"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 |
