"Inexact" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the celebrated Arabic scholar of Leyden, that he does not very much like the theory of two Sanf, and that he is inclined to believe that the sea captain of the Marvels of India placed Sundar Fulat a little too much to the north, and that the narrative of the Relation des Voyages is inexact. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... individual shows up decidedly better or worse than that of his fellows, and when the foreman or superintendent, or other onlooker, happens to observe this is the individual appreciated, and then only in the most inexact, unsystematic manner. ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... and fifteen to one hundred and forty words count one minute for delivery. This is so inexact, depending as it does on the number of laughs and the monologist's speed of delivery, that it is like a rubber ruler. At one performance it may be too long, at ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... had said to one another of the newcomer, "How pretty she is!" with something of real generosity and admiration, though with a half hope that the auditors would qualify the assertion—which, strictly speaking, they might have done, prettiness being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in Tess. When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman's wife—who was too respectable to go out milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints—was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... with a new and splendid wonder, for their descriptive phrase was now inexact. Merton was no longer in a runaway. But only for a moment did they hesitate before taking up the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... was rendered indispensable, therefore, which should display uniformity in its character, and a sufficiently rigorous mode of Scientific proof. To fulfil this end, the Inexact Sciences were accorded a position of certainty in reference to their Principles which does not in reality belong to them; while the Exact or Infallible Sciences were degraded from their peculiarly high state, and brought to the new level of the former on the middle ground of the Positive Philosophy. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... artist in letters, enamored of words as he was, seized firmly the indispensable law. "The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction," he declared. "They do not pin their reader to a dogma, which he must afterward discover to be inexact; they do not teach a lesson, which he must afterward unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintances of others, and they show ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... of details is given, but the links whereby the generalizations from these are sought to be established, are here and there wanting, and here and there obscure. It is probably the fault of the subject, which is in its character inexact; but we certainly expected that more had been done; and from some passages in the early portions of the work, we were induced to believe that the author had succeeded in proving races of mankind to be more distinctly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... universal conception, is named Life in the widest acceptation; a conception that expresses all material existence and all that is immediately present in the senses. The object of the formal instinct, expressed in a universal conception, is called shape or form, as well in an exact as in an inexact acceptation; a conception that embraces all formal qualities of things and all relations of the same to the thinking powers. The object of the play instinct, represented in a general statement, may therefore bear the name of living form; a term that serves ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... She was very calm. She was interrogated in German, a language she did not understand, but the questions and responses were translated into French. Her mind was very alert, and she was entirely self-possessed, and frequently rectified any inexact details and statements that were put to her. When, in her interrogatory, she was asked if she had not aided English soldiers left behind after the early battles of the preceding Autumn about Mons and Charleroi, she said yes; they were English and she was English, and she would help her own. The ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... they obtained by the pulverisation of a particular kind of limestone found in the neighbourhood of Keneh, Luxor, and Asuan; and a third sort, reddish in tone, and mixed with powdered sandstone and brick-dust. These various substances are known by the equally inexact names of Egyptian porcelain and Egyptian faience. The oldest specimens, which are hardly glazed at all, are coated with an excessively thin slip. This vitreous matter has, however, generally settled into the hollows of the hieroglyphs ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... genealogy of Jesus, "exact or inexact," is found in any of the world's records save those entitled the Gospels of SS. Mathew (I—1-17), and Luke (iii. 23—38); and, since these radically disagree—although this personage is the most conspicuous ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... information to colleagues in all parts of the country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required dates.... You say 'I' must be referred ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... (inexact quotation).—The story told in this section was a favourite of St. Charles Borromeo (Alban Butler, Lives of Saints, ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... account of a portion of the acts imputed to Marie Antoinette, was heard as a witness in the trial of that princess. The annals of tribunals, either ancient or modern, never offered any thing like this. What did they hope for? To lead our colleague to make inexact declarations, or to concealments from a feeling of imminent personal danger? To suggest the thought to him to save his own head at the expense of that of an unhappy woman? To make virtue finally stagger? At all events, this infernal ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... group of men, and from that time dates the definite foundation of the Impressionist school. For thirty years it continued to produce without interruption an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of the ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to me cowardly, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... understood at a glance by those familiar with fleet tactics under sail. The usual version of the attack at Trafalgar has of late been elaborately disputed by capable critics. I myself have no doubt that they are quite mistaken; but it would be curious to investigate how far their argument derives from inexact phraseology—as, for example, the definition of "column" and "line" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... to Christianity as Christianity stood closely related to the old Judaic dispensation. It is commonly assumed that the rejecters of the popular religion stand in face of it, as the Christians stood in face of the pagan belief and pagan rites in the Empire. The analogy is inexact. The modern denier, if he is anything better than that, or entertains hopes of a creed to come, is nearer to the position of the Christianising Jew.[20] Science, when she has accomplished all her ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... served. Merchants, refugees, spies, adventurers desirous of bettering their condition, were continually moving, singly or in bodies, from one land to another, and through them a considerable acquaintance with mundane affairs generally was spread abroad. The knowledge was, of course, very inexact. No surveys were made, no plans of cities or fortresses, no maps; the military force that could be brought into the field by the several nations was very roughly estimated; but still, ancient conquerors did not start ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... are at present cherished by the Universities and Royal Associations throughout Europe".—220. Churchyard: St. Giles churchyard where Capt. Borrow was buried on the 4th of March previous.—220. A New Mayor: Inexact. Robert Hawkes was mayor of Norwich in 1822. Therefore he was now ex-mayor—220. Man with a Hump: Thomas Osborn Springfield, was not a watchmaker so far as is known in Norwich, but "carried on the wholesale silk business, having almost a monopoly of the market" (Bayne's ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... banquet, the story of Jason was enacted. Time there certainly was for the play. La Marche estimated forty-eight dishes to every course, though he qualifies his statement by the admission that his memory might be inexact. These dishes were wheeled over the tables in little chariots before each person ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... house we found the friend we had left there quite unruffled and not much concerned to know the facts of our adventure. My impression is that he had been taking a nap on my lounge; be appeared refreshed and even gay; but if I am inexact in these details he is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... once, involved him in a charge of Pelagianism, or something like it, which he wrote much to disprove, but which has so far lasted as to justify modern theologians in regarding his ideas on this and other theological points as, to say the least, confused. All over his work inexact quotation from memory, illicit argumentation, and an abiding inconsistency, mar the intellectual value, affecting not least his famous Liberty of Prophesying, or plea for toleration against the new Presbyterian uniformity,—the conformity ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... between the squadrons by another deflection of the leading ship, at 7.45. In the meantime it had grown dark. The range finders on the Scharnhorst used the fire on the Monmouth as a guide for a time, though eventually all range finding, aiming and observations became so inexact that fire was stopped at 7.26. At 7.23 a column of fire from an explosion was noticed between the stacks of the Good Hope. The Monmouth apparently stopped firing at 7.20. The small cruisers, including the Nuremburg, received by wireless at 7.30 ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... identify these various regions by the inexact accounts of the direction of their sailing, by the very general descriptions of the country, by the number of days occupied in going from one point to another, with the uncertainty if the ship sailed at night, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... as any, since there is no consciousness of sex in the thought patterns. I wonder what sort of ... and to my surprise I swore! I do not ordinarily curse or use obscenities—not because they are obscene but because they are a poor and inexact means of conveying ideas or impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could so precisely describe my feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional stimuli! If this keeps on, the next thing I know I will be seeing little green ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... a treasury of knowledge, preparing himself against all possible contingencies. Scarce anything fell under his notice but he perceived in it some relation to his work, and chronicled it in the pages of his journal in his always lucid, but sometimes inexact and wordy, style. The Travelling Diary (so he called it) was kept in fascicles of ruled paper, which were at last bound up, rudely indexed, and put by for future reference. Such volumes as have reached me contain a surprising medley: the whole details of his employment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "creole" is often used in a vague or inexact manner, it seems best to state that, as used in our text, it means a person of pure Spanish blood, born in any ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... here, then, that the artist sees beauty in nature, the phrase may be understood as a convenient but inexact formula, as when one says the sun rises or the sun sets. Beauty is in the landscape only in the sense that these material forms express for the artist an idea he has conceived of some ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... This recurs in Mr. Aubrey do Vere's 'Recollections' (p. 487 onward). I venture as a Scot to observe that for this one slight misquotation by Scott, on which so large a conclusion is built, the quotations by Wordsworth from others would furnish twenty-fold. He was singularly inexact in quotation, as even these Notes and Illustrations will satisfy in the places—scarcely in a single instance being verbally accurate. 'Sweet' certainly was a perfectly fitting word for the sequestered ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... "Inexact in small things as well as great," said Lady Margaret, who had returned to her accounts. "Your poet, you mean, for your quotation is from Longfellow, and he lived nearer your ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... nothing more to teach me, and did not know what to do with me. I might have gone to a public school, or to a private tutor for three or four years; but there were reasons against either plan, and at the unusual age I speak of, with some inexact acquaintance with Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, and Xenophon, Horace, Virgil, and Cicero, I was matriculated at the University. I had from a child been very fond of composition, verse and prose, English and Latin, and took especial interest in the subject ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the correctness of its own views can be permitted without a total forgetfulness of self-respect. In the sentence quoted from M. Serurier's letter no exception is taken to the assertion that the complaints of this Government are founded upon allegations entirely inexact, nor upon that which declares the explanations given here or in Paris appeared, not to have left even the possibility of a misunderstanding on such delicate points. The correctness of these assertions we shall always dispute, and while the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... It is inexact enough, if we are entirely honest, to force us to hold our conclusions with an open mind ready to admit new evidence. It is entirely the fault of the teacher if the pupil gets a dogmatic, too-sure habit of mind as the result ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... fat of milk is its most valuable and most important constituent. The exact determination of the percentage of fat is therefore the chief problem of the milk-analyst. All analyses made prior to the year 1885 are more or less inexact, because a complete separation of the fat from the other milk constituents had not been obtained. In that year M. A. Adams, by the simple and ingenious expedient of spreading a known volume of the milk ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... never regarded Shakespeare as learned. Perhaps few modern men of letters who are scholars differ from them. The opinion of Mr. Collins is to be discussed presently, but even he thought Shakespeare's scholarship "inexact," ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... average schoolmaster for mere book-work has put such a stamp on study, that, in nine cases out of ten, a student, unless he is expressly instructed to the contrary, will go to the tortuous, and possibly inexact, descriptions of a book for a knowledge of things that lie at his very finger-tips. We have not written, this chapter to give a complete knowledge of the skeleton, but simply as an aid in the actual examination ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... in this manner. Authors tell us that Homer but recited the traditions of his countrymen. The nautical and geographical proofs, by which portions of the North Atlantic shores have been identified by the bold spirit of northern research, are certainly inexact and to some extent hypothetical. In extending the heretofore admitted points of discovery and temporary settlement, south to Massachusetts and Rhode Island, they carry with them sufficient general plausibility, as being of an early and adventurous age, to secure assent. And ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... was struck by the appearance of Schwarz's broad, fat hand, which crossed his range of vision to turn a leaf; he meditated absently on a sharp uplifting of this hand that occurred, as though the master were dissatisfied with the rhythm—the 'cellist's fault, no doubt: he had been inexact at rehearsal, and, this evening, was too much taken up with his own witticisms beforehand, to think about what he had to do. And thus the four divisions of the trio slipped past, separated by a disturbing noise of hands, which continued to seem ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... must be said, are incomplete and inexact to a degree that will shock any person with a scientific knowledge of Polish pronunciation. In the present instance brevity seemed of more importance than ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... distinguished two kinds of being—the unchanging or invisible, and the visible or changing. But now a third kind is required, which I shall call the receptacle or nurse of generation. There is a difficulty in arriving at an exact notion of this third kind, because the four elements themselves are of inexact natures and easily pass into one another, and are too transient to be detained by any one name; wherefore we are compelled to speak of water or fire, not as substances, but as qualities. They may be compared to ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... means "He of the long strides"; Fenti means "He of the Nose"; Neha-hau means "Stinking-members"; Set-qesu means "Breaker of bones," etc. The early Egyptologists called the second part of the CXXVth Chapter the "Negative Confession," and it is generally known by this somewhat inexact title ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... what pertained to their career, they used to speak with consternation of the numerous books that filled Ferragut's stateroom, many of them upon matters which appeared to them most mysterious. Some even made inexact statements in order to enlarge ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... high perfection, while leaving the rest of the picture misty and vague. Even in that case the subordinate figures, if subdued in fogginess, should not be falsely drawn, but Mr. Strachey, intent upon the violent portrait of Gordon, is willing to leave his Baring and Hartington and Wolseley inexact as well as shadowy. The essay on General Gordon, indeed, is the least successful of the four monographs. Dexterous as he is, Mr. Strachey has not had the material to work upon which now exists to elucidate his other and earlier subjects. But it is difficult to account for his apparently not ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... living man, had made the loveliness of the universe more lovely by expressing in poetry his acute and subtle sense of its beauties—by lavishing on it (as we say) 'the colours of his imagination,' He was then an 'individual mind'—according to the current, but (as Shelley held) inexact terminology. He has now, by death, wholly passed out of the class of individual minds; and he forms a portion of the Universal Mind (the 'One Spirit') which is the animation of ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... statements throughout the treatise concerning the relations between Cato and Africanus the elder, particularly in Sec. 77 where Cato calls his enemy amicissimus, are audaciously inexact. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... upwards of a century. At last the Pehlevi or old Iranian origin of the work found an able and strenuous advocate in Baron von Hammer-Purgstall [FN128] who worthily continued what Galland had begun: although a most inexact writer, he was extensively read in Oriental history and poetry. His contention was that the book is an Arabisation of the Persian Hazar Afsanah or Thousand Tales and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... London, and saw, as one of the most interesting sights of the city, a dramatic performance at the Swan. Later he communicated a description of the building to his friend Arend van Buchell,[248] who recorded the description in his commonplace-book, along with a crude and inexact drawing of the interior (see page 169), showing the stage, the three galleries, and the pit.[249] The description is headed: "Ex Observationibus Londinensibus Johannis de Witt." After a brief notice ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Ibid., p. 57. The quotation is from a despatch by Lyons of Dec. 6, 1861; but this is inexact language. It is true that Seward had refused to receive officially this despatch, but he had read and considered it in private. Hence he knew privately the facts of Russell's proposal and that Lyons had no instructions to negotiate. The incident of this despatch has been treated by me in Chapter ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Madame Colette Willy never had short hair, that she does not wear masculine attire; that her cat does not accompany her when she goes to a concert, that her friend's dog does not drink from a tumbler. It is inexact to say that Mme. Colette Willy works in a squirrel's cage, or performs upon trapeze and flying rings, and can reach with her toe the nape of her neck. Madame Colette Willy has never ceased to be the plain woman par excellence, who rises at dawn ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... thing to demand and another to comply, for among the Platitudes is the admission made: 'No needle has two sharp points.' The conditions which the subtlety of Ming-shu imposed ceased to bind, for their corollary was inexact. In no romance composed by poet or sage are the unassuming hopes of virtuous love brought to a barren end or the one who holds them delivered to an ignominious doom. That which was called for does not therefore exist, but the story of Hien may be taken as indicating the actual course ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... in the art, she believed in infallible fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another in the matter of an insult. But how can women admit that inflexible rigor in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations, when they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... certain early taverns inaugurate the business of the day. It was into one of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming companion disappear. To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment behind him. Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace enchantress. She had scarce been gone a ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... loss in killed and wounded, twelve, must have been largely by grapeshot or musketry. The British had twenty-one men hurt. It has been said that this difference in loss is nearly proportionate to the difference in force. This is obviously inexact; for the "Enterprise" was superior in gun power by twelve per cent, while the "Boxer's" loss was greater by seventy-five per cent. Moreover, if the statement of crews be accurate, that the "Enterprise" had ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... endowed in the first place with the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton may have come to marry Lawrence Pole, we can defer for the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, unprofitable, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How does any woman come to marry any man? Poets, psychologists, and philosophers have failed to account for the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... this inexact fashion, it was evidently much lighter than before; and, by the gratified look with which the philosopher regarded it, he appeared to be much better satisfied with its weight. Still, however, he was not sanguine: as ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... historian Gibbon that the system thus established "exhibited under other names a lively image of the feudal system which has since prevailed in Europe." The comparison is of some value, but, like most historical parallels, it is inexact, the points of difference between the Parthian and the feudal system being probably more numerous than those of resemblance, but the points of resemblance being very main points, not ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... through the kindness of the Editor and Proprietors, whom I wish to thank. Four years have passed since I wrote this account, and in reading it over today one or two little things, as the use of particular words in what I quote from him, etc., have made me pause, as possibly inexact. I have not altered these things, because, when I wrote this account, my memory of the events and words was sharper than it is today. Memory is a bad witness, and inexact in very little things, such as the precise words used in talk some years ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... prove how inexact Vasari is here once more. But it may be objected, supposing that he is inaccurate in statements which refer back, can he not be in the right in a case where he comes back, so to speak, straight from visiting Titian and writes down ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... ice off the coast of his Knox Land. These facts lend credence to Wilkes's claims of land in that vicinity. His expedition did not once set foot on Antarctic shores, and, possibly on account of the absence of the scientific staff, his descriptions tend to be inexact and obscure. The soundings made by Wilkes were sufficient to show that he was probably in some places at no great distance from the coast, and, considering that his work was carried out in the days of sailing-ships, in unsuitable craft, under the most adverse weather conditions, with crews scurvy-stricken ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... prosecution of the various branches of social science, especially political economy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, is succeeding in explaining many things; but history must always remain, from the standpoint of the astronomer, physicist, or chemist, a highly inexact and fragmentary body of knowledge.... History can no doubt be pursued in a strictly scientific spirit, but the data we possess in regard to the past of mankind are not of a nature to lend themselves to organization into an exact science, although, as we shall ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... chapter 3, part i; vol. ii, p. 384. The quotations as given by the author are inexact. The editor has substituted correct extracts from Matthews's text. Matthews spells the name of the prophet's widow ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... intelligence, which is the Comic Spirit? Wise men say the latter. They tell us that there is a constant tendency in the Book to accumulate excess of substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it holds to mankind, renders us inexact in the recognition of our individual countenances: a perilous thing for civilization. And these wise men are strong in their opinion that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who is after all our own offspring, to relieve ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inexact, if ferment cells did require for their growth or for their increase in number or weight, as all other vegetable cells do, the presence of oxygen, whether gaseous or held in solution in liquids, this new theory would lose all value, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... time were being instituted; everywhere there was a tightening up of loose screws and a knitting up of loose ends, with the inevitable consequent irritation. This was especially true in the case of Tony Perrotte, to whom discipline was ever an external force and never an inward compulsion. Inexact in everything he did, irregular in his habits, irresponsible in his undertakings, he met at every turn the pressure of the firm, resolute hand of the new manager. Deep down in his heart there was an abiding admiration and affection for Jack Maitland, but he loathed discipline ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... a good deal of harm, because it induces high-minded persons of inexact ideas to think ambition a noble infirmity, or at least to believe that they need not try to get rid of their personal ambitions until they have conquered all their other evil dispositions. I suppose that what Milton meant was that it was the hardest of all faults to get rid of; and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... destructive disturbances and errors of all, through the imperfect understanding of the aesthetic fact. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself aesthetic activity? An inexact Aesthetic must of necessity drag ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of the little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in the inexact language of the old. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... accounts should be ended, what theories they would endeavour to establish, their results would seem far more trustworthy, their theories far more probable, than according to the method actually adopted. Science, which should be exact, seems altogether inexact, because one observer seems to obtain one result, another a different result. Scientific theories seem unworthy of reliance because scientific men entertain for a long time rival doctrines. But in another and a worthier sense than as the words are used ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... eudiometer, seemed to prove that the air of the crater contained 0.09 degrees less oxygen than the air of the sea; but I have little confidence in this result obtained by means which we now consider as very inexact. The crater of the Peak has so little depth, and the air is renewed with so much facility, that it is scarcely probable the quantity of azote is greater there than on the coasts. We know also, from the experiments of MM. Gay-Lussac and Theodore de Saussure, that in the highest as well ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... inexact en avanc, ant que l'Aboudjed se compose de vingt-quatre lettres seulement, d'abord parce que les six mots qu'il numre ne renferment que vingt-deux lettres, et en second lieu, parce qu'il oublie de citer les deux derniers mots techniques, et , lesquels compltent ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... even when grammatical accuracy has been attained, in the way of English persons attempting to write and speak correctly. First, there is the cramping restriction of an insufficient vocabulary; not merely a loose and inexact apprehension of many words that are commonly used, and a consequent difficulty in using them accurately, but also a total ignorance of many other words, and an inability to use them at all; and these last are, as a rule, the very words which are absolutely ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... Saxon. When he was fourteen, the first measure of Catholic Emancipation opened Trinity College to him, and that establishment, "the intellectual eye of Ireland" as Sir William Harcourt has justly called it, received him a year later. The "silent sister" has fostered an always genial, if sometimes inexact, fashion of scholarship, in which Moore's talents were well suited to shine, and a pleasant social atmosphere wherein he was also not misplaced. But the time drew near to '98, and Moore, although he had always too ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... go; if the criminal's hiding-place is changed, it follows the track, points it out, descries it in the gloom. This is what happened on the news of Derues' arrest. The affair was everywhere discussed, although the information was incomplete, reports inexact, and no real publicity to be obtained. The romance which Derues had invented by way of defence, and which became known as well as Monsieur de Lamotte's accusation, obtained no credence whatever; on the contrary, all the reports to his discredit were eagerly adopted. As yet, no crime could ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have thought her deficient in sensibility, judging from the tone of her conversation. She did not freely express admiration, even in the form of assent to what was said by others. To interpret her reticence as shyness was a misunderstanding, or a misuse of words, natural in the case of an inexact observer like Mrs. Rossall. Four years ago, when Beatrice met her in Dunfield, her want of self-confidence was pronounced enough; she had at that time never quitted her provincial home, and was in the anomalous position of one who is intellectually outgrowing very restricted social circumstances. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... mean by society; it's a very general and inexact term. If you mean formal dinners, dances, parties, receptions, and all that, the lightest housekeeping would distract from the duties to it; but if you mean congenial friends willing to come in for tea in the afternoon, or ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... laws of that trade; but he worked in his own shop with his own tools, and the whole profit went to himself. But the word "employer" marks a modern deficiency which makes the modern use of the word "master" quite inexact. A master meant something quite other and greater than a "boss." It meant a master of the work, where it now means only a master of the workmen. It is an elementary character of Capitalism that a shipowner need not ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... thought and in the criticisms of pacifism, a great deal of confusion arises because of the inexact use of terms. We have already seen that pacifists of many shades of opinion are united in their refusal to participate in war. In this objection there is a negative quality. The very word "non-violence" used in the title of this study suggests this same negative attitude, and it was ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... Erasmus DARWIN. (See Carlyle's inexact description, and the appreciations of him by his brother and others, in "Life and Letters of ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... material substance, but a "mode of motion." It consists of very small undulations propagated with inconceivable velocity. Hence of it, and of it alone, it could not be correctly said that it was created. To say that God made light would be inexact. The words which are used exactly suit the circumstances of the case. But the discovery of the correlation of forces has given to these words a much more extended significance, while at the same time it furnishes a satisfactory reason for their occurrence ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... that the Doctor was everywhere in Harvey is inexact. He was everywhere except on Quality Hill in Elm Street. There, from the big, bulging house with its towers and minarets and bow windows and lean-tos, ells and additions, the Doctor was barred. There was chaos, and the spirit that breathed on the face of the waters was the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... remarked that, while Washington achieved a great victory in the ratification of the Jay Treaty, that event broke up the Federalist Party. That is probably inexact, but the break-up of the Federalist Party was taking place during the last years of Washington's second administration. The changes in Washington's Cabinet were most significant, especially as they nearly all meant the change from a more important ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... they thought was adroitness, they turned conversation upon her pecuniary welfare. They were Jean d'Eau, a slumberous butcher; Richard Reau, an embarrassed baker; and one —— Ecswyzee, an illiterate but prosperous candlestick-maker. These names may sound inexact, but can you prove that these were not their names and occupations? We ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... all Bacon, has risen to so noble and profound a conception of this most strangely commingled of all human affections. There is no modern thinker, again, who makes Beauty—all that is gracious, seemly, and becoming—so conspicuous and essential a part of life. It would be inexact to say that Emerson blended the beautiful with the precepts of duty or of prudence into one complex sentiment, as the Greeks did, but his theory of excellence might be better described than any other of modern times by the [Greek: ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... them? If, on the other hand, Justin has cited them accurately in this instance, why has he failed to do so in the others? For no other reason than that traditionary sayings are generally thus irregularly exact or inexact, and Justin, citing from them, has been as irregularly exact as they were" (Ibid, p. 85). "The result to which a perusal of his works will lead is of the gravest character. He will be found to quote ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... simply record the results of the fact that the likeness of the offspring to the parent in evolution is constantly inexact, are (like the records of other cases of 'chance' variation) fairly symmetrical, the greatest number of instances being found at the mean, and the descending curves of those above and those below the mean corresponding pretty closely with each other. Boot manufacturers, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... who will spare no labour in research, grudge all labour in style; a morning is cheerfully devoted to verifying a quotation, by one who will not spare ten minutes to reconstruct a clumsy sentence; a reference is sought with ardour, an appropriate expression in lleu of the inexact phrase which first suggests itself does not seem worth seeking. What are we to say to a man who spends a quarter's income on a diamond pin which he sticks in a greasy cravat? A man who calls public attention on him, and appears in a ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... history Lucan is supposed to have used Livy mostly. How far he used other authorities is unknown. His history is sometimes inexact. In ii. 478 sqq. the character of L. Domitius Ahenobarbus is falsely portrayed. So the journey of Cato to the shrine of ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... constantly urged by the opponents of the authenticity of this Gospel that, as it was published at Ephesus at a late period, it cannot be the work of the apostle, because he never went to Ephesus, and "died early as a martyr." [2] This is a most unscrupulous use of an inexact quotation made by some later Greek writers from a lost book of Papias. It can be {85} traced to Philip of Side (5th century), and it is to the effect that "John the Divine and James his brother were killed by the Jews." Papias does not say that they died together, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... punished. Aristarchus left a treatise "On the Magnitudes and Distances of the Sun and Moon;" and his methods to measure the apparent diameters of the sun and moon are considered theoretically sound by modern astronomers, but practically inexact owing to defective instruments. He estimated the diameter of the sun at the seven hundred and twentieth part of the circumference of the circle which it describes in its diurnal revolution, which is not far ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... sense of exact drawing, is not the most important thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. There is something more important ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... obsolete with that which it had helped to make popular. Some of the material—Huon of Bordeaux, the Four Sons of Aymon, and others—retained a certain vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to. But the chanson de geste itself was never, so to speak, "half-known"—except to a very few antiquaries. After its three centuries of flourishing, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jos Maria de Heredia on the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and travels, only to sink prematurely into the abyss of madness ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... too strong a statement, and Morga's knowledge is inexact, as Magalhaes had sailed the eastern seas while in the service ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... velocity very greatly increased the danger in abdominal wounds. I believe that the bowel was, under these circumstances, less likely to escape by displacement, and was more widely torn when wounded; again, that inexact impact led to increase of size in the external apertures, and the bullet was of course more ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... and that he entirely agrees with my denunciation of secret diplomacy and undemocratic control of foreign policy and that I am a perverse and wayward harlequin, mischievous, unveracious, scurrilous, monstrous, disingenuous, flippant, unjust, inexact, scandalous, and objectionable, and that on all points to which he takes exception and a good many more I am so magnificent, brilliant, and convincing that no citizen could rise from ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Maeander, inland places, and failed before Smyrna and Miletus, which could be provisioned by their fleets and probably had at their call a larger proportion of those warlike "Ionian pirates" who had long been harrying the Levant. In the course of a long reign, which Herodotus (an inexact chronologist) puts at thirty-eight years, Gyges had time to establish his power and to secure for his Lydians the control of the overland trade; and though a fresh Cimmerian horde, driven on, says Herodotus, by Scythians (perhaps these were not unconnected with the Medes then moving westward, ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... which she waited upon Theodora, for whose existence she regarded herself as entirely to blame. Had she not, without consulting her parents, applied to high heaven for an increase in live stock, and was not the answer to this application, however inexact, manifestly her responsibility. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... various old ones. It was not a society—that was clear—in which little girls and boys set the tune; and there was that about it all that might well have cast a shadow on the path of even the most successful little girl. Yet also—let me not be rudely inexact—it was in honour of youth and freshness that we had all been convened. The fiancailles of the last—unless it were the last but one—unmarried daughter of the house had just been brought to a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Indo-European class. Nevertheless, the Roman grammarians deserve great praise for their elaborate results in the sphere of correct writing. No defects of syntax perplex the reader of the classical authors. Imperfect and unpliable the language is, but never inexact. And though the meaning is often hard to settle, this is owing rather to the inadequacy of the material than the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... offered of language like this. [Reading from letter.] "From the first moment I saw you, I felt that you were entirely different from any woman I have ever met——" A monstrously inexact statement to start with. And a woman who is capable of ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... the value of which any body can now appreciate, this tardy and inexact report was addressed to the minister of the marine. Mr. Correard, when he landed at Rochefort, informed Mr. Savigny of it, and gave him a certificate of what has been just related. The latter procured two others, which were delivered to him, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... level horizon. It was then descending; and, after rising and declining a little, it sunk slowly behind the trees, I should think about or beyond Sunbury, at five minutes after one. But you know I am a very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in many miles; and you know how little I have attended to these airgonauts: only t'other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... on the contrary, place the stress mainly upon groups of fundamental muscles to the neglect of finer motor possibilities. Some who excel in heavy athletics no doubt coarsen their motor reactions, become not only inexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the large muscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. On the other hand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too little of their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work, and cultivate ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... is widely known that physicians sometimes terminate labor in this way, the public estimate of the merits and of the limitations of the instrument is so inexact that the truth about it should be understood. Obstetrical forceps were devised by one of the Chamberlens, a family of French Huguenots who fled to England in 1569. The invention was long kept a secret; therefore its date cannot be fixed, nor ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... It is inexact to say that the nineteenth century invented impressionist criticism, the nineteenth century invented nothing except the electric light and Queen Victoria. But it was in the later years of that century ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... his disgrace, the enfeeblement of his faculties, and the poverty he was reduced to, rendered him accessible to the pecuniary offers made to him. He consented to give the authority of his name to Memoirs in whose composition he had only co-operated by incomplete, confused, and often inexact notes, materials which an editor was employed to put in order." And Meneval (iii. 29-30) goes on to quote what he himself had written in the Spectateur Militaire, in which he makes much the same assertions, and especially objects to the account of conversations with the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... them by mail to Professor Scheibner, with the request that he correct them and return them to me at Berlin, signing his name to them if they correctly represented his opinions. In answer he enclosed me the copy which I had sent him, corrected where he thought the notes inexact, and an accompanying letter, stating that he did not forbid me to use the material which he had given me, but that he did not wish to set his name to any publication, if only for the reason that he was not sufficiently familiar with the English to judge accurately as ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... his seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they would be sent on the rounds of the other English-speaking ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... not only a description of castles, towns, churches, public monuments of every kind:—it is not only a representation of the general aspect of the country, as to its picturesque appearances—but it is an extended, minute, though occasionally inexact, account of public and private libraries; with reflections upon certain customs of the country, and upon the character of those who inhabit it. It is in short the personal history of the author, throughout the whole length of his journey. Not the smallest incident, however indifferent, but ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... with an insane itch for scribbling about things so infinitely above his capacity as the fine arts. Avoid this sordid dreamer, and follow, in letters as in science, the Baconian method! Then you will find that all uninspired narratives are more or less inexact, and that one, and one only, Fiction proper, has the honesty to antidote its errors by professing inexactitude. You will find that the Historian, Biographer, Novelist, and Chronicler are all obliged to paint upon their ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... is no pueblo which does not show modifications in mythology and ritual due to European contact. Modern Pueblo life resembles the ancient, but is not a facsimile of it, and until we have rightly measured the effects of incorporated elements, we are more or less inexact in our estimation of the character of prehistoric culture. The vein of similarity in the old and the new can be used in an interpretation of ancient paleography, but we overstep natural limitations if by so doing we ascribe to prehistoric culture every concept which we find ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... thought about me and felt toward me; and this spoiled the joy of life for me. This was probably the reason why I particularly delighted in the opposite of this in other people; namely, directness of egoism. That is what I especially loved in Seryozha, though the word 'loved' is inexact. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... is here used in an obviously inexact sense; but the wraith seemed to be the nearest equivalent in English mythology to the Scandinavian "fylgie," an attendant spirit, often regarded as a sort of emanation from the person it accompanied, and sometimes ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... the chief of the inexact sciences!" interrupted Denoisel, who delighted in muddling M. Bourjot's brain with paradoxes. "But I grant that," he went on. "I grant that the lives of the people have been prolonged, and that they eat more meat than they have ever eaten. Do you, on that account, believe ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... a time in Europe when they christened with the name "nihilism" this active negation of civilization and of bourgeois customs, so characteristic of the Russian "intellectuals." Taken in its literal sense, this word is inexact, since those to whom it was applied were inspired by a very high ideal. In a loose use of the word, nihilism has, on the contrary, a real significance, especially if one connects it with most of the Russian "intellectuals." ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... instead of going to his office with his little black bag and behaving generally as a "weel tappit" husband and king would do. Rudolph's hobbies were alchemy and astronomy. The chief object of the former extremely inexact science seems to have been to make gold by the synthetic process. Any charlatan who came along with a declared conviction that he could produce gold was welcomed by the King. It was for these his guests that Rudolph prepared those tiny dwellings in the narrow alley called "The Alchemists" ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the confusion naturally resulting from this three-fold and inexact use of the word, many teachers of music are adopting certain changes in terminology as noted in Sections 105, 106, and 107. Such changes may cause some confusion at first, but seem to be necessary if our musical terminology is to be ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... unit of the civilised world, and because of the fundamental difference of structure of the units which roughly answer to the definition of family in various parts of the world. It is no use in scientific matters to use terms of inexact reference. As much as almost anything else it has led to false conclusions as to the evolution of the family, conclusions which seem to entangle even the best authorities in a mass of contradictions. I cannot think of a family group in savagery with father, mother, sons, and daughters, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... that our fond dreams are on that account shattered is inexact, and is the sort of language which ought to be addressed to the promoters of intelligence through public meetings and a commendable interest in politics, when they fail in their designs, and not to us. For we are fond stickers to no machinery, not even our own; and we have ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... be said that there were no inexact statements made by the communicator during all these sittings? There are some, but very few. I shall speak of them in the following chapter. In any case, there is no trace of a single intentional untruth in ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... of definition and partition, but to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, and to place on the throne a sovereign under whom law and liberty might be secure. This object they attained by using language which, in a philosophical treatise, would justly be reprehended as inexact and confused. They cared little whether their major agreed with their conclusion, if the major secured two hundred votes, and the conclusion two hundred more. In fact the one beauty of the resolution is its inconsistency. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the past become inexact by the mere decay and disappearance of essential features, it becomes positively incorrect through the gradual incorporation of elements that do not properly belong to it. Sometimes it is easy to see how these extraneous ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... who will one day be called the Great, is born. Habits of the expensive King, hours of rising, modes of dressing, and so forth, are to be found in Pollnitz; [Pollnitz, Memoiren zur Lebens-und Regierungs-Geschichte der Vier letzten Regenten des Preussischen Staats (Berlin, 1791). A vague, inexact, but not quite uninstructive or uninteresting Book: Printed also in FRENCH, which was the Original, same place and time.] but we charitably omit them all. Even from foolish Pollnitz a good eye will gather, what was ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... 1825 to 1850 wholly—it would be somewhat absurd to rest them mainly—on its performances in this single kind. It found out, continued, or improved many others; and perhaps most of its greatest achievements were in these others. In fact "others" is an incorrect or at least an inexact term; for the historic novel itself is only a subdivision or offshoot of the great literary revolution which we call Romanticism. Indeed the entire novel of the nineteenth century, misapprehend the fact as people may, is in fact Romantic, from the first novel of Chateaubriand ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... long ere he has made the circuit the whole figure will have changed. Life may be compared, not to a single tree, but to a great and complicated forest; circumstance is more swiftly changing than a shadow, language much more inexact than the tools of a surveyor; from day to day the trees fall and are renewed; the very essences are fleeting as we look; and the whole world of leaves is swinging tempest-tossed among the winds of time. Look now for your shadows. O man of formulae, is this a place for you? Have you fitted the spirit ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinas uses a term which seems to be inexact. It baffled me for a long time. It would lead you to believe that he had in mind symbolism or idealism, the supreme quality of beauty being a light from some other world, the idea of which the matter is but the shadow, the reality of which it is but the symbol. I thought ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce |
