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Defective   Listen
adjective
Defective  adj.  
1.
Wanting in something; incomplete; lacking a part; deficient; imperfect; faulty; applied either to natural or moral qualities; as, a defective limb; defective timber; a defective copy or account; a defective character; defective rules.
2.
(Gram.) Lacking some of the usual forms of declension or conjugation; as, a defective noun or verb.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defective" Quotes from Famous Books



... from her; she speaks and surmises evil of the absent; to strut down Fifth Avenue in finery, to which she has given her whole soul, is her ideal of happiness—there, stop! She is the daughter of my kind host and hostess. The mystery of this world's evil is sadly exemplified in her defective character, from which sweet, true womanliness was left out. I should pity her, and treat her as if she were deformed. Poor Mrs. Yocomb! Even mother-love cannot blind her to the truth that her fair daughter is a misshapen creature." After a little, I ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... of style is one of the best of the Platonic writings; the first portion of the dialogue is in no way defective in ease and grace and dramatic interest; nor in the second part, where there was no room for such qualities, is there any want of clearness or precision. The latter half is an exquisite mosaic, of which the ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... full capacity for availing itself of the aid of all others, and chiefly of the central tongue, in all those respects in which in consequence of its own special character it should remain individually defective. The new Scientific and Central Language might thus plant itself in the midst of the Languages; gradually assimilate them to itself; drawing at the same time an augmentation of its own materials from them, until they would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "are soiled by the false judgments proceeding from a mind which made him look at every thing in a false light, and it must be allowed that that mind was either troubled or defective ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... or more faculties developed out of all proportion to the rest, with the natural result of occasionally overbalancing him. Extraordinary memories with weak logical faculties, wonderful imaginative sensibility with a complete absence of self-control, and other defective conformations of mind, supply the raw materials for a luminary of the second order, and imply a predisposition to certain faults, which are natural ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... with whom he negotiates those statements that he wishes; and there is even a very evil rumor that the latter will give them even though they are not true, and that he gives them from the official records as demanded, even when these are defective—not only by what is known of the person of each one, but because the governor has favored, protected, and placed him by force in the Audiencia. [This has been done] both in a murder that the governor committed on the person of his wife, and in many other matters. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... o'clock the next morning he staggered into his quarters, more dead than alive. In his heart was a great thankfulness that Big George had not found him wanting. The last defective machine was mended, the last weakness strengthened, and the plant had reached its fullest stride. The fish might come now in any quantity; the rest was but a matter of coal and iron and human endurance. Meanwhile ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... her ears, on the high rail that inclosed the down. Two gentlemen stood before her whose faces we couldn't see but who even as observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charming figure-piece submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact that this meagre and defective little person, with the cock of her hat and the flutter of her crape, with her eternal idleness, her eternal happiness, her absence of moods and mysteries and the pretty presentation of her feet, which especially ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... that the start was to be made on the 13th; the intervening day being devoted to seeing to the arms and ammunition, issuing stores, and replenishing the water supply. The water-skins were extremely defective, leaking freely, the only exception being the india-rubber bags with which the sailors had been supplied. Every effort was made during the halt to sew up holes and stop leaks, but with poor success. Each man carried on his camel one of these skins in addition to his water-bottle. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... gunner of the fourth piece, whose failure to throw a twenty-pound shell "within a hair's breadth and not miss" could be attributed only to defective ammunition. ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... and Mr. W. agree as to the meaning of this verb, viz. "to mend, to put in order any thing which is broken or defective." Being used in this sense, Mr. W. differs from Johnson and Todd, and he is inclined to derive Fettle from some deflection of the word Faire, which comes from Latine Facere. I must not crowd your columns further, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various

... Anthropology of the late Dr. Theodore Waitz (Anthropologie der Naturvoelker: Leipzig, 1862-66). No more comprehensive, sound, and critical work on the indigenes of America has ever been written. But on their religions the author is unfortunately defective, being led astray by the hasty and groundless generalizations of others. His great anxiety, moreover, to subject all moral sciences to a realistic philosophy, was peculiarly fatal to any correct appreciation of religious growth, and his views are neither ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... other cause. Some repeat what they have heard, without, examination or reflection; others speak through pessimism or are impelled by that human characteristic which paints as perfect everything that belongs to oneself and defective whatever belongs to another. But it cannot be denied that there are some who worship truth, or if not truth itself at least the semblance thereof, which is truth in the mind of ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... create new worlds, and in their creation, which, always ending in partial failure, forces fresh effort, lies, Browning might have said, the excuse for God having deliberately made us defective. Had we been made good, had we no strife with evil; had we the power to embody at once the beauty we are capable of seeing; could we have laid our hand on truth, and grasped her without the desperate struggle we have to win one fruit ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... mother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wanted sympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my age was homeless and wanted boots. As a matter of reasoning the reply would have been defective, but for practical purposes it would have been much to the point. And it is fair to this rough-and-ready sort of philosophy to defend it from a common charge of selfishness. It was not that I should have been the happier because another lad was miserable, but that an awakened sympathy ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... fine arts informs us what has been, and the theory teaches what ought to be accomplished by them. But without some intermediate and connecting link, both would remain independent and separate from one and other, and each by itself, inadequate and defective. This connecting link is furnished by criticism, which both elucidates the history of the arts, and makes the theory fruitful. The comparing together, and judging of the existing productions of the human mind, necessarily throws light upon ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Instantly Wade dropped the defective screen. Almost as quickly as the screen vanished, a cylinder of artificial matter surrounded the entire ship. The cylinder was tipped by a perfect cone of the same base diameter. The entire system settled into the solid rock. The rock above cracked and filled ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... re-piecing their ancient chronicles and poems from imperfect manuscripts and fallible memories. The process obliged them to enquire at every step whether the texts which they examined were genuine and complete: to admit that they might be defective or paraphrases of a difficult original. Hence the Chinese have sound principles of criticism unknown to the Hindus and in discussing the date of an ancient work or the probability of an alleged historical event they ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... species created by Hapley. Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins[A]. Pawkins, in his "Rejoinder[B]," suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his powers of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"—Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley, in his retort[C], spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... dispense with Anne of Cleves and her relatives; and with his will there was easily found a way. His case, as stated by himself, was, as usual, a most ingenious mixture of fact and fiction, reason and sophistry. His "intention" had been defective, and therefore his administration of the sacrament of marriage had been invalid. He was not a free agent because fear of being left defenceless against Francis and Charles had driven him under the yoke. His marriage had only ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... and when once the battle was joined, numbers counted for little: the English crews, inured to fights on the ocean, might be trusted to overwhelm the foe by their superior experience and discipline, hampered as the French now were by the lumbering and defective warships of Spain. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... taking a part in the glorious deeds of our army in Spain. I joined in February 1813, and cannot but recollect with astonishment how limited and imperfect was the instruction which an officer received at that time: he absolutely entered the army without any military education whatever. We were so defective in our drill, even after we had passed out of the hands of the sergeant, that the excellence of our non-commissioned officers alone prevented us from meeting with the most fatal disasters in the face of the enemy. Physical force and our bull-dog energy carried many ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... enter upon their war originally for independence. Abraham Lincoln did not start out to free the slaves, but to save the Union. The war with Spain was not of our seeking, and some of its consequences may not be to our liking. Our vision is often defective. Short-sightedness is a common malady, but the closer we get to things or they get to us the clearer our view and the less obscure our duty. Patriotism must be faithful as well as fervent; statesmanship must be wise as well as fearless—not the statesmanship which will command the applause ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish. Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;—it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men. What are called fateful or fated men; such as are often seen on the top places of the world, making an ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... "He was," says Lord Brougham, "an assiduous member of the Society of Friends of the People, and drew up the much and justly celebrated Petition in which that useful body laid before the House of Commons all the more striking particulars of its defective title to the office of representing the people, which that House then, as now, but with ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... cases of this disease, of which four have been fatal. I am not aware that there has been any other case in the town of distinct puerperal peritonitis, although I am willing to admit my information may be very defective on this point. I have been told of some I 'mixed cases,' and 'morbid affections ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... considered a more shocking mark of defective education than false spelling, or bad spelling, or misspelling—all which terms are used to express one's spelling a word in some way which the critic does not approve; that is, does not consider the right way. But this is plainly assuming that there is but one right ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... equal, force will be gained by so arranging the members of a sentence that these suspensions shall at any moment be the fewest in number; and shall also be of the shortest duration. The following is an instance of defective combination:—"A modern newspaper-statement, though probably true, would be laughed at if quoted in a book as testimony; but the letter of a court gossip is thought good historical evidence, if written some centuries ago." A rearrangement of this, in accordance ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... light of this sermon they will find that the difficulty lies, either in the lack of fellowship with Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His commands, or in the absence from their hearts of the interceding Spirit, or in defective faith. In the discussion of these hindrances to prayer, the preacher lays open the heart, and with a skilful spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom. The incisiveness of her style, her courage and plain ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... to the art critic that the book is defective according to the rules of the modern French romance; that Mrs. Stowe was possessed by her subject, and let her fervid interest in it be felt; that she had a definite purpose. That purpose was to quicken the sense of responsibility of the North by showing the real character of slavery, and to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... other guilds. The Coach and Coach-Harness makers have a hall in Noble Street, noteworthy as being the place where the Gordon riots were organized. The company was formed in 1677, and performed useful functions in examining defective wheels and axle-trees and in the construction of coaches. The Cooks, formerly known as pastelers or piebakers, are a very ancient fraternity, but most of their documents were destroyed in the Great Fire. An inspeximus charter of George III., however, informs us that it was incorporated by Edward ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... nothing counterfeit. Now, all other creatures being sufficiently furnished with all things necessary for the support of their being—[Montaigne's expression is, "with needle and thread."—W.C.H.]—it is not to be imagined that we only are brought into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid. Therefore it is that I believe, that as plants, trees, and animals, and all things that have life, are seen to be by nature sufficiently clothed and covered, to defend them from ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... and deformity, and these, being the temporary, the accidental, the deficient, should not be perpetuated in ideal creation. It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood—not a cripple or a hunchback. Still further: art should not only refuse to embody the defective, which is a mere negative; it should not only give form to the utmost perfection it beholds in nature or in humanity, but beyond this the responsibility is upon the artist to penetrate into loftier realms, to catch the vision not revealed to mortals. The artist is, by virtue ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... memoir of captain John Davis, the celebrated arctic navigator, is that given by the reverend John Prince in his DANMONII ORIENTALES ILLUSTRES, or the worthies of Devon, Exeter, 1701, folio. It is, however, erroneous and defective in important particulars, and has misled some eminent writers, as Campbell, Eyries, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... others are always starving. One with a few sticks and straws fills his room with officers and soldiers, ships and sailors, carriages and horses, the management of which occupies all his time and thoughts. Some have good memory as regards most things, and singularly defective as to others. One does not recollect the names of his associates, which he hears every hour, yet his memory is good in other respects. One says he is THOMAS PAINE, author of the 'Age of Reason,' a work he has never ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... with me on this subject, in which I deplored my want of judgment, he concluded with these words: "It is a common thing for people to complain of their defective memory, and even of the malice and worthlessness of their will, but nobody ever deplores his poverty of spirit, i.e., of judgment. In spite of the Beatitude, everyone rejects such a thought as a doing an ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... the power of sin in the spirit comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object both of Christ's redemption and the Holy Spirit's renewal, that our study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the teaching of Scripture ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... of a contemporary, "this Anglo-Teutonic, castellated, gothized structure must be considered as an abortive production, at once illustrative of bad taste and defective judgment. From the small size of the windows and the diminutive proportion of its turrets, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... too petty a profit for him. The real plight of these folk came when a horse died and they had to buy another. Don Jaime became a dealer in dray horses, buying more or less defective animals from gypsies in Valencia, praising their virtues to the skies, and reselling them as thoroughbreds. And no sale on the instalment plan! Cash down! The horses did not belong to him—as he vowed with his hand pressed solemnly to his bosom—and their owners wished to realize ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... clamor of discussion as to the fair adjustment of the throw in the score. The backers of Wyejah claimed the accidental hit as genuine and closing the game. The backers of Otasite protested that it could not be thus held, since Wyejah's defective cast of the chungke-stone debarred their champion from the possibility of first scoring the eleventh point, which chance was his by right, it being his turn to play; they met the argument caviling at ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... intellectually, a remarkable man. He was tall and finely formed, with noble features lighted up with an extremely brilliant eye. His constitution was robust, enabling him to undergo great hardship, and he was, by nature, a man of great activity and energy. His education, however, was exceedingly defective. The regent Sophia had not only exerted all her influence to keep him in ignorance, but also to allure him into the wildest excesses of youthful indulgence. Even his recent marriage had not interfered ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and defective. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... to be such a one, with her defective knowledge and her weak superstition,—as some would call it,—than the proud sceptic, ever croaking, like some hideous night-bird, as he turns his bleared eyes away from the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, "No God, no Bible, no Saviour, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... 1956b. The alliteration is defective, unless a word be supplied; but the sense may be preserved, without emendation, by construing ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous

... as porter in his establishment, and for a long time he worked at seven dollars a week at the loading and unloading of vans. In the course of years it was noticed, however, that his memory, however defective as to the past, was extremely reliable and accurate when concerned with anything which had occurred since his accident. From the factory he was promoted into the counting-house, and the year 1835 found him ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... never by any possibility be happy with her brother and sister-in-law, and moreover considering that it was beneath the dignity of his sister's daughter, a young lady of good family, for ever to roll herself in the feathers with which the middle-class goose-born Dobbs had furnished Peter's otherwise defective nest, he had decided to make her independent altogether of them, numerous though his own sons were, and angry as they no doubt would be, by bestowing on her absolutely after his death the only property he could leave to whomsoever he chose, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... not know, until her first plunge into the sea, that it is salt. Many of the detached incidents and facts of our daily life pass around and over her unobserved; but she has enough detailed acquaintance with the world to keep her view of it from being essentially defective. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... had been said, fit for his Majesty's navy, or not. In providing a top-mast and a top-sail-yard for a seventy-four gun ship, a thirty-two, a twenty, or a sloop, and one rough spar, in all seven sticks, 34 trees were cut down, 27 of which were found defective. When these trees were falling, it was observed that most of them discharged a considerable quantity of clear water, which continued to flow at every fresh cut of the axe; there is no turpentine in these trees but what circulates between the bark and body of the tree, and which is soluble ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... we shall follow suit to the Seine and the Rhine, by tenanting it with cheap baths for the many. Until we do so, the stale joke of the "Great Unwashed" recoils upon ourselves, and is no less symptomatic of defective sanitary arrangements than the possibility of a drought in Bermondsey. But we are forgetting our bathers. They have gone, leaving the place to solitude—some, I hope, home to breakfast, others out among the flower-walks or on the greensward. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... against Johnston's whole army. I sent back orders for him to fight defensively to save time, and that I would come up with reenforcements from the direction of Cog's Bridge, by the road which we had reached near Falling-Creek Church. The country was very obscure, and the maps extremely defective. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... upon young and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help, not inexhaustible ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... orator that has ever lived, yet he had no natural advantages for oratory. A feeble frame and a weak voice, a shy and awkward manner, the ungraceful gesticulations of one whose limbs had never been duly exercised, and a defective articulation, would have deterred most men from even attempting to address an Athenian assembly; but the ambition and perseverance of Demosthenes enabled him to triumph over every disadvantage. He improved his bodily powers by running, his voice by speaking aloud as he walked up ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... British Government should refuse to refund his money. There must have been numbers of such cases with every possible complexity of title; and even if the class that would be actually affected was not large, it was powerful, and every landowner with a defective title would, however small his holding (provided it was over 30 jugera, the proposed allotment), take the alarm and help to swell the cry against the Tribune as a demagogue and a robber. This is what we can state about the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... of nothing that can be done," he said. "He received no injury except the wound on his head, and that, apparently, is not serious. Time is the great healer in such cases. My chief fear is that when he recovers consciousness we will find his memory is defective, as it was after his plunge into your ocean, Zenith. He will doubtless forget how we ever got into this strange place, and I am almost sure he will not recognize Mona, for that was the direction in which he ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... and Chinese live apart. Much evidence of volcanic activity in the Philippines. Natural resources abundant. Primitive tools cause much waste of labour. The buffalo as a draught animal. Rice the staple diet: defective mode of culture. Hemp, its growth and manufacture. Crops of coffee, sugar and cotton. The ravages of locusts. Geography of the country and the diverse elements of its population. Its army of about 6,000. Frequent rebellions among the troops and tribes. Iron rule of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... honourable and commendable appearances, for the laudable laws, and antient constitutions of this kingdom, both as to sacred and civil concerns, all these appearances, whither by addresses or protestations being so far lame and defective, as that the resolutions and purposes of such have never been fairly and freely remonstrat to the contrivers, promoters and establishers of this Union. The consideration of which, and the lamentable case and condition the land already is, and may be in, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... objections, for the question they sceptically put is this: are you quite certain that such a village ever existed? In the first place, they say, you have only got one other witness beside yourself, and she is aged, and has defective sight; and really we don't know what to say to accepting such evidence unsupported. Secondly, John Brown cannot be found to bear testimony. Thirdly, there are no ghosts there; that can be demonstrated. It renders a case unsubstantial to introduce ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... 34, Oxford (B); on vellum, 165 120 mm.; written in one hand throughout about 1210 A.D.... It has lost two leaves after f. 80, which is very faint and defective. Entries in fourteenth-century hands connect it with Ledbury, Godstow, and Magna Coworne (Much Cowarne) in Herefordshire. The text is printed from this manuscript up to ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various

... found very defective and in bad order, but by the remodeling are made as good, perhaps, as ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... perfection in nature's own appropriate time and manner. I ought to say, however, very distinctly, that of the fruits of any particular tree, those which first ripen are always the worst; for they are usually wormy, or otherwise defective. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... rule, which is founded on a just regard to uniformity and truth, must often be relaxed; and the exceptions will be limited or enlarged by the custom of the language and the taste of the interpreter. Our alphabets may be often defective; a harsh sound, an uncouth spelling, might offend the ear or the eye of our countrymen; and some words, notoriously corrupt, are fixed, and, as it were, naturalized in the vulgar tongue. The prophet ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... immediate antecedent, never to its second or third antecedent. A pupil wrote:—Short steps ... stepson ... real son ... more a son ... Morrison. Here, "more a son" refers to the comparison between "real son" and "stepson," but the latter is the second antecedent so the correlation is a defective one. He might have said: Short steps ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... when the material is of the best description, and the means are unlimited,—upon the total absence of any system throughout places of education, either public or private, and consequently at the imperfect and defective education which is given to the highest and richest class of society, who are brought up thus stupidly at an enormous expense, acquiring little knowledge, and what they do acquire, so loosely and incompletely as to be of the smallest possible use. When one sees what is done here, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... have a terrible time when I am confined but caring for the oldest child it preys so on my mind that I fear more defective children. ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... Empire, poor soul—or rather "to drink beer and dance with the girls"; in which, if defective in other things, Wenzel had an eminent talent. He was one of the worst kaisers and the least victorious on record. He would attend to nothing in the Reich; "the Prag white beer, and girls" of various complexion, being much preferable, as he was heard to say. He had to fling his poor Queen's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... true. The gods have not left us dependent exclusively, upon either religion, or philosophy. There is a natural religion of the heart and the conscience, which is born with us, grows up with us, and never forsakes us. But then, after all, how defective and incomplete a principle it is. It has chiefly to do, only with our daily conduct; it cannot answer our doubts, or satisfy our most real wants. It differs too with the constitution of the individual. In some, it is a principle of much greater value ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... please not to pass over a great deal of bad for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being so often defective in others; few men driving at the extent and amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, and others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others commonly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... not making choice of another subject; but in vindication of himself he asserted that it was not easy to find a better; and that he thought it his interest to extinguish the memory of the first tragedy, which he could only do by writing one less defective upon the same story; by which he should entirely defeat the artifice of the booksellers, who, after the death of any author of reputation, are always industrious to swell his works by uniting his worst productions with his best. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... behaved himself uprightly in the conversion of the people, and took away the abominations of iniquity. He directed his heart unto the Lord, and in the time of the ungodly he established the worship of God. All, except David, and Ezekias, and Josias, were defective; for they forsook the law of the Most High, even ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... actual surveys of roads and harbours, and nice and critical delineations of views of land, take up much time and attention, and require a good degree of skill, both in planning and drawing, those who are defective in industry and ability supply these wants by bold conjectures and fictitious descriptions; and, as they can be no otherwise confuted than by going on the spot, and running the risk of suffering by their misinformation, they have no apprehension of being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... the Quayle family, and that a leading one, had taken his dismissal before it was given and, with a nice mixture of defective moral-courage and good common-sense, had removed himself bodily from the neighbourhood of the scene of action. Lord Shotover was still in London. Along with the payment of his debts had come a remarkable increase of cheerfulness. He made no more allusions to the unpleasant ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... nice adaptation of the means to the end. The means are always exaggerated; the end is so much more than attained. The Roman rigour was apt to overshoot the mark, and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great. Of this Roman rigour the Pont du Gard is an admirable example. It would be a great injustice, however, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... has many of the things that are wanting or defective in Scott. He has his philosophy of life; he is beyond remedy a moralist, even when his morality is of the kind which he happily calls 'tail foremost,' or as we may say, inverted morality. Stevenson is, in fact, much more of a thinker than ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... One might multiply examples, but it would be idle. No Western man could for a moment entertain the view of Sri Ramakrishna. To him such a God would be a mere devil. The Indian position, no doubt, is a form of idealism; but an idealism conditioned by defective experience of the life in Time. The saint has chosen another experience. But clearly he has not transcended ours, he has ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... that was defective. When it came to actual war in 1914, it turned out that Germany had not adequately thought out her military problems. If she had done so, she would have used her fleet at the very outset, and particularly her destroyers and submarines, to try to hinder ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... my training has been defective. I have passed through Edinburgh Academy, also the University, with the exception of my last year. But I ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... the growth and luxuriance of the hair, when languid or defective, the only natural and perfectly safe method that can be adopted is to promote the healthy action of the scalp by increasing the vigor of the circulation of the blood through its minute channels. For this purpose nothing is so simple and effective as gentle excitation of the ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... in all the world of palaces in France, or beyond the frontiers, to rank with the great Galerie Francois I at Fontainebleau, though indeed its proportions are modest and its lighting defective to-day, for Louis XV blocked up all the windows on one side. It remains, however, one of the richest examples of the Franco-Italian decoration of its era, though somewhat tarnished by the heedlessness ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... itself repaid by a progressive purity of vision, a progressive sense of assurance, an ever-increasing delicacy of moral discrimination and demand. Psychologists, as we have seen, divide men into introverts and extroverts; but as a matter of fact we must regard both these extreme types as defective. A whole man should be supple in his reactions both to the inner and to ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... production extant which is epic in its form; and it likewise approaches nearest in merit to that celebrated poem, which Statius appears to have been ambitious of emulating. In unity and greatness of action, the Thebais corresponds to the laws of the Epopea; but the fable may be regarded as defective in some particulars, which, however, arise more from the nature of the subject, than from any fault of the poet. The distinction of the hero is not sufficiently prominent; and the poem possesses not those circumstances which are requisite towards interesting the reader's affections in the issue ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... massive shoulders. "My English is defective but distinct," he explained. "One is forced to speak slowly when one speaks badly. Also the Colonel Chichely"—the Britisher—"it is he at whom I talk carefully. The English ear, it is not imaginative. One must make things clear. You know the ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... he considered to be the law in the Netherlands with regard to military allegiance. It is not probable that there was in the country a more competent expounder of it; and defective and even absurd as such a system was, it had carried the Provinces successfully through a great war, and a better method for changing it might have been found among so law-loving and conservative a people as the Netherlanders ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the side of the reader, there must in fairness be added certain undeniable limitations on the part of the seer. These are principally owing to lack of training, and possibly to lack of patience, sometimes also it would seem to defective vision. So that his symbols are at times no longer true and living, ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... that there was money in the investment if one could and would give the proper attention to pushing it. He told Vandover that he—Vandover—was no business man, which was the lamentable truth, and would much prefer to live upon the interest of his bonds rather than to be continually annoyed by defective plumbing, complaints, and repairs. The truth of the matter was that Geary knew that a certain immense boot and shoe concern was after the same piece of property. The houses themselves were nothing ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... to return to myself, the only things by which I esteem myself to be something, is that wherein never any man thought himself to be defective. My recommendation is vulgar and common; for whoever thought he wanted sense. It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction in itself; [in such subtleties thickly studding this popular ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the tale is defective, but from the remains it appears to have ended by the gift of the Hemti's property to the oppressed Sekhti and the ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... proved once more how defective was England's colonial administration. Three years of devastating Indian warfare again demonstrated the necessity of an adequate defense of the frontier, and a stricter control of Indian trade. A customs service which collected annually L2000 of revenue and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... Natal. After much reconnoitring and concealment, however, we soon discovered that the "large English force" was only a herd of cattle belonging to friendly Boers, and that the camp consisted of two tents occupied by some Englishmen and Kaffirs who were mending a defective bridge. We also came across a cart drawn by four bullocks belonging to a Natal farmer, and I believe this was the first plunder we captured in Natal. The Englishman, who said he knew nothing about any ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... from more than one adventure of his own that a log in the water is the next thing to a live thing, and that its capacity for playing evil jokes was beyond any computation that he had ever been able to make. That was where Miki's store of knowledge was fatally defective. Inasmuch as the log had carried them safely through the worst stretch of water he had ever seen he regarded it in the light of a first-class canoe—with the exception that it was unpleasantly rounded on top. But this little defect did not worry him. To Neewa's horror he ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... even fall," it is difficult to coincide; and it is an illustration of the contradictions of criticism that this very figure should have been selected for especial praise, with particular reference to the charges made against the painter of defective drawing, by another critic who was not only as keenly sympathetic as Hazlitt, but was probably a better anatomist—the author of Rab ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... The present organization is defective and unsatisfactory, and the suggestions submitted by the Department will, it is believed, if adopted, obviate the difficulties alluded to, promote harmony, and increase the efficiency ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... was occasioned by the defective condition of her mast, whereupon the admiral remarks in his diary, that "if Pinzon had exerted himself as much to provide himself with a new mast in the Indies, where there are so many fine trees, as he had in running away from him in the hope of loading his vessel ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... Europe, the plains of India, in China, Japan, the south-sea islands, New Holland, even to New Zealand. What renders it so peculiarly valuable is, that in the seasons when the corn crop fails, that of potatoes is generally more abundant; thus furnishing a substitute for the other, which proves defective from atmospheric conditions, which have little influence over the potatoe, placed as it is underground, and secure against extremes of temperature. The potatoe is not a root, as commonly supposed, but an underground collection of buds, having a quantity of starch ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... that the vision of his master was defective; hence the sometime shocking deformations he indulged in. "His optique was more in his brain than in his eye." He lacked imagination absolutely, and worked slowly, laboriously, his method one of excessive ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... whole, like a chain with defective links, is no stronger socially, morally, industrially, or politically, than its weakest unit. Hence it becomes the self interest of every individual member to endeavor unselfishly to build up and strengthen the weaker units ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... in their ordinary diversions: his only amusement was in winter, when he took a pleasure in being drawn upon the ice by a boy barefooted, who pulled him along by a garter fixed round him; no very easy operation, as his size was remarkably large. His defective sight, indeed, prevented him from enjoying the common sports; and he once pleasantly remarked to me, 'how wonderfully well he had contrived to be idle without them.' Lord Chesterfield, however, has justly observed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... mental torture that the actress rises to the occasion, and here it is pleasing to record, she displayed on Saturday night an earnestness and an intensity which won her an ungrudging round of applause. Miss Anderson's conception of the character is excellent, it is her powers of execution that are defective; and we do not omit from these the quality of her voice, which at times sinks into a ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... opened down Hester Street way last week the only public school in the world for children with defective eyes. Bad eyesight has been urged for years as a cause of backwardness and incorrigibility in school children. Now the public school authorities plan, for the first time, not only to teach children whose eyes are defective, but ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... allowed. To-day the sound body generally includes the sound mind, and vice versa. If mental dullness be due to imperfect ears, the remedy lies in medical treatment of those organs,—not in education of the brain. If lack of initiative or energy proceeds from defective aeration of the blood due to adenoids blocking the air tides in the windpipe, then the remedy lies not in better teaching but in a ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... of two kinds," (a division I have ever found useful), "the one kind I designate the passive memory, the other the creative, with the first I retain the names of 'things', 'figures', and 'numbers', &c. and this in myself I believe to be very defective. With the other I recall facts, and theories, &c. by means of their law or their principle, and in tracing these, the images or facts present ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... philosophy with religion, the scoffing scepticism of Voltaire would form even a stronger repulsion than his puerile hostility to Shakespeare. Even here, however, there is something to be pleaded for Voltaire. Much of his irreligion doubtless arose from a defective and unimpassioned nature, but part of it was noble, and rested upon his intolerance of cruelty, of bigotry, and of priestcraft—but still more of these qualities not germinating spontaneously, but assumed fraudulently as masques. But very little Coleridge ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... very little use of other translations; but I must acknowledge a debt to Lord Brougham's version of the Speeches on the Chersonese and on the Crown, which, though often defective from the point of view of scholarship and based on faulty texts, are (together with his notes) very inspiring. I have also, at one time or another, consulted most of the standard German, French, and English editions of Demosthenes. I cannot ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... upon which he depended for subsistence been destroyed by fire, and destitution stared him in the face. He was too poor to buy new tools, so he bethought him of teaching children their letters,—a profession requiring the least possible capital. But though he had mastered many languages, he was so defective in the common branches of knowledge, that at first he could not teach them. Resolute of purpose, however, he assiduously set to work, and taught himself arithmetic and writing to such a degree as to be able to impart the knowledge of these branches to little children. His unaffected, simple, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... advertising in a New York paper for a German governess "to mind a little girl three years old." The lady's English is doubtless defective, but the fate of the governess is thereby indicated with much greater candor ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Gouache began to brush over the face of his picture. Orsino felt that the silence was becoming awkward. He began to regret that he had remained, for he discovered from his present position that the lady's nose was indeed her defective feature. ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... Dutch Indies at the age of twenty-one, and there spent some seventeen years in official life, gradually rising to the position of Assistant Resident of Lebac. While occupying that office his eyes were opened to the defective System of government existing in the Colonies, and the abuses to which the natives were subjected. He tried to interest the higher officials on behalf of the subject races, but as all his endeavours proved unavailing he became disheartened, and, resigning ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... impaired by Byron's ethical poverty. The latter was an inevitable consequence of his defective discipline. The triteness of his moral climax is occasionally startling. When Sardanapalus, for instance, sees Zarina torn from him, and is stricken with profound anguish at the pain with which he has filled her life, he winds up with such ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... be accounted as the unnurtured men who are known once to have roamed through these forests in quest of their game? Without assuming any infallibility of judgment, or aspiring to any peculiarity of information, it doth not appear to my defective understanding, Master Dudley, that the progress of the settlement hath ever been checked for want of necessary foresight, nor that the growth of reason among us hath ever been stunted from any lack of mental aliment. Our councils are not barren of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... more profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this:—in remedy of the defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have suggested ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... relation tends to bring together persons with similar morbid tendencies. Where both are healthy, however, there seems to be no special liability to mental incompetency, though such marriages are accused of producing defective or idiot children. Men suffering from congenital defects should not marry. Natural blindness, deafness, muteness, and congenital deformities of limb are more or less likely to be passed on to their children. ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... parents after his decease. In the "Rainbow," several of Hogg's poetical pieces are translations from the German, and from the Latin of Buchanan. All his compositions evince taste and felicity of expression, but they are defective in startling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... gaze, and wondered at it, but Mr. Wharton's eyesight was defective, and he did not perceive his ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. The parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon complacent relatives or friends when deserted ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... Santa Agnese, in the Piazza Navona, a pretty church, but hardly anybody in it; to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, empty likewise, but Michael Angelo's Christ was there—a grand performance, though defective about the legs, which are too thick; he has one golden foot for the devotees, who were wearing out the marble toe, and would soon have had it as smooth as that of Jupiter's in St. Peter's; ci-devant Jupiter, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... out of view the absence of those methods and criteria on which we have been insisting, it appears to us that meritorious as is Mr. Bain's book in its details, it is defective in some of its leading ideas. The first paragraphs of his first chapter, quite startled us by the strangeness of their definitions—a strangeness which can scarcely be ascribed to laxity of expression. The ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... mentioned it many a time. I've often noticed, Gammon, how very defective your memory is. You should use a mnemonic system. I made a splendid one some years ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... difficult part of the feat. For in his Irish way he played the conjurer very much,—"three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in clear earnestness, of purport and outcome; but went tumbling as if in mere welters of explosive unreason; a volcano heaving under vague deluges of scoriae, ashes and imponderous pumice-stones, you could not say in what direction, nor ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... our readers how to draw and construct a lever escapement complete, of the correct proportions, and will next take up defective construction and consider faults existing to a lesser or greater degree in almost every watch. Faults may also be those arising from repairs by some workman not fully posted in the correct form and relation of the several parts which go to make up a lever escapement. It makes no difference ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... is sometimes corrupted by vicious principles in its construction; and then its members are in proportion defective. It produces in excessive degree idiots, blind, deformed, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... chest covered with a piece of green taffeta. "What hast thou brought me there, friend?" asked the kazi. "My lord," replied the porter, setting the chest on the floor, "I bring your bride." The kazi opened the chest, and discovered a woman of three feet and a half, defective in every limb and feature. He was horrified at the sight of this object, and throwing the covering hastily over it, demanded of the porter, "What wouldst thou have me do with this frightful creature?" "My lord," said the porter, "this is the daughter of Omar the dyer, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... against intimidation, violence, repeating, false swearing when challenged, ballot-box stuffing, and the more patent forms of partizan vices. In order to stop the practice of "repeating," New York early passed laws requiring voters to be duly registered. But the early laws were defective, and the rolls were easily padded. In most of the cities poll lists were made by the party workers, and the name of each voter was checked off as he voted. It was still impossible for the voter ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... the nations of the world His subjects, and assured them of the authority to do this by promising to be with them and their successors to the end of the world. And wherever the Church spread, however defective and imperfect it might be, it was still part of one and the same Kingdom, owning the Lord Jesus Christ as King. Besides this bond of union, one Holy Spirit was working with more or less success upon all the subjects, wherever ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... any other characteristic deserving of grave censure, but his enemies have adopted a simpler process. They have been able to find few flaws in his nature, and therefore have denounced it in gross. It is not that his character was here and there defective, but that the eternal jewel was false. The patriotism was counterfeit; the self-abnegation and the generosity were counterfeit. He was governed only by ambition—by a desire of personal advancement. They never attempted to deny his talents, his industry, his vast sacrifices ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... must be seen to," said the defective one, a fat white hand stroking an equally fat, but blue, jowl. "He's got to have a bit to eat and drink, and a trifle of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... education has at last raised the intelligence of the British lower classes to a point when the prospect of fighting in distant lands under unsuitably educated British officers of means and gentility with a defective War Office equipment and inferior weapons has lost much of its romantic glamour. But an unofficial body that set itself to the establishment of a school of military science, to the sane organization and criticism of military experiments in tactics and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... her now all about his sickness, and soon he came involuntarily to the thing that gave him most trouble, his defective knowledge. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... seems defective," remarked Forrest in flute-like tones. "Let me repeat: This is headquarters for Wells Brothers. Their range runs from the trail crossing, six miles below, to the headwaters of Beaver, including all its tributaries. Since you can't stay for dinner, you'll ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... were always ill, and suppose that the house was badly built, the walls so constructed that they drew and retained moisture, the roof broken and leaky, the drains defective, the doors and windows ill-fitting and the rooms badly shaped and draughty. If you were asked to name, in a word, the cause of the ill-health of the people who lived there you would say—the house. All the tinkering in the world would not ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... managing the mineral lands of the United States is believed to be radically defective. More than 1,000,000 acres of the public lands, supposed to contain lead and other minerals, have been reserved from sale, and numerous leases upon them have been granted to individuals upon a stipulated ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... mountains, the wind, the sun, the moon, the clouds, and the stars, day and night, the heaven and the earth, were alive and possessed of the passions and the will they felt within themselves" (258. 25). Here belongs a large amount of folk-lore and folk-speech relating to the defective, delinquent, and dependent members of human society, whose misfortunes or misdeeds are assigned to ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most inquisitive companions. Truth is certainly the foundation of these anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or exaggerated. Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand personage they concern, and the mystery with which he and his Government encompass themselves, or in which they wrap up everything not ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... purposes. Mr. Passmore Edwards contributed L14,000 to its cost, and it bears his name. It was opened in 1898 by Lord Peel and Mr. Morley, and for twenty years it has been a center of social work and endeavor in St. Pancras. From it have sprung the Physically Defective Schools under the Education Authority, now so plentiful in London, and so frequent in our other large towns. The first school of the kind was opened at this Settlement in 1898; and the first school ambulance in London was given to us by Sir Thomas Barlow for our Cripple Children. The ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... invariably levied with costs, which not seldom swelled the ten shillings to ten pounds. A new instrument of oppression was also, in Lord Grandison's time, invented—"the Commission for the Discovery of Defective Titles." At the head of this Commission was placed Sir William Parsons, the Surveyor-General, who had come into the kingdom in a menial situation, and had, through a long half century of guile and cruelty, contributed as much to the destruction ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... may not have personally participated in the guilty deed, he was not active against it, he did not apparently seem to restrain the repetitions of it, he was paralyzed in energy. It was his will which was defective, not his intellect; he did not commit the offense, but he did not stop it, and try to conciliate the wrath of the Gods by sacrifices, by what we now call repentance. Hence, while he does not perish, he is still unfinished, incomplete, with a limit to be removed. A training of the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... with much furious Invective, Though perhaps 'twere no difficult task to confute it; But if Venus and Hymen should once prove defective, Pray who would there be to ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... of all casts made from the same mix. Careful records are always kept of the tests of cement and material, and test cubes are made from each consignment of cement so tested; in this way all danger of defective stone through inferior cement is eliminated. The patterns used in making the molds and the method of molding are quite similar to ordinary iron foundry practice except that the sand used is of special nature. The finish ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... defective, I have extracted from Mr. Spencer's chosen authority a mass of facts, pointing to a Yao belief in a primal being, maker of mountains and rivers; existent before men were; not liable to death—which came late among them—beneficent; not propitiated ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... attempt to do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them as human beings,—an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows. Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Leibniz, Montesquieu, and myself"—he was quite conscious of his own limitations, and had the common-sense to entrust to Daubenton the description of the anatomy and other technical matters as to which his own knowledge was comparatively defective. He reserved to himself what may be called the "literary" aspect of his theme, recording the place of each animal in history, and relating its habits with such gusto as his ornate ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... "Thou seest," said she to the girl, "how easy it has been for thee to do this; I ought to have given thee something harder." She went through all the rooms, and examined every corner to see if anything was wanting or defective; but she could discover nothing. "Now we will go down below," said she, looking at the girl with malicious eyes. "The kitchen and the cellar still have to be examined, and if thou hast forgotten anything thou shalt not escape ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... God is the most important and comprehensive of all the ideas of which the human mind is possessed. It is the foundation of religion; of all right doctrine, and all right conduct. A correct intuition of it leads to correct religious theories and practice; while any erroneous or defective view of the Supreme Being will pervade the whole province of religion, and exert a most pernicious influence upon the entire character and conduct ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... years. The traces of poverty became more and more rare, and want was less often their guest at table. In the garden, where were pretty flower-beds, the pease and asparagus stood in long rows, and the defective fence had long since been replaced by a new one. The cattle were augmented every year by two or three valuable milking cows, and the milk-cart which drove into the town every morning brought home many a groschen on the first ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... the outside air or gas. One helmet is good for five hours of the strongest gas. Each Tommy carries two of them slung around his shoulder in a waterproof canvas bag. He must wear this bag at all times, even while sleeping. To change a defective helmet, you take out the new one, hold your breath, pull the old one off, placing the new one over your head, tucking in the loose ends under the collar ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... upper windows. The roof is formed by girders and 4-1/2-brick arches in cement, covered with asphalt to form a flat. The failure is attributed to the quantity of rain which has fallen. Others suppose that some of the girders were defective, and gave way, carrying the walls with them."—Builder, for January 29th, 1853. The rest of this volume might be filled with such notices, if ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... the manner in which this extraordinary influence was secured. In later mediaeval times all classes of the population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade, pledged themselves by a solemn oath to a defensive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... partly positive, partly produced by narrowness. They are, in fact, English second-class churches with the height of English first-class churches. Bayeux, in every way the largest of the three, perhaps just trembles on the edge of the first-class. Coutances, the smallest, is distinctly defective in length; the magnificent, though seemingly unfinished, central tower, plainly wants a longer eastern limb to support it. Even at Bayeux the eastern limb is short according to English notions, though not so conspicuously so as Coutances. We suspect that Dol is really the most justly proportioned ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... the State Paper Office of any letter of credence having been given by James II. to Lord Castlemaine in 1685. The correspondence of the reign of James II. is, however, very defective, and much of it must either have been suppressed or ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... legislation should be as perfect as possible, defining every power intended to be conferred, every crime intended to be made punishable, and prescribing the punishment to be inflicted. In addition to some particular cases spoken of more at length, the whole criminal code is now lamentably defective. Some offenses are imperfectly described and others are entirely omitted, so that flagrant crimes may be committed with impunity. The scale of punishment is not in all cases graduated according to the degree and nature of the offense, and is often rendered more ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... to recover it, because the tribe to which he belonged was by no means numerous; and because he was but young himself, and too inconsiderable to think of such great actions. But the other promised him, that God would supply what he was defective in, and would afford the Israelites ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... attend to pedigree, for thus only can we know what are the hereditary qualities, but it is not well to lay too much stress upon "blood," What matters it that my horse was sired by such a one or such a one, if he be himself defective? In breeding horses, structure is first, and endowment with nervous energy is next to be seen to, and then pedigree—afterwards that these be fittingly united, by proper selection for coupling, in order ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... presentations, and was heartily welcomed as evidence of the "growing taste in America for this kind of inquiry." Among other things Maclean said of the various ideas regarding combustion—"Becker's is incomplete, Stahl's though ingenious, is defective; the antiphlogistic is simple, consistent and sufficient, while Priestley's resembling Stahl's but in name, ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... other hand, if the four were massed and centrally placed, which is the correct disposition of any mobile force, military or naval, intended to counteract the attack of an enemy whose particular line of approach is as yet uncertain, their sluggishness and defective nautical qualities would make them comparatively inefficient. New York, for instance, is a singularly central and suitable point, relatively to our northern Atlantic seaboard, in which to station a division intended to meet and ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... time. Upon his demission of authority the direction of affairs devolved upon the Honourable Peter Russell, as senior member of the Executive Council; and that gentleman had not been long in authority before murmurs began to be heard about the partial and defective administration of the important department of Crown Lands. There were comparatively few men in the country possessed of sufficient education and business experience to admit of their being entrusted with the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... bred in the deepest reverence for Scripture. In a sense that reverence never left him, though it changed its form. He saw that it was absurd to appeal to the Bible in the old way as an infallible source of doctrine. How could truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible expressions? Newman's own studies in criticism, by no means profound, led him to this correct conclusion. This was the end for him of evangelical Protestantism. The recourse was then to the infallible ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... hatred towards them himself; nay, there is no surer sign of a great mind than that it refuses to notice annoying and insulting expressions, but straightway ascribes them, as it ascribes countless other mistakes, to the defective knowledge of the speaker, and so merely observes without feeling them. This is the meaning of that remark of Gracian, that nothing is more unworthy of a man than to let it be seen that he is one—el mayor desdoro de un hombre es dar ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... senseless words I wouldna fyle my tongue with. Them and their socialism! There's more gumption in a page of John Stuart Mill than in all that foreign trash. But, as I say, I've got to keep a quiet sough, for the world is gettin' socialism now like the measles. It all comes of a defective eddication.' ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... affirmed the Raposa. "I have not been insane. But much was gone from me. My mind was a house full of closed doors which I could not open. I knew who I was and why I was here, but I knew also that something had happened to my brain; knew I was defective; believed I was wanted for murder. So I could not go out. I could only stay here, prowl the jungle, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... AND JUSTIFICATION.—(1) It is the business of this life to make excuses for others, but none for ourselves. We should be clearly persuaded of our own misconduct, for that is the part of knowledge in which we are most apt to be defective. (2) Even justice is no right of a man's own, but a thing, like the king's tribute, which shall never be his, but which he should strive to see rendered to another. None was ever just to me; none ever will be. You may reasonably aspire to be chief minister ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not understand the language of the woman, and turned with a helpless and appealing look to the gentleman, who still speaking French with the slightly defective English accent, replied: ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... not much, certainly, but it persisted. The impression, defective as I give it, had been pleasing; an impression of warm femininity, of graceful motion. It had had the quality, besides, of the unexpected and the fugitive, and the advantage of a sylvan background. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... small breakdowns of their machinery if they are manned by crews who have no familiarity with them. Many accidents of this kind had occurred in the British navy at manoeuvres, though it could not be shown that the vessel was defective, or that the crew was either untrained or negligent. These experiments led the admiralty to adopt a new system in 1904, designed to obviate the risk that vessels would be crippled at a critical moment by want of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia



Words linked to "Defective" :   imperfect, bad, nonfunctional, defective pleading



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