"Imperfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought, I considered that it took its rise from those narrow conceptions which we are apt to entertain of the Divine nature. We ourselves cannot attend to many different objects at the same time. If we are careful to inspect some things, we must of course neglect others. This imperfection which we observe in ourselves is an imperfection that cleaves in some degree to creatures of the highest capacities, as they are creatures, that is, beings of finite and limited natures. The presence ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... handiwork; and besides the indecent haste, so incompatible with thoroughness, the misrepresentations of Smollet are patent. Goldsmith, as unambitious in research as he was genial in expression, made so agreeable a story, that, with all its imperfection, his sketch still finds readers; while the rarely quoted work of Henry most conveniently enumerates, at the end of each reign, details economical and social which identify and illustrate both period and progress in Anglo-Saxon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... implanted 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... necessary to mention also, that what he says immediately before, in allusion to the discoveries made by Captain Furaeaux, must submit to correction. That officer committed some errors, owing, it would appear, to the imperfection of preceding accounts; and he left undetermined the interesting question as to the existence of a connection betwixt Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. The opinion which he gave as to this point, on very insufficient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... in itself so beautiful speech, the least explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakespeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... undoubtedly do so at the present day, were the conditions possible. In 1853 Mr. Maslin owned, with his brother, a one-fifth interest in ten gravel claims at Pike Flat near Grass Valley. On the ground of alleged imperfection of location of a portion of these claims, they ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... children that we find the quality of charity sufficiently strong to forgive deformity. The natural instinct is to turn away from any physical imperfection. It is the instinct of the race for the preservation of its forms. We call these forms beauty and the departure from them ugliness, and it is from "beauty's rose," as Shakespeare says, that "we desire increase." ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the pipe home. As all the above conditions are not found on the job, threads are made tight by the use of red or white lead and oil. The lead is put on the thread and when the thread is made up the lead will have been forced into any imperfection that may be in the threads and the joint will then be water-tight. White lead and oil should be used on nickel-plated pipe as other pipe compounds are too conspicuous and look badly. A pipe compound should be used with discretion, for if too much is put on a burr ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... dinner upstairs—a first course of mutton chops and potatoes, cooked to a degree of imperfection only attained in an English kitchen. The sour French wine was still on the good woman's mind. "What would you choose to drink, sir?" she asked. Mr. Mountjoy seemed to feel no interest in what he might have to drink. "We have ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... of their swift judgment of expectation. Now, before we treat the witness to some reproach like untruth, inattention, silliness, or something equally nice, *we had better consider whether his story is not true, and whether the difficulty might not really lie in the imperfection of our own sensory processes. This involves partly what Liebmann has called "anthropocentric vision,'' i. e., seeing with man as the center of things. Liebmann further asserts, "that we see things only in perspective sizes, i. e., only from an angle of vision varying with their approach, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... resource against a rainy day, he goes to some wild spot—the wilder the better—where he roves at will from point to point of interest and beauty, and spends his time in reading, sketching, and—alas, for human imperfection!—shooting. These vagrant habits first brought him into the neighborhood of Donaldson Manor, and he had for two successive summers hunted with the Colonel and sketched with the young ladies, when he was invited to join their ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... very sincerely protested that Stella and imperfection could not be named together, except as contrasts, for he truly thought so. She sighed, and then smiled, and the colonel cantering up cut short the interesting conversation—interesting to the two persons ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... giant's clothes. Therefore, let not Shakespeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him in an age which is more refined, if we imitate him so ill, that we copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings, which in his was an imperfection. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the low short growls behind him, the cause of the imperfection: they wanted to dance all round the tree, but Lina would not permit them to come on ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... you, I would endeavour to become imperfectly well; a little imperfection in that direction might make ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... it stands. That is the foundation of our inquiry; we have no right to first cut it about at our will, to omit this, to alter that, to find traces of two, three, or more original documents, and so to split up the narrative as it stands into a number of imperfect fragments, which by their very imperfection may seem to be more ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... and motives which we are accustomed to express in the general term of chivalry was the mediaeval ideal of virtue, and as such was in practice inevitably subject to imperfection and inconsistency. The Roman virtus was simply courage. Chivalry meant courage and skill in arms, united to gentle birth, to courtesy, to gallantry, and to a faithful observance of the laws of combat; the whole inspired by military glory, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... no sense of humour. The more highly you extol any one, the more eagerly will your audience accept anything you may have to say against him. Perfection is unloved in this imperfect world, but for imperfection comes instant sympathy. Any excuse is good enough for exalting the bad or stupid brother of us, but any stick is a valued weapon against him who has the effrontery to have been by Heaven better graced than we. And what could match for deadliness the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... long as left to itself, of anything but 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 ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... more faith! What though the means be weakness? With God supreme, the victory must be ours! From imperfection he works out completeness; From feeble means makes overwhelming powers. How shall this be? The knowledge is not given; Each to his duty in the field of Right; Sure as th' Almighty ruleth earth and heaven, His arm will do ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... and evil, the high and the low, and it is well that we should; but here is a man who aims to take absolute ground, and to look at the world as God himself might look at it, without partiality or discriminating,—it is all good, and there is no failure or imperfection in the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... man, "the flatness of the earth be not greater then Huyghens supposed, the margin between the degrees of the meridian measured in France, and the first degrees of the meridian near the Equator, would not be too considerable to be attributed to possible errors of the observers, or to the imperfection of instruments. But, if the observation can be made at the Pole, the difference between the first degree of the meridian nearest the equatorial line, and, for example, the sixty-sixth degree, which crosses the polar circle, will be great enough, even by Huyghens' hypothesis, to show itself irresistibly, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... said tenderly, "when it is to that very imperfection of our enjoyment that we are indebted for its continuance? I loved thee a few minutes since, now I love thee a thousand times more, and perhaps I should love thee less if thou hadst carried my enjoyment ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... state that it has never been my privilege to be united to any body more desirous of keeping simply to the one great object of their association—the total and immediate abolition of slavery and the slave-trade. I am persuaded that all candid minds, making due allowance for the imperfection pertaining to human associations, will feel their confidence in the future integrity of that committee increased in proportion as they closely investigate their past acts; and that, even when the wisdom of their course ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... known many fine geniuses have that imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, not so much as write one clean sentence. 'Tis worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. At a distance, he is admired; but bring him hand to hand, he is a cripple. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the specific rightness or wrongness of opinion in the intellectual order. Let us condemn error 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature, in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false, that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me because of a certain imperfection of my nature. But this could not be the case with-the idea of a nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and, because it is not less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of, and dependence on the less perfect, ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... 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, running north-east to south-west ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... an ordinary man or woman, implies at least modesty, and always procures a kind quarter from the censorious. Who will ridicule a personal imperfection in one that seems conscious, that it is an imperfection? Who ever said an anchoret was poor? But who would spare so very absurd a wrong-head, as should bestow tinsel to make his deformity the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... think they are mocking spiritual things when it is the imperfection of material nature, (which they set so much store by,) that provokes ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... is 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 at the time of the menstrual flow, accompanied with troublesome headache. The correction ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... sawdust, and yet are excellent playthings; 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again their dim, blue billows, ridge after ridge interminable, beyond purple valleys full of sleep, "in which it seemed always afternoon." Miles and miles away, where the lift of earth meets the stoop of sky, I discern an imperfection in the tint, a faint graying of the blue above the main range—the smoke of an ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... curious hereafter to hear what you think of distribution during the glacial and preceding warmer periods. I am so glad you do not think the Chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record exaggerated; I was more fearful about this chapter than about ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... for they would look for the like concession at other times. The Londoners were not peculiar in their desire to have their own officers, according to the earl's own showing, for the letter continues:—"You and my lords all know the imperfection at this time, how few leaders you have, and the gentlemen of the counties here are likewise very loth to have any placed with them to command under them, but well pleased to have some expert man with them to give them advice." Two years later a code of regulations for ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... 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 utmost ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... take so great a latitude in their mode of speaking, that I have sometimes observed four or five different terminations of the same word. This is a circumstance very puzzling at first to a stranger, and marks a great imperfection in their language. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... into the future life, and will have none of a "joy which is crystallised for ever." Felt imperfection is a proof of a higher birthright:[400] if we have arrived at the completion of our nature as men, then "begins anew a tendency to God." This faith in unending progress as the law of life is very characteristic of our own age.[401] It ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... habits. But it is so discouraging a thing to have my monitress so very good!—I protest I know not how to look up at her! Now, as I am thinking, if I could pull her down a little nearer to my own level; that is to say, could prevail upon her to do something that would argue imperfection, something to repent of; we should jog on much more equally, and be better able to comprehend one another: and so the comfort would be mutual, and the remorse not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... deserted by her partisans to the last. Two 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; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... but this very imperfection it is which urges us to arise and seek for the Isles of the Immortals. What we lack recalls the fullness. The soul has seen a brighter day than this and a sun which never sets. Hence the retrospect: "Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... is to awake in heaven; to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This we all believe; and may we never be moved away from this cheering, animating hope. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our feelings and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they grow; the seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach maturity. It is instructive to notice how men who have had the very best advantages, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... grown-up frogs; But do not undertake the work Of Nature till she prove a shirk; 'T is not by jumps that she advances, But wins her way by circumstances: Pray, wait awhile, until you know We're so contrived as not to grow; Let Nature take her own direction, And she'll absorb our imperfection; You mightn't like 'em to appear with, But we must have the things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... recreancy, her folly, seemed for the moment to come into true perspective, and to show venial and unimportant, to be limited to itself, and to be even good in its effect of humbling her to patience with all imperfection and shortcoming, even her own. She was aware of the cessation of a struggle that has never since renewed itself with the old intensity; her wishes, her propensities, ceased in that degree to represent evil ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... functionaries are principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of Dantes, who almost fancied he had to do with one gifted with supernatural powers; still hoping to find some imperfection which might bring him down to a level with human beings, he added, "Then if you were not furnished with pens, how did you manage to write the work ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... industrious to search out the merit of an author, than sagacious in discerning his errors and defects; and takes more pleasure in commending the beauties, than exposing the blemishes of a laudable writing; like Horace, in a long work, he can bear some deformities, and justly lay them on the imperfection of human nature, which is incapable of faultless productions. When an excellent drama appears in publick, and by its intrinsick worth attracts a general applause, he is not stung with envy and spleen; nor ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the extent and value of the knowledge acquired—Imperfection of data not to be forgotten ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... greatest fears, and to true penitence its best consolations; which restrains even the least approaches to guilt, and yet makes those allowances for the infirmities of our nature which the stoic pride denied to it, but which its real imperfection and the goodness of its infinitely benevolent ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... 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 their realisation ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... servants, maids and workingmen roughly, not look to all things too closely, occasionally overlook something, and for peace' sake make allowances. For it is not possible that everything be done perfectly at all times among any class of men, as long as we live on earth in imperfection. Of this St. Paul says, Colossians iv, "Masters, do unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." Therefore as the masters do not wish God to deal too sharply with them, but that many things be overlooked ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... not fall into the same error that has produced the socialist question in modern civilised states. The earth belongs to those creatures who live on it and by it in accordance with a higher law than human imperfection has framed. Therefore the soil of our earth must be no object of traffic. Its growth is inseparable from that of the body of the state. I dare not hope that it will be allotted to me or my contemporaries to solve this question, yet I shall never tire of using ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... He imagined at first, that she might perhaps be dumb: "But then," said he to himself, "can it be possible that heaven should forge a creature so beautiful, so perfect, and so accomplished, and at the same time with so great an imperfection? Were it however so, I could not love her with less passion than I do." When the king of Persia rose, he washed his hands on one side, while the fair slave washed hers on the other. He took that opportunity ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... subordinate the lives of the citizens of the state not to the common good but to his own private purposes. In modern terms, it is a simple, rough-and-ready attempt to solve that constant problem of politics, how efficient government is to be combined with popular control. This problem arises from the imperfection of human nature, apparent in rulers as well as in ruled, and if the principle which attempts to solve it be admitted as a principle of importance in the formation of the best constitution, then the starting-point of politics will be man's actual imperfection, not his ideal nature. Instead, then, ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... of one or 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 of which he was accused. It was an unfair and unjust attitude ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... 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 himself for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... tendencies of men's minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? between Christ and the world, say! Christ and the flesh?—that so very ancient antagonism between good and evil? Was there any place for imperfection in a world wherein the minutest atom, the lightest thought, could not escape from God's presence? Who should note the crime, the sin, the mistake, in the operation of that eternal spirit, which could have made no misshapen births? In ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... branch of our curriculum is gone to Sunch'ston this afternoon. He has friends who have asked him to see the dedication of the new temple, and he will not be back till Monday. I really do not know what I can do better for you than examine the boys in Counsels of Imperfection." ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... 