"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God forgive me!" over and over and over, unconscious apparently that she was not alone, that any one heard or observed her. No doubt there is in all our actions, the very best, much for God to forgive; mingled motives, imperfect deeds, thoughts full of alloy and selfishness; but in what her conscience could accuse her now he could not understand. She might be to blame in respect to her husband, though he was very loth to allow the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... little while unto thyself. Thus grows the fruit; first, the seed must be buried in the earth for a little space; there it must be hid and slowly grow, that it may reach maturity. But if it produce the ear before the jointed stalk, it is imperfect—a thing from the garden of Adonis. Such a sorry growth art thou; thou hast blossomed too soon: the winter ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... not a transient evil, productive, as some have too favorably represented it, of a lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future and (if that were possible) worse evils.—That it is not an undigested, imperfect, and crude scheme of liberty, which may gradually be mellowed and ripened into an orderly and social freedom; but that it is so fundamentally wrong as to be utterly incapable of correcting itself by any length of time, or of being formed into any mode of polity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... relations in the organism are not adjusted to certain relations in the Environment. There will come a time in each history when the imperfect correspondences of the organism will betray themselves by a failure to compass some necessary adjustment. This is why Death is associated with Imperfection. Death is the necessary result of Imperfection, and the necessary end of it. Imperfect correspondence gives imperfect and uncertain Life. "Perfect ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... only heard imperfect reports of it; but it is said that she gave offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had held an office of trust in the family, and who, after some incoherent threats, disappeared. This peculiar affection followed soon after. But the strangest ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... opportunities and possibilities throughout the entire course of life. The mere acquisition of knowledge, or the simple development of the intellect alone, may be of little value. Many who have received such imperfect or one-sided education, have proved to be but ciphers in the world; while, again, intellectual giants have sometimes been found to be but intellectual demons. Indeed, some of the worst characters in history have been men of scholarly ability ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... girls, the two heroines, Elinor and Marianne, are as imperfect and as different as sisters are apt to be in real life. Vulgar match-making Mrs. Jennings, as Austin Dobson calls her, like many a flesh-and-blood dowager, at first repels us by her foolish prattle and finally wins our respect by her kindness. Sir John Middleton, with his horror of being ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... maxim that when put into practise has frequently led to the breaking-down of vowel values—the writer feels that the common custom of allowing "the consonants to take care of themselves" is pernicious. It leads to suppression or to imperfect utterance, and ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... set out. Then he embarked from Bristol with a single ship, called in an old history the Matthew, and a crew of eighteen men. First, he sailed round the south of Ireland, and from there struck out westward into the unknown sea. The appliances of navigation were then very imperfect. Sailors could reckon the latitude by looking up at the North Star, and noting how high it was above the horizon. Since the North Star stands in the sky due north, and the axis on which the earth spins points always towards it, it will appear to an ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... imperfect digest gives only the headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the Times, and it is needless to say that such an article in the leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper in the world produced an intense ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... into the causes of the revolutions of nations is more imperfect and less satisfactory than when [end of page xi] directed to those of individuals, and of single families, if, ever it should be rendered complete, its application will, at least, be more certain. Nations are exempt from those accidental vicissitudes which derange ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... minutes; there is the very lengthy criticism of 'Bernardin de Saint-Pierre'; there is the 'Confutation d'une Censure indiscrate qu'on lit dans la Gazette de Iena, 19 Juin 1789'; with another large manuscript, unfortunately imperfect, first called 'L'Insulte', and then 'Placet au Public', dated 'Dux, this 2nd March, 1790,' referring to the same criticism on the 'Icosameron' and the 'Fuite des Prisons. L'Histoire de ma Fuite des Prisons de la Republique de Venise, qu'on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... copies of this chapter are found, one on the coffin of Amamu, the other on that of Horhotep. Mission. Arch. Fran. au Caire, Tom. I., p. 157, l. 335-337. They are not perfect. The papyrus of Ani contains an imperfect copy of the chapter. ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... not justify, although they are virtues and pertain to the righteousness of the Law, in so far as they are a fulfilling of the Law. So far also this obedience of the Law justifies by the righteousness of the Law. But this imperfect righteousness of the Law is not accepted by God, unless on account of faith. Accordingly it does not justify, i.e., it neither reconciles, nor regenerates, nor by itself ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... to visual hallucinations, of a diseased nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy, seemingly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... possibility of error; while, on the other, was the curious fact that no such island—not even a rock, or indeed shoal water—appeared on the chart in the position indicated. This circumstance, coupled with my knowledge of the imperfect character of the instruments in use by navigators of the period at which the cryptogram had been written, caused me now to experience no little curiosity and anxiety as to what the approaching daylight ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... had I stayed there very long, I should have become purblind, and that would have been a great misfortune, for I have heard men say that a stone-blind horse was safer to drive than one which had imperfect sight, as it generally makes them very timid. However, I escaped without any permanent injury to my sight, and was sold to a large ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... presumptuous in a foreigner to give an opinion against such high authority; but, "what can we reason but from what we know?" and truth compels me to say, I cannot subscribe to this opinion. My own observation, imperfect though it be, has led to a different conclusion. I believe there are thousands, even among those who throng the Tuileries, who would hasten to throw off the mask at the first serious misfortune that ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which the public has imperfect knowledge, public opinion is as likely to be erroneous as is the opinion of an individual equally uninformed. To hold otherwise is to hold that wisdom can be got by combining many ignorances. A man who knows nothing of algebra can not be assisted in the solution ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the same word differently misrepresented. Cook writes it Taoneroa, and Rutherford Takomardo. The slightest examination of the vocabularies of barbarous tongues, which have been collected by voyagers and travellers, will convince every one of the extremely imperfect manner in which the ear catches sounds to which it is unaccustomed, and of the mistakes to which this and other causes give rise, in every attempt which is made to take down the words of a language from the native pronunciation, by a person who does ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... whole ought not to be—that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world.' This charge was in fact based on a careless reading, or an imperfect recollection, of the twentieth discourse in 'Sermons on Subjects of the Day.' The discourse in question is a somewhat nauseous glorification of the servile temper, but it only says that the meekness ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... animated, and are in a Capacity of exerting their Charms: And those who seem to have been neglected by her, like Models wrought in haste, are capable, in a great measure, of finishing what She has left imperfect. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for my imperfect geographical knowledge, but the cyar-man was immovable. No pardoning look stole over his big red face, which was of the size and complexion of a newly cut ham. Nor would he enter into conversation with the inquiring stranger. He cursed his horse with a copiousness which showed his power of imagination, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... chestnuts; take them out of the shells; reject all imperfect ones; keep the large pieces aside; pound the crumbs and most broken pieces with an ounce of butter till very smooth; then mix in a small cup of cream two ounces of butter and one ounce of powdered sugar; put the whole into a double boiler, and stir in ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... to one of the native in the imperfect jumble of Otaheitan and English with which the white men had learned to communicate with the natives. Ohoo understood, and at once went to the bow of the boat, the head of which was now directed towards a place in the cliffs where there seemed to be a small bay ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... important for us as we proceed with our subject. Air is absolutely necessary for combustion; and, what is more, I must have you understand that fresh air is necessary, or else we should be imperfect in our reasoning and our experiments. Here is a jar of air. I place it over a candle, and it burns very nicely in it at first, shewing that what I have said about it is true; but there will soon be a change. See how the flame is drawing upwards, presently fading, and at last going out. And ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... of one of the vessels, the Pinta, threw all possible obstacles in the way of her being fitted out. The caulkers performed their work in an imperfect manner, and even some of the seamen who had at first volunteered repented of their hardihood, and ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... is, that the prophet, when, in his inward vision, he sees the divine judgments not remaining and stopping at Samaria, but poured out like a desolating torrent over Judah and Jerusalem, suddenly sinks his own consciousness in that of his suffering people. We have thus here before us an imperfect symbolical action, similar to that more finished one which occurs in Is. xx. 3, 4, and which can be explained only by a deeper insight into the nature of prophecy, according to which the dramatic character is inseparable ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... named Van Diemen's Land. Was it an island, or did it join on to New Holland? There were also many islands of the Pacific still to be explored and correctly charted, the map of Eastern Asia was imperfect, and the whole of the coastline of North-Western America was ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... a brief and Imperfect description of this wonderful steam man, as it appeared on its first visit to ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... a common means of communication therefore has long been recognized; and about that time some one had invented a somewhat imperfect method of universal speech, with the idea of having everybody learn it, and so be able to converse with the inhabitants of all lands without the well-nigh impossible task of learning five, or ten, or fifty ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both natural ability and training is imperfect. For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... determination, sensation