"Preciseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humble, had been going from bad to worse. So that it was not without some trepidation, which was shared by the family, that old Elnathan now rose from his seat by the chimney corner and went and opened the door. A clear, soft voice, with the effect of distinctness without preciseness, which betrays the cultured class, was heard by those within, asking, "Is Captain Hamlin ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... "The curious preciseness, And all pretended gravity of those That seek to banish hence these harmless sports, Have thrust away much ancient ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... lady, and turning to her incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment, not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's thought, hurried them over the dusty surface ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sides, aspired to nothing but an easy enjoyment of life, amidst the jovial entertainment and social intercourse of their companions. All these flocked to the king's standard, where they breathed a freer air, and were exempted from that rigid preciseness and melancholy austerity which reigned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... be sure of?—but I could see why Lena thought she would. She was a little unhealthy thing, dark and sallow and sulky, with thin lips that showed a lack of temperament, and she had a stiffness and preciseness, like a Board School teacher—just that touch of "commonness" which Lena relied on to put him off. She wore a shabby brown skirt and a yellowish blouse. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... and, hearing the noise of the enemy in the corridor, walked with it in his hand across to the door. He tapped his box with accustomed preciseness, but I, a step behind, having lingered for a last look into Margaret's eyes, heard him ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... words, and after a few minutes' pause he waived the subject by reverting to the description which Eve had given of Joan, so that, in case he had to meet her alone, he might recognize her without difficulty. Eve repeated the description, dwelling with loving preciseness on the various features and points by which Joan might be known; and then Reuben, having some work to do, got up to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... doubtless the memories of reading. In the Apology for Smectymnuus, when he has to reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days, he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort bespeaks a certain severity and preciseness in judging of plays and their actors, which can hardly have found gratification in the licenses and exuberances of the contemporary drama. It was not difficult, he remarks, to see plays, "when in ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... they also raised it, and exercised a purifying censorship. And many more who do not go all these lengths with the reactionists, and cannot make up their mind to look to the Stuart reigns either for model churchmen or model courtiers, are still inclined to sneer at the Puritan 'preciseness,' and to say lazily, that though, of course, something may have been wrong, yet there was no need to make such a fuss about the matter; and that at all events the Puritans were men of very ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... lovely needle-work about the implicated hands in the Modesty and Vanity, and of reliefs, like those cameos which in the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of a sanctuary swept and [103] garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for tapestry, to be woven ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... hanging gardens. Of these they give the measurements, on plan, of the platforms and piers, together with their heights, and the heights of the arches. We should find it difficult to explain the preciseness of these measurements and their agreement one with another, unless we supposed that both writers had some exact authority, such as one of the companions or historians of Alexander, to refer to. The kings of Persia lived at Babylon ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... sitting in the dusk of a Spanish cathedral ... afterward one does not know whether what he has seen was dream or reality, but certainly he has been on holy ground." The average mind, whether Swedish or Anglo-Saxon, soon wearies of heartless preciseness in literature and welcomes an idealism as wholesome as that of Miss Lagerloef. Furthermore, the Swedish authoress attracts her readers by a diction unique unto herself, as singular as the English sentences of Charles Lamb. Her style may be ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... to protest against Mr. Whittier's carelessness in accents and rhymes, as in pronouncing "ly'ceum," and joining in unhallowed matrimony such sounds as awn and orn, ents and ence. We would not have the Muse emulate the unidiomatic preciseness of a normal school-mistress, but we cannot help thinking that, if Mr. Whittier writes thus on principle, as we begin to suspect, he errs in forgetting that thought so refined as his can be fitly matched only with an equal refinement of expression, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... dictation, receiving instructions, going about her office duties in a state of apparently chill, practical, commercial single-mindedness; but it would be to no purpose. As a matter of fact, without in any way affecting the preciseness and accuracy of her labor, her thoughts were always upon the man in the inner office—the strange master who was then seeing his men, and in between, so it seemed, a whole world of individuals, solemn and commercial, who came, presented their cards, talked ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser |
