"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afraid to travel alone in so dreary a place, adding, that if his countrywomen were to be overtaken by a stranger like him, on the wilds of a mountain, they would scream and fly; all which he acted very vividly, by way of making out his imperfect speech, and trying her courage at ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... glorious future," said he, "which we are not destined to see—the golden age which has not been, but will yet be. We are only morning-stars shining in the dark, but the glorious morn will break, the good time coming yet. For this time we work; may God accept our imperfect service." ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... with you most heartily, Miss Huntington," he said, "and if you can, by any means, put your theory into practice, you will succeed in doing more than any one else has ever done. Bertha is perfectly well and strong, with the exception of her imperfect sight, and she ought to have regular duties; but she is so willful and obstinate at times that others have found it impossible to make her learn her lessons. She is naturally affectionate and tender-hearted, and good when she ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... since writing the last paragraph and going through the material half a dozen times more, I have about concluded, or perhaps worked myself up to the conclusion, that if a judicious blue pencil were to take from it what could be attributed to imperfect means of communication, and what could be considered as having slopped over from the medium, there would be a pretty substantial and not unbeautiful residuum which might, without straining anything, be taken for a description by George Eliot, of the heaven ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the trouble of walking to this spot, Captain Waverley, both because I thought the scenery would interest you, and because a Highland song would suffer still more from my imperfect translation were I to introduce it without its own wild and appropriate accompaniments. To speak in the poetical language of my country, the seat of the Celtic Muse is in the mist of the secret and solitary hill, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 gave it into ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... elves were like I have failed to gather, so vague and imperfect is his vocabulary, and so unobservant of all minor detail does he seem to have been. They were clothed in something very light and beautiful, that was neither wool, nor silk, nor leaves, nor the petals of flowers. They stood all about ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... good or bad. Drill is the usual method adopted by all classes of people for habit formation. It is because of the recognition of the value of repetition that the old maxim of "Practice makes Perfect" has been so blindly adhered to. Practice may make perfect, but it also may make imperfect. All that practice can do is to make more sure and automatic the activity, whatever it is. It cannot alone make for improvement. A child becomes more and more proficient in bad writing or posture, in incorrect work in arithmetic and spelling, with practice ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... When they look at things, they put their hands in their pockets. No doubt that is one reason why their knowledge is often so vague, inaccurate, and useless. It is probable, too, that our knowledge of phenomena beyond the reach of the hand is equally imperfect. But, at all events, we behold them through ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... all-pervading unity. Whoever speaks timidly and hesitatingly of the essential harmony between the Old Testament and the New, either refuses to acknowledge both as given by inspiration of God, or he apprehends this great fundamental truth only in a confused and imperfect manner. If God spake by Moses and the prophets, as well as by Christ and his apostles, it is vain to allege any contradiction in doctrine or spirit between the former and the latter. So absolutely certain is it that the Saviour ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning-fork, and her eyes were sharp as talons in their ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds, which is the centre of the movement for letting ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... observation. Thus, their quality proves that charcoal was the fuel invariably employed, and the large percentage of metal left in them shows that the process then in use of extracting the iron was very imperfect. They are said to vary in richness according as they belong to an earlier or later period—so much so, that some persons have ventured on this data to specify their relative ages; but other causes may have produced this difference. As to their quantity, it was once so great, that, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... this third inhabitant of the sixth floor attic was no other than Jean Didier, whose name had been entered in the bureau of police—when they tried to get some imperfect statistics of missing men—as "Jean Didier, glazier; fought with the insurgents, wounded at the barricade of the Rue Soleil d'Or, May 28th, 1871; denounced as Communist by Andre Fort; executed on the spot." Nevertheless, for once the police were wrong. Jean was not shot, though it was true ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... these relate at ease: Narrations clear and neat will always please; Like me, to this attention criticks pay; Then sleep, on either side, from night till day. If awkward, vulgar phrase intervene, Or rhymes imperfect o'er the page be seen, Condemn at will; but stratagems and art, Pass, shut your eyes, who'd heed the idle part? Some mothers, husbands, may perhaps be led, To pull my locks for stories white or red; So matters stand: a fine affair, no doubt, And what I've failed to do—my ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... see the two together, the giant trying, in his kind, but imperfect way, to anticipate the wishes of the other, with whom he had so often disputed and quarreled in days past. Now all that was forgotten, and Koku gave up being with Tom to wait ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... friendships with an imperfect man, with a man in bad health, of violent passions, of any characteristic that evidently disturbs his own life, and so may have disturbing influence on thine. Shake not any man by the hand, because thereby, if there be any evil in the man, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Abbot rose, To speak the Chapter's doom On those the wall was to enclose, Alive, within the tomb: But stopped, because that woful maid, Gathering her powers, to speak essayed. Twice she essayed, and twice in vain; Her accents might no utterance gain; Nought but imperfect murmurs slip From her convulsed and quivering lip; 'Twixt each attempt all was so still, You seemed to hear a distant rill - 'Twas ocean's swells and falls; For though this vault of sin and fear Was to the sounding ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... of Nature, they walk in as quiet and unadorned as at a morning rehearsal; marching like a vender of clumsy Italian images, "with all their imperfections on their head," and an additional load attributable to the imperfect head of the manager. Remember the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... masculine perfection. Their pledge is to build up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate, crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has become degenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect is permitted inside that wire fence. My eye-glasses bar me out; your shanks exclude you—also your politics, because you're ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the 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 ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... life, but even at my present age, is not hard for the Almighty, Who art able to do above all that we ask or think. But what I yet am in this kind of my evil, have I confessed unto my good Lord; rejoicing with trembling, in that which Thou hast given me, and bemoaning that wherein I am still imperfect; hoping that Thou wilt perfect Thy mercies in me, even to perfect peace, which my outward and inward man shall have with Thee, when death shall be swallowed up ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the moral state of the Pelasgi our accounts are imperfect and contradictory. They were not a petty horde, but a vast race, doubtless divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes, differing in rank, in civilization [8], and in many peculiarities of character. The Pelasgi in one country might ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her young friend unmercifully, as they walked homeward, and she extracted a very brief and imperfect history of the adventure that had formed the first acquaintance, and of the interview by which it had been renewed. But Evelyn did not heed her; and the moment they arrived at the rectory, she hastened to shut herself in her room, and write the account ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... half tone pictures of the delicate details being washed out. The first defects are avoided by pouring a solution of boric acid on the transitory support before applying the tissue and developing at a low temperature with salted water. The second from an imperfect knowledge of the properties of gelatine acted on by light in presence of a salt of chromic acid. One should bear in mind that the degree of solubility of gelatine so acted on, as also its degree of impermeability—which is important in certain processes of photogravure—is proportionate to the degree ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... Their imperfect surfaces reflect the lofty catafalque, an open canopy of solemn alapaca, lined with tasteful satin of creamish lead, looped at the curving roof and dropping to the four corners in half transparent tapestry. Beneath the roof, the half light shines ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... they fall ill and die, kith or kin can seldom reach them. Again, as French is persistently spoken in the home, and German only learnt under protest at the primary school, the young annexe enters upon his enforced military service with an imperfect knowledge of the latter language, the hardships of his position being thereby immensely enhanced. No one here hinted to me of any especial severity being shown to French conscripts on this account, but we can easily understand the disadvantage under which they labour. ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... ever,' what correspondence between such a creature and acts that are done without reference to God can there ever be? They are not worth calling 'fruit.' At the most they are 'wild grapes,' and there comes a time when they will be tested and the axe laid to the root of the trees, and these imperfect deeds will shrivel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... fresh horses being fine animals, the ammunition in excess of our needs. Conroy was enthusiastic, and somewhat loquacious, but I cut his conversation off rather sharply, and ordered the men into their saddles. With brain clarified by sleep I realized the importance of the work before us, and how imperfect my plans were. I could merely ride forth to Elmhurst, hoping to pick up some clew to aid me. As we rode rapidly along the deserted road leading to Farrel's I reviewed over and over again every remembered detail, only to conclude that I must get ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... a day's notice—and for two or three days we had nobody but Rex's orderly, such a handy, imperturbable soldier, who made beds, cooked the dinner, hung pictures, and blew the organ with equal urbanity. He didn't know much—and in the imperfect state of our cuisine had few appliances—but he affected to be au fait at everything—and what he had not got, he "annexed" from somewhere else. One of our maids uniformly set tumblers and wine-glasses ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... paragraphs and half-finished sentences, which have been found committed to paper, as materials for the remainder. The fastidious and cold-hearted critic may perhaps feel himself repelled by the incoherent form in which they are presented. But an inquisitive temper willingly accepts the most imperfect and mutilated information, where better is not to be had: and readers, who in any degree resemble the author in her quick apprehension of sentiment, and of the pleasures and pains of imagination, will, I believe, find gratification, in contemplating sketches, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 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 may be the means, as on earth, of helping it along." "The conditions constituting ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... spin, begin, swim, strike, stick, sing, sting, fling, ring, wring, spring, swing, drink, sink, shrink, stink, come, run, find, bind, grind, wind, both in the preterit imperfect and participle passive, give won, spun, begun, swum, struck, stuck, sung, stung, flung, rung, wrung, sprung, swung, drunk, sunk, shrunk, stunk, come, run, found, bound, ground, wound. And most of them are also formed in the preterit by a, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... subject to a fixed number of words hampered the treatment, and it was thought best to enlarge many points which in the allotted space could have hardly more than mention. Acting on this wish, the monograph has been nearly doubled in size, but still must be counted only an imperfect summary, since facts in these lines are in most cases very nearly unobtainable, and, aside from the few reports of Labor Bureaus, there are as yet almost no sources of full information. But as there is no existing manual ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... as they exist in what is natural, they seem by reason of their covering or clothing to be natural and some of them seem to be material. They are infinite in number and variety, and more or less simple or composite, and also more or less imperfect or perfect. There are means for forming and perfecting natural civil life; likewise for forming and perfecting rational moral life; as there are for forming and ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... thousand souls there are sufficient dregs to fill all the public-houses on an occasion of ceremonial excitement. Constance saw the bar of the Vaults crammed with individuals whose sense of decent fitness was imperfect. The barman and the landlord and the principal members of the landlord's family were hard put to it to quench that funereal thirst. Constance, as she ate a little meal in the bedroom, could not but witness the orgy. A bandsman ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... near when Deity shall appear to destroy all unbelievers in their respective religions. For myself, I cannot but believe that the world has only yet begun. It is impossible that the Creator should destroy the world in its present imperfect state. No—the world will go on yet thousands of years on years in the path of improvement unto (shall I say?) perfection. At any rate, I belong to those whose aspirations are for the future and not for the past. I am not enamoured with Hebrew patriarchal innocence, or Grecian classic polish ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... understood from those people respecting the existence of the desired passage to the westward in this neighbourhood, though the impossibility of Captain Lyon's proceeding farther in that direction, combined with our imperfect knowledge of the language, still left us in some doubt as to the exact position of the strait in question. While, therefore, Captain Lyon was acquainting me with his late proceedings, we shaped a course for Igloolik, in order to continue our look-out upon ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... practice of using the name of one author as the characteristic designation of another. It is, at best, the sign of an imperfect fame, implying rather the imitation of a scholar than the independent position of a master. We can, nevertheless, in no other way indicate in advance the place which the subject of our sketch occupies in the literature of Germany. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... been greatly cultivated, and in some respects highly developed. There are various recognised schools of painting, but I shall not weary my readers with any attempt, necessarily imperfect as it would be, to describe them in detail. China and the Buddhist religion have profoundly influenced painting as the other arts of Japan. Indeed, the early painters of Japan devoted themselves almost entirely to religious subjects. Most of their work was executed on the walls, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... indeed, if Theodosius had purchased, by the loss of honor, a secure and solid tranquillity, or if his tameness had not invited the repetition of injuries. The Byzantine court was insulted by five or six successive embassies, and the ministers of Attila were uniformly instructed to press the tardy or imperfect execution of the last treaty; to produce the names of fugitives and deserters, who were still protected by the Empire; and to declare, with seeming moderation, that, unless their sovereign obtained complete and immediate satisfaction, it would be impossible for him, were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... with apparently a single lens, surrounded, except at the apex, by dark-reddish pigment-cells. In some cases, as in some species of Lepas, the larvae, when first excluded from the egg, have not an eye, or a very imperfect one. ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... imperfect distinction divydes the partes of a period, and is marked with tuoe punctes, the one under the other, thus : and is red with half the pause of a perfect punct; as, al have synned, and fallen from the glorie of god: but are justifyed frelie be ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... has a cause. But this does not mean that the cause is an intelligent one, as God is supposed to be. If it is argued that he is regarded as intelligent on the analogy of human causation then he might also be regarded as imperfect as human beings. If it is held that the world as a whole is not exactly an effect of the type of effects produced by human beings but is similar to those, this will lead to no inference. Because water-vapour is similar to smoke, nobody will be justified in inferring fire from water-vapour, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... principles is in the departing from them. I will give you a cheque, Mr. Brooks, only I beg you to think over what I have said. Abandon this doling principle as soon as it is possible. Give your serious attention to the social questions and imperfect laws which are at the back of all ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... water give the basis for a determination of the heat produced by the current. Knowing the resistance of the conductor immersed, the watts can be calculated. This gives the bases for the determination of the heat-equivalent of electric energy. This is but an imperfect calorimeter, as it constantly would lose heat by the surrounding atmosphere, and would cease to operate as a calorimeter when the water was as hot as the wire normally would be, for then it would not absorb ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... many having knowledge of the battles of our Civil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest acts of heroism and devotion performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the impossible? Buried in the official reports of the victors there are indeed imperfect accounts of the engagement: the vanquished have not thought it expedient to relate it. It is ignored by General Sherman in his memoirs, yet Sherman ordered it. General Howard wrote an account of the campaign of which it was an incident, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... error; while, on the other, was the curious fact that no such island—not even a rock, or indeed shoal water—appeared on the chart in the position indicated. This circumstance, coupled with my knowledge of the imperfect character of the instruments in use by navigators of the period at which the cryptogram had been written, caused me now to experience no little curiosity and anxiety as to what the approaching ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... velocity and penetration of an ounce spherical ball, with the heavy powder charge, were immense, but beyond 50 yards the accuracy was imperfect. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... this most imperfect attempt to give some slight idea of the fishing in these waters, it is certainly not out of place to allude to the immense importance and necessity of preserving the fishing for the future. It is but lately ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... voice of the Ry of 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 seventy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... years the methods of striking a light were very primitive, just as they were in Europe; many families possessed no adequate means, or very imperfect ones. If by ill fortune the fire in the fireplace became wholly extinguished through carelessness at night, some one, usually a small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor, bearing a shovel or covered pan, or perhaps a broad strip of green bark, on which ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... is on the other side of the Cathedral. It is 188 feet high, 53 feet round the base, and about 14 feet out of the perpendicular. It is now, I believe, generally understood that this obliquity was occasioned by the imperfect state of the foundations and the sinking of the soil, which is light and sandy, and which caused it to settle down on one side while the building was still uncompleted; and this defect was afterwards provided for by its architect. This is evident from the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great ignorance. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... desires an example of imperfect and arrested knowledge in some of the common affairs of life, let him collate the statements of scientific experts concerning the physiological effects upon mankind, of tea. He will then admit that "in a multitude of ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... inaccuracy had done its baleful work, a spirit of infidelity and of hostility either to the essentials or the details of the new religion must have impelled such as were either imperfect Christians, or no Christians at all, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... saddle" was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled. Dirkovitch, at the far end of the table, slid gently from his chair to the floor, No son of Adam, in this present imperfect world, can mix the Hussars' champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each without remembering the pit whence he has been digged and descending thither. The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars, from the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... their songs? The love of the soil and of what grows on it is not acquired by sketching with a paint-brush—it is only in its service; and without loving it, how paint it? This is why all that the best painters have produced in this direction is still so imperfect, not true to life, nearly always merely sentimental. There is no ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a plan or invention, be it a statue or picture; and the way they think it over and anticipate it—very often actually seeing the picture in a finished state in imagination—all amounts to foresight and hypnotic preparation in a crude, imperfect form. If any artist who is gifted with resolution and perseverance will simply make trial of the method here recommended, he will assuredly find that it is ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... this volume to the reader, with feelings which, I trust, will be in some degree appreciated when it has been read and reflected upon. A hasty perusal, and an imperfect apprehension of its contents, can never produce such impressions as it has been my design to make by the statements I have laid before the world. I know that misapprehensions exist in the minds of some virtuous people. I am not disposed to condemn their ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... moment in The New Machiavelli, and again in his next book, Marriage, he has a passing vision of some greater movement of which we are but the imperfect instruments. He develops and then drops the idea of a "hinterland," not only to the individual mind but to the general consciousness. The "permanent reality," he calls it, "which is never really immediate, which draws continually ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... injunction not to return to Costaguana), he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer. But this scientific aspect of his labours remained vague and imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for him a dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from a personal point of view, too, as one would study the varied characters of men. He visited them as one goes with curiosity ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... none of them were perfect, except one or two vertebrae of a very large species of kangaroo. Pursuing this lode of osseous earth we traced it to several other recesses and in the lower side of an indurated mass (the upper part having been the floor of our first landing place) we found two imperfect skulls of Dasyuri, the teeth being however very well preserved. This was, doubtless, an unvisited cave; for the natives have an instinctive or superstitious dread of all such places, and it is not therefore probable that man had ever before visited that ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... known to the writer: one in the Royal Library at Brussels, the second in the Royal Irish Academy Collection (M. 23, 50, pp. 109-120), and the third in possession of Professor Hyde. As the second and third enumerated are copies of one imperfect exemplar it has not been thought necessary to collate both with the Brussels MS. which has furnished the text here printed. M. 23, 50 (R.I.A.) has however been so collated and the marginal references initialled B are to that imperfect copy. The latter, ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... Geological Record is one of the greatest difficulties...During the earliest period the record would be most imperfect, and this seems to me sufficient to account for our not finding intermediate forms between the classes in the same great kingdoms. It was certainly rash in me putting in my belief of the probability of all beings having descended from ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... proceed further than this point, but shall leave to-morrow. Mr. Fenwick has some very important information to communicate, and if he has not found time to write you, I would advise your going on to New York immediately. At best, hurried business letters give but imperfect notions of things. An hour's interview with Mr. Fenwick will enable you to comprehend the present state of affairs more perfectly than the perusal of a volume of letters. Some new aspects have presented themselves that I particularly wish ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, were deprived of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Pyramid, and happily possessed of a golfing-ground and a marble swimming- bath. That ubiquitous nuisance, the "amateur photographer," can there have his "dark room" for the development of his more or less imperfect "plates"; and there is a resident chaplain for the piously inclined. With a chaplain and a "dark room," what more can the aspiring soul of the modern tourist desire? Some of the rooms at the Mena House are small ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... songsters, possess inferior powers of execution, and cannot equal the Finches in their capacity of learning and performing the notes of other birds. Even the Mocking-Bird, as compared with many other species, is a very imperfect imitator of any notes which are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Regent Morton's famous epitaph spoken by Knox's grave, is an imperfect echo of what the Reformer ten days before, in bidding farewell to the Kirk (Session) of Edinburgh, had said of his own past career:—'In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he must make account for the same, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... of the lava is more thinly wooded and better grassed than the granite; but the roughness of the surface and scarcity of water rendered it less convenient travelling. From one of the higher ridges we had a wide but imperfect view of the country. The air being hazy, only a few of the marked features of the ranges to the north were visible; to the east a high hill twenty-five miles distant rose beyond an undulating wooded ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... disadvantage because of her imperfect German. She could not repress Karlchen when he was unduly kind as she would have done in English, and with his mother presiding, as it were, at their opening friendship, she did not like to begin by looking lofty. Luckily the princess ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... my lost, benighted soul been wand'ring?— What means this mist, that hangs about my mind, Through which reflection's painful eye discerns Imperfect forms and horrid shapes of woe?— The cloud dispels, the shades withdraw, and all My dreadful fate appears.—Oh! where's my lord?— My life! my Essex! Oh! whither have they ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... her that she lived in his soul, as much as he did in hers, that his existence without her must be barren and imperfect. She did not ask when and how, she only prayed that she might become his, expecting it as confidently as light in the morning, spring after winter. Nothing appeared so irrefutable as this faith; it was the belief of her loving soul. Then, when the inevitable had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the interstice of the two beneath it, the whole forming a connic figure about 10 feet high with a small apperture in one side which answers as a door. leaves bark and straw are sometimes thrown over the work to make it more complete, but at best it affords a very imperfect shelter particularly without straw which is the state in which we have ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... which turns, in the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the period of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and imperfect a state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to commit it to the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of activity, we must recollect however the entire solitude, in which most of her hours were at that ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... 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
... this ambition appealed to her. Nay, at times it certainly did so, for she liked the brilliant and the commanding. On the other hand, it seemed imperfect as an ideal of life. In its undercurrents her thought was always more ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Sharpsburg, five miles from the city of Pittsburg, and there used as fuel, but not with such triumphant success as to attract much attention to the experiment. Failures of supply, faults in the tubing, and imperfect appliances for use at the mills combined to make the new fuel troublesome. Seven years ago a company drilled for oil at Murraysville, about eighteen miles from Pittsburg. A depth of 1,320 feet had been reached when the drills ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... become wonderfully conceited as to its own progressive excellences, and the individuals who form the concrete entertain the same complacent opinion of themselves. There are, of course, even in my brief and imperfect experience, many exceptions to what appear to me the prevalent characteristics of the rising generation in "society." Of these exceptions I must content myself with naming the most remarkable. Place aux dames, the first I name is Cecilia Travers. She and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Irene, erected about 740 A.D., is generally considered to be the first example of a dome built on a high drum, though S. Sophia of Salonica, an earlier structure, has a low imperfect drum. After this date the characteristics of the Byzantine dome are the high drum divided by ribs or hollow segments on the interior, polygonal on the exterior, and crowned by a cornice which ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... give the go-by to all positive, finite, limited interests whatever. The vague pretensions of an abstract expression acted on him with all the force of a prejudice. "The ideal," he admits, [32] "poisons for me all imperfect possession"; and again, "The Buddhist tendency in me blunts the faculty of free self-government, and weakens the power of action. I feel a terror of action and am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective line of thought." But then, again, with him "action" meant chiefly literary ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Penitential books and observed the evidences they afford of the vitality of heathen practices and rites among the people in England in the early Middle Ages will not be too harsh in characterizing the still imperfect fruits of the Catholic missions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... her feet and looked at him hard. His eyes by this time were accustomed to the imperfect light, and he could see that if she was urgent she was yet beseechingly kind. She shook her head impatiently and came near enough to lay her fan on his arm with a strong pressure. "If that were so it would be a weary world. I know enough, ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... way of the English Channel and lay storm-bound for twelve days under the Scilly Islands, a circumstance which bears witness to the imperfect means of navigation of the day and to the courage of seamen. The ships once able to put to sea, the voyage was rapid, and in twenty days Davis was off the south-west coast of Greenland. All about ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... Cuvier, the classification of animal life had been most imperfect and unsatisfactory. The basis adopted by Ray was open to criticism. Comparative anatomy, rising into importance during the eighteenth century, continued through that period in a state of infancy. Linnaeus and Buffon rendered valuable service; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... received. They seem to forget the meaning of the words, and to think only of the music. They do not sing sufficiently with their hearts. That was not the case with us in that storm-driven boat. The music was, I daresay, very imperfect, but never did men enter more heartily into the spirit of the psalm than did we ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... might almost be called hyper-refinement, a wonderfully good eye for form, and last, but not least, the most scrupulous conscientiousness about detail. On the other hand his sense of colour was somewhat imperfect, and his hand was almost totally untrained, so that while he had all the enthusiasm of the true artist, his work always had the defects ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... obtained but a very imperfect idea of the exciting scene which had transpired before her. When she saw Vernon fall, and then Maxwell, she realized that she was safe. With an effort,—for her excited nerves had taken away her strength,—she rose from her position on the floor, by the side of her lifeless hostess. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... sometimes several influences combine to affect it greatly and suddenly. Recent inventions, chemical and mechanical, moreover, have considerably altered the conditions of production. While, therefore, it is the best standard yet devised and put into actual practice, it is very imperfect. A standard better than a single metal, more stable than a single commodity, is desirable ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... leaves or sheaves of grass, and among these they saw figures moving and disappearing, watching their approach, yet always ready to disappear in the recesses of the woods. Sounding carefully the depth of water with their imperfect tackle, they anchored off the main beach, and sent a boat on shore from each vessel, Luis being in command of one. The natives at first hovered in the distance, but presently came down to the shore to meet ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the genuine from the spurious Plays: And, with equal Judgment, tho' not always 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 were most proper ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion. It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the church, determined ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... retired, leaving Aladdin alone in the hall. He took the lamp, which he carried about him, rubbed it, and presently the genie appeared. "Genie," said Aladdin, "I ordered thee to leave one of the four- and-twenty windows of this hall imperfect, and thou hast executed my commands punctually; now I would have thee make it like the rest." The genie immediately disappeared. Aladdin went out of the hall, and returning soon after, found the window, as he wished it to be, like ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... was there again that the really fine and poignant irony came in. Through her intercourse with Jane and Laura, Rose offered herself for comparison, and showed flagrantly imperfect. But for that, owing to Tanqueray's superhuman powers of abstraction, she might almost have passed unnoticed. As it was, he owned that her incorruptible simplicity preserved her, even at her worst, from being ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... prayer are often seeming denials. Beneath the outward request He hears the voice of the inward desire, and He responds to the mind of the Spirit rather than to the imperfect and perhaps mistaken words in which the yearning seeks expression. Moreover, His infinite wisdom sees that a larger blessing may be ours only by the withholding of the lesser good which we seek; and so all true prayer trusts Him to give His own answer, not ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... very convenient and expeditious mode of cooking; but though one of the most common, it is as commonly performed in a very imperfect manner, and meets with less attention than the comfort of a good meal requires. A fryingpan should be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, and perpendicular sides. When used it should be half filled with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... frontiers, or, to speak more accurately, something of an irritation. But that menace or irritation was never conceived of as we conceive of the menace of a foreign power. It was merely the trouble of preventing a fringe of imperfect, predatory, and small barbaric communities outside the boundaries from doing harm to a vast, rich, thickly populated, ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Latin Poems, as make several lines unintelligible; and that in the volume of Poems on Affairs of State, the same mistakes are as frequent; and in those, some pieces are attributed to our author, which he never wrote. Most of his Poems printed in Dryden's Miscellanies are so imperfect, that whole stanzas are ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Covenant here come into consideration? The answer is suggested by ver. 17. The Ark of the Covenant is no more remembered, because Jerusalem has now, in a perfect sense, become the throne of God. The Ark of the Covenant comes into consideration, therefore, as the throne of God, in an imperfect sense. It can easily be proved that it was so, although there have been disputes as to the manner in which it was so. The current view was this, that God, as the Covenant God, had constantly manifested ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... handed me the cutting he said: "I am Destilia!" His story was so strange that I asked him a good many questions about it. He answered me quite frankly on every point, but always adhering stoutly to the main point—namely, that it was no phantom or mirage, no dream or imperfect vision in a fog. "We were four in all who saw it," he said—"three from the bridge and the Englishman, Caulfield—from the bows—whose account exactly agreed with what we saw. Captain Mirolani and Falamano and I were all awake and in good trim. We looked with our night-glasses, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... and the archivists and annalists will pile up facts forever like so many articulates or mollusks or radiates, until the vertebrate historian comes with his generalizing ideas, his beliefs, his prejudices, his idiosyncrasies of all kinds, and brings the facts into a more or less imperfect, but still organic series of relations. The history which is not open to adverse criticism is worth little, except as material, for it is written without taking cognizance of those higher facts about which men must differ; of which Guizot ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... inclinations, at least by their enthusiasm and partial view of their own purposes; and even the description of disinterested reporters and eye witnesses may be distorted and exaggerated, either by their own peculiarities of excited imagination, or from their imperfect opportunities for observation. But in cases where numerous witnesses are questioned, and cross examined under the solemnities of judicial proceeding, each one knowing that others equally well informed have been or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... feel secure; he would never believe in the stability of life, or forget what depths of pain lie beneath small happiness and feelings of content and safety. It seemed to him as he looked back that their happiness had never been so great as his pain was now. There had always been something imperfect in their happiness, something they had wanted and had not been able to get. It had been fragmentary and incomplete, because they were so young and had not known ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... little journeys from one patch of grass to another, by a hundred obstacles, which, trifles though they might be to animals of a higher species, were yet of fatal importance to creatures constituted like itself, he began to find an imperfect, yet remarkable analogy between his own destiny and that of this small unit of creation. He felt that, in its petty sphere, the short life of the humble animal before him must have been the prey of crosses and disappointments, as serious to it, as the more severed and destructive ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... all that my approaching departure from England, at the time last mentioned, left in my power: upon the present occasion I have offered arguments for, and endeavoured to anticipate those against, the deductions I then made public; and however imperfect may have been my success in either, the welfare of society at large is too deeply involved in the establishment of my opinions with respect to the custom I condemn, (if those opinions be correct,) for me to hesitate while ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton
... soft divisions their tender fingers should strike on the yielding strings."[11] Life was lacking in physical comforts, and still more in refinement. The dining-hall became at night the sleeping place of a promiscuous crowd of retainers. There was a very imperfect separation of the sexes at any time. Men and women ate with their fingers, and threw the refuse of their meal on the table, or amidst the straw on the floor, to be devoured by the cats and dogs which swarmed about. Read the directions for ladies' table manners given by Robert de ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... lustre in her eyes that told of unnatural excitement. It gave a strange brilliancy to her beauty, and might have deceived an unpractised observer. The old man looked at her long and curiously, his imperfect sight excusing the closeness ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Notes of my Celtic Fairy Tales, No. xvii.). This is a specifically Celtic formula, and would seem therefore to claim Cinderella for the Celts. But the welding of the Sea Maiden ending on to the Cinderella formula is clearly a later and inartistic junction, and implies rather imperfect assimilation of the Cinderella formula. To determine the question of origin we must turn to the purer type given by the other two ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... the 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. "And indeed," said he, "I have always had especial care of keeping ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... behind it, and made a lunge in the direction of a muttered curse. The curse gave way to a roar of pain and rage, and Colden's second follower dropped, spurting blood in the darkness, his shoulder gashed horribly by the blunt end of Peyton's imperfect weapon. Harry now ran back to the parlor, to deal with Colden in the light, the latter's greater length of weapon giving a greater searching-power in the darkness. In the parlor Elizabeth stood waiting in suspense. Sam was sitting on the floor and staring stupidly at Williams, who was now awake and ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... inversion of conservative principles was, that the movement of Slavery is towards barbarism, while the movement of all countries in which labor is not positively chattellized is towards freedom and civilization. True conservatism, it must never be forgotten, is the refusal to give up a positive, though imperfect good, for a possible, but uncertain improvement: in the United States it has been misused to denote the cowardly surrender of a positive good from a fear to resist the innovations of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... describe what followed? Not adequately, only by imperfect hints. These two faced each other, Rosa and the apparition. She uttered no word. But I, in my stupor, knew that she was interceding with the spectre for my life. Her lovely eyes spoke to it of its old love, its old magnanimity, and in the name of that love and that magnanimity ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... nightmare of the nations, in which Europe had gone mad, revelling in superhuman bloodshed and destruction,—a conflict in which more than earthly forces had been let loose, accomplishing a carnage so immense that the mind could only form a dim and imperfect conception of it. And now this red tide of desolation had swept up to the western verge of the Continent, and was there gathering strength and volume day by day against the hour when it should burst and oversweep the narrow strip ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... rooms with imperfect ceilings it is easy to disguise this by using a paper with a small design in the same tone. A perfectly plain ceiling paper will show every defect in the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... imperfect rest, Which these bewilder'd spirits share! Welcome this tumult of the breast, After the ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... means employed by Nature to diversify species, a means which comes into play whenever the environment changes. The cause of the great diversity shown by animal species is indeed ultimately to be sought in the environment. As the imperfect and earliest forms developed they spread over the earth and invaded the utmost corners of it:—"One can imagine what an enormous variety of habitats, stations, climates, available foods, environing media, etc., animals and plants have had to endure, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... to be discussed in this chapter are of the highest interest, but are treated by me in an imperfect and fragmentary manner. Mr. Wallace, in an admirable paper before referred to (1. Anthropological Review, May 1864, p. clviii.), argues that man, after he had partially acquired those intellectual and moral faculties which distinguish him from the lower animals, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... him, mother?" said Jock. "I should think he was quite to be trusted with it. I see! I was reading an account of this method of his to Dr. Lucas one day, and he was much interested and tried to tell me something about my father; but it was after his speech grew so imperfect, and he was so much excited and distressed that I had to lead ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Delvile were as vehement as had been his entreaties, which yet, however, were not at an end; the concession she had made was imperfect, unless its performance were immediate, and he now endeavoured to prevail with her to be his before ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... informs us that it need not be, and on the whole ought not to be—that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world.' This charge was in fact based on a careless reading, or an imperfect recollection, of the twentieth discourse in 'Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' The discourse in question is a somewhat nauseous glorification of the servile temper, but it only says that the meekness of the saints is (by Divine providence) so successful ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... expected naturally to see a youth of imperfect constitution, and cachectic or dyspeptic tendencies, who was in training to furnish one of those biographies beginning with the statement that, from his infancy, the subject of it showed no inclination for boyish amusements, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... that in those woods that have passed through the engraver's hands, some which promised best, so far as their texture or grain is concerned, have been tried upon very imperfect or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... one is a bookman because he has many books, for he may be a book huckster or his books may be those without which a gentleman's library is not complete. And in the present imperfect arrangement of life one may be a bookman and yet have very few books, since he has not the wherewithal to purchase them. It is the foolishness of his kind to desire a loved author in some becoming dress, and his fastidiousness ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... say womankind, I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... gaping crowd on the landing received the visitor when he stepped ashore and asked to see the captain of the guard. To that dignitary he delivered a despatch handsomely enveloped in yellow silk, saying, in imperfect Greek: ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only the headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the Times, and it is needless to say that such an article in the leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper in the world produced an intense ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... another, feasted from morning to night on the repetition of my own praises, and enjoyed the various conjectures of criticks, the mistaken candour of my friends, and the impotent malice of my enemies. Some had read the manuscript, and rectified its inaccuracies; others had seen it in a state so imperfect, that they could not forbear to wonder at its present excellence; some had conversed with the author at the coffeehouse; and others gave hints that they had lent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... dwelt on in speaking, as to be equivalent to a dissyllable - u, is characteristic of the solemn Glendower; but the imperfect line ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Billardiere, "at the exactitude with which the latitude had been determined by this navigator, at a time when instruments were very imperfect. The same remark applies to nearly all Leuwin's ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... who has produced it, but as one who has experienced art; and his own experience is really the subject-matter of his criticism. If he is a philosophic critic, he will know that his experience is itself necessarily imperfect. As some one has said: "We do not judge works of art; they judge us"; and the critic is to be judged by the manner in which he has experienced art, as the painter is to be judged by the manner in which he has experienced the visible world. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... things), logical, free from pleonasm or tautology, smooth, certain, free from bombast, agreeable or sweet, truthful, not inconsistent with the aggregate of three, (viz., Righteousness, Wealth and Pleasure), refined (i.e., free from Prakriti), not elliptical or imperfect, destitute of harshness or difficulty of comprehension, characterised by due order, not far-fetched in respect of sense, corrected with one another as cause and effect and each having a specific object.[1694] I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... secret about it; you didn't confide your—your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can't be polite and keep peace with Cora—at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe," she finished with imperfect gravity, "that it—it ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... up in despair my effort to appear genteel, and devoted myself to the bouquet. I cut almost flowers enough to dress a church, and then remorselessly excluded every one which was in the least particular imperfect. In making the bouquet I enjoyed the benefit of my nephews' assistance and counsel and took enforced part in ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... II; and the variations between them will be found in the notes. About one third of this article, taken from the former of those MSS., is printed in Malcolm's London, vol. ii. p. 89, but it conveys a very imperfect idea of the whole composition; for not only has the orthography of the extract been modernized, but the most interesting descriptions do not occur. The annexed is therefore, it is presumed, the only correct copy which has ever been published, and it cannot fail to be deemed an exceedingly curious ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... practice more than advanced the theory of Morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics. ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of the debate, the admissions of the ministerial speakers, and the delays which have been submitted to, we would almost be inclined to doubt the sincerity of the government in wishing to pass even this measure, imperfect as it is. There seems to exist an extraordinary and ominous good feeling between the opposing parties. Sir James Graham is described by Mr O'Connell as having "stated the case of the promoters of the bill in a manner which could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various |