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; ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... and prosperity make them not utterly to forget their duty, both towards God and man, as David for a season, yet it makes them careless, insolent, and in many things unmindful of those things that God chiefly craves of them; which imperfection being espied, and the danger that thereof might ensue, our heavenly Father visits the sins of his children, but with the rod of his mercy, by which they are moved to return to their God, to accuse their former negligence, and to promise better obedience in all times hereafter; as David ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... worldliness of mind and absence of warm feelings had caused to exist between my father and myself. You have seen and observed this drawback to our happiness, Ellen, or I should not have pointed out to you this single imperfection in as amiable and excellent a character as ever existed. Your uncle's favourite maxim is, 'Deeds, not words;' and well has he acted up to it himself; but his mistake is, in not perceiving that there are characters in which, without words, there can scarcely be deeds; for which sympathy ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... thought. It is "of the Father," indeed. We picture to ourselves the pure joy of God in thought. Free from so many of our cumbrous processes, free from the limitations of slow-moving time, free from all imperfection, with an instantaneous thought as is His being, the intellect that is the center of all reason revolves in its unfathomed majesty. And man thinks too. God makes him think. God gives him powers to think with, and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... 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 no tenderness or sympathy ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... The imperfection alluded to is one of which the general reader will make no great account; the second half is fitted to the first with address enough for his purposes. Intent not upon applying the dramatic gauge, but on being moved and exalted, we may peruse the tragedy without noticing that any ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... yet a twisted spine; it was an elevation of the shoulders, shortening the neck, and giving the appearance of a perpetual stoop. There was nothing disgusting or painful in it, but still it was an imperfection, causing an instinctive compassion—an involuntary "Poor ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... with any truth be called the "epitome of mankind." On the contrary, the distinguishing features of his life are its incompleteness, aimlessness, imperfection, insignificance, neglect of talents and waste of opportunities. "He saw and approved the best," says Brian Fairfax, "but did too often deteriora sequi." He is more severely but more justly judged by himself. In gay moments ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 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, but my solace. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... of chemical phenomena, that it was found possible to frame a rational definition of chemistry; and the definition of the science of life and organization is still a matter of dispute. So long as the sciences are imperfect, the definitions must partake of their imperfection; and if the former are progressive, the latter ought to be so too. As much, therefore, as is to be expected from a definition placed at the commencement of a subject, is that it should define the scope of our inquiries: and the definition which I ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... reference to morality, or the sentiments of the mind, is a quality perfectly insensible, and even inconceivable; nor can we form any distinct notion, either of its stability or translation. This imperfection of our ideas is less sensibly felt with regard to its stability, as it engages less our attention, and is easily past over by the mind, without any scrupulous examination. But as the translation of property from one person to another is a more remarkable event, the defect of our ideas becomes ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... is that this is not officially recognized. There is a hypocrisy in not recognizing the inadequacy of human eyes and ears to grasp even simple concrete facts. A timidity exists that will not allow the admission of human imperfection. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... which, in the imperfection of language, we have called words, till the unthinking actually dream they are words, but which are the shadows of the corpses of words; these word-shadows then were living powers on her lips, and subdued, as eloquence ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... into three kinds—imperfection, natural evil and moral evil—including under the last head all the physical evils that arise from human actions, as well as the evils which consists in ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... the presence of the spermatic fluid, the presence of the prepuce seems to anticipate those promptings. Circumcised boys may, in individual cases, either through precept or example, physical or mental imperfection, be found to practice onanism, but in general the practice can be asserted as being very rare among the children of circumcised races, showing the less irritability of the organs in the class; ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... be living, thinking, feeling and reasoning beings that have created butterfly, flower and man and are still constantly creating and changing them, with infinite skill, with incomprehensible ingenuity, but nevertheless with ever-recurring imperfection. And probably beings who are by no means always in harmony with one another, that fight and struggle among them, supplanting and replacing one another, whose desires, endeavors, joys and sorrows are far beyond the comprehension of insignificant individuals as we - but whose expressions ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the moral sense now goes on to show you; it is so far from being, as these Giants suppose, a proof of their superiority that they cannot see or notice things they consider beneath them—that it is, in fact, an evidence of some imperfection or defect in either their moral or intellectual structure. Just as it is a proof of our eyes being imperfect, that we cannot see the little water insects as well as a great big elephant. I am sure you will allow there is nothing to boast ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... through a severe trial. Many of the ancients explicated this severity by the fire of conflagration, which say they shall purify those souls at the day of judgment, which in this life have built upon the foundation (hay and stubble) works of folly and false opinions, states of imperfection. So St. Augustine's doctrine was: "The great fire at doomsday shall throw some into the portion of the left hand, and others shall be purified and represented on the right." And the same is affirmed by Origen and Lactantius; and St. Hilary thus expostulates: "Since we are to give ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... dogmatize on a point like this is obviously very dangerous. Certain poets, especially among the moderns, may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Further, that he employs popular phraseology when speaking of natural phenomena, is a statement altogether undeniable. But such remarks are a gross fallacy, and a mere deceit, if it be meant that the statements in the Bible partake of the imperfection of knowledge incident to a rude and primitive state of society. To revive an old illustration,—Is a philosopher therefore a child, because, in addressing children, he uses language adapted to their age and capacity? GOD speaks in the First Chapter of Genesis,—hath ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... reverberations of his fame, we seek to strike the balance? Solitude has austere lessons; it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the halfness and imperfection ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... 