"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many, we know, and it is an absurd optimism which would ignore such facts because they are abnormal. The world is full of human abnormality, because it is not yet above the juvenile age of its growth, which is the age of feebleness and folly, disease and crime. The imperfect organism of childhood is incapable of resisting either temptation or disease. The twenty-five millions destroyed by the black death, in the fourteenth century, and the countless millions destroyed by war in all centuries, including the present, show how little we ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... as for instance the experimental, and again the philosophical; but that is because it is theology, not because of the gift of infallibility. But, as far as this goes, I think it could be shown that physical science on the other hand, or again mathematical, affords but an imperfect training for the intellect. I do not see then how any objection about the narrowness of theology comes into our question, which simply is, whether the belief in an infallible authority destroys the independence of the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... practice was not wholly confined to the poorer classes, for he was often consulted by well-dressed members of the foreign colony—on account, probably, of his linguistic attainments. A foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of English naturally prefers a doctor to whom he can speak in his own tongue. Therefore, as Weirmarsh spoke French, Italian and Spanish with equal fluency, it was not surprising that he had formed quite a large practice among ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... that knowledge that is acquired by the Actual Building of great Fabricks. These Two Parts are so necessary, that never any came to any great Perfection without them both. The one being lame and imperfect without the other, so they must walk ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... will not always be perfect literature; often it will be imperfect, especially in form. Yet the tale should be selected with the standards of literature guiding in the estimate of its worth and in the emphasis to be placed upon its content. Such relating of the tale to literary standards would make it quite impossible later in the primary grades when ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... hot fit of fever all the parts, which had acquired too great irritability, or associability, regain their natural degree of it; the disease is removed, and health restored. But if some of these parts do not regain their natural degree of these sensorial powers, the actions of those parts remain imperfect, and are more or less injurious to the system, according to the importance of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his books, De Usu Partium, as in Suarez's Meta- physicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... "Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more: By Sinol's death, I know I am thane of Glamis; But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman; and, to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief, No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of bitterness, fight, faction and jealousy is creating an opposition that will hold him and all others like him in check. And this opposition is well, for even a very imperfect society is forced to protect itself against dissolution and a condition which is worse. To take over the monopolies and operate them for the good of society is not enough, and not desirable either, so long as the ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... the freedom of the human will that it is inconsistent with God's foreknowledge of future events, and thus represents the Supreme Being as not omniscient, and in that particular finite and imperfect. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... phantasia]. Ut Carneades: see Sext. A.M. VII. 166 [Greek: ten te pithanen phantasian kai ten pithanen hama kai aperispaston kai diexodeumenen] (R. and P. 411). As the trans. of the latter phrase in Zeller 524 "probable undisputed and tested" is imperfect, I will give Sextus' own explanation. The merely [Greek: pithane] is that sensation which at first sight, without any further inquiry, seems probably true (Sext. A.M. VII. 167—175). Now no sensation is ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in this volume, were written for the pulpit, in the usual manner of preparation for such labor, without any expectation of their appearing in print. The author is but too sensible that they are imperfect in many features, both in matter and style. It is only in the hope that they will be of some benefit to the class to whom they are addressed, that he has consented to submit them to public perusal. He has aimed at nothing ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... 250 Patten Greening, 300 Northwestern Greening, 1,000 Wealthy. Were I to set another commercial orchard of the same size it would contain 500 Duchess and the balance Wealthy. While the Patten Greening is an ideal tree and an early and prolific bearer, there is with us a much larger per cent of imperfect and diseased fruit than of any other variety. Tree for tree, I believe the Duchess will ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... attacks of neighbours who had not advanced beyond that early stage of humanity in which warfare was chronic and normal. During the historic period, the wars of Europe have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society, or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of large political aggregates. There have been three ways in which great political bodies have arisen. The earliest and lowest method was that of conquest without incorporation. A single powerful ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... B is merely A turned upside down and viewed with the imperfect appreciation of the mere ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Jacob Kurtz's, where I have the pleasure of meeting again the dear family that showed me so much kindness two years ago. Stay fifteenth and sixteenth nights here. If the meeting with those we love, and a brief stay with them, can give us so much joy here in our imperfect state, what will be the measure of our joy when we meet in that world where all is perfection, and partings are known no more! "In his presence there is fullness of joy: and at his right hand there are ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and the flesh of a child, though very delicate and tender, wears out many clothes, whilst it daily grows stronger. If this renewing of spirits were perfect, it would be real immortality, and the gift of eternal youth. But the same being imperfect, the animal insensibly loses his strength, decays and grows old, because everything that is created ought to bear a mark of nothingness from which it was ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... much to ask whether I still consider my philosophy as sufficient, and whether it be so, as whether or not I am still a man, and therefore a mixed and imperfect being. But if you desire the assurance, I can answer you, and say that I am but a man, and therefore notwithstanding my philosophy subject to infirmity and to assaults from the body, which undoubtedly occasion me some distress. But ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Royal Library at Brussels, the second in the Royal Irish Academy Collection (M. 23, 50, pp. 109-120), and the third in possession of Professor Hyde. As the second and third enumerated are copies of one imperfect exemplar it has not been thought necessary to collate both with the Brussels MS. which has furnished the text here printed. M. 23, 50 (R.I.A.) has however been so collated and the marginal references initialled B are to that imperfect copy. The latter, by the way, is in the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... best possible way, and in a logical sequence. Such evils do not invalidate or destroy the force of our assertion that social order is derived from and is based upon the order of nature. Although savage passions, excited by an imperfect understanding of the truth, do from time to time cause the overthrow of given societies, and arouse the horror and alarm of pessimist votaries of myth, nature is not thereby overcome; she still triumphs, and restores the order which has been interrupted, so far as ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... as quasi-psychical, or in some measure similar to the mental part of ourselves; and I have gone on to conclude that this Power may be identical with what men have, in all times and by the aid of various imperfect symbols, endeavoured to apprehend as Deity. [12] We are thus led to a view of things not very unlike the views entertained by Spinoza and Berkeley. We are led to the inference that what we call the material universe is but the manifestation of infinite ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the dumfounded, hysterical crowd. Here some one was shouting command to imaginary militia; there an aged crone was offering, without price, simnels and black butter, as a sort of propitiation for an imperfect past; and from a window a notorious evil-liver was frenziedly crying that she had heard the devil and his Rocbert witches revelling in the prison dungeons the night before. Thereupon a long-haired fanatic, once a barber, with a gift for mad preaching, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man who had not been a good man because he had never had a chance, who had never really earned his spurs as a Western badman, because he was of too small calibre, who was after all a vessel that had come imperfect from the hands of the potter. Now Jimmie answered, his voice hushed, his eyes wide, his ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... had seen no machine in the air above them. The use of machines for more local needs, such as artillery ranging, hastened the recognition of the services rendered by the Flying Corps, and brought it into closer touch with the other arms. Photographic cameras and fittings were still very imperfect, and photography from the air was not much practised, but sketch-maps of enemy trenches and gun-pits, as located by air reconnaissances, were issued by Headquarters during the battle of Ypres. Good work was done in directing the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... external world, and proceed straight to the object of our desires, without almost ever thinking of this medium, our own material frame, unaided by which none of these things could be accomplished. In this sense we may properly be said to be spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are enabled to ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... clear, shallow eyes, 'I think Lisa has earned her freedom, and the right to ask a Christmas gift of you. Stand on the other side of the cot and put your hand in mine. I ask you for the last time, will you give this unfinished, imperfect life into my keeping, if I promise to be faithful to it unto the end, whatever it ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... love, the caressing grace of the language which describes the spiritualised beauty of Emily Hood and the exquisite charm of her slender hands, and the silvery radiance imparted to the whole scene of the proposal in the summer-house (in chapter iii., 'Lyrical'), give to this most unequal and imperfect book a certain crepuscular fascination of its own. Passages in it, certainly, are not undeserving that fine description of a style si tendre qu'il pousse le bonheur a pleurer. Emily's father, Mr. Hood, is an essentially ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... glittering and imperfect brightness, about four bells in the first watch we made our third atoll, Raraka. The low line of the isle lay straight along the sky; so that I was at first reminded of a towpath, and we seemed to be mounting some engineered and navigable stream. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the purport and effect of the communications which passed between Her Majesty and myself, in respect to certain appointments in the household, which are held by Ladies. Now, whatever blame may attach on account of imperfect explanations, I am content to bear it; whatever consequences may result from misconception, let them be visited on me; but, as to my intentions in regard to the Ladies of the household, I must not only state them, but I must prove them by ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... had but an imperfect knowledge of this part of the world, imagined here those "vast insular tracts" mentioned in the beginning of this treatise. Hence Pliny, also, says of the Baltic sea (Codanus sinus), that "it is filled with islands, the most famous of which, Scandinavia (now Sweden and Norway), is of an undiscovered ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... necessary to plan a social order in which all men shall work without overworking and support all women during the best years of the child-bearing and child-rearing span. If men had been clever enough to make even an imperfect attempt to protect women without independent means from the terrors of life, say by taxing themselves, they would not be pestered to-day with the demand for equal rights, see themselves menaced in nearly all of the remunerative industries ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from those in other cases where the conditions had been ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... coating may also act, by reason of its conductivity, as a sort of equalizer or dampener of the bombardment against the stem. To be explicit, I assume the action as follows: Suppose a rhythmical bombardment to occur against the conducting tube by reason of its imperfect action as a screen, it certainly must happen that some molecules, or atoms, strike the tube sooner than others. Those which come first in contact with it give up their superfluous charge, and the tube is electrified, the electrification instantly spreading over its ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... Sage, with unaccountable bluntness; "truth to tell, these orations about nothing in particular, spouted by persons with an imperfect knowledge of, I should say, almost any ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... wholesome want the fancy of man conceives, have a striking instance in the case of orchids. At the beginning of this century, the science of floriculture, so far as it went, was at least as advanced as now. Under many disadvantages which we escape—the hot-air flue especially, and imperfect means of ventilation—our fore-fathers grew the plants known to them quite as well as we do. Many tricks have been discovered since, but for lasting success assuredly our systems are no improvement. Men interested ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... them out of the produce of the land. Without entering here upon the important effect of the corn supplies from America, and of the depreciation of the value of the Norwegian timber, owing to the increased competition of America and other countries, we may sum up this imperfect prefatory sketch by stating that, from a general point of view, the Gamle Norge (Old Norway) of Mr. Laing's days has for many years been passing through a process of transformation, the latest results of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... than the pistol and binoculars were his books, an oddly assorted library that included the child's pictorial history already mentioned, Dryden's translation of the Iliad, an imperfect copy of The Three Musketeers, and The Descent of Man. These, indeed, made up the full list of books belonging to the keep, and Constans had been permitted to appropriate them, nobody else caring to waste time over ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... it, if I could," said the other prince, in much slower, and more imperfect English. "It grieves me much. My purse has little, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nobility of thought, and all beauty of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up. Then the dexterous management of a few individuals, base or dull, was the only means of success. But we live in a different age: there are popular sympathies, however imperfect, to appeal to; we must recur to the high primeval practice, and address nations now as the heroes, and prophets, and legislators of antiquity. If you wish to free your country, and make the Syrians a nation, it is ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Latin nationalities conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand on a footing of equality—restricted, it is true, and imperfect— with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter. The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will pass into a bilingual state and the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... opportunities and possibilities throughout the entire course of life. The mere acquisition of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again, intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men of scholarly ability and of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... with our extracts from Miss Mannering's letters, which throw light upon natural good sense, principle, and feelings, blemished by an imperfect education and the folly of a misjudging mother, who called her husband in her heart a tyrant until she feared him as such, and read romances until she became so enamoured of the complicated intrigues which they contain as to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were as vehement as had been his entreaties, which yet, however, were not at an end; the concession she had made was imperfect, unless its performance were immediate, and he now endeavoured to prevail with her to be his before the expiration of ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of the above-mentioned conditions is the nature of the crop itself. Our knowledge of the requirements of the different farm crops is still very imperfect. A very wide experience, however, of the effect of different manures on different crops, has conclusively proved that their manurial requirements differ very considerably. The subject is complicated by other considerations, such as the nature of the soil, &c.; but ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Gulf of Carpentaria? Then there was that piece of country discovered by the Dutchman Tasman, and named Van Diemen's Land. Was it an island, or did it join on to New Holland? There were also many islands of the Pacific still to be explored and correctly charted, the map of Eastern Asia was imperfect, and the whole of the coastline of North-Western ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... this qualification was so slight that it excluded very few people, and no one who had any consideration in the city. Aristocratic families should belong to the people as much as possible. The more an aristocracy resembles a democracy, the more perfect it is. The most imperfect of all is that in which the lower classes are ground down ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the movements of this class of armed craft. An immense number of anecdotes of their prowess is current, and some few such narratives will be repeated in this chapter; but, as a rule, they are based only upon tradition, or the imperfect and often incorrect reports in the newspapers of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... to mark how trifling a thing will sometimes connect, arrange, and render clear as day to the mind all that has before been vague, imperfect, and indistinct. It is like the touch of lightning on an electric chain, link after link starts up till we see the illumined whole. We have said Nigel had never heard the particulars of the tradition; but he looked on that misshapen plank, and in an instant ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the empire have made visible progress in their educational system, although it is yet in a very imperfect state. In the middle of the last century a body of Armenian monks formed a society for promoting the educational interests of their countrymen. These pious and benevolent men dwell alone on the little island of San Lazzaro, and publish works on literature, science, and religion, which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... influence of no worse motives or passions than usually actuate man in a civilised state, we ought in fairness to suppose that sufficient provocative for retaliation has been given in those few instances of revenge, which, our imperfect knowledge of the circumstances attending them does not enable us satisfactorily to account for. In considering this question honestly, we must take into account many points that we too often lose sight ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... manner described." So far, Pennant versus Pownall! "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The opinion of both these antiquarians is liable to demur. Governor Pownall might probably be a better judge of military defences than Pennant; but he evidently forms his notions of defence with imperfect knowledge of the forts, which would have amply sufficed for the warfare of the ancient Britons; and moreover, he was one of those led astray by Bryant's crotchets as to "High places," etc. What appears most probable is, that the place was both carn and fort; ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster's jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... beneath a tree in Adventure Bay, were found by Captain Bunker, of the Venus, in 1809, to which he was directed by the words, still legible, "dig underneath;" and supposed, from his imperfect knowledge of the language, that they were left by Perouse. In this he was mistaken: they were deposited by D'Entrecasteaux, at his second visit. Bent's Almanack, 1828, adopted Bunker's mistake: it was copied by Mr. Widowson, who adds—"these letters were dated one month after his departure ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... seems to be quoted from the first imperfect edition of "The Spanish Tragedy;" in the later (corrected) impression it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... interesting subject will probably engage your [the Assembly's] deliberations.... Considered merely as an instrument denning the powers and duties of magistrates and rulers, the Charter may justly be considered as unprovisional and imperfect. Yet it ought to be recollected that what is now its greatest defect was formerly a pre-eminent advantage, it being then highly important to the people to acquire the greatest latitude of authority with an exemption from British ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with $200 in his pocket, joined the Carpenter's Union, and tried to make a living at that trade. Between dull business, lock-outs, tie-ups, ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... my lecture on geography, which, though very imperfect, has yet exceeded the usual limits of our lessons; many interesting circumstances relating to the various countries I have mentioned, have been entirely omitted, as I was fearful that by telling you too much on the subject ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... the imperfect code of human justice under which we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the Consolidated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... devised against Atheists by Des Cartes, and drawn from the Idea's of our Mind, examin'd and found imperfect and invalid. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... One has an impression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three inches wide, on the map; Switzerland only a few more inches away. These sizable masses of salt are described in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 3-3-239, as "essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt." As to occurrence with hail—that can in one, or ten, or twenty, instances be ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... improving the social condition of rabbits, some time before he could conveniently raise himself to a level with the hutch in which three of them, jointly belonging to himself and his brother, abode. His theory was consummate; in practice, however, it proved imperfect,—and great wrath on the part of Richard Gray, and much confusion and disappointment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... repeated the verses, he laid a sharp accent upon every word and every imperfect rhyme; scanned every line with stern precision. Sometimes when he came to a false Alexandrine, he gave himself the appearance of being absolutely unable to force his lips to utter such barbarisms; and then his eyes glowed with malicious fire, and a contemptuous smile ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... exits; it is generally covered by a few feet in thickness of sandy earth; and in some places, according to M. Parchappe, by beds of clay two yards thick. (M. d'Orbigny "Voyage" Part Geolog. pages 47, 48.) On the banks of the Sauce, four leagues S.E. of the Ventana, there is an imperfect section about two hundred feet in height, displaying in the upper part tosca-rock and in the lower part red Pampean mud. At the settlement of Bahia Blanca, the uppermost plain is composed of very compact, stratified tosca-rock, ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... negatively. Thus, the birth-mark of creation must have been an inclination towards folly, and from purity. The mere idea of creatures would involve, as its great need-be, the qualifying clause that these emanations from perfection be imperfect; and that these children of purity be liable to grow unpure. They must either be thus natured, or exist of the essence of God, that is, be other persons and phases of the Deity: such a case was possible certainly; but, as we have already shown, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I am sorry to say, has been interrupted and imperfect, very necessarily the last from the ignorance I have just confessed of more than one segment of the great illuminated field of early religious art, to which the writer most wisely has directed equal ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... turn the light of common sense on to these most imperfect, confused and few facts which Gildas gives us. What sort of thing would a middle-aged man, writing in the decline of letters and with nothing but poor and demonstrably distorted verbal records to go by, set down with regard to a piece of warfare, if (a) that man were a monk and a man of peace, (b) ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... was disappointed too. At any rate, many complaints of smashed dishes, imperfect wiping, and inadequate sweeping of corners reached Miss Bowes, who urged patience, harangued the culprit, and shook her head, half laughing and half sighing, over the domestic catastrophes. Though strictly confined to the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... travel alone in so dreary a place, adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and trying her courage ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... not unlike other municipal councils—its members honest for the greater part, but many of them men who followed old traditions, and believed that quiet things should not be moved. For many years they had lived under a system of accepting the imperfect, and never attempting to make it more perfect. Of these easy-going, self-satisfied gentlemen Councillor Garnett was ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or right ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... book to Theophilus whose title, "most excellent," indicates that he is a man of rank and official position, one to whom an author would not venture to present hasty, imperfect, and inaccurate work, especially when the one addressed had been instructed already in reference ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... conscious that while I have taxed your patience, I have given but an imperfect presentation of the subject. If this endeavor shall serve to incite members of the Club to investigate the subject for themselves, my object will have ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... Perceval), Professeur of Arabic at the Imperial Library, who edited Galland in 1806, tells us that he found there only two MSS., both imperfect. The first (Galland's) is in three small vols. 4to. each of about pp. 140. The stories are more detailed and the style, more correct than that of other MS., is hardly intelligible to many Arabs, whence he presumes that it contains the original ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... up the group better than the conventional nimbus could have done. The fair-haired Virgin, draped entirely in blue with a white veil, recalls vividly the same figure in the Paumgaertner altarpiece. Aerial and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in Duerer's best pictures of the later period. The outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... teach him to change it are generally almost fruitless. The entire race are any thing but docile. They are tamed, so as to obey the bridle, only with great difficulty; and their obedience is rather imperfect, at best. Bingley mentions one which was brought from the Cape of Good Hope to the tower of London, in 1803, who was more docile and kindly disposed than most of the species. When in pretty good humor, this ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... greatly obliged if I could obtain through "N. & Q." when, where, and by whom an imperfect black-letter copy of the New Testament, lately come into my possession, was printed, and also who was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... malignity, until their unhappy carcasses are covered with ghastly wounds and frightful contusions? Who can reflect on these things when applying the case to himself, without being chilled with horror, at circumstances so extremely shocking?—Yet hideous as this concise and imperfect description is, of the sufferings sustained by many of our slaves, it is nevertheless true; and so far from being exaggerated, falls infinitely short of a thousand circumstances of distress, which have been recounted by different writers on the subject, and which contribute to make their situation ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... carelessness in not altering her will, but had reminded Miss Marsh that she should be grateful to her late employer for having had such kindly intentions toward her, vaguely ending her remarks with the statement that as her dear husband had always said in this imperfect world one had often to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... mean there is no necessity of our perfection, of our personal perfection, as to our justification, and that we are justified without it; yea, that that, in justified persons, remains. Again; when I say that justification will stand with imperfection, I do not mean that in our justification we are imperfect; for in that we are complete; 'we are complete in him' who is our justice. (Col 2:10) If otherwise, the imperfection is in the matter that justifieth us, which is the righteousness of Christ. Yea, and to say so would conclude that wrong ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... turned in a sudden nervous impatience foreign to her. "Howard Quarrier is too perfectly imperfect for me. I'm glad I've said it. The things he knows about and doesn't know have been a revelation in this last week with him. There is too much surface, too much exterior admirably fashioned. And inside is all clock-work. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sufficiently obvious. It was to honor the memory of the writer's excellent father-in-law, Agricola (cf. Sec. 3: honori Agricolae, mei soceri, destinatus). So far from apologizing for writing the life of so near a friend, he feels assured that his motives will be appreciated and his design approved, however imperfect may be its execution; and he deems an apology necessary for having so long delayed the performance of that filial duty. After an introduction of singular beauty and appropriateness (cf. notes), he sketches a brief outline of the parentage, education, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... will not undertake to answer your theology, but since I am more ready to apprehend evil than to believe in good, I will entreat you to address to me no more such words as lead you to esteem but lightly those who are wont to believe them. I very well know that I am a woman like any other and imperfect, and that virtue would do a greater thing by transforming me into itself than by assuming my form—unless, indeed, it would fain pass unrecognised through the world, for in such a garb as mine its real nature could never be known. Nevertheless, my lord, with all my imperfections, I have ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... did Stubbs, with a good ear and voice, but an imperfect acquaintance with the music. Leon and the guitar were equal to the situation. The actor dispensed his throat-notes with prodigality and enthusiasm; and, as he looked up to heaven in his heroic way, tossing the black ringlets, it seemed to ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the rough, careless, imperfect record which I have kept of my life. As I run my fingers through the pages of the limp morocco-covered volume, I almost wonder at my wasted labour;—the random notes, jotted down now and then, sometimes with long intervals between their dates, make such a mass of worthless literature. This diary-keeping ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... is! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, when they're new to the business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes that out of 'em. Why, I originally come into ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Austria. Her representations will be of no use: you may stake all you have on that; and eventually, since she will be unable to draw back she, too, will begin in her slow, cumbrous manner, hampered by those immense distances and her imperfect railway system, to mobilise also. Then will Germany, already quite prepared, show her hand. She will demand that Russia shall cease mobilisation, and again will Russia refuse. That will set the military machinery of France going. All the time the governments of Europe will be working for peace, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire tree-top—the tops of several trees—and all in full song. Suddenly—in a moment—at absolutely the same instant—all spring into the air and fly away. How? They ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... emperor of Russia, son of the Czar Alexei, born at Moscow; succeeded his half-brother Feodor in 1682, but was forced for a time to share the throne with his half-sister Sophia, acting as regent for her brother Ivan; conscious of his imperfect education, he chose a Genoese named Lefort as his preceptor, and after some years' careful training he deposed Sophia, and entered Moscow as sole ruler in 1689; with the help of Lefort and Patrick Gordon, a Scotsman, he proceeded to raise and discipline an army on the European model, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... youths between sixteen and nineteen came up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on their slates and were now required to calculate "off-hand"—a test which they stood with such imperfect success that Bartle Massey, whose eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... seem faintly to greet her ear. How she longed for her mate to return, that he might enjoy, with her, this new happiness! When husband and wife love each other, as they should, all pleasure must be shared, or it will still be imperfect. She waited, almost impatiently for his coming; and when he alighted on the honeysuckle, she looked so full of grateful joy, that he knew that something more than usual must have occurred. He affectionately kissed her bill, and then, ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... powerful disposition in Bob Corkey and Simon O'Rook to argue. Though the arguing never quite degenerated into quarrelling, and the quarrelsome men never absolutely came to blows, their tendencies made this coral paradise imperfect. ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Cecilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to the wise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to complete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we should otherwise have desired. For instance, here ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the imperative mood; self, first person singular; mind, imperfect tense; eyes, positive; voice, in the superlative degree; ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... freely under her imperfect sail and with the roof she carried, and a moment of painful anxiety succeeded. Paul managed, however, to get a part of the sail aback, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... that their gods belonged to a finite race. The AEsir had had a beginning; therefore, it was reasoned, they must have an end; and as they were born from a mixture of the divine and giant elements, being thus imperfect, they bore within them the germ of death, and were, like men, doomed to suffer physical death in order to attain ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... (1698) and, much later, In "The Stage Defended" (1726). But, Vanbrugh is casual, Dennis is slow witted, and it is only by comparison with the triviality of D'Urfey or the contemptuous disingenuity of Congreve's "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations" (1698) that they ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions; nor could he of himself discover any solution ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... easily got to believe that the picture brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood's drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he was represented in the painting, with the same periwig, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... martyr St. Vitus. We may therefore ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus's dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly-coloured descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... knowledge of a future Life, than they were without it, to seek to attone the Divine Wrath by such ways as would inevitably draw on a neglect of conformity to his Law. Whereas Christianity doth provide against both these Mistakes, in that it assures us that God will accept of our imperfect Obedience for the sake of his Son, if we believe in him, and withal sincerely indeavour to obey him; whereby Faith does plainly not make void, but establish the Law, it laying the highest Obligation as well as Encouragement that is possible upon Men to do their ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... enamel was cracked, and I followed every crack as well as every figure of the hours. Then I began to wonder what I could do with it next. I was not satisfied. Possession I found was not bliss: it had not rendered me content. But it was as yet imperfect: I had not seen the inside. Grannie had told me not to open it: I began to think it hard that I should be denied thorough possession of what had been given to me, I believed I should be quite satisfied if I once saw what made it go. I turned it over and over, thinking I might at least find ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... must trust to sense, to furnish the data of knowledge, and reason will suitably combine them. In this the affinity of Zeno to Aristotle is plainly seen. Every appetite, lust, desire, springs from imperfect knowledge. Our nature is imposed upon us by Fate, but we must learn to control our passions, and live free, intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason. Our existence should be intellectual, we should survey with equanimity ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... situated within five minutes' walk of the Great Pyramid, and happily possessed of a golfing-ground and a marble swimming- bath. That ubiquitous nuisance, the "amateur photographer," can there have his "dark room" for the development of his more or less imperfect "plates"; and there is a resident chaplain for the piously inclined. With a chaplain and a "dark room," what more can the aspiring soul of the modern tourist desire? Some of the rooms at the Mena House are small and stuffy; others large and furnished with sufficient ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... I have observed before, delighted in discrimination of character, and having a masterly knowledge of human nature, was willing to take men as they are, imperfect and with a mixture of good and bad qualities, I suppose though he had said enough in defence of his friend, of whose merits, notwithstanding his exceptional points, he had a just value; and added no ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... which these events are said to have occurred was some sixty or eighty years ago, according to the imperfect chronology of my informant. At first, I hesitated to believe that such horrible deeds as those recorded could have taken place almost within the memory of men. My Indian narrator replied—"Indians, no Christians in those days, do worse ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the author extend to irreligious and immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law; to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will be obliged to register; and, recognized ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... on the presence of Omniscience; Think on the punishments with which the church Threatens imperfect and reserved confessions This is the sin to everlasting death, For this is sinning 'gainst ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... If, on reading this imperfect narrative,[7] any persons beyond the immediate circle of my companions in misery (for within it I can safely declare that there were no indications of ridicule) should affect to despise, as contemptible or unsoldierlike, the humble devotional ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... risk, and the authority which he was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who was proving false to a similar sacred charge,—all these admirable traits are most miserably transmitted to you by my imperfect account; and when I assure you that his own narrative, full as it necessarily was of the details of his own heroism, was as simple, modest, and unpretending, as it was interesting and touching, I am sure ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of 4 feet becomes an almost certain failure. As to the longitudinal fracture, not only is the tile subject to be broken by one of those slips which are so troublesome in deep draining, and to which the lightly-filled material, even when the drain is completed, offers an imperfect resistance, but the constant pressure together of the sides, even when it does not produce a fracture of the soil, catches hold of the feet of the tile, and breaks it through the crown. When the Regent's Park was first ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... till it hit the Mark, And all the Truth was told. Then Sage and Shah Struck out with Hand and Foot in his Redress. And First with Reason, which is also Best; Reason that rights the Retrograde—completes The Imperfect—Reason that unties the Knot: For Reason is the Fountain from of old From which the Prophets drew, and none beside. Who boasts of other Inspiration lies— There are no other ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unusually tall or unusually short. A middle-sized man was perfectly safe from recognition, so long as he did not speak and could keep his equipments. Those who did speak altered their voices, as we soon found, using a jargon that was intended to imitate the imperfect English of the native owners of the soil. Although neither of us had ever seen one of the gang before, we knew these disturbers of the public peace to be what in truth they were, the instant our eyes fell on them. One could not well be mistaken, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... long and justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... and inability even to read the Greek alphabet were hindrances, he picked up a little mathematics and heard the lectures of the great Dr. Beattie. His powers of talk and his knowledge of London life atoned for his imperfect education. He saw something of Aberdeen society; admired and danced with the daughters of baillies, and was even tempted at times to forget his passion for Anne Stent, who had sent a chilling answer to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... with Dutch-speaking children; either they would have to devote a great deal more time to the study of Dutch in the first three years so as to be able to receive all instruction in that tongue, or they would suffer in the higher standards through their imperfect knowledge of the medium of instruction. It was not to be supposed that the Uitlanders, after an experience extending over a decade and a half of all sorts of promises, not one of which had been kept in the spirit in which it was intended to be construed, would consent to abandon their scheme ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... As for prophecies they shall come to an end. As for tongues they shall cease. As for knowledge it also shall come to an end; for we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect shall ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... those which we have mentioned. The sources of our information on the subject are so few and scanty, and the notices from which we derive our knowledge for the most part so casual, that we may be sure what is preserved is but a most imperfect record of what was—fragments of wreck recovered from the sea of oblivion. It may have been a Phoenician caravan route which Herodotus describes as traversed on one occasion by the Nasamonians,[993] which began in North Africa and terminated with the Niger ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... vegetation, formed a boundary to the view. The shore is lined by a barrier of sharp rocks, covered with species of ostrea and nerita, but although these were the only living testaceous animals that were found, the beach was covered with a multitude of dead and imperfect shells ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... occasions, but it was to be exempt from the hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property and, encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies, to animate society. But in those dark ages, force was necessary to defend the claims of industry; ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... supposed that an impression from plate would [v.03 p.0320] be more easily photographed than one from surface where only a film of ink is spread upon the top of the raised lines. But surface-printing being much less sharp and distinct than plate-printing, imperfect copies of notes for which that process is used are the more likely to escape detection. The plates upon which the early notes were engraved being of copper quickly wore out and had to be constantly replaced. The result was great difference ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... you off, and by a noble resolution have freed this slave within' (striking her breast) 'from a tyranny which it should disdain to suffer under:' with that she raged about the chamber with broken words and imperfect threatenings, unconsidered imprecations, and unheeded vows and oaths; at which Antonet redoubled her petition to know the cause; and she replied—'Philander! The dear, the soft, the fond and charming Philander is now no more the same. O, Antonet,' ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... any of his predecessors, whose productions, on religious themes especially, striking as many of them are, with situations and motives of the deepest effect, are not sustained at the same impressive elevation, nor disposed with that consummate judgment which leaves nothing imperfect or superfluous in the dramas of Calderon. 'The Constant Prince' and 'The Physician of his own Honour', which Mr. Mac-Carthy has translated, are noble instances representing two extremes of ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... by the curate, and Rachel was with difficulty withheld from an explosion; but even this was less annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday morning, that, in the midst of her lesson, carried off the chief of her scholars to practise their chants. Moreover, the blame of all imperfect lessons was laid on the "singing for the parson," and all faults in the singing by the tasks for Miss Rachel; and one night, the excellent Zack excused his failure in geography by saying that Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and said that it was no better than sacrilege, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tire you, look around you! What contrasts of figures and faces you see in the crowd! What a vast field for the exercise of meditation! A half-seen glance, or a few words caught as the speaker passes by, open a thousand vistas to your imagination. You wish to comprehend what these imperfect disclosures mean, and, as the antiquary endeavors to decipher the mutilated inscription on some old monument, you build up a history on a gesture or on a word! These are the stirring sports of the mind, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Father, beholding Ubi nos in filii sui communionem us in the body of His Son Christ semel recepit, opera Jesus, accepts our imperfect nostra grata acceptaque habet, obedience as it were perfect. non quod ita promereantur sed quia condonata eorum imperfectione, nil in illis intuetur, nisi quod a Spiritu suo profectum, ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... was wholly unconscious of having given offence. It would have been difficult to make him understand what there was objectionable in his remark, and indeed the offence lay more in the tone than in the words. Flint's sympathies were imperfect, and he had no gift for discerning the sensitiveness which lay outside his sphere of vision. To all that came within that rather limited range, he was kind and considerate; beyond, he saw nothing and therefore ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... writer of the 3rd century, wrote a curious miscellany of a book entitled "Deipnosophistae, or the Suppers of the Learned," extant only in an imperfect state. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... after my business among his people. After listening, through my interpreter, to my answers to his questions, he turned from me and honored me no further. I call the Seminole communicative, because most with whom I spoke were eager to talk, and, as far as they could with the imperfect means at their disposal, to give me the information I sought. "Doctor Na-ki-ta" (Doctor What-is-it) I was playfully named at the Cat Fish Lake settlement; yet the people there were seemingly as ready ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... not a human being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolical poem like Faust, but in a purely human drama like Othello he would be a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in Othello: he is a product of imperfect observation and analysis. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... bottles for the new wine." The opening prayer is recited by everybody present standing. It is rather an act of adoration and faith than a prayer, properly so called. It represents, in fact, the placing of the soul in the presence of God. The mortal turns to the eternal; the ignorant and imperfect look away from themselves to the knowledge and perfection of the All-Holy. It is Elsmere's drawing up, I imagine—at any rate it is essentially modern, expressing the modern spirit, answering to modern need, as I imagine the first Christian ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... elements. These lowest forms of animal life then entered upon a series of evolutionary growth, each lower form evolving one a little more complex, each series gaining the use of and developing organs which existed essentially in the lower form but were small, imperfect, and useless, because not needed. Thus the hand and arm in man are structurally or essentially the same as the leg of the brute, the wing of the bird, the flipper of the whale, and the fin of the fish; and the endeavor to adapt itself ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... afraid I have sometimes neglected it, mother," he acknowledged with a sigh, "and at others performed it in a very halting and imperfect way. But as you know—for I could not keep from you such gladness as the knowledge of that fact brought me—I have been privileged to win some souls to Christ—smooth some dying pillows—and to lead some recovering ones to devote their spared lives and ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... hands rushed to the sides. Some leaped into one boat, some into another. Almost immediately the boats were swamped, and I had the misery to see the poor fellows drowned before my eyes. I alone remained on deck. The ship floated longer than I expected, and I had time to lash together the imperfect raft on which you found me, get it overboard, and to leap upon it, and with only a few biscuits which I stuffed into my pockets and a bottle of water. Had I not taken them I must have perished. How I could have existed for a whole week, as I did, I know not; but I must have been ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... among the people the men of energy who incite the masses to insurrection. By opening out in this way to the public ambition paths that are at once difficult and easy, easy for strong wills, difficult for weak or imperfect ones, a State averts the perils of the revolutions caused by the struggles of men of superior powers to rise to their proper level. Our long agony of forty years should have made it clear to any man who has brains that social superiorities are ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac |
