"Imperfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... francs a year and his salary as copying-clerk enabled him every evening to take a nap at a coffee-house. Thus their meeting had the importance of an adventure. They were at once drawn together by secret fibres. Besides, how can we explain sympathies? Why does a certain peculiarity, a certain imperfection, indifferent or hateful in one person, prove a fascination in another? That which we call the thunderbolt is true as ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the monstrosities of vice, for their hideous images would be reproduced in her own face and manners. Nor would she try to make herself graceful by practising awkwardness. We can never gain health by contemplating disease any more than we can reach perfection by dwelling upon imperfection, or ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a distinction made between impotence and sterility. Impotence is a loss of power to engage in the sexual act and is common to men. It may be imperfection in the male organ or a lack of sufficient sexual vigor to produce and maintain erection. Sterility is a total loss of capacity in the reproduction of the species, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the prolific origin of such errors; and so indulgent are we to its faults that we try secretly to hide them even from our own eyes, mostly with success; and where success is not perfect, we make a second effort to hide the imperfection. Repeated efforts of this kind, from which we but half turn away, are crowned in the end, and we soon forget what successful hypocrites we have been. Our numerous passions, the complexities of our desires, the tenacity of their grasp, and the pleasant gentleness ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... threw such a light of sweetness over his soul, that Septimius almost forgot all the wild cares of the day, and walked by her side with a quiet fulness of pleasure that was new to him. She reconciled him, in some secret way, to life as it was, to imperfection, to decay; without any help from her intellect, but through the influence of her character, she seemed, not to solve, but to smooth away, problems that troubled him; merely by being, by womanhood, by simplicity, she interpreted God's ways to him; she softened the stoniness ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is more searching even than the ordeal of war. Every smallest blot and blemish, every slightest impurity is shown up in startling clearness. Every flaw at once betrays itself. What will not bear a strain immediately breaks down. There is not an imperfection which is not glaringly displayed. The other may not see it, but he himself will—and upon him ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... were the Romans of the imperfection of valor without skill and practice, that, in their language, the name of an army was borrowed from the word which signified exercise. [36] Military exercises were the important and unremitted object of their discipline. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... give me this Father, do for me that!"? Or shall we say: "Behold, I am perfect! Imperfection, sin and suffering are ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the preeminence of the first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy; and in the Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism: their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... and yet are excellent play-things; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted of infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfection, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life. So thinking, you will ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consciously hurtful to its more generous impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon the mountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain. Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfection of character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations, probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation of a just and final judgment of an author's merit within his own lifetime. When it goes the length ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," was published in November, 1859. It begins with the simplest narrative of the events leading to its publication, and an apology for the imperfection of "this abstract." The author is well aware, he says, that on most points he deals with, facts can be adduced which often apparently lead to conclusions directly opposite to his own. He states clearly the important truth that a mere belief in the origin of species by descent ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... that a good reason why the sun should be struck down from heaven. They prefer the chance of running into utter darkness to living in heavenly light, if that heavenly light be not absolutely without any imperfection. There are impatient men; too impatient always to give heed to the admonition of St. Paul, that we are not to "do evil that good may come"; too impatient to wait for the slow progress of moral causes in the improvement of mankind. They do not remember that the doctrines ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... sensible objects. But in these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to see several varieties of the being, homo. There is no other family approaching to this in importance, which presents but one species. The corvidae, our parallel in aves, consist of several distinct genera and sub-genera. It is startling to find such an appearance of imperfection in the circle to which man belongs, and the ideas which rise in consequence are not less startling. Is our race but the initial of the grand crowning type? Are there yet to be species superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, more powerful in device and act, and who shall take a rule ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... to despair is the idea of perfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. But when you understand that the primal idea itself was human, small and restricted, you will see that it is little more than a rung in the rotten ladder of human imperfection. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... practice; and with all his acuteness, his discernment, and his knowledge of the world, his mind is always ready to receive any impression from the person who last addresses him, though he himself be fully aware of the inferiority of his adviser's intellect to his own, or the imperfection of that adviser's knowledge. Never for a moment out of the sight of Beckendorff, the royal pupil has made an admirable political puppet, since his talents have always enabled him to understand the part which the Minister had forced him to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... French twenty-five centimes. And here joining them in stealthy review, I found the C and the CH; then something of an A just following; and then a terminal Y. Here was also the whole name spelt out to me; it seemed familiar, too; and yet for some time I could not bridge the imperfection. Then I came upon another stamp, in which an L was legible before the Y, and in a moment the word leaped up complete. Chailly, that was the name; Chailly-en-Biere, the post town of Barbizon—ah, there was ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... by saying that a variable proportion exists in all industrial pursuits, between the effort and the result. Absolute imperfection consists in an infinite effort, without any result; absolute perfection in an unlimited result, without any effort; and perfectibility, in the progressive diminution of the effort, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake to answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse the prayse of ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... of us bear the test of experiment, when tried upon those subjects which call forth our particular propensities. We may strive to be disinterested, we may struggle to be impartial, but self will still predominate, still shew us the imperfection of our natures, and the narrowness of our souls. Yet acquit me, I beg, of any intentional insolence, and imagine not that in speaking highly of my own family, I, mean to depreciate yours: on the contrary, I know it to be ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... attention of all who are not blind the traces of human imperfection, of a kind and an extent which precludes any notion of a clean copy of a perfect script let down from ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... serious. He was as splendidly serious as a reformer. By a single urgent act of thought he would have made himself a man, and changed imperfection into perfection. He desired—and there was real passion in his desire—to do his best, to exhaust himself in doing his best, in living according to his conscience. He did not know of what he was capable, nor what he could achieve. Achievement was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... primitive corpuscles or atoms. Anaxagoras made believe that the atom had reason. Xenophanes wished to persuade me that God and the Universe were one. Empedocles, the wisest of the whole company, despaired at the imperfection of reason, and went in despair and flung himself head foremost into Etna's ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... their sensitiveness for some time after they have ceased to revolve and after they have sunk downwards; in this position, even if they were able to seize an object, such power would be of no service in supporting the stem. It is a rare circumstance thus to detect any superfluity or imperfection in the action of tendrils—organs which are so excellently adapted for the functions which they have to perform; but we see that they are not always perfect, and it would be rash to assume that any existing tendril has reached the ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... amounts to this: women-journalists are unreliable as a class. They are unreliable, not by sexual imperfection, or from any defect of loyalty or good faith, but because they have not yet understood the codes of conduct prevailing in the temples so recently opened to them. On the hearth, their respect for the exigencies of that mysterious business is unimpeachable; somehow, admittance ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... brightest of stars appear the most unsteady and tremulous in their light; not from any quality inherent in themselves, but from the vapours that float below, and from the imperfection ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... charge upon this religious class of war denouncers is, that whilst they see and recognize this infinite imperfection of any influence which Christianity yet exercises upon the world, they nevertheless rely upon that acknowledged shadow for the accomplishment of what would, in such circumstances, be a real miracle; they rely upon that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... poised on mighty pinion above the highest peak of Pisgah, and scanning with swift glances the beauty of the promised land. Now any people of which this is true must be, in a large sense of the word, an inspired people; and their literature, with all the signs of imperfection which must appear in it, on account of the medium through which it comes, will give proof of the divine ideas and forces that are working themselves ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... local and constitutional. Where there is constitutional imperfection, it should be remedied. Usually in young women there is some difficulty with the ovarian or uterine circulation, and the attack of hemorrhage from the nose is reflex in its character, appearing just before or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... not to come into application as regards Rome and Italy (Staatsrecht, ii. 8 854). On this element rests the essential distinction between the Caesarian imperium and the Augustan principate, just as on the other hand the real equality of the two institutions rests on the imperfection with which even in principle and still more in practice that limit ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... all, it is with great parts, as with great virtues, they naturally border on some imperfection; and it is often hard to distinguish exactly where the virtue ends, or the fault begins. As prudence may sometimes sink to suspicion, so may a great judgment decline to coldness; and as magnanimity may run up to profusion or extravagance, so may a great ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... than to his own. The conversion of the sceptical gentleman of whom he speaks is highly illustrative of popular credulity carried away into enthusiasm, or into imposture, by the evidence of those around, and at once shows the imperfection of such a general testimony, and the ease with which it is procured, since the general excitement of the moment impels even the more cold-blooded and judicious persons present to catch up the ideas and echo the exclamations of the majority, who, from the first, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... note is that the fortress of Maubeuge, with its garrison of reserve and second line men, had, of course, been at once invested by the Germans when the British and French line had fallen behind it and left it isolated. The imperfection of this fortress I have already described, and the causes of that imperfection. Maubeuge commanded the great railway line leading from Belgium to Paris, which is the main avenue of supply for an invasion or for a retreat, ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... corps diaphanes, tels que les miroirs, les cuvettes remplies d'eau et les liquides; ceux qui inspectent les coeurs, les foies et les os des animaux, ... tous ces gens-la appartiennent aussi a la categorie des devins, mais, a cause de l'imperfection de leur nature, ils y occupent un rang inferieur. Pour ecarter le voile des sens, le vrai devin n'a pas besoin de grands efforts; quant aux autres, ils tachent d'arriver au but en essayant de concentrer en ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the mature age ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... gratitude towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions. Your health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they would all have suffered, how they would all have been sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of human imperfection. Health flees before their face. They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses blowed; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break this ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves occurred. In writing the narratives, the author has endeavored to avail himself of the best sources of information which this country affords; and though, of course, there must be in these volumes, as in all historical accounts, more or less of imperfection and error, there is no intentional embellishment. Nothing is stated, not even the most minute and apparently imaginary details, without what was deemed good historical authority. The readers, therefore, may rely upon ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an aggravation of the evil—if that were possible. That Adrian, with such a state of things before his eyes, should readily give his sanction to a project which, however liable to be clogged by human imperfection, could not at any rate make things worse, but haply might make them better, was surely a proceeding quite consistent with the character of a wise and zealous pope; of a pope too, who lived and thought when the crusades were at their height, and who may, therefore, be very well supposed to have ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... leaped to their feet. But he threw off these broken lights with a quick relapse to indifference; he didn't like the Anglo-Saxon—of the children of Albion at least his view was low; on his American specimens he had, I observed, more mercy; and this imperfection of sympathy (the question of Waterloo apart) rested, it was impossible not to feel, on his so resenting the dishonour suffered at our hands by his beautiful tongue, to which, as the great field of elocution, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... sympathies, or hers, run out of that course which my reason tells me they should hold. The man with whom it would not be so would simply be a god among men. It is in his perfection as a man that we recognise the divinity of Christ. It is in the imperfection of men that we recognise our necessity for a Christ. Yes, sir, the death of the poor lady at Barchester was very sudden. I hope that my lord the bishop bears with becoming fortitude the heavy misfortune. They say ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... would still be the best of its kind—the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing on the doctrine of species that has ever appeared. The chapters on variation, on the struggle for existence, on instinct, on hybridism, on the imperfection of the geological record, on geographical distribution, have not only no equals, but, so far as our knowledge goes, no competitors, within the range of biological literature. And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since the publication of Von Baer's Researches on Development, thirty years ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... that the statue should be erected in front of the Duomo, where the block was originally meant to be set up; he was supported by the painters Cosimo Rosselli and Sandro Botticelli. Giuliano da San Gallo proposed to place it under the Loggia dei Lanzi, because "the imperfection of the marble, which is softened by exposure to the air, renders the durability of the statue doubtful." Messer Angelo de Lorenzo Manfidi (second herald) objected because it would break the order of certain ceremonies held in the Loggia. Leonardo da Vinci followed ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... married life. The principal feature of the ceremony is the splitting open of a PINANG (the seed of the areca palm) during the feast, in the presence of the young couple and their relatives. The two halves are examined for signs of decay or imperfection; and if there are none, the marriage is regarded as approved. A live fowl is waved over the couple by the chief of the house as he says, "Make them prosperous, make them happy, give them long life, make them wealthy, etc. etc." ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the great sun-kindled, constructive imaginations, and a far more numerous class of poets who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius given them to compensate for their imperfection of nature. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them sensitive to those impressions which stronger minds neglect or never feel at all. Many of them die young, and all of them are tinged with melancholy. There is no more beautiful ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... disposition on the part of the head of the Department to gratify the wishes of the public in the extension of mail facilities, have induced him to incur responsibilities for their improvement beyond what the current resources of the Department would sustain. As soon as he had discovered the imperfection of the method he caused an investigation to be made of its results and applied the proper remedy to correct the evil. It became necessary for him to withdraw some of the improvements which he had made to bring the expenses of the Department within its own ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... But the imperfection of our Western civilization shows itself in more serious forms involving women. The promiscuous herding of men and women prisoners in jails, the opposition to reformatories and penitentiaries exclusively for women, and, in general, the failure to provide, as a matter of ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... discrepancy, and the moral life a progressive realization of a good that can never be complete. It would thus seem to be irreconcilably different from religion, which must, in some way or other, find the good to be present, actual, absolute, without shadow of change, or hint of limit or imperfection. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... In writing the narratives, the author has endeavored to avail himself of the best sources of information which this country affords; and though, of course, there must be in these volumes, as in all historical narratives, more or less of imperfection and error, there is no intentional embellishment. Nothing is stated, not even the most minute and apparently imaginary details, without what was deemed good historical authority. The readers, therefore, may rely upon the record as the truth, and nothing ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The organic force with which life begins constrains chemical affinity to work in special modes for the formation of special products: when it is spent or disappears, chemical affinity is at liberty to work in its general modes; and that is death. "Life is the co ordination of actions; the imperfection of the co ordination is disease, its arrest is death." In other words, "life is the continuous adjustment of relations in an organism with relations in its environment." Disturb that adjustment, and you have malady; destroy it, and you have death. Life ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... also noticed large craters, without any interior cones, which shed a bluish tint similar to the reflection of a sheet of steel freshly polished. These colors belonged really to the lunar disc, and did not result, as some astronomers say, either from the imperfection in the objective of the glasses or from the interposition of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... unless, by the abatement of what weighs them down till they rise in the opposite scale, they recognize a change, so in the case of those who profess philosophy no improvement or sign of improvement can be supposed, unless the soul lay aside and purge itself of some of its imperfection, and if it continue altogether bad until it become absolutely good and perfect. For indeed a wise man cannot in a moment of time change from absolute badness to perfect goodness, and suddenly abandon for ever all that vice, of which he could not during a long period of time divest himself of any ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... recollection of the godlike," says Schlegel, "remains ever dark and mysterious; for man is surrounded by the sensible world, which being in itself changeable and imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, changeableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual obscurity over that light which is within him. Wherever, in the sensible and natural world, he perceives any thing which bears a resemblance to the attributes of the God-head, which can serve as a symbol ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... open it? No button or lock were visible. Again and again I went carefully over every square inch of its surface, but the most that I could find was a tiny pinhole a little above and to the right of the door's center—a pinhole that seemed only an accident of manufacture or an imperfection of material. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... highest level of power for work. His father early warned him to have a care for his health, "for," said he, "in your profession, if once you were to fall ill you would be a ruined man." To one so intent on perfection and so keenly alive to imperfection such advice must have been nearly superfluous, for the artist could not but observe the effect upon his work of any depression of his bodily well-being. He was, besides, too thrifty in all respects to think of lapsing into bodily neglect or abuse. He was severely temperate, but ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... why there is evil in existence is the same as why there is imperfection, or, in other words, why there is creation at all. We must take it for granted that it could not be otherwise; that creation must be imperfect, must be gradual, and that it is futile to ask the question, Why ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... always tends to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection; the soul desires to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... of the jury had difficulty in reconciling themselves to the verdict of guilty, suggesting that her story might be substantially correct, though undoubtedly she had made a mistake about the persons by whom she was injured. There was a technical imperfection in the verdict, and her friends strove to the utmost to take advantage of it. When it was overruled, and a verdict of guilty was recorded, she pleaded for mercy, saying that she was more unfortunate than wicked; that self-preservation had been her sole object; and that she did not wish to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... tend to deviate from each other and to utter contradictory oracles. We may therefore lay it down as an unalterable law of their activity that when any one of these ideas contradicts another it does so because of a weakness and imperfection in its own intensity or in the intensity of the idea ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... or immorality, when the scope of our criticism calls for this particular function, but why rush to praise or blame, to eulogy or reprobation, when we should do better simply to explore and enjoy? Moral imperfection is ever a grievous curtailment of life, but many exquisite flowers of character, many gracious and potent things, may still thrive in the most ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... distinct elocution; without which nobody will hear you with patience: this everybody may acquire, who is not born with some imperfection in the organs of speech. You are not; and therefore it is wholly in your power. You need take much less pains ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to American readers, has lately discovered in the National Library at Paris an important long lost MS., by the Cardinal Richelieu. In the MS. memoirs of the Cardinal, deposited at the Office for Foreign Affairs, an imperfection has existed, in the total absence of a series of leaves from the most interesting part of the collection. These appear to have been found accidentally, by M. Ranke, in a bundle of papers, gathered from some of the old mansions in Saint Germains. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in their spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised at any moment, but it is at the peril of the whole sincerity and peacefulness of their lives if they, in the smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in deference to the imperfection of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... completeness of records such as is never found. We do not find even that all recently extinct plants have left memorials of their existence in the crust of the earth; and ancient archives are certainly extremely defective. To one who is aware of the extreme imperfection of the geological record, the discovery of one or two missing links is a fact of small significance; but each new form rescued from oblivion is an earnest of the former existence of hundreds of species, the greater part of which ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... wrote more fully conduced to that lofty purpose than his famous "Polemical Essay on the Twin Doctrines of Christian Imperfection and a Death Purgatory"; than which few clearer, more convincing, or more able vindications of Scriptural holiness have ever been written. Can aught be plainer than the definition of Christian ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... notorious a {347} fact, that some florists regularly pinch off the central trusses of flowers. Whether in the highly improved varieties the departure of the central trusses from their proper type is due to reversion, I do not know. Mr. Dombrain insists that, whatever may be the commonest kind of imperfection in each variety, this is generally exaggerated in the central truss. Thus one variety "sometimes has the fault of producing a little green floret in the centre of the flower," and in central blooms these become excessive in size. In some central blooms, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... I far other feelings prove. When on me she does advance Her good-natur'd countenance, And those eyes which in their way Saying much, so much would say, They to me no blemish seem, Or as none I them esteem; I their imperfection ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... from which the following translations have been made are the Latin and the German,—the Latin of the German Universities, the German of the people, and both distinctively Luther's. In the Latin there is added to the imperfection of the form, when measured by classical standards, the difficulty of expressing in an old language the new thoughts of the Reformation. German was regarded even by Gibbon, two hundred and fifty ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the kind. Hence, what would he perfectly clear to myself, and to those who have passed through a similar experience, may be unintelligible to the former class. The Spiritualists excuse the crudities which their Plato, St. Paul, and Shakspeare utter, by ascribing them to the imperfection of human language; and I may claim the same allowance in setting forth mental conditions of which the mind itself can grasp no complete idea, seeing that its most important faculties are paralyzed during the existence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... blended them too much; for example, color a photograph of a statue, which exhibits a marked contrast of light and shade, and it will tend to confuse and blend the two. The taste for polychrome sculpture in the period of the decline of art was obviously but a returning to the primitive imperfection of art, when an attempt was made to produce illusion in order to please the uneducated taste ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... late Gregory was aware that Constance still remained a pleasant possibility to contemplate and that he had come no nearer to being in love with her. It might be easier, he mused, if only she could offer some trivial trick or imperfection, if she had been freckled, say, or had had a stammer, or prominent teeth. He could imagine being married to her so much more easily than being in love with her, and he was a little vexed with ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... upon European feeling, and aided to plant more deeply than ever the theological opinion that the earth as now existing is merely a ruin; whereas, before sin brought on the Flood, it was beautiful in its "egg-shaped form," and free from every imperfection. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... when a spirit returns to earth in visible form, it is the result of some disquieting influence immediately before the death of the body, or, as I might say, previous to the new life. At the hour of physical birth, such influences cause idiocy or such imperfection of the bodily functions that death ensues, and the spirit returns to seek another entrance into the world of matter. When a man dies dominated by some intense earthly desire, his mind is barred against the ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... consolatory for him to find upon examination, that the sheet anchor of his hope is well grounded; and that he has laboured in the cause of his divine Lord with a conscious integrity, though with a conscious imperfection of character. It was well said by the wife of a Missionary, in her last moments, when it was observed to her that she was dying a sacrifice in the cause of missions, "I would rather (said she) die a ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... of her lonely situation, of her ignorance and imperfection, of her often baffled struggles to do well in this world and to overcome her poor, weak self, and she ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... natural attitude of the sexes, designed by an all-wise Creator; but designed for a condition of ideal perfection. No perfect law could be framed for imperfection. Therefore, if the working out prove often a failure, the fault lies in the imperfection of the workers, not in the perfection of the law. In those rare cases where the love is ideal, the man's "I take" and the woman's ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... the experiment with all care. But if James Ross, owing to the imperfection of his instruments, found a declination of only 89 degrees 50 minutes, the real magnetic point is found within a minute of this spot. Dr. Clawbonny was more fortunate, and at a little distance from there he found ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... those serious times desired that a child should be; that is, she was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, as might be. Childhood, as an age of progress, was not to be delayed, as an age of imperfection was to be improved, as an age of inability was not to be exposed except when precocity distinguished it. It must at any rate be shortened. Lucy Apsley, at four years old, read English perfectly, and was "carried to sermons, and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Thus, men have learned to melt and vitrify the sand on the sea-shore, to make glass, grind it into a form, and make a microscope to view the most minute objects of nature, or to bring the most distant nearer, by the telescope: thus, rectifying the imperfection of human sight. Perhaps the burning of coals to convert water into steam, and, with that steam, raising coals and water from the mine is the most complete triumph of human skill over physical difficulties. How invention and discovery ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... Men Gamblers? No Man Understands Iron We Long for Immortal Imperfection—We Can't Have It. Three Water-Drops Converse Did We Once Live on the Moon? William Henry Channing's Symphony The Existence of God—Parable of the Blind Kittens Have the Animals Souls? Jesus' Attitude ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... decidirse, to decide, to make up one's mind decir, to say, to tell declamar, to declaim declarar, to declare declararse en quiebra, to file one's petition in bankruptcy decretar, to decree dedal, thimble dedicarse, to devote oneself defecto, defect, imperfection definir, to define, also to settle definitivo, definite dejar, to leave, to let dejar sin efecto, to cancel (orders, etc.) delegado, delegate delicado de salud, in indifferent health delinquir, to commit a delinquency demanda y oferta, supply and demand demandar, to demand ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... punishment for a self-inflicted wrong it was John Yule. A punishment as subtle as the sin; for in the children growing up about him every relinquished hope, neglected gift, lost aspiration, seemed to live again; yet on each and all was set the direful stamp of imperfection, which made them visible illustrations of the great ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of the Red Branch, such was his stature, his bearing, such his slowly-turning, steady- gazing eyes and the majesty of his bearded countenance. His countenance was long, broad above and narrow below, his nose eminent, his beard bipartite, curling and auburn in hue, his form without any blemish or imperfection. ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... chosen from within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a spectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. In whatever sense the word 'rationality' may be taken, it is vain to contend that the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing things is altogether rational. Theologians have felt its irrationality acutely, and the 'fall,' the predestination, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... spent; understanding will follow. Not anxious to know our duty, or knowing it and not doing it, how shall we understand that which only a true heart and a clean soul can ever understand? The power in us that would understand were it free, lies in the bonds of imperfection and impurity, and is therefore incapable of judging the divine. It cannot see the truth. If it could see it, it would not know it, and would not have it. Until a man begins to obey, the light that ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... — N. inferiority, minority, subordinacy; shortcoming, deficiency; minimum; smallness &c. 32; imperfection; lower quality, lower worth. [personal inferiority] commonalty &c. 876. V. be inferior &c. adj.; fall short of, come short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195; hide its diminished head, retire into the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fewer teeth than before; at which contemporaries were mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise. Some writers of authority published their opinions on this subject. Others copied from them, without seeing for themselves, and thus the world believed in the miracle of an imperfection in the human body which had been caused by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of instinct, or the mental powers of animals; thirdly, hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the geological record. In the next chapter I shall consider the geological succession of organic beings throughout time; in the twelfth and thirteenth, their geographical distribution throughout space; in the fourteenth, their classification or mutual affinities, both when mature and in ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... gratulating the youth on the gift thus miraculously bestowed, said unto him: "Now, my best-beloved son, shalt thou know by this pastoral staff that the guardianship of souls will be committed unto thee." But he refusing and alleging his ignorance and the imperfection of his youth, the saint is reported thus to have said: "Seek not thou to excuse thyself for that thou art a boy, since unto all those parts whither the Lord sendeth thee shalt thou go; and what he commandeth unto thee, that shalt thou speak." ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... considerable portion of embryonic life. Larger vessels and the heart are burrowed, as it were, out of masses of mesoblast cells. The course of the blood in the embryo is by the veins to the right auricle, thence through the imperfection of the auricular septum already alluded to, into the left auricle. Then the left ventricle, aortic arches (for the future pulmonary artery is in communication by a part presently blocked, the ductus arterious, with the systemic ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... What the ear hears is the fundamental pitch only; the overtones harmonize with the primary or fundamental tone, and enrich it. Since this is a law of vibration, it is unscientific to speak of giving an overtone, for all tones contain overtones. Where these overtones are interfered with by any imperfection in the instrument the result is a harsh or ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... by means of the new arrivals which kept coming in, hurled into the midst of us without thought or question, that this was the common fate of all who were repulsive to the sight, or who had any weakness or imperfection which offended the eyes of the population. They were tossed in among us, not to be healed, or for repose or safety, but to be out of sight, that they might not disgust or annoy those who were more fortunate, to whom no injury had happened; and because in their sickness and imperfection ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... departure of my first acquaintance, I held a cold and civil correspondence with their successors. This seclusion from English society was attended with the most solid benefits. In the Pays de Vaud, the French language is used with less imperfection than in most of the distant provinces of France: in Pavilliard's family, necessity compelled me to listen and to speak; and if I was at first disheartened by the apparent slowness, in a few months I was astonished by the rapidity of my progress. My pronunciation was formed by the constant repetition ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... any precise boundaries to the royal power; that the right of issuing proclamations on any emergence, and of exacting obedience to them, a right which was always supposed inherent in the crown, is very difficult to be distinguished from a legislative authority; that the extreme imperfection of the ancient laws, and the sudden exigencies which often occurred in such turbulent governments, obliged the prince to exert frequently the latent powers of his prerogative; that he naturally proceeded, from the acquiescence of the people, to assume, in many ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... sublime in many respects as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in that very self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride. In resting so solely on man's perceptions of the right, he lost one attribute of the true hero—faith. We do not mean that word in the religious sense alone, but in the more comprehensive. He did ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... see that the mistake is to judge boys by the standard of grown-ups, to forget that a child is quick and mobile like a running stream; and that, in the case of such, any touch of imperfection need cause no great alarm, for the speed of the flow is itself the best corrective. When stagnation sets in then comes the danger. So it is for the teacher, more than the pupil, to beware ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... impossible to spend more care on her person than she had in the past; but that was unrelenting. Linda was inexorable in her demands on the establishments that made her suits and dresses. The slightest imperfection of fit exasperated her; and she regarded the endless change of fashions with contempt. This same shifting, she observed, occurred not only in women's clothes but in ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... circumstances, then, I cannot but regard it as fortunate that you are only engaged to your obedient Microcosm: a biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its untidiness, its largeness, its irritating imperfection and its profound and hearty intention to go on existing as long ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... work of man Some imperfection mars the plan? Why join'd in every human art A perfect and imperfect part? Is it that life for art is short? Or is it nature's cruel sport? Or would she thus a moral teach; That man should see, but never reach, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... was awake, pressed her mother's hand and looked up in her face, but Mary, though returning the glance and the pressure, did not send her away, while Melville recommended strongly that the Queen should continue to insist on the imperfection of the evidence adduced against her, which he said might so touch some of the lawyers, or the nobles, that Burghley and Walsingham might be afraid to proceed. If this failed her, she must allow her knowledge of the plot for her own escape and the Spanish invasion, but strenuously ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sir, there is an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we should thank fortune, double to nature, for any benefit she confers upon us; besides, it is your imperfection, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... one or another of the Indian tribes. To determine the several tribal possessions and to indicate the proper boundary lines between individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty. This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the boundaries of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... much the slave of a woman that had but one eye. "Sire," replied the ingeniously gallant Perez, "she set the world on fire with that; if she had preserved both, she would have consumed it." It is of little consequence. Any slight physical blemish or imperfection was more than counterbalanced by the wit and accomplishments of this seductive woman, whose enchantments, like those of Ninon de l'Enclos, defied the impairing inroads ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... come to, and never broach the subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... art in Heaven." In the laws of life we read the methods of His schooling of our souls. In the sorrows of life we receive His disciplinings. In the sins that cling so hard upon us we feel the evils of our imperfection, from which He is seeking to deliver us through His training of our spirits. In the shame of sin we are conscious of the guilt that His free forgiveness wipes away, when we turn saying, Father, I have ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... participation in the same animal frailties and capacities of fleshly temptation. No other vinculum could bind the two postulates together, of an absolute perfection in the end proposed, and yet of utter imperfection in the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Nicias, smiling. "Then they must share the same infirmities as men. Love presupposes unhappiness on the part of whoever suffers from it, and is a proof of weakness. The affection they feel for Drosea is a great proof of the imperfection of ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... within the life of one individual. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, a great and good man, at one time a sensualist, has now turned ascetic; a common evolution in the lives of the saints. But excellent as this man is, there is yet a grave imperfection in his cosmos which to a degree vitiates the truth he desires to teach: he leaves the element of beauty out of his formula. Not caring for harmony as set forth in color, form and sweet sounds, he is quite willing to deny all others these things which minister to their well-being. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... seemed to love, or to take an interest in me. He had desired a son, and I think he never thoroughly forgave me my unfortunate sex. My having come into the world at all as his child, he regarded as a kind of fraudulent intrusion, and, as his antipathy to me had its origin in an imperfection of mine, too radical for removal, I never even hoped to stand high in his good graces. My mother was, I dare say, as fond of me as she was of any one; but she was a woman of a masculine and a worldly cast of mind. She had ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings, which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... become unsettled, but the laws of the world remain fixed as at the beginning. He has discovered that his appeal to the fallibility of sense was really an illusion. For whatever uncertainty there may be in the appearances of nature, arises only out of the imperfection or variation of the human senses, or possibly from the deficiency of certain branches of knowledge; when science is able to apply her tests, the uncertainty is at an end. We are apt sometimes to think that moral and metaphysical philosophy are lowered by the influence which is exercised ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... that reasoning banished reason. It is possible also that the progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentious imperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it means lessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, but not happiness; it is an incessant pursuit of an unattainable goal, a noble madness, but not reason; it is homesickness for the impossible—pathetic and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which he worked, he had placed, as it were a photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro's Daughter. He would gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in which the imperfection of her skin might be surmised, the marvellous locks of hair that fell along her tired cheeks; and, adapting what he had already felt to be beautiful, on aesthetic grounds, to the idea of a living woman, he converted it into ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence and delight. He had the laws ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... two who became involved in scandal of some sort she gave to all. Because a motion picture actress, as human as any other woman and as liable to imperfection, sought a divorce in the courts she instantly, in Mrs. Gallant's mind, became an immoral character. A motion picture actor attacked by a blackmailer because of his wealth and prominence, was adjudged guilty of whatever wrong ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... assist the pupils by calling attention to some pertinent passage, or by removing difficulties by means of questions or explanations. In all cases, it is well to accept a partially correct answer by the pupils, and to try to improve its imperfection by questioning, until a fairly complete and substantial statement has been given. Every answer which contains even a fragment of sound thought should receive due recognition. In some cases it is sufficient, at the outset, to take an imperfect statement of the main thought, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... memory is mine; and when one of these insects comes to my lamp in whatever part of the world, fluttering weakly, legs breaking off at the slightest touch, I shall cease to worry about the scientific problems that loom too great for my brain, or about the imperfection of whatever I am doing, and shall welcome the crane-fly and strive to free him from this fatal passion for flame, directing him again into the night; for he may be looking for a dark pocket in a root, a pocket on the Edge of the World, where crane-flies ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... alterations are at all wanting, and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent or safe to be meddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of our Constitution—that our representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... she answered, "a little. It gives me more hope. I cannot think I am totally depraved. I do not believe that God wishes me to think so. And while I am still aware of the distance between Christ's perfection and my own imperfection, I feel that the possibility is greater of lessening that distance. It gives me more self-respect, more self-reliance. George Bridges says that the logical conclusion of that old doctrine is what philosophers call determinism—Calvinistic predestination. I can't believe in that. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... egge, and also as it is thought his first origine, and is as it were a bastard or imperfect rounde declining toward a longitude, and yet keeping within one line for his periferie or compasse as the rounde, and it seemeth that he receiueth this forme not as an imperfection but any impediment vnnaturally hindring his rotunditie, but by the wisedome and prouidence of nature for the commoditie of generation in such of her creatures as bring not forth a liuely body (as do foure ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... worker is a perfected factory attachment as he surrenders himself to the time and the rhythm of the machine and its functioning; as he supplements without loss whatever human faculties the machine lacks, whatever imperfection hampers the machine in the satisfaction of its needs. If it lacks eyes, he sees for it; he walks for it, if it is without legs; and he pulls, drags, lifts, if it needs arms. All of these things are done by the factory worker at the pace set by the machine and under its direction and command. A ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... him. They would both speak English—which they spoke with difficulty and in an indistinct utterance of voice—and he did not like to break the conversation into French, because to have done so would have looked like a condemnation of their English, of any imperfection of which they did not seem to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... was once spiritually comforting a member of his flock who was tormented by doubts about the goodness of God as measured by the imperfection of His creation. Having listened to a vivid account of the troubled soul's high expectation of its Maker and of its deep disappointment at His work, the pious old cure said: "Yes, my child. The world is indeed ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and objections, "some of them so grave that to this day," the author frankly says, he "can never reflect on them without being staggered." We do not wonder at it. After drawing what comfort he can from "the imperfection of the geological record" (Chapter IX), which we suspect is scarcely exaggerated, the author considers the geological succession of organic beings (Chapter X), to see whether they better accord with the common view of the immutability ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... from devouring the distances too fast, is the mood in which your best thoughts and impulses come to you, or in which you might embark upon any noble and heroic enterprise. Life is sweet in such moods, the universe is complete, and there is no failure or imperfection anywhere. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... remarkable that some authors attempted to account for the invention of the Asiatic style, on the same principle we have here adduced to account for Cicero's adoption of it in Latin; viz. that the Asiatics had a defective knowledge of Greek, and devised phrases, etc., to make up for the imperfection of their scanty vocabulary. See Quinct. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... nil nisi bonum is an excellent maxim; but in concluding this sketch, there can be no harm in at least regretting the imperfection of human nature. If its eminent subject, instead of spending abroad upon the world her great capacity, had been able to concentrate it in some measure upon herself and family, there can be little doubt that she would have been regarded in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... have found myself involved in others of a different species, some of which I have not been able to remove; but I am persuaded, that such as remain do not arise from the nature of the order I have adopted, but are rather consequences of the imperfection under which chemistry still labours. This science still has many chasms, which interrupt the series of facts, and often render it extremely difficult to reconcile them with each other: It has not, like the elements of geometry, the advantage ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... Fauns and Sylvans, and the birth of Aphrodite from the waves. Such fables took deep hold upon their fancy, stirring them to strange and delicate creations, the offspring of their own thought, and no mere copies of marbles seen in statue galleries. The very imperfection of these pictures lends a value to them in the eyes of the student, by helping him to comprehend exactly how the revelations of the humanists affected the artistic sense ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and captains of men-of-war are not exempted from this human imperfection! How much, also, drops between the cup and the lip! There chanced to be on board of the same trader two very pretty Irish girls of the better sort of bourgeoisie; they were going to join their friends at Philadelphia: the name of the one was Judy, and of the other Maria. No sooner ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on which his stories are built was by any means an imperfection. He arranged his endless prefaces and his colossal introductions just as an architect plans great gates and long approaches to a really large house. He did not share the latter-day desire to get quickly through a story. He enjoyed narrative as a sensation; he did not wish to swallow a story like ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... there is no outcry at the present time more unjust or—except for the "Wanted, a Man" clamour—more foolish. No doubt our educational resources, like most other things, fall far short of perfection, but of all this imperfection the elementary schools are least imperfect; and I would almost go so far as to say that, considering the badness of their material, the huge, clumsy classes they have to deal with, the poorness of their directive ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... i. 26, 27, or at least part of that image; which image of God, and light of nature, was con-created with man, and was perfect: viz. so perfect as the sphere of humanity and state of innocency did require; there was no sinful darkness, crookedness, or imperfection in it; and whatsoever was evident by, or consonant to this pure and perfect light of nature, in respect either of theory or practice, was doubtless of divine right, because correspondent to that ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor; and having once caught a glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that Love until you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect harmony with it. And that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. Take also other spiritual principles, such as Purity and Compassion, and apply them in the same ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... international statistics are capable of throwing on the relations between poverty and crime. At the outset of this inquiry we are at once met by the old difficulty respecting the value of international criminal statistics. The imperfection of those statistics is a matter it is always important to bear in mind, but in spite of this circumstance the light which they shed on the problem of poverty and crime is not ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... antagonism, between two tendencies of men's minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? Between Christ and the world, say!—Christ and the flesh!—or about that so very ancient antagonism between good and evil. Was there any place really left for imperfection, moral or otherwise, in a world, wherein the minutest atom, the lightest thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the crime, the sin, [160] the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, which was incapable of mis- shapen births? In proportion as ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... occurred to him that he must translate this into the native tongue if his secret was to be preserved. While he was turning over in his mind the best words to use for this purpose he reflected that the imperfection of his knowledge, even the mere tone of his voice, would probably betray him; he therefore remained dumb, with ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... incident as an evidence of what diversified materials an army is composed, and that the instruments of military despotism are not necessarily endowed with personal courage, the discipline of the mass compensating for individual imperfection. It also gives evidence that luck has much to do in the fortunes of this world, and that many a man who "bears his blushing honors thick upon him" would as poorly stand a scrutiny as to the means by which they were acquired, as our friend, the drummer, had he been enabled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... be, therefore, this universal consciousness of imperfection, and if that consciousness of imperfection has only need to be brought into contact with God, as it were, to flame thus, let me remind you, too, that this fact of universal sinfulness puts us all in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren |
