"Deficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this hospitable family, I embarked on board a Portuguese brig, with poor accommodations, for Cayenne in Guiana. The most eligible bedroom was the top of a hen-coop on deck. Even here an unsavoury little beast, called bug, was neither shy nor deficient in appetite. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... girl, and passed through the ordeal of a rather stiff examination with considerable ability. Mrs. Willis pronounced her English and general information quite up to the usual standard for girls of her age—her French was deficient, but she showed ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... we may extend that a great deal further. It is just as true about the whole New Testament. The four Gospels are written to tell us these two facts about Christ. They are none of them merely biographies; as such they are singularly deficient, as we have seen. But they are biographies plus a doctrine; and the biography is told mainly for the sake of carrying this twofold truth into men's understandings and hearts, that Jesus is, first of all, the Christ, and second, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... down with extreme caution on the deficient camp-stool and surveyed the situation. There were clouds across a waning moon, and it was fairly dark. She could see the outlines of the tents in black masses behind her; in front the field lay dim and shadowy, with a mist creeping from ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... without on the seat of the central legislature might unduly sway the national councils. Just so, we have often known a single street in Paris coerce the deliberations of the nation. Columbia having, as I understand, by an exceptional arrangement, no true local self-government, is deficient in local movement. Nevertheless, I have received private expression of sentiment and of generous kind sympathy from various parts of this district, and chiefly ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... porcupine-man," whose skin was thickly covered with warty projections, which were periodically moulted, had all his six children and two grandsons similarly affected.[5] The face and body being covered with long hair, accompanied by deficient teeth (to which I shall hereafter refer), occurred in three successive generations in a Siamese family; but this case is not unique, as a woman[6] with a completely hairy face was exhibited in London in 1663, and another instance has recently occurred. Colonel Hallam[7] has described ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... a year. It was of mixed cloth, neat in appearance, though showing signs of wear; but there was one trouble. During the past year Luke had grown considerably, and his coat-sleeves were nearly two inches too short, and the legs of his trousers deficient quite as much. Nevertheless, he dressed himself, and he, too, surveyed himself, not before a pier-glass, but before the small ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... hospitality, never deficient in high-born courtesy, and which, even while preserving the touching simplicity of primitive manners, inspired in Poland all the refinements of the most advanced state of civilization,—how could it be exiled from the details of a dance so eminently Polish? After the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... prosperity, is shown by a recent census bulletin to have been 153 per cent greater in 1890 than in 1880, and the production of steel 290 per cent greater. Mining in coal has had no limitation except that resulting from deficient transportation. The general testimony is that labor is everywhere fully employed, and the reports for the last year show a smaller number of employees affected by strikes and lockouts than in any year since 1884. The depression in the prices of agricultural ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... The Fraction, being deficient for the moment in language proper to express his appreciation of this new development, simply volunteered to return for the Celebrity, and left ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evening of the card party, when he had become so fully conscious of the condition of things inside his heart, Quimby had been in a really pitiable state of unrest. Too bashful, or too deficient in self-confidence to seek the society of her who was the cause of all his uneasiness, as his inclinations directed, and not knowing how to make himself as charming to her as she was to him, he wandered past the building containing her, two or three times a day, sometimes ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... sir! Nothing, I assure you, is further from our wishes than fuss of any kind. But unfortunately, the Emperor—the Emperor—I respect and admire him, of course. We all do. But if the Emperor has a fault it is that he's slightly deficient in humour. He does not easily see ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... this romance, I examined with some care the probabilities of Aram's guilt; for I need scarcely perhaps observe that the legal evidence against him is extremely deficient,—furnished almost entirely by one (Houseman) confessedly an accomplice of the crime and a partner in the booty, and that in the present day a man tried upon evidence so scanty and suspicious would unquestionably ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brilliancy, and it at once stamped Washington as a military genius of the first order. And with such an army to make such an attempt! Said one of the officers of the period in his memoirs: "An army without cavalry, partially provided with artillery, deficient in transportation for the little they had to carry; without tents, tools, or camp equipage,—without magazines of any kind; half clothed, badly armed, debilitated by disease, disheartened by misfortune." But their leader was a Lion, and the Lion was at last ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that kind of so-called 'spiritualist' whose enlightened intelligence and heaven-aspiring aims are demonstrated in the turning of tables and general furniture-gyration. I am, however, hopelessly deficient in such knowledge. I should make a most unsatisfactory conjurer! Moreover, whatever you may have heard concerning me in Paris, you must remember I am in Paris no longer. I am a monk, as you see, devoted to my vocation; I am completely severed from the world, and my duties and occupations ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... however, his former doubts and fears returned to him. To the 7th corps had been assigned the duty of guarding the entrance to the Black Forest; it had reached its position in a state of confusion that exceeded imagination, deficient in men, material, everything. The 3d division was in Italy; the 2d cavalry brigade had been halted at Lyons to check a threatened rising among the people there, and three batteries had straggled off in some direction—where, no one could ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sir?" said Henry, courteously. "Any friend of Charles Holland's is most welcome here. You will have much to excuse us for, because we are deficient in servants at present, in consequence of come occurrences in our family, which your nephew has our full permission to ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a holiday, you will see them doing a large amount of "nothing," dawdling, in fact; and "amusements" are, when they are not excitements, that is to say, stimulations to deficient energy, full of such "doing nothing." Think, for instance, of "amusing conversation" with its gaps and skippings, and "amusing" reading with its perpetual ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the new tariff. Their combined effect is to oppose every barrier that human wisdom and foresight can devise, against dearth and famine in England: securing an abundant supply of corn and meat from abroad, whenever our own supply is deficient; but up to that point protecting our home producers, whose direct interest it will henceforth be to supply us at fair and moderate prices. It is the cunning policy of the heterogeneous opponents of the existing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... that adenoids made children mentally deficient, nor did we dream that teeth properly attended to, and a pair of glasses could transform a girl from a sullen, morose disobedient child into an interesting, happy and obedient one; but some of us have seen that transformation and marveled at it. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... about Zack's odd companion—was secretly anxious to ascertain what impressions Madonna would bring away of Mat's personal appearance and manners. And thus it was that Zack, by seizing his opportunity at the right moment, and exerting a little of that cool assurance in which he was never very deficient, now actually entered the painting-room in a glow of mischievous triumph ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... way a young Yorkshireman, who frequently appearing in subsequent pages, we may introduce as a loosish sort of hand, up to anything in the way of a lark, but rather deficient in cash—a character so common in London, as to render further ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... really seem as though the philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century must have been totally deficient in the smallest faculty of observation. They lived amidst their contemporaries without seeing them and without understanding them. Above all, they had not a suspicion of the true nature of the popular mind. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... your parties in bridal finery; one excursion takes place of another, and gaiety upon gaiety succeeds; this passes over, and with faded dresses, faded looks begin. At least, care sits a little heavy on your husband's brow; he perceives that you are deficient in all the requisites for a good wife; and when he looks round the uncomfortable apartment in which he is seated, his thoughts naturally revert to the home of his youth, and his prudent, excellent mother; you are too much ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... Yen Yuan said, 'I beg to ask the steps of that process.' The Master replied, 'Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.' Yen Yuan then said, 'Though I am deficient in intelligence and vigour, I will make it my ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... damnified. In fine, when the multitude of books increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all those printers who are found frequently offending, and forbid the importation of their whole suspected typography. In a word, that this your Order may be exact and not deficient, ye must reform it perfectly according to the model of Trent and Seville, which I ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... happy that you found any amusement in the Lay of the Last Minstrel. It has great faults, of which no one can be more sensible than I am myself. Above all, it is deficient in that sort of continuity which a story ought to have, and which, were it to write again, I would endeavour to give it. But I began and wandered forward, like one in a pleasant country, getting to the top of one hill to see a prospect, and to the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... envelop his meaning in a cloud of words from which the Quaestor of Anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaning then, as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible English now. It is certainly difficult to acquit Cassiodorus of the charge of a deficient sense of humour, when we find him putting into the mouth of his master, who had so often marched up and down through Thrace, ravaging and burning, these solemn praises of "Tranquillity". And when we read the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... accordingly bought these articles at a curiosity shop. During the first weeks of his residence in the city he made some feeble efforts to perfect himself in mathematics, in which he suspected he was somewhat deficient. But when the same officious friend laughed at him, and called him "green," he determined to trust to fortune, and henceforth devoted himself the more assiduously to the French ballet, where he had already made ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and, if we have this in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of inhibition. It is doubtful if modern society affords anything more striking in the way of inhibition than is found in connection with taboo, fetish, totemism, and ceremonial among the lower races. In the great majority of the American Indian and Australian tribes a man is ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Providence for the most part sets us upon a Level, and observes a kind of Proportion in its Dispensation towards us. If it renders us perfect in one Accomplishment, it generally leaves us defective in another, and seems careful rather of preserving every Person from being mean and deficient in his Qualifications, than of making any single one ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... expectations, and assailed in my character, what could I do but appeal to an impartial public, by giving them a circumstantial detail of what was most memorable in my adventures, that they might judge, from intrinsic evidence, whether I was deficient either in soundness of understanding or of moral principle? But let me first bespeak their candour, and a salutary diffidence of themselves, by ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... prayers were heard: the wife of Tokubei gave birth to a daughter. The child was very pretty; and she received the name of Tsuyu. As the mother's milk was deficient, a milk-nurse, called O-Sode, was hired for the ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... Yet they did not attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the earth 'by sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizonal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver,—a mineral not rare in Peru, as an amalgam to effect this ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... been in operation for some months. The beet-root crop on the estate itself had been deficient, and the cultivation of it in the country round had proved unsuccessful. Many of the small farmers had failed to fulfill their contracts, and others had brought in inferior produce. There was a scarcity ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... in ancient times with the greatest families, and is by all genealogists allowed to be a mighty evidence of dignity, to use certain nicknames which the French call sobriquets . . . such as 'the Lame' or 'the Black.'. . . The house of Yvery, not deficient in any mark or proof of greatness and antiquity, abounds at different periods in instances of this nature. Roger, a younger son of William Youel de Perceval, was ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... in which war was resolved on by the league, individual towns very frequently kept aloof from it. The Etruscan confederations appear to have been from the first—still more than the other Italian leagues formed on a similar basis of national affinity—deficient in a firm and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... any branch of knowledge in which I am so deficient as history, both ecclesiastical and profane. I have never been much interested facts, considered simply as facts, and that is about all that is to be found in most historical works. The relations of facts to each other and of all to reason, in other words, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the corps without having entered as a private secretary or attache. It would be monstrous, unheard of; and the very idea would throw Lord Aberdeen on the one side, or Lord Palmerston on the other, into convulsions. Is it therefore to be wondered at our being so deficient in our diplomatic corps? Surely if any point more than another requires revision and reform, it is this; and the nation has a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... fields, or to Tartarus, and there meet with the reward or punishment of their deeds during life. Later, on drinking of the waters of Lethe, which takes away all memory of the past, they return to earth." But it must be admitted that Rome was deficient in spiritual insight and beliefs, on the whole, her material successes having diverted her attention from the problems which had so engrossed the mind of her neighbor Greece, and her older ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... drill of the best institutions. A keen eye, a prompt judgment, and a fearless speech, all belonged to Mrs. Marx; universally esteemed and looked up to and welcomed by all her associates. She was not handsome; she was even strikingly deficient in the lines of beauty; and refinement was not one of her characteristics, other than the refinement which comes of kindness and unselfishness. Mrs. Marx would be delicately careful of another's feelings, when there was real need; she ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... boys are not deficient in obedience and helpfulness. At Sheppard's age I had already begun to take the duties of a man ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... habit of drinking, though not to excess, yet more than his abstemious past allowed. Doubtless she exaggerated her fears, with Branwell always present in her thoughts. But Emily grew afraid, alone at Haworth, responsible, knowing herself deficient in that controlling influence so characteristic of her elder sister. Her burden of doubt was more than she could bear. She decided to write ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... offered themselves,—or, rather, had not offered themselves for his acceptance. He had endeavoured to become an usher at a commercial seminary, not supposed to be in a very thriving condition; but he had been, luckily, found deficient in his arithmetic. There had been some chance of his going into the leather-warehouse of Messrs Basil and Pigskin, but those gentlemen had required a premium, and any payment of that kind had been quite out of his mother's power. A country ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... they were proper, not merely because they were agreeable. I felt that I should respect, but never love him; and that he would never either love or respect me, because the virtue which he held in the highest veneration was that in which I was most deficient—punctuality. But I will give, as nearly as I can, my first conversation with him; and from that a better idea of his character may be formed than I can afford ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... fan from her waist, and sailed in to supper, her maid carrying her gloves and scent-bottle behind her. The tutor, who wore no gloves, was a little longer. But having washed his hands at a pump in the scullery, and dried them on a roller-towel—with no sense that the apparatus was deficient—he tucked his hat under his arm and, handling his snuff-box, tripped after her as hastily as vanity and an elegant ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... on plants Doubleday discovered that "whatever might be the principle of manure, an overdose of it invariably induced sterility in the plant." Although his formula is deficient in that food is selected as the one factor in environment which influences fertility, and although it may be an overstatement to claim that fertility varies in exact proportion to abundance or to scarcity, nevertheless his formula contains an important truth which ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... Grecian history perfectly written should be a political institute for all nations." It has not occurred to him that a Grecian history, perfectly written, should also be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts. Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents of action almost exclusively attract his notice; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sentiment of honor, for instance, is a vital compelling force in one individual, and is so weak or deficient in another as to be a negligible quantity, what is the explanation of this difference? What influence has developed the sentiment in one, and retarded or eliminated it in the other? On what does it depend? What causes it to come ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... {Right Thing} to do is obvious to any thinking observer; sadly, this casual attitude towards specifications becomes unworkable when a system becomes popular in the {Real World}.) Since a hacker is likely to feel that a standards document is both unnecessary and technically deficient, the deprecation inherent in this term may be directed as much against the standard as against the person who ought to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... attended it in company with my sister Fanny and my brother James who was my junior. Miss Forbes occasionally admitted boys to her school when accompanied by older sisters. Our life there was regulated in accordance with the strictest principles of learning and etiquette, and a child would have been deficient indeed who failed to acquire knowledge under the tuition of such an able teacher. School commenced promptly at eight o'clock and continued ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... indisposition had then prevented the intended conversation; but now, after the will had been examined, she received a summons, which she immediately obeyed, and became informed of circumstances, that powerfully affected her. As the narrative of the abbess was, however, deficient in many particulars, of which the reader may wish to be informed, and the history of the nun is materially connected with the fate of the Marchioness de Villeroi, we shall omit the conversation, that passed in the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... his father's fastidious taste, persistent tenacity, and crafty avarice, Paul is deficient in this cold-tempered power ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... courage and firmness." But four months later he was lamenting Washington's "fatal indecision," and by inference was calling him "a blunderer." In another month he wrote, "entre nous a certain great man is most damnably deficient." At this point, fortunately, Lee was captured by the British, so that his influence for the time being was destroyed. While a prisoner he drew up a plan for the English general, showing how America ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... the eye, and its associated phantasms, or memorial visions, under the name of IDEAS, are to be viewed as the effective materials of our Thoughts; such inference is directly confuted by the instances of those born blind, and continue through life without sight, and who must necessarily be deficient of such materials. If Thought be the result of any immediate spiritual dictation, which the difficulty of accounting for it without such mysterious agency, has led many to suppose: and of which we are not conscious, the responsibility of our species is ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... look of the queen-mother was the reply to this objection, which was by no means deficient in finesse; and both of them, almost sure of their victory, went to look for Maria-Theresa, who had been engaged, while awaiting their arrival, in endeavoring to disguise ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... propose to make the attack. He walked forward to a favorable place and took his stand. The position he assumed would have assured the casual observer that he knew something of the art in which his larger antagonist was deficient. ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... deficient in many respects. I have suffered bitter cold in the great chilly palace; at night one might break one's neck on the dark stone stairway; in some parts an ofttimes very foul and disgusting stench prevailed; ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... agricultural and mining sectors, a more favorable atmosphere for business initiatives, a more realistic exchange rate, fairly low inflation, and the continued support of international organizations. Chronic problems include a shortage of skilled labor and a deficient infrastructure. The government is juggling a sizable external debt against the urgent need for expanded public investment. The InterAmerican Development Bank in November 2006 canceled Guyana's nearly $400 million debt with the Bank. The bauxite mining sector should ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... remained in the utmost obscurity. According, however, to another authority, Bello confined him to the house for twelve months, and then a reconciliation took place between them. We are apt to speak of the sovereigns of barbarous and uncivilized nations as deficient in those virtues for which civilized sovereigns are or ought to be distinguished; but we suspect that few of the latter would have acted towards the usurper of his throne with the same magnanimity as was displayed ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... to surprise Sir Hugh Gough's camp and to retrieve a succession of disasters at a single stroke. The project was not without a chance of success, but it required prompt action and no hesitation in coming to close quarters—the two qualifications in which the Chinese were most deficient. So it was on this occasion. Ten or fifteen thousand Chinese braves suddenly appeared on the hills about two miles north of the English camp; but instead of seizing the opportunity created by the surprise at their sudden appearance and at the breach of armistice, and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... miles to the eastward of it, that Flinders succeeded in obtaining an interview with a party of natives; two of whom, he says, were of the great height of six feet three inches, but with features similar to those on the south and east coasts. They were deficient in two front teeth of the upper jaw; their hair was short but not curly; and with the exception of a fillet of network worn round the head of one of them, they had not a vestige of clothing. Two of the older men of the party, Flinders ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... properly to come together. Poor Leonore had a sickly childhood, and this rather, I believe, than nature, has given to her an unsteady and violent temper, and has unhappily sown the seeds of envy towards her more fortunate sisters. She is not deficient in deep feeling, but the understanding is sluggish, and it is extremely difficult for her to learn anything. All this promises no pleasure; rather the very opposite. The expression of her mouth, even in ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... how to properly prepare the kind of soup best adapted to the purpose has, no doubt, in a great measure, militated against its being more generally bestowed throughout the kingdom; and it is in order to supply that deficient knowledge, that I have determined on giving easy instructions for ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... which was undeniably true in this particular instance. This man who swore so steadily merely repeated, times without number and presumably with reference to the Germans, the unprettiest and at the same time the most familiar name of compounded opprobrium that our deficient language yields. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... does not seem to be familiar with the tests made by good authorities on square slabs of reinforced concrete and of cast iron, which latter material is also deficient in tensile strength. These tests prove quite conclusively that the maximum bending moment per linear foot may be calculated by the formulas, (w l^{2})/32 or (w l^{2})/20, according to the degree ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... I sympathize In his good fortune; and if you have seen me Deficient in the expressions; of that joy, Which such a victory might well demand, Attribute it to no lack of good will, For henceforth are our fortunes one. Farewell, And for your trouble take my thanks. Tomorrow The citadel shall be surrendered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a list of the medals recently struck in bronze from the dies of a public character in our possession. It will be seen that it is deficient in ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... what Etta said that you were a little eccentric and strong-minded, and I have such a dislike to that in young people; young ladies are so terribly independent at the present day, in my opinion, and I know the colonel thinks the same. They are sadly deficient in good manners and reverence. That is why I am so fond of the Hamilton girls: they are perfect young gentlewomen; they never talk slang or slip-shod English, and they know how to respect gray hairs. The colonel is devoted to Gladys: I tell him he is as ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... French minister proposed to the Genoese, that she should discharge the debt by sending six battalions to serve in Corsica for four years. The indignation which this conduct excited in all generous hearts was forcibly expressed by Rousseau, who, with all his errors, was seldom deficient in feeling for the wrongs of humanity. "You Frenchmen," said he, writing to one of that people, "are a thoroughly servile nation, thoroughly sold to tyranny, thoroughly cruel and relentless in persecuting the unhappy. If you knew of a freeman ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... parliament; and his grandson went to Oxford, and became the great leader of the Conservative party, although like Walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his adopted class were generally deficient. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and spoils; or it creates a new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixing it with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. In the former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original, the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two expressions, but with two different contents. "Ugly faithful ones or faithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with which every translator is faced. In aesthetic translations, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of Lycaste Skinneri similar changes were observed, as shown in the plan, fig. 47. Here the posterior sepal was deficient, the two lateral ones were present, one of them with a long tubular spur, o o; of the two lateral petals, i i, one was twisted out of place, so as partially to occupy the place of the deficient sepal; the lip was represented by two three-lobed segments, l, one above and within the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... scene of action few of Macdonald's followers were alive. Thus ended the career of Angus, younger of Glengarry, a chief to whom his followers looked up, and whom they justly regarded as a bold and intrepid leader, though deficient in prudence ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... reorganized several times and many of its best men had been siphoned off as leaders for new units. To compound these losses of experienced men, the battalion was constantly receiving large influxes of inexperienced and educationally deficient draftees and sometimes there was ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... working like horses, with Halbert for their constant companion, and, half an hour before dinner, would run whooping down to the river for their bathe, and then come in clean, happy, hungry—so full of life and youth, that in these sad days of deficient grinders, indigestion, and liver, I can hardly realize that once I myself was as full of blood and as active and hearty as ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... gentle, amiable creature, may be deficient in mental endowments, and destitute of fancy or sentiment; and you, perhaps a man of taste and talents, are inclined to think lightly of her. This is unjust, unkind and unwise. It is not, believe me, the woman most gifted by nature, or most stored with literary knowledge, who always makes ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... masterpieces of these two great poets. Libraries of considerable dimensions have been written in the way of commentaries upon, and expositions of, their notable works. Many of these books are, it is true, deficient in insight and possessed of very little power of interpretation or illumination; they are the products of a barren, dry-as-dust industry, which has expended itself upon external characteristics and incidental references. Nevertheless, the very volume and mass of these secondary books witness ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... blowing; a whale, too, very near Spitzbergen. When first Spitzbergen was discovered, in the good old times, there were whales here in abundance; then a hundred Dutch ships, in a crowd, might go to work, and boats might jostle with each other, and the only thing deficient would be stowage room for all the produce of the fishery. Now one ship may have the whole field to itself, and travel home with an imperfect cargo. It was fine fun in the good old times; there was no need to cruise. Coppers and ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... One sign of deficient taste in our day is this failure to perceive that every age has a charm of its own which can be enhanced by appropriate surroundings, but is lost when placed in an incongruous setting. It saddens a lover of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... came the building of palaces for kings, equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,—like the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... misspell, copying them several times in correct form. Concentrate your effort upon a few words at a time—upon those words which you yourself actually misspell. The list will be shorter than you think. It may comprise not more than twenty or thirty words. Unless you are extraordinarily deficient, it will certainly not comprise more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty. Find where your weakness lies; then master it. You can accomplish the difficult part of the task in a single afternoon. An occasional review, and constant care when you write, ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... time of its remaining has expired, becoming dilated in an extraordinary manner and so perfectly removed from the senses that they cannot injuriously affect it, retaining within itself a power and strength to eject the foetus, unless it be rendered deficient by any accident; and in such a case remedies must be applied by skilful hands to strengthen it, and enable it to perform its functions; directions for which will be given ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... pictures of later centuries are more easily appreciated by those who have not made a thoughtful study of Art, and they have consequently been more loudly praised and more generally sought for. The later works have attractive qualities in which the earlier are often deficient, and it is not until very recently that the real beauty and value of these first pictures of the revival have been felt with any due appreciation. The masters of the fourteenth, and of the greater part of the fifteenth century, did not, as we have said, paint pictures simply as objects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... President Wheelock says: "We have examined the youth you sent, and find them deficient in several parts of learning which the [Junior] class have made some proficiency in, viz., Mathematics, Geography, and parsing Greek. They have studied Tullie de Oratore, and Xenophon, and some in Homer, more than that class have done. On the whole I have concluded to take them into that ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... they praise than to him they slight. Nay, so far has this been carried, that some who never were out of the limits of this union have, by a kind of telescopical discernment, viewed Cooke and Kemble in comparison with their new favourite, and found them quite deficient. We cannot readily forget one circumstance: a person said to another in our hearing at the playhouse, "You have been in England, sir, don't you think Master Payne superior to young Betty?" "I don't know, sir, having never ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Continuator is one of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth Field, makes him fairly impartial; but he is sketchy and deficient in information. The more copious narrative of Polydore Vergil is far superior to these in literary ability, but of later date, and strongly Lancastrian in tone. For the struggle between Edward and Warwick, the valuable ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... not escape the notice of the French, who used at times generously to place under my command some of their field guns and howitzers, but in the latter they were also lamentably deficient, and in ammunition they were, themselves, during May and early June, none too well provided, although towards July their reserves grew more sufficient. The British deficiency in ammunition, however, was so great, and created so much merriment among the French that they christened ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... commander of the land force, Orontes, contrived very artfully to induce the rebels to make their submission. Artaxerxes was thus enabled to withdraw from the country without serious disaster, having shown in his short campaign that he possessed the qualities of a soldier, but was entirely deficient in ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... causes and effects, chronology is not a dry and mechanical compilation of barren dates, but the explanation of events and the philosophy of facts. And the publication of the Fasti Hellenici has thrown upon those times, in which an accurate chronological system can best repair what is deficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scanty authorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound and disciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to the richest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circumstances of the case, the conduct of the Whig Cabinet, in their final propositions, cannot be described as deficient either in boldness or prudence. The policy which they recommended was in itself a sagacious and spirited policy; but they erred in supposing that, at the period it was brought forward, any measure promoted by ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... griefs with the spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in Ulysses. The man who is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to himself, has certainly the better of the argument with the despairing Voice. The arguments of "that barren Voice" are, indeed, remarkably deficient in cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the discussion of its poetry. The original title, Thoughts of a Suicide, was inappropriate. The suicidal suggestions are promptly faced and confuted, and the mood of the author is throughout that of ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Camel, he was so frightened at his vast size that he ran away. After a time, perceiving the meekness and gentleness of the beast's temper, he summoned courage enough to approach him. Soon afterwards, observing that he was an animal altogether deficient in spirit, he assumed such boldness as to put a bridle in his mouth, and to let a child ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... think the Indian would, probably, even with proper discipline to bear, lack powers of concentration, with the kindred faculty of being able to direct the mind to the achieving or subserving of some one grand purpose or aim, and would, likely, be deficient in other allied ways, by which a gifted and powerful mind will be asserted; and would imagine, on the whole, that there is slight ground for thinking him capable, under the most favourable circumstances, of imperilling the eminence of the white in respect of intellectual ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the Council for the ensuing year," was by that very Council rejected, without even the ceremony of discussing its merits. Was every individual recommendation it contained, not merely unfit to be adopted, but so totally deficient in plausibility as to be utterly unworthy of discussion? Or did the President and his officers feel, that their power rested on an insecure foundation, and that they did not possess the confidence of the ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... into varied and vigorous play the chest and shoulders? Indeed, in almost the entire drill, are not these parts held immovably in one constrained position? In all but the cultivation of erectness, the military drill is singularly deficient in the requisites of a system of muscle-training adapted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... concerned, his pieces are generally simple, modeled as they are on the two and three-part form and that of the rondo. When he attempted works of large scope, where varied material had to be held together, he was lamentably deficient, e.g., in his Sonatas. In fact, even in such pieces as the Etudes and Scherzos, in the presentation of the material we find occasional blemishes. But there are so many other wonderful qualities that this weakness ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... struggles and his purposes. Don't suppose, however, that I lay claim to any great wisdom; after the last fortnight, that would be rather laughable. But I am capable of benefiting by experience, and very few men can truly say as much. It is on the practical side that I have hitherto been most deficient. I see my way to correcting that fault. Nothing could be better for me, just now, than electioneering work. It will take me out of myself, and give a rest to the speculative side of my mind. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... hour later the Battalion parades, and sets off, to the sound of music, in pursuit. (It is perhaps needless to state that although we are deficient in rifles, possess neither belts, pouches, nor greatcoats, and are compelled to attach, our scanty accoutrements to our persons with ingenious contrivances of string, we boast a fully equipped and highly efficient pipe band, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... observed to hand one Richard Still some guineas, which he took from a private drawer, and placed with the others on the table. Still was immediately followed, and on the examination of his money three of the guineas in his possession were deficient in weight. An inquiry was immediately instituted. Forty of the guineas in the charge of Guest looked fresher than the others upon the edges, and weighed much less than the legitimate amount. On searching his house ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... each person of a verb, singular and plural, join a noun, according to your taste or comic talent. Should you be deficient in the inventive faculty, apply for assistance to one of the senior boys, which, in consideration of your fagging for him, he will readily give you. If yourself a senior boy, apply to ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... only "a father," Old-fashioned and rather Deficient in stiffness of spine, So, feeling unequal To facing the sequel, My name I'm unwilling to sign; For the call for more powder Grows stronger and louder From every daughter of mine, And any restriction Of puffs or nose-friction Would end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... should have been settled; and Sir Thomas had felt, when Ralph had spoken of selling all that remained to him and of paying his debts, that there would be fresh trouble, and that he might be forced to own that he had been himself deficient. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... but pernicious fashion, that you will have to combat. But the truth is, that there ought to be no combat at all; this important matter ought to be settled and fully agreed on beforehand. If she really love you, and have common sense, she will not hesitate a moment; and if she be deficient in either of these respects; and if you be so mad in love as to be unable to exist without her, it is better to cease to exist at once, than to become the toiling and embarrassed slave of a wasting and ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... tendency to disease, although for the latter it is doubtful if the possession of any good qualities can fully compensate, it should be mated with one which excels in every respect in which the other is deficient, and on no account with one which is near of kin ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... lose this appendage when grown up (as do the Frogs and Toads). Most of them have naked skins, but a few living and many extinct forms have hard structures in the shape of scales developed in the integument. All of them have well-ossified skeletons, though some fossil types are partially deficient in this respect; and all of them which possess limbs at all have these appendages supported by bones essentially similar to those found in the limbs of the higher Vertebrates. All the Carboniferous Amphibians belong to a group which has now wholly ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... events over which no statesman could then have control overtook Canada, while as yet things bounded along gaily in the States, and the sons of despair seemed to have some ground for their pusillanimity. The harvest of 1885 was deficient, and agriculture was in consequence depressed: a slight panic in the Spring was succeeded by a great one in the Fall. Heavy failures followed. A feeling of uneasiness was caused at the same time by great social and political changes which were going on in the mother ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... wards again and again, and the average number of offspring to each one of them is probably three or four, although even six is not uncommon." In his work on Mental Deficiency (pp. 288-292) the same author shows that propagation by the mentally deficient is, in England, "both a terrible ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in their houses, stairs, and lanterns, I always find their reflectors, burners, windows, and light in general, ill attended to; and, therefore, I must insist on cleanliness throughout.' 'I find you very deficient in the duty of the high tower. You thus place your appointment as Principal Keeper in jeopardy; and I think it necessary, as an old servant of the Board, to put you upon your guard once for all at this time. I call upon you to recollect what was formerly and is ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cream-cakes. As regards this, however, a critical attitude would be inconsistent with a candid reference to the early annals of any biographer. Catherine was decidedly not clever; she was not quick with her book, nor, indeed, with anything else. She was not abnormally deficient, and she mustered learning enough to acquit herself respectably in conversation with her contemporaries, among whom it must be avowed, however, that she occupied a secondary place. It is well known that in New York it is possible for a young girl to ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... sort I shall mention are verbal critics—mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong.(6) These erudite persons constantly find out by anticipation that you are deficient in the smallest things—that you cannot spell certain words or join the nominative case and the verb together, because to do this is the height of their own ambition, and of course they must set you down lower than their opinion of themselves. They degrade by reducing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... exempted so large a proportion of the spirituality from episcopal jurisdiction, that, even had all the bishops been appointed on the principle of professional excellence, their power of restoring discipline would have been lamentably deficient. But in their appointment was evinced the most reckless prostitution of their sacred order. Not only was the selection of bishops made without reference to personal merit and individual fitness, whilst regard was had chiefly to high connexions ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Affairs do not scruple to affirm, than if the Kofirans had not been headed by a General prudent even to a Fault, not so much as a single Soldier would have been left to have given the Queen of Ghinoer an Account of their Expedition. This General so deficient in the ardent Bravery of his Country, was call'd Leosanil; he was afterwards disgraced, and though his Age was still fit for Military Functions, he was taken into the Cabinet, which was a fitter Theatre for his Abilities; for there being ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... father saw this, and I don't believe he had a regret when the slaves were free. Mother, it matters not what else you teach your daughters, if they have not an experience in doing the work themselves about a home, they are sadly deficient. It is not the soft, palefaced, painted, fashionable lady we want, for the world would be better without her; but the woman capable of knowing how, and willing to take a place in the home affairs of life. It is an ambition ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... dissimulation in her conduct be only the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She has been brought up a Catholic: had she been born an Englishwoman, and reared a Protestant, might she not have added straight integrity to all her other excellences? Supposing ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... to a partial rebuff, rather than make a bad matter worse by trying to save one's pride, is a rare wisdom. Still, Lombard might have exercised it at another time. But there are days when the magnetisms are all wrong, and a person not ordinarily deficient in tact, having begun wrong, goes on blundering like a schoolboy. Piqued at the sudden shock to the pleasant day-dream, in which he had fancied himself already virtually assured of this young lady,—a day-dream which she was not really accountable for spoiling, ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... gentleman's aspect, causing him, as compared with his head clerk, Dominic Iglesias—standing there patiently awaiting his further utterance—to be as is a cheap oleograph to a fine sketch in pen and ink. It may be taken as an axiom that, in body and soul alike, to be deficient in outline is a sad mistake. But of all these little facts and the result of them, Sir Abel was, needless ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... of our shortcomings has been the lamentable fact that some of our Officers have been deficient in ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the most perfect humour and irony is generally quite unconscious. Examples of both are frequently given by men whom the world considers as deficient in humour; it is more probably true that these persons are unconscious of their own delightful power through the very mastery and perfection with which they hold it. There is a play, for instance, of genuine fun in some of the more serious scientific and theological journals ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... possess the same color all through, if the filler, binder and wrapper are of the same shade of color. The finest-flavored cigars are those of a medium shade, between a light and a dark brown,—not so dark as to be of strong, rank taste, or so mild as to be deficient in a decided tobacco flavor, but simply possessing sufficient strength to ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... chew iron. They could masticate steel. They could grind up and swallow anything but tool-steel reinforced with diamond chips. The same amateur chemist worked it out that the surface soil of the planet Eire was deficient in iron and ferrous compounds. The dinies needed iron. They ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... benevolent neighbour, and an intelligent companion. In the performance of his religious duties he was regular and exemplary. Desirious of excelling in conversation, he was prone to evince an undue formality of expression. His poetry, occasionally deficient in power, is uniformly distinguished for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various |
