"Precision" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... six shiny new slaggers came rumbling into the open with military precision. They moved along slowly, prolonging the pleasures of anticipation, then broke rank, each seeking its assigned point around the pile of appliances gathered ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... write without effort,—never aiming, it is true, at the higher graces of style, somewhat diffuse, too, both in French and in English, but easy, natural, idiomatic, and lucid, with the distinctness of clear conceptions rather than the precision of vigorous conceptions, and a warmth which in his public letters sometimes rose to eloquence, and in his private letters often made you feel as if you were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... inscriptional mode of writing. The sentences are composed of short parallel clauses, and the nature of the material induced a division into paragraphs which resemble strophes. They are characterized also by precision and pithiness of statement, and are probably as trust-worthy as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the lace fringes of her parasol; and smoothed them with some precision. Her eyes were bent on what she was doing; consequently, they did not ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... business-like precision, Sim Squires pitched a stone on the end of a long cord, and to the cord he fastened the rope's end. All that was needed now was the weight which the rope was to lift, and in the blue-ink shadow that mercifully cloaked it ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... not know—that it had been left by a messenger. He untied the knotted string with neat precision, and rolled it into a ball ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... with such regularity and precision, that, for a moment or two, Dick believed them to be a troop of cavalry, but he learned better when they scattered with a shout and began to chase the buffaloes. Then he knew that they were a band ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... scathingly described. No one could call it a "commodious station home," and it was even patched up and shabby; but, for all that, neat and cared for. An orderly little array of one-roomed buildings, mostly built of sawn slabs, and ranged round a broad oblong space with a precision that suggested the idea of a section of a street cut out from some neat compact ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... afterwards she was established here, and had adapted herself to all our modes of life in a way that astonished me. She went about all her duties quietly, and with the greatest order and precision. Her classes were the most orderly in the school, and in a short time her authority was acknowledged by all the girls. There were few who did not admire her, and not one who dared to set her at defiance. By degrees ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... that reminiscence, with the consent of parent and pupil, and to his own great delight, the hour designed for the scholar's scales and exercises was given to the master's playing. He was fond of Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," and he played it with force and precision and the utmost delicacy. Mr. Timm had a pale, smooth, sharp face, a rather prim manner, and a quick, modest gait. He was most simple-hearted, and loved a joke; and his fun was all the more effective from his very sober face and his lisp. It was his wife who was long the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... made;" and these words seem to show that the Areopagus existed before Solon's laws, for who could be condemned by that council before his time, if he was the first that instituted the court? unless, which is probable, there is some ellipsis, or want of precision, in the language, and it should run thus, — "Those that are convicted of such offenses as belong to the cognizance of the Areopagites, Ephetae, or the Prytanes, when this law was made," shall remain still ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... flight between Paris and Isle-Adam. Having married the daughter of a small inn-keeper, he enlarged his business, made it a regular service, and became noted for his intelligence and a certain military precision. Active and decided in his ways, Pierrotin (the name seems to have been a sobriquet) contrived to give, by the vivacity of his countenance, an expression of sly shrewdness to his ruddy and weather-stained visage which suggested wit. He was not without that facility of speech which is acquired chiefly ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... ladies in the tent, he said eagerly: "Not sung amiss for your Ratisbon, I should think. But how this superb composition was sung six years ago at Catnbray, under the direction of Courtois himself!—that, yes, that is one of the things never to be forgotten. Thirty-four singers, and what power, what precision, and, moreover, the great charm of novelty! I have certainly been ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... martial lower limbs visible below the long, voluminous skirts of their double-breasted frock-coats. Flo gazed with frank animation in her eyes, but Forrest never saw her until after he had waved adieu to his German friends, standing in statuesque and superb precision at the salute beyond the foaming wake ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... willingly give up their lives. And before they submit to unquestioning discipline and sacrifice themselves for an ideal they need a clear understanding of that ideal and a just appreciation of its value. So they think out the ideal with greater precision and make sure that what they are aiming at is nothing short of the highest. Now the ideal of fellowship enriched with beauty and elevated to the Divine is one which all can understand and of which all can see the value. Because ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... he went out from Macedonia northwards, struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass, frustrating the mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision of discipline which, probably, no other army of the time could have approached, and traversed the land of the Triballians (Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or strike the imagination of the world he took his army over the Danube and burnt a settlement of the Getae ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unimpeded expression of healthy instinct in an environment squarely faced. Conduct from the first then issues in progress, and, by reinforcing its own organisation at each rehearsal, makes progress continual. For there will subsist not only a readiness to act and a great precision in action, but if any significant circumstance has varied in the conditions or in the interests at stake, this change will make itself felt; it will check the process and prevent precipitate action. Deliberation or well-founded ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Peyton Randolph? And he would answer: "No, sir; I was born in December, 1774, and he died in October, 1775, in Philadelphia, when I was not a year old." And it was by questions such as these, which I could answer with exact precision myself, that I ascertained not only the integrity and worth of his memory, which we all know in aged persons retains with freshness the incidents of youth, but his capacity of combination which, in the degree in which he possessed ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down; these are your own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith's (as I have the story) came to him in an agony. 'This is too bad of you,' he cried. 'Willoughby is me!' 'No, my dear fellow,' said the author; 'he ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exhibited even after death. A neighbor of mine very lately killed a chief who had been tattooed by Aranghie, and appreciating the artist's work so highly, he skinned the chieftain's thighs, and covered his cartouch box with it!—I was astonished to see with what boldness and precision Aranghie drew his designs upon the skin, and what beautiful ornaments he produced: no rule and compasses could be more exact than the lines and circles he formed. So unrivalled is he in his profession, that a highly finished face of a chief from the hands of this artist, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... few days the awkwardness arising from the novelty of the scene, and from the superior dimensions of every variety of equipment on board of the frigate, compared to the small craft to which he had been accustomed, passed away. The order which was exacted to preserve discipline, the precision with which the time was regulated, the knowledge of the duty allotted to him, soon made him feel that no more was exacted than what could easily be performed, and that there was no hardship in serving on board of a man-of-war; the only hardship was, the manner in which he had been brought ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... great therefore was our gratification when we pulled up at the door of the Angel, and were shown into a splendid room, thirty-five or forty feet long by twenty wide, secured bedrooms as clean and comfortable as heart could desire, and had every thing we asked for with the precision of clockwork and the rapidity of steam. The Three Cocks began to descend from the lofty place they held in our esteem, and we resolved for one day at least to rest contentedly in such comfortable quarters, and look about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and the troopers were forming before them. The arrows of the chariot warriors made the mob behind keep a respectful distance. It was the triumph of discipline over man's animal sense of fear. Even the mob felt this, when it saw the little squadron fall into line with as much precision as on the parade ground. A tile smote one soldier upon the head, and he tumbled from his horse like a stone. His comrades never paused in their evolution. Then, for the first time, Cornelia screamed with horror and fright. Drusus, who was setting a new ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... build you the kind of lithe and dainty schooner that, with the cadences of her sheer and moulding, and the soaring of her masts, would keep you by her side all day in harbour; build you the kind of girded, braced, and immaculate vessel, sound at every point, tuned and sweet to a precision that in a violin would make a musician flush with inspiration, a ship to ride, lissom and light, the uplifted western ocean, and to resist the violence of vaulting seas and the drive of hurricane. She will ride out of the storm afterwards, none to applaud her, over the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... was invented to measure the intensity of sound. But it is much more valuable as an instrument that tells with precision from what direction a sound comes. It needs only a small dry battery and can be carried around easily. The sound enters the two horns of the phonometer, is focused at the neck, and strikes on a delicate diaphragm, behind which is a ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... intellectual capacity of man when he made his first appearance upon the earth? Or, to speak with more scientific precision (as the question relates to material evidences), what were the mental powers of the people who fashioned the earliest stone implements, which are admitted to be the oldest remaining traces of our kind? As ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... arrangement had been punctually complied with. The ships that were directed to cover the landing of the troops, knocked down many of the enemy, and not a great many more of our own men. The stations of the other ships were taken with a precision deserving of the highest encomiums; and there is no doubt, that, had not the enemy had the advantage of stone walls, they must have had the worst of it, and would have ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there are stakes of that kind some men would not shrink from. What are called "arms of precision" have had a great influence on modern politics. When there's no time for a plebiscite, there's always time for ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... dream about, or for how long. You never knew if you would have a dream or a nightmare, a horror or a delight. This uncertainty has been removed from the modern Dream Shop. Nowadays, our drugs are carefully measured, mixed, and metered for each individual. There is an absolute precision in dream-making, ranging from the Nirvana-like calm of Black Slipper through the multicolored hallucinations of peyotl and tri-narcotine, to the sexual fantasies induced by nace and morphine, and at last to the memory-resurrecting ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... that intercourse as they are modified by the usages of the civilised nations of Christendom. Here this science no longer rests in general principles. That province of it which we now call the law of nations, has, in many of its parts, acquired among our European nations much of the precision and certainty of positive law, and the particulars of that law are chiefly to be found in the works of those writers who have treated the science of which I now speak. It is because they have classed (in a manner which seems peculiar to modern times) the duties of individuals with those of ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... PPP estimates for some countries are based on a small and sometimes different set of goods and services. In addition, many countries do not formally participate in the World Bank's PPP project that calculates these measures, so the resulting GDP estimates for these countries may lack precision. For many developing countries, PPP-based GDP measures are multiples of the official exchange rate (OER) measure. The difference between the OER- and PPP- denominated GDP values for most of the weathly industrialized countries ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... returned during copulation, the same as when forced out by pressure. Following their example, we have pressed them from the body of many males; we have a thousand times witnessed this wonderful return, which they detail with the greatest precision; but our males never survived the operation. We have seen, as M. de Reaumur, a few males protrude them spontaneously, even some of the parts inverted, but at that moment they died, and were unable to retract the parts which a pressure, most likely ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... falsehood!—No, no; it was absurd! it could not be! What had he done to find himself damned to such a depth? Yet the thing must be looked to. He batht himself without remorse and never even shivered, though the water in his tub was bitterly cold, dressed with more haste than precision, hurried over his breakfast, neglected his newspaper, and took down a volume of early church history. But he could not read: the thing was hopeless—utterly. With the wolves of doubt and the jackals of shame howling ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... ineffectual exertion, or indolence with its thousand attendant evils—the wayward conduct—intemperance or profligacy—will most appreciate this benefit. The line of a slave's duty is marked out with precision, and he has no choice but to follow it. He is saved the double difficulty, first of determining the proper course for himself, and then of summoning up the energy which will ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... early in assembling around the breakfast table; and Miss Peyton, with a little of that minute precision which creeps into the habits of single life, had pleasantly insisted that the absence of her nephew should in no manner interfere with the regular hours she had established; consequently, the party were already ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the Lord Lieutenant, Mr. Mitchel took to addressing the farming classes, and it is really a study to observe the exquisite precision, the clearness, and the force of the language he employed to convey his ideas to them. In his second letter he supposes the case of a farmer who has the entire produce of his land in his haggard, in the shape of six stacks of corn; he shows that three of these ought, in all honour and conscience, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... steam. Your attention is speedily concentrated on a small brass box, not larger than an eight-day pendule, the works of which are impelled by steam. This is a self-acting weighing machine, which, with unerring precision, tells which sovereigns are of standard weight, and which are light, and of its own accord separates the one from the other. Imagine a long trough or spout—half a tube that has been split into two sections—of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Stephenson's railways. The England he had left was the England of mail- coaches. In Italy, he had learnt to travel by carriage, after the fashion of the country; but these new whizzing locomotives, with their time-tables, and their precision, and their inscrutable mysteries of shunts and junctions, were quite too much for his simple, childish, old- world habits. He had a knack of getting out too soon or too late, which often led him ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... doctrines upon conduct the greater, the further back we go in time and the lower the stage of civilisation submitted to investigation. Historically, indeed, there would seem to be an inverse relation between supernatural and natural knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in precision and in trustworthiness, so has the former shrunk, grown vague and questionable; as the one has more and more filled the sphere of action, so has the other retreated into the region of meditation, or vanished behind the screen ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the service of the Church should be strenuously resisted. Each innovation in the worship of God does violence to the most delicate and sacred feelings of the human heart, and is a reflection on the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has ordained all the services of His House with utmost care and precision. If the Covenanted fathers protested unflinchingly against a man-made Prayer Book, what would they have done at the appearance of a modern pulpit programme of ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... private exhibitors for the more palpable contributions of tool-making machinery, steam-machinery, mowing-machines and dentistry. This list does not teach us much. The prizes are, unless awarded with the most intelligent and conscientious precision, valuable chiefly as advertisements to the recipients, who can earn, and generally have earned, better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... wind day after day, marking the position of my ship on the chart with considerable precision; but this was done by intuition, I think, more than by slavish calculations. For one whole month my vessel held her course true; I had not, the while, so much as a light in the binnacle. The Southern Cross I saw every night abeam. The sun every morning came up astern; every evening it ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... this supposition must have been deduced either from their conversation or their compositions, of which the English could not possibly judge with precision, as they did not understand the dialect used by the Scots in common discourse, as well as in their works of humour. When I desired to know what those works of humour were, he mentioned a considerable number of pieces, which he insisted were equal in point of humour to any thing extant ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to fight this war. We have spent more than a billion dollars a month—over $30 million a day—and we must be prepared for future operations. Afghanistan proved that expensive precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives, and we need more of them. We need to replace aging aircraft and make our military more agile, to put our troops anywhere in the world quickly and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George W. Bush • George W. Bush
... one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated:—I mean Emanuel Swedenborg.[91] The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount. But he saw and showed the connexion between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... from the Deity —mostly swim in .. veins, as they are called; continuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to swim, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years Social Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the contemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has given precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which strengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that economic relations are possible only within the framework of a society which has its ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... through the eyes alone, then the Pollaiuolesque treatment could be equalled by none that has followed, and surpassed only by Rogier van der Weyden, or by the quaint German "Master of the Lyversberg Passion," who makes us see objects miles away with as great a precision and with as much intensity of local colour as if we were standing off from them a few feet. Were landscape really this, then nothing more inartistic than gradation of tint, atmosphere, and plein air, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... the function of science to find out the real nature of the universe. Its purpose is to eliminate the personal equation and the human equation in statements of truth. By methods of precision of thought and instruments of precision in observation, it seeks to make our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mysterious as accurate as our knowledge of the common things men have handled for ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of common things exact ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... thin man, still young, with an earnest face which at once arrested attention. It was far more that of a visionary than was the boy's, a difficult countenance to read and understand. If, for a moment, the neatness and precision of his dress suggested a man of idle leisure, a courtier and little more, there quickly followed a conviction that such an estimate of his character was a wrong one. Dreamer he might be, in a sense, but he was also a man of action. The spare frame was full of energy, there was determination ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... underestimate our differences, but we are moving with precision and purpose from an era of confrontation to an ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... than anyone else, for she would memorize them with mechanical precision. For her children she cared about as much as for her old dresses: she bore them and left them to the care of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... order to designate the boundary line with due precision upon authoritative maps, and to establish upon the ground landmarks which shall show the limits of both Republics as described in the present article, the two Governments shall each appoint a commissioner ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Marquis was taken to call at the house of his future wife, and was presented to her in the garden. Formal paths wound under a row of chestnut-trees, carefully tended flower-beds were arranged with mathematical precision, a few peacocks strutted across the lawn, and here and there a marble statue or a great stone jar from Italy gave a classic touch to ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... other resented the familiarity, deprecated the boisterous publicity with which the stranger saw fit to do business. Business, with Mendenhall, was a matter for dignified and strictly private conference. With stately precision he took up the neat bundle of checks which he had just indorsed, ran them over, slipped one from under the rubber band, and scanned it with great deliberation. He could not afford to offend a good customer, but he ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... she explored the country for many miles round Horncastle to collect fossils, besides making excursions into other counties, thus obtaining a valuable collection of specimens. The writer possesses a copy of these lectures, which are remarkable for their fulness and precision. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... to take this precaution; the efficiency of their forecastle guns was therefore greatly impaired. Their prows were also much higher than the prows of their antagonists. While their shot passed harmlessly over the enemy, his balls struck their galleys close to water-mark with fatal precision. The fire of the Christians was the more murderous because many of the Turkish vessels were crowded with soldiers both on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... meet Mr. Clodd. He is never dull; he is always well informed, and he says what he has to say with clearness and precision.... The interest intensifies as Mr. Clodd attempts to show the part really played in the growth of the doctrine of evolution by men like Wallace, Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer.... We commend the book to those who want to know what evolution ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... of the world, that would be caused by a breach of national faith; and he appealed with inexpressible power to the hearts and understandings of the members, on this all-important consideration. He probed, with keen and searching precision, the Jesuitical position assumed by the house, in disclaiming any participation in the treaty-making power, and yet claiming the right to decide upon the merits of a treaty, and to defeat its execution. He then dwelt upon ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Mr. Lee to their home. Keineth played on the piano for them—not her own fairy things, but a simple little piece she had learned with much precision from Madame Henri. Then she and Tante went upstairs. Daddy had whispered to her as she ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... Lady Atherley was counting the stitches of her knitting; I was too tired; so he resumed: "For my part, I prefer the daylight and the glass, without any daubing. What does science discover in the universe? Precision, accuracy, reliability—any amount of it; but as to pity, mercy, love! The fact is, that famous simile of the angel playing at chess was a mistake. Very smart, I grant you, but altogether misleading. Why! the orthodox quote it as much as the others—always a ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... river. Our men, who had in various ways evinced their feelings—some in weeping, some in swearing, some in mournful silence—now exhibit demoniac energy. The heavy guns are loaded, traversed and fired, as if they were field-pieces—too much hurry for precision. 'Take your time, men; don't throw away your fire, my lads.' 'No, sir, but we will give it to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... forget how they circled about us. One of their clan, as they supposed, was in dire danger and they functioned as only a fatu-liva can. Flying at an immense height, in battle formation, they began laying eggs with marvelous precision. The first two struck the wak-wak square on the nose and he screamed with pain. The third, landing corner-wise, put out his right eye and he began to thrash in helpless circles. The fourth was a direct hit on my left temple. "Face-of-the-Moon" ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... something which even he was forced to recognize, that curious and voluptuous abandonment which a woman rarely permits herself, and can never assume. He was a little bewildered. His speech lost for a moment its cold precision. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... engineman stands. This platform is so situated that all orders can be distinctly heard by the engineman, and so that he shall be protected from the heat radiated by the steel that is being forged. All the maneuvers of the hammers are effected with most wonderful facility and with the greatest precision. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the narrative; and called him a senseless imitator, in words and expressions, of the earlier Roman historians, especially of Cato. Others praised him for his vivid delineations of character, the precision and vigour of his diction, and for the dignity which he had given to his style by the use of ancient words and phrases which were no longer employed in the ordinary language of his own day. But however different these opinions may appear, there is truth both in the censure and in the praise, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... in which Decatur lost several of his most valuable officers and was himself painfully wounded by flying splinters. But the American guns were served with perfect precision and the Endymion was so broken and shattered by the fire that after two and a half hours she was incapable of further resistance. She would have surrendered had the time been sufficient for Decatur to enforce the demand, but the other blockaders ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... he loathed himself as a thick-headed ass for talking to Betty as he had done; as well put a burr under one's saddle and then feel surprise because the horse bucks. He passed on to the others with equal precision. Captain Lorrimer was as dirty as a greaser; and like a greaser, loose-lipped, unshaven. Chick Stewart was a born fool, and a fool by self-culture, as his never changing grin amply proved. Lew Perkins sat in the corner on a shaky old apple barrel and brushed back his long mustaches to ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... also much concerned over my enigmatical future, in one of those letters that seemed always to come from an enchanted land, suggested, because of a certain facility in mathematics and a certain precision of nature, certainly anomalies in one of my temperament, that it might be well for me to study engineering. And when they consulted me and I replied apathetically: "Very well, it is agreeable enough to me," the matter ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... richest planet in the Federation. For Simonides Four had become just that, even outstripping Terra in the wealth from her manufacturers and exports. Her shipments of ores, jewels, unusual furs, manufactured goods, precision tools and art products, as well as foodstuffs raw and processed, ran into trillions of credits ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... watched and waited, Dale's hands came up and gripped the top of the wall—both hands, huge and muscular. Owen looked at them with great glee before he acted. Then he brought the stock of the rifle down on one of the hands with the precision of a cold deliberation that had taken possession ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the consignment of boxes. It gave me almost a turn to see again one of the letters which I had seen on the Count's table before I knew of his diabolical plans. Everything had been carefully thought out, and done systematically and with precision. He seemed to have been prepared for every obstacle which might be placed by accident in the way of his intentions being carried out. To use an Americanism, he had 'taken no chances', and the absolute accuracy with which his ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... discovery, as he called it, was made by chance. One day he had magnetised his gardener; and observing him to fall into a deep sleep, it occurred to him that he would address a question to him, as he would have done to a natural somnambulist. He did so, and the man replied with much clearness and precision. M. de Puysegur was agreeably surprised: he continued his experiments, and found that, in this state of magnetic somnambulism, the soul of the sleeper was enlarged, and brought into more intimate communion with all nature, and more especially with him, M. de Puysegur. He found that all further ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... herself, in her stiff black silk, with a square of lace turned back from her thin throat and a fluted cap above her corkscrew curls—her daguerreotype, taken in all her pride and her precision, was tied up in the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... game in which team work is more important than in football. Eleven boys of moderate ability and comparative light weight who can execute their plays with skill and precision can beat a team of heavier boys or superior players who may lack their skill and organization. In the case of a school team it is almost always possible to secure the services of a coach from among the graduates. If such a one has had experience on a college ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... to lock and unlock a padlock. The animal most proficient in this became able to select the right Yale key out of a bunch of half a dozen or more, with as much quickness and precision ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to mention here A fact you all no doubt are sure to know, 'Tis necessary oftentimes to steer Clear of surrounding difficulties, so When an especial object lies below The precision of your kindness and attention, Snatch the right time (a glance may serve to show If in a mood for jesting or dissension, Domestic trials are too ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... a sudden resolve," he said in a manner almost professional in its precision. "You cannot and shall not ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was so amusing in her energy and precision, and her turns of speech, so deliberately homespun, as if she—than whom none could better use a stiff and polished phrase, or the refinements of the French language—were determined to take what liberties she liked. To the girl, haunted still by the feeling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... maintained by men so respectable as Messrs. Goodwin, Burroughs, Bridge, Simpson, and Nye, whom the Parliament itself had sent into the Assembly. The demand for Toleration which these men addressed to the Parliament in their famous Apologetical Narration of January 1643-4 gave sudden dignity and precision to what till then had been vulgar and vague. It put the question in this form, "What amount of Nonconformity is to be allowed in the new Presbyterian Church which is to be the National Church of England?"; and it distinctly intimated that on the answer to this question it would depend whether ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Island battery, placed just north of the church, had opened; the cavalry in the meadow could see them—see the whirl of smoke, the cannoneers moving with quick precision amidst obscurity—the flash, the recoil as gun after gun ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... that went beyond the borders of France, for oratorical ability and theological precision. His former associates, the Jesuits, originated stories against his morality and sought to bring him into trouble with the authorities. The attacks to which he was subjected led him to adopt a broad though wholly fanatical scheme ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... on deck. Perhaps the fact that Mr. Lowington was not on deck had encouraged the conspirators in creating the confusion which pervaded the decks and rigging. As he was the last to ascend the companion-way, he paused on the steps, with his head on a level with the deck, to note the precision of the drill. He was not noticed by the conspirators, and, unfortunately for them, they continued in their career of insubordination. The quick eye of the principal readily detected the nature of the mischief, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... early days at the Bar, whenever a complicated case presented itself to him, he had always written out a kind of resume, or synopsis of the whole situation, so as to have everything clear before his mind. After that he had been able to classify and to arrange with precision and accuracy. He made up his mind to do this now. But on entering the room where he intended to work he was startled to find that his daughter Mary ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... sun had not drank up the dew-drops that sparkled like gems on herb and foliage before the young hunter had again resumed his march. He followed with unerring precision the trail of the fugitives through thorny thicket and quaking morass, and ere the evening sun had dropped behind the hills, he came upon the encampment of his foe. The party had flung themselves upon the soft turf, beneath the drooping branches of a grove of cedars, and were enjoying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... distances of his sailing both before and on leaving the island, as well as this description, are the best means we have of identifying the spot of this portentous landfall. The early maps may help in a subsidiary way, but with little precision. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... thumb loosely retain the spear. With the aid of the powerful leverage of the throwing-stick a spear can be thrown to a distance varying according to its weight from 30 to 80 yards, and with considerable precision; still, if observed coming, it may easily ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... he hurled the decanter, full of wine, against the mirror which hung directly opposite Hermann; striking the reflection of his person with great precision, and of course shattering the glass into fragments. The whole company at once started to their feet, and, with the exception of myself and Ritzner, took their departure. As Hermann went out, the Baron whispered me that I should ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of memory among rhapsodes, Vedic students, and other Aryans; among the Iroquois "memory was tasked to the utmost, and developed to an extraordinary degree," says Parkman, who adds that they could repeat point by point with precision any address made to them.[2] Murder was compromised for by Wehrgeld, as among the Vedic, Iranic, and Teutonic peoples. The Iroquois, like all Indians, was a great gambler, staking all his property[3] (like the Teutons and Hindus). In religion "A ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... individual State. Washington concurred with Hamilton on these points, but he could make neither oral nor written argument in a way that would convince others; so this task was left to Hamilton. Hamilton appeared before Congress and explained his plans—explained them so lucidly and with such force and precision that he made an indelible impression. There were grumblers and complainers, but these did not and could not reply to Hamilton, for he saw all over and around the subject, and they saw it only at an angle. Hamilton had studied the history of finance, and knew the financial ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... or stone jugs are moved rhythmically upon the oaken board. Another word of command, and each student empties his beaker. Then the vessels are rattled on the table, while he slowly counts three, with the precision of a military drum, then struck sharply again three times, so that they touch the table all together, and the meeting is opened or closed, as the case may be. The same ceremony is performed when the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... numberless and distracting. Never surely was there a career more beset with insoluble riddles and unmanageable dilemmas. At each step, in the relation of the most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events, appears unattainable. Fiction is ever elbowing fact, so that it might be supposed contemporaries had with one accord been conspiring to disguise the truth from posterity. The uncertainty ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... with masterly dexterity, he could not do at all, ergo, must he not be a natural? There was no man in the regiment who met with so many falls from his horse, as Silas Tomken Cumberbatch! He often calculated with so little precision his due equilibrium, that, in mounting on one side, (perhaps the wrong stirrup) the probability was, especially if his horse moved a little, that he lost his balance, and, if he did not roll back on this side, came down ponderously on the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion on the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says, "One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims, by Francois Duc ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... and floods—that it is profuse and impartial—that there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth and sea, without it—nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance. One part does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure of poems is not in them that take the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... may be seen passing over the sun from different parts of the earth. It was on this account apprehended, that the parallax of the sun, by means of observations taken from different places at the time of the transit of Venus in 1761 and 1769, might be ascertained with a great degree of precision(53). ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... will tell you, and you must understand if you can. You belong to a singular race. Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain—maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... after year, the meridian altitude and the relative distances of stars, or who seeks a telescopic comet in a group of nebulae, does not feel his imagination more excited — and this is the very guarantee of the precision of his labors — than the botanist who counts the divisions of the calyx, or the number of stamens in a flower, or examines the connected or the separate teeth of the peristoma surrounding the capsule of a moss. Yet the multiplied angular measurements on the one hand, and ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... columns, while our small four and six-pounders could not reach their batteries. But in the after part of the day, when the contending forces were nearer together, Rickett's and Griffin's Batteries, the most celebrated at that time in the Northern Army, could not stand the precision and impetuosity of Kemper's, the Washington, Stannard's, Pendleton's, and Pelham's Batteries as they graped the field. The Second and Eighth South Carolina coming up at a double quick, joined Hampton's Legion, with Early, Cox, and the troops ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... natural history, and, to some extent, the moral history of its population. "History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... been otherwise. They who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr. Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the next hundred ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine," he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... of the affair had not, perhaps, been laboriously collected as yet, but luckily Mrs. Heth was not the sort that requires a mass of verbose testimony and dull statistics. The right note awaited her touch six floors below, and time was pressing. Already her mind had flown well ahead, perceived with precision just what was required. Willie must be seen, and at least two ladies, of different sets, great gossips, for preference; and to these she would confide, with some little just indignation but without excitement, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that," said Nares. "I got that book on purpose for this cruise." Therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his berth, turned to Midway Island, and read the account aloud. It stated with precision that the Pacific Mail Company were about to form a depot there, in preference to Honolulu, and that they had already a station on ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sharp consciousness; but it was the shape, the form, the appearance of things, that interested me, took up most of my time and energy, occupied me unceasingly. Even now my memory ranges, with lively precision, over the home, the garden, the heathery moorland, the firwoods, the neighbouring houses of the scene where I lived. I can see the winding walks, the larch shrubberies, the flower-borders, the very grain ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... might render good service. The Chinese, in their junks, when they expect a piratical attack, bring up baskets filled with stones from the ballast of the ship, and put them on deck ready at hand. They throw them with great force and precision: the idea is not a bad one. Boiling water and hot sand, if circumstances happened to permit their use, are worth bearing in mind, as they tell well on the bodies of naked assailants. In close quarters, thrust, do not strike; and recollect that it is not the slightest use to hit ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... and she sat down and looked at the music he placed there for her. He had chosen a well-known exercise, a Czerny; not a difficult one, but requiring some technique to play with precision. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... experiment in order to make sure they were really awake. They verified their discovery beyond all shadow of doubt. One spring and then another was tried and always the same great law acted with invariable precision. Heat, fatigue, even the dingy garret itself was forgotten in the flight of those busy, exultant hours. Before they separated that night, Alexander Graham Bell had given to Thomas Watson directions for making the first electric speaking telephone in ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... had mounted, and were sitting like so many bronze statues, waiting for the Doctor's permission to go; for military precision and discipline had of late been introduced, and regular guards and watches kept, much to the disgust of some of the Englishmen, who did not scruple to say that it ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... precision On naught beneath the sky; And so I've come to the decision That't ain't ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... signed "Florian Varillo". Angela looked at it long and earnestly,—all the delicate flesh tints contrasting with the exquisite hues of red and white roses were delineated with wonderful delicacy and precision of touch, and there was a nymph-like grace and modesty about the woman's form and the drooping poise of her head, which was effective yet subtle in suggestion. Was it a portrait of Pon-Pon? Angry with herself Angela tried to put the hateful but insinuating thought ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... to proceed to Vincocaya in the morning, destroy as they went along, the telegraph offices, wait at Vincocaya until the arrival of the regular passenger train from Arequipa and then proceed to Sumbay bridge. They evidently had calculated with a great deal of precision, and if their plans carried, victory ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... Belamour heeding the little nursery. He has always been an obstinate melancholic lunatic, confined to his chamber by day, and wandering like a ghost by night, refusing all admission. Moreover my good Aylward had appeared hitherto a paragon of a duenna for discretion, only over starched in her precision. Little did I expect to find my young lady spending all her evenings alone with him, and the solitary hermit transformed into a gay and gallant bachelor like the Friar of Orders Gray in the song. And since matters have gone to such a length, I, as a woman who has seen more of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of it. The tone came, strong, full, and true. The notes came in exact time, and with precision and certainty. The people were hushed to a painful silence, as the child went steadily on with the work. M. Simon was breathless with excitement, and her father hardly knew where he was. In his haste, he turned two ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... and casts his blanket over him, so as to darken the water and conceal himself from observation; in this position he will remain for hours, patiently watching the approach of his prey, which he strikes with admirable precision as soon as it appears within the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... disgrace brought upon it, and the admiration of the chambermaid, as well as the salute of the sentinel, all which formed a combustible in my brain. I went off like a flash, and darted my fist (the weapon I had been most accustomed to wield) into the left eye of my adversary, with a force and precision which Crib would have applauded. Murphy staggered back with the blow, and for a moment I flattered myself he had ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and immediately commenced a heavy cannonade, supported by the cannon and mortars on the enemy's lines. On seeing this the garrison opened a tremendous fire; the red-hot shot were thrown with such precision that about two o'clock in the afternoon, the smoke was seen to issue from the admiral and another ship, the men in vain endeavouring to extinguish the fire by pouring water into the holes. By one o'clock the two ships were in flames, and seven more took fire in succession. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... for we have fallen on evil days, When science, with remorseless cold precision, Puts out the flame of poetry, and lays Her double-convex lens on fancy's vision. When not a star has longer leave to shine, Unweighed, unanalysed, reduced to gases,— Resolved to something in the chemist's line, By those ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... of the Villani is a treasure-house of clear and accurate delineations rather than of profound analysis. Not only does it embrace the whole affairs of Europe in annals which leave little to be desired in precision of detail and brevity of statement; but, what is more to our present purpose, it conveys a lively picture of the internal condition of the Florentines and the statistics of the city in the fourteenth century. We learn, for example, that the ordinary ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... to obtain from it maps of Afghanistan and Baluchistan. The latter I subsequently found better and far more accurate than any obtainable in England. The most insignificant hamlets and unimportant camel-tracks and wells were set down with extraordinary precision, especially those in the ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... significance. As time passed on this difficulty was gradually diminished: synonyms crept into all languages from various sources, and when once adopted, they were in many cases gradually differentiated, the various senses which the original word had borne were portioned off among them, and increased precision was thus obtained. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... animated with extraordinary vigour, presenting types of the utmost variety and vivid beauty, imagination quails before the intellectual energy which could first conceive a scheme so complex, and then carry it out with mathematical precision in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a study improve a person's language greatly, but it will, at the same time, do much to improve the clearness and precision of his thinking; thought and language have ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... Boyne, the more extravagant of the two, had jocosely insisted; "the least hint of 'convenience' would make me think it had been bought out of an exhibition, with the pieces numbered, and set up again." And they had proceeded to enumerate, with humorous precision, their various suspicions and exactions, refusing to believe that the house their cousin recommended was REALLY Tudor till they learned it had no heating system, or that the village church was literally in the grounds till ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... with him and stopped where a gang of men were at work among the fallen trees. Two, swaying backwards and forward with rhythmic precision, dragged a big crosscut-saw through a massive trunk. Others swung bright axes, and the wood rang with the noise of their activity. All were usefully employed, but there were more of them ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... of electric-car tracks, and on rainy days, out of a small fund of children's car tickets laid by in Mrs. Becker's glove box for just that contingency, she would ride to and from school, changing cars with a drilled precision ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... words to Priscilla, but he sent out his voice to Harriett. She could feel its false precision, its intention, its ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... ourselves of the lights which modern psychology, faithful to the method of Plato, has thrown upon the subject. Whilst, however, we admit that modern psychology has succeeded in giving more definiteness and precision to the "doctrine of Ideas," we shall find that all that is fundamentally valuable and true was present to the mind of Plato. Whatever superiority the "Spiritual" philosophy of to-day may have over the philosophy of past ages, it has attained that superiority by its ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to do its work with thoroughness and precision this commission has taken some time to make its report. The country is undoubtedly hoping for as prompt action on the report as the convenience of the Congress can permit. The recognition of the gross ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin". The Quarterly was much too hard on the earlier cadeau scene, with Rochester and Jane and Adele, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and precision. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the children may have learned a lesson in very small fractions indeed as they gazed at the fragment of sin before them on the stool of penitence. They all stared at him attentively with hard and passionately interested eyes, in which there was never one trace of pity. It cannot be said with precision that he writhed; his movement was more a slow, continuous squirm, effected with a ghastly assumption of languid indifference; while his gaze, in the effort to escape the marble-hearted glare of his schoolmates, affixed itself with apparent permanence to the waistcoat button ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... best qualified for such duty should endeavour to ascertain, with as much precision as possible, the extent and position of the fire, while the others collect as much water as they can. If the fire be in an upper floor, the inmates should be got out immediately, although the lower part of the house may generally be entered with safety for some time. ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... So that the originally available number of words is multiplied ten and hundred fold. Which simply means a tremendous saving of labor in learning words and forms and yet secures a range of expression and a degree of precision undreamed of in any ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... mental tests in the school will be worse than useless unless the tests are given with the greatest care and scientific precision. Every test should be most carefully explained to the children so that they will know exactly what they are to do. The matter must be so presented to them that they will put forth all possible effort. They must take the tests ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... from a nozzle, that the water falls into the tailrace with practically no velocity. When it is remembered that the nozzle pressure under a 2,250-foot head is nearly 1,000 pounds to the square inch, and that water issues from this nozzle with a velocity of 23,000 feet a minute, the scientific precision of this type of ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson |
