"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were particularly aggravating. The December frost was a very imperfect one, and the mill-dam never bore properly, so the boys swarmed over our pond, which was shallow and safe. Very few of them could even hobble on skates, and those few carried the art no farther than by cutting up the slides. But thaw came on, so that ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... turned towards mine. Although I hated myself even for thinking such a thing, still, while I looked at the woman before me, the idea would force itself into my mind that one sad change, in the future, was all that was wanting to make the likeness complete, which I now saw to be so imperfect in detail. If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie's face, then, and then only, Anne Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance, the living ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... than sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... sweet with these words to close this imperfect record of the labours of the Lord's beloved handmaid; especially when we look back to the time twenty years' before, when the "blessed hope" was first made the source of new strength and power to her soul. May not the words of the letter quoted above be adopted with little ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... imperfect, representing the time of the action when the words would be read by the recipient of ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... in his imperfect English and little innocent fashion. "Where we got to? Why not give me hot tea? Why ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... structure of the brain, or of the physiological functions of its separate parts; its elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells, were almost unknown, as was also the cell-soul of the Protista; very imperfect ideas were held as to ontogenetic development, and as to phylogenetic there were none ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to hide it from those dead eyes.... ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... excellent mean to preserve this peace, if it be secured with much correspondence with heaven by prayer, Phil. iv. 6, 7. If you would disburden your hearts daily at the throne of grace, peace should guard and keep your heart, and then your peace would be perfect indeed. But because your faith is here imperfect, your requests few and infervent, your follies and iniquities many, therefore is this promised perfection a stranger to the most part of Christians. Always what we want here, we must expect to have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... vague metaphorical expression such as the "over-soul." The symbolic ritual of the Mass, for instance, has far more truth in it than any metaphorical expression such as the "life-force." And although both the Cross and the Mass are inadequate and imperfect symbols with regard to the vision of "the sons of the universe," because they are associated with the idea of an historic incarnation, yet in comparison with any modern rationalistic or chemical metaphor they ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... world, or rather, with a certain portion of it. For we by no means sense all that is sensible, and, as I have already indicated, our sense impressions are often delusive. The gamut of our senses is very limited, and also very imperfect both as to extent and quality. Science is continually bringing new instruments into our service, some to aid the senses, others to correct them. The microscope, the microphone, the refracting lens are instances. It used to be said with great certainty that you cannot see through a brick wall, ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... has been referred to imperfect and exaggerated accounts of monstrous Polypi infesting the northern seas; how far may not the Cuttle-fish have given rise to this fiction? In hot countries (our readers will remember that in a late paper, Mirror, vol. xvii. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... unsatisfactory. They will tell you that Christ died for men, and that He is the Saviour of the World, but they do not seem to comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity, nor the full extent of the requirements and application of the law of Christian love. These imperfect views may not be entertained by all Christian Indians, but they were very common amongst those with whom I conversed. Their ignorance upon theological, as well as upon other subjects, is, of course, extreme. One Indian asked me very innocently if I came from the land where Christ was born, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... was for their good. Having been thoroughly educated in the German methods of teaching, she was a firm believer in vacation benefits, also in muscular training, which she considered quite as essential for girls as for boys. In her imperfect English, and also by personal illustration, she had tried, ever since her connection with this school, to awaken the teachers, Miss Ashton in particular, to a greater sense of its importance. To be sure, there was a gymnasium in the building, and a regular teacher, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... school and college, and finds inviting and ever-widening opportunities and possibilities throughout the entire course of life. The mere acquisition of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again, intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men of scholarly ability and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... patience never knew, nor used, Trembling for ire, his sandy locks he tore, Our from his lips flew such a sound confused, As lions make in deserts thick, which roar; Or as when clouds together crushed and bruised, Pour down a tempest by the Caspian shore; So was his speech imperfect, stopped, and broken, He roared and thundered when he should ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... be called—of scattering diplomas and medals of gold, silver and bronze right and left, after the fashion of largesse at a mediaeval coronation, heretofore followed at international expositions. These prizes were decided on and assigned by juries whose impartiality—by reason of the imperfect representation upon them of the nations which exhibited little in mass or little in certain classes, and also of their failure to make written reports and thus secure their responsibility—could not be assured, and whose action, therefore, was defective in real weight and value. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... verb and dormiebat below are in the imperfect tense to denote a state of things existing at the past time indicated by ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... a living creature, whole and great, God's image, praising God whose type it is; We are imperfect worms, vile families, That in its belly have our low estate. If we know not its love, its intellect, Neither the worm within my belly seeks To know me, but his petty mischief wreaks:— Thus it behoves us to ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... his country. He makes a proposal of much advantage to the king, which is rejected. The king's great ignorance in politics. The learning of that country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and military affairs, and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... this old woe step on the stage again, Act itself o'er anew for men to judge; Not by the very sense and sight indeed, Which take at best imperfect cognizance. Since, how heart moves brain, and how both move hand, What mortal ever in entirety saw? Yet helping us to all we seem to hear, For, how else know we save by worth ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... 'We learn here on earth those things the knowledge of which is perfected in heaven.'" "According to that," said Cortlandt, "you will some day be setting the axis of heaven right, for in order to do work there must be work to be done—a necessary corollary to which is that heaven is still imperfect." "No," said Bearwarden, bristling up at the way Cortlandt sometimes received his speeches, "it means simply that its development, though perfect so far as it goes, may not be finished, and that we ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... extraordinary that June should be of the party, and, improbable as it seemed, she had fancied that the woman had covertly followed the Iroquois in her own canoe, and had got in their advance, merely to give her the notice which had probably saved her life. But in all this she was mistaken, as June, in her imperfect manner, now found means to ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... any movement of itself, but is only moved by another power, then its life is said to fail, and the animal to be dead. Whereby it is clear that those things are properly called living that move themselves by some kind of movement, whether it be movement properly so called, as the act of an imperfect being, i.e. of a thing in potentiality, is called movement; or movement in a more general sense, as when said of the act of a perfect thing, as understanding and feeling are called movement. Accordingly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... buttoned frock-coat that covered his heart, and bowed profoundly. It was obvious that he resented our presence and desired to wipe us out of our hostess's consideration. I glanced ironically at Dale's disgusted face, and smiled at the imperfect development of his sense of humour. Indeed, to the young, humour is only a weapon of offence. It takes a philosopher to use it as defensive armour. Dale burned to outdo Mr. Papadopoulos. I, having no such ambition, laid my hand on his arm and went forward ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... forgiven. It is their best part only that remains unrealised and unread, their purest aspirations which we follow with leaden wings, their deepest thoughts that we still strive to plumb with the short line of our imagination or experience, and to weigh in our imperfect balances. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... imperfect communication of Fleta, who had heard the gipsy say that "he was dead;" and also the word horse made use of, and I now felt convinced that I had found out Melchior. "Sir Henry, if I recollect right, has no ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... we go to the plantation-houses for our meals, camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of William Washington,—William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern of house-servants, William the noiseless, the observing, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... reception of the ships that brought corn from Egypt; which was indeed a work without dispute very great in itself, and of very great advantage to the navigation. Yet was not this work brought to perfection by him, but was the one half of it left imperfect, by reason of his want of application to it; the cause of which was this, that he employed his studies about useless matters, and that by spending his money upon such pleasures as concerned no one's benefit but his own, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... is precisely here that we face one of the fundamental difficulties of the poet's task; a difficulty that affects, indeed, all human intercourse. For words are notoriously an imperfect medium of communication. They "were not invented at first," says Professor Walter Raleigh in his book on Wordsworth, "and are very imperfectly adapted at best, for the severer purposes of truth. They bear upon them all the weaknesses ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... to form, as for instance the experimental, and again the philosophical; but that is because it is theology, not because of the gift of infallibility. But, as far as this goes, I think it could be shown that physical science on the other hand, or again mathematical, affords but an imperfect training for the intellect. I do not see then how any objection about the narrowness of theology comes into our question, which simply is, whether the belief in an infallible authority destroys the independence of the mind; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... dispensation, we have discovered many women of superior excellence, availing themselves of all the means they enjoyed, and presenting a pre-eminence of character proportioned to their comparatively few advantages and imperfect revelation; but amidst the splendours of the "Sun of Righteousness" we shall witness, in the females who adorned this new era, a greater elevation of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... systematic array of doctrines, we have no choice left, if we desire to know what his opinions concerning the future life were, when deduced and arranged, but to exercise our learning and our faculties upon the imperfect discussions and the significant hints and clews in his extant epistles. Bringing these together, in the light of contemporary Pharisaic and Christian conceptions and opinions, we may construct a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... inhabitants had deserted it, that he might avenge those that had there been destroyed. From thence he now marched to Jerusalem; whereupon those Jews whose camp lay there, and who had besieged the Roman legion, not bearing the coming of this army, left the siege imperfect: but as to the Jerusalem Jews, when Varus reproached them bitterly for what had been done, they cleared themselves of the accusation, and alleged that the conflux of the people was occasioned by the feast; that the war was not made with their approbation, but by the rashness of the strangers, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... thought so,' said Mr. Ney, 'must have a very imperfect knowledge of what is to his own advantage. The interest paid by foreign debtors can in no respect compare with the advantages offered by employment of the money in Freeland, those advantages being, as you know, equably distributed among all ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... people, or into Canada to discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused, contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence, and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of the three French savans, to the impossibility of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... that region, perhaps from her Tagalog name, or from the fact that she bore the characteristic impress of things in the country, representing something like a triumph over progress, a steamer that was not a steamer at all, an organism, stolid, imperfect yet unimpeachable, which, when it wished to pose as being rankly progressive, proudly contented itself with putting on a fresh coat of paint. Indeed, the happy steamer was genuinely Filipino! If a person were only reasonably considerate, she might even have been taken for the Ship of State, constructed, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... procured at this late day—upon the arrival of our National Centennial year, are often imperfect and fragmentary in character—merely scattered facts and incidents gathered here and there from the traditional recollections of our oldest inhabitants, or from the musty records of our State and county ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... habit all his life of enjoying things, even imperfect things—and there had been many imperfect things—he had enjoyed them all with moderation, so as to keep himself young. But now he was deserted by his power of enjoyment, by his philosophy, and left with this dreadful feeling that it was all done with. Not even the Prisoners' Chorus, nor Florian's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... forms are found first (that is, farthest back), and are followed by remains of creatures higher in the scale of life; that is to say, not so simple in structure. In using the words "higher" or "lower," we do not mean that there is anything imperfect about the humbler creatures; they are exactly suited to the life which has been given to them to live, but their form is very simple compared with that of "higher" animals, just as a three-legged stool is much more simple in its construction, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... in good time because she wanted to walk without hurry, and to ponder. The morning, though imperfect and sunless, had in it some quality of the spring, which the buoyant youth of Rachel instantly discovered and tasted in triumph. Moreover, the spirit of a festival was abroad, and visible in the costume and faces of passers-by; and it was the first festival ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... 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 by one of the best-informed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... taking any notice of what had been done by Archimedes and Apollonius. He saw the importance of determining accurately the specific gravity of different substances, and himself attempted to form a table of them by a rude process of his own, without knowing of the more scientific though still imperfect methods previously employed by Archimedes, Ghetaldus,[123] and Porta. He speaks of the [Greek: heureka] of Archimedes in a manner which implies that he did not clearly apprehend either the nature ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... great men of the eighteenth century, however brief, would be certainly most imperfect if I omitted the name of the Earl of Charlemont, who, had his courage been equal to his honesty of purpose, might have been enrolled not merely as an ardent, but even as a successful patriot. He was one of the Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,—one ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... known as cinnabar is of a dark-red colour, and gives a beautiful appearance to the galleries. Sometimes when a hewer detaches a block of ore with his pick mass of quicksilver, the size of a pigeon's egg, rolls out, and leaping along the floor, divides into thousands of small drops. Owing to the imperfect apparatus with which the ore is sublimated, nearly one-half is lost. Formerly criminals only were employed in these mines. They were conducted at sunrise from prison by a subterranean passage into the mine, and ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... cleverness. The commissary regarded me with astonishment, and I thought a slight suspicion entered his official mind....Oh! scarcely that, for the photographs distributed broadcast by the police department were too imperfect; they presented an Arsene Lupin so different from the one he had before him, that he could not possibly recognize me by it. But, all the same, he was troubled, confused ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... say?" exclaimed the maid, leading, or rather dragging off her master, who had a very imperfect idea of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... also a word, a feeling, an idea which has in it a direct operative force. The dramatic genius of Browning was in the main of the static kind; it studies with extraordinary skill and subtlety character in position; it attains only an imperfect or a laboured success with character in movement. The dramatis personae are ready at almost every moment, except the culminating moments of passion, to fall away from action into reflection and self-analysis. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the letter with apprehension, as she recognized the down-slanting calligraphy of Sarah Gailey. Yes, the address was imperfect—"Miss Lessways, c/o Osmond Orgreave, Esq., Lane End House, Knype-on-Trent," instead of "Bursley, Knype-on-Trent." On the back of the envelope had been written in pencil by an official, "Try Bursley." Sarah ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Baxter tells us much of the Association in Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex. These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the stricter Presbyterians, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... kindness, come to our aid for this one night: we felt sure a Humbug audience—what am I saying?—a Homburg audience would appreciate this, and make due allowance for a performance undertaken in such a spirit, and with imperfect rehearsals, etc.—in short, the usual patter; and the usual effect, great applause. Indeed, the only applause that I have heard in this theater to-night. Ashmead ahead of Gounod, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... 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, left an imperfect idea ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... could have imagined; I told her so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed to have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men-servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age till he appears will be doubtful; she receives ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... picture on the postcard; on the coloured almanack given away at Christmas by the local grocer; on the advertisement of Jones' soap, and thinks with discontent of Polly Perkins, who in a natural way is as pretty a girl as can be looked for in this imperfect world. Thus it is that woman has had to take to shorthand and typewriting. Modern woman is being ruined ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... surprise at this change of mind, and was glad of McLean's company and judgment during the impending selections. A picture of a cow-puncher and himself discussing a couple of dolls rose nimbly in Barker's mental eye, and it was with an imperfect honesty that he said, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Rys to do his bidding, to say his say. No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded or loved. His words were ever few, but his deeds had been many. Now, as he looked at Fleda, his old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not receive at least one letter from him during the last month of his life.' The following is his last letter to Reeve. The writing is painfully bad, the letters often half formed, or crowded one on top of another; even the orthography is imperfect; but the words and ideas flow ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... 