"Perfectness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every inadequate consideration. The sanctified are united by a common cause and a common experience. Opinions may differ as to ecclesiastical polity or the mode of baptism, but the white cord of sanctification is "the bond of perfectness" which makes them one bundle. Yale and Cornell are rivals with their "eights" and "shells" on American Hudson, but men from both colleges join forces to beat the Britishers at Henley. Holiness people of every church unite ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... that the criterion of the perfectness of any language is not to be found in a comparison of its forms or methods with those of any other, but in its fitness as a vehicle for the expression of deeper life, of the best and the greatest that is in those who use it, and ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... doth save in way of works Prescribed[FN4] by reason; next, the Yog, which bids Attain by meditation, spiritually: Yet these are one! No man shall 'scape from act By shunning action; nay, and none shall come By mere renouncements unto perfectness. Nay, and no jot of time, at any time, Rests any actionless; his nature's law Compels him, even unwilling, into act; [For thought is act in fancy]. He who sits Suppressing all the instruments of flesh, Yet in his idle heart thinking on them, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... all the care and all the deliberation that is needed for so vast a work. There is no haste if we select those things which have eternal value. We can undertake the development of the Christian qualities of character with entire hopefulness. The very conception of the beauty and perfectness of the fruits of the Spirit might discourage us if our time were limited. But if we feel that the work we have done on them, however elementary and fragmentary, as long as it is honest and heartfelt, will not be lost when death comes, then we can go securely on. We can go on in any spiritual ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... presented in response to that vague agitation of our soul, we feel its inadequacy to our need in spite of, or perhaps on account of, its own particular perfection. We then say that the classic does not satisfy us, and that the "Grecian cloys us with his perfectness." We are not capable of that concentrated and serious attention to one thing at a time which would enable us to sink into its being, and enjoy the intrinsic harmonies of its form, and the bliss of its immanent particular heaven; we flounder ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... subject without touching specially upon one among other important laws which deserve our consideration; the law of love. Paul was quite right when, comparing the various qualities of Christian character he declared, 'The greatest of these is love'. 'Love is the bond of perfectness.' ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy: that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I must forsake the world: I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me to that which passeth away; I must live with my fellow-beings only as human souls related to the eternal unseen life. That need was urging me continually: it came over me in visions when ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... though relevant, is a digression. Returning, and to produce some further argument against all creature perfectness; let us consider how rational it seems to presuppose that the mighty Maker in his boundless love should have willed to form a long chain of classes of existence more and more subordinated each to the other, each good of its kind and happy in its way, but yet all ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that is difficult ground you are getting upon; and we must keep to our crystals, till at least we understand what THEIR good and evil consist in; they may help us afterwards to some useful hints about our own. I said that their goodness consisted chiefly in purity of substance, and perfectness of form: but those are rather the EFFECTS of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crystals, resulting in these outer conditions, might really seem to be best described in the words we should use respecting living creatures— "force of heart" and "steadiness ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... whose substance have formed the earth be gathered together, and let the earth and the waters stand in perfectness in their orders. And let the firmament beneath the heaven of electricity remain unmovable, and let there be a door as a gateway from the heaven to the earth remain ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... Pharisees of old, with two bags, one before and the other behind him. In the one before he deposits the faults of other people, and in the one behind he now and then, it may be, deposits the faults of himself. He is devoid of the charity which covereth a multitude of sins, which is the bond of perfectness, which "suffereth long, and is kind, which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, which doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... not sell them to thee,' replied she, 'save on condition that thou fast a whole month, watching by night and fasting by day for the love of God the Most High: but if thou wilt do this, they are thine, to use as thou pleasest.' The King wondered at the perfectness of her piety and devotion and abnegation and she was magnified in his eyes, and he said, 'May God make this pious old woman to profit us!' So he agreed to her proposal, and she said to him, 'I will help thee with my prayers.' Then ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... is to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... little one. If we have the angel aim and standard, we can consecrate the smallest acts. Don't you know that "he who aims for perfectness in a trifle, is trying to do that ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... forces of the universe, as we believe He does, then to Him belongs the divine prerogative of imparting His nature and His character to them that love Him. Then His righteousness is not a solitary, uncommunicative perfectness for Himself, but like a sun in the heavens, which streams out vivifying and enlightening rays to all that seek His face. If it be true that Christ has risen, then it is also true that you and I, convicted of sin, and learning our weakness and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[23] in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath the lowered lances. For in like ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... — N. perfection; perfectness &c. adj.; indefectibility[obs3]; impeccancy[obs3], impeccability. pink, beau ideal, phenix, paragon; pink of perfection, acme of perfection; ne plus ultra[Lat]; summit &c. 210. cygne noir[Fr]; philosopher's stone; chrysolite, Koh-i-noor. model, standard, pattern, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... It tells us why God hates sin with so unextinguishable a hatred, just because He is a God of Love. It is not that man's sin injures God, insults God, as the heathen fancy. Who is God, that man can stir Him up to pride, or wound or disturb His everlasting calm, His self-sufficient perfectness? 'God is tempted of no man,' says St. James. No. God hates sin. He loves all, and sin harms all; and the sinner may be a torment and a curse, not only to himself, not only to those around him, but to ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... partially cleared, and the rain had ceased; but huge fantastic masses of cloud, tinged with lurid copper-colour by the setting sun, still towered afar off over the horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark—the beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green fields of Looe Island rose high ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... investigation of this matter of colonial inferiority, that they had proved to their own perfect satisfaction, which was the same thing as disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and tree, hill and dale, lake, pond, sun, air, fire, and water were all wanting in some of the perfectness of the old regions. It was plain we could never hope to reach the exalted excellence they enjoy; and while he respected the patriotism that held the contrary view, he could not, out of deference to it, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... more for you, nor you for him; but he may be rich in juices wherewithal to nourish the heart of another man, and their two lives, set together, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness of fruit; while you and he would only have languished into aridity and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... hope to prepare them for receiving the historic testimony which tells of the Divine plan for human redemption: leading them from the sense of sin to Him who saves from sin; from the inward to the outward; from Christ to Christianity; from Christian doctrine to the perfectness of Christian faith. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... while in fact he is only listening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the great paradox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits; it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude every moment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness; finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are but completeness manifested in parts, infinity revealed ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... repel her, truth and ease Deserted me; I strove to talk, And stammer'd foolishness; my walk Was like a drunkard's; if she took My arm, it stiffen'd, ached, and shook: A likely wooer! Blame her not; Nor ever say, dear Mother, aught Against that perfectness which is My strength, as once it was my bliss. And do not chafe at social rules. Leave that to charlatans and fools. Clay grafts and clods conceive the rose, So base still fathers best. Life owes ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... moment in its flight, again possessed his mind: he had known it from a child, the ambition to follow, follow, follow, in the hope that somewhere, perhaps behind the setting sun, he might arrive at the land of perfectness for which he craved. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... yashmak, {6} she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty. And this, it is not the light, changeful grace that leaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or only a soul; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectness of hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous colour. There is fire, though, too—high courage and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride through those ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it was her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back—watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes—and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and, because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and left the pure, ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly; and at the end of your day's work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same way. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... love;" and reciprocal love constitutes "the bond of perfectness" between God and rational creatures. Communion with God is the supreme felicity and highest honor of which angels and men are capable. The first emanation of divine love revealed to us was displayed in the covenant of works; although not called a covenant, the ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... seemed as though the roadway below boiled over. Horses reared, plunged and stampeded, while high above the head of a long-tailed chestnut a countryman floated forth into space, a vision, in its brief perfectness, delightfully ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... see a Zouave gravely cheat a Turk, or trip up a Greek street-merchant, or Maltese fruit-seller, and scud away with the spoil, cleverly stowed in his roomy red pantaloons, was an operation, for its coolness, expedition, and perfectness, well worth seeing. And, to a great extent, they escaped scatheless, for the English Provost marshal's department was rather chary of interfering with the eccentricities of our gallant allies; while if the French had taken close cognizance of the ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... with its perfectness Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals, half divined, as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... the perfectness of this method appears may be pointed out. First of all, it is perfect in this: that anyone who begins it is bound to go on to the end. The very nature of the case leads him to go on and on from glory to glory, back and back to Christ, until the ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... "and for those duties, some of the very highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of perfectness. The wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough, should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And, for her own happiness, all the more because her sphere is at home, her home stores ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all against his direct material passion. To destroy ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... stereotype; as in the case of the human frame, it has expanded to the loss of its elasticity, and can expand no more. Then the general style of educated men, formed by the accumulated improvements of centuries, is far superior perhaps in perfectness to that of any one of those national Classics, who have taught their countrymen to write more clearly, or more elegantly, or more forcibly than themselves. And literary men submit themselves to what they find so well provided ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas,[Z] and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of disciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And, in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the great schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern line engraving. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... of cloudless blue perfectness, and we were all basking on the beach. We had all bathed. Mrs. Bax said we might. There are points about having a grown-up with you, if it is the right kind. You can then easily get it to say "Yes" to what you want, and after that, if ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... pleasant thy shade, All things commend thee in thy place; Dwelling on thy perfectness, O Sweet, I am afraid, But, fearing, long to look upon thy ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wife to the end of her life against all manner of trouble save the shame of thy disloyalty." There was no more for me to do, for my deep love itself forbade my staying longer within reach of the noble deserted soul. And so I saw the chastened glory of her face no more, nor evermore beheld her perfectness.'" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
