"To perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great opportunity," I answered. "Character is a flower which blossoms in all manner of places. Sometimes it comes nearest to perfection in the most unlikely spots. Prosperity and sunshine are not the best things in the world for it. Sometimes in the gloomy and desolate places its growth is the sturdiest and ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the self-same needs; Loving smiles are life to some, Others but by kindly deeds. To perfection come. ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... reference to Him, it is, next, unquestioning docility and obedience. Its seat is in the will. When the will is bowed, a man is far on his road to perfection; and the meaning of all that God does with us—joys and sorrows, light and darkness, when His hand gives, and when His hand withdraws, as when His authoritative voice commands, and the sweet impulses of His love graciously constrain—is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and many days before all these things were brought to perfection; and therefore I must go back to some other things which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick, dark cloud, a sudden flash of lightning ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "Spinning-jenny." The secret of this device soon came out and jennies spinning twenty or thirty or more threads at a time came into use here and there through the old spinning districts. At the same time a much more effective method was being brought to perfection by Richard Arkwright, who followed out some old experiments of Wyatt of Northampton. According to this plan the carded material was carried through successive pairs of rollers, each pair running more rapidly than the previous pair, thus ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... a bully. His great size and strength enabled him to enact the part of the bully, and upon all occasions he played it to perfection. He was a bold man, however, and a good seaman—one of the two or three who divided the championship with Ben Brace. I need hardly say that there was a rivalry between them, with national prejudices at the bottom of ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... from the one delicious dish of ambrosia most to her taste and to sip only the choicest brand of nectar. Profusion, even at a feast of the gods, would have no charms for her. She had begun to see the world so early and had seen so much of it that she had learned the art of elimination to perfection. Sensuous to the last degree, but not sensual, she had a cool self-control and a fineness of taste which led her to choose but a few refined pleasures at a time and then to enjoy them deliberately and until satiety pointed to a new choice. Keen of intellect, she had studied society and ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... neck, waist, hands; her mouth was large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of, like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate about her, though she had the trigness, and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... wishes to surprise genius labouring to give birth to perfection, one should consult the later editions of Victor Hugo's works and note the countless emendations he made after their first publication—here a more fitting word substituted, there a line recast, elsewhere an entire verse ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... cross, but of Mr. Stocks she was radically intolerant. A moment of pique might send her to his side, but the position was unnatural and could not be maintained. Even now Lewis was in her thoughts. Fragments of his odd romantic speech clove to her memory. His figure—for he showed to perfection in his own surroundings—was so comely and gallant, so bright with the glamour of adventurous youth, that for a moment this prosaic young woman was a convert to the coloured side of life and had forgotten ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... education. The other, a Master Period, when an art of music suddenly blossoms out, complete and satisfactory according to the principles recognized by the musicians of the time. In the natural course of things such an art, having once found its heart, ought to go on to perfection; but this has not generally been the case. After a period of vigorous growth and the production of master works suitable to the time, a decline has ensued, and at length musical productivity has entirely ceased. Occasionally ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... lovely bride, smiling in the depths of the mirror, and was glad for Billy's sake that she looked "nice." Tall and straight, with sky-blue eyes shining under a crown of bright hair, with the new corsets setting off the lovely gown to perfection, her mother's lace at her throat and wrists, and the rose-wreathed hat matching her cheeks, she looked the young and happy woman she was, stepping bravely into the world of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... straightway the stillness of dawn was affronted by a riot of life and sound. Men, women, and children, cooking-pots and bundles, overflowed on to the sunlit platform; and through their midst, with a dignified aloofness that only flowers to perfection in the East, Honor Meredith's tall chuprassee[1] made his way to her carriage window. Beside him, in a scarlet coat over full white skirts, cowered the distressed figure of an old ayah, who for twenty years had been a pillar of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... enough to bow and take their hats off,—which, of course, no businessman can afford to do. Their beavers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well polished; all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits,—they frequent reading-rooms,—insurance-offices,—they walk the same streets at the same hours,—so that one becomes familiar with their faces and persons, as a part of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... companionship and congenial activity. Our individual activities and needs of this kind are innumerable, and of infinite delicate variety; and there is reason to suppose that the place in which our lot is cast does not necessarily fit them to perfection. For things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging is a useful, rapid way of despatching business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal which is too good for wasting. Hence, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and although they do not sit ungracefully upon her, because she is innately graceful, and too clever to assume a virtue which she cannot assimilate, still it is like a foreigner who speaks your language to perfection in all but accent, and whom you long to hear in his own tongue. Put her back in her Welsh castle, and the scales would fall from her as from a mermaid who loves. If she returns to her father at the end of the season, I think I will call upon her six months later. She should go now, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... disembark at St. Helen's and help to decorate Elsie's new home. All went as was planned, and Clarence's life from that day to this had been, as Clover mischievously told him, one paean of thanksgiving to her for refusing him and opening the way to real happiness. Elsie suited him to perfection. Everything she said and did and suggested was exactly to his mind, and as for looks, Clover was dear and nice as could be, of course, and pretty,—well, yes, people would undoubtedly consider her a pretty ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... use the Rouquayrol apparatus, invented by two of your own countrymen, which I have brought to perfection for my own use and which will allow you to risk yourself without any organ of the body suffering. It consists of a reservoir of thick iron plates, in which I store the air under a pressure of fifty ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... naval officer of breeding, in which you see neatness trifling with disorder, or disorder plucking at neatness, like the breeze a trim vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil Beauchamp, according to Cecilia. It presented him to her mind in a cheerful and a very undemocratic aspect, but in realizing it, the thought, like something flashing black, crossed her—how attractive such a style must be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... between the aristocracy and the lower class, or the great intellects and the less, was similar to the relative positions of teacher and pupil. I recognized in this social condition the great media of their marvelous approach to perfection. This aristocracy was never arrogant, never supercilious, never aggressive. It was what the philosophers of our ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... as he glanced at it and then at the name and history on the back. "Annie Grayson? Why, she is known as the queen of shoplifters. She has operated from Christie's in London to the little curio-shops of San Francisco. She has worked under a dozen aliases and has the art of alibi down to perfection. Oh, I've heard of her many times before. I wonder if she really is the person we're looking for. They say that Annie Grayson has forgotten more about shoplifting than the others ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... roasted in their room for supper, and intended for a jolly party of friends who would collect together, were, of course, quite common affairs. On one occasion, just as the odor had become very exciting to their gastric organs, and the skin had assumed that tempting brown hue betokening a near approach to perfection in their culinary operations, the watchful tutor scented out either the supper or some mischief, and rap-rap-rap was heard at the door. Every sound was instantly hushed, and the offending bird was quickly transferred to a hiding-place ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... use. That most difficult feature, the column, he handled with enthusiasm and perfect mastery; he studied and wrote of it with minute pains, while his practice showed his graslp of the subject by all avoidance of bare imitation of the classic masters who first brought it to perfection. His work might be classic in form, but it was independently developed by himself. It would be impossible here to give a list of the innumerable works which he executed. In London, of course, the Adelphi stands pre-eminent; the screen and gate of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... explained to him the higher law of the Tarykat, or "path" to perfection. The knowledge of this is not for the common people, but for those only who endeavor to obey the commands of Allah, not as external ordinances and ceremonies, but because they appreciate their justness, and ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... to perfection. Day was dawning as the majority of his forces formed upon the Heights of Abraham. It was six in the morning before Montcalm's irregulars were upon the field, and nine o'clock before the French army was in position for action. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... you observe,' said Ralph, in the same dry, hard manner. 'If any caprice of temper should induce him to cast aside this golden opportunity before he has brought it to perfection, I consider myself absolved from extending any assistance to his mother and sister. Look at him, and think of the use he may be to you in half-a-dozen ways! Now, the question is, whether, for some time to come at all events, he won't serve your purpose better ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... keep his mind from thinking about things that it was no good thinking about. And for dear Flora (how wonderful that she could write poetry—poetry!) a really splendid, and perfectly new, little pill. She herself had already taken two, and they had suited her to perfection. For darling Felix a new kind of eau de cologne, made in Worcester, because that was the only scent he would use. For her pet Nedda, a piece of 'point de Venise' that she really could not be selfish enough to keep any longer, especially as she was particularly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... factors—intellectual power, physical endowment or propitious material—is most imperious. When we find this factor most perfectly developed, and the others, though subordinate, neither absent nor stunted, we shall find the art nearest to perfection. And the conditions of race and climate and society which most helpfully develop that factor without injuring the others are the conditions which will best further that art. And the critic who lays most stress on that factor, and is content to miss, if necessary, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... look to the growing crops, clear away the weeds every where among them, dig up the earth between the rows of beans, peas, and all other kinds that are distantly planted. This gives them a strong growth, and brings them much sooner to perfection than can be done in any other way. Draw up the mould to the stalks of the cabbage and cauliflower plants, and in cold nights cover the glasses over the early cucumbers and melons.—MAY. Once in two days water the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Lord Lufton and Mark were in the dining-room, where they remained a terribly long time, she would make me go through the house that she might show me your rooms, and explain how you were to be mistress there. She has got it all arranged to perfection, and I am sure she has been thinking about it for years. Her great fear at present is that you and he should go and live at Lufton. If you have any gratitude in you, either to her or me, you will ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... man's conformity with the various customs of the inmates is one of the most curious facts on record. We have been favoured with the following table or scale by which time regulates the gradual advancement to perfection of a genuine "Fleety":— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... with Peter Plum, and in the cosy interior of the little cabin, whose atmosphere was rendered speedily fragrant with the perfume of rum punch, which Joe, whilst in the West Indies, had learnt the art of brewing to perfection, the two sailors would sit smoking their yards of pipe-clay whilst they discoursed on the past, one incident recalling another, one briny recollection prompting an even salter memory, until their eyes grew moist and their vision dim in ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... herself. "Why can't I be cool and cutting—pay her back when she is rude, and contradict her when she's absurd? She is absurd often. But I think of the right things to say just five minutes too late. I have no nerve—that's the point!—only l'esprit d'escalier to perfection. And she has been trained to this sort of campaigning from her babyhood. No good growling! I shall ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... sedate performances they required a long-winded, polite, unexciting, stately book that might be read aloud by turns. The heroic novel, as provided by Gombreville, Calprenede, and Mlle. de Scudery supplied this want to perfection. ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... her hair and pretty Parisian winter dress arranged to perfection, contemplating with approval the sitting-room that had been appropriated to her, the October sunshine lighting up the many- tinted trees around the smooth-shaven dewy lawn, and a bright fire on the hearth, shelves and chiffoniers awaiting her property, and piles ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... another art, that of architecture, I shall endeavour to illustrate what I mean by this contrast. Throughout the Middle Ages there prevailed, and in the latter centuries of that aera was carried to perfection, a style of architecture, which has been called Gothic, but ought really to have been termed old German. When, on the general revival of classical antiquity, the imitation of Grecian architecture became prevalent, and but too frequently without a due regard to the difference of climate and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... which had resulted in the treaty just signed. For he had been the link between Russia and England; the never-failing messenger passing from one to the other with question and answer which were destined to bear fruit at last in an understanding brought to perfection in Paris, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Deluge. Subsequent to the Flood, the Assyrians were the first people who turned their attention to astrology. The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Arabians soon became acquainted with the art, and by perseverance brought it to perfection and high estimation. In several nations none but those skilled in astrology were admitted to the administration of sacred rites or to the management of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... on the best efforts, was repeated by the orators, the poets, the philosophers, and historians; the Cow of Miron, the Venus of Apelles, and the Cupid of Praxiteles, have exercised every pen. By these means Greece brought the fine arts to perfection; by neglecting them, Rome failed to equal her; and, by pursuing the same course, every country may become as ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... her, for at that time—in the eighties—she was the finest American sailing-vessel afloat. Afterward I owned and sailed the Aquidneck, a little bark which of all man's handiwork seemed to me the nearest to perfection of beauty, and which in speed, when the wind blew, asked no favors of steamers, I had been nearly twenty years a shipmaster when I quit her deck on the coast of Brazil, where she was wrecked. My home voyage to New ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... her death had arrived," says Brantome, "Mademoiselle sent for her valet, Julian, who could play the violin to perfection. 'Julian,' quoth she, 'take your violin and play on it until you see me dead—for I am going—the Defeat of the Swiss, and play it as well as you know how; and when you shall reach the words "tout est perdu," play it over ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... that his work was profoundly influenced by the circumstances of his life. Moliere never knew the leisure, the seclusion, the freedom from external cares, without which it is hardly possible for art to mature to perfection; he passed his existence in the thick of the battle, and he died as he had lived—in the harness of the professional entertainer. His early years were spent amid the rough and sordid surroundings of a travelling provincial ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... and human remains found here may possibly date from an early Christian settlement; but the prevailing memories of the island are by no means saintly. It was once occupied by a reprobate pair who certainly lived the "simple life" to perfection so far as locality was concerned, but whose simplicity may otherwise be doubted. These were a man named Fyn and his sister "Black Joan," who appear to have been born on the Mewstone, near Plymouth, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... three or four courses, cooked to perfection. For myself, I would rather snatch a few mouthfuls and go up on deck again; but this would hurt Leon's feelings if he saw it, and he might even consider that he must seek another employer, for that his talents were wasted upon me; so I go through it all with ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... you acted your stony part to perfection. As you could neither follow her, nor make inquiries of the Smyrnaean, it only remains for you to describe her as best you can, on the chance of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... been asked to conduct, not one of the works of our recent masters, like Debussy or Dukas, whose style he renders to perfection, but Franck's Les Beatitudes, a work whose spirit he does not, to my mind, quite understand. The mystic tenderness of Franck escapes him, and he brings out only what is dramatic. And so that performance of Les Beatitudes, though in many respects fine, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... revolutions. It seemed as if the animal, with automatic perseverance, attempted to eject the incubus, the weight of which kept it about an inch below the aperture of the valves. Such motion would naturally tend to perfection. Whatsoever its lustre, it would certainly be a sphere. Besides, it was a pearl in the making. As long as it remained within the pinna and it could not be voluntarily rejected, its size would inevitably increase. It was ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... feat. The faculty acquired by men of Mr. Stanley's trade, of acting with the intense decision and energy of great military captains, and then relating the action with the voluble unction of bar-rooms or political stumps, is a strange mixed faculty, and is found to perfection in the reporters' rooms of the New York Herald. The tale has the Herald's well-known style, and is a correspondent's letter in a state of amplification. It is always energetic, often tinged with real heroism and romance, and adorned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... established?—(Cries of 'no, no.') I venture to say they have not established any thing of the kind. All that has been done is this—it has been shown that wood pavement, which is comparatively a recent introduction, has not yet been brought to perfection—(hear, hear.) Now, every one knows that complaints have always been made against every new principle, till it has been brought to perfection. Look, for instance, at the steam-engine. How vastly different it now is, with the improvements which science has effected, from what it was when it was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... much against his plunging nature, that he took long to learn it, but when, through hard practice and the loss of many a fine deer, he came at length to break himself in to it, he gradually progressed to perfection, and ultimately became the best stalker in the valley. This, and this alone, enabled him to procure game, for, being short-sighted, he could hit nothing beyond fifty yards, except a buffalo ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... was unnecessary. Giottesque art is not incorrect art, it is generalized art; it is an art of mere outline. The Giottesques could draw with great accuracy the hand, the form of the fingers, the bend of the limb, they could give to perfection its whole gesture and movement, they could produce a correct and spirited outline, but within this correct outline marked off in dark paint there is but a vague, uniform mass of pale colour; the body of the hand is missing, and there remains only ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Mrs Perkins, who was married out of a drapery establishment and has the drapery style of talking to perfection. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... one chief reason why we should see ourselves as we really are is, that we might be able by penitence to wipe out the ugly smears that deface the divine image, and that we might go on to perfection, becoming daily more like unto Him who is our pattern, so that at the Last Day, when we wake up, it will be with the likeness complete, for ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that it can make any sort of approach to perfection. There is not, there never was, a principle of government under heaven, that does not, in the very pursuit of the good it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into some inconvenience which makes it absolutely necessary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... man has purposed to make a given thing, and has brought it to perfection, his work will be pronounced perfect, not only by himself, but by everyone who rightly knows, or thinks that he knows, the intention and aim of its author. For instance, suppose anyone sees a work (which I assume to be not ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... ventrem ... quietum whereas the belly resting calmly in their midst. —Rawlins. 13. conficerent grind, and so aid digestion. Cf. confecto l.20. 19-20. maturum confecto cibo brought to perfection only when the food is digested. —R. 24. sacrosancti consecrated and inviolable. 24-25. quibus ... esset, i.e. as official protectors of the Plebs, by their right of veto on the official ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the "contrary method" to perfection requires a careful control up to the finish and beyond it. In order never to be found out, we have to be so consistent in our behavior that we gradually get trained into nothing but a common every-day hypocrite, and the process which goes on behind hypocrisy must necessarily ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... food supplies, clothing and depots made on the interior ice-sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the Pole and back, worked out to perfection. The advance party would have returned to the glacier in fine form and with surplus of food, but for the astonishing failure of the man whom we had least expected to fail. Edgar Evans was thought the strongest man of ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... study. It is our object to assist nature in all things. The efforts of your people amount to nothing because they are not carried far enough. Your scientists are dreaming idiots. They are continually groping after the ideal and doing nothing with the positive. It was for us to carry out everything to perfection. Show me where we can make a single improvement and you shall ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... garment that would receive and successfully resist this terrible pressure, and yet be flexible enough to permit of free movement to the wearer, the problem would be solved. And these diving-suits are the outcome of my efforts; they sustain and resist to perfection, without permitting them to be transmitted to the body, the most severe pressures to which we have ever exposed them, while at the same time they afford complete protection in other respects to the wearers—as when, for example, we were attacked by ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the old mediaeval Nymwegen, gathered about one of the most charming market places in all Holland—a scene for comic opera. The Dutch way of chequering the shutters in blue and yellow (as at Middelburg) or in red and black, or red and white, is here practised to perfection. The very beautiful weigh-house has red and black shutters; the gateway which leads to the church has ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the neat old serving-woman to perfection, and once started on their journey Violet's face brightens. They find the modiste, who inspects her new customers and is all suavity. Grandon makes a brief explanation, and questions if ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... who should, by seditious discourses and libels, presume to defame the government. Thus the revolutioners commenced the professed enemies of those very arts and practices which had enabled them to bring their scheme to perfection. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... young, oily-mannered and dressed in the most gorgeous livery costume of the period. The last days of genuine dandyism were then rapidly approaching all over the civilized world; and Monsieur Justin was, in his own way, dressed to perfection, as a living illustration of the expiring glories of ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... economic wisdom of this rule as applied to the business of a nation. It means, doesn't it, Get something for nothing, or as near nothing as you can. Well, then, if you can get it for absolutely nothing, you are carrying out the maxim to perfection. For example, if a manufacturer could hypnotize his workmen so as to get them to work for him for no wages at all, he would be realizing the full meaning of the maxim, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... imagine many faces more beautiful than Eliza's, though not more charming. I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I maintain that, if she were more perfect, she ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... trouble was, I had both. I've described you the charms and grace of each, and when I add that both were elegant housekeepers, ye'll admit that my dilemma was greater than ever. They both handled the broom to perfection; they could knock a chap clane across the cabin and out of the window before ye could know what was coming. Me mither used to say it was the housekeeping qualities that should decide, and she told me to call upon 'em sometime when they was n't expecting ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... this growing suspicion of the man which prevented West from indulging in more rigorous methods. As the evening progressed he became almost convinced that her principal object was to deceive this gentleman; that she really cared nothing for what the others might think, or say. And she did her part to perfection, being with West often, although never alone, speaking to him intimately, and requesting of him little acts of service most natural under the circumstances. He played opposite her in a fourhanded game of bridge; he turned the leaves of her music when she sang, and her arm rested within ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... to a Resolution, either not to be a Monk, or to be a Monk to Perfection. I had heard there were some of the Order of St. Bridget, that were really heavenly Men, I ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... written of the degradation of love by habit, and Alexandre Dumas expresses the whole question to perfection in one crystal sentence: 'In marriage when love exists habit kills it; when love does not exist habit calls it into being.' This is profoundly true, and for every passion habit has killed it must certainly have ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... to misunderstand the whole drift of the great revolution which he brought about in English letters. The characteristics of the pre-Johnsonian prose style—the style which Dryden first established and Swift brought to perfection—are obvious enough. Its advantages are those of clarity and force; but its faults, which, of course, are unimportant in the work of a great master, become glaring in that of the second-rate practitioner. The prose of Locke, for instance, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... become a sixth man. Every one knows it who has ever founded a club. It is a moment when five places become one place. Every one must know it who has ever had to repel an invasion. Mr. Timothy Healy, the most serious intellect in the present House of Commons, summed up nationality to perfection when he simply called it something for which people will die, As he excellently said in reply to Lord Hugh Cecil, "No one, not even the noble lord, would die for the meridian of Greenwich." And that is the great tribute to its purely psychological ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... into or come out of storage," says one—an excellent plan, to be sure by which the grocers could buy one case of fresh, eggs and a back room full of storage goods and do Elijah's flour barrel trick to perfection. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... boarding her, as she held the mouth of the vat all closed up, on such wise as in the ample plains the unbridled stallions, afire with love, assail the mares of Parthia, he satisfied his juvenile ardour, the which enterprise was brought to perfection well nigh at the same moment as the scraping of the vat; whereupon he dismounted and Peronella withdrawing her head from the mouth of the vat, the husband came forth thereof. Then said she to her gallant, 'Take this light, good man, and look if it be clean to thy mind.' Giannello ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... splitting timber, and putting up huts—very valuable arts in that country. He might have been a first-rate watchmaker or jeweller, have known Hebrew or Greek, or been a good draughtsman, or kept accounts in excellent style, or dressed to perfection, and been able to leap with the most perfect grace and nimbleness over counters, and yet have starved. Rough backwoodsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen have from the first been able to secure good wages ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... substitute Stelli's fabrications for the genuine coins. The princely collection of rarities that he would thus amass might be difficult to dispose of safely, but I have no doubt that he had matured his plans. Helene, in the person of Nina Brun, an Anglicised French parlourmaid—a part which she fills to perfection—was to obtain wax impressions of the most valuable pieces and to make the exchange when the counterfeits reached her. In this way it was obviously hoped that the fraud would not come to light until long after the real coins had been sold, and I gather that she has already done her work ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... artificial than other plantations of fruits, since the vine requires greater discipline under cultivation than tree or bush. Yet greater art is required only when the attempt is made to grow the grape to perfection, for the vine bears fruit if left to indulge in riotous growth wheresoever it can strike root. Vineyard management, therefore, may represent the consummate art of three thousand or more years of cultural subserviency; or it may be so primeval ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... that, whenever they could do it unobserved, they pelted the damsels with the remains of the corn, or sprinkled them with wine-drops. Glaukias had the art of imitating the pattering of rain and the humming of a fly to perfection with his lips; and when the girls complained of the tiresome insect buzzing in their faces, or declared, when a drop fell on them, that in spite of the blue and cloudless sky it was certainly beginning to rain, the two men had to cover their mouths with their hands, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... railways," said Lord Wilmore, "and as he is an expert chemist and physicist, he has invented a new system of telegraphy, which he is seeking to bring to perfection." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reduced to about a seven inch core, which is useless for the purpose. The veneer as it comes rolling off the log presents all the diversity of colors and the beautiful grain and rich marking that have perhaps for centuries been growing to perfection in the silent depths ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... but secretly, were of opinion that the decision of the censeur was not so wrong as the hardihood of Lenglet insisted on. All this increased the public rumour, and raised the price of the cancels. The craft and mystery of authorship was practised by Lenglet to perfection; and he often exulted, not only in the subterfuges by which he parried his censeurs, but in his bargains with his booksellers, who were equally desirous to possess, while they half feared to enjoy, his uncertain or his perilous copyrights. When the unique copy of the Methode, in its pristine ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... for the purpose of illustrating a new principle, that of the modern turret, and said to surpass the "Monarch," as yet considered the nearest approach to perfection in shipbuilding. ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... really have worked very hard; at all events they collected everything rare and strange in the way of fish, flesh, and fowl peculiar to Australia, the arrangement of the table was charming, and the delicacies were all cooked and served to perfection. The ladies' tastes were considered in the profusion of flowers, and we each found an exquisite bouquet by our plate. I cannot possibly give you a minute account of the whole menu; in fact, as it is, I feel rather like Froissart, who, after chronicling a ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... to the port of Cairo, Boulak, to see Hassaneyn Effendi about boats. He was gone up the Nile, and I sat with his wife—a very nice Turkish woman who speaks English to perfection—and heard all sorts of curious things. I heard the whole story of an unhappy marriage made by Leyla, my hostess's sister, and much Cairo gossip. Like all Eastern ladies that I have seen she complains of indigestion, and said she knew she ought to go out ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... safe enough. Name me one year, since the days of Julius Caesar, when the situation in Europe hasn't been tragic! And it worked, to perfection. ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... from Rum or Rom, a Gipsy. It is a peculiar word, and all of its peculiarities might well be assumed by the sporting Gipsy, who is always, in his way, a character, gifted with an indescribable self-confidence, as are all "horsey" men characters, "sports" and boxers, which enables them to keep to perfection the German eleventh commandment, "Thou shall not let ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... The garden song in "Maud" was rewritten fifty times, and almost as great labor has been given to other famous bits of writing. He was seventeen years in writing "In Memoriam," and he brought it almost to perfection of finish; but he has spent laborious years upon poems which are comparative failures. After the inspiration has waned, or if the inspiration is wanting in the first place, the pains taken in revision ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... man (not to forget the cases in which peculiar aptitude for some one department of knowledge, rightly makes pursuit of that one the bread-winning occupation)—for the average man, we say, the desideratum is, a training that approaches nearest to perfection in the things which most subserve complete living, and falls more and more below perfection in the things that have more and more ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to pay the public debt. Congregational, Baptist, and Episcopal churches had lotteries "for promoting public worship and the advancement of religion." Canals, turnpikes, bridges, excavations, public buildings were brought to perfection by lotteries. Schools and academies were thus endowed; for instance, the Leicester Academy and the Williamstown Free School. In short, "the interests of literature were supported, the arts encouraged, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... that all great and surprising events, the designs of which are laid, conducted, and brought to perfection by the utmost force of human invention and art, should be produced by great and eminent men, so the lives of such may be justly and properly styled the quintessence of history. In these, when delivered to us by sensible writers, we are not only most agreeably entertained, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... exclusive of all reference to what might lie beyond its "flaming barriers." And at the age of sixty he had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far from unamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed him. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine aristocratic manners, with "a rampart," through which he himself never broke, nor permitted any thing or person to ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... the spot, and when in the deepening gloom he saw Adrienne flinging herself violently this way and that, helplessly trying to escape from the clasp of a man, he did to perfection what a priest is supposed to be the least fitted to do. Indeed, considering his age and leaving his vocation out of the reckoning, his performance was amazing. It is not certain that the blow dealt upon Governor Hamilton's jaw by M. Roussillon was a stiffer one ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Incouragement due to ingenious and industrious people given, (as in this Case, the Nation might well afford) then to be sure, our Hospitals would be suddenly stock'd with curious Artists, by which our new Manufactory would speedily be brought to perfection. ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... cattle: its leaves, its flowers, its buds, its stalk, its root; all that it now wants is to combine the ornamental with the useful, to smarten itself, to adorn our flowerbeds and cut a good figure on a drawing-room table. It has done this to perfection, not with its flowers, which, in their modesty, continue intractable, but with its curly and variegated leaves, which have the undulating grace of Ostrich-feathers and the rich colouring of a mixed bouquet. None who beholds it in this magnificence ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... coward than ever, Chicken-hearted, past thought. The caffes and waiters distress me. All is unkind, and, alas, I am ready for any one's kindness. Oh, I knew it of old, and knew it, I thought, to perfection, If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness, It is the need of it,—it is this sad self-defeating dependence. Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Father Nannar, lord of Ur, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, lord of E-gish-shir-gal,[436] chief of the gods, Father Nannar, lord of the brilliant crescent, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, whose sovereignty is brought to perfection, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, who passes along in great majesty, O strong Bull,[437] great of horns, perfect in form, with long flowing beard[438] of the color of lapus-lazuli. Powerful one, self-created, a product (?) beautiful to look upon, whose fullness has not been brought forth,[439] ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... perfect work, and are, indeed, among the most original and polished forms of Roman verse. His Art of Poetry is not a complete theory of poetic art, and is supposed to have been written simply to suggest the difficulties to be met on the way to perfection by a versifier destitute of the poetic genius. The works of Horace were immediately popular, and in the next generation became ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... their hearts while there, to pray for deliverance; it was God that put it into the hearts of the kings of the Medes and Persians to give them liberty to return and build; and it was God that quailed the hearts of those that by opposing did endeavour to hinder the bringing the work to perfection; yea, it was God that did indeed bring the work to perfection; wherefore she may well be said to descend 'out of heaven from God': as he also saith himself by the prophet, I will cause the captivity of Judah, and the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I sat there with a perfectly straight face through the whole of it, while she made up dreadful things about me. I'm going away off in the pasture to-morrow and practise that bray all by myself till I can do it to perfection. Then when A.O. begins to sing his praises again, I won't say a word. I'll just give her Jimmy's laugh. Won't she be astonished? She's bound to recognize it, for it's the only one of its kind in the world. I shall keep her guessing until ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he said, as he reached for the moustache and carefully adjusted it, "one moment while I take a glance at myself in the glass over the seat. That's better, ain't it? Quite straight, and makes me look the part to perfection. But what did that signalman shout, you ask? Well, rather an important message, and these are the words as I remember them: 'You'll stop at the station just beyond', he called to the driver; 'there are police there waiting for you, for there's information that there are three escaping ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Peggy he placed in his pocket, and returning to the room where they were now dancing, found her in a flimsy cream gown, sleeveless and cut low—a dress that suited her to perfection—dancing with apparent merriment with young Eastwood, though he knew that her heart was sad. But her face was flushed by excitement, and she was entering thoroughly into the country-house gayety. Presently, however, he was able to slip the note ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... riding, betting with him, or relieving him from the sense of his own inability by making a jest of some person. Buckhurst's talents for mimickry were an infallible resource. In particular, he could mimick the two Clays to perfection, could take off the affected tone, foreign airs, and quick talkative vanity of French Clay; and represent the slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence, and solemn self-importance of English Clay. He used to imitate not only their manners, gesture, and voice, but could hold ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Hers is the simplicity of silliness, which reveals what a woman of sense, though no better than herself, would not speak of. It is exasperating to think that her eyes and fingers are endowed with a sense of harmony and beauty, so that she can cut a gown and adorn her lovely person to perfection, and yet be so idiotic as to make a spectacle of herself in her real womanhood. As far as I can make out, Nature is more to blame than the girl. There is not a bat blinking in the sunlight more blind than she to every natural ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... gang of ingenious rascals, who lived by imitating the less known gems of the old masters, and palming them off on the credulous public and wealthy collectors as genuine. The impostures were very cleverly manipulated, and quite a little system was instituted to bring them to perfection. Mr. Wilfer's part of the undertaking was "toning"; that is, bringing to the imitations the necessary mistiness and discoloration supposed to ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the above-mentioned critics is sufficiently alive to the egregious shortcomings which Byron himself recognized. That he loses almost nothing by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist. Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with a big brush were never meant for the microscope. Here the contrast between his theoretic worship of his idol and his own practice ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... home, if it keeps its conscience clear towards God and lives always as though in public, fearing itself more than other men, then it avoids all storms, it stands on firm ground in fair daylight, and has brought to perfection its knowledge of all that is useful and essential. All that remains serves merely to amuse our leisure; yet, when once anchored in safety, the mind may consider these matters also, though it can derive no strength, but ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... the maestro as usual smoking his long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw open the window and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by a magnificent chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices; they sang to perfection, each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered light in his hand, and the performance, which was the only one of the sort I ever heard, gave a wonderful impression of the musical capacity of the only really musical ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... anxious to contemplate at their ease "the aristocrats" already slain; consequently, lights are required, and one is placed on the breast of each corpse.—Meanwhile, the slaughter continues, and is carried to perfection. A butcher at the Abbaye[31107] complains that "the aristocrats die too quick, and that those only who strike first have the pleasure of it"; henceforth they are to be struck with the backs of the swords only, and made to run between two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... part to perfection, and not even the bookkeeper seemed to have the slightest suspicion that Mr. Cheever could be ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Divinity, which rush in upon us from our passions, from our selfish partialities, and from the low-minded world around us. There is one view of God particularly suited to elevate us. I mean the view of Him as the "Father of our spirits;" as having created us with great powers to grow up to perfection; as having ordained all outward things to minister to the progress of the soul; as always present to inspire and strengthen us, to wake us up to inward life, and to judge and rebuke our wrong-doing; as looking with parental joy on our resistance of evil; as desiring ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... disturbing passions to have faith in its continuous progress. Though immensely greater than Bacon, it may be questioned if he could thoroughly have appreciated Bacon's intellectual character. He could have delineated him to perfection in everything but in that peculiar philanthropy of the mind, that spiritual benignity, that belief in man and confidence in his future, which both atone and account for so many of Bacon's moral defects. There is no character in his plays that covers the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... yet a subject on wh I shd like to know more, if you fall in with persons who have ye guidance of consciences,—what penances they employ for persons whose temptations are almost entirely spiritual, of delicate frames often, and who wish to be led on to perfection. I see in a spiritual writer that even for such, corporal severities are not to be neglected, but so many of them are unsafe. I suspect ye 'discipline' to be one of ye safest, and with internal humiliation the best.... Cd you ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... her capability as a musician. In music she was not only an infant prodigy, but very much of a born genius. Her memory for any composition she heard once was unfailingly accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect, since to perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation. She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something between that of a guitar and a harp, with ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... smooth and shining and full of lights and set off her fresh complexion to perfection. This was not at all brown, but her eyes were. Great, big ones these, with a star in each of them for laughter. Her nose turned up ever so slightly, and she had a little way of tilting her dainty chin, as if to keep ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... most of what is left him. In three years he will be a wreck. Then he will be ambitious; perhaps he may succeed. I do not think so.—What is he? A man of intrigue, who may have the business faculty to perfection, and be able to gossip agreeably; but he is too presumptuous to have any sterling merit; he will not go far. Besides—only look at him. Is it not written on his brow that, at this very moment, ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... expression or beauty of the style it tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... advisable thing is to watch carefully over the sure preservation and increase of what has been reduced and pacified at so great expense. I charge you that you strive for this end, considering the condition in which you find affairs and the great importance and advisability of bringing them to perfection and placing foundations so firm and secure that not only will there be naught to fear from the many enemies surrounding that part explored, but that it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... acknowledge all who love such knowledge as our brethren in CHRIST, with whom we hope to rejoice eternally in the heavenly school. For our best knowledge here is but in part, but when we shall attain to perfection, then we shall see what GOD is, and what He ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... dream about. If people had said that epics were only fit for children and nursemaids, 'Paradise Lost' might have been an average pantomime: it might have been called 'Harlequin Satan, or How Adam 'Ad 'em.' For who would trouble to bring to perfection a work in which even perfection is grotesque? Why should Shakespeare write 'Othello' if even his triumph consisted in the eulogy, 'Mr. Shakespeare is fit for ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... over the surface of the tun; roused well, and cleansed 81 barrels. This quality of beer, when brewed from good materials, and managed as directed, makes a wholesome and a pleasant beverage; but, to do it justice, should have more time allowed it for coming to perfection. ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... plants and flowers till the warm days of summer are fully set in, the plant has scarcely time to grow into perfection before the chills of autumn come on, and they perish before their blossoms, fruit, or seeds come to perfection. But this may be obviated by means of a frame and hot-bed, which every young gardener ought to have, however small it may be. One of the simplest is the common garden or cucumber frame, which may be bought for a few shillings. This, if about a yard square, should be set upon a low framework ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... have been either hypocrites or fools, had learnt certain things which he would hardly have been taught just now in any school in England; for his training had been that of the old Persians, "to speak the truth and to draw the bow," both of which savage virtues he had acquired to perfection, as well as the equally savage ones of enduring pain cheerfully, and of believing it to be the finest thing in the world to be a gentleman; by which word he had been taught to understand the careful habit ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... county; and, 4. The ward republics, for the small, and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood: and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division and sub-division of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a part in the administration of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... it is also peeled by the women, and, when dried, it is boiled with milk to give it sweetness. A grain called dochan, a species of millet, is likewise cultivated to a considerable extent; when ripe, it somewhat resembles the head of the bulrush. The whole of this country would grow cotton and sugar to perfection. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... said to her mother. "We have only to wait and be quiet." And she carried out both parts of her stated duty to perfection. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner |
