly I have tested individuals of the same litter, the same sex, and, so far as I could judge, of the same stage of development, and obtained results ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... meant what I had said, he and his sister plotted together to accomplish their object, and make me his wife by strategy. Madam planned a winter frolic at her country residence; she wrote the play of which you have an account in that paper; she chose her characters, and it was rehearsed to perfection. At the last moment, on the evening of its presentation before her friends, she removed the two principal characters—telling me that they had been called home by a telegram—and substituted her brother and me in their places. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... its cravings, and wealth, once obtained, unfits the mind for future self-exertion or sympathy for others. Many an upstart voluptuary surveys the elegancies of his well-furnished mansion in comparative ignorance of the means employed for their perfection; and, as regards his stock of knowledge conducive to happiness, he is in a more "parlous state" than the poor shepherd who had not been at court. How many of the prodigals that cross in the steam-boat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... England with pious nervous exaltation, and Samuel Sewall as doing the day's work uprightly without taking anxious thought of either past or future. But Jonathan Edwards is set apart from these and other men. He is a lonely seeker after spiritual perfection, in quest of that city "far on the world's rim," as Masefield says of it, the city whose builder and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... was very lover-like in Mahommed, his giving himself up to thought of the Princess while gliding down the Bosphorus, after leaving his safeguard on her gate. He closed his eyes against the mellow light on the water, and, silently admitting her the perfection of womanhood, held her image before him until it was indelible in memory—face, figure, manner, even her dress and ornaments—until his longing for her became a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... always had been, a conservatory—the original owner, the famous artist Imlay, delighting in bringing to perfection there the many rare plants and flowers. So the place lent itself exactly to the work of Professor Benson. Many of the orchids hung in leafy baskets, seemingly not requiring soil, but subsisting, as they so peculiarly do, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... picture of Gloatitia, for instance, with the following of a lady in La Belle Assemblee, I, 22. "To form any Idea of what she was, one must imagine all that can be conceived of Perfection—the most blooming Youth, the most delicate Complection, Eyes that had in them all the Fire of Wit, and Tenderness of Love, a Shape easy, and fine proportion'd Limbs; and to all this, a thousand unutterable Graces accompanying every ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... our system; and yet from some of them it takes the light thirty—sixty thousand years to come to us: nay, twenty millions, Nichol suggests, I know not on what grounds. And yet in the minutest details such perfection! A million of perfectly formed creatures in a drop of water! I do not doubt that it is this overwhelming immensity of things that leads some minds to find a sort of relief, as it were, in the idea of an Infinite Impersonal Force working in all things. But ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... none of these things, and so his married life had come to grief. The first few months were smoothed and gilded by his passionate enjoyment of her mere physical perfection, his pleasure in the admiration she excited, and in the envy of other men. Life's river glided smoothly, gayly in the sunshine; then ugly snags began to appear, and reefs, fretting the surface of the water, and hinting of sterner difficulties below; then a long stretch of tossing, troubled water, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... reward. He was the key to the meaning of life, the justification of what must have seemed as incomprehensible as it was odious, had it not all-sufficingly ended in himself. He was a perfect son, and Mrs. Quentin had always hungered for perfection. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... excited in us such pity that we felt half disposed to leave alms at every door. In this country there are no roads, paths are nearly unknown, and vegetation, poor as it was, slowly as it reached perfection, soon obliterated all traces of the few travelers who passed from place ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... fruit. It may be melons, peaches, strawberries, or grape fruit. It must be in perfection, and should be on ice up to the moment of serving, and must tempt the eye as ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... great energy on the subject of roads and railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery: "In short," said he, "every thing we look on attests the progress of mankind in all the arts of life, and demonstrates their gradual advancement towards a state of unlimited perfection." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... knew who he was, save that he was a gentleman, a Spaniard, and a Catholic. But when he returned to the perfection of physical and mental health, and had married the grey-eyed, dark-browed girl, who had seemed to him during his long hours of sickness the guardian angel who had brought him back across the line which marks the frontier between life and death, he developed an extraordinary talent in boat-building, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... takes its expression for the moment in some particular exercise of his art. To the ship that sails upon the sea there are the everlasting winds that come out of the treasuries of God and fulfil His purpose in carrying His children to their destination. There is no perfection of the universe and of the special life of man in the universe until it comes to this. The greatest of all forces are ready without condescension, are ready as the true expression of their life, to manifest themselves in the particular activities which we find everywhere, and which are going on ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... of virtues before him, this remarkable young man commenced the effort vigorously to attain perfection. The Christian reader will not be at all surprised to read from Franklin's pen the ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... character to herself so thoroughly, that, as she stood there, she felt herself to be in reality all that she represented. The spectators caught the same feeling from her. Yet so marvelous was her beauty, so astonishing was the perfection of her form and feature, so accurate was the living representation of the ideal goddess that the whole vast audience after one glance burst forth into pealing thunders of spontaneous ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... after all, what do they build? In the forest we do everything so quietly. A tree would be ashamed of itself that could not get its growth without making such a noise and dust and fuss. Our life is the perfection of good manners. For my part, I feel degraded at the mere presence of these human beings; but, alas! I am old; a hollow place at my heart warns me of the progress of decay, and probably it will be seized upon by these rapacious creatures as an excuse ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a number of ideas foreign to Aristotle, which are found first in Philo the Jew and appear later in medival philosophy. Thus God as a Being absolutely unknowable, of whom negations alone are true just because he is the acme of perfection and bears no analogy to the imperfect things of our world; matter in our world as the origin of evil, and the existence of matter in the intelligible world—all these ideas will meet us again in Ibn Gabirol, in Ibn Daud, in Maimonides, some in one, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... are the perfection of the practice of the art. Seldom is the quarry wanting. The refrain of the Ode to Saint Hubert lauds the prowess of this ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... this Unfoldment, and Plan of the Universe, has for its object any advantage, benefit or gain to the Absolute—such a thought would be folly, for the Absolute is already Perfect, and Its Perfection cannot be added to, or taken away from. But they do positively teach that there is a great beneficial purpose in all the Plan, accruing in the end to the developed souls that have evolved through the workings of the plan. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... him coming from the porch of the house, a tall slim figure in a hunting shirt—that fitted to perfection—and cavalry boots. His face, his carriage, his quick movement and stride filled my notion of a hero, and my instinct told me he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pencil and sheet of paper upon which he had been drawing new patterns for the "gull vane" which was to move its wings when the wind blew. This great invention had not progressed very far toward practical perfection. Its inventor had been busy with other things and had of late rather lost interest in it. But Barbara's interest had not flagged and to please her Jed had promised to think a little more about it during the next day ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... from keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton, Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... of our mother's kindred; and if it was my habit, as I have hinted, to attribute to orphans as orphans a circumstantial charm, a setting necessarily more delightful than our father'd and mother'd one, so there spread about this appointed comrade, the perfection of the type, inasmuch as he alone was neither brother'd nor sister'd, an air of possibilities that were none the less vivid for being quite indefinite. He was to embody in due course, poor young man, some of these possibilities—those that had originally been for me the vaguest of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... to hear what reviews have appeared, I may mention that Agassiz has fired off a shot in the last 'Silliman,' not good at all, denies variations and rests on the perfection of Geological evidence. Asa Gray tells me that a very clever friend has been almost converted to our side by this review of Agassiz's...Professor Parsons (Theophilus Parsons, Professor of Law in Harvard University.) has ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... family character not easily mistaken, and this similarity is especially observable in birds. As Agassiz says, "Compare all the sweet warbles of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or lesser perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the whole group. Does not every member of the Crow family caw, whether it be a Jackdaw, the Jay, or the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... few difficulties. All the coasts that we have visited have been surveyed. Lighthouses are now as numerous and efficient on the coasts of China and Japan as on the shores of Europe. Such is the perfection of the modern chronometer, that lunar observations, the only difficult work in ocean navigation, are no longer necessary; and the wind charts published by the Admiralty supply to the amateur navigator accumulated information ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... and, so far as we know, nothing can move it but mind: therefore God is a spirit. We do not mean that his nature is the same as that of our soul; for it is infinitely more excellent. But we mean, that he possesses intelligence and active power in supreme perfection; and, as these qualities do not belong to matter, which is neither active nor intelligent, we must refer them to that which is not matter, but mind."—Beattie's Moral ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... point, fall upon any Hemisphere of it; that every one of them may meet on the opposite side, and cross one another exactly in a point; and that it may do the like also with all the Rays that, coming from a lateral point, fall upon any other Hemisphere; for if so, there were to be hoped a perfection of Dioptricks, and a transmigration into heaven, even whil'st we remain here upon earth in the flesh, and a descending or penetrating into the center and innermost recesses of the earth, and all earthly bodies; nay, it would open not onely ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... 'The curse that I have pronounced can never be falsified, this is certain. But from kindness towards thee, I shall do thee a favour. Though born in the Sudra class thou shalt remain a pious man and thou shalt undoubtedly honour thy parents; and by honouring them thou shalt attain great spiritual perfection; thou shalt also remember the events of thy past life and shalt go to heaven; and on the expiation of this curse, thou shalt again become a Brahmana. O best of men, thus, of old was I cursed by that rishi of severe ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... them and the son in whose name their good works have been done—cause to bless Beckett kindness, Beckett money for generations in the future! Yet now they have added this most ambitious plan of all to the list, and I know it will be carried out to perfection. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... daughters to become my wife. Now, although I had no dislike to the notion of matrimony, I had a decided preference for a wife of my own colour and style of education. Miss Waggum-winne-beg was a very charming young lady, I had no doubt, and could dress a puppy-dog to perfection, and could manufacture moccasins unsurpassed by those of any other young damsel in the tribe, and embroider with coloured grass, or make mats of great beauty; indeed, I cannot enumerate all her accomplishments and attractions. Still she had not won my heart, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the title of a pamphlet containing an attack on Pope's Homer, An Epistle To Mr. Welsted; And A Satyre on the English Translations of Homer, by that engagingly inept Dunce, Bezaleel Morrice. In 1724 in the "Dissertation concerning the Perfection of the English Language" prefixed to his Epistles, Odes, &c., Welsted quoted (not quite correctly) and criticized Pope's "And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be" (p. x). The anonymous author of Characters of ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... you. It's trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... grafting ever diminished the awe I felt when I stood under this tree and saw ripe spice apples growing on one limb and green winter pearmains on all the others. The pound sweeting, the spitzenberg, and many sister apples were there; and I stayed long enough to see them ripen into perfection. While they ripened I gathered the jewel-like clusters of red and white currants and a certain rare English gooseberry which English hands had brought from beyond the seas and planted here when the sign of the Black-Horse swung over the tavern door. The ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... pen, as all the world now knows. His deft touch is seen to perfection in these short sketches—these "facts and fancies of medical life," as he calls them. Every page reveals the literary artist, the keen observer, the trained delineator of human nature, its weal and its ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... which I had lately entered with more ardor I fear than judgment. What was I to do? Let her have her way—this woman I had not seen in fifteen years,—who if at the age of twenty had seemed to my enthusiastic youth little short of a poet's dream, must be far short of any such perfection now? I rebelled at the very thought. Yet to deny her meant the possible facing of consequences such as the strongest may well shrink from. And the time for choice was short. She had limited her patience to a fortnight, and ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... But far off is the time when life takes flight into eternity. I come from the land of the dead. Thou also shalt once pass through the dark valley into yon lofty realms of brightness, where grace and perfection dwell. I shall not guide thee now to Hedeby for Christian baptism. First must thou disperse the slimy surface over the deep morass, draw up the living root of thy life and thy cradle, and perform thy appointed task, ere thou darest to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... they will move with the weight of a hair. If a planchet is found too light, it is thrown aside to be remelted; if only slightly over the proper weight, a tiny particle is filed off from the edge; but if the weight is much in excess, it is to go back to the furnace. Nothing but perfection ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... a bound as he set to work. He had learnt by this time to control the trembling of his hands, otherwise the portrait would never have reached its present perfection. He had painted from many women in the life school, and always with the same emotions, the same reverence for womanhood, and the same delight in his own power, tempered by compassion for the model. But these were so many studies in still life compared ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... manage to make his customers' clothes fit their bodies. For fat men he invariably made tight coats, and for thin people loose ones. Few, therefore, except those who were indifferent on that point, went a second time to him for new ones. He repaired clothes, however, to perfection, and never refused to attempt renovating the most threadbare or tattered of garments. He had evidently mistaken his vocation; or rather, his friends had committed a great error when they made him a tailor. Yet ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... us which were opposed to each other until recently—the military and the Social Democratic. The world sees with amazement the perfection which has been reached by the military organization of our army. Its achievements have only become possible through the above-mentioned philosophical conception of the sense of duty which raises it far above any systematic obedience and lets ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... &c. We have now sent you, we hope, men & means, to setle these 3. things, viz. fishing, salt making, and boat making; if you can bring them to pass to some perfection, your wants may be supplyed. I pray you bend you selfe what you can to setle these bussinesses. Let y^e ship be fraught away as soone as you can, and sent to Bilbow. You must send some discreete man for factore, whom, once more, you must also authorise to confirme y^e ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... All London swam before me. After so many months' absence, the polychromatic decorations of our English streets, looming up through the smoke, seemed both strange and familiar. I drove through the first half mile with a vague consciousness that Lipton's tea is the perfection of cocoa and matchless for the complexion, but that it dyes all ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... It was not the perfection of the carving or the unusual nature of the ornament which attracted Caldew's attention, but the material, of which it was composed, a clear almost transparent stone, with the faintest possible tinge of green. Holding it in the sunlight, Caldew was ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... crime. The one is detached and remote, the other inhuman and passionless. The contrast in style between Hawthorne and Poe reflects clearly their difference in temper. Hawthorne writes always with easy, finished perfection, choosing the right word unerringly, Poe experiments with language, painfully acquiring a conscious, studied form of expression which is often remarkably effective, but which almost invariably suggests a sense of artifice. In ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... bunch of fertilized flowers some will be almost sure to start the development enough to show that in some way the fertilized flowers were able to produce seeds, while the others will in no case make any attempt at seed-forming. Even though none of the seeds come to perfection, the fact that they start at all will demonstrate the effect of the pollen. The geranium is a good plant to use in illustrating this point, because it is so constructed that it cannot ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... which in these days might be termed a cardinal virtue. The girls wore their fresh cambrics and plain straw hats: no one seemed to think it necessary to put on smart clothing when they wished to visit their friends. People said this Arcadian simplicity was just as studied: nevertheless, it showed perfection of taste and a just appreciation ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... advantage may accrue to the reader in finding these masters side by side for comparison and for gauging Dr. Lord's unique life-work by recognized standards, keeping well in view the purpose no less than the perfection of these literary performances, all of which, like those of Dr. Lord, were aimed at setting forth the services of selected forces ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... upon me like a mere vision of spring and youth and beauty. I could have fallen down and worshipped her. She was like one of those fictions of poets and painters, when they would express the beau ideal that haunts their minds with shapes of indescribable perfection. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Good qualities.] Goodness — N. goodness &c adj.; excellence, merit; virtue &c 944; value, worth, price. super-excellence, supereminence; superiority &c 33; perfection &c 650; coup de maitre [Fr.]; masterpiece, chef d'ouvre [Fr.], prime, flower, cream, elite, pick, A 1, nonesuch, nonpareil, creme de la creme, flower of the flock, cock of the roost, salt of the earth; champion; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to perfection; and an admirable piece of horsemanship it was. The horse, suddenly checked in his impetuous gallop, upon the very brink of the zequia, and drawn back on his haunches, with head erect, starting eyeballs, and open smoking nostrils, formed a noble picture to look upon. Several, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the persons defrauded ought to have been named. The first answer to that is, the crime of conspiracy is complete when the concert to bring about an object with a mischievous intent is complete; it is not at all necessary for the perfection of the crime that its object should be attained. Therefore, the first answer is, there need be no person injured. The next answer is the impossibility of the defendants knowing before-hand who would be defrauded. It is said, the indictment was preferred after the mischief had taken effect, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... 'rubbish,' as you call it.—Such 'rubbish,' dear child," he resumed, "is frequently all that remains of vanished civilizations. An Etruscan jar, and a necklace, which sometimes fetch forty and fifty thousand francs, is 'rubbish' which reveals the perfection of art at the time of the siege of Troy, proving that the Etruscans ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the application of the fund was undertaken. Our coasts were practically undefended. Our Navy needed large provision for increased ammunition and supplies, and even numbers to cope with any sudden attack from the navy of Spain, which comprised modern vessels of the highest type of continental perfection. Our Army also required enlargement of men and munitions. The details of the hurried preparation for the dreaded contingency are told in the reports of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, and need not be repeated here. It is sufficient ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and the fourth, that little closet on the right, was his store-room. His one indulgence was coffee; coffee he must and would have, though he slept on straw and went without meat. But he cooked to perfection in his odd way, and I have often eaten a dainty meal in that little kitchen, sitting at the propped-up table, using the battered tin dishes, and the clumsy wooden spoons fashioned with a jackknife. After ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the sultan summoned his jewelers and goldsmiths, and showed them the unfinished window. "I sent for you," said he, "to fit up this window in as great perfection as the rest. Examine them well and make all ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was very great. John, young as he was, knew that it was hardly likely he should ever see beauty in such perfection again. It was not an intellectual face, but it was faultless of line and delicate of coloring. The eyes were not only very large and black, but the lashes were so long and soft the wonder was they did not ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Assur-bani-pal. In Babylonia, in place of the bas-relief we have the figure in the round, the earliest examples being the statues from Tello which are realistic but somewhat clumsy. The want of stone in Babylonia made every pebble precious and led to a high perfection in the art of gem-cutting. Nothing can be better than two seal-cylinders that have come down to us from the age of Sargon of Akkad. No remarkable specimens of the metallurgic art of an early period have been found, apart perhaps from the silver vase of Entemena, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... town in France, has never been as beautiful as now. Coming back to it last evening from a round of ruins one felt as if the humbler Sisters sacrificed to spare it were pleading with one not to forget them in the contemplation of its dearly-bought perfection. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... water at a time from the faucet into one of our yellow dishes, and tilting it back again as soon as the dish was full, beside "tooting," as loud as we could, to represent the commotion going on to perfection. We were soon so busy over this, that we forgot all about the front basement windows for ever so long, until we heard Aunt Elsie calling out, "Tom! ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... mediaeval architecture, has driven people into spending their money on these buildings, not merely with the purpose of repairing them, of keeping them safe, clean, and wind and water- tight, but also of 'restoring' them to some ideal state of perfection; sweeping away if possible all signs of what has befallen them at least since the Reformation, and often since dates much earlier: this has sometimes been done with much disregard of art and entirely from ecclesiastical zeal, but oftener ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... full height, about five feet six. His bride was perhaps three inches shorter. The world vowed that never had there been so pretty a couple, nor one so well matched in every way. Both were the perfection of make, and the one as fair and fresh as a Scot, the other a golden gipsy, the one all fire and energy, the other docile and tender, but with sufficient spirit and intelligence. It is seldom that the world so generously gives its blessing, but it might have withheld it, for all that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... would quietly have told him, he was a fool for not being calm, and that wise men striving against the stream, can yet be in good humour. I have done with insensible human wisdom,—"indifference cold in wisdom's guise,"—and turn to the source of perfection—who perhaps never disregarded an almost broken heart, especially when a respect, a practical respect, for virtue, sharpened the wounds of adversity. I am ill—I stayed in bed this morning till eleven o'clock, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... found, in a tiny box of faded morocco, an ivory thimble exquisitely carved with minute Chinese figures. It fitted her slender finger to perfection, and she gazed at it with great delight, while Miss Wealthy and Martha shook their ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... mural and decorative conditions which governed ancient sculpture no doubt gave to Greek sculpture in its perfection a certain dignity, simplicity, and restraint, and also accounted in a great measure for that rhythmic control of invisible structural and ornamental line which asserts itself in such works as the Pan-Athenaic ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... you have to study in every flower: the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its substance; first, the manner in which the leaves are placed for beauty of form; then the spinning and weaving and blanching of their tissue, for the reception of purest colour, or refining ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... talent. True, this selfishness of his at least respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one's burden; in a word, it lacks charity, the great Christian virtue. To his mind perfection lies in personal nobility, and not in love. His keynote is aesthetic and not moral. He ignores sanctity, and has never so much as reflected on the terrible problem of evil. He believes in the opportunity of the individual, but neither in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... practical moral ends, such as the reformation of prisons, the improvement of the dwellings of the poor, are yet higher ends. But above all these is the highest end, that of moral completeness, of perfection, not in one particular but in every particular. Spirituality consists in always keeping in view this supreme end. The spiritually-minded person is one who regards whatever he undertakes from the point of view of its hindering or furthering ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... methodically checking every control as Arcot called out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working to perfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test was ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Vassilyev and led him up a staircase. In the carpet and the gilt banisters, in the porter who opened the door, and in the panels that decorated the hall, the same S. Street style was apparent, but carried to a greater perfection, more imposing. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... father frets me in the same way. If he wins a difficult case, he does it naturally, because he is a Rawdon. He is handsome, gentlemanly, honorable, even a perfect horseman, all because, being a Rawdon, he was by nature and inheritance compelled to such perfection. It is very provoking, Dora, and if I were you I would not allow Basil to begin a song about 'the English Stanhopes.' Aunt Ruth and I get very tired often of the English Rawdons, and are really ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... biographer, Vasari. After pointing out that in the matter of drawing and composition the artist would scarcely have won a reputation, the writer goes on to say: "To Correggio belongs the great praise of having attained the highest point of perfection in coloring, whether his works were executed in oil or in fresco." In another place he writes, "No artist has handled the colors more effectually than himself, nor has any painted with a more charming ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... simple-looking woman, but the daughter was a perfect beauty; she literally dazzled me. After a few minutes, the over-trustful mother begged leave to retire, and her daughter remained. In less than half an hour I was captivated; her perfection delighted me; her lively wit, her artless reasoning, her candour, her ingenuousness, her natural and noble feelings, her cheerful and innocent quickness, that harmony which arises from beauty, wit, and innocence, and which had always the most powerful influence over me—everything ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because (and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the subject-matter itself if its genesis were ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... in me secretly craves an opportunity to tell those precious creatures that the time appears near at hand when this glorious gospel light will shine so clearly that they will discover a Saviour in the secret of their own hearts; and it is to him (I could tell them) that they must look for the perfection of their salvation. Should there be anything of the right savor in my heart concerning this matter, I humbly hope that in due time it will be brought to maturity, and my way made plain and easy—plain, so that I cannot possibly mistake the pointing hand of divine wisdom, and ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Ben Aulder, for no less remote retreat was thought secure. This retreat was prepared by Clunie, and obtained the name of the Cage. "It was," as he himself relates, "a great curiosity, and can scarcely be described to perfection." It is best to give the account of the edifice which he had himself constructed, in Macpherson's own words. "It was situated in the face of a very rough, high, and rocky mountain, called Lettemilichk, still a part of Ben Aulder, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... any one with whom she came in contact. Mademoiselle, who did all the hard work of the teaching, and was only half paid for it, wore out her strength and energy and youth day by day at her desk in the middle of the school-room, and thought Madame the perfection of women; and her sallow, thin face would flush with pleasure, if Madame gave her a look or one of her soft ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... mark you, that's her gift—she made me talk. It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to win—never!—but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation—and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see? Will not they stir new affection? I will think they pictures be (Image-like, of saints' perfection) Poorly ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in the faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline—more beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your faults, I shall ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... combining single instruments so as to form groups, or in the combination of several separate groups of instruments by which he has produced the most novel and beautiful effects—effects not found in other composers. The originality and variety of his rhythms, the perfection of his instrumentation, have never been disputed even by his opponents. In many of his works, especially those of a religious character, there is a Cyclopean bigness of instrumental means used, entirely beyond parallel in art. Like the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... too, will be unable to help forming some idea of them; nay, even you and I have experienced it. By a thousand phenomena they force themselves into the world which surrounds us and our emotional life. Epicurus, who denied their power, saw in them at least immortal beings who possess in stainless perfection everything which in mortals is disfigured by errors, weaknesses, and afflictions. To him they are the intensified, reflected image of our own nature, and I think we can do nothing wiser than to cling to that, because it shows us to what heights of beauty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, and to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection."[108] This rather cumbersome definition shows how fully Milton was possessed of the Puritan spirit, which then controlled England, and which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... remembered old Jean Gordon of Yetholm, who had great sway among her tribe. She was quite a Meg Merrilies, and possessed the savage virtue of fidelity in the same perfection. Having been often hospitably received at the farmhouse of Lochside, near Yetholm, she had carefully abstained from committing any depredations on the farmer's property. But her sons (nine in number) had not, it ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appearances a most contented woman. When he died at last, people said that it was just in time to escape the penitentiary, but to see Matty you would have thought she had lost nothing short of pure perfection. Poor old Bishop Deane, who always would speak his mind, in the pulpit or out of it, went to call on her, he told me, and took occasion to reprove her for such excessive grief over so unworthy an object. 'He was not an upright man, Matty, and you know it,' he began quite boldly; ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... art of composition. It is this quality which gives the greatest value to the works of Le Sueur and Poussin. Scheffer possessed this power in a remarkable degree, but it was united to a directness and truth of feeling which made his art the perfection of natural expression. A very charming little engraving, entitled "The Lost Children," which appeared in "The Token" for 1830, is probably from a picture of this period. A little boy and girl are lost in a wood. Wearied with their fruitless attempts to find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... standing sublime behind his grating, seems a kind of mundane St. Peter, I suppose, to the beggars who sit at the church door or lie in the sun along the farther slope which leads to the gate of the convent. The place always seems to me the perfection of an out-of-the-way corner—a place you would think twice before telling people about, lest you should find them there the next time you were to go. It is such a group of objects, singly and in their happy combination, as one must ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... and I need hardly say that errors in these matters of mutual comprehension have their palpable practical consequences. All social cohesion and co-operation rest on this comprehension, and are limited by its degree of perfection. Nay, more, all common knowledge itself, in so far as it depends on a mutual communication of impressions, ideas, and beliefs, is limited by the fact of this great liability to error in what at first seems to be one of the most certain ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... and extinguish life In Nature and all things; which these soft fires Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat Of various influence foment and warm, Temper or nourish, or in part shed down Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow On earth, made hereby apter to receive Perfection from the sun's more potent ray. These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain; nor think, though men were none, That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise: Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... events rarely happen according to his projects. He foresees everything, but his foresight prevents nothing. He is impatient if any offend him; at the same time he puts every one in the way of offending him. His knowledge is admired in the perfection of his works, but his works are full of imperfections, and of little permanence. He is continually occupied in creating and destroying, then repairing what he has done, never appearing to be satisfied with his work. In all his ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love,—so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... into general use, dry kilns were unheard-of, air-drying or seasoning was then relied upon solely to furnish the craftsman with dry stock from which to manufacture his product. Even after machinery had made rapid and startling strides on its way to perfection, the dry kiln remained practically an unknown quantity, but gradually, as the industry developed and demand for dry material increased, the necessity for some more rapid and positive method of seasoning became apparent, and the subject ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... earlier days of the first occupation, the English residents of Hong Kong were often placed in difficulties about their clothing, Chinamen not having attained to that perfection in the tailors' art which they now have acquired. On one occasion an old coat was supplied to a native tailor as a guide to the construction of a new one; it so happened the old garment had a carefully mended rent in its sleeve—a circumstance the man was prompt to notice—setting to at once, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... done. We have seen already something of the vociferous thoroughness of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the polishing of reflectors. In building, in road-making, in the construction of bridges, in every detail and byway of his employments, he pursued the same ideal. Perfection (with a capital P and violently under-scored) was his design. A crack for a penknife, the waste of 'six-and-thirty shillings,' 'the loss of a day or a tide,' in each of these he saw and was revolted by the finger of the sloven; and to spirits intense ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the literature of the people of religion, in whom ethical and spiritual religion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward perfection. The New Testament is the literature of the movement which grew out of Israel, the literature of the Universal Church bodying around the Son of Man, in whom religion came to perfect flower and fruit. The real Bible is the record of this real revelation coming through real ethical and ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... (in a purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her reputation as a mirror of elegance. The skirt had—but no (see the columns of the Staffordshire Signal for the 9th November, 1901). The mischief was that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one particular thing, and that particular thing was separated from Vera by the glass front of Brunt's celebrated shop at Hanbridge. Vera could have managed without it. The gown would still have been brilliant without it. But Vera had seen it, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and a firm determination to stop short of nothing less than the perfection of art, those early years of Clara Morris's life on the stage went swiftly by, and in her third season she was more than ever what she herself called "the dramatic scrape-goat of the company," one who was able to play any part ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the fort everything is clean, regular and orderly, as becomes a place under the care of British soldiers. The house, or quarters I suppose they should be called, are clean and bright, whitewashed (I almost said pipe-clayed), to the highest point of perfection. There are fortifications above fortifications here, and plenty of cannon pointed at an imaginary foe. There are cannon balls in scientific heaps waiting to be despatched on errands of destruction. Long may ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the other hand, a man who proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both, who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world; but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther than living ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... known that we of New York have long been accustomed to regard our neighbours of New England as very different from ourselves, whilst, I dare say, our neighbours of New England have regarded us as different from themselves, and insomuch removed from perfection. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... attention. In 1787 Washington presided over the famous convention which met in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution of the United States, and largely in accordance with his ideas, which strongly influenced the minds of all those present, the Government of the United States was formed. The perfection of the form of government, as entered into by so many separate and widely different States, seemed to Washington, as he afterward said in a letter to Lafayette, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... comes dinner, with three or four courses, cooked to perfection. For myself, I would rather snatch a few mouthfuls and go up on deck again; but this would hurt Leon's feelings if he saw it, and he might even consider that he must seek another employer, for that his talents were wasted ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... seek salvation by works, such as sincere obedience or Christian perfection, we thereby bring ourselves under the law, and become debtors to fulfil all its requirements, though we intended to engage ourselves to fulfil it only in part (Gal 5:3). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Theban kings, is one of the brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period reached the highest perfection ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and opulent nation. They seem generally to be falling into opinions that the chief end of society is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts, and makes them subservient to every modish vice, who has a restless ambition, a perfidious ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... us, wagging their tails, and a long-bearded old goat walked away with an air of dissatisfaction; three stable-boys, in strong but greasy sheepskins, bowed to us without speaking. To right and to left, in horse-boxes raised above the ground, stood nearly thirty horses, groomed to perfection. Pigeons fluttered cooing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... new territory across the range led to a terrible feeling of disappointment; true, that on at once crossing the crest of the watershed country was found, which being partly within the influence of the heavier fall of rain, approached in every way the perfection dreamt of by the explorers; but as progress inland was made, a change was found to take place, and, above all, the familiar indigenous grasses were lost, and replaced by what the settlers took to be nothing but worthless weeds. All the now prized edible shrubs, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... has succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its nourishment entirely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... of writing and bringing it to perfection, the human intellect worked on the same lines among the Turanians of Chaldaea as it did everywhere else. The point of departure and the early stages have been the same for all peoples, although some have stopped half-way and others ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... a farewell. Ah! he loves another woman better than his mother now. Nay, even a feeling of embarrassment and pain is associated with the recollection of that fond and elegant being, whom he had recognised once as the model of all feminine perfection, and who had been to him so gentle and so devoted. He drives his mother from his thoughts. It is of another voice that he now muses; it is the memory of another's glance that touches his eager heart. He falls into a reverie; the passionate past is acted again before ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... there must always be a sense of the effort necessary to keep the various parts from flying asunder, a sense of imperfect continuity, such as the older criticism vainly sought to obviate by the rule of the dramatic "unities." It follows that a play attains artistic perfection just in proportion as it approaches that unity of lyrical effect, as if a song or ballad were still lying at the root of it, all the various expression of the conflict of character and circumstance falling at last into the compass of a single melody, or musical theme. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... repugnance, such as I had never before experienced, I touched the figure with my hand, "The flesh is like stone," I said, "thus held lifelike by some magic of the Indies. I have heard of such skill but never before realized its perfection. Good God! she actually seems to breathe. What can it all mean? Who could the woman be? And why should her body be thus carried about at sea. Is it love, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the quadroones (for we must contrive a feminine spelling to define the strict limits of the caste as then established) came forth in splendor. Old travellers spare no terms to tell their praises, their faultlessness of feature, their perfection of form, their varied styles of beauty,—for there were even pure Caucasian blondes among them,—their fascinating manners, their sparkling vivacity, their chaste and pretty wit, their grace in the dance, their modest propriety, their taste and elegance in dress. In the gentlest ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... descendants, was created.... We may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." The concluding sentence of the "Origin of Species" has become one of our classical quotations. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Lord Castlewood, he was good-humoured, of a temper naturally easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to perfection—shooting at a mark, breaking horses, riding at the ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. He was fond of the parade of dress, and also fond of having his lady well dressed; who spared no pains in that matter to please him. Indeed, she ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to re-learn his song every spring, and for a fortnight or more you will hear him trying his voice very sweetly and softly, but as soon as he has acquired his song in perfection, it will be so strong and piercing that on fine days he often has to be banished from the sitting-room. He should not, however, be exposed too much to sun and wind; a cloth thrown over half the cage will ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... works of nature alone, because they know there is no hope for them, and content themselves with enacting rules in literature and art, which make all the perfection and grace of the past so many impassable barriers to progress in future. Because the ancients kept to unity of idea in their groups, and attained to most beautiful results by doing so, shall no modern make an antithesis ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... outer world, though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... expression) come home to Men's Business and Bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... advantages hold proportion with his wants. The sheep and ox are deprived of all these advantages; but their appetites are moderate, and their food is of easy purchase. In man alone, this unnatural conjunction of infirmity, and of necessity, may be observed in its greatest perfection. Not only the food, which is required for his sustenance, flies his search and approach, or at least requires his labour to be produced, but he must be possessed of cloaths and lodging, to defend him against the injuries ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... picture she made as she stood there, symmetrical figure gracefully erect, her head held high with its elaborate coiffure of brown hair, her dark blue eyes flashing resentment. The creamy column of her well shaped neck, the firm chin, the almost classic perfection of her features, the rich red of her cheeks—wherever did Ferguson go for his secretaries? She was plainly dressed in some dark material with white collar and cuffs; but the sensible office dress served only to heighten the pleasing effect. There ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... in chorus, as, standing in the bows with one hand upon his gun, the other upon his right hip, he looked the very perfection of a British man-of-war's man, ready to lead or be led, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... smile would be more than his eyes could endure. Here, in Saturn, a ladder is seen, reaching to the next sphere. We learn that this is identical with the ladder seen by Jacob in his vision; and down it are descending the spirits of such as in this world had lived the contemplative life in full perfection. The chanting which has been audible in the other spheres is here silent—no doubt in order to symbolise the insensibility to outward impressions of the soul rapt in contemplation. The speakers in this group are ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... William; she is much grown since you saw her, and I shall be quite disappointed if you do not admire her."—"No fear, my dearest father, that I shall fail either in admiration or love to such a sister," answered William; "I owe her too much gratitude not to be prepared to find her little short of perfection; she has been," continued he, kissing her, "my comforter and adviser for the last six years; and I am sure her correspondence with me during that time deserves to be published, to show sisters how to treat with effect a brother who required admonition coupled with tenderness." ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... nevertheless circumstances from time to time arise to get them by the ears in spite of themselves. But from whatever point of view you may look at the question, it is obviously better to aim at imperfection than perfection; for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection. Moreover, from a worldly point of view, there is no mistake ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... spinner; nay his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I—good Heaven!—have thatched myself ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... things implies an infinite power. Or as Descartes and his followers put it, we can have no idea of anything that has not either an actual or a possible existence; but we have an idea of a Being of infinite perfection; therefore, he must actually exist; for otherwise there would be one perfection wanting, and so he would not be infinite, which he either is actually or possibly. It is needless to remark that this whole argument, whatever may be said of the former one, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... queen admired that ring, deeming it a most noble gift. It was most beautifully wrought and interwoven with scrolls and circles so delicate that all wondered how the hand of man could achieve such perfection. Everyone praised it exceedingly, and among others to whom Sigrid showed the ring were her own goldsmiths, two brothers. These handled it with more care than others had done, and weighed it in their hands as if they would estimate ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... his essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking his beatitude, as well as of contributing to his glory. The Eternal willed it, and they were. He formed them partly of his own essence, capable of perfection or imperfection, according to their will. The Eternal first created Brahma, Vishna and Siva, then Mozazor and all the multitude of the angels. The Eternal gave the pre-eminence to Brahma, Vishna and Siva. Brahma was the prince of the angelic army. Vishna and Siva were ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... alphabet of smart costumers, was aware of the sophisticated perfection of that fluff of jade green tulle. The touch of gold at the girdle, the flash of gold for the petticoat. She guessed the price, a stiff one, and wondered that Mary should speak of it casually ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... It is a great cause, a mighty project, commanding the noblest enthusiasms and the highest efficiency of effort, the project of bringing this whole world to salvation. And that not the salvation of a mental condition but of the perfection of its whole being, the realization of its highest possibilities, the full noontide of the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... not pretend that the writer has attained perfection. The book has faults—but these may be overcome by a writer of so much real ability, and we hope his pen will not ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... The perfection of the Norman nave seems to have been tampered with in later days by cutting through a low transepted chapel on each side. The arches look as if they had supplanted a sixth arch of the nave. But far greater changes were presently ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... that woman is the link connecting Heaven and earth. True it is, we see in her the embodiment of purity and heavenly graces, the most perfect combination of modesty, devotion, patience, affection, gratitude and loveliness, and the perfection of physical beauty. We watch with deep interest the steady and gradual development from girlhood to womanhood, when the whole person improves in grace and elegance, the voice becomes more sonorous and melodious, and the angles and curvatures of her contour become ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the most of, all round; no one is even made the most of as regards the two or three most important things of all. And, indeed, it is curious to observe that the things in which human beings seem to have attained to absolute perfection have for the most part been things comparatively frivolous,—accomplishments which certainly were not worth the labor and the time which it must have cost to master them. Thus, M. Blondin has probably made as much of himself as can be made of mortal, in the respect of walking on a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... was very near to Nature himself; and the nearer a man was to Nature, the more he esteemed him. Thus persons who superintended his farms and cattle, or who pulled an oar in his boat when he ventured out in search of cod and halibut, thought "Squire Webster" a man who realized their ideal and perfection of good-fellowship while it may confidently be said that many of his closest friends among men of culture, including lawyers, men of letters, and statesmen of the first rank, must have occasionally resented the "anfractuosities" of his mood and temper. But Seth Peterson, and Porter Wright, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make more. There IS use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will proceed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole: Should not the heart beat once "How ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... quivering bough, the mellow sunshine streaming through the lattice of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in every tone; and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the patient hands had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in passionate prayer for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought their blessed influence on the willing strings until the tone was laden with spiritual harmony. One might indeed have sung of this little red violin—that looked to Lyddy, in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered with rubies—all ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the souls of those that leave it, that when they pass they leave their worse self behind them, even as the germ leaves the shuck out of which it sprouted,—leaves the dull, clamp ground forever while it groweth up into the sunlight in which it finds perfection. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... truth-like volumes, by an Irish J.P., who appears to possess in perfection the fun, frolic, shrewdness, and adaptability to circumstances so remarkable among the better specimens of his countrymen.... The second volume is entirely devoted to the best description of California and its 'diggings,' its physical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd's coffee-house; and ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... brilliant exterior; excelled in all martial exercises; rode well, fenced well, managed his lance to perfection, was a first-rate marksman with the arquebuse, and added the accomplishment of being an excellent draughtsman. He was bold and chivalrous, even to temerity; courted adventure, and was always in the front of danger. He was a knight- errant, in short, in the most extravagant sense of the term, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St. Louis journal—almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place. Perhaps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age—some twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the condition ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... liberty. NOTE. - I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least, not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed, it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week's work to bring it to perfection. ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... travelled to the Louvre to study and copy the masterpieces which Napoleon had brought over from Italy as trophies of war. Here, as he "marched delighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a universe of art,"[6] he imbibed a love of perfection which may have been fatal to his hopes of a career. At any rate it was soon after, while he was following the profession of itinerant painter through England, that he wrote to his father of "much dissatisfaction and much ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... city people can cultivate, for in Indianapolis, in early December, I saw fully one half as many Polyphemus cocoons on the trees as there were Cecropia, and I could have gathered a bushel of them. They have emerged in perfection for me always, with one exception. Personally, I have found more Polyphemus ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... mutually, as link does link in a chain. It follows that it is form which makes a thing a unit and thus an entity of which character, state, affection or anything else can be predicated; each is predicated of it according to the perfection of the form. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! smoke and lukewarm water Is your perfection. This is Timon's last; Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, Washes it off, ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... faces more beautiful than Eliza's, though not more charming. I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... most kind and indulgent master, and, provided his servants humor his peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and then, and do not peculate grossly on him before his face they may manage him to perfection. Everything that lives on him seems to thrive and grow fat. His house-servants are well paid and pampered and have little to do. His horses are sleek and lazy and prance slowly before his state carriage; and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... have selected for my hero has pleased my readers is, of course, exceedingly doubtful. At all events the ladies will have failed to approve him for the fair sex demands in a hero perfection, and, should there be the least mental or physical stain on him—well, woe betide! Yes, no matter how profoundly the author may probe that hero's soul, no matter how clearly he may portray his figure ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... bench of experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators. One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Affirm The Chosen The Nameless The Word Assistance Credulity' Consciousness The Structure Our Souls The Law Knowledge Give Perfection Fear The Way Understood His Mansion Effect Three Things Obstacles Prayer Climbing There Is No Death, There ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... good humoredly. Capitola, being of a brave, hard, firm nature, had not the sensitive perceptions, fine intuitions and true insight into character that distinguished the more refined nature of Clara Day—or, at least, she had not these delicate faculties in the same perfection. Thus, her undefined suspicions of Craven's sincerity were overborne by a sort of noble benevolence which determined her to think the best of him which circumstances ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and raiment, let us be therewith content.[114] Where is this rule? We see it in books, but not in men. But you have [the saying] about the righteous man, that the law of his God is in his heart,[115] not in a codex. Nor is that the standard of perfection. The perfect man is ready to forgo even necessaries. But that is beside the mark.[116] Would that some limit were set on superfluous things! Would that our desires were not infinite! But what? Perhaps you might ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... study; him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an author had written like a great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bloody-bones to a distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the French revolution, and still wish ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... gottee there?" called Hugh, under the impression that he was speaking pidgin-English to perfection. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... led us through civil strife to a glory and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible. Gratitude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... their superior faculties, the Martians have carried every science to a perfection undreamt of on this earth. In astronomical observations, for instance, they employ a system of telephotography. For thousands of years their instruments have been photographing, on an unending roll of paper, the wild spectacle of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... far left, block after block, came upon the line with unerring order and precision, as though it were a long curling whiplash straightening itself out to the tension of a giant hand. And so with each of the other two lines. All were formed simultaneously. Here was not only perfection of military evolution, but the poetry of rhythmic movement. The three lines were all formed within twenty minutes, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... is transmitted. In all animals the new-born stomach needs but the contact with food in order to begin digesting, and the new-born lungs need but the contact with air in order to begin to breathe. The capacity for performing these perpetually repeated visceral actions is transmitted in perfection. All the requisite nervous connections are fully established during the brief embryonic existence of each creature. In the case of lower animals it is almost as much so with the few simple actions which make up the creature's ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... back of a group of flowering shrubs at the end of the hallway, or some other convenient nook or corner. If there should be a balcony, a shady bower can be constructed for them there, and by taking out the window frame they will be heard to perfection. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... quieted him—this vision of earthly peace, this perfection to which order and civilization had come; and then, as he regarded it, it enraged him. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Holy Trinity of Persons there is perfect unity existing, an unity of substance, an unity of Godhead, an unity of perfection, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... with which he adapted himself to his surroundings. He was in swell society on the occasion of our first meeting, being bestridden by the colonel of the regiment. He was dressed and caparisoned in the height of martial fashion; his clear eyes, glistening coat, and joyous bearing spoke of the perfection of health; his every glance and movement told of elastic vigor and dauntless spirit. He was a horse with a pedigree,—let alone any self-made reputation,—and he knew it; more than that, he knew that I was charmed at the first greeting; probably he liked it, possibly ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility and Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that such an inheritance made Mr. Dutton much more in his eyes than an ex-umbrella-monger; but no sooner was the tall iron gate opened than Monsieur, beautifully shaved, with all his curly tufts in perfection, came bounding to meet his master, and Alwyn had his arms round the neck in a moment. Monsieur had in his time been introduced to too many children not to understand the situation, and respond politely; and he also recognised ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the establishment have, from his first connection with the office, been under the control of Mr. Fairbanks, and he feels a just pride in the perfection to which these details have been brought. His heart is in his profession, and it is his constant study. No improvement in it escapes his observation, and he is ever on the alert to avail himself of everything promising to increase the efficiency ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... like William of Orange, and ended the campaign invariably with victory; who managed that element of warfare, the treatment of which serves to distinguish military genius from the mere ordinary ability of an officer—the rapid movement of masses—with unsurpassed perfection, and found the guarantee of victory not in the massiveness of his forces but in the celerity of their movements, not in long preparation but in rapid and daring action even with inadequate means. But all these were with Caesar mere secondary ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... truce!" cried Mayence sternly. "Again we are running into a moral catalogue impossible of embodiment. Is there any such man in your mind, or are you merely treating us to a counsel of perfection?" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... flower-laden heads in the sunshine in a carelessly well-satisfied fashion that filled my heart with envy. There was a rise in the field behind them, and at the foot of its protecting slope they luxuriated in the insolent glory of their white and pink perfection. It was May, and my heart bled at the thought of the tulips I had put in in November, and that I had never seen since. The whole of the rest of the garden was on fire with tulips; behind me, on the other side of the wall, were ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... not appreciate the exquisite charm of the Gulab; no art could have equalled the inherent patrician simplicity and sweetness of her every thought and action. Perhaps her determination to ingratiate herself into the good graces of the Chief was intensified, brought to a finer perfection, by the motive that had really instigated her to accept this terrible mission, her love for the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... that was gathered that evening around my friend's hospitable board. One felt that the English dinner, that choicest of all opportunities for exchange of thought, was here to be enjoyed in high perfection. Among the guests were Mr. Blore, an elderly gentleman, one of whose distinctions was that he had been a friend of Sir Walter Scott and the architect of Abbotsford; Mr. Helmore, the well-known writer on choral music; Mr. Tremenheere, who had traveled in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... gaze of eternity shall be fastened. For then shall our eyes see "The King in His Beauty." {24a} They shall see GOD, see Him face to face,—GOD! No higher conception of happiness is set before the heart of man, which ever craves for heaven and for perfection, than GOD Himself, the sight of GOD, the Presence of GOD, the Knowledge of GOD. "In Thy Presence is the fulness of joy." {24b} But we must not lose sight of the effect which this vision of GOD produces upon those who gaze. To see Him is to become like Him. "Then," says S. John, "we shall ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... have previously suffered much from rheumatism about the body and limbs have found themselves entirely free from any such pains or trouble whilst taking the extract of Fucus Vesiculosus (Bladderwrack). This Sea Weed is in perfection only during early and middle summer. For fresh sprains and bruises a hot decoction of the Bladderwrack should be used at first as a fomentation; and, afterwards, a cold essence of the weed should be rubbed in, or applied on wet lint beneath light thin waterproof tissue, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... attempted. It need scarcely be added that the more serious a play is, or aspires to be, the more carefully should the author avoid any such effects as call for the active collaboration of the stage-carpenter, machinist, or electrician. Even when a mechanical effect can be produced to perfection, the very fact that the audience cannot but admire the ingenuity displayed, and wonder "how it is done," implies a failure of that single-minded attention to the essence of the matter in hand which the dramatist would strive to beget and maintain. A small ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Sinclair took them on a tour of the house. They walked through long corridors looking into all the rooms, eventually winding up in the kitchen, and the three boys marveled at the simplicity yet absolute perfection of the place. Every modern convenience was at hand for the occupant's comfort. When the sun had dropped a little, they all put on sunglasses with glareproof eye shields and walked around the plantation. Sinclair ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... dialogue. Whether, therefore, a particular comedy ought to be versified or not, must depend on the consideration whether it would be more suitable to the subject in hand to give to the dialogue this perfection of form, or to adopt into the comic imitation all rhetorical and grammatical errors, and even physical imperfections of speech. The frequent production, however, of prose comedies in modern times has not been owing so much to this cause as to the ease and convenience of the author, and in some ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... encountered on the ocean, there is none so symmetrically beautiful as the barque. Just as the name looks well on the page of poetry and romance, so is the reality itself on the surface of the sea. The sight is simply perfection. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... It is useless for him to think of attaining perfection of form; he will shine by his science; he will go to the University of Paris, that centre of all light; he will become "Magister," and be appointed bishop. The people will bow down to him as he passes; it is a dream of bliss, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... "very respectable," and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both girl and lover were very young and with just that mutual jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull. What the precise matter of quarrel was I have no idea. She may have said she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't any gaiters on, or he may have said he liked her better in a different ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the wisdom of the framers of the Federal Constitution. Under all circumstances the result of their labors was as near an approximation to perfection as was compatible with the fallibility of man. Such being the estimation in which the Constitution is and has ever been held by our countrymen, it is not surprising that any proposition for its alteration or amendment should be received with reluctance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... in a ship of war, compels the lowest workman to act continually upon his own judgment. Thus it creates that combination of ready obedience, with intelligence, and promptitude at resource, which is the perfection of a sailor's character. Familiarity with danger gives the miner a cool and reflective intrepidity; and the old county sport of wrestling, so peculiarly a game of strength and skill, now falling into disuse, but then the daily amusement of every ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings; and you will by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... clipped as to form a solid wall with square pillars topped by round balls of living green. In the background posed two peacocks, also clipped from box. What patience, time and care had been required to bring that hedge to such perfection! Early roses were now plentiful and as Win sauntered through their fragrant mazes, he realized how much loving thought had been expended through the centuries on this old garden. Sad indeed that the present owner of Laurel Manor was the last ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... think it may be fairly stated at the above increase, without the trouble of manuring. That useful article of food, the potatoe thrives well, and returns upon an average thirty bushels for one. Indian corn is grown; and every kind of garden vegetable, with water melons, and pumpkins, comes to great perfection, when spared by the locusts. Some have raised the tobacco plant, but it has not yet met with a fair trial, any more than the sowing of hemp and flax. I failed in the experiment of sowing some winter wheat, which I brought with me from England; but I attribute ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... visit of inspection to the engine-room. Matters were found to be all right there; the engines were working smoothly and noiselessly, the bearings were quite cool, and the automatic feed was doing its work to perfection. The ship, then, being at such a height as to be clear of all danger, and steering herself in the required direction, with all the machinery in perfect working order, the weather also being fine and wearing a settled aspect, von Schalckenberg told himself that there was not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... enough for it. But you needn't feel uneasy because I say it in your hearing, for I'm going to his office this very day to say the same things, and worse, to his face. When I think of the way he's used his influence over Mark—and I believed him the pink of perfection and was as pleased as an old fool over his friendship for ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... each must contribute to the needs of the state according to his several abilities; but in the actual working it had a most injurious influence on the wellbeing of the country. Each man tried to avoid the demands made upon him, and the art "how not to do it" was cultivated to a very high degree of perfection. Many of the head men made this "fanompoana" system a means of enriching themselves, compelling the subordinates to serve them as well as the government. History does but repeat itself, as there are not wanting instances in our own country where certain heads ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... holidays under such circumstances, the time passed not unhappily. Had he sought the world over for a haven from the intrusion of business or professional cares he could have found it nowhere in greater perfection than in the foothill country centering about the Elden ranch. Here was an Arcadia where one might well return to the simple life; a little bay of still water sheltered from the onrushing tide of affairs by the warm brown prairies and the white-bosomed ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... displeasing discovery that no one named Dale had reached Symon's Yat that evening, while the stolid fact stared him in the face that his cherished Mercury demanded several hours of hard-working attentions if it were to glisten and hum in its usual perfection next morning. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... girl spent a quarter for a cheap sailor collar or a pair of near-silk stockings. Ray Willets, who wanted passionately to be different, whose hands so loved the touch of the lacy, silky garments that made up the lingerie and negligee departments, recognised the perfection of Miss Jevne's faultless realness—recognised it, appreciated it, envied it. It worried her too. How did she do it? How did one go about attaining the same ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... their own legal studies is almost certain. The combination of legal training and Stoic influence (whether direct or unconscious) seems to have been capable of bringing the Roman aristocratic character to a high pitch of perfection; and it will be pleasant to take this friend of Cicero, whose public career we can clearly trace, and one or two of whose letters we still possess, as our example of a really well spent life in an age when time and talent were constantly ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... her to perfection, for she wished, after she had greeted her people in the Camp, to write an important letter, destined for the north of Holland, for which she had had neither time nor ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... innocent man may be suspected for the moment, Gilbert Gildersleeve thought to himself, with a lawyer's blind confidence; but under our English law he need never at least fear that the suspicion will be permanent. For lawyers repeat their own incredible commonplaces about the absolute perfection of English law so often that at last, by a sort of retributive nemesis, they really almost come ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... heaven who has supplanted an older and milder dynasty of gods, and Prometheus, visited in his punishment by the nymphs of ocean, knows a secret on which the rule of Zeus depends. Shelley took over these features, and grafted on them his own peculiar confidence in the ultimate perfection of mankind. His Prometheus knows that Jupiter (the Evil Principle) will some day be overthrown, though he does not know when, and that he himself will then be released; and this event is shown as actually taking ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... must add his party predilections. He was opposed to democratic opinions—and that objection, slight in itself, or it might be urged against many of the best historians and the wisest thinkers, is rendered weighty in that he was unable to see, that in all human constitutions perfection is impossible, that we must take the evil with the good, and that what he imputes to one form of government is equally attributable to another. For in what monarchy, what oligarchy, have not great men been misunderstood, and great merits exposed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of all the difficulties of the journey, and the scantiness of our food, Shakro, with his rich vitality, could not acquire the lean, hungry look, of which the starving peasants could boast in its fullest perfection. Whenever he caught sight, in the distance, of these latter, he would exclaim: "Pouh! pouh! pouh. Here they are again! What are they roaming about for? They seem to be always on the move! Is Russia too small for them? I can't understand what they want! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the very non-existence proves that it ought not to be—'whatever is, is right'—you might as well expect to find perfect happiness or perfection in the individual. Your ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... amazed, but not at the austere beauty of the whole, for only a few connoisseurs could appreciate that. What amazed London was the fabulous richness, the absurd spaciousness, the extravagant perfection of every part of the ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... both, he showed him the cup. The young man could scarcely contain himself at the sight. For some time he had been turning over in his mind the possibility of discovering enamel, or glaze, to put on the earthen pots, and now here, in perfection, was the very thing he was ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... various parts, such as the hand and the membranes of the brain, as absolute perfection, although his idea of the human hand was derived from a study of the ape's, and he had no knowledge of the arachnoid membrane of the brain, but it would be unfair to criticize his conclusions because of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... yet he was The earth's perfection of all mental beauty, And personification of all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of fact, I dont believe. I dont believe in anything but my own will and my own pride and honor. Your fishes and your catechisms and all the rest of it make a charming poem which you call your faith. It fits you to perfection; but it doesnt fit me. I happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. [Mrs George, associating Mohammedanism with polygamy, looks at him with quick suspicion]. I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... environment outside his own. It is inherent in us that we always really want to be somewhere else; which is fortunate, as it makes it certain that the world will never come to an end through a universal contentment. It has been said that contentment is the essence of perfection. It is equally true that the essence of perfection is discontent, a striving for something else. This, I think, Chesterton feels when he says of the penny novelette that it is the literature to 'teach a man to govern empires or look over ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... were erected. Amenemhat III. built the immense artificial reservoir, Lake Moeris, to receive and dispense the waters of the Nile. Under the twelfth dynasty is the blossoming period of literature. The carving of hieroglyphics and the execution of the details of art reach their perfection. It is the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... main assumption reason most revolts at! power Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour, Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim, So much passion,—no defect there, no excess, but still the same,— As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon happier world—its leaf! No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute: Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!" (vol. xiv. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... frost are not so apparent in Oak woods, which have a more coriaceous and persistent foliage than other deciduous trees: but Oaks do not attain the perfection of their beauty, until the Ash, the Maple, and the Tupelo—the glory of the first period of autumn—have shed a great portion of their leaves. The last-named trees are in their splendor during a period of about three ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... writings, most of which are extremely rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection (London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell (1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the perfection of its conic form. Owing to the perpendicular walls of lava formed on the slopes all around, it would seem impossible to reach the crater. The elevation of the peak has been computed at between 8,200 and 8,400 feet. I have been around the base on the E. and S. sides, but the grandest view is to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years past; especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of bodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in portraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion; we have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have the most perfect ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of our verses. Criticism is not construction, it is observation. If we could surpass in its own way everything which displeased us, we should make short work of it, and instead of showing what fatal blemishes deform our present society, we should present a specimen of perfection, directly. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... without difficulty. I would wish to smooth the path for you as much as I can, but learning is "labour, call it what you will;" and without strict attention, and industrious perseverance, you will never attain perfection in any thing. The classes and orders in that division of natural history, called the animal kingdom, are, however, by no means difficult. There are, in botany, as you no doubt recollect, twenty-four classes; in natural history, there are ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... of Elizabeth, the galleon, or great ship, and the galliasse, or cruiser, grew to gradual perfection, in the hands of our great sailors. If we look upon the galleon or great ship as the prototype of the ship of the line, and on the galliasse as the prototype of the frigate, and on the pinnace as the prototype of the sloop, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... magnificent tower, a thing to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family, very rare in their construction, and the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
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