"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and constant absorbment, at the time of its preparation, occasioned it to appear with so many undramatic effects, from my inexperience of theatrical requisites and demands, that, when I saw it, I myself perceived a thousand things I wished to change. The performers, too, were cruelly imperfect, and made blunders I blush to have pass for mine,-added to what belong to me. The most important character after the hero and heroine had but two lines of his part by heart ! He made all the rest at ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... who wins the world's honors to-day must not be overtrained mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of Virginia,—"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested, convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on insanity, and out of tune ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... feel badly." "He looks badly." The former sentence implies defective nerves of sensation, the latter, imperfect vision. Use ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... that, in the most fundamental of all social operations, the building up of the family, the issues involved in the nuptial contract, lie beyond the best exercise of human thought, and the unseen forces of providential government make good the defect in our imperfect capacity. Even so would it seem to have been in that curious marriage of competing influences and powers, which brings about the composite harmony of the British Constitution. More, it must be admitted, than any other, it leaves open doors which lead into blind alleys; for ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the inscriptions upon any of these Butsu-soku- seki will be found of more significance than the above imperfect attempts at an explanation of the emblems. The inscriptions upon the monument at Dentsu-In are typical. On different sides of the structure,—near the top, and placed by rule so as to face certain points of the compass,—there are engraved five Sanscrit characters which are ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... and gold was brought to a greater perfection in this ware than ever before, and it established for the makers a wide-reaching reputation. Possibly this reputation might have remained preeminent had not the short-sighted manufacturers begun to sell at a lower rate their imperfect pieces, or seconds. Great quantities of these flooded the market and immediately the fame of ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... very convenient and expeditious mode of cooking; but though one of the most common, it is as commonly performed in a very imperfect manner, and meets with less attention than the comfort of a good meal requires. A fryingpan should be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, and perpendicular sides. When used it should be half filled with fat, for good frying ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... dagoba at the top was reached they had passed through a course of religious instruction, as it were, and were ready, with enlightened eyes, to enter and behold the image of Buddha, symbolically left imperfect, as beyond the power of human art to realize or portray. From base to summit the whole hill is really a great picture-bible of ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... its verse and its prose. "The Modern Muse", exhibiting Mr. Kleiner in a somewhat humorous mood, is very forceful in its satire on the altered ideals of the poetical fraternity, but is marred by the noticeably imperfect rhyming of "garret" and "carrot", it is barely possible that according to the prevailing New York pronunciation this rhyme is not so forced as it appears, but we are of New England, and accustomed to hearing the sounds ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... can hardly think that shame has any share in the concealment of your guilt; for no shame can exceed that which you have already suffered. Besides, confession is all the amends you can make; and mankind know experimentally how frail and imperfect human nature is, and will allow for ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... These works are very imperfect, because they have exposed points. The angles are not protected by the fire from the sides. To remedy this difficulty, the next most usual work is the star fort, made in the form of a regular or irregular ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that they were primordially twiners is forcibly suggested. The internodes of all, without exception, revolve in exactly the same manner as twiners; some few can still twine well, and many others in an imperfect manner. Several leaf-climbing genera are closely allied to other genera which are simple twiners. It should also be observed, that the possession of leaves with sensitive petioles, and with the consequent power of clasping an object, would be of comparatively little use to a ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... of every man paints his character,' says Goethe; and scanty and imperfect as are the recorded details of General Lyon's life, enough is known to prove him to have been high-minded and brave as a soldier, with a perseverance and a penetration that analyzed at once the platforms of contending factions, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Bridge" is printed in Ritson's Gammer Gurton's Garland, and in Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England; but both copies are very imperfect. There are also some fragments preserved in the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1823 (vol. xciii. p. 232.), and in the Mirror for November 1st of the same year. From these versions a tolerably perfect copy has ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... used threats, or expressions of loud resentment. All was arranged with him on system, and it was his practice to do "the needful" on every occasion, without wasting words about it. It was, therefore, with a bitter smile that he listened to my imperfect answers concerning the state of commerce in France, and unmercifully permitted me to involve myself deeper and deeper in the mysteries of agio, tariffs, tare and tret; nor can I charge my memory with his having looked positively angry, until he found me unable to explain the exact effect which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... misfortunes removed from the company of those who first seduced him into his vices, he began to have some ideas of the use of life when he was going to leave it; and his thoughts had received certain ideas (though very imperfect ones) of death and a future state, when the punishment appointed by Law sent him to experience them. He died on the 23rd of August, 1726, being then upwards of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater!—the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders had already reached a high degree of culture in comparison ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... short distance when the head of the column emerged from the heavy forest, and discovered the enemy to be advancing in line of battle. Nearly all the Twelfth Corps had emerged from the forest at that moment" (this is a very imperfect statement of the facts); "but, as the passage-way through the forest was narrow, I was satisfied that I could not throw troops through it fast enough to resist the advance of Gen. Lee, and was apprehensive of being whipped ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... have constituted "the Western recension." If, in codices of this family also, the self-same termination is now all but universally found, the fact is to be accounted for, (Griesbach says,) by the natural desire which possessors of the Gospels will have experienced to supplement their imperfect copies as best they might. "Let this conjecture be accepted," proceeds the learned veteran,—(unconscious apparently that he has been demanding acceptance for at least half-a-dozen wholly unsupported as well ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... great men who are worshipped in our temples, by reason of our indebtedness to them for the arts of life, could not but become impaired if their posterity were suffered to eclipse their fame by new discoveries, or presumptuously amend what might appear imperfect in their productions. It is therefore, by an edict of the Emperor Suen, forbidden to invent anything; and by a statute of the Emperor Wu-chi it is further provided that nothing hitherto invented shall be improved. My predecessor in the small office I hold was ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... such a translation must be very imperfect; but it is equally manifest that much divine truth maybe communicated by it, and probably with more accuracy than is commonly done by preaching, either with an ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... Bentham for his philanthropy, plain powerful sense, and lucid forcible writing; but as for John's politics, they are, as Beatrice tells the prince he is, "too costly for every-day wear." His theories are so perfect that I think imperfect men could never be brought to live under a scheme of government ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... on which it stands, yet enough, in this level country, to give it a prospect of a score or two of miles in all directions. The Conqueror fell in love with the situation at first sight, and gave a stolen monastery in exchange for it. The home so won has provided a shelter—at times very imperfect, indeed—to British sovereigns for eight centuries. From the modest erection of William it has been steadily growing—with the growth of the empire, we were near saying, but its chief enlargements occurred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... nay, suppose them to observe some doubtful clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from delicacy to object to it. I know I am speaking within the mark, for I have seen such a case occur, and the Mexican, in spite of the advice of his lawyer, has signed the imperfect paper like a lamb. To have spoken in the matter, he said, above all to have let the other party guess that he had seen a lawyer, would have "been like doubting his word." The scruple sounds oddly to one of ourselves, who have been brought up to understand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ready. Three times the duke repeated the same question, raising his voice still more each time; and three times I made him the same reply, always in the same respectful manner. "Oh, you fool!" said he at last, "you do not understand, then."—"That arises evidently, Monseigneur, from your Excellency's imperfect explanations!" Upon which he explained that he was speaking of a new carriage which had come from Paris that very day, a fact of which I was entirely ignorant. I was on the point of explaining this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in action. If we believe in democracy, we must recognize in politics the instrument, however imperfect, through which democracy works. Brand Whitlock knew politics, first as a political reporter, then as candidate for mayor in four campaigns, in each of which he was successful. Under his administration the city of Toledo became a better place to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... compel those we employ to do work that demoralizes them or does not tend to elevate or lift them, we are forcing them into service worse than useless. "If we induce painters to work in fading colors, or architects with rotten stone, or contractors to construct buildings with imperfect materials, we are forcing our Michael Angelos ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... uncultivated. When they look at things, they put their hands in their pockets. No doubt that is one reason why their knowledge is often so vague, inaccurate, and useless. It is probable, too, that our knowledge of phenomena beyond the reach of the hand is equally imperfect. But, at all events, we behold them through a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind—to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill—war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had stood high in the niches ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... laugh went round till it reached the Vice-Chancellor. There it stopped. He was far too well bred to allow a single muscle of his face to move. "He throws a cold blanket on everything," my neighbour said; and my knowledge of English was still so imperfect that I accepted many of these metaphorical remarks in their literal sense, and became more and more puzzled about my host. It was evidently a pleasure to my friends to see how easily I was taken in. On the walls of the houses at Oxford I saw the letters ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... us the answer to the question as to the connection between the sudden and the gradual in sanctification: between its being a thing once for all complete, and yet imperfect and needing to be perfected. What God sanctifies is holy with a Divine and perfect holiness as His gift: man has to sanctify by acknowledging and maintaining and carrying out that holiness in relation to what God has made holy. ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... whilst the sphynx, satyr, unicorn, centaur, hypogriff, hydra, dragon, griffin, cockatrice, &c. &c. &c. were either the creations of fancy, or fabled accounts of creatures of whose real form, origin, nature, and qualities, but the most imperfect knowledge ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... Macalister (ibid. p. 121) has tabulated his observations, and finds that muscular abnormalities are most frequent in the fore-arms, secondly, in the face, thirdly, in the foot, etc.) Such resemblances are either perfect or imperfect; yet in the latter case they are manifestly of a transitional nature. Certain variations are more common in man, and others in woman, without our being able to assign any reason. Mr. Wood, after describing numerous variations, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that one having for his vehicle the horse (Uchchaisrava), (Indra), patting me on the head with his hand, said these words, 'Now even the celestials themselves cannot conquer thee,—what shall I say of imperfect mortals residing on earth? Thou hast become invulnerable in strength, irrepressible, and incomparable in fight.' Then with the hair of his body standing on end, he again accosted me saying, 'O hero, in fighting with weapons none is equal unto thee. And, O perpetuator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... carriage and began to play on a fiddle made apparently of an old blacking-box, and though I am quite unmusical the sounds filled me with the strangest emotions. I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Presbyterian merchant, of a religious turn, it is probable a quantity of tracts would have been made to answer the purpose; but, belonging to a sect whose practice was generally as perfect as its theory is imperfect, Friend Abraham White's conscience was not to be satisfied with any such shallow contrivance. It is true that he expected to make many thousands of dollars by the voyage, and doubtless would so have done, had not the accident befallen ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the morning, cheered by the pleasant feeling of being once more in that Paris which is so imperfect, but which is the only true town in the world, I called on my dear Madame d'Urfe, who received me with open arms. She told me that the young Count d'Aranda was quite well, and if I liked she would ask him to dinner the next day. I told her I should be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... chemistry apply By sweet affinities to human flesh, Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,— O, that were much, and I could be a part Of the round day, related to the sun And planted world, and full executor Of their imperfect functions. But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes in astronomy, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... practice was not wholly confined to the poorer classes, for he was often consulted by well-dressed members of the foreign colony—on account, probably, of his linguistic attainments. A foreigner with an imperfect knowledge of English naturally prefers a doctor to whom he can speak in his own tongue. Therefore, as Weirmarsh spoke French, Italian and Spanish with equal fluency, it was not surprising that he had formed quite a ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... several weeks, built shed-fashion, open to the fire on the west. If the wind changed, they could turn it round. It was formed by two forked stakes and a cross-bar, with rafters slanted from this to the ground. The covering was partly an old sail, partly birch-bark, quite imperfect, but securely tied on, and coming down to the ground on the sides. A large log was rolled up at the back side for a headboard, and two or three moose-hides were spread on the ground with the hair up. Various articles of their wardrobe were tucked around the sides and corners, or under the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... want to point out that even in the realm of science, where progress is so swift and books so short-lived, the Greeks of the great age had such genius and vitality that their books lived in a way that no others have lived. Let us get away from the thought of Euclid as an inky and imperfect English school-book, to that ancient Eucleides who, with exceedingly few books but a large table of sand let into the floor, planned and discovered and put together and re-shaped the first laws of geometry, till at last he had written one of the great simple books of the world, a book which ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... her cheek against his saddle bags, which he had placed for her the last thing. Very white and small her face looked as she slept, her hands folded under her chin.... Peter watched, his eyes becoming accustomed to the faint light. The white cap lay near, a different and imperfect white compared to her flesh; and the soft deep night of her hair seemed to him of sufficient loveliness for any world. A girl asleep—and such a faith had they known. There was a beauty about it all that rebuked the actuality ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... dire necessity of the admonition. The halting tongue, the slip in name or incident, the turning back to forge an omitted link in the chain, the repetition, the general weakness of statement consequent on imperfect grasp: these are common features of the stories one hears told. And they are features which will deface ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be found ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... being entirely moulded by hand, and showing no trace of the use of the potter's wheel. The body consists of a mixture of clay mixed with fine pebbles, or pounded flint, and sometimes ground chalk or shells. For finer work sharp sand has been employed. The firing is most primitive and imperfect. After drying in the sun the vessel was probably baked in the ashes of a fire of brushwood piled over and about it. The decoration, like the other processes, bespeaks a simple culture. It is usually in the nature of lines, or dots, varied now and then by thumb ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... be noted of Montesquieu, and as often of Voltaire, that each of them is constantly led astray by imperfect knowledge of foreign, and especially of barbarous and savage nations. Since the voyages and conquests of the Renaissance, accounts of strange countries had abounded in Europe, written in many cases by men anything but accurate, if not, in the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... though it reaches but to a very little part of the World, it did at least give us a satisfactory account of those things to which 'tis said to reach. But I find not, that it gives us any other then a very imperfect information even about mixt Bodies themselves: For how will the knowledge of the Tria Prima discover to us the Reason, why the Loadstone drawes a Needle and disposes it to respect the Poles, and yet seldom precisely points ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... Enquiring what the reason of this might be, the general woice was that it proceeded from the nature of the Aurelian wine, which they alledge to have such influence on the sperm of man as to produce a creature imperfect in their legs. Others sayd it was the purity of the air about Orleans whence the city has the name of Aurelia. But what influence the air can have in this point is hardly explicable. Monsieur Ogilvy more rationally informed me ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... fact, even the very imperfect and indirect kind of contact which can be established by telegraphing over great distances is largely lacking. The French and the Russians are in touch. The commanders can and do pursue a combined plan. But the communication of results and the corresponding ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... without a motive, suggested a stroll on the lawn. If there was dew upon the grass none of them heeded it, and it was but seldom anyone enjoyed the privilege of pacing that sod when Mr. Schuyler was at home. Every foot had cost him many dollars, and it remained but an imperfect imitation of an English lawn. There was on the one side a fringe of maples, and it was perhaps by Mrs. Schuyler's contrivance that eventually Hetty found herself alone with Cheyne in their deeper shadow. It was not, however, a surprise to her, for she had seen the man's desire ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... mind, and a general feebleness of body, were all the apparent consequences of this stroke. She was not herself sensible of the nature of the attack, or clear in her ideas of any thing that had passed immediately previous to it. She had only an imperfect recollection of her daughter's illness, and of some hurry about Mr. Vivian's going away. She was, however, well enough to go into her dressing-room, where Vivian went to pay his respects to her, with Lord Glistonbury. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... legislation. It is possible that in some cases it places too much faith in law as a means of emancipation from economic bondage; but, in the main, its legislative point of view is sane and conservative. It believes that such ills as are due to bad or imperfect legislation can be, at least partly, relieved by good or more perfect legislation. Nor does it limit its interest to measures that concern the farmer alone. It is unalterably opposed to class legislation, and aims to keep its ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... his admirer, after Athens was abandoned, and Decelea fortified by the enemy—the admirer of one whose sole aim in life was tyranny? But, as the divine Plato says, as long as his chin was beardless, he was beloved by all; but, when he passed from boyhood to manhood, when his imperfect intelligence had reached its maturity, he was hated by all. Why, then, giving modest names to immodest sentiments, do men call personal beauty virtue, being in reality lovers of youth rather than lovers of wisdom? However, it is not my intention ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... imperfect acquaintance with the recent ganoidal fishes in 1836, from a perusal of the late Dr. Hibbert's paper on the deposit of Burdiehouse, which I owed to the kindness of Mr. George Anderson. Dr. Hibbert, in illustrating the fishes of the Coal Measures, figured ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has gone out to the ends of the world, permit a false ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... followed? Not adequately, only by imperfect hints. These two faced each other, Rosa and the apparition. She uttered no word. But I, in my stupor, knew that she was interceding with the spectre for my life. Her lovely eyes spoke to it of its old love, its old magnanimity, and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... instance, or in these or those instances, education for the people has failed. And I have never traced even this to its source but I have found that the term education, so employed, meant anything but education—implied the mere imperfect application of old, ignorant, preposterous spelling-book lessons to the meanest purposes—as if you should teach a child that there is no higher end in electricity, for example, than expressly to strike a mutton-pie ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... that he may devote himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence. Mr. Godwin gives no quarter to the amiable weaknesses of our nature, nor does he stoop to avail himself of the supplementary aids of an imperfect virtue. Gratitude, promises, friendship, family affection give way, not that they may be merged in the opposite vices or in want of principle; but that the void may be filled up by the disinterested love of good, and the dictates of inflexible justice, which is ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... strained, and imperfect generalizations. A historian should always remember that he is a sort of trustee for his readers. No matter how copious may be his notes, he cannot fully explain his processes or the reason of his confidence in one witness and not in another, his belief in one honest man against a half dozen ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... interesting, as there appears some reason for believing that before long we may see another outburst of the same star. In the years 945, 1264, and 1572, brilliant stars appeared in the region of the heavens between Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Sir J. Herschel remarks, that, 'from the imperfect account we have of the places of the two earlier, as compared with that of the last, which was well determined, as well as from the tolerably near coincidence of the intervals of their appearance, we may suspect them, with Goodricke, to be one ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... at Greenwich, and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This, however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective insulation became frequently and painfully apparent while the cable was being submerged. Still further evidence of its imperfect condition was afforded when it came to be cut up for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... those that would be used in counting, but are for specific use, being varied according to the thought it was intended to express. For example, naiooktaich there is 1, is present tense; naiooktaichcus, there was 1, is imperfect; and encoodaichdedou, there will be 1, is future. The variation in person is shown ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... no part of this country which has not its broad characters and tendencies, different from anything ever seen before, imperfect while they are doomed to isolation, during which they show only a maimed and grotesque vitality. The religious tendency is different, the humor is different, the imagination differs from anything beyond the Atlantic. And the East differs from the West, the North from the South; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... to breathe between its lips the living soul. But as he stooped, Hephaistos, jealous of the divine gift about to be conferred upon the mortal race, sent from his forges smoke and vapour, which obscured the vision of the Almighty Workman. So that the imperfect image received that which was meant ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... imperfect history of the times of which I write, I cannot resist at this place to render a deserved tribute to the noble women of the South, more especially of South Carolina. It was with difficulty that the soldiers going to the army from their homes ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... exclaims, "Ah, madam, how different is the morality of a blind man from ours; and how the morality of the deaf would differ from that of the blind; and if a being should have a sense more than we have, how wofully imperfect would he find our morality!" This is plainly a crude and erroneous way of illustrating the important truth of the strict relativity of ethical standards and maxims. Diderot speaks as if they were relative simply and solely to our five wits, and would vary with them only. Everybody now has learnt ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... rock, a wood, or a valley, however the scenery may be diversified, always conveys a perfect and distinct image to the mind; but a temple, an altar, a palace, or a pavilion, requires a detail, minute even to tediousness, and which, after all, gives but an imperfect notion of the object. I have as often read descriptions of the Vatican, as of the Bay of Naples; yet I recollect little of the former, while the latter seems almost familiar to me.—Many are strongly impressed with the scenery ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... it, is an imperfect system. But it is the only system that has banished famine. Under communism and feudalism there was hunger. Under capitalism the world has been able to feed twice as many mouths as could be ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... and in Washington, during those years when he needed help. She had not broken down until after the birth of his daughter, but that was twenty years ago, and she had been an invalid ever since. He spoke of this long period of imperfect happiness in a matter-of-fact way, and Betty assumed that by this time he was used to it. He alluded to his wife once as "a very dear old friend," but Betty guessed that she was nearly obliterated ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... a question of daily bread," said Morten, with energy. "Hungry people can't sit down and try to become a majority; while the grass grows the cow starves! They ought to help themselves. If they do not, their self-consciousness is imperfect; they must wake up to the consciousness of their own human value. If there were a law forbidding the poor man to breathe the air, do you think he'd stop doing so? He simply could not. It's painful for him to look on ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... works do not justify, although they are virtues and pertain to the righteousness of the Law, in so far as they are a fulfilling of the Law. So far also this obedience of the Law justifies by the righteousness of the Law. But this imperfect righteousness of the Law is not accepted by God, unless on account of faith. Accordingly it does not justify, i.e., it neither reconciles, nor regenerates, nor by itself renders us ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... it generally practised, men would become a race of pigmies. It iz no crime for brothers' and sisters' children to intermarry, and this iz often practised; but such near blood connections often produce imperfect children. The common peeple hav hence drawn an argument to proov such connections criminal; considering weakness, sickness and deformity in the offspring az judgements upon the parents. Superstition iz often awake ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... small white seed like rice—and reaped their harvest in the late summer, storing the crop in their dry cellars under ground. He told me also the story of the ant lion—a big beetle that lives in the jungles of the grain and the grass—of which I remember only an outline, more or less imperfect. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... describe with some exactness the forest of Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my account of Selborne would be very imperfect, as it is a district abounding with many curious productions, both animal and vegetable, and has often afforded me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... crime still remains one of the most perplexing and obstinate of social problems. It is much more formidable than pauperism, and almost as costly. A social system which has to try hundreds of thousands of offenders annually before the criminal courts is in a very imperfect condition; the causes which lead to this state of things deserve careful consideration from all who take an ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... rushing about the back of her store at the moment that Susan chanced to choose for her nervously murmured remarks, and had to have them repeated several times. Then she laughed heartily and merrily, and assured Susan in very imperfect and very audible English, that forty girls were already on her list waiting ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... is to know what we really like. It is probably impossible to look at a famous work with eyes clear from preconceived impressions: copies, engravings, photographs, have familiarized us in some measure with the finest things in the world. However imperfect an idea may be given by reproductions of great pictures—great in size as well as merit—whether we have seen a Marcantonio or a Raphael Morghen or only a carte de visite—a notion of their chief features is acquired: we recognize them from the farther end of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... clever young men of strong bias and manifest indisposition to respect or attend to, or even to be patient with, any aspect of the subject but their own in this complicated and eventful question, and who, partly from overlooking great and material elements in it, and partly from an imperfect apprehension of what they had to do, have failed to present even the matters of fact with which they deal with the necessary exactness and even-handedness. It seems to us that in a work intended ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... men and women of the human family? In the home from which he came he had dwelt from all eternity in the bosom of the Father, and had enjoyed the companionship of the highest angels. What could he find in this world of imperfect, sinful beings to meet the cravings of his heart for fellowship? Whom could he find among earth's sinful creatures worthy of his friendship, or capable of being in any real sense his personal friend? What satisfaction could his heart find in this world's deepest and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... early four-toed ancestor in the Eocene age, has increased in size and in perfect adaptation of feet and teeth to a life on open plains, and has reached its highest perfection in the horse, the ass, and the zebra. In birds, also, we see an advance from the imperfect tooth-billed and reptile-tailed birds of the secondary epoch, to the wonderfully developed falcons, crows, and swallows of our time. So, the ferns, lycopods, conifers, and monocotyledons of the palaeozoic and mesozoic rocks, have ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... were not for the art of writing and printing! This it is that makes libraries the only sure and lasting memory of the human race, for its individual members have all of them but a very limited and imperfect one. Hence most men of learning as are loth to have their knowledge examined as merchants to lay ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... one journey, and went twenty miles from the first range of hills, till his further course was interrupted by a river running north, which is a curious circumstance, being in the mountains. He described it as wide as the Thames at Kingston. Some native iron he found, and also an imperfect limestone, and the dung of an unknown animal. Samples of everything he there found will be sent by the GREENWICH (whaler), and I did hope to have been able to add something farther from another journey he was about undertaking, and for ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... him, having been the proper time in the bath, he takes them out to be dried, sorted, cleaned, and packed. The bath has to be of just the right temperature, as, if it be too hot or too cold, the chimneys are liable to explode. In either case the process of annealing is imperfect. By working the tables at a certain rate, the baths are kept at the right temperature by the immersion of the red hot glass. Oil or tallow is used in the bath. Any greasy substance will do, though ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... the costume of women who work in some of the Derbyshire lead-mines; they are capital figures, to which the pencil can scarcely do justice; indeed, though this sketch was drawn from nature, it conveys but an imperfect idea of beings, (nondescripts,) who would assuredly delight Cruikshank. The dress of these women, of whom the writer saw several emerged from mines a few miles from the Peak, seems contrived to secure them from the cold and wet attendant upon their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... which are formed— 1. Present, Imperfect, and Future Indicative, 2. Present and Imperfect Subjunctive, 3. The Imperative, 4. The Present Infinitive, - (Active and Passive.) 5. The Present Active Participle, the Gerund, and Gerundive. II. Perfect Stem, ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... Europe was in a continual state of warfare. Little princes and great lords were constantly skirmishing and struggling for trifling additions of territory, or wasting each others borders. Geography was very imperfect; no police existed; roads, such as they were, were dangerous; and posts were not established. Events were only known by rumour, from pilgrims, or by letters carried In couriers to the parties interested: the public did not ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... our results with a much greater confidence than in any other case (except perhaps Clement of Rome, where we have the equally accurate and scholarly guidance of Dr. Lightfoot [Endnote 40:1]) that we are not led astray by imperfect materials. I have availed myself freely of Credner's collection of variants, indicating the cases where the existence of documentary (or, in some places, inferential) evidence for Justin's readings ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the divine essence. Therefore to be unbegotten belongs also to the essence; thus it is not proper to the Father. But if it be taken in a privative sense, as every privation signifies imperfection in the thing which is the subject of privation, it follows that the Person of the Father is imperfect; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Seat—from which, this evening, I watched the sun set behind the distant Lomonds—that I might acquaint myself with the features of the surrounding country, and the effect of the city as a whole. And amid much confused and imperfect recollection of picturesque groups of ancient buildings, and magnificent assemblages of elegant modern ones, I carried away with me two vividly distinct ideas—first results, as a painter might perhaps say, of a "fresh eye," which no after survey has served to freshen ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... constructed. How he conceived this process has never been satisfactorily explained. He traced the various forms and phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and essence. The "Monad" or unit he regarded as the source of all numbers. The number Two was imperfect, and the cause of increase and division. Three was called the number of the whole because it had a beginning, middle, and end. Four, representing the square, is in the highest degree perfect; and Ten, as it contains the sum of the four ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... machine which was to do the more difficult work of sewing the sole to the upper was the invention of a mere boy, Lyman R. Blake. The first model, completed in 1858, was imperfect, but Blake was able to interest Gordon McKay, of Boston, and three years of patient experimentation and large expenditure followed. The McKay sole-sewing machine, which they produced, came into use, and for twenty-one years was used almost universally both in the United ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... us, it is that the infinite God, the Power, whatever we name it, that is the thought and life of this universe, is expressed just as perfectly in the tiniest atom as in the most magnificent galaxy. There is no such thing as an imperfect atom in this universe. The infinitesimal atoms below us, and the tiny orbits through which these atoms and molecules sweep, are as much in the grasp of the Eternal Law as the movements of the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... clear and distinct; in this clearness and distinctness we find the principle of certitude. Mind, then, exists, and is known to us as a thinking substance. But the idea of an infinite, perfect Being is also present to our intellect; we, finite, imperfect beings, could not have made it; unmake it we cannot; and in the conception of perfection that of existence is involved. Therefore God exists, and therefore the laws of our consciousness, which are ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... on the original miry earth, produced filmy bladders or bubbles, and these, becoming surrounded with a prickly rind, at length burst open, and as from an egg, animals came forth. At first they were ill-formed and imperfect, but subsequently they elaborated and developed." This has the genuine ring of the language ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... can not do better than to conclude this brief and imperfect sketch with the notice which appeared in the Cleveland Herald on the evening of the day of his decease. Speaking of the event ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... he observed, "it is really more a toy than a real camera, although it served admirably last night. I have had a great deal of amusement with it, pretending to feel people's pulses, but in reality snapping their photographs. It takes very small, imperfect pictures, of course, as you can see from the print there on your desk, and only one to each loading, but it can be carried in the palm of one's hand, and it uses a peculiarly sensitive plate that will register a snap-shot even by electric light. It had fortunately just been ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Yankee is nothing more than the word English so transformed by the imperfect pronunciation of the natives of Massachusets—Yenghis, Yanghis, Yankies. The orthography of this much-used epithet, which is not given, we believe, in any English or American work, was communicated to M. Philarete {261} Charles ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... fact pointed out the fitness of New Holland for English settlement; and projects of its occupation, and of the colonization of the Pacific islands by English emigrants, became from that moment, in however vague and imperfect a fashion, the policy of the English crown. Statesmen and people alike indeed felt the change in their country's attitude. Great as Britain seemed to Burke, it was now in itself "but part of a great empire, extended ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... of the boat up to the path, so that I can step on. She is laden with flour from the valley of the Genesee, and may have started on her voyage shortly after the canal was made. She is succinctly manned by the captain, the driver, and the cook, a fiery- haired lady of imperfect temper; and the cabin, which I explore, is plainly furnished with a cook-stove and a flask of whiskey. Nothing but profane language is allowed on board; and so, in a life of wicked jollity and ease, we glide imperceptibly down the canal, unvexed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... reduce all men to their own miserable level—"I will make a scientific simile" he would say, "[i]n the manner, if you will, of Dr. Darwin—I consider the alledged errors of a man of genius as the aberrations of the fixed stars. It is our distance from them and our imperfect means of communication that makes them appear to move; in truth they always remain stationary, a glorious centre, giving us a fine lesson of modesty if we ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... way from Lowell to Boston, and won a handsome wager for his owner, while intent only on a dinner for himself. Humanity is served out of all proportion to the intention of service. Even the noble souls, never wanting in history, who follow not a bait, but belief, see only in imperfect survey the connections and relations of their deeds. Each is faithfully obeying his own inward vocation, a voice unheard by other soul than his own, and the inability to calculate consequences makes the preeminent grandeur of his position; or he is urged by the high inevitable impulse to publish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... see what an impulse these far-reaching conceptions would give to Comte's meditations. There were conceptions of less importance than these, in which it is impossible not to feel that it was Saint Simon's wrong or imperfect idea that put his young admirer on the track to a right and perfected idea. The subject is not worthy of further discussion. That Comte would have performed some great intellectual achievement, if Saint Simon ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... Antonio, where they expected first to burn powder. Nor were they deceived in their expectations. They found the Texian militia encamped before the town, which, as well as its adjacent fort of the Alamo, was held by the Mexicans, the Texians were besieging it in the best manner their imperfect means and small numbers would permit. An amusing account is given by Mr Ehrenberg of the camp and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... man, with a glance at his comrades' faces, gave way. I could not have told why, but from the start of the dispute I felt that this girl held her bandits, or whatever they were, in imperfect obedience. They obeyed her, yet with reserve. When pressed to the point between submission and mutiny, they yielded; but they yielded with a consent which I could not reconcile with submission. Even whilst answering deferentially ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... robbing its writings of every natural charm, as the best means of making men feel its supernatural power. The fresh sense of "letters" disappears in this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of the text. The larger divisions into chapters ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... unpared nails, scabbed hands or wrists, a tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splay-footed, "as slender in the middle as a cow in the waist," gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster, an oaf imperfect, her whole complexion savours, a harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gait, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fustilugs, a truss, a long lean rawbone, a skeleton, a sneaker (si qua latent meliora puta), ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... producing any countervailing evil. But the presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great ignorance. The causes of domestic anarchy are usually of such ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... assistants were congregated. Sheridan sat by some fagots, examining a topographical map of the country he had so well traversed; possibly with a view to design further aggressive movements in the morning. He is opposite me now as I pen these paragraphs by the imperfect blaze of his bivouac fire. He is good humored and talkative, like all men conscious of having achieved a great work, and has been good enough to sketch for me the plan of the day's operations, from which I have compiled much of the statement above. Close by lies Custer, trying ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... fruit, we thought, of our shaggy democracy,—as interesting a phenomenon in that regard as it has been our fortune to encounter. Where is the rudeness of a new community, the pushing vulgarity of an imperfect civilization, the licentious contempt of forms that marks our unchartered freedom, and all the other terrible things which have so long been the bugaboos of European refinement? Here was a natural product, as perfectly natural as ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... peace. But this he could not do. Not only was he under tribute to the Khazarui (a powerful tribe of mingled Finnish and Turkish blood), and harried by the Turks, in the South; overrun by the Finns and Lithuanians in the North; but in his imperfect political condition he was broken up into minute divisions, canton incessantly at war with canton, and there could be no peace. The roving bands of Scandinavian traders and freebooters were alternately his persecutors and ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... not mathematically accurate formulae; but they are generous, if imperfect, statements of great truths, and not unbecoming in the mouth of the man who, as the member of an unpopular sect, learnt to be cosmopolitan rather than bitter, and expressed his convictions in the well-known words addressed to Swift: 'I am of the religion of Erasmus, a Catholic; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never vulgar, nature has endowed them with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... Violet Grandon will remember "Lohengrin," the perfect evening to the rather imperfect day. In good truth the day disappoints madame as well. Gertrude comes down with Violet, and there is a little shopping to finish. Laura and Gertrude cannot agree in one or two points concerning the wedding. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... method. It is open and easy when the facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect. No magic and no miracle has aided man in his long conflict with the material forces around him. No ghost has come from the grave, no God from on high, to help him in the bitter struggle. What he has won is his own by the right ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... water-tight, secondly, by providing for the rapid escape of rain water from the cemetery,[432] and, finally, if they did not push the art of embalming so far as the Egyptians, they entered upon the same path. The bodies we find in the oldest tombs are imperfect mummies compared with those of Egypt, but the skeleton, at least, is nearly always in an excellent state of preservation; it is only when handled that it tumbles into dust. In the more spacious tombs the body lies upon a mat, with its head upon a cushion. In most ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... allow them the time to make anything but hasty sketches, and they require that practice with the pencil without which natural talent is of little avail; the consequence is, that the engravings, which have appeared in too many of the Narratives of Journeys and Expeditions, give not only an imperfect, but even an erroneous, idea of ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... of blood, the perpetrators of violence—have been treated as only worthy of secondary consideration. Such are the lines on which social structure has, in most cases, proceeded, with the result that while external security was for long periods assured, internal security remained as imperfect and ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... Cooking places for the different castes and latrines were constructed in each yard; a military guard room, food and clothing stores were also supplied. Little can be said in favour of this prison, as the wards were ill-ventilated, and the sanitary arrangements were very imperfect. All the prisoners were in a somewhat lax system of association, except those undergoing punishment in cells. Prior to the receipt of the convicts from Bencoolen, Penang itself, as a penal settlement, had already been supplied from India with a number of transported criminals ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... astonished at the ease and rapidity with which they would accumulate interesting and valuable matter. Transcribing and printing, it is admitted, are expensive processes, and little could be effected by them at first; but merely to make known to the world by hasty, imperfect, even blundering, lists or indexes, that things unsought and unknown exist, would be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... composed till last year, for he was more disposed to versify in sorrow than in joy. There were a good many written during his loneliness, for his reflections had a tendency to flow into verse, and pouring them out thus had been a great solace. The lines were often imperfect and irregular, but not one that was not deep, pure, and genuine, and here and there scattered with passages of exquisite beauty and harmony, and full of power and grace. No one could have looked at them without owning in them the marks ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which we are giving a very imperfect report, was garnished by both ladies with sundry vituperative epithets, which it would be inconsistent with the dignity of our ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... administration of justice, all the information we could collect was very imperfect and confined. Whenever any of the lowest class of people had a quarrel amongst themselves, the matter in dispute was referred to the decision of some chief, probably the chief of the district, or the person to whom they appertained. If an inferior ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... with analogies and working models: although they must necessarily be imperfect, so long as they are only analogies, yet the making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual processes, ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge |