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 Toward Children Study of the Character of God The ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... mind. The first string that the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in tune; God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in tune for himself. Only, there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing, he could play upon no other music but this till towards his ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... very good style, leaving the sheaves in a handy manner at the side of the furrow. Hussey's completed a similar breadth, but deposited the sheaves behind, and consequently several binders were required to follow the machine to clear the course for cutting the next breadth, an imperfection, which, however, it was understood could be easily remedied, and the back deliver replaced by a side one. This breadth was closer cut than the one executed by McCormick's reaper. The two were then tried across the ridge, where Hussey's implement carried ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... his personal concerns than may perhaps be either graceful or prudent. In this particular he runs the risk of presenting himself to the public in the relation that the dumb wife in the jest-book held to her husband, when, having spent half of his fortune to obtain the cure of her imperfection, he was willing to have bestowed the other half to restore her to her former condition. But this is a risk inseparable from the task which the Author has undertaken, and he can only promise to be as little of an egotist as the situation will permit. It ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... inability of a supreme artist like Tolstoy to appreciate his greatness. Though he has written a noble sonnet in homage to Shakespeare's genius, Matthew Arnold once permitted himself to say that "Homer leaves Shakespeare as far behind as perfection leaves imperfection." Paul wrote in a marginal note, "Bosh! to put it bluntly." He would say with Goethe, "The first page of Shakespeare made me his for life, and when I had perused an entire play I stood like one born blind, to whom sight by some miraculous power had been restored in a moment." Paul and I often ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... and his death as a truly physical death, but he distinctly asserts the inferiority of the Son to the Father (John xiv. 28). Indeed, as M. Reville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the Logos that it should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God; since it is only its relative imperfection which allows it to sustain relations to the world and to men which are incompatible with absolute perfection, from the Philonian point of view. The Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity finds no support in the fourth gospel, any more than in ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... and which therefore it justly takes away for his own Offence. Perhaps, in Cases of Hereditary Possessions, it may seem a little hard, because it prevents the next Heir from inheriting; but if there be any Evil or Imperfection in this, we must excuse it, for the Sake of the Intent, which might be for the general Good, the more effectually to deter Men from treasonable Conspiracies against their Prince, whereby the Happiness of Society ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... posted in the correct form and relation of the several parts which go to make up a lever escapement. It makes no difference to the artisan called upon to put a watch in perfect order as to whom he is to attribute the imperfection, maker or former repairer; all the workman having the job in hand has to do is to know positively that such a fault actually exists, and that it devolves upon him ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... the narrative may be as nervous in the Annals as in the History; but the latter is proof against all objections to imperfection and hurry of narrative: every now and then errors of this description mar the workmanship of the Annals, showing at once that it was not composed by Tacitus. From what he did in the History, he never would have abruptly dropped the proceedings in the Senate with regard to Tiberius and the honours ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... such there might be, who thought their laws first and then embodied them in a world of aeonian growth. These indeed seek law likewise, but a perfect law—a law they can believe perfect beyond the comprehension of powers of whose imperfection they are too painfully conscious. They feel in their highest moments a helplessness that drives them to search after some Power with a heart deeper than his power, who cares for the troubled creatures he has made. ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... variety of mental powers, some must perform extemporary prayer with much imperfection; and in the eagerness and rashness of contradictory opinions, if publick liturgy be left to the private judgment of every Minister, the congregation may often be offended ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... in a large square, at the base of an equestrian statue, the beauty or imperfection of which I could not see at the late hour; and, with Mr. C—— in the centre, consulted what could be done. Being in ignorance of the habits of the people, and the haunts where amusements existed, we three could only look at each ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... though I respect, admire, and fear her. Her emotions are carbolized, her heart is sterilized, her personality has the mathematical perfection of something turned out by a super-machine: like, say, the last word in machine-guns. None of the divine imperfection of your hand-wrought, artist-stuff there! I forgive her for existing, because she is intelligent and useful, two things that, without lying like a Christian and a gentleman, one may not say of many women, and seldom of one woman at the same time), your nurse gave me ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... virtue as Miss Cantwell, for example, or Miss Herald, or their humble servant; it appears quite another thing, quite another thing, ladies:—though it is one of my foibles;—I own it is a fault to be so intalerably nice about the affairs of women; but it is a laudable imperfection, if I may be allowed the phrase;—it is erring on the safe side, for women's affairs are delicate things to meddle ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... brains are so muddled and empty that they are utterly unfit to teach their fellows. We must not, however, look for perfection in this world, Mr Clearemout. A little chaff will always remain among the wheat. There is no system without some imperfection, and I am convinced that upon the whole our system of appointing local preachers is a first-rate one. At all events it works well, which is one of the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... intended by the author for publication. Our next was to select such as, though not originally intended for publication, yet appeared to contain matter that might contribute to the gratification and instruction of the public. Our last object was to determine what degree of imperfection and incorrectness in papers of either of these classes ought or ought not to exclude them from a place in the present volume. This was, doubtless, the most nice and arduous part of our undertaking. The difficulty, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has already been made in this direction affords a strong presumption in favor of the idea, that the apparent nebulosity of those masses which still appear, even to our best telescopes, as cloud-like vapors, is to be ascribed rather to the imperfection of our instruments than to any difference between them and such as have been already resolved. Sir John Herschell, a high authority in such a case, tells us that "we have every reason to believe, at least in the generality of cases, that a nebula ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... ascertained in its minutest details; an event of which the principal actors are known to you familiarly, as if belonging to your own age; an event of a magnitude before which imagination shrinks at the imperfection of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in those eminent characters, who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the settlement of your country, men upon whose virtue you can dwell ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... 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
... me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... 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
... full scope, and a sympathetic listener:—ill, when they fear interruption and are annoyed by the impossibility of exhausting the topic during that particular talk. The partial genius is flashy—scrappy. The true genius shudders at incompleteness—imperfection—and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not every thing that should be said. He is so filled with his theme that he is dumb, first from not knowing how to begin, where there seems eternally beginning behind beginning, and secondly from perceiving his true end ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... they ate a pad apiece. Neither dared to smoke, Sayre because it might reveal his hiding place, Langdon because smoking might be considered an imperfection ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 as it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... limited number of individuals, bureaucratic control is and must be an essential feature of its government. On the other hand, where the government is founded upon the representative principle, the appearance of bureaucracy is an indication of some imperfection in the organisation of the State itself. The introduction of the representative principle may have been too premature or its extension too rapid, and as a consequence the government of the people by themselves is ineffective through the general want of an enlightened self-interest ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... not yet learned, or have hardly learned, the use of language, although their intelligence is already sufficient. There is no longer any deficiency in the development of the external organs of speech, no muscular weakness, no imperfection of the nervous structures that effect the articulation of the separate sounds, for intelligence shows itself in the child's actions; he forms the separate sounds correctly, unintentionally; his hearing is good and the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... auxiliary factor is human labor. A 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 ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... recollect that the two-gilled cephalopods have not yet been found below the lias, where they at once abound; whereas the four-gilled cephalopods are Silurian forms. Moreover, the absence is in this case significant in spite of the imperfection of the geological record, because when we consider how many individuals of various kinds of four-gilled cephalopods have been found, it is fair to infer that at the least a certain small percentage of dibranchs would also have left traces of their presence had ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... and was silent; but immediately added, with a kind of embarrassment which was at other times quite foreign to him, and from which one might infer how unpleasant confessing any imperfection was to ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... dislodged and taken. The natives always pitch on a part of a tree for this purpose, which has been perforated by a worm, which indicates that the wood is in an unsound state, and will readily yield to their efforts. If the rudeness and imperfection of the tools with which they work be considered, it must be confessed to be an operation of great ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... meanings. The "natural" emotion they stimulate affords the kind of sustenance on which Nature Mysticism can thrive. Longfellow, in his poem, "The Bridge," strikes the deeper note. The rushing water draws the poet's reflections away from a world of imperfection to ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... years, we hear of the first notable imperfection of her childhood and youth, and nothing perhaps gives a more accurate idea of her innocence, than the gravity which that imperfection assumed in her estimation. The singular degree of supernatural light vouchsafed her, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... for very hopelessness made bold Did off my hat ere time there was for thought, She with a gracious sweetness, calm, not cold, Acknowledged me, but brought my chance to nought 'This vale of imperfection doth not hold A lovelier bud among its loveliest wrought! She turns,' methought 'O do not quite forget To me remains ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical practical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imperfection of their practice, makes them willingly assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it against attack: and clearly this is narrowing and baneful for them. If they were reassured on ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... it were, a certaine apparaunce of her frailtie, and the litle reason wherewith she is indewed, to vanquish him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, whose ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Many can, I think, be satisfactorily answered. Natura non facit saltum answers some of the most obvious. The slowness of the change, and only a very few individuals undergoing change at any one time, answers others. The extreme imperfection of our ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... was superhuman, (114) and the dimensions of his body were gigantic he measured sixty ells between the shoulders. Yet he had one imperfection, he was maimed in both feet. (115) The first evidence of his gigantic strength he gave when he uprooted two great mountains, and rubbed them against each other. Such feats he was able to perform as often as the spirit of God was poured out over him. Whenever ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... plough-slip, till the plough-head be so much worne, that it take no more but an ordinary furrow, and then you shall set on your Plough-slips and Plough clouts also: but I write this in case there be imperfection in the Plough, which if it be otherwise, then ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... administration, and the essential agreement of their will. A faint resemblance of this unity of action may be discovered in the societies of men, and even of animals. The causes which disturb their harmony, proceed only from the imperfection and inequality of their faculties; but the omnipotence which is guided by infinite wisdom and goodness, cannot fail of choosing the same means for the accomplishment of the same ends. III. Three beings, who, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... after seven hundred leagues we should find land. Add fifty more for our general imperfection. But it may be wider than I think. We may not come even to some fringing island in eight hundred leagues, no, nor in more than that! If it be a thousand, if it be two thousand, on I go! But after the seven hundred is passed, it will be hard to keep them ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... show how the existing arrangement is best; although I never doubted that there must be a satisfactory reason for this seeming imperfection. To suppose otherwise, would be highly unphilosophical, since we constantly see, as the circle of our knowledge is enlarged, many mysteries in nature hitherto ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... regarded as one of the most important discoveries of our time as to the capabilities of astronomical instruments. It has long been known that the image formed in the focus of the best refracting telescope is affected by an imperfection arising from the different action of the glasses on rays of light of different colors. Hence, the image of a star can never be seen or photographed with such an instrument, as an actual point, but only as a small, diffused mass. This difficulty is avoided ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... evidence of such whole-hearted enthusiasm that I cannot bring myself to join issue with the critics who have lately attacked the Schola, though their attacks have been in some degree merited. Pettiness is to be found even in great artists, and imperfection in every human work; and defects reveal themselves most clearly after a victory has been won. The Schola has not escaped the critical periods that accompany growth, through which every work must pass if it is to triumph and endure. Without doubt, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... at myself for yielding, for I didn't mean to have any photographs until the experiment was quite finished—to mortify me in future with their record of imperfection; but I'm so nearly perfect now that, really, it's time I had something to tell me how I do look. Of course, as fast as I can lay hands on them, I'm destroying every likeness of the old Nelly. At the studio it was such a revelation—the care and intelligence the man ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... find another reason why God hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that environ and effect us, and blended them together in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with; that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness in all the enjoyments which the creature can afford us, might be fed to seek it in the enjoyment of him, with whom there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... because words do not create ideas, but only recall them; and the same word may recall many different ideas. For this reason, nearly all abstract principles can be seen by the single mind more clearly than they can be expressed by words to another. This is owing to the imperfection of language, and the different senses, meanings, and shades of meaning, which different individuals attach to the same words, in the same ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... words, but bad pronunciation. William Thomas {418a} laughed many a time at him coming talking his funny Welsh to him, and said he was glad he knew a few words of Spanish to answer him with. Borrow was, apparently, unconscious of any imperfection in his pronunciation of the "ll". He has written: "'Had you much difficulty in acquiring the sound of the "ll"?' I think I hear the reader inquire. None whatever: the double l of the Welsh is by no means the terrible guttural which English people generally ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... clause 'or neither,' 'or both.' The double form makes reflection easier and more conformable to experience, and also more comprehensive. But in order to avoid paradox and the danger of giving offence to the unmetaphysical part of mankind, we may speak of it as due to the imperfection of language or the limitation of human faculties. It is nevertheless a discovery which, in Platonic language, may be termed a ...
— Sophist • Plato
... spectrum is very commonly confounded with the chromatic aberration of higher order. While the latter is produced by imperfections in the form of the lens, the former is due to an imperfection of the optical qualities of the material from which the lens is constructed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... of the Popes of Rome" is familiar 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... before. He himself has 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 over them ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... 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
... one imperfection. It is some weakness of the spine, and neither she nor I can be about with Michael as long as it is good for him. I thought he must be safe in the garden, but it turned out that Louisa had been taking him down to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hips. The whole length of the leg which is placed in advance of the other is very often connected with the pediment by a band of stone. It has been conjectured that this course was imposed upon the sculptor by reason of the imperfection of his tools, and the consequent danger of fracturing the statue when cutting away the superfluous material—an explanation which may be correct as regards the earliest schools, but which does not hold good for the time of the Fourth Dynasty. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... of this method over the direct method of operating the buzzer is that any imperfection in the night-alarm contact at the drop is much less likely to prevent the flow of current of the high-voltage battery 6 than of the low-voltage battery 1, shown in connection with Fig. 274. This is because ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... of forces, whose heaven and whose hell in one is the dull peace of an equilibrium; but a struggle, through splendour of colour, graciousness of form, and evasive vitality of motion and sound, after an utterance hard to find, and never found but marred by the imperfection of the small and weak that would embody and set forth the great and mighty. The waving of the tree-tops is the billowy movement of a hidden delight. The sun lifts his head with intent to be glorious. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... In fact he shut the book very hastily, with a quick, sidewise look, lest his father should see and notice the imperfection of his gift. ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... all your luxuriance of beauty, where the flowering earth smiles up to the far sparkling azure, and all nature seems chanting delicious harmonies, that man should here, as elsewhere, make the one discordant note! Frail, grovelling, passion-blinded man! The noblest imperfection of God! When will he be elevated to the standard for which the Maker ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... longer still, the absolute certainty of God's revelation of Himself in nature, and the absolute perfection of the religion founded on that revelation, in contradistinction to the uncertainty and imperfection of all traditional religions, had been the incessant cry of the new school of thought, a cry which had lately found its strongest and ablest expression in Tindal's famous work. It was to those who raised this cry, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... garrulous sympathy of the District Visitor. The old gossip and dawdle have disappeared from the parochial charity, but with them has gone a good deal of the social contact, the sympathy of rich with poor, in which its chief virtue lay. The very vicar sighs after a little human imperfection and irregularity as he reads the list of sick cases ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... semblance of some human deformity, of some animal type, or of some grotesque embodiment of human feeling or passion. He throws himself into their midst, and these monstrosities disappear. The human asserts itself; the brute-like becomes softened away; what imperfection remains creates pity rather than disgust. He finds that by shifting his point of view, he can see even necessary qualities in what otherwise ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 a fraction of the plants that have existed, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... intention completely, and by degrees more and more imperfectly. Short as man's spoken word often falls of his thought, his written word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. All alphabets have been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters, letters, that is, which they do not want, because other letters already ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... copied from her mother, but he had some doubts as to whether his wonderful Margaret might not be too perfect in herself, and too engrossed with the duties pertaining to perfection to be quite the proper manager of imperfection and immaturity represented ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... passion by exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors. Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard must be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men, which always results—even with scoundrels, and how much more with honest men!—in ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... daughter of free and freeborn parents, who had never been in slavery, and had never followed any menial or degrading occupation; and also that both her parents should be living. To be an orphan was considered, it seems, in some sense an imperfection. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy. My mother, who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me Goethe's lines—written by Carlyle in a book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, I ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... on reaching the ice the impetus she acquired was so great that the shores gave way, and with greater force than before she fell over on her side, and in spite of the stout timbers and thick planking, from the imperfection of our workmanship ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... ethics: in itself, it must be, in the negative sense of the words, at once useless and immoral. "Nature is not its standard, nor is truth its chief end."[244-1] Its spirit is repose, "the perfect form in perfect rest;" whereas the spirit of religion is action because of imperfection. Even the gods must know of suffering, and partake, in incarnations, of the miseries ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... superior and hereditary position a taste for what is extremely well made and lasting. This affects the general way of thinking of the nation in relation to the arts. It often occurs, among such a people, that even the peasant will rather go without the object he covets, than procure it in a state of imperfection. In aristocracies, then, the handicraftsmen work for only a limited number of very fastidious customers: the profit they hope to make depends principally on the perfection of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a small and peculiar handwriting, which, though evidently by the same person whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more hard to decipher. Those parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, or alleged secrets in Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submit exclusively to scholars or men of science, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friend's house that I first witnessed the peculiar manner in which the markets in Mizora are conducted. Everything, as usual, was fastidiously neat and clean. The fruit and vegetables were fresh and perfect. I examined quantities of them to satisfy myself, and not a blemish or imperfection could be found on any. None but buyers were attending market. Baskets of fruit, bunches of vegetables and, in fact, everything exhibited for sale, had the quality and the price labeled upon it. Small wicker baskets were near to receive the change. When a buyer had ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... for a time, and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is reproduced with but partial accuracy: some imperfection in the recipient sense, or in the receptacle, sends imperfection into the presentation. In a way something similar may our contact with the dwellers beyond fare in our dreams. My unknown mother ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... builders may raise; make the arches above the openings massive, and the recessed portions of the cornice or any other ornamental work deep and narrow. There are not the same objections to a recess as to a projection; it is better protected, any imperfection is less apparent, and the desired effect of shadow is more complete. Much variety in color will not increase the appearance of strength, but the expression will be emphasized by pilasters and buttresses; also by the low segment arches ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner |