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 protectors. After burning his villages for some fancied ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... the medieval universities seem to have studied grammar, logic, and rhetoric; arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology, and music. Thus their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with all the leading aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo, sometimes it may be in ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... a gude man tae her through the dark an' through the licht, an' she hes tried tae repay him as a puir imperfect wumman can, an' her hert is warm to him, but there hes aye been ae thing wantin'—an' it hes been that wife's cross a' her life—there wes nae ither man, but her husband wesna, isna, canna be her ain a'thegither an' for ever—for the want ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... upright and the most wicked,—that the latter is a mere atom, and not accounted of in God's sight. That there is an infinite difference between God and the best of men, is all true; for God is infinite in all his attributes, and man is very imperfect at the best. But to argue from this that God is inferior to man, so that he cannot discern difference in character here, even as man can plainly discern it, seems but mad-house reasoning. What would we think of the man who ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... particular occasions, but it was to be exempt from the hardships of feudal service; to have the right of disposing both of person and property, and to be governed by laws intended to promote the general good, and not to gratify the ambition and avarice of individuals. These laws, however rude and imperfect, tended to afford security to property and, encourage men to habits of industry. Thus commerce, with every ornamental and useful art, began first in corporate bodies, to animate society. But in those dark ages, force was ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... works. To secure a good price for the poet, I wrote the sketch, being furnished with facts by his brother; it was done, however, in great haste, when I was 'not in the vein,' and, of course, was very slight and imperfect. It served, however, to put me at once on a friendly footing with Campbell, so that, when I met him for the first time a few years subsequently in England, he received me as an old friend. He was living at that time in his rural ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... of the queen was directed to the affairs of Ireland, which had been conquered by Henry II. in the year 1170, but over which only an imperfect sovereignty had been exercised. The Irish princes and nobles, divided among themselves, paid the exterior marks of obedience, but kept the country in a constant state ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... California shows an alarming tendency among the people to take the law into their own hands. The papers ascribe this state of things to the imperfect and corrupt manner in which the officers of the law have discharged their functions. Acts of violence and crime are frequent in all parts of the country, and the mining communities, with few exceptions, administer summary punishment wherever the offender is captured. Sacramento City has ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... working hard to complete a new factory which he had left unfinished, while the buildings of the Jesuit establishment made good progress under the hand of workmen specially brought from France. What still remained imperfect was the fortification. The English had destroyed the French settlements at Mount Desert and Port Royal. What was to hinder them from ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... paces farther, turned his horse around again and took the road toward Kohlhaasenbrueck, in order, as seemed to him wise and just, to hear first what the groom had to say. For in spite of the injuries he had suffered, a correct instinct, already familiar with the imperfect organization of the world, inclined him to put up with the loss of the horses and to regard it as a just consequence of the groom's misconduct in case there really could be imputed to the latter any such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... who had not been a good man because he had never had a chance, who had never really earned his spurs as a Western badman, because he was of too small calibre, who was after all a vessel that had come imperfect from the hands of the potter. Now Jimmie answered, his voice hushed, his eyes wide, his ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... Parkins spent an agonised half hour, counting everything. Mr. Ludwig appears to be one of those unsolved mysteries which go to make up an imperfect world." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distinction or solemn didactic declamation, in which the disembodied principles of all arts and sciences float before the imagination in undefined profusion, the eye turns with impatience and indifference to the imperfect embryo specimens of them, and the hopeless attempts to realise this splendid jargon in one poor work by one poor author, which is given up to summary execution with as little justice as pity. 'As when a well-graced ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... In the attitude of the latter to the land in which he lives or has been born, there is always an inherent something of the soil for which even trained powers of comparison, and a special perceptive faculty, are but imperfect substitutes. On the other hand, the visitor from over-sea is, in many respects, better placed for observation than the inhabitant. He enjoys not a little—it has been often said—of the position of posterity. He takes in more at a glance; he ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... these are proofs except the papers you have in your hands, and the imperfect events which you witnessed. I am so much an admirer of your wife myself, that I am ready to believe this statement against the rest; and to believe that, however strange may have been her conduct in ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... one side, lay ready to be let down. A well-dressed mason, a trowel in one hand and a hammer in the other, came forward, and with much grace spoke an address in verse, of which in prose we can give but an imperfect rendering. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... expect displeasure from death, seeing it is made by the hand of the same master," was a favourite reflection of Michael Angelo's upon mortality. This Deposition was never completed, flaws appeared in the marble, and perhaps whilst working in the imperfect light Michael Angelo's impatient chisel cut too deep. He began to break up the work, but luckily his servant Antonio, successor to Urbino, begged the fragments from his master. Francesco Bandini, a Florentine exile settled in Rome, wished for ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... having found his disciples firmly adhering to Hinayanism without knowing that it was a modified and imperfect doctrine, he had to lead them up to a higher and perfect doctrine that he might lead them up to Buddhahood. With this object in view Shakya Muni preached Vimalakirtti-nirdeca-sutra[FN117], Lankavatara-sutra, and other sutras, in which he compared Hinayanism with ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the very imperfect maps of Diaz and Clavigero, Tezcuco is placed near the mouth of a rivulet which discharges itself into the lake of Mexico: In the former, the buildings are represented as extending two miles and a half along the rivulet, and coming close ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... walks, it is in the garden or library; if he rides, it is surrounded by guards and followed by his household train. He took his last walk in the streets when he was a prelate, and thenceforth knows no more of the city than he can see through his carriage-windows; and now even that imperfect view is more than half cut off by the officers of the guard, who ride their great black horses close ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... causing death from choking) by the action of a small cartilaginous shield (the epiglottis), which at the right moment bends back and protects the orifice. Now the kangaroo is born in such an exceedingly imperfect and undeveloped condition, that it is quite unable to suck. The mother therefore places the minute blind and naked young upon the nipple, and then injects milk into it by means of a special muscular envelope of the mammary gland. Did no special provision ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... which few would have ventured; and I even arrived to such a pitch of perfection at praying, that with the assistance of young and powerful lungs, I was fully able to distance him at any English prayer in which we joined. But in Latin, I must allow, that owing to my imperfect knowledge of its pronunciation, and to some twitches of conscience I felt on adventuring to imitate, him by overleaping this impediment, he was able to throw me back a considerable distance in his turn; so that when we both started for a De Profundis, I ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... British Government and its Allies, or you will certainly miss the truth. By which statement I do not mean that each Government is equally accurate, still less equally full in its relation; but that, unless you compare all the statements of this sort, you will have most imperfect evidence; just as you would have very imperfect evidence in a court of law if you only listened to the prosecution and refused to listen ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... thought's space being untrue to the ideal each one of us bears in his breast; never yielding jot or tittle to the world's opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard the lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at one with himself, his life alone was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... open, the room within empty. It was obviously Baumgartner's bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase. Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and so eloquent of Baumgartner himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more freely ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... with the same Success, attempted to clear the genuine Plays from the interpolated Scenes: He then consulted the old Editions; and, by a careful Collation of them, rectified the faulty, and supplied the imperfect Reading, in a great number of places: And lastly, in an admirable Preface, hath drawn a general, but very lively, Sketch of Shakespear's poetic Character; and, in the corrected Text, marked out those peculiar Strokes of Genius which ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the pistol and binoculars were his books, an oddly assorted library that included the child's pictorial history already mentioned, Dryden's translation of the Iliad, an imperfect copy of The Three Musketeers, and The Descent of Man. These, indeed, made up the full list of books belonging to the keep, and Constans had been permitted to appropriate them, nobody else caring to waste time over ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Captain and the lady, when we were retired, was to the following effect:—They both talked loud enough for me to hear them—the lady from anger, the Captain with design; and thou mayest be sure there was no listener but myself. What I was imperfect in was supplied afterwards; for I had my vellum-leaved book to note all down. If she had known this, perhaps she would have been more sparing of her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sent forth a few vessels, to explore the western shores of Africa, while he prepared a great armament to attack the moors of Barbary, the art of navigation was still very imperfect, nor had the Portuguese ever ventured to sail beyond Cape Non. But what most powerfully contributed to give impulse and direction to the national ardour, was the enlightened enthusiasm, with which prince Henry ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... were not in those days, as they are now, at the beck and call of every purse, and the attainment of each little masterpiece was a separate triumph. In particular I shall never forget the excitement of reaching at length the exorbitant price the bookseller asked for the only, although imperfect, edition of the poems of S. T. Coleridge. At last I could meet his demand, and my friend and I went down to consummate the solemn purchase. Coming away with our treasure, we read aloud from the orange coloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... what endless practices are held, Before bright pencils mark the April earth—— Where grasses learn how gaiety is spelled, And jonquils trace the golden writs of mirth; Some slow, imperfect patterns must be wrought Some, cast aside in dark, abandoned crypts, Before the swift, impulsive hands are taught To ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... is imperfect solution of the tougher solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious consequences to the stomach ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... wish here to give you the substance of a speech made by one of Mokanna's head-men, who came after Mokanna's surrender into the English camp. I am told that the imperfect notes taken of it afford but a very faint idea of its eloquence; at all events, the speech gives a very correct view of the treatment which the ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... state of the case," rejoined Frank, "was, that our good-natured friend the squire, from an imperfect knowledge of the natural boldness of my disposition, (call it impudence, if you will,) supposed me incapable of facing the battery of laughter my extraordinary appearance would have exposed me to, had I come within ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... soldiers, but was literally "made in Congress." Stanton grimly made the best of it, though he unwaveringly condemned some of its most conspicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve his blunder of the previous year, and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, the Conscription Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him to replace the wastage of the Union armies and steadily to augment them. At the close of the war, the Union had on foot a million men with an enrolled reserve of ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... adversaries. The third party (tiers parti), as we call it nowadays, wished to hold the balance continually wavering between the Catholics and the Protestants, conceding to the former and the latter, alternately, that measure of liberty which was indispensable for most imperfect maintenance of the public peace, and reconcilable with the sovereign power of the kingship. On such conditions was the government of Charles ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... having few relatives, and none able to assist her, she is dependent for her support on such efforts as she is still capable of making. These, were she a person of common fortitude, energy and hopefulness, would be very small, for to her great privation is added very imperfect general health. Yet she has struggled on in the hope of gaining such a competency as should ultimately secure 'a home that she may call her own.' I commend Miss Davenport to all who feel for the afflicted and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... deep as it was possible to make it descend, in which he could see all the various strata and deposits of which the earth is composed. How far he could send down this piercing cylinder of light he did not allow himself to consider. With a small and imperfect machine he had seen several feet into the ground; with a great and powerful apparatus, such as he was now constructing, why should he not look down below the deepest point to which man's knowledge had ever reached? Down so far that he must follow his descending light with a telescope; ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... see, a description of your journal: it is a description of only one portion of it. It is a complex and wonderful creation. Every morning it is a mirror of the world, more or less distorted and imperfect, but such a mirror as it never had held up to it before. But consider how much space is taken up with mere trivialities and vulgarities under the name of news. And this evil is likely to continue and increase until news-gatherers learn that more important than the reports ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... present day, the frequent occurrence of the termination "watte" in the names of places on the map of Ceylon, is in itself an indication of the importance attached to them by the villagers. The term "garden," however, conveys to an European but an imperfect idea of the character and style of these places; which in Ceylon are so similar to the native gardens in the south of India, as to suggest a community of origin. Their leading features are lines of the graceful areca palms, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... mangled when his other message of 'Christ for us' has been taken, as it too often has been, to be the whole of his Gospel. They who take either of these inseparable elements to be the whole, rend into two imperfect halves the perfect oneness of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... to admit that He has in His mind an infinite number of things which might be created, but which, nevertheless, He will never be able to create, for if He were to create all things which He has in His mind, He would, according to them, exhaust His omnipotence and make Himself imperfect. Therefore, in order to make a perfect God, they are compelled to make Him incapable of doing all those things to which His power extends, and anything more absurd than this, or more opposed to God's omnipotence, I do not ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the end of August of that year in consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence. The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... laws regulating or limiting the hours of labor of women and children, prohibiting it entirely in mines; several anti-truck laws; two laws against the screening of coal before the miner is paid, and in Massachusetts, laws against imposing fines for imperfect weaving and deducting the fine from the wages paid. Pennsylvania thinks it necessary to enact by statute that a strike is lawful when the wages are insufficient or it is contrary to union rules to work, which latter part is clearly unconstitutional. There is ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... group on his canvas that one glance suffices to take in the whole picture, with the lights and shadows, attitudes, costumes, and details of every kind, which are sadly wanting in our description—too long, though so imperfect—of the party gathered thus unexpectedly round our young baron's table. The beginning of the repast was very silent, until the most urgent demands of hunger had been satisfied. Poor de Sigognac, who had never perhaps at any one time had as much ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... think," said Nekayah, "that the monastick rule is a more holy and less imperfect state than any other? May not he equally hope for future happiness, who converses openly with mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity, instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes, by his industry, to the general system of life: even though he ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... upon the right flank of the Burgundian army, who, alarmed at their war cries of Vive la France! and Denis Montjoie! which mingled with those of Liege! and Rouge Sanglier! and at the idea thus inspired, of treachery on the part of the French confederates, made a very desultory and imperfect resistance; while the Duke, foaming and swearing and cursing his liege Lord and all that belonged to him, called out to shoot with bow and gun on all that was French whether black or white,—alluding to the sleeves with which Louis's soldiers had ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the real author of it was a certain Joshua Sylvester. Unwilling to displace the brave knight from the niche he had graced so long, I hunted up Sylvester's old folio, and the result of my search may be found in these imperfect remarks. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... anything else but a form of the Beautiful—I have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... good and fresh, if the bread is to be digestible and nice. Stale yeast produces, instead of vinous fermentation, an acetous fermentation, which flavours the bread and makes it disagreeable. A poor thin yeast produces an imperfect fermentation, the result being a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... reports of them as can be got at, are full of striking passages and impressive phrases; they are speeches which even now one cannot read without interest. But it would seem that Shippen often marred the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, careless, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been one of the men who wanted nothing but a clear {290} articulation and effective utterance to be great Parliamentary debaters, and whom that single want condemned to comparative failure. Those who remember the late Sir ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the depths below. George hesitated, thinking, perhaps, to attempt a rescue; but it was too late. The Two Hundred and Tenth, coming on in close divisions, trampled it down beyond all hope of recovery. Advancing some distance, the line halted. The formation of the Second Division must have been imperfect, on account of the nature of the ground. This ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... so weak, he was always able and ready to help Robert in any difficulty not unfrequently springing from his imperfect preparation in Greek; for while Mr. Innes was an excellent Latin scholar, his knowledge of Greek was too limited either to compel learning or inspire enthusiasm, And with the keen instinct he possessed in everything immediate between man and man, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... symbolize our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and fondly dream we are painting pictures. Or we shall copy with a hopeless effort after literalness the first face or weed we meet, and call the imperfect, mechanical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... agreed that before the stormy weather came on, their little vessel should be employed in making a voyage round the island. A complete survey of the coast had not yet been made, and the colonists had but an imperfect idea of the shore to the west and north, from the mouth of Falls River to the Mandible Capes, as well as of the narrow bay between them, which opened ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... imperfect beings, and in nothing more imperfect than in our power of appreciating each other's mental suffering. We see the odd contortions to which they give rise without seeing the reasons for them, and they are to us fit subjects for caricature. We all know Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... measurements of heads and noses, and it seems probable that deductions drawn from these physical characters are of more value than any evidence based on the use of a common speech. But it is hard to reconcile the theory with the facts of history even in the imperfect shape in which they have come down to us, or to believe that Sakas, Yuechi, and White Huns (see historical section) have left no traces of their blood in the province. If such there are, they may ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... Rosini; besides Baldinucci (ch. iv. p. 83), who says, "Raphael gave great testimony of his esteem when, in after years, he employed his own brush in Rome to finish a work begun by Fra Bartolommeo in that city and left imperfect." ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... curious proof of the slow and imperfect intercourse of communication between Scotland and London, if Baxter had not been particularly informed of Lauderdale's horrible cruelties to the Scotch Covenanters:—and if Baxter did know them, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking orders," with the prospect ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... greetings of her Majesty to the Duke, and was heard with great attention. Alexander attempted a reply in French, which was very imperfect, and, apologizing, exchanged that tongue for Italian. He alluded with great fervour to the "honourable opinion concerning his sincerity and word," expressed to him by her Majesty, through the mouth of her envoy. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of our own middle ages, who state that a man must be born a magician; in other words, that the gift is constitutional, though developed by practice and art. Now, that this gift and its practice should principally obtain in imperfect states of civilization, and fade into insignificance in the busy social enlightenment of cities, may be accounted for by reference to the known influences of imagination. In the cruder states of social life not only is imagination more frequently predominant over all other ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... us, because it is imperfect, and unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of bony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal of the guard. His hand went ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... which it is his merit so effectively to have opened room in the mental scheme, to be known by us, if at all, through our affinities of nature with it, which, however, in our dealings with ourselves and others we may assume to be objective or real:—and then, over against our imperfect realisation of that ideal, in ourselves, in nature and history, amid the personal caprices (it might almost seem) of its discovery of itself to us, as the appropriate attitude on our part, the dialectical spirit, which to the last will have ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... facile discerneres, 'it was not easy to determine whether she was less concerned about her money or her reputation,' since she was reckless in regard to both. Respecting the imperfect subjunctive, see Zumpt, S 528, note 2. [140] Praeceps is used of steep and precipitous places, and of persons who fall or throw themselves headlong down from or into anything. Hence Sempronia praeceps abierat is, 'she had thrown herself ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... wisdom a little while unto thyself. Thus grows the fruit; first, the seed must be buried in the earth for a little space; there it must be hid and slowly grow, that it may reach maturity. But if it produce the ear before the jointed stalk, it is imperfect—a thing from the garden of Adonis. Such a sorry growth art thou; thou hast blossomed too soon: the winter cold will ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them, and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the outlines, with colors brighter, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 243. of his work "that not one of the books of the New Testament, nor all of them together, were intended to be a forensic defence of Christianity. On the contrary, the historical books are brief, and imperfect memoirs, which were not designed, nor supposed to contain all the faces, and which do not set forth, nor profess to set forth the evidences of the religion. The Epistolary parts are the counsels, instructions and affectionate sentiments which the occasions ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... of my life more choice to me (Though brief, yet in itself so round and whole) Than all the imperfect residue can be;— The Artist saw his statue of the soul Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, The earthen model into fragments broke, And without her the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... universe was 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 ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... easily got to believe that the picture brought over from Paris, and now hanging in Lady Castlewood's drawing-room, was a perfect likeness of her son, the young lord. And the domestics having all seen the picture many times, and catching but a momentary imperfect glimpse of the two strangers on the night of their arrival, never had a reason to doubt the fidelity of the portrait; and next day, when they saw the original of the piece habited exactly as he was represented ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mamba, and then endeavoured to tell something of his doings in English; but his knowledge of that language was so very imperfect that they could make nothing of it. They understood him, however, when he cautiously and lovingly drew the Testament from its hiding-place and ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... highways to get a perfect transportation system for this country. If there were no railroads we would have little transportation. If there were no waterways there would be insufficient transportation. If we had an abundance of railways and waterways and lacked the use of highways, we should have imperfect transportation. We should fail to bring it to every man's door, and it must be brought to every ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... a time it is the right and duty of every one to point out whatever he deems erroneous and imperfect in that instrument, and press ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... be exhibited in a kind of formula. The following is no doubt very imperfect, but it may be somewhat suggestive. The first includes the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... intended to have dedicated my imperfect illustrations of this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... Grace had made to her young pupil the first imperfect revelation of God's character and government, declaring that he would punish with eternal fire those who should lie, swear, or steal, the child had held these sins in the greatest abhorrence, and was scrupulously careful to avoid them. She ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... was strictly the one which we are here recommending, that of "using the best known means for accomplishing the particular end." Those who adopt the principle do most honour to their sagacity; while their shallow admirers, by abandoning the principle, and clinging to their necessarily imperfect mode of applying it, at once libel their good sense, and dishonour those whom they profess to revere. As society is rapidly advancing, paternal affection would undoubtedly have prompted them to advise their descendants to take the benefits of every ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... escape the threatening storm that hovers over our heads. The leading causes of the clamour against her have been, if you must know, Nature; her beauty; her power of pleasing; her birth; her rank; her marriage; the King himself; her mother; her imperfect education; and, above all, her unfortunate partialities for the Abbe Vermond; for the Duchesse de Polignac; for myself, perhaps; and last, but not least, the thorough, unsuspecting goodness ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... canoe is by no means perfect under canvas and vice versa. The best cruiser is not a perfect racer, while neither of them is at all perfect as a paddling cruiser where much carrying is to be done. And the most perfect canoe for fishing and gunning around shallow, marshy waters, would be a very imperfect canoe for a rough and ready cruise of one hundred miles through a strange wilderness, where a day's cruise will sometimes include ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... bells, at the sound of which the faithful fall upon their knees. When, therefore, he learnt that the Republic had just been proclaimed in France he fancied that the whole world would enjoy a life of celestial beatitude. His knowledge, though imperfect, made him see farther than other workmen; his aspirations did not stop at daily bread; but his extreme ingenuousness, his complete ignorance of mankind, kept him in the dreamland of theory, a Garden of Eden where universal justice reigned. His paradise was for a long time a delightful ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... existing literature of the supernatural for proof, he will know what I mean. This literature is enormous, but it is practically worthless for evidential purposes. Facts enough are cited, indeed; but the records of them are so fallible and imperfect that at most they lead to the opinion that it may be well to keep a window open upon that ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... can lead him on into anything. I don't suppose he ever gave a thought to the O'Moores, anywhere further back than those kings. He had a vague idea that they must have been going on, simply because it must have seemed to him that a world without an O'Moore in it would be necessarily imperfect. It was Bob Repton's questions, as to what they were doing at the time of the flood, that brought him suddenly up; then he didn't hesitate for a moment in taking them back to Adam, or before him. ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... and knell, which he called 'some simpler bell.' I have seen all his odes already published in his own handwriting; they had the marks of repeated correction: he was perpetually changing his epithets. Dr. Warton, my brother, has a few fragments of some other odes, but too loose and imperfect for publication, yet containing ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... to King James, and published by O'Daniel in 1603, is still reprinted by the Bible Societies. The first Protestant translation of the Old Testament, made under Bishop Bedel's eye, and with such revision of particular passages as his imperfect knowledge of the language enabled him to suggest, though completed in the reign of Charles I., was not published before the year 1680. It was Bedel, also, who caused the English liturgy to be recited in Irish, in his Cathedral, as ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... surmise proved false; find peace within, Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the event. And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed Alone, without exteriour help sustained? Let us not then suspect our happy state Left so imperfect by the Maker wise, As not secure to single or combined. Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed. To whom thus Adam fervently replied. O Woman, best are all things as the will Of God ordained them: His creating hand ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Stubbs, with a good ear and voice, but an imperfect acquaintance with the music. Leon and the guitar were equal to the situation. The actor dispensed his throat-notes with prodigality and enthusiasm; and, as he looked up to heaven in his heroic way, tossing the black ringlets, it seemed to him that the very stars contributed a dumb applause to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imperfect knowledge,' she said; 'I may have been too hasty in concluding that Mark had only written some worldly and frivolous love-tale to keep minds from dwelling on higher subjects. If so, I'm willing to own it, and if Mark was to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... now enumerate a few duties, adopting the usual division of them into duties to ourselves and ourselves and to others, and into perfect and imperfect duties. * ...
— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals • Immanuel Kant |