attains a higher dignity: it is more than has been seen in it before, for it includes in itself the future concept of the understanding in an unconscious form, nay, it is itself an imperfect thought, a thought in process of becoming. Sensation and thought are not different in kind, and if the former is called a passive state, still passivity is nothing other than diminished activity. Both are spontaneous; thought is merely spontaneous ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... have operated for fifty years to produce Negro criminals will some day, I trust, be traced without fear or bias to their source. I do not pretend to possess any scientific qualification for such a task, but I do intend in these imperfect remarks to try to indicate in outline merely the dismal stream of these causes during the last half century, hoping thereby to cast a little light on a dark and difficult subject: namely, how out of hostile and unequal social, industrial and political conditions Negro ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke
... already made up his mind that he would have to go through the usual cross-questioning in regard to his father and family; he had even forlornly thought of inventing some innocent details to fill out his imperfect and unsatisfactory recollection. But, glancing up, he was surprised to find that his elderly cousin was as embarrassed as he was, Flynn, as usual, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Religion, with its powerful motives and its wide range of consolatory and soothing thoughts and images, has much power in this sphere when it does not take a morbid form and intensify instead of alleviating sorrow; and the steady exercise of the will gives us some real and increasing, though imperfect, control over the current of our feelings as well as of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the quarters of the hind that lay upon it. Agesilaus took this very ill, and without further sacrifice immediately sailed away, highly displeased with the Boeotians, and much discouraged in his mind at the omen, boding to himself an unsuccessful voyage, and an imperfect issue of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... mistake in displaying so much cleverness. The commissary regarded me with astonishment, and I thought a slight suspicion entered his official mind....Oh! scarcely that, for the photographs distributed broadcast by the police department were too imperfect; they presented an Arsene Lupin so different from the one he had before him, that he could not possibly recognize me by it. But, all the same, he ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... should have been torn away from its doting parents, who have thus imperfectly expressed their anguish on the tomb; it would appear hard that their delight, their solace, the object of their daily care, of their waking thoughts, of their last imperfect recollections as they sank into sleep, of their only dreams, should thus have been taken from them; yet did I know them, and Heaven was just and merciful. The child had weaned them from their God; they lived but in him; ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... live to a good old age, which is improbable, as many years lie behind me as before me. I have lived half my life, and perhaps more than half my life. I have realised part of my worldly ambition. I have made many good resolutions, and kept one or two of them in k more or less imperfect manner. I cannot, as a commonsense person, hope to keep a larger proportion of good resolutions in the future than I have kept in the past. I have tried to understand and sympathise with my fellow creatures, and though I have not entirely ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... elated to a degree. We had sent for a little ale for him, but were informed he was not accustomed to drink much of any strong liquor. After a glass, Herbert recited with great gesture and action, but in a very imperfect manner, the Montem ode; and then for a few minutes seemed quite exhausted. During this exhibition my friend Transit was engaged in sketching his portrait, a circumstance that appeared to give great pleasure to the wife and daughter, who earnestly requested, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... by a spring-lever, left the damnable mark upon the skin in deep, rich purple characters. The surface of the branding instrument was peculiarly soft and yielding, so that when, by the automatic inking, the mark was made, there was never an imperfect sign, but every character was truly formed. The ink used, claimed to be absolutely indelible, and those who had tried it, more than two years before, had found no break in any single line or curve if ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... will follow successively in this place. The name or sound of the character is placed immediately after it, expressed in such others as are supposed to be most familiar; and, in the method made use of for conveying this information, the Chinese have discovered some faint and very imperfect idea of alphabetic writing, by splitting the monosyllabic sound into a dissyllable, and again compressing the dissyllable into a simple sound. One instance will serve to explain this method. Suppose the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... time of the empire, was dissoluble almost at pleasure; the father and mother had not the same relation to their children; the woman, if detected in adultery, was severely punished; the man, in the same case, was not punished at all. The "correlation of their entire lives" was, therefore, very imperfect. The sense of individuam vitae consuetudinem is very uncertain. It could not have meant merely the exclusive conjugal relation of each to the other, although such was the sense given to the words in the church. The law contained no specification of the mutual rights ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... people. The only effect on the boss was to evoke a contemptuous "E-r-r-r!" and an injunction, in Chicago vernacular, to get out of that as soon as they liked—or sooner. And, by way of punctuation, he turned to expectorate copiously, but with imperfect precision at a box of sawdust which was littered with cigar stumps. The interview was over—he wished them to understand that. He turned to ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... concretion, purely a trick of the chemistry of the deposit. A Pterichthys in Dr. Emslie's collection struck me as different in its proportions from any I had previously seen, though, from its state of rather imperfect preservation, I hesitated to pronounce absolutely upon the fact. I cannot now doubt, however, that it belonged to a species not figured nor described at the time; but which, under the name of Pterichthys quadratus, forms in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... who knew Winslow's Journal only by imperfect extracts, erroneously states that the men put on board the vessels were sent away immediately. They remained at Grand Pre several weeks, and were then sent off at intervals ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... in "The Essays of Elia" volume which had not appeared in the "London Magazine"—is a pretty bit about "Valentine's Day." This is followed by an inquiry into the existence of "Imperfect Sympathies," the writer declaring that he had been trying all his life—without success—to like Scotsmen, and that he had the same imperfect sympathy with Jews. The Scotsmen are too precise, too matter of fact at once in their own statements and those to which alone they will ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... "It is imperfect; and long must so remain. But we make not the miserable many support the happy few. Nor by annulling reason's laws, seek to breed equality, by breeding anarchy. In all things, equality is not for all. Each has ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms. In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California mule-driver would be silenced, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... even vivisection. The original writings of the chief men of this school have not been preserved, but there is a possibility that any day a papyrus maybe found which will supplement the scrappy and imperfect knowledge afforded us by Pliny, Celsus and Galen. The two most distinguished names are Herophilus—who, Pliny says, has the honor of being the first physician "who searched into ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. It is not known by whom the travels were actually performed, neither can their exact date be ascertained, as the commencement of the MS. which was translated by Renaudot was imperfect; but it appears to have been written in the 237th year of the Hegira, or in the year 851 of the Christian era. Though entitled the travels of two Mahomedans, the travels seem to have been mostly performed by one person only; the latter portion being chiefly a commentary ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... high-thoughted, pure-lived, unique course that was run in those sequestered vales. The closer one gets to the man, the greater he proves, the truer, the simpler; and it is a benediction to the race, amid so many fragmentary and jagged and imperfect lives, to have one so rounded and completed, so ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... from Sikyatki is especially rich in picture writing, and imperfect as these designs are as a means of transmitting a knowledge of manners, customs, and religious conceptions, they can be interpreted with ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... masters, and were brought into notice now by one citizen and now by another, demonstrating their inconstancy, their little knowledge, and their even smaller understanding, since, having perfection in their grasp, they brought forward the imperfect ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... of Lincoln's writings that has been preserved is a communication to the voters of Sangamon County in 1832, when Lincoln was for the first time a candidate for the State legislature. It is significant of Lincoln's imperfect command of English at that time that "some of the grammatical errors" were corrected by a friend before the circular was issued. Although this circumstance makes it impossible for us to judge exactly what his style ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the v is already represented by the ff, so on Sir James's assumption coffee must stand for kahv-ve, which is unlikely. The change from a to o, in my opinion, is better accounted for as an imperfect appreciation. The exact sound of a in Arabic and other Oriental languages is that of the English short U, as in "cuff." This sound, so easy to us, is a great stumbling-block to other nations. I judge that Dutch koffie and kindred forms are imperfect attempts at the notation of a vowel which ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not uncommonly developed a phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by placing two mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed. In this case, particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness of Mary. The Mary Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened to her own frantic purpose—a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of penetrating that purpose. Sibyl sat there believing that she was projecting the image of herself that she desired to project, never ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... to have a will and character of his own, and become mere clay in your hands. You will have so completely moulded him to your likeness, that your household will consist of only one person instead of two, and that one necessarily imperfect. You will regret it bitterly; but when at last you deign to open your eyes, the evil will be past cure. Do what we will, women do not, and never will, possess the qualities which are characteristic of men, and these qualities are absolutely indispensable to family life. Already Macumer, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... philosophers looked upon Nature as a gradual development and as still in process of change. In the suggestions of Empedocles, to take the best instance, there were "four sparks of truth,—first, that the development of life was a gradual process; second, that plants were evolved before animals; third, that imperfect forms were gradually replaced (not succeeded) by perfect forms; fourth, that the natural cause of the production of perfect forms was the extinction of the imperfect."[2] But the fundamental idea of one stage ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... elucidation of the Antarctic problem was more than ever desirable. In the Australian Quadrant, the broad geographical features of the Ross Sea area were well known, but of the remainder and greater portion of the tract only vague and imperfect reports could ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to the tree. Man's logic, and therefore necessarily imperfect, you would say, but for once I stick to it." I spoke lightly and reminiscently, so as to chase the gloom from her mind, and she was ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that the obligations I refer to are imperfect obligations in the sense that no sanctions are provided for against any party which shall have failed loyally and effectively to co-operate in protecting the Covenant and resisting every act of aggression. It should, however, be emphasised that such a State would ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... Godwin conscientiously trying to bring in an imperfect science to assist him in the difficult task of developing his infant's mind, in place of the watchful love of an intelligent mother, who would check the first symptoms of ill-temper, be firm against ill-placed determination, encourage childish imagination, and not let the ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... colds is due to abnormalities in the nose or throat. Nasal obstruction is a very common condition. The nose, like the eye, is usually an imperfect organ. These obstructions are often the result of adenoids in childhood, which interfere with the proper development of the internal nasal structures. Malformation of the teeth and dental arches in childhood are frequent ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... ambition and self-consciousness. For it will not do to dismiss the Northern poems on the Volsung story as a mere set of popular variations on common themes. The more carefully they are examined, the less will be the part assigned to chance and imperfect recollection in producing the variety of the poems. The variation, where there are different presentations of the same subject, is not produced by accident or the casual and faulty repetition of a conventional type of poem, but by ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... On those the wall was to enclose, Alive, within the tomb: But stopped, because that woful maid, Gathering her powers, to speak essayed. Twice she essayed, and twice in vain; Her accents might no utterance gain; Nought but imperfect murmurs slip From her convulsed and quivering lip; 'Twixt each attempt all was so still, You seemed to hear a distant rill - 'Twas ocean's swells and falls; For though this vault of sin and fear Was to the sounding surge so near, A tempest there ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... and much more than in the Trough of the Clyde, a great portion of the ground was uncultivated, but the hills being less wild, the river more stately, and the ground not heaved up so irregularly and tossed about, the imperfect cultivation was the more to be lamented, particularly as there were so many houses near the river. In a small enclosure by the wayside is a pillar erected to the memory of Dr. Smollett, who was born in a village at a little distance, which we ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... perfectly himself what he does without the deliberation of reason, since the principal part of man does nothing therein: wherefore such is not perfectly a human act; and consequently it cannot be a perfect act of virtue or of sin, but is something imperfect of that kind. Therefore such movement of the sensuality as forestalls the reason, is a venial sin, which is something imperfect in the genus of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Even so imperfect, not to say arbitrary, a classification as I have been able to attempt, excludes a number of Mr. Browning's minor poems; for its necessary condition was the presence of some distinctive mood of thought or feeling ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of their imperfect civilization and anxious to improve themselves by contact with the Lamas. As a nation they wished to repeat their past victories over China, and individual chiefs wished to make themselves the head of the nation. People and princes alike ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... great many more questions to the lad, and elicited from him, in his imperfect English, the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... imperfect conspectus of a vast territory I should be sorry to say anything that can raise false expectations. Our country is very big; and though scarcely any part of it has not some advantages, and notwithstanding the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... though the rains may fall, and the floods and the winds beat upon it, your house will rest on its massive support in absolute security, never showing the ugly cracks and other signs of weakness that spring from imperfect foundations. Perhaps not, but it will be far more likely to do so than if the first course of stones in the bed of gravel or hard pan are no larger than you can easily lift. You cannot give these huge bowlders such firm resting-place as ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... very favourably. 'They learn French and history and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.' This was said from the standard of Rugby and Balliol, and the method that Clough calls imperfect had merits of its own. The pupil lost much in a curriculum that had a certain rawness about it, compared with the traditional culture that was at that moment (1820) just beginning to acquire a fresh hold within ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... this judgment as a whole must not blind us to the fragment of truth which it included. England's literature was, in many respects, very imperfect and chaotic. Her "singing masons" had already built her "roofs of gold"; Hooker and one or two other great prose-writers stood like towers: but the less exalted portions of the edifice were still half hewn. Some literatures, like the Latin and ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... remembrances of the past as her sister's confused and weakened memory was able to recall. The terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained was presented in fragments, sadly incoherent in themselves, and widely detached from each other. Imperfect as the revelation was, it must nevertheless be recorded here before this explanatory narrative closes with the events of the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... reasoning out not only correct actions, but also faulty ones, and our readers are earnestly advised to make such faulty drawings in several stages of action. By this course they will educate the eye to discriminate not only as to correct actions, but also to detect those which are imperfect, and we believe most watchmakers will admit that in many instances it takes much longer to locate a fault than to remedy it ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... what he says. Let us therefore see how this celebrated author describes the general or abstract idea of a triangle. 'It must be (says he) neither oblique nor rectangular, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenum; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is somewhat imperfect that cannot exist; an idea, wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together' ESSAY ON HUM. UNDERSTAND. B. iv. C. 7. S.9. This is the idea which he thinks needful for the enlargement of knowledge, which is the subject of mathematical demonstration, and without which ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... of St. Roch seem to be in favour of a less severe temperature in winter; but so many of the species of mammalia, as well as of the land and freshwater shells, are common to both formations, and our information respecting the entire fauna is still so imperfect, that it would be premature to pretend to settle this question in the present state of our knowledge. We must be content with the conclusion (and it is one of no small interest), that when Man first inhabited this part of Europe, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... O negligent female, imperfect housekeeper, Though faultless in figure and charming of face, In ruffles of ribbon and trailings of lace Usurping the part of a common street-sweeper, You never can pose as a type of your race In frowsy appearance ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... then and later in the smoking-room from Jaffery alone, a prodigious amount of information about Albania which, if I had imprisoned it in writing that same evening as the perfect diarist is supposed to do, would have been vastly useful to me at the present moment. But I am as a diarist hopelessly imperfect. I stare, now, as I write, at the bald, uninspiring page. This is my entry for ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... drawing a long bow," he said more soberly. "You employ femininity's imperfect warrant to shoot at random and trust her gods to put something in the way of getting hit. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... mouth and face were small and rabbit-shaped. Instead of a nose, it had a fleshy growth 3/4 inch long by 1/4 inch broad, directed upward at an angle of 45 degrees. The space between this and the mouth was occupied by a body resembling an adult eye. Within this were two small, imperfect eyes which moved freely while life lasted (ten minutes). The child's integument was covered with dark, downy, short hair. The woman recovered and afterward bore two ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... from, he said it was taken direct from the arm of a deformed person, who had employed one of the Italian moulders to make the cast. It was a curious case, it should seem, of one beautiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly imperfect—I have repeatedly noticed this little gentleman's use of his left arm. Can he have furnished the model I ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... obsolete, and even for Christian devotion a new era has arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The membrana is wanted now for a knightly romance—for "my Cid," or Coeur de Lion; for Sir Tristrem, or Lybaeus Disconus. In this way, by means of the imperfect chemistry known to the mediaeval period, the same roll has served as a conservatory for three separate generations of flowers and fruits, all perfectly different, and yet all specially adapted to the wants of the successive possessors. The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend, the knightly romance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... inconvenience of a meeting of different gauges (even if we could assume their practicability, which in the present state of experience we should not be warranted in doing,) as anything better than partial and imperfect palliatives ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... the fact, Dante, whose eyes have been fixed on Beatrice, has during her exposition been wafted up to the third heaven, that of Venus (revolved by Princedoms). In the planet of love—where Beatrice glows with increased beauty—are innumerable souls "imperfect through excess of love," which are grouped in constantly revolving circles. All at once one of these luminous spirits approaches Dante, and, after expressing great readiness to serve him, introduces himself as Charles Martel, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the condition of the African, and a deep impression of the importance of this country to Great Britain, in a commercial point of view, have actuated me in obtruding myself upon the public; and before I take my leave, I earnestly entreat a deliberate investigation of the imperfect system of operation, I have recommended in the foregoing pages. If I have not been sufficiently perspicuous, I trust the shafts of criticism will be enfeebled by the consideration, that a commercial education and pursuit cannot claim ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... believe that this ambition appealed to her. Nay, at times it certainly did so, for she liked the brilliant and the commanding. On the other hand, it seemed imperfect as an ideal of life. In its undercurrents her thought was always more or ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion. It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the church, determined ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... subalterns of the king. Mutual good-will was fostered by the money and troops which the southern and less exposed colonies sent to their sister commonwealths on the frontier. In these and numberless minor ways a community of sentiment was engendered which, imperfect as it was, yet prepared the way for that hearty co-operation which was to carry the infant States through the fiery trial ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... one thread and hurried seizures of another, which though one is dreaming very distinctly, supply some vague mental comfort, since even to the sleeper they are reminders that his experiences are not solid but mere phantasies woven by imperfect consciousness and incomplete control of thought. It was not thus that Morris dreamed; his dream was of the solid and sober texture ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... to be quoted from the first imperfect edition of "The Spanish Tragedy;" in the later (corrected) impression it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. Duveen found confusion, brewed tea and reported the conversation ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... miscarriages are many: Disease of the embryo, imperfect fetal development, some constitutional disease of the mother, a faulty position of the uterus, or it may result from something unusual about the lining of the uterus such as an endometritis—an ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... a thorough specimen of the not-guilty-but-don't-do-it-again order of judgment. It stated that the Home Secretary saw no reason to doubt the substantial guilt of Eleanor Owen, but that as, in his opinion, the evidence was of an imperfect character, and failed to throw a clear light upon all the circumstances of the case, including the motive for the crime, he had advised her Majesty to commute the sentence to one ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... is necessary in getting blackberries ready to serve. They should simply be looked over carefully, so that all imperfect ones and all foreign matter may be removed, and then washed ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... hardly raise my eyes to look at my neighbour, and when I wanted to speak a word it seemed that my tongue was not free as usual; even my throat was as if it were choked; the articulation of the sounds was imperfect. It was evidently the same with the rest of the priests. Instead, then, of the noisy and cheerful conversation of the other meals, there were only a few insignificant words exchanged with ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... reluctantly forgive it in women of genius; but in ordinary folk, no. These are the strong-minded women; ordinary folk, who make a vigorous protest against one or two of the minor mistakes of society, instead of lifting the whole: I should call these, women of imperfect sanity. It is a small matter that you should protest against some small maladjustment or folly; but it is a great matter that you should be perfectly sane and well-balanced. Now education helps sanity. It shows the proportion ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... the centuries that have rolled over tide-worn Rouen. Let it be said at once that the "Old Rouen" you will first see is almost completely a French Renaissance city of the sixteenth century. Of older buildings you will find only slight and imperfect remnants, and as you pass monstrosities more modern you will involuntarily close your eyes. But the remnants are there, slight as they are; and they are worth your search for them, as we try together to reconstruct the ancient city of which they ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... asked you if it was shady," I cried; and then it occurred to me that, in spite of my studies at Brandscombe and out here, my Hindustani was very imperfect, for the man smiled in a deprecatory way which seemed to mean that he hoped my lord would not be angry with him for ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... admired," he says, "the prudence and philosophical reserve shown by M. Arago in resisting the temptations to give a theory of the effect he had discovered, so long as he could not devise one which was perfect in its application, and in refusing to assent to the imperfect theories of others." Now, however, the time for theory had come. Faraday saw mentally the rotating disk, under the operation of the magnet, flooded with his induced currents, and from the known laws of interaction between currents and magnets he hoped to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... his own thoughts to other people who are perfect strangers, and cause them to design and carry out certain actions in accordance with his plans. You are incredulous? Mademoiselle, this power is in every one of us; only we do not cultivate it, because our education is yet so imperfect. To prove the truth of what I say, I, though I have only advanced a little way in the cultivation of my own electric force, even I have influenced YOU. You cannot deny it. By my thought, impelled to you, you saw clearly my picture ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... two thousand years later, agreed in regarding the pupa as a second egg. The egg laid by a butterfly had not, according to Harvey, enough store of food to provide for the building-up of a complex organism like the parent; only the imperfect larva could be produced from it. The larva was regarded as feeding voraciously for the purpose of acquiring a large store of nutritive material, after which it was believed to revert to the state of a second but far larger egg, the pupa, from which ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... farmer, in moderate circumstances; and now lives in the county of Erie, a short distance from Buffalo. The limited means of the family prevented the old gentleman from giving his son Millard any other or better education than was obtained in the imperfect common schools of ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... saith Sir Robert, "so far gone from original righteousness, that our imperfect nature hath ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... signifies the son of my sorrow, and Benjamin the son of days, or one born in the father's old age, Genesis 44:20, I suspect Josephus's present copies to be here imperfect, and suppose that, in correspondence to other copies, he wrote that Rachel called her son's name Benoni, but his father called him Benjamin, Genesis 35:18. As for Benjamin, as commonly explained, the son of the right hand, it makes no sense at all, and seems to be a gross modern error only. The ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... style, he must not be understood too literally. As a matter of fact, the rubato is too important an element of expression not to have been partially anticipated in the works of some of Chopin's predecessors, just as Wagner's leading motives had imperfect prototypes in the works of some preceding composers. As early as 1602, the Italian, Caccini, describes what he calls the "Stile Nobile, in which the singer," he says, "emancipates himself from the fetters of the measure, by prolonging ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... and mill constitute only a false and imperfect rhyme. Sound for sound, the letters f and m (the parts preceding the vowel) are different. This is as it should be. Also, sound for sound, l and ll (the parts following the vowel) are identical; and this is as it should be also: but ee ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... to make a brief preliminary remark or two which may render clear any after-evidence which you may call upon me to give. At the time when certain gentlemen tendered their evidence on Shetland truck before the Commission at Edinburgh, I read the brief, necessarily imperfect, and probably inaccurate reports of the same which appeared in the Edinburgh weekly papers. I also read some articles and letters which appeared in the newspapers at the time. About seven months ago I read, as printed I think in a Parliamentary blue book, the report ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... delivery of parcels. The parcels arrived broken and partly or wholly emptied of their contents. So it was, we may remember, with parcels intended for English prisoners in Germany. The probability is that in both cases imperfect packing was responsible for the damage. (Cf. pp. 6, 8.) In the report just cited, De Marval states that, in general, there has been great improvement in the lodging of the prisoners, and that some bad camps (Vitre, Lorient, Belle-Ile) have been broken up (January, 1915). Here ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... punishment is put unto the man, not of his own election and free choice but by force, so that he would fain avoid it and falleth in it against his will, and therefore it seemeth worthy of no thanks; yet the great goodness of almighty God so far surpasseth the poor imperfect goodness of man, that though men make their reckoning here one with another such, God yet of his high bounty in man's account alloweth it toward him far otherwise. For though a man fall in his pain by his own fault, and also at first ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... command, but thine own judgment; thou wouldst not do the will of Heaven, communicated through thy best friend, to whom thou owest thine all; but thou wouldst observe the blinded dictates of thine own imperfect reason. Hear me, Roland! a lot calls thee—solicits thee—demands thee—the proudest to which man can be destined, and it uses the voice of thine earliest, thy best, thine only friend—Wilt thou resist it? Then go thy way—leave ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... it much resembles the Chinese ke. They have also many other instruments, especially various kinds of imperfect guitars, a few rude violins, and the usual outfit of trumpets, reed pipes and instruments of percussion. Like all the other barbarous nations, they have never had harmony until since they began to ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... time rain began to fall. It soon ceased, and a stillness like death succeeded the pattering sound of the falling drops. On a sudden the dark clouds seen before in the distance covered the sky, except in the zenith, where an obscure circle of imperfect light was visible, while a dismal darkness gathered round the ships. The midshipmen of the frigate, and several others, had begun ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Secretary of War, of the position of Quartermaster-General, was received to-day. His wife is ill, and he prefers to remain with her; besides, he doubts his qualifications—he, who was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States! He says, moreover, referring to the imperfect ordnance stores of his brigade, that there can be no remedy for this so long as Col. G. is the Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. So Col. Myers is to be disposed of at last, and Col. G. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... and when softened, to assume a {new} form. Presently after, when they were grown larger, a milder nature, too, was conferred on them, so that some shape of man might be seen {in them}, yet though but imperfect; and as if from the marble commenced {to be wrought}, not sufficiently distinct, and very like to rough statues. Yet that part of them which was humid with any moisture, and earthy, was turned into ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the succession in the order of nature—of course the younger being presumed to have survived the elder.—(Code Civ. Sec.Sec. 720-722.) It has been objected, that, though these rules are generally equitable, they are imperfect: for a man above sixty ought surely to be held to have survived a mere infant; and no provision is made for the case of persons under 15, and under 60 years of age perishing together. By the Mohammedan law of India, "when relations perish together, it is to be presumed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... efforts, in its little journeys from one patch of grass to another, by a hundred obstacles, which, trifles though they might be to animals of a higher species, were yet of fatal importance to creatures constituted like itself, he began to find an imperfect, yet remarkable analogy between his own destiny and that of this small unit of creation. He felt that, in its petty sphere, the short life of the humble animal before him must have been the prey of crosses and disappointments, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins |
