"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simple-looking woman, but the daughter was a perfect beauty; she literally dazzled me. After a few minutes, the over-trustful mother begged leave to retire, and her daughter remained. In less than half an hour I was captivated; her perfection delighted me; her lively wit, her artless reasoning, her candour, her ingenuousness, her natural and noble feelings, her cheerful and innocent quickness, that harmony which arises from beauty, wit, and innocence, and which had always the most powerful influence over me—everything ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... give this long and very uninteresting explanation, not at all because I have wished by giving the conditions under which this little book was written, to make excuse for any repetitions or lack of literary perfection, for these things matter very little; but, because (and this matters very much) it might lead to misconception on the subject-matter itself if its genesis were ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... in me secretly craves an opportunity to tell those precious creatures that the time appears near at hand when this glorious gospel light will shine so clearly that they will discover a Saviour in the secret of their own hearts; and it is to him (I could tell them) that they must look for the perfection of their salvation. Should there be anything of the right savor in my heart concerning this matter, I humbly hope that in due time it will be brought to maturity, and my way made plain and easy—plain, so that I cannot possibly mistake the pointing hand of divine wisdom, and ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Ben Aulder, for no less remote retreat was thought secure. This retreat was prepared by Clunie, and obtained the name of the Cage. "It was," as he himself relates, "a great curiosity, and can scarcely be described to perfection." It is best to give the account of the edifice which he had himself constructed, in Macpherson's own words. "It was situated in the face of a very rough, high, and rocky mountain, called Lettemilichk, still a part of Ben Aulder, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... any one with whom she came in contact. Mademoiselle, who did all the hard work of the teaching, and was only half paid for it, wore out her strength and energy and youth day by day at her desk in the middle of the school-room, and thought Madame the perfection of women; and her sallow, thin face would flush with pleasure, if Madame gave her a look or one of her soft ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... mark you, that's her gift—she made me talk. It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to win—never!—but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation—and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see? Will not they stir new affection? I will think they pictures be (Image-like, of saints' perfection) Poorly ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... could make you visible to yourself. I don't believe in the faults. They're just a joyous softening of the outline—more beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If you talk of your faults, I shall ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... combining single instruments so as to form groups, or in the combination of several separate groups of instruments by which he has produced the most novel and beautiful effects—effects not found in other composers. The originality and variety of his rhythms, the perfection of his instrumentation, have never been disputed even by his opponents. In many of his works, especially those of a religious character, there is a Cyclopean bigness of instrumental means used, entirely beyond parallel in art. Like the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... too, will be unable to help forming some idea of them; nay, even you and I have experienced it. By a thousand phenomena they force themselves into the world which surrounds us and our emotional life. Epicurus, who denied their power, saw in them at least immortal beings who possess in stainless perfection everything which in mortals is disfigured by errors, weaknesses, and afflictions. To him they are the intensified, reflected image of our own nature, and I think we can do nothing wiser than to cling to that, because it shows us to what heights of beauty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, and to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection."[108] This rather cumbersome definition shows how fully Milton was possessed of the Puritan spirit, which then controlled England, and which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... remembered old Jean Gordon of Yetholm, who had great sway among her tribe. She was quite a Meg Merrilies, and possessed the savage virtue of fidelity in the same perfection. Having been often hospitably received at the farmhouse of Lochside, near Yetholm, she had carefully abstained from committing any depredations on the farmer's property. But her sons (nine in number) had not, it ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appearances a most contented woman. When he died at last, people said that it was just in time to escape the penitentiary, but to see Matty you would have thought she had lost nothing short of pure perfection. Poor old Bishop Deane, who always would speak his mind, in the pulpit or out of it, went to call on her, he told me, and took occasion to reprove her for such excessive grief over so unworthy an object. 'He was not an upright man, Matty, and you know it,' he began quite boldly; ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... art of composition. It is this quality which gives the greatest value to the works of Le Sueur and Poussin. Scheffer possessed this power in a remarkable degree, but it was united to a directness and truth of feeling which made his art the perfection of natural expression. A very charming little engraving, entitled "The Lost Children," which appeared in "The Token" for 1830, is probably from a picture of this period. A little boy and girl are lost in a wood. Wearied with their fruitless attempts to find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... standing sublime behind his grating, seems a kind of mundane St. Peter, I suppose, to the beggars who sit at the church door or lie in the sun along the farther slope which leads to the gate of the convent. The place always seems to me the perfection of an out-of-the-way corner—a place you would think twice before telling people about, lest you should find them there the next time you were to go. It is such a group of objects, singly and in their happy combination, as one must ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... and I need hardly say that errors in these matters of mutual comprehension have their palpable practical consequences. All social cohesion and co-operation rest on this comprehension, and are limited by its degree of perfection. Nay, more, all common knowledge itself, in so far as it depends on a mutual communication of impressions, ideas, and beliefs, is limited by the fact of this great liability to error in what at first seems to be one of the most certain ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... and extinguish life In Nature and all things; which these soft fires Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat Of various influence foment and warm, Temper or nourish, or in part shed down Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow On earth, made hereby apter to receive Perfection from the sun's more potent ray. These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain; nor think, though men were none, That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise: Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... events rarely happen according to his projects. He foresees everything, but his foresight prevents nothing. He is impatient if any offend him; at the same time he puts every one in the way of offending him. His knowledge is admired in the perfection of his works, but his works are full of imperfections, and of little permanence. He is continually occupied in creating and destroying, then repairing what he has done, never appearing to be satisfied with his work. In all his ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... in musings. She considered the character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love,—so pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... into general use, dry kilns were unheard-of, air-drying or seasoning was then relied upon solely to furnish the craftsman with dry stock from which to manufacture his product. Even after machinery had made rapid and startling strides on its way to perfection, the dry kiln remained practically an unknown quantity, but gradually, as the industry developed and demand for dry material increased, the necessity for some more rapid and positive method of seasoning became apparent, and the subject ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... earlier days of the first occupation, the English residents of Hong Kong were often placed in difficulties about their clothing, Chinamen not having attained to that perfection in the tailors' art which they now have acquired. On one occasion an old coat was supplied to a native tailor as a guide to the construction of a new one; it so happened the old garment had a carefully mended rent in its sleeve—a circumstance the man was prompt to notice—setting to at once, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... done. We have seen already something of the vociferous thoroughness of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the polishing of reflectors. In building, in road-making, in the construction of bridges, in every detail and byway of his employments, he pursued the same ideal. Perfection (with a capital P and violently under-scored) was his design. A crack for a penknife, the waste of 'six-and-thirty shillings,' 'the loss of a day or a tide,' in each of these he saw and was revolted by the finger of the sloven; and to spirits intense ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the literature of the people of religion, in whom ethical and spiritual religion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward perfection. The New Testament is the literature of the movement which grew out of Israel, the literature of the Universal Church bodying around the Son of Man, in whom religion came to perfect flower and fruit. The real Bible is the record of this real revelation coming through real ethical and ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... (in a purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her reputation as a mirror of elegance. The skirt had—but no (see the columns of the Staffordshire Signal for the 9th November, 1901). The mischief was that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one particular thing, and that particular thing was separated from Vera by the glass front of Brunt's celebrated shop at Hanbridge. Vera could have managed without it. The gown would still have been brilliant without it. But Vera had seen it, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and a firm determination to stop short of nothing less than the perfection of art, those early years of Clara Morris's life on the stage went swiftly by, and in her third season she was more than ever what she herself called "the dramatic scrape-goat of the company," one who was able to play any part ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the fort everything is clean, regular and orderly, as becomes a place under the care of British soldiers. The house, or quarters I suppose they should be called, are clean and bright, whitewashed (I almost said pipe-clayed), to the highest point of perfection. There are fortifications above fortifications here, and plenty of cannon pointed at an imaginary foe. There are cannon balls in scientific heaps waiting to be despatched on errands of destruction. Long may ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... little Osborne's feet, and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the possessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created boys. He shared his money with him: bought him uncountable presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee, Little Warblers, and romantic ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the other hand, a man who proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both, who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world; but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther than living ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... known that we of New York have long been accustomed to regard our neighbours of New England as very different from ourselves, whilst, I dare say, our neighbours of New England have regarded us as different from themselves, and insomuch removed from perfection. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... attention. In 1787 Washington presided over the famous convention which met in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution of the United States, and largely in accordance with his ideas, which strongly influenced the minds of all those present, the Government of the United States was formed. The perfection of the form of government, as entered into by so many separate and widely different States, seemed to Washington, as he afterward said in a letter to Lafayette, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... comes dinner, with three or four courses, cooked to perfection. For myself, I would rather snatch a few mouthfuls and go up on deck again; but this would hurt Leon's feelings if he saw it, and he might even consider that he must seek another employer, for that his talents were wasted ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... seek salvation by works, such as sincere obedience or Christian perfection, we thereby bring ourselves under the law, and become debtors to fulfil all its requirements, though we intended to engage ourselves to fulfil it only in part (Gal 5:3). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of Theban kings, is one of the brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period reached the highest perfection ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and opulent nation. They seem generally to be falling into opinions that the chief end of society is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts, and makes them subservient to every modish vice, who has a restless ambition, a perfidious ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... us, wagging their tails, and a long-bearded old goat walked away with an air of dissatisfaction; three stable-boys, in strong but greasy sheepskins, bowed to us without speaking. To right and to left, in horse-boxes raised above the ground, stood nearly thirty horses, groomed to perfection. Pigeons fluttered cooing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... new territory across the range led to a terrible feeling of disappointment; true, that on at once crossing the crest of the watershed country was found, which being partly within the influence of the heavier fall of rain, approached in every way the perfection dreamt of by the explorers; but as progress inland was made, a change was found to take place, and, above all, the familiar indigenous grasses were lost, and replaced by what the settlers took to be nothing but worthless weeds. All the now prized edible shrubs, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... has succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its nourishment entirely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... of writing and bringing it to perfection, the human intellect worked on the same lines among the Turanians of Chaldaea as it did everywhere else. The point of departure and the early stages have been the same for all peoples, although some have stopped half-way and others ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... a farewell. Ah! he loves another woman better than his mother now. Nay, even a feeling of embarrassment and pain is associated with the recollection of that fond and elegant being, whom he had recognised once as the model of all feminine perfection, and who had been to him so gentle and so devoted. He drives his mother from his thoughts. It is of another voice that he now muses; it is the memory of another's glance that touches his eager heart. He falls into a reverie; the passionate past is acted again before ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... there must always be a sense of the effort necessary to keep the various parts from flying asunder, a sense of imperfect continuity, such as the older criticism vainly sought to obviate by the rule of the dramatic "unities." It follows that a play attains artistic perfection just in proportion as it approaches that unity of lyrical effect, as if a song or ballad were still lying at the root of it, all the various expression of the conflict of character and circumstance falling at last into the compass of a single melody, or musical theme. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... repugnance, such as I had never before experienced, I touched the figure with my hand, "The flesh is like stone," I said, "thus held lifelike by some magic of the Indies. I have heard of such skill but never before realized its perfection. Good God! she actually seems to breathe. What can it all mean? Who could the woman be? And why should her body be thus carried about at sea. Is it love, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the quadroones (for we must contrive a feminine spelling to define the strict limits of the caste as then established) came forth in splendor. Old travellers spare no terms to tell their praises, their faultlessness of feature, their perfection of form, their varied styles of beauty,—for there were even pure Caucasian blondes among them,—their fascinating manners, their sparkling vivacity, their chaste and pretty wit, their grace in the dance, their modest propriety, their taste and elegance in dress. In the gentlest ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... descendants, was created.... We may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." The concluding sentence of the "Origin of Species" has become one of our classical quotations. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Lord Castlewood, he was good-humoured, of a temper naturally easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to perfection—shooting at a mark, breaking horses, riding at the ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. He was fond of the parade of dress, and also fond of having his lady well dressed; who spared no pains in that matter to please him. Indeed, she ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to re-learn his song every spring, and for a fortnight or more you will hear him trying his voice very sweetly and softly, but as soon as he has acquired his song in perfection, it will be so strong and piercing that on fine days he often has to be banished from the sitting-room. He should not, however, be exposed too much to sun and wind; a cloth thrown over half the cage will ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... works of nature alone, because they know there is no hope for them, and content themselves with enacting rules in literature and art, which make all the perfection and grace of the past so many impassable barriers to progress in future. Because the ancients kept to unity of idea in their groups, and attained to most beautiful results by doing so, shall no modern make an antithesis ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... outer world, though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... expression) come home to Men's Business and Bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... advantages hold proportion with his wants. The sheep and ox are deprived of all these advantages; but their appetites are moderate, and their food is of easy purchase. In man alone, this unnatural conjunction of infirmity, and of necessity, may be observed in its greatest perfection. Not only the food, which is required for his sustenance, flies his search and approach, or at least requires his labour to be produced, but he must be possessed of cloaths and lodging, to defend him against the injuries ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... picture she made as she stood there, symmetrical figure gracefully erect, her head held high with its elaborate coiffure of brown hair, her dark blue eyes flashing resentment. The creamy column of her well shaped neck, the firm chin, the almost classic perfection of her features, the rich red of her cheeks—wherever did Ferguson go for his secretaries? She was plainly dressed in some dark material with white collar and cuffs; but the sensible office dress served only to heighten the pleasing effect. There ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... in chorus, as, standing in the bows with one hand upon his gun, the other upon his right hip, he looked the very perfection of a British man-of-war's man, ready to lead or be led, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... smile would be more than his eyes could endure. Here, in Saturn, a ladder is seen, reaching to the next sphere. We learn that this is identical with the ladder seen by Jacob in his vision; and down it are descending the spirits of such as in this world had lived the contemplative life in full perfection. The chanting which has been audible in the other spheres is here silent—no doubt in order to symbolise the insensibility to outward impressions of the soul rapt in contemplation. The speakers in this group are ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... William; she is much grown since you saw her, and I shall be quite disappointed if you do not admire her."—"No fear, my dearest father, that I shall fail either in admiration or love to such a sister," answered William; "I owe her too much gratitude not to be prepared to find her little short of perfection; she has been," continued he, kissing her, "my comforter and adviser for the last six years; and I am sure her correspondence with me during that time deserves to be published, to show sisters how to treat with effect a brother who required admonition coupled with tenderness." ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... nevertheless circumstances from time to time arise to get them by the ears in spite of themselves. But from whatever point of view you may look at the question, it is obviously better to aim at imperfection than perfection; for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection. Moreover, from a worldly point of view, there is no mistake ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... spinner; nay his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I—good Heaven!—have thatched myself ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... things implies an infinite power. Or as Descartes and his followers put it, we can have no idea of anything that has not either an actual or a possible existence; but we have an idea of a Being of infinite perfection; therefore, he must actually exist; for otherwise there would be one perfection wanting, and so he would not be infinite, which he either is actually or possibly. It is needless to remark that this whole argument, whatever may be said of the former one, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... queen admired that ring, deeming it a most noble gift. It was most beautifully wrought and interwoven with scrolls and circles so delicate that all wondered how the hand of man could achieve such perfection. Everyone praised it exceedingly, and among others to whom Sigrid showed the ring were her own goldsmiths, two brothers. These handled it with more care than others had done, and weighed it in their hands as if they would estimate ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... his essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking his beatitude, as well as of contributing to his glory. The Eternal willed it, and they were. He formed them partly of his own essence, capable of perfection or imperfection, according to their will. The Eternal first created Brahma, Vishna and Siva, then Mozazor and all the multitude of the angels. The Eternal gave the pre-eminence to Brahma, Vishna and Siva. Brahma was the prince of the angelic army. Vishna and Siva were ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... alphabet of smart costumers, was aware of the sophisticated perfection of that fluff of jade green tulle. The touch of gold at the girdle, the flash of gold for the petticoat. She guessed the price, a stiff one, and wondered that Mary should speak of it casually ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... It is a great cause, a mighty project, commanding the noblest enthusiasms and the highest efficiency of effort, the project of bringing this whole world to salvation. And that not the salvation of a mental condition but of the perfection of its whole being, the realization of its highest possibilities, the full noontide of the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... not pretend that the writer has attained perfection. The book has faults—but these may be overcome by a writer of so much real ability, and we hope his pen will not ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... The perfection of the Norman nave seems to have been tampered with in later days by cutting through a low transepted chapel on each side. The arches look as if they had supplanted a sixth arch of the nave. But far greater changes were presently ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... that woman is the link connecting Heaven and earth. True it is, we see in her the embodiment of purity and heavenly graces, the most perfect combination of modesty, devotion, patience, affection, gratitude and loveliness, and the perfection of physical beauty. We watch with deep interest the steady and gradual development from girlhood to womanhood, when the whole person improves in grace and elegance, the voice becomes more sonorous and melodious, and the angles and curvatures of her contour become ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the most of, all round; no one is even made the most of as regards the two or three most important things of all. And, indeed, it is curious to observe that the things in which human beings seem to have attained to absolute perfection have for the most part been things comparatively frivolous,—accomplishments which certainly were not worth the labor and the time which it must have cost to master them. Thus, M. Blondin has probably made as much of himself as can be made of mortal, in the respect of walking on a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... was very near to Nature himself; and the nearer a man was to Nature, the more he esteemed him. Thus persons who superintended his farms and cattle, or who pulled an oar in his boat when he ventured out in search of cod and halibut, thought "Squire Webster" a man who realized their ideal and perfection of good-fellowship while it may confidently be said that many of his closest friends among men of culture, including lawyers, men of letters, and statesmen of the first rank, must have occasionally resented the "anfractuosities" of his mood and temper. But Seth Peterson, and Porter Wright, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down nearly all the time. ITS PRESENCE IS YOUR LIMIT. Your reform will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make more. There IS use in training. Immense use. Presently you will reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will proceed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole: Should not the heart beat once "How ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... quivering bough, the mellow sunshine streaming through the lattice of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in every tone; and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the patient hands had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in passionate prayer for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought their blessed influence on the willing strings until the tone was laden with spiritual harmony. One might indeed have sung of this little red violin—that looked to Lyddy, in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered with rubies—all ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the souls of those that leave it, that when they pass they leave their worse self behind them, even as the germ leaves the shuck out of which it sprouted,—leaves the dull, clamp ground forever while it groweth up into the sunlight in which it finds perfection. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... truth-like volumes, by an Irish J.P., who appears to possess in perfection the fun, frolic, shrewdness, and adaptability to circumstances so remarkable among the better specimens of his countrymen.... The second volume is entirely devoted to the best description of California and its 'diggings,' its physical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... long thought that a system of telegraphs for domestic purposes would constitute one perfection of civilization in any country. Multifarious are the occasions in which individual interests require that events should be communicated with telegraphic celerity. Shipping concerns alone would keep telegraphs constantly at work, between all the ports of the kingdom and Lloyd's coffee-house; and ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... brilliant exterior; excelled in all martial exercises; rode well, fenced well, managed his lance to perfection, was a first-rate marksman with the arquebuse, and added the accomplishment of being an excellent draughtsman. He was bold and chivalrous, even to temerity; courted adventure, and was always in the front of danger. He was a knight- errant, in short, in the most extravagant sense of the term, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St. Louis journal—almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place. Perhaps it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age—some twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the condition ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... liberty. NOTE. - I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least, not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed, it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week's work to bring it to perfection. ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... travelled to the Louvre to study and copy the masterpieces which Napoleon had brought over from Italy as trophies of war. Here, as he "marched delighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a universe of art,"[6] he imbibed a love of perfection which may have been fatal to his hopes of a career. At any rate it was soon after, while he was following the profession of itinerant painter through England, that he wrote to his father of "much dissatisfaction and much ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... city people can cultivate, for in Indianapolis, in early December, I saw fully one half as many Polyphemus cocoons on the trees as there were Cecropia, and I could have gathered a bushel of them. They have emerged in perfection for me always, with one exception. Personally, I have found more Polyphemus ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... mutually, as link does link in a chain. It follows that it is form which makes a thing a unit and thus an entity of which character, state, affection or anything else can be predicated; each is predicated of it according to the perfection of the form. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... better feast never behold, You knot of mouth-friends! smoke and lukewarm water Is your perfection. This is Timon's last; Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries, Washes it off, ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... faces more beautiful than Eliza's, though not more charming. I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... most kind and indulgent master, and, provided his servants humor his peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and then, and do not peculate grossly on him before his face they may manage him to perfection. Everything that lives on him seems to thrive and grow fat. His house-servants are well paid and pampered and have little to do. His horses are sleek and lazy and prance slowly before his state carriage; and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... have selected for my hero has pleased my readers is, of course, exceedingly doubtful. At all events the ladies will have failed to approve him for the fair sex demands in a hero perfection, and, should there be the least mental or physical stain on him—well, woe betide! Yes, no matter how profoundly the author may probe that hero's soul, no matter how clearly he may portray his figure ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... bench of experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators. One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Affirm The Chosen The Nameless The Word Assistance Credulity' Consciousness The Structure Our Souls The Law Knowledge Give Perfection Fear The Way Understood His Mansion Effect Three Things Obstacles Prayer Climbing There Is No Death, There ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... good humoredly. Capitola, being of a brave, hard, firm nature, had not the sensitive perceptions, fine intuitions and true insight into character that distinguished the more refined nature of Clara Day—or, at least, she had not these delicate faculties in the same perfection. Thus, her undefined suspicions of Craven's sincerity were overborne by a sort of noble benevolence which determined her to think the best of him which circumstances ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and raiment, let us be therewith content.[114] Where is this rule? We see it in books, but not in men. But you have [the saying] about the righteous man, that the law of his God is in his heart,[115] not in a codex. Nor is that the standard of perfection. The perfect man is ready to forgo even necessaries. But that is beside the mark.[116] Would that some limit were set on superfluous things! Would that our desires were not infinite! But what? Perhaps you might ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... study; him they meditate; him they turn over in all the time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day or the debauches of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is their canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of perfection. To this man and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches. If an author had written like a great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bloody-bones to a distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the French revolution, and still wish ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... gottee there?" called Hugh, under the impression that he was speaking pidgin-English to perfection. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... led us through civil strife to a glory and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible. Gratitude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... their superior faculties, the Martians have carried every science to a perfection undreamt of on this earth. In astronomical observations, for instance, they employ a system of telephotography. For thousands of years their instruments have been photographing, on an unending roll of paper, the wild spectacle of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... far left, block after block, came upon the line with unerring order and precision, as though it were a long curling whiplash straightening itself out to the tension of a giant hand. And so with each of the other two lines. All were formed simultaneously. Here was not only perfection of military evolution, but the poetry of rhythmic movement. The three lines were all formed within twenty minutes, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... is transmitted. In all animals the new-born stomach needs but the contact with food in order to begin digesting, and the new-born lungs need but the contact with air in order to begin to breathe. The capacity for performing these perpetually repeated visceral actions is transmitted in perfection. All the requisite nervous connections are fully established during the brief embryonic existence of each creature. In the case of lower animals it is almost as much so with the few simple actions which make up the creature's ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... back of a group of flowering shrubs at the end of the hallway, or some other convenient nook or corner. If there should be a balcony, a shady bower can be constructed for them there, and by taking out the window frame they will be heard to perfection. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... quieted him—this vision of earthly peace, this perfection to which order and civilization had come; and then, as he regarded it, it enraged him. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Holy Trinity of Persons there is perfect unity existing, an unity of substance, an unity of Godhead, an unity of perfection, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... with which he adapted himself to his surroundings. He was in swell society on the occasion of our first meeting, being bestridden by the colonel of the regiment. He was dressed and caparisoned in the height of martial fashion; his clear eyes, glistening coat, and joyous bearing spoke of the perfection of health; his every glance and movement told of elastic vigor and dauntless spirit. He was a horse with a pedigree,—let alone any self-made reputation,—and he knew it; more than that, he knew that I was charmed at the first greeting; probably he liked it, possibly ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility and Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that such an inheritance made Mr. Dutton much more in his eyes than an ex-umbrella-monger; but no sooner was the tall iron gate opened than Monsieur, beautifully shaved, with all his curly tufts in perfection, came bounding to meet his master, and Alwyn had his arms round the neck in a moment. Monsieur had in his time been introduced to too many children not to understand the situation, and respond politely; and he also recognised ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the establishment have, from his first connection with the office, been under the control of Mr. Fairbanks, and he feels a just pride in the perfection to which these details have been brought. His heart is in his profession, and it is his constant study. No improvement in it escapes his observation, and he is ever on the alert to avail himself of everything promising to increase the efficiency ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... like William of Orange, and ended the campaign invariably with victory; who managed that element of warfare, the treatment of which serves to distinguish military genius from the mere ordinary ability of an officer—the rapid movement of masses—with unsurpassed perfection, and found the guarantee of victory not in the massiveness of his forces but in the celerity of their movements, not in long preparation but in rapid and daring action even with inadequate means. But all these were with Caesar mere secondary ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... truce!" cried Mayence sternly. "Again we are running into a moral catalogue impossible of embodiment. Is there any such man in your mind, or are you merely treating us to a counsel of perfection?" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... flower-laden heads in the sunshine in a carelessly well-satisfied fashion that filled my heart with envy. There was a rise in the field behind them, and at the foot of its protecting slope they luxuriated in the insolent glory of their white and pink perfection. It was May, and my heart bled at the thought of the tulips I had put in in November, and that I had never seen since. The whole of the rest of the garden was on fire with tulips; behind me, on the other side of the wall, were ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... not appreciate the exquisite charm of the Gulab; no art could have equalled the inherent patrician simplicity and sweetness of her every thought and action. Perhaps her determination to ingratiate herself into the good graces of the Chief was intensified, brought to a finer perfection, by the motive that had really instigated her to accept this terrible mission, her love for the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... that was gathered that evening around my friend's hospitable board. One felt that the English dinner, that choicest of all opportunities for exchange of thought, was here to be enjoyed in high perfection. Among the guests were Mr. Blore, an elderly gentleman, one of whose distinctions was that he had been a friend of Sir Walter Scott and the architect of Abbotsford; Mr. Helmore, the well-known writer on choral music; Mr. Tremenheere, who had traveled in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... gaze of eternity shall be fastened. For then shall our eyes see "The King in His Beauty." {24a} They shall see GOD, see Him face to face,—GOD! No higher conception of happiness is set before the heart of man, which ever craves for heaven and for perfection, than GOD Himself, the sight of GOD, the Presence of GOD, the Knowledge of GOD. "In Thy Presence is the fulness of joy." {24b} But we must not lose sight of the effect which this vision of GOD produces upon those who gaze. To see Him is to become like Him. "Then," says S. John, "we shall ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... have previously suffered much from rheumatism about the body and limbs have found themselves entirely free from any such pains or trouble whilst taking the extract of Fucus Vesiculosus (Bladderwrack). This Sea Weed is in perfection only during early and middle summer. For fresh sprains and bruises a hot decoction of the Bladderwrack should be used at first as a fomentation; and, afterwards, a cold essence of the weed should be rubbed in, or applied on wet lint beneath light thin waterproof tissue, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... attempted. It need scarcely be added that the more serious a play is, or aspires to be, the more carefully should the author avoid any such effects as call for the active collaboration of the stage-carpenter, machinist, or electrician. Even when a mechanical effect can be produced to perfection, the very fact that the audience cannot but admire the ingenuity displayed, and wonder "how it is done," implies a failure of that single-minded attention to the essence of the matter in hand which the dramatist would strive to beget and maintain. A small ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Sinclair took them on a tour of the house. They walked through long corridors looking into all the rooms, eventually winding up in the kitchen, and the three boys marveled at the simplicity yet absolute perfection of the place. Every modern convenience was at hand for the occupant's comfort. When the sun had dropped a little, they all put on sunglasses with glareproof eye shields and walked around the plantation. Sinclair ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... dialogue. Whether, therefore, a particular comedy ought to be versified or not, must depend on the consideration whether it would be more suitable to the subject in hand to give to the dialogue this perfection of form, or to adopt into the comic imitation all rhetorical and grammatical errors, and even physical imperfections of speech. The frequent production, however, of prose comedies in modern times has not been owing so much to this cause as to the ease and convenience of the author, and in some ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... encountered on the ocean, there is none so symmetrically beautiful as the barque. Just as the name looks well on the page of poetry and romance, so is the reality itself on the surface of the sea. The sight is simply perfection. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... It is useless for him to think of attaining perfection of form; he will shine by his science; he will go to the University of Paris, that centre of all light; he will become "Magister," and be appointed bishop. The people will bow down to him as he passes; it is a dream of bliss, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... "very respectable," and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both girl and lover were very young and with just that mutual jealousy, that intolerantly keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully dull. What the precise matter of quarrel was I have no idea. She may have said she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't any gaiters on, or he may have said he liked her better in a different ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the wisdom of the framers of the Federal Constitution. Under all circumstances the result of their labors was as near an approximation to perfection as was compatible with the fallibility of man. Such being the estimation in which the Constitution is and has ever been held by our countrymen, it is not surprising that any proposition for its alteration or amendment should be received with reluctance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... in a ship of war, compels the lowest workman to act continually upon his own judgment. Thus it creates that combination of ready obedience, with intelligence, and promptitude at resource, which is the perfection of a sailor's character. Familiarity with danger gives the miner a cool and reflective intrepidity; and the old county sport of wrestling, so peculiarly a game of strength and skill, now falling into disuse, but then the daily amusement of every ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... superior to the pressure of the most complicated sufferings; and you will by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion for posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... clipped as to form a solid wall with square pillars topped by round balls of living green. In the background posed two peacocks, also clipped from box. What patience, time and care had been required to bring that hedge to such perfection! Early roses were now plentiful and as Win sauntered through their fragrant mazes, he realized how much loving thought had been expended through the centuries on this old garden. Sad indeed that the present owner of Laurel Manor was the last ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... think it may be fairly stated at the above increase, without the trouble of manuring. That useful article of food, the potatoe thrives well, and returns upon an average thirty bushels for one. Indian corn is grown; and every kind of garden vegetable, with water melons, and pumpkins, comes to great perfection, when spared by the locusts. Some have raised the tobacco plant, but it has not yet met with a fair trial, any more than the sowing of hemp and flax. I failed in the experiment of sowing some winter wheat, which I brought with me from England; but I attribute ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... visit of inspection to the engine-room. Matters were found to be all right there; the engines were working smoothly and noiselessly, the bearings were quite cool, and the automatic feed was doing its work to perfection. The ship, then, being at such a height as to be clear of all danger, and steering herself in the required direction, with all the machinery in perfect working order, the weather also being fine and wearing a settled aspect, von Schalckenberg told himself that there was not ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... enough for it. But you needn't feel uneasy because I say it in your hearing, for I'm going to his office this very day to say the same things, and worse, to his face. When I think of the way he's used his influence over Mark—and I believed him the pink of perfection and was as pleased as an old fool over his friendship for ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... each must contribute to the needs of the state according to his several abilities; but in the actual working it had a most injurious influence on the wellbeing of the country. Each man tried to avoid the demands made upon him, and the art "how not to do it" was cultivated to a very high degree of perfection. Many of the head men made this "fanompoana" system a means of enriching themselves, compelling the subordinates to serve them as well as the government. History does but repeat itself, as there are not wanting instances in our own country where certain heads ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... holidays under such circumstances, the time passed not unhappily. Had he sought the world over for a haven from the intrusion of business or professional cares he could have found it nowhere in greater perfection than in the foothill country centering about the Elden ranch. Here was an Arcadia where one might well return to the simple life; a little bay of still water sheltered from the onrushing tide of affairs by the warm brown prairies and the white-bosomed ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... displeasing discovery that no one named Dale had reached Symon's Yat that evening, while the stolid fact stared him in the face that his cherished Mercury demanded several hours of hard-working attentions if it were to glisten and hum in its usual perfection next morning. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... girl spent a quarter for a cheap sailor collar or a pair of near-silk stockings. Ray Willets, who wanted passionately to be different, whose hands so loved the touch of the lacy, silky garments that made up the lingerie and negligee departments, recognised the perfection of Miss Jevne's faultless realness—recognised it, appreciated it, envied it. It worried her too. How did she do it? How did one go about attaining the same ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... their own legal studies is almost certain. The combination of legal training and Stoic influence (whether direct or unconscious) seems to have been capable of bringing the Roman aristocratic character to a high pitch of perfection; and it will be pleasant to take this friend of Cicero, whose public career we can clearly trace, and one or two of whose letters we still possess, as our example of a really well spent life in an age when time and talent were constantly ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... her to perfection, for she wished, after she had greeted her people in the Camp, to write an important letter, destined for the north of Holland, for which she had had neither time nor ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... innocent man may be suspected for the moment, Gilbert Gildersleeve thought to himself, with a lawyer's blind confidence; but under our English law he need never at least fear that the suspicion will be permanent. For lawyers repeat their own incredible commonplaces about the absolute perfection of English law so often that at last, by a sort of retributive nemesis, they really almost come ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... heaven who has supplanted an older and milder dynasty of gods, and Prometheus, visited in his punishment by the nymphs of ocean, knows a secret on which the rule of Zeus depends. Shelley took over these features, and grafted on them his own peculiar confidence in the ultimate perfection of mankind. His Prometheus knows that Jupiter (the Evil Principle) will some day be overthrown, though he does not know when, and that he himself will then be released; and this event is shown as actually taking ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... must add his party predilections. He was opposed to democratic opinions—and that objection, slight in itself, or it might be urged against many of the best historians and the wisest thinkers, is rendered weighty in that he was unable to see, that in all human constitutions perfection is impossible, that we must take the evil with the good, and that what he imputes to one form of government is equally attributable to another. For in what monarchy, what oligarchy, have not great men been misunderstood, and great merits exposed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of all the difficulties of the journey, and the scantiness of our food, Shakro, with his rich vitality, could not acquire the lean, hungry look, of which the starving peasants could boast in its fullest perfection. Whenever he caught sight, in the distance, of these latter, he would exclaim: "Pouh! pouh! pouh. Here they are again! What are they roaming about for? They seem to be always on the move! Is Russia too small for them? I can't understand what they want! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... the very non-existence proves that it ought not to be—'whatever is, is right'—you might as well expect to find perfect happiness or perfection in the individual. Your ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... amazed, but not at the austere beauty of the whole, for only a few connoisseurs could appreciate that. What amazed London was the fabulous richness, the absurd spaciousness, the extravagant perfection of every part of the ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... both, he showed him the cup. The young man could scarcely contain himself at the sight. For some time he had been turning over in his mind the possibility of discovering enamel, or glaze, to put on the earthen pots, and now here, in perfection, was the very thing he was ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... various parts, such as the hand and the membranes of the brain, as absolute perfection, although his idea of the human hand was derived from a study of the ape's, and he had no knowledge of the arachnoid membrane of the brain, but it would be unfair to criticize his conclusions because of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... yet he was The earth's perfection of all mental beauty, And personification of all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of fact, I dont believe. I dont believe in anything but my own will and my own pride and honor. Your fishes and your catechisms and all the rest of it make a charming poem which you call your faith. It fits you to perfection; but it doesnt fit me. I happen, like Napoleon, to prefer Mohammedanism. [Mrs George, associating Mohammedanism with polygamy, looks at him with quick suspicion]. I believe the whole British Empire will adopt a reformed ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... environment outside his own. It is inherent in us that we always really want to be somewhere else; which is fortunate, as it makes it certain that the world will never come to an end through a universal contentment. It has been said that contentment is the essence of perfection. It is equally true that the essence of perfection is discontent, a striving for something else. This, I think, Chesterton feels when he says of the penny novelette that it is the literature to 'teach a man to govern empires or look over ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... were erected. Amenemhat III. built the immense artificial reservoir, Lake Moeris, to receive and dispense the waters of the Nile. Under the twelfth dynasty is the blossoming period of literature. The carving of hieroglyphics and the execution of the details of art reach their perfection. It is the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... main assumption reason most revolts at! power Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour, Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim, So much passion,—no defect there, no excess, but still the same,— As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon happier world—its leaf! No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute: Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!" (vol. xiv. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... frost are not so apparent in Oak woods, which have a more coriaceous and persistent foliage than other deciduous trees: but Oaks do not attain the perfection of their beauty, until the Ash, the Maple, and the Tupelo—the glory of the first period of autumn—have shed a great portion of their leaves. The last-named trees are in their splendor during a period of about three ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... writings, most of which are extremely rare, are: Mons Perfectionis, or the Hill of Perfection (London, 1497); Gallicontus Johannis Alcock episcopi Eliensis ad frates suos curatos in sinodo apud Barnwell (1498), a good specimen of early English printing and quaint illustrations; The Castle of Labour, translated from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the perfection of its conic form. Owing to the perpendicular walls of lava formed on the slopes all around, it would seem impossible to reach the crater. The elevation of the peak has been computed at between 8,200 and 8,400 feet. I have been around the base on the E. and S. sides, but the grandest view is to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years past; especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of bodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in portraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion; we have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have the most perfect ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of our verses. Criticism is not construction, it is observation. If we could surpass in its own way everything which displeased us, we should make short work of it, and instead of showing what fatal blemishes deform our present society, we should present a specimen of perfection, directly. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... without difficulty. I would wish to smooth the path for you as much as I can, but learning is "labour, call it what you will;" and without strict attention, and industrious perseverance, you will never attain perfection in any thing. The classes and orders in that division of natural history, called the animal kingdom, are, however, by no means difficult. There are, in botany, as you no doubt recollect, twenty-four classes; in natural history, there are ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... of Elizabeth, the galleon, or great ship, and the galliasse, or cruiser, grew to gradual perfection, in the hands of our great sailors. If we look upon the galleon or great ship as the prototype of the ship of the line, and on the galliasse as the prototype of the frigate, and on the pinnace as the prototype of the sloop, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... magnificent tower, a thing to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family, very rare in their construction, and the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope |
