"Imperfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intellectual life, the life of thought. It is "of the Father," indeed. We picture to ourselves the pure joy of God in thought. Free from so many of our cumbrous processes, free from the limitations of slow-moving time, free from all imperfection, with an instantaneous thought as is His being, the intellect that is the center of all reason revolves in its unfathomed majesty. And man thinks too. God makes him think. God gives him powers ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... view the planet with one eye through the telescope and the moon with the unaided eye, in such a manner that the two discs may coincide, and thus their relative apparent dimensions be at once recognised. Nor should the indistinctness and incompleteness of the view be attributed to imperfection of the telescope; they are partly due to the nature of the observation and the low power employed, and partly to the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... experiments were made with common ice, during the cold freezing weather of the latter end of January 1833; but the results were fallacious, from the imperfection of the arrangements, and the following more unexceptionable ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... the world at all as his child he regarded as a kind of fraudulent intrusion, and as his antipathy to me had its origin in an imperfection of mine, too radical for removal, I never even hoped to stand high ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... lighthouse, more or less lofty, and more or less illumined by the glory that burns within; yet their purest rays are only "broken lights." The glory itself is infinite: it is only through human narrowness and imperfection that it appears narrow and imperfect. The lighthouse is good in its place: it beckons home, with its "wheeling arms of dark and bright," many a benighted voyager; but we must remember that it is a structure made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... once, when her necklace was slightly displaced, that a faint ring or band of a little lighter shade than the rest of the surface encircled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity of her enunciation, when she read? Not a lisp, certainly, but the least possible imperfection in articulating some of the lingual sounds,—just enough to be noticed at first, and quite forgotten after being a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... there is an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we should thank fortune, double to nature, for any benefit she confers upon us; besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... not and cannot be a failure. The ultimate result of the life of humanity will doubtless be found in symmetrical and harmonious individuals; and in a perfect Christianity we shall look to see an angelic love radiant from every face. But while there is disease and imperfection in any part of the human body, there cannot be perfect health in any other part; just so while there is disease and imperfection in humanity, of which the human body is an image, there cannot be perfect health in any individual. Perfect men and women are possible only ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... to note is that the fortress of Maubeuge, with its garrison of reserve and second line men, had, of course, been at once invested by the Germans when the British and French line had fallen behind it and left it isolated. The imperfection of this fortress I have already described, and the causes of that imperfection. Maubeuge commanded the great railway line leading from Belgium to Paris, which is the main avenue of supply for an invasion or for a retreat, running ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... the quality of imperfection in drawing form. There are many pictures of Tintoret in which the trees are drawn with a few curved flourishes of the brush instead of leaves. That is (absolutely) wrong. If you copied the tree as a model, you would be going ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... hardened; the thin lips had a firmer compression and the lower jaw—always firm and prominent—was closer pressed to its fellow. Mr. Davis had lost the sight of one eye many months previous, though that member scarcely showed its imperfection; but in the other burned a deep, steady glow, showing the presence with him of thought that never slept. And in conversation he had the habit of listening with eyes shaded by the lids, then suddenly shooting forth at the speaker ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... yet are excellent playthings; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one, but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be in complete harmony. Short of this extreme limit they tend to deviate from each other and to utter contradictory oracles. We may therefore lay it down as an unalterable law of their activity that when any one of these ideas contradicts another it does so because of a weakness and imperfection in its own intensity or in the intensity of the idea ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances: Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; You mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... terms of our formulae, and searching for the minutest effects, we may gradually approach, though we may never reach, absolute exactness. Here we see the first difficulty in reaching a definite conclusion. One cannot be quite sure that a deviation is not due to some imperfection in mathematical method until he and his fellows have exhausted the subject so thoroughly as to show that no error is possible. This is hard ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the one-sidedness, imperfection, and glow, of a mind like that of Novalis, seem refreshingly human to me. I have wished fifty times to write some letters giving an account, first, of his very pretty life, and then of his one volume, as I re-read it, chapter by chapter. If you will pretend to be very much interested, perhaps ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the sexes, designed by an all-wise Creator; but designed for a condition of ideal perfection. No perfect law could be framed for imperfection. Therefore, if the working out prove often a failure, the fault lies in the imperfection of the workers, not in the perfection of the law. In those rare cases where the love is ideal, the man's "I take" and the woman's "I give" blend into an ideal union, each completing and ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... very good!—I protest I know not how to look up at her! Now, as I am thinking, if I could pull her down a little nearer to my own level; that is to say, could prevail upon her to do something that would argue imperfection, something to repent of; we should jog on much more equally, and be better able to comprehend one another: and so the comfort would be mutual, and the remorse not all ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... creation is not only a mere specious mask for our ignorance; its existence in Biology marks the youth and imperfection of the science. For what is the history of every science but the history of the elimination of the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the natural order of the phenomena which are the subject-matter ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... N. inferiority, minority, subordinacy; shortcoming, deficiency; minimum; smallness &c. 32; imperfection; lower quality, lower worth. [personal inferiority] commonalty &c. 876. V. be inferior &c. adj.; fall short of, come short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Campagna presents a more intricate situation than most of the love-poems. It is the lament of a man, addressed to the woman at his side, whom he loves and by whom he is loved, over the imperfection and innocent inconstancy of his love. The two can never quite grow to one, and he, oppressed by the terrible burden of imperfect sympathies, is for ever seeking, realising, losing, then again seeking the spiritual union still for ever denied. The vague ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... by a woman whose incomparable beauty is without imperfection. But, my dear master, if he consents to lend her to you, at least you must let us ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... handiwork; and besides the indecent haste, so incompatible with thoroughness, the misrepresentations of Smollet are patent. Goldsmith, as unambitious in research as he was genial in expression, made so agreeable a story, that, with all its imperfection, his sketch still finds readers; while the rarely quoted work of Henry most conveniently enumerates, at the end of each reign, details economical and social which identify and illustrate both period and progress in Anglo-Saxon civilization. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Effects of Pregnancy on the Organism. Pigmentation. The Blood and Circulation. The Thyroid. Changes in the Nervous System. The Vomiting of Pregnancy. The Longings of Pregnant Women. Mental Impressions. Evidence for and Against Their Validity. The Question Still Open. Imperfection of Our Knowledge. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to Sunch'ston this afternoon. He has friends who have asked him to see the dedication of the new temple, and he will not be back till Monday. I really do not know what I can do better for you than examine the boys in Counsels of Imperfection." ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... product of the specific heat of an element by its atomic weight. The product is approximately the same for all the elements, and varies as determined between 5.39 and 6.87. The variations are by some attributed principally to imperfection of the work in determining them. The atomic heat represents the number of gram calories required to raise the temperature of a gram atom (a number of grams equal numerically to the atomic weight) one ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... belonged to her father, as Piombo's whole heart belonged to his child; and if it be true that we are bound to one another more by our defects than by our virtues, Ginevra echoed in a marvellous manner the passions of her father. There lay the sole imperfection of this triple life. Ginevra was born unyielding of will, vindictive, and passionate, like ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... per cent.) is by no means a hurtful amount of CO2, and that it would lead to an especially vigorous assimilation. Mountain plants would be more likely to descend to the plains to share in the rich feast than ascend to higher regions to avoid it. Ball draws attention to the imperfection of our plant records as regards the floras of mountain regions. It is, he thinks, conceivable that there existed a vegetation on the Carboniferous mountains of which no traces have been preserved ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Succession of Sedimentary Formations. Frequent Unconformability of Strata. Imperfection of the Record. Defectiveness of the Monuments greater in Proportion to their Antiquity. Reasons for studying the newer Groups first. Nomenclature of Formations. Detached Tertiary Formations scattered over Europe. Value of the Shell-bearing Mollusca in Classification. Classification of Tertiary ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... besides; and imagine their great prosperity, not to have proceeded from the aemulation of particular men, but from the vertue of their popular form of government: Not considering the frequent Seditions, and Civill Warres, produced by the imperfection of their Policy. From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latine writers, in their books, and discourses of Policy, make it lawfull, and laudable, for any man so to do; provided before he do it, he call ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... very manifest difference that is seen between one and another of them. In the first and most ancient age these three arts are seen to have been very distant from their perfection, and, although they had something of the good, to have been accompanied by so great imperfection that they certainly do not merit too great praise; although, seeing that they gave a beginning and showed the path and method to the better work that followed later, if for no other reason, we cannot but speak well of them and give them a little more glory than the works ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... man of candour and of true understanding is never hasty to condemn. He can censure an imperfection, or even a vice, without rage against the guilty party. In a word, they are the same folly, the same childishness, the same ill-breeding, and the same ill-nature, which raise all the clamours and uproars both in life and on the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... promised to the children of Israel in the old law as a special gift of God, because of their imperfection at that time, to draw them to God with gay things and pleasant, as men, to make children learn, give them cake-bread and butter. For, as the scripture maketh mention, that people were much after the manner of children in lack of wit and in waywardness. ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... the ungodly." And you dare not deny but that Samuel Rutherford was one of the holiest men that ever lived, or that in saying all that he was speaking of himself. And Newman: "Every one who tries to do God's will"—and that also is Newman himself—"will feel himself to be full of all imperfection and sin; and the more he succeeds in regulating his heart, the more will he discern its original bitterness and guilt." As ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... cones, which shed a bluish tint similar to the reflection of a sheet of steel freshly polished. These colors belonged really to the lunar disc, and did not result, as some astronomers say, either from the imperfection in the objective of the glasses or from the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... Balmawhapple, ... he had no imperfection but that of keeping light company at a time; such as Jinker the horse-couper, and Gibby Gaethroughwi't, the piper o' Cupar; 'O' whilk follies, Mr Saunderson, he'll mend, he'll mend,' pronounced the bailie. 'Like sour ale in summer,' added Davie Gellatley, who happened to be nearer the conclave ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence and delight. He had the laws of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... MYSTERY has been deliver'd down; the many Centuries it has survived; the many Countries and Languages, and SECTS and PARTIES it has run through; we are rather to wonder that it ever arrived to the present Age, without more Imperfection. It has run long in muddy Streams, and as it were, under Ground. But notwithstanding the great Rust it may have contracted, there is much of the OLD FABRICK remaining: the essential Pillars of the Building may be discov'd through the Rubbish, tho' the Superstructure be overrun with Moss and Ivy, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... do to justify Lomazzo's title chosen for him of the Eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and the swiftness of the king of birds. And yet the works of few really great painters—and among the really great we place Ferrari—leave upon the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature, and great command of technical resources are here (as elsewhere in Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to admit a streak of imperfection in a few of their number, while maintaining their essential goodness. It is refreshing, after witnessing too much whitewashing of Burns, to find James Russell Lowell bringing Burns down to a level where the attacks of philistines, though unwarranted, are not sacrilegious. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... be a Spirit, then he is most perfect and most powerful. All imperfection, all infirmity, and weakness in the creature, is founded in the gross and material part of it. You see the more matter and bodily substance is in any thing, it is the more lumpish, heavy, and void of all action. It is the more spiritual, pure, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... by religion had proved a failure. Helvetius, as the organ of reaction against asceticism and against mysticism, appealed to positive experience, and to men's innate tendency to seek what is pleasurable and to avoid what is painful. The scientific imperfection of his attempt is plain; but that, at any rate, is what the attempt signified in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy imperfection in the art of swearing, it must be that all the profit of the traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a plausible argument that the traffic ought to be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... suggestions for its remedy. That defect consists in the want of moral instruction in our schools. Its existence, he believes, may be attributed to the state of public opinion, rather than to any imperfection in the system itself. For this reason, he is of opinion that remarks on the subject are more necessary, and therefore worthier of the consideration and indulgence of ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my experience. If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length—not doubled, for your life—across the pack-saddle, the traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him for an impudence so consummate that it had ended (in the face of mortifications, exposures, failures, all the misery of a hand-to-mouth existence) by imposing itself on her as a kind of infallibility. She knew he was an awful humbug, and yet her knowledge had this imperfection, that he had never confessed it—a fact that was really grand when one thought of his opportunities for doing so. He had never allowed that he wasn't straight; the pair had so often been in the position of the two augurs behind the altar, and yet he had never given her a glance that the whole circle ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... distinct elocution; without which nobody will hear you with patience: this everybody may acquire, who is not born with some imperfection in the organs of speech. You are not; and therefore it is wholly in your power. You need take much less pains for ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... prolific origin of such errors; and so indulgent are we to its faults that we try secretly to hide them even from our own eyes, mostly with success; and where success is not perfect, we make a second effort to hide the imperfection. Repeated efforts of this kind, from which we but half turn away, are crowned in the end, and we soon forget what successful hypocrites we have been. Our numerous passions, the complexities of our desires, the tenacity of their grasp, ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... advances in religion and the character of his piety becomes more pure, the whole religious world will more and more appear to him as an indivisible whole. The spirit of separation, in proportion as it insists upon a rigid division, is a proof of imperfection; the highest and most cultivated minds always perceive a universal connection, and, for the very reason that they perceive it, they also establish it. Since every one comes in contact only with his immediate neighbor, but, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of all this, however, in spite of the imperfection of his title, and the coolness or discontent of Mohammedans throughout the world, in spite of the growing weakness of the empire and his failure to defend those whom he has encouraged to resist Europe, it is not probable that ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Swinton would venture to go where you are bound, Mr Wilmot, but you can talk of that another day, when you have been longer together. There is nothing that requires more deliberation than the choice of a travelling companion; any serious imperfection of temper may make a journey very miserable. Now, Wilmot, if you are tired of natural history, and wish to change it for the painful history of human nature, I am ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... friend of one's emotions must walk in flesh and blood. Earwaker, Moxey—these were in many respects admirable fellows, and he had no little love for them, but the world they represented was womanless, and so of flagrant imperfection. Of Marcella Moxey he could not think emotionally; indeed she emphasised by her personality the lack which caused his suffering. Sidwell Warricombe suggested, more completely than any woman he had yet observed, that companionship without which life must to ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the reverse of the medal. These have their shirks, their do-nothings, their men of small account, just as do other races. I have no thought of glorifying the noble red man, nor of claiming for him a freedom from human imperfection—even where his natural quality and training count the most—greater than enlightenment has been able ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor; and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that Love until you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it. And that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. Take also other spiritual principles, such as Purity and Compassion, and apply them in the same way, ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily—we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. The "pure spirit" is a piece of pure stupidity: take away the nervous ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... this work simple, and not worth comparison to any of theirs: for the writers of them were grave men; of this, young heads: in them is shown the perfection of their studies; in this, the imperfection of their wits. Nevertheless herein they all agree, commending virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their overthrow that suppress not their unruly affections. These things noted herein, how simple soever the verse be, I hope the matter will be ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... this: That if there be a God—as there is a God—these failures are not according to His will. The highest reason should teach us that; for it must tell us that in the work of the Divine Artist, as in the work of the human, imperfection, impotence, disorder of any kind, must be contrary to the mind and will of the Creator. The highest reason, I say, teaches us this. And Scripture teaches it like wise. For if we believe our Lord to have been as He was—the express image of the Almighty Father; if we ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... avait de la religion et de la science, mais non sans bizarreries. . . . C'est sur le diable qu'il professait des opinions singulieres. Il pensait que le diable etait mauvais sans l'etre absolument et que son imperfection naturelle l'empecherait toujours d'atteindre a la perfection du mal. Il croyait apercevoir quelques signes de bonte dans les actions obscures de Satan, et, sans trop l'oser dire, il en augurait la redemption finale de l'archange meditatif, apres la consommation des siecles. . . . Assis sur ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... has endeavored to avail himself of the best sources of information which this country affords; and though, of course, there must be in these volumes, as in all historical accounts, more or less of imperfection and error, there is no intentional embellishment. Nothing is stated, not even the most minute and apparently imaginary details, without what was deemed good historical authority. The readers, therefore, may ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... Schlesinger's address (delivered on 9th October at Altenburg) on this subject he rightly called attention to the limits of knowledge of nature (in Kant's sense of the terms) imposed upon us by the imperfection of our perceptive organs. The gaps which the empirical investigation of nature must thus leave in science, can, however, be filled up by hypotheses, by conjectures of more or less probability. These we cannot indeed for the time establish on ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... omnipotent, ever-present, who reads his heart, who is "about his path, and about his bed, and spies out all his ways."[1111] He instinctively catches at anything whereby he may be relieved from the intolerable burden of such a thought; and here the imperfection of language comes to his aid. As he has found it impossible to express in any one word all that is contained in his idea of the Divine Being, he has been forced to give Him many names, each of them originally ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... the negative sense of the words, at once useless and immoral. "Nature is not its standard, nor is truth its chief end."[244-1] Its spirit is repose, "the perfect form in perfect rest;" whereas the spirit of religion is action because of imperfection. Even the gods must know of suffering, and partake, in incarnations, of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... world is honesty and moral truth'. Perfection was made to depend on harmony and proportion; and moral beauty upon the harmony of the individual soul with the general system of things. Wrong action was regarded as discord, imperfection. Virtue, being a disposition toward the general harmony, necessarily meant happiness. Thoughts of this kind, mixed up with vague ideas of a pre-established harmony, constituted the staple of Schiller's early philosophizing. The identity of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the new arrivals which kept coming in, hurled into the midst of us without thought or question, that this was the common fate of all who were repulsive to the sight, or who had any weakness or imperfection which offended the eyes of the population. They were tossed in among us, not to be healed, or for repose or safety, but to be out of sight, that they might not disgust or annoy those who were more fortunate, to whom no injury had happened; and because in their sickness and imperfection they were ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Chinese mind a distinction quite as clear in all dialects as the European distinction in all languages between the two states of Prussia and Russia, or between the two peoples Swedes and Swiss: it is entirely the imperfection of our Western alphabet, not at all that of the spoken sounds or the ideographs, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... infirmity of human nature flows from four separate and distinct sources: (1) concupiscence (fomes peccati); (2) imperfection of the ethical judgment (imperfectio iudicii); (3) inconstancy of the will (inconstantia voluntatis); and (4) the weariness caused by continued resistance to temptation. In view of these agencies and their combined attack upon the will, theologians speak of a necessitas ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... accuracy of the Gospel narratives, or even with the incidents there recorded. Those records are the work of men of very imperfect education, and feeble intellectual grasp, in the grip of the prejudices and beliefs of their age. But their very imperfection makes me feel more strongly the august personality of Christ, because the principles, which they represent Him as maintaining, seem to me to be entirely beyond anything that they could themselves have originated. It seems to me, if I discern Christ rightly—speaking ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... business man. He liked me. I had long been one of his most important customers and I had always sought to build up a good record with him. For example: other cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for merchandise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so. It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such things. In the majority of cases the goods can be cut so as to avoid any loss of material, and if it cannot, I will sustain the small loss rather than incur the mill's disfavor. In ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Wild, Rural Felicity Grass, Utility Hand Flower Tree, Warning Harebell, Submission Hawkweed, Quicksightedness Hawthorn, Hope Hazel, Reconciliation Heart's-ease, Thought Heath, Solitude Helenium, Tears Heliotrope, I Turn to Thee Hellebore, Scandal Hemlock, You will be my death Hemp, Fate Henbane, Imperfection Hepatica, Confidence Hibiscus, Delicate Beauty Holly, Foresight Holy Herb, Enchantment Hollyhock, Fecundity Honesty, Honesty Honey Flower, Love, Sweet Honeysuckle, Affection Hop, Injustice Horehound, Fire Hornbeam, Ornament Horse, Chestnut, Luxury Hortensia, You are Cold ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... what they do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve much,—at times even this victory over himself; being persuaded, that fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of a mutual guaranty of the State governments is another capital imperfection in the federal plan. There is nothing of this kind declared in the articles that compose it; and to imply a tacit guaranty from considerations of utility, would be a still more flagrant departure from the clause which has been mentioned, than to imply a ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... I had accomplished if I had never once thought about his opinion as I worked. As I carried them into the library that bright early autumn morning, I felt a shrinking at submitting my pictures, in their imperfection, to unsympathetic eyes, much as a mother might feel at bringing a deformed child to a baby show; but I had also a measure of satisfaction, since I could prove to my guardian that I had not been idle, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... There was one singular imperfection about these children, that they had inherited from their father, which was a freak growth of an inch-wide streak of white hair which started from the center of their heads and continued downwards to the base of their ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... is a curious imperfection in our knowledge of him. His very name is not his own—or any other man's. His father, if it were his father, took his name from Mont-Corbier—half noble. Villon is but a little village over beyond the upper Yonne, near the division, within a day of the ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... orders at p. 194, vol. i., which I think I shall fill by taking cyclamen and anagillis out of the Primulaceae, and making a separate group of them. These retouchings and changes are inevitable in a work confessedly tentative and suggestive only; but in whatever state of imperfection I may be forced to leave 'Proserpina,' it will assuredly be found, up to the point reached, a better foundation for the knowledge of flowers in the minds of young people than any hitherto adopted ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... quantity of marble and hard stone, which are very costly, cannot have that practice in the art that is essential; he who does not practise does not learn it; and he who does not learn it can do no good. Wherefore they should rather excuse with these arguments the imperfection and the small number of their masters, than seek to deduce nobility from them under false colours. As for the higher prices of sculptures, they answer that, although theirs might be much less, they have not to share them, being ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... one exception. The anti-Austrian party frowned, and plotted, and hated. Exasperated by the enthusiasm which the beautiful young queen inspired, they watched her every motion, eager to magnify the most trivial imperfection into crime; hoping, sooner or later, to render her obnoxious to the French people, and finally, to compass the end of all their wicked intrigues—a separation between the king and queen, and the disgrace and banishment of Marie Antoinette ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of their swift judgment of expectation. Now, before we treat the witness to some reproach like untruth, inattention, silliness, or something equally nice, *we had better consider whether his story is not true, and whether the difficulty might not really lie in the imperfection of our own sensory processes. This involves partly what Liebmann has called "anthropocentric vision,'' i. e., seeing with man as the center of things. Liebmann further asserts, "that we see things only in perspective sizes, i. e., only from an angle of vision varying ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... in the imperfection of language, we have called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence always does, every ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the face of ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... writing the narratives, the author has endeavored to avail himself of the best sources of information which this country affords; and though, of course, there must be in these volumes, as in all historical narratives, more or less of imperfection and error, there is no intentional embellishment. Nothing is stated, not even the most minute and apparently imaginary details, without what was deemed good historical authority. The readers, therefore, may rely ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... alike to its pride and envy, whilst consciously hurtful to its more generous impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon the mountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain. Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfection of character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations, probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation of a just and final judgment of an author's merit within his own lifetime. When it goes the length of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... form must have been preceded by that of some form little different from it. Here, however, we have to take into consideration that important truth so well insisted upon by Lyell and by Darwin—the imperfection of the geological record. It can be demonstrated that the geological record must be incomplete, that it can only preserve remains found in certain favourable localities and under particular conditions; that it must be destroyed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... itself,' stripped of its social lendings, or setting at nought the social restraints, is not by any means an attractive one, as this philosopher does it for us. The scientific artist is no better pleased, than the king is with this kind of 'nature.' It is the imperfection of the civilization which still generates, or leaves unchecked these savage evils, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... must have proved very troublesome to his peace of mind in his early life," my guru answered causticly. "Otherwise he would have denounced, not woman, but some imperfection in ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... tendencies of men's minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? Between Christ and the world, say!—Christ and the flesh!—or about that so very ancient antagonism between good and evil. Was there any place really left for imperfection, moral or otherwise, in a world, wherein the minutest atom, the lightest thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the crime, the sin, [160] the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, which was incapable of mis- shapen births? In proportion ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... are run over in thirty-seven days; then out comes the book, and the great question of America, socially and politically considered, is sealed for evermore. Now, if these gentlemen would only recollect that impressions, which are thus hastily collected must of necessity share the imperfection of all things done in a hurry, they would not record these hurriedly gleaned facts with such an appearance of infallibility, or, rather, they might be induced to try a second rush across the Atlantic before attempting that first rush into print. Let them ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... around them, and this is probably as much the case with the poor as with the rich; but it seems to have become a sort of custom to speak of the heartlessness of society. It is rather owing to the imperfection of our constitution. Loss of fortune renders us more sensitive, and we are apt to fancy slights where none were intended; but we may be pretty certain that the better men and women of society do not make money the index ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the citizens of the state not to the common good but to his own private purposes. In modern terms, it is a simple, rough-and-ready attempt to solve that constant problem of politics, how efficient government is to be combined with popular control. This problem arises from the imperfection of human nature, apparent in rulers as well as in ruled, and if the principle which attempts to solve it be admitted as a principle of importance in the formation of the best constitution, then the starting-point of politics will be ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... speech. And, if our plates had been sufficiently large, we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and, if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record. But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; therefore he hath prepared means ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... while endeavoring to correct a careless habit in writing, the mind must be upon the work in hand, and not be allowed to wander into fields of thought or imagination; by thus confining the attention, any defect or imperfection in the formation of letters may be soon ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.' He published it with a preface modestly explaining to the public his own sense of its imperfection. Nevertheless a storm of abuse broke upon him from the critics who fastened upon all the faults of the poem—the diffuseness of the story, its occasional sentimentality and the sometimes fantastic coinage of words,[xiii:1] and ignored the extraordinary ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Buffon, we hear, was wont to shave, and put on clean linen, before he sat down to write, finding it more comfortable so. Though, again, there have been others who could write in considerable disorder; not to say litter, and palpable imperfection of equipment: Samuel Johnson, for instance, did some really grand writing in a room where there was but one chair, and that one incapable of standing unless you sat on it, having only three feet. A man is to fit himself to what is round ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... comic work. Now, not only was Rowley little more than a farce writer, but he seems to have been either unable to make, or quite careless of making, his farce connect itself in any tolerable fashion with the tragedy of which it formed a nominal part. The result is seen in its most perfect imperfection in the two plays of The Mayor of Queenborough and The Changeling, both named from their comic features, and yet containing tragic scenes, the first of a very high order, the second of an order only overtopped by Shakespere at his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... identity; nor is there any evidence or any probability that the horse will ever change into anything essentially different. All the fossil bats, again, were true bats: and so with the rhinoceroses and the elephants. Granting the fullest use that may be made of the imperfection of the geological record, it is difficult to account for this, and still more for the absence of intermediate forms (particularly suitable for preservation) of the Cetaceae. The Zeuglodons from Eocene down to Pliocene, the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... regard it as a reality?" she asked. "You know, Duns Scotus said: 'Since there is no real being outside of God, evil has no substantial existence. Perfection and reality are synonyms, hence absolute imperfection is synonymous with absolute unreality.' Did Jesus know less than this man? And do you really think he looked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... prime requisite, discipline. He never took a city, because he could not rule his spirit. Democracy was inscribed upon his banner, sympathy for the disenfranchised bound him to it, but not that charity which seeketh not her own, nor the loyalty that abides the day when imperfection shall become perfection. Sarcasm was his weapon, ridicule his plan of campaign, and destruction ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fill any library with imperfections, since second-hand books are liable to have missing leaves, or plates, or maps, while new books may lack signatures or plates, or be wrongly bound together. In the case of new books, or books still in print, the publisher is bound to make good an imperfection. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even the sublimest, of his ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... labor. A worker is a perfected factory attachment as he surrenders himself to the time and the rhythm of the machine and its functioning; as he supplements without loss whatever human faculties the machine lacks, whatever imperfection hampers the machine in the satisfaction of its needs. If it lacks eyes, he sees for it; he walks for it, if it is without legs; and he pulls, drags, lifts, if it needs arms. All of these things are done ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... have," she answered, "a little. It gives me more hope. I cannot think I am totally depraved. I do not believe that God wishes me to think so. And while I am still aware of the distance between Christ's perfection and my own imperfection, I feel that the possibility is greater of lessening that distance. It gives me more self-respect, more self-reliance. George Bridges says that the logical conclusion of that old doctrine is what philosophers call determinism—Calvinistic ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conditions of human suffering, which in any other country would be confined in hospitals, are permitted to be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the ruined wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite in expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole land. It does not appear to arise from poverty, nor careless contentment ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... meanings of the original word, and thus senses may be ascribed to the original which it will not bear, because the reader annexes to the word in the translation a sense different from that in which it corresponds to the original word. To all these sources of imperfection must be added the fact that our translation was made at a time when science was not yet sufficiently developed to exercise any influence upon it. There was nothing to induce the translators to attempt, where it was possible, to preserve any indications ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... poem is Browning's favorite philosophy of development. He compares the perfection of Greek art with the imperfection of the real human body. We know what a man ought to look like; and if we have forgotten, we may behold a representation by a Greek sculptor. Stand at the corner of a city street, and watch the men pass; they are caricatures ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... therefore, a total solar eclipse is an occurrence for the proper utilisation of which personal experience is of absolute necessity. It was manifestly out of the question that such experience could be gained by any individual in early times, as the imperfection of astronomical theory and geographical knowledge rendered the predicting of the exact position of the track of totality well-nigh impossible. Thus chance alone would have enabled one in those days to witness a total phase, and the ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... if from my own feelings, or from the less suspicious test of the observations of others, I had been made aware of any literary testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should have been, however, neither silly nor arrogant enough to have burthened the imperfection on genius. But an experience—(and I should not need documents in abundance to prove my words, if I added)—a tried experience of twenty years, has taught me, that the original sin of my character consists in a careless ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... minutes before the gong was due to sound, made her way to her grandmother's room. Frances Freeland had just pulled THIS, and, to her astonishment, THAT had not gone in properly. She was looking at it somewhat severely, when she heard Nedda's knock. Drawing a screen temporarily over the imperfection, she said: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fault, n. defect, imperfection, failing, foible, shortcoming, blemish, flaw; demerit, dereliction, offense, indiscretion, lapse, delinquency. Antonyms: merit, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... amiss, though it portrays But feebly her angelic loveliness. Aught less than perfect is depicted falsely, And fancy must supply the imperfection. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... and captains of men-of-war are not exempted from this human imperfection! How much, also, drops between the cup and the lip! There chanced to be on board of the same trader two very pretty Irish girls of the better sort of bourgeoisie; they were going to join their friends at Philadelphia: ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... only among children that we find the quality of charity sufficiently strong to forgive deformity. The natural instinct is to turn away from any physical imperfection. It is the instinct of the race for the preservation of its forms. We call these forms beauty and the departure from them ugliness, and it is from "beauty's rose," as Shakespeare says, that "we desire increase." If you shudder at the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... England, we should find, as in other countries, that a large fraction of the men who earn their living by sedentary occupations are unfit for military service. Our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... the table, now by the chair-back, and now by the wall behind him. He was very angry, exasperated beyond control by Ellis' raillery and abuse. He forgot himself and uttered a series of peculiar cries very faint and shrill, like the sounds of a voice heard through a telephone when some imperfection of transmission prevents one from distinguishing the words. His mouth was wide open and his tongue rolled about in an absurd way between his teeth. Now and then one could catch a word or two. Ellis went into spasms of laughter, holding his sides, gasping for breath. Vandover could not help ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and the dying world of France. And this may perhaps at this point be observed as the centre of his action, namely the discovery that a wholesome desire for fame proceeds not from our self-satisfaction, but from our profound sense of emptiness, of imperfection. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... to despair is the idea of perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But when you understand that the primal idea itself was human, small and restricted, you will see that it is little more than a rung in the rotten ladder of human imperfection. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... recollect that the two-gilled cephalopods have not yet been found below the lias, where they at once abound; whereas the four-gilled cephalopods are Silurian forms. Moreover, the absence is in this case significant in spite of the imperfection of the geological record, because when we consider how many individuals of various kinds of four-gilled cephalopods have been found, it is fair to infer that at the least a certain small percentage of dibranchs ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... the precepts of this religion, as they affect nations, we shall see, that it interdicts every thing which can make a nation flourishing. We have seen already the notion of imperfection which Christianity attaches to marriage, and the esteem and preference it holds out to celibacy. These ideas certainly do not favour population, which is, without contradiction, the first source of power ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... no poetry in his soul, neither does he understand the philosophy of imperfection nor ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... be expedient, can justify the assumption of any power not granted. The powers conferred upon the Government and their distribution to the several departments are as clearly expressed in that sacred instrument as the imperfection of human language will allow, and I deem it my first duty not to question its wisdom, add to its provisions, evade its requirements, or ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... excellence of form, they sought it so far only as its perfection is indispensable for the complete revelation of the idea, for they were not ignorant that the sentiment is maimed if the form remain imperfect, any imperfection in it, like an opaque veil, intercepting the raying of the pure idea. Thus they elevated what had otherwise been the mere work of the trade, into the sphere of poetic inspiration. They enjoined upon genius and patience the task of inventing a ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... were, a certaine apparaunce of her frailtie, and the litle reason wherewith she is indewed, to vanquish him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... that leads to Emancipation and Brahma.[815] That person who regards this union of perishable attributes (called the body and the objects of the senses) as the Soul, feels, in consequence of such imperfection of knowledge, much misery that proves again to be unending. Those persons, on the other hand, who regard all worldly objects as not-Soul, and who on that account cease to have any affection or attachment for them, have never to suffer any sorrow for sorrow, in their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... clear that in certain cases, and especially in making an attack from the leeward, as Clerk of Eldin had pointed out, and where it was desirable to preserve your own line intact, Rodney's manoeuvre might still be the best. Howe's manoeuvre moreover supplied its chief imperfection, for it provided a method of dealing drastically with the portion of the enemy's line that had been cut off. Thus, although it is not traceable in the Signal Book, it was really reintroduced in Howe's third code. This is clear from the last article of the Explanatory Instructions of 1799 ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... remarkable, that in this biographical disquisition there appears a very strong symptom of Johnson's prejudice against players; a prejudice which may be attributed to the following causes: first, the imperfection of his organs, which were so defective that he was not susceptible of the fine impressions which theatrical excellence produces upon the generality of mankind; secondly, the cold rejection of his ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... a small and peculiar handwriting, which, though evidently by the same person whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more hard to decipher. Those parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, or alleged secrets in Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submit exclusively to scholars or men of science, were in Latin,—and Latin ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or of some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon us, but know too little of the general system of the universe, to be aware how the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and horses if I was to try more," he added, reflecting that Philip might falsely suppose that he was going to "knock under," if he were too frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... putting up with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral somewhere: but he could ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... contemplated the precious locket a good while. "These are splendid diamonds, indeed," he said, "and I am convinced Bonaparte did not inherit them of his father. Not the slightest blemish, not a single imperfection in them; I believe I have no more beautiful ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... carry through so impracticable a scene, would appear stripped of its principal beauties to the taste of a great part of an English audience; and yet we are perfectly convinced, that there is no one imperfection, in the plan or composition of the French tragedies, so deserving of censure, as the taste which can admit such representations on the stage. We allude, of course, entirely to the attempt to introduce this celebrated ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Essays, ii. 57. The more important the subject of difference, the greater, not the less, will be the indulgence of him who has learned to trace the sources of human error,—of error, that has its origin not in our weakness and imperfection merely, but often in the most virtuous affections of the heart.—BROWN, Philosophy of the Human Mind, i. 48, 1824. Parmi les chatiments du crime qui ne lui manquent jamais, a cote de celui que lui inflige la conscience, l'histoire ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... up one's mind decir, to say, to tell declamar, to declaim declarar, to declare declararse en quiebra, to file one's petition in bankruptcy decretar, to decree dedal, thimble dedicarse, to devote oneself defecto, defect, imperfection definir, to define, also to settle definitivo, definite dejar, to leave, to let dejar sin efecto, to cancel (orders, etc.) delegado, delegate delicado de salud, in indifferent health delinquir, to commit a delinquency demanda y oferta, supply ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and tolerant charity. Fenelon truly says, it is only perfection that can tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty. This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly assist the world in understanding ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he is in his native state, a Tarahumare never cheats at bargains. He does not like to sell anything that is in any way defective. He always draws attention to the flaw, and if a jar has any imperfection, it requires much persuasion to make him part with it. He shows honesty also in other ways. Often I trusted Indians with a silver dollar or two for corn to be delivered a few days later, and never was I disappointed by them. On the other hand, they are chary of ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... of the moths bred by her used their wings more than the females, and could flutter downwards, though never upwards. She also states that, when the females first emerge from the cocoon, their wings are less expanded than those of the male. The degree of imperfection, however, in the wings varies much in different races and under different circumstances; M. Quatrefages[511] says that he has seen a number of moths with their wings reduced to a third, fourth, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... harsh treatment is possible. The most loving and indulgent parents are now and again ill-tempered, fretful, or nervous. The fathers were men subject to all the limitations of other men. Granting these limitations and making due allowance for human imperfection, the rule of the fathers must still be admired for its wisdom and commended for ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... first, that she might perhaps be dumb: "But then," said he to himself, "can it be possible that heaven should forge a creature so beautiful, so perfect, and so accomplished, and at the same time with so great an imperfection? Were it however so, I could not love her with less passion than I do." When the king of Persia rose, he washed his hands on one side, while the fair slave washed hers on the other. He took that opportunity to ask the woman who held the basin and napkin, if ever they had heard ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... due to the deceptive indefiniteness of line and pleasant gray tone. When inked-in, in uncompromising black against the white paper, the draughtsman is apt to find that his sketch has developed many an imperfection, both in composition and in individual letter shapes, that the vague pencil lines ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... proceed to the solution of the riddle. The imperfection of the English stage has been represented to us by well-informed men. There is not a trace of those requirements of realism to which we have gradually become used through improvements in machinery, the art of perspective, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... imperfection fifty miles away. The crow has no faculty compared with this for finding carrion. It has scented something a hundred miles off, and before night "treed" its game. It has a great genius for smelling. It can ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... throughout, I must confess that it leaves on my own mind a stronger impression of the unequal and imperfect than does that of any poet at all approaching Coleridge in imaginative vigour and intellectual grasp. It is not a mere inequality and imperfection of style like that which so seriously detracts from the pleasure of reading Byron. Nor is it that the thought is often impar sibi—that, like Wordsworth's, it is too apt to descend from the mountain-tops of poetry to the flats ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... regard to your own sketch or story. If you are quite dissatisfied with it, I think this is probably due not to what you suppose,—imperfection of expression,—but rather to the fact that some latent thought or emotion has not yet defined itself in your mind with sufficient sharpness. You feel something and have not been able to express the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... IMPERFECTION OF THE LIFE RECORD. At the present time only the smallest fraction of the life on earth ever gets entombed in rocks now forming. In the forest great fallen tree trunks, as well as dead leaves, decay, and only add a little to the layer of dark vegetable mold from which they grew. The ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... of to-day inhabits a country, long ago civilized and Christianized, where, despite of much imperfection and much social misery, thirty-eight millions of men live in security and peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld. There is every reason to nourish great hopes of such a country, and to wish for it more and more of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... now you throw a glance at yourself in the glass! Oh Jane, Jane, the best of us and the freest from imperfection is not without a little pride and vanity; but don't be too confident, my saucy beauty; consider that you complained to William yesterday, about the unusual length of time that has elapsed since you received his last letter, and yet he ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by saying that a variable proportion exists in all industrial pursuits, between the effort and the result. Absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort, without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result, without any effort; and perfectibility, in the progressive diminution of the effort, compared with ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... born with an uncomfortable and awkward and unwieldy character, as some men are born lame, or scrofulous, or dyspeptic. The child of a father over sixty, and of a very young mother; there was in him some indefinable imperfection of nature, some jar of character, or some great want, some original sin of mental constitution, which made him different from other men, disabled him from getting pleasure or profit out of the circumstances ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... bearing upon the principles involved in the construction of a telescope. Those who employed the telescope for looking at the stars, had been long aware of the imperfections which prevented all the various rays from being conducted to the same focus. But this imperfection had hitherto been erroneously accounted for. It had been supposed that the reason why success had not been attained in the construction of a refracting telescope was due to the fact that the object glass, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Prince Oscar was not clearly understood by him. They would both speak English—which they spoke with difficulty and in an indistinct utterance of voice—and he did not like to break the conversation into French, because to have done so would have looked like a condemnation of their English, of any imperfection of which they did not seem to be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... says Nimrod, "that the breeding of a pack of fox-hounds, bordering on perfection, is a task of no ordinary difficulty. The best proof of it is to be found in the few sportsmen that have succeeded in it. Not only is every good quality obtained if possible, but every imperfection or fault is avoided. The highest virtue in a fox-hound is his being true to the line his game has gone, and a stout runner at the end of the chase. He must also be a patient hunter when there is a cold scent and the pack ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... shores of orthodoxy or of heresy. He would not deal with the question of the Deity of Jesus as a question for argument; he reminded me: "You are speaking of your judge," when I pressed some question. The mere suggestion of an imperfection in Jesus' character made him shudder in positive pain, and he checked me with raised hand, and the rebuke: "You are blaspheming; the very thought is a terrible sin". I asked him if he could recommend to me any books which would throw ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... France, who expressed surprise that he should be so much the slave of a woman that had but one eye. "Sire," replied the ingeniously gallant Perez, "she set the world on fire with that; if she had preserved both, she would have consumed it." It is of little consequence. Any slight physical blemish or imperfection was more than counterbalanced by the wit and accomplishments of this seductive woman, whose enchantments, like those of Ninon de l'Enclos, defied the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... heaven; to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This we all believe; and may we never be moved away from this cheering, animating hope. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our feelings and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they grow; the seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach maturity. It is instructive to notice how men who have had the very best advantages, and the greatest knowledge, are, nevertheless, prone to unbelief. Christ ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... climax of knightly qualities, the very impersonation of beauty, grace, and accomplishment, he could not have been better adapted than, in his own estimation, he already was, to please the fancy of a lady. He was blissfully unconscious of every imperfection; and displayed himself before what he thought the admiring gaze of all dames and demoiselles, as proudly as if he had been the all-accomplished victor in some passage of arms. Yet he carried himself, in outward appearance, as meekly as the humblest ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel |
