"Imperfectly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infringed the company's mandate by lighting a cigar, and I, finding him disinclined for talk, did the same thing, and watched the passing country. Flat and uninteresting at first, it consisted of a mere sandy plain, treeless, hedgeless, and imperfectly cultivated with struggling strips of corn and vegetables. By and by came a line of stunted pollards, a hamlet, and a little dreary cemetery. Then the landscape improved. The straight line of the horizon broke into gentle undulations; the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... woodsman's trained eye rested on a broken twig and a bit of bruised bark at the edge of a near-by thicket. Stepping to the place and parting the bushes, he uttered a cry of joy. There, bottom-side up, and imperfectly concealed, as though in great haste, lay the canoe in which he had so recently journeyed. Beneath it he found a rifle that had belonged to the paymaster, as well as most of his luggage, which included a good ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to take the initiative. This was a great relief after the two and a half months of continued defence over a large district of country, and where nearly every citizen was an enemy ready to give information of our every move. I have described very imperfectly a few of the battles and skirmishes that took place during this time. To describe all would take more space than I can allot to the purpose; to make special mention of all the officers and troops who distinguished themselves, would ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... also found in the internal organs of the body as the result of injuries which have healed. The scar represents a very imperfect repair. In the skin, for example, the scar tissue never contains such complicated apparatus as hair and sweat glands; the white area is composed of an imperfectly vascularized fibrous tissue which is covered with a modified epidermis. The scar is less resistant than the normal tissue, injury takes place more easily in it and ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... seem singular that Nancy—with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience—should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge—singular, ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... commit myself to particulars concerning their dress, but I am sure that the elder Queen wore black, and the younger white. The mother has one of the best and wisest faces I have seen any woman wear (and most of the good, wise faces in this imperfectly balanced world are women's) and the daughter one of the sweetest and prettiest. Pretty is the word for her face, and it showed pink through her blond veil, as she smiled and bowed right and left; her features are small and fine, and she is not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... than alarums and excursions of no great seriousness, I think of modifying the gladiatorial arena and approximating it to natural conditions. The soil is very imperfectly represented by my work-table; and the Spider has not her fortress, her burrow, which plays a part of some importance both in attack and in defence. A short length of reed is planted perpendicularly in ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... tapestry in her hand, at the left of the King, some skeins of thread near her, papers scattered upon the rest of the bed and upon an armchair at the side of it. She was quite close to the King, who was in his night-cap, she also, and in her bed-gown, both between the sheets, which were only very imperfectly hidden ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... life, a break up, under the laws of the inanimate, of the animate contrivance; so that energy is no longer available to it, or the primary condition, "the transfer of energy into the animate system," is imperfectly obeyed. It is to the perfect contrivance ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... simple. His father was a British officer quartered at Montreal, of a good old Irish family. From his account he was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly educated, and tyrannizing over a loving but weak mother. When seventeen years old he saw a young girl at church whose appearance he described as being of angelic beauty, and fell in love with her with all the intensity of an uncontrolled nature. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... of labour in its service, nor to find affection for the man incompatible with the condemnation of his errors. Finally, after having arrived at a clear perception of the true method to be pursued, and ends to be aimed at, he should be able to recognize how very imperfectly he has succeeded in acting up to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. Some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. Yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. Through air thick with flying particles of cotton, pale, anaemic young women glanced at him curiously, with lack-luster eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not that of health, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... River, as they pass through the Shanghai settlement of to-day; whilst the other ancient mouth entered the sea at modern Hangchow. We have given various other evidence above to show that, even earlier than this, the Yang-tsz was an unexplored region, known, and that only imperfectly and locally, to the Ts'u government alone. In the year 656 B.C. the First Protector called Ts'u to book because, in 1003 B.C., the Emperor had made a tour to the Great River and had never returned (see Chapter XX-XV.). Again, when the imperial power collapsed in 771 B.C., the first Earl ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... hands of the public, will be abridged to their leading heads; and the reader referred, for the details, to the original works; but in such articles as have either not appeared before, or but very imperfectly, in an English dress, as also in those extracted from unpublished manuscripts, a wider range will be taken: in these, so far as the documents go, on the one hand, and the limits of an introduction can allow, on the other, no interesting ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Those who formerly aimed at this upon the foot of philosophy appear to have had better success in eradicating the affections of tenderness and compassion than they had with the passions of envy, pride, and resentment: these latter, at best, were but concealed, and that imperfectly too. How far this observation may be extended to such as endeavour to suppress the natural impulses of their affections, in order to form themselves for business and the world, I shall not determine. ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... namesake Samuel; or calmly to compare the stinging wit of a Sidney Smith with the stinging fist-cuffs of a "Gunboat" Smith. In a word, what is suited to the street-corner is not always suited to the library, and the taste of the United is as yet but imperfectly attuned to the lyrical liltings of the pool-room Muse. It is both hard and unwise to take the "Best Sport Page" seriously. As a copy of "yellow" models it is a work of artistic verisimilitude; indeed, were Mr. Dowdell a ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... given us a great word in the language, and that we have not yet escaped from the humoral pathology of Hippocrates is witnessed by the common expression of biliousness—"too much bile"—or "he has a touch of the liver." The humors, imperfectly mingled, prove irritant in the body. They are kept in due proportion by the innate heat which, by a sort of internal coction gradually changes the humors to their proper proportion. Whatever may be the primary cause of the change in the humors manifesting ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... the seemingly insignificant problem—left in dust and decay—of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... greatness of this power. It must be felt in the books themselves, and all that can be done in the present essay is to recall to the reader the more general features of each of the five great romances, hurriedly and imperfectly, as space will permit, and rather as a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and swam over, I on one side and Mike on the other. Though swept down for some distance, we got safe on shore at last, but we had to trudge on in our wet clothes. Not only were we wet, but so was our imperfectly dried meat; the consequence was, that when we came to cook it in the evening it was scarcely eatable. Our clothes, too, were damp when ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... distribution of animals, and their combination into distinct zooelogical provinces called faunae, with definite limits, are very imperfectly understood as yet; but so closely are all things linked together from the beginning till to-day, that I am convinced we shall never find the clew to their meaning till we carry on our investigations in the past and the present simultaneously. The same principle according to which animal ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and forever, in the past, the present and the future, the most diversified relations among hundreds of thousands of organized beings, each of which may present complications again, which to study and understand even imperfectly—as for instance man himself— mankind has already spent thousands of years."[I-14] In thus conceiving of the Divine Power in act as coetaneous with Divine Thought, and of both as far as may be apart from the human element of time, our author may regard the intervention of the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... expedition of any consequence in which he had engaged since his settlement in Vienna; it was prosecuted under the most favourable auspices, and with glowing anticipations of that pleasure for which he so ardently longed, but so imperfectly realized at home—the entire sympathy of the public. Nor was he disappointed. On the same evening that he alighted at the castle of his noble entertainer, his opera of 'Figaro' was given at the theatre, and Mozart found himself for the first time in the midst of that Bohemian audience ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... over, and as she sat there Morton came up to her. He had been so little intimate with the members of the party assembled and had found himself so much alone, that he had only lately heard the story about Major Caneback, and had now only heard it imperfectly. But he did see that an absolute intimacy had been effected where two days before there had only been a slight acquaintance; and he believed that this sudden rush had been in some way due to the accident of which he had been told. "You know what ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of her complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale, there was the mark ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... this much: I was no longer dependent for music on the playing of others; from this time forth I used to try and play, albeit very imperfectly, everything I wanted to know. I also tried Mozart's Don Juan, but was unable to get any pleasure out of it, mainly because the Italian text in the arrangement for the piano placed the music in a frivolous light in my eyes, and much in it seemed to me trivial and unmanly. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... we have these instincts which defy all our wisdom and for which we never can frame any laws. We may laugh at them, but we are always meeting them, and one cannot help knowing that it has been the same through all history. They are powers which are imperfectly developed in this life, but one cannot help the thought that the mystery of this world may be the commonplace ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... goddesses which were so numerous in the gardens and public places in Greece, reproduced themselves in the sons and daughters of the passers-by. We know also that marriages contracted at an age too early or too late, are apt to give imperfectly-developed children. The crossing of temperaments and of nationalities beautifies the offspring. The custom which has prevailed, in many countries, among the nobility, of purchasing the handsomest girls they could find for ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... newspaper, the 'Siecle,' left with us every evening. Also, this library admits (is allowed to admit on certain conditions) some books forbidden generally by the censureship, which is of the strictest; and though Balzac appears very imperfectly, I am delighted to find him at all, and shall dun the bookseller for the 'Instruction criminelle,' which I hope discharges your Lucien as a 'forcat'—neither man nor woman—and true ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... mis-narrated by a prelate of so much undeniable talent. I once began a very elaborate life myself, and in these words: "Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent and the subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the son of a barber, and the son-in-law of a king,"—alluding to the tradition (imperfectly verified, I believe) that he married an illegitimate daughter of Charles I. But this sketch was begun more than thirty years ago; and I retired from the labor as too overwhelmingly exacting in all that related to the philosophy and theology of that man 80 "myriad-minded," and of that century ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... good criticism lies in its readiness and penetration in discovering and applauding merit not before recognized, or imperfectly recognized. This is a conspicuous trait of Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of all newspaper critics. He knew how to be severe upon occasion, but he saw talent in advance of the public and dispensed encouragement heartily, so that he made himself almost a foster-father to the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... Gerard seemed to be imperfectly informed about the situation in Berlin. He was certainly right in his prediction of the unrestricted submarine campaign, but in this case the wish was father to the thought. It accorded with Mr. Gerard's anti-German feeling, to which he gave expression later in his gossipy literature and film ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the soul as an entity distinct from the brain, and of the body as an anatomical and physiological apparatus. The latter had already been well accomplished by the medical profession, and the former very imperfectly by spiritual psychologists. But neither the physiology, nor the pneumatology had been placed in organic connection with the central ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... wings, and kicked his seed-pot over, and spilled his water-pot on to the Derbyshire marble chess-table, and screamed till the room rang again, and went on screaming, with Miss Kitty's pocket-handkerchief over his head to keep him quiet, my poor pen can but imperfectly describe. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... of Khanyunis is formed by two streets lined with wretched Turkish shops, with mud or clay projections for seats. The doors are made to flap upward, but they close imperfectly; the roofs are, as usual, made of the Artemisia shrub. The goods exposed in these shops come for the most part from Gaza and Jaffa; but the caps of camel's hair and of cotton, as well as the white and black Syrian mantles, are made by the villagers themselves. At ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... Greek. But he taught these languages better probably than they have ever been taught on this continent; and any two branches thoroughly mastered are of more service to the pupil than twenty branches known imperfectly and superficially. A limited field, then, and thorough work. This is our ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... be it known that the architecture of the Cork Mansion House has but one fault, but that fault is a grand one, and a strong evidence of how unsuited English architects are to provide buildings for a people whose tastes and habits they but imperfectly understand—be it known, then, that the descent from the hall-door to the street was by a flight of twelve stone steps. How I should ever get down these was now my difficulty. If Falstaff deplored "eight yards of uneven ground as being three score and ten miles a foot," with equal truth did I feel ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... he came when Zoo arrives and confronts him at the head of a party consisting of the British Envoy, the Elderly Gentleman, the Envoy's wife, and her daughter, aged about eighteen. The envoy, a typical politician, looks like an imperfectly reformed criminal disguised by a good tailor. The dress of the ladies is coeval with that of the Elderly Gentleman, and suitable for public official ceremonies in western capitals at the XVIII-XIX fin ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... love. They are still much drawn by natural affection and human friendship to these or to those: and as they reckon of themselves in lower matters, so also do they frame imaginations of things heavenly. But there is an immeasurable difference between those things which they imperfectly imagine, and these things which enlightened men behold through ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... external cause, by other minds either in the body or out of the body, which are themselves invisible in the ordinary and physical sense of the term, and really acting through some means at present very imperfectly known. Such an opinion of course reserves the question of the possible action of unseen forces upon what is commonly called matter involved in 'spirit'-photography, materialisation, levitation, the passage of matter through ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... which I make known to you my lost condition and my present abode. Know ye that a little more than two years ago I left the Seminary, and came with my friends to our country. I did not wish to leave so soon, for I had learned but very imperfectly what the Scriptures teach about our Lord Jesus Christ. But my mother was not willing I should remain, for her heart is yet hard and dark. Know, then, dear sisters in Christ, I dwell in Tiary, in the village of Chumba, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... and Venice appear in 'Pippa Passes' and 'In a Gondola'; but the latter poem showed, to Mr. Browning's subsequent vexation, that Venice had been imperfectly seen; and the magnetism which Asolo was to exercise upon him, only fully asserted itself at a much ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... beings follow (their own) nature. What then would restraint avail? The senses have, as regards the objects of the senses, either affection or aversion fixed. One should not submit to these, for they are obstacles in one's way.[165] One's own duty, even if imperfectly performed, is better than being done by other even if well performed. Death in (performance of) one's own duty is preferable. (The adoption of) the duty of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... began to read. Reading was an accomplishment which distinguished Flora; but to-day her voice faltered, her expression was uncertain; she seemed but imperfectly to comprehend her page. More than once Lady Monmouth looked round at her with an inquisitive glance. Suddenly Flora stopped ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... afraid," said the Colonel, "that I must ask you to be more explicit. You must remember that I am still most imperfectly acquainted with the rules ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself longing even for the usually unwelcome sound of his wife's voice to break the oppressive stillness which seemed, to his frightened fancy, to portend the advent of some new misfortune. "What has happened?" he muttered half aloud, as he shuffled in his imperfectly adjusted slippers towards the balustrade of the verandah. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Regler, and the native chief, Taipi-kikino. "Captain, is it permitted to come on board?" were the first words we heard among the islands. Canoe followed canoe, till the ship swarmed with stalwart, six-foot men in every stage of undress; some in a shirt, some in a loin-cloth, one in a handkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some, and these the more considerable, tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns; some barbarous and knived; one, who sticks in my memory as something bestial, squatting on his hams in a canoe, sucking an orange and spitting it out again to alternate sides with ape-like vivacity—all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apparently supernatural knowledge such as Senan displays in this incident of the personality of a coming guest. In reading documents such as this, we are not infrequently tempted to suspect that we have before us the record of actual manifestations of the even yet imperfectly understood phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy, "second sight," and similar ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... been lengthened some nine inches at the top by letting in a piece of shirting. A thin red-and- black-striped jacket that she wears, a kind of loose Garibaldi, is supposed to hide this addition, which it only very imperfectly does. Her head is small and piquant; her hair heavy, blue-black; her eyes light brown, of exquisite shape, smiling and kind. She has small, red lips, and the most beautiful teeth that I remember seeing. Her complexion is brown, unless she blushes; then it grows darker brown. Her figure ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... first of the Realists. His object in writing was, he tells us, to represent mankind as he saw it, to be the historian of the nineteenth century, and to classify human beings as Buffon had classified animals. No doubt this scheme was very imperfectly carried out: certainly the powerful mind of Balzac with its wealth of imagination, often projected itself into his puppets, so that many of his characters are not the ordinary men and women he wished to portray, but are inspired ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Hyder Ali. After nightfall Hughes got under way, and also steered south. He feared for Trincomalee, in Ceylon, recently a Dutch port, which the British had captured on the 5th of January. It was a valuable naval position, as yet most imperfectly defended. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... within whose boundaries it is situated, I learned from the aged and truly respectable incumbent that traditions still lingered amongst the inhabitants of the great size and age of the oaks employed to furnish the materials of the stately structure which has been, however imperfectly, described in the above lines. Of one in particular, which stood near the centre of the grove, it is remembered that it was known as the Hanging Oak. The propriety of that title is confirmed by the fact that a quantity of human bones was found in the soil about its roots, and that at certain ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... to render its independence dependent on ours, was to wrest it from the power of Austria, and turn it against our foes. The Belgians, according to Dumouriez's plan, were to conquer Belgium for us; for the germs of revolt had been but imperfectly stifled in these provinces, and were destined to bud again at the step ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... knee at the second battle of Manassas, and suffered amputation of the leg in consequence. His absence of mind nearly proved fatal. Forgetting his condition, he suddenly started to walk, came down on the stump, imperfectly healed, and ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... according to Tennyson, the stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which, for the better part of a century, had been deposed from their old-time place of honour. These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known—and only to a few—that the most to be said is that some connection between their reviving popularity and the name of Smollett's knight-errant hero is ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... commonly taken on trust, without sufficient historical evidence, as the cathedral church of the Saxon diocese of Lindsey, although an advance in transeptal construction was made, the main principle was imperfectly grasped. This church was made the home of a community of clergy about the beginning of the reign of Edward the Confessor, by Leofric, earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva. It was restored after the Conquest by Remi, the first Norman bishop ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... happened to be in a noisy bustle in the house, just at the time of those queer performances of his, and heard them imperfectly. But, if the sound I heard was not that of a veritable rooster, I never was so deceived in my life respecting the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... blood of the vessels whose duty it is to supply the vital fluid to the absorbent system, be inadequate to enable these operations to go on properly, the life-giving processes must necessarily be imperfectly accomplished. Under these circumstances the digested material is imperfectly vitalized, and is therefore inadequately fitted to be used in building up and repairing the living body. But its course in the system cannot ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... was imposed upon; and being a foreigner, speaking the Italian language but imperfectly, and not being expert at reckoning the Italian money, he was no match for the cunning Piedro, who cheated him not only as to the freshness, but as to the price of the commodity. Piedro received nearly half as much again for his fish as he ought to ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... distinction between himself and other things or other persons. But we are sure, I think, that this distinction is a matter of growth which extends over many years and that at two, three, and even four, it is imperfectly apprehended. We all know how long a child is in acquiring a correct use of the pronouns "me" and "you." And we know that long after he has this language distinction, he still calls everything he likes "mine." "This is my cow, this is my tree!" The only way to persuade him that ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... escape the common lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of "Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Text have arisen in the first instance from the merest inadvertency of the scribes. That such was the case in a vast number of cases is in fact demonstrable. [Inaccuracy in the apprehension of the Divine Word, which in the earliest ages was imperfectly understood, and ignorance of Greek in primitive Latin translators, were prolific sources of error. The influence of Lectionaries, in which Holy Scripture was cut up into separate Lections either with or without an introduction, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... self-seeking politicians, bent upon regaining their ascendency at any cost, stultifying their own minds by vague sophistries and high-sounding phrases, which deceived none but those who wished to be deceived, and these but imperfectly; and dulling the public conscience by a loud clamor in which the calm voice of truth was for the moment silenced. So the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati,—wherever the horse-car, that tinkles well-nigh round the Continent, is known; remember that the same victims are thus daily sacrificed, without an effort to right themselves: and then you will begin to realize—dimly and imperfectly, of course—the unfathomable meekness of the American character. The "full" horse-car is a prodigy whose likeness is absolutely unknown elsewhere, since the Neapolitan gig went out; and I suppose it will be incredible to the future in our own country. When I see such a horse-car ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... or exempt from change. The catalogue of Hipparchus probably, and certainly that of Tycho Brahe, some seventeen centuries later, owed each its origin to the temporary blaze of a new star. The general aspect of the skies was thus (however imperfectly) recorded from age to age, and with improved appliances the enumeration was rendered more and more accurate and complete; but the secrets of the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of many paragraphs; yet if I had undertaken to exemplify Pope's felicity of composition before a rigid critick, I should not select the Essay on Man; for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness of diction, more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found in all his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to retire out of sight, for the window was open and he himself imperfectly concealed by the muslin blind. Then, as he was on the point of retiring, he distinctly heard the sound of his own name. The two men were speaking in a low tone, but a slight breeze was blowing into the room. Julien stood still and ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to leave her bedroom. She had dressed with frantic speed. In her haste to get to the windows and see the world from the sky, she had secured her hair very imperfectly, and Droop was favored with a charming display of bright ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... dull ache of disappointment which came to me as a girl, after I'd idolized a great man called Meredith and after I'd almost prayed to a great poet called Browning, on finding that one was so imperfectly monogamous and that the other philandered and talked foolishly to women. I had thrust my girlish faith in their hands, as so often befalls with the young, and they had betrayed it.... But for the second time since I married, I have been reading Modern ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... and glens. From the middle of the thirteenth century they have been distinctly marked from those inhabiting the low countries, in consequence of which they exhibit a civilization peculiarly their own. By their Lowland neighbors they were imperfectly known, being generally regarded as a horde of savage thieves, and their country as an impenetrable wilderness. From this judgment they made no effort to free themselves, but rather inclined to confirm it. The language spoken by the two races greatly varied which had a tendency to ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... brown bread taken from the strange oven in the terrible Redan, and that the two would typify war and peace. There was a great traffic going on in such things, and a wag of an officer, who could talk Russian imperfectly, set himself to work to persuade an innocent Russian that I was his wife, and having succeeded in doing so promptly offered to dispose of me for the medal hanging at ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... rejoined Madame La Vigne; "and, even if she had not, I fear her duties would preclude much longing for excitement.—It is a very onerous task you are undertaking, my dear young lady, certainly," turning kindly to me. "Five ignorant little Southern girls, well disposed but imperfectly trained, will fill your hands to positive overflowing, I fear. You will find me exacting, too, sometimes. I am sure I shall enjoy your society whenever you choose to bestow it on me, and Colonel ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... I pray imperfectly, as I am forced by my distracting fears and apprehensions; and O join with me, my dear parents!—But, alas! how can you know, how can I reveal to you, the dreadful situation of your poor daughter! The unhappy Pamela may be undone (which God forbid, and sooner deprive me of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers, and that he was easy in his mind. I was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it. In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out, throw my great coat over his head, pinion him, and leave the rest to Holmes. But Milverton ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the boat had heard me imperfectly; he rose up—"I won't go back, my good man, until I see what you are made of;" and as he spoke he sprang on board, but the instant he got over the bulwarks, he was caught by two strong hands, gagged, and thrown bodily ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... recall that I had ever seen any of them before? And then, as I lay puzzling over this perplexing problem, the past gradually unfolded itself before me; first of all confusedly, as one recalls the images and incidents of an imperfectly remembered dream, and then more clearly, until it had all come back to me in the fulness of its hideous reality. I recollected everything, my memories beginning, strangely enough, as I think, with the incidents of my earliest childhood, and gradually ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the reign of the Antonines was that society had attained in it, though very imperfectly, and for the most part by cumbrous effort of law, many of those ends to which Christianity went straight, with the sufficiency, the success, of a direct and appropriate instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touching charity-sermons on occasions of great public distress; its charity-children ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... what must we think in regard to the truth or falsehood of the outward, forensic, military, and ritual part of the doctrine of historic and literary development we have imperfectly followed. Is it not perfectly clear, that the growth of the doctrine in question has been but a natural action of the imagination on the materials furnished it; adding congruous particulars, one after another, until the view was complete, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... marked the conflict, most of which are perhaps inseparable from a civil strife so intense and prolonged, and involving warfare in some border countries new and imperfectly civilized. Barbarities also there were, for which the Southern people collectively can hardly be held responsible, though perpetrated by ruffians in their name. But surely other qualities—exalted ones—courage and ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... Faculty consistent with the purposes in view; and, finally, an appeal to the community to increase our means, to strengthen our hands, to supplement our deficiencies, and especially to surround our scholars with those social, domestic and religious influences which a corporation can at best imperfectly provide, but which may be abundantly enjoyed in the homes, the churches and the private associations of an enlightened ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... extra dry for himself, but would have it manipulated with such discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal, he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered them. They could not, or very ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... all. So far were they from having any thought of such a thing, that when Jesus told them, in the plainest words imaginable, they did not understand Him. The fact had to reveal itself. And even now the nature and end of Christ's sacrifice are but very imperfectly understood. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... him carefully, and as the corporal sat in the middle thwart, with his face turned aft, catching but imperfectly the conversation of the men, the lad separated the painter with a sharp knife, and at the same time dropping his foot down, gave the bow of the boat a shove off, which made it round with the stream. The tide was then running five or six miles an hour, and before the corporal, in the utter ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... on account of ice, he acknowledged he did not regret he found it impossible to go further, and, thinking that in the unexplored parts of the South Pacific there was room for many large islands, and also that discoveries already made had been imperfectly laid down on the charts, he decided that it was his duty, as he had a well-found ship and a healthy crew, to remain in these waters and add what he could to the knowledge of geography. He therefore ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the home of Eleanor Fenn, his "Lady Bountiful," widow of the editor of the "Paston Letters," Sir John Fenn. He had "increased rapidly in size and in strength," but not in mind, and could read only imperfectly until "Robinson Crusoe" drew him out. He went to church twice on Sundays, and never heard God's name without a tremor, "for I now knew that God was an awful and inscrutable being, the maker of all ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... And what a wretched plight we should be in, if the sheep, or their like, did not come to the rescue, or the help they are fitted to render were not laid under contribution! For not only might we be fated to go often dinnerless to bed, and to live all our days in a body imperfectly nourished, but our evenings would in many cases be spent without light, and our journeys undertaken without comfort, and our outer man left to battle at odds, unshod and unprotected, with the discomforts of the highway and the inclemency of the seasons. ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... much more,—deserves to be known in her mind and her feelings, yes, and in her soul,—she must put up, as she did in life, with getting less than her deserts, and let her rough actions reveal her nature imperfectly. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... have ever been in, imperfectly lit with blue light and obscured by a gray-blue fog, surging with metallic or livid-gray creatures of such a mad diversity as I have hinted. Imagine this hall to end in an open archway beyond which is a still ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... spirit, or turpentine was vaporised, the gases being ignited by a light burning outside the cylinder. The piston in this engine was thrown upwards, this in turn forcing a pump piston down which did work in raising water. This was the first real gas engine, though it was crude and very imperfectly arranged. ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... centuries ago in Europe only a very small portion of the earth's surface was known. Their geography was confined to the regions lying immediately around the Mediterranean, and including Europe, the north of Africa, and the west of Asia. Round these there was a margin, obscurely and imperfectly described in the reports of merchants; but by far the greater part of the world was utterly unknown. Great realms of darkness stretched all beyond, and closely hemmed in the little circle of light. In these unknown lands our ancestors loved to picture ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... the Rio Grande del Norte on the west, nearly opposite the town of Santa Fe, in the Territory of New Mexico, are to-day but little known. The interior of the chain, the Sierra de los Valles, is as yet imperfectly explored. Still, these bald-crested mountains, dark and forbidding as they appear from a distance, conceal and shelter in their deep gorges and clefts many a spot of great natural beauty, surprisingly picturesque, but difficult of access. From ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... talked to McTavish and his guards, he had not realized the strange situation in which he found them. As he came nearer and nearer to Jean Fitzpatrick, his mind had grown more and more intense against McTavish. What had happened to the unfortunate Hudson Bay man, he only knew imperfectly. But that the former should be in constant communication with the girl was a spur to his jealous imagination. If he could but get his rival out of the way, for a while at least, things would be so much easier. The bird had fallen unexpectedly into his hand, and for ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... which was just putting off, and, hustled across the gulf, found themselves on the deck so breathless and so scared that they gave up half the voyage to letting their emotion sink. It sank slowly and imperfectly; but at last, in mid-channel, surrounded by the quiet sea, Mrs. Wix had courage to revert. "I didn't look ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... ceremonial of reception had no sooner terminated than the king proceeded on horseback to Tours, followed by the whole of this splendid retinue. The two Queens occupied the same carriage, and were lavish in their expressions of mutual regard and goodwill; but the comedy was imperfectly acted on both sides, although neither affected to doubt the sincerity of the other. It was necessary that the piece should be played out, and the performers were skilful enough to bring it to a close without openly betraying ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... critics, any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself. But the leading function of both must be supposed this—not to tell you any thing absolutely new, that was done by the actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own lurking thoughts—hidden for the moment or imperfectly developed, and to place before you, in immediate connexion with groups vanishing too quickly for any effort of meditation on your own part, such commentaries, prophetic or looking back, pointing the moral or deciphering the mystery, justifying Providence, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... While the pure "theow" or absolute slave disappeared therefore the ceorl or villein sank lower in the social scale. But though the rural population was undoubtedly thrown more together and fused into a more homogeneous class, its actual position corresponded very imperfectly with the view of the lawyers. All indeed were dependents on a lord. The manor-house became the centre of every English village. The manor-court was held in its hall; it was here that the lord or his steward received homage, recovered fines, held the view of frank-pledge, or enrolled ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... was, quite a different being, inspired with energy, and quickness, and presence of mind: she forgot herself, and her illness, and her prudery, and her love, and every other consideration, in the sense of her mother's danger. Lady Glistonbury had but imperfectly recovered her recollection. At one moment she smiled on Vivian, and tried to stretch out her hand to him, as she saw him standing beside Lady Sarah. But when he approached Lady Glistonbury, and spoke to her, she seemed to have some painful recollection, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... forms, which do not require, and consequently have not been injured by, castration. Girou de Buzareingues crossed what he designates three varieties of gourd,[232] and asserts that their mutual fertilisation is less easy in proportion to the difference which they present. I am aware how imperfectly the forms in this group were until recently known; but Sageret,[233] who ranked them according to their mutual fertility, considers the three forms above alluded to as varieties, as does a far higher authority, namely, M. Naudin.[234] Sageret[235] has observed that certain melons have a greater ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... bare-bodied from the waist upward. The common language among them is the Malayan language, and, by speaking to some whom I met on landing, I found I was able to make myself understood, and to understand, though imperfectly, what was said to me. The Sumatrans are a very indolent race of people, which accounted for the small interest they took in the arrival of our ship, none thinking it worth while to come aboard, or to make ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... of our deepest insight into this unity of the spirit which underlies all the varieties, and which leads us upward to itself past all the sunderings and doubts of existence, is the loyal spirit itself. Loyalty asserts: "My cause is real. I know that my cause liveth." But the cause, however imperfectly interpreted, is always some sort of unity of the spiritual life in which we learn to share whenever we begin to be loyal. The more we grow in loyalty and in insight into the meaning of our loyalty, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... as he arrived he thought she looked different. The powder had been imperfectly brushed out of her hair; also she had been crying. She greeted him very gently. She wore a pretty white dress ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... will try to tell you one, which I remember imperfectly. It relates, as many such stories do, to a buried treasure. An old miser had an only daughter; he denied himself everything, but he educated her well, and treated her becomingly. He had accumulated a treasure, which he designed for her, but could not bear ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock |
