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More "Precision" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... condition to that of the present—of the application of the inductive system of science and thought; and you know that it is by constant and close mathematical study of analogy—of probability—that we exclude error little by little from our observations—we improve more and more our instruments of precision—we count out the errors of our observation; and we are constantly seeking those laws which are not transient and ephemeral only, but which are eternal and immortal. Upon those laws, finally, must rest all our real, certain knowledge; and it is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the precision of a merchant making a calculation what was the state of his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... originality, your uniqueness, the very you-ness of you, will be absorbed in a round of missionary meetings, and prayer-meetings, and choir practises, and Sunday-school classes. The hard routine, my dear, will take the sparkle from you, and give you a sweet, but un-Carol-like precision and method. Oh, yes, you are happy, but thank you, dear, I think I'll keep my Self and do my work, and—be ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... its fire upon the battery on the Trocadero, and with so accurate an aim that at the end of that time it was reduced to silence. While the fire was going on, those on the roof went below, for although the precision with which the artillerymen fired was so excellent that there was but slight danger, the trial to the nerves from the rush of the heavy shell was so great that they were glad to leave the roof and to take their ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... and six-pounders could not reach their batteries. But in the after part of the day, when the contending forces were nearer together, Rickett's and Griffin's Batteries, the most celebrated at that time in the Northern Army, could not stand the precision and impetuosity of Kemper's, the Washington, Stannard's, Pendleton's, and Pelham's Batteries as they graped the field. The Second and Eighth South Carolina coming up at a double quick, joined Hampton's Legion, with Early, Cox, and the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... their need for clearness, and with this they are content. Antithesis is in the Frenchman's blood; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on the platform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either A or not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision and sharp analysis facilitates the formation of closed parties, whereas each individual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own. The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and the sanguine return ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general, equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision and stability of public faith, and bearing no mark of that ingenuous simplicity and native candor and integrity which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of joyous music being the signal, form in two lines, and simultaneously, with military precision, kneel, fold and raise their hands, and bow till their foreheads touch the carpet before their lord. Then suddenly springing to their feet, they describe a succession of rapid and intricate circles, tapping ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... were absolutely miraculous. Her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto D to the D upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the San Carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. In the final of the Somnambula, she brought about a most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Overland Express. Looking back over the active, energetic career that had led up to this, however, Ralph realized that the climax had been reached a step at a time through patience, perseverance and genuine hard work. It was a proof to him that any person following discipline and having as a motto precision and finality, was bound to succeed. It was a most enjoyable breathing spell to realize that all the anxiety, dash and novelty of the experimental trips over the Mountain Division were past, and he now felt that he knew the route and all ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... accordance with the number of those who enter heaven and who enter hell; and this amounts to several thousands daily. The Lord alone, and no angel, can know and perceive this, and regulate and equalize it with precision; for the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is omnipresent, and sees everywhere whether there is any wavering, while an angel sees only what is near himself, and has no perception in himself of what is taking place even in his ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... gentle calisthenics invented by her father, combined with breathing exercises, she had developed a body of rarest grace. Her head had corners, as once Professor O. S. Fowler told us that a woman's head must have, if she is to think and act with purpose and precision. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the mental tests in the school will be worse than useless unless the tests are given with the greatest care and scientific precision. Every test should be most carefully explained to the children so that they will know exactly what they are to do. The matter must be so presented to them that they will put forth all possible effort. They must take the tests seriously. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... in ships and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr. Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... though this was less the result of moral convictions than of a fastidious temperament. The man had an instinctive aversion for anything that was ugly or unpleasant. His companion, dressed with an equal precision, looked different, more virile, coarser; he was fuller in ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... 335 he went out from Macedonia northwards, struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass, frustrating the mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision of discipline which, probably, no other army of the time could have approached, and traversed the land of the Triballians (Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or strike the imagination of the world he took his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... punctiliously shaving, although it was now practically dark; in another corner the devotee of some system of how to get strong and how to stay so, stripped to the skin, was slowly and with solemn precision raising and lowering a pair of light dumb-bells. Some saluted as private soldiers would; some bowed almost as to a friend, with a cheery "Guten Abend, Herr Baron!" There seemed, indeed, to be a very pleasant relation between this gentleman soldier and his gentlemen ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... inconveniences of their number have been distressing to the last degree, though, as yet, they have been employed in work which could be done in the lump. They are now proceeding to instruments, every word of which must be weighed with precision. Heretofore, too, they were hooped together by a common enemy. This is no longer the case. Yet a thorough view of the wisdom and rectitude of this assembly disposes me more to hope they will find some means of surmounting the difficulty of their numbers, than to fear that yielding ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... able, fifteen hours before a shot was fired in the battle, to prescribe the movements of the different organizations of his command, and to outline the plan of battle as it was finally carried out, with a degree of precision which can be fully appreciated only by those to whom the plan was communicated in advance. In spite of slight changes, made necessary by local failures and unforeseen circumstances; in spite of the very poor cooperation of the artillery arm; in spite of the absence of cavalry, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the middle of September when the old yellow omnibus rolled up for Miss Barbara and her trunk. This time there was no returning in mad haste after forgotten property. With a precision that was almost fussiness, she had packed her trunk days before her departure, and her bonnet was on an hour ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I could see cavalrymen in stable-jackets, whitewashing walls and out-buildings and ill-smelling stalls, while others dug shovelfuls of slaked lime from wheelbarrows and spread it through stable-yards and dirty alleys. Everywhere quiet, method, order, prompt precision reigned; I even noticed a big, red-fisted artilleryman tying up tall, blue larkspurs, dahlias, and phlox in a trampled garden, and he touched the ragged masses of bloom with a tenderness peculiar to a flower-loving and sentimental people, whose ultimate ambition ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... to make a dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin". The Quarterly was much too hard on the earlier cadeau scene, with Rochester and Jane and Adele, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and precision. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day. Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking musician. Her little claw swept the chords with Courage and precision, and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It was not mighty, but it was round, clear, full, and ringing like a bell. She sang with a certain modest ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Precision in the Meaning of Dynamical Terms: accompanied with an Appendix on Duodenal Arithmetic and Metrology. By JOHN W. NYSTROM, C.E. Illustrated. ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... twenty feet across space at the dizzy heights of the forest top, and grasp with unerring precision, and without apparent jar, a limb waving wildly in the path of an ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precision equipment (bearings, radio and telephone parts, armaments), wood pulp and paper products, processed ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... might be made a direct and successful engine in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city missionary, the Rev. William ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and judgement, are not, I think, entitled to the first praise amongst the various parts of this immense work. The definitions have always appeared to me such astonishing proofs of acuteness of intellect and precision of language, as indicate a genius of the highest rank[854]. This it is which marks the superiour excellence of Johnson's Dictionary over others equally or even more voluminous, and must have made it a work of much greater mental labour than mere Lexicons, or Word-books, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... habits. He affected to despise artificial manners; and, though frequenting polished circles in Edinburgh, then in London, and afterwards in Madras and Calcutta, he persevered in an indomitable aversion to the use of the English tongue, which he so well knew how to write with precision and power. He spoke the broadest provincial Scotch with singular pertinacity. His voice was extremely dissonant, but, seemingly unconscious of the defect, he talked loud; and if engaged in argument, raised his voice to a pitch which frequently proved more powerful than ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... upon them.[59] It was not a very great or remarkable speech, but it was a good one, and not conceived in the fervid and florid style which defaced his youthful efforts; he spoke sensibly, clearly, and with precision of thought; he sought his strength in the facts, and went in straight pursuit of the truth; his best intellectual qualities were plainly visible. The resolutions were not acted upon, and doubtless their actual ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... sand, wondering of what nature her husband's secret could be, and why it compelled him to absent himself occasionally from her. Though he kept an accurate calculation of the lapse of time, and counted the passing days with unvarying precision, yet she retained no such faithful calendar in her memory, and had not observed that his absence always occurred on the last day ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was his inhibition. He never unbent. In his football days, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he grew. He was noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with the inhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows, guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and too controlled to permit himself to put a pound more weight into a punch than he ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... rather appears that their answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, while Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidae, solved the question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on the day named, "What is Croesus now doing?" than she exclaimed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... sketch-books were later on developed with the utmost care, being written out again and again, with fresh alterations and additions each time, until every trace of crudeness had disappeared, and the finished work stood out with such clearness and precision as to suggest that it had been but that moment created. Nothing, indeed, has struck those who have followed the gradual development of his work from the first sketches which have been preserved more than ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... committed the task of meeting infantry with cavalry in an open field. Placing the Fifth New York in support of Elder's battery, which was exposed to a galling fire, but made reply with characteristic rapidity, precision, and slaughter, Farnsworth quickly ordered the First Virginia, First Vermont, and Eighteenth Pennsylvania in line of battle, and galloped away and charged upon the flank of the advancing columns. The attack was sharp, brief, and ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... short legs, and huge arms so long that even when the brute stood upright its clenched fists reached to within a foot of the ground. As it started to wade ashore its advance was momentarily checked by a terrific volley of stones, hurled with amazing force and precision; then, emitting a series of those dreadful, shrieking roars, it dashed forward with outstretched arms, seized the nearest native and, without apparent effort, literally tore the unfortunate man's head ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... encyclopaedias form a very notable feature in all Chinese libraries. These works show great research, clearness, and precision, and are largely drawn upon by European scholars. Early in the last century one of the emperors appointed a commission to reprint in one great collection all the works they might think worthy of preservation. The result was a compilation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... value. The French Commander-in-Chief paid tribute to their skill. His message ran: 'Please express most particularly to Marshal French my thanks for the services rendered to us every day by the English Flying Corps. The precision, exactitude, and regularity of the news brought in by them are evidence of their perfect organization and also of the perfect training ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... luckee," and a diabolical fire-work with an irregular spasmodic activity that would sometimes be prolonged until the next morning. In return, I gave him some apparently hopeless oral lessons in English, and certain sentences to be copied, which he did with marvelous precision. I remember one instance when this peculiar faculty of imitation was disastrous in result. In setting him a copy, I had blurred a word which I promptly erased, and then traced the letters more distinctly ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of John Smith, since John Smith may change his residence or abandon his occupation without ceasing to be called by his name. Indirectly then definition serves the purpose of distinguishing things in the mind, but its direct object is to unfold the intension of terms, and so impart precision to our thoughts by setting plainly before us the meaning of the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... hard and earnestly, and dealt his blows with the precision of a blacksmith; Julia the while standing silently by his side, and regarding rather the workman than the work. He was a handsome fellow; she told herself she had never seen such beautiful arms. And suddenly, as though he had overheard ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of new districts received the royal sanction. Barcelona thus comprises an old town, still consisting for the most part of irregular and narrow streets, and a new town built with all the symmetry and precision of a premeditated scheme. The buildings of the old town are chiefly of brick, from four to five storeys in height, with flat roofs, and other oriental peculiarities; while in the new town hewn stone is very largely employed, and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... tavern. They had a good supper, and port wine, but the occasion was more than food and drink to Boswell. "The orthodox high-church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson,—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... suspicious, inclined to wrong-doing, full of capacity for evil, and he judges it with his ready gossip of depreciation. He may be in all this reporting what is true, or he may be stating what is untrue; but one truth he is reporting with entire precision,—the fact that he is himself a suspicious and ungenerous man; and this disclosure of his own heart, which, if another hinted at it, he would resent, he is without any disguise making of his own accord. The cynic looks over the world and finds it hopelessly bad, but the one obvious fact is not ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... commanded Sir Robert Keith, the Marshal of Scotland, with those four hundred men at arms whom he had kept in reserve for the purpose, to make a circuit, and charge the English bowmen in the flank. This was done with a celerity and precision which dispersed the whole archery, who, having neither stakes nor other barrier to keep off the horse, nor long weapons to repel them, were cut down at pleasure, and almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... than the words "some such state." Although we are distinctly told by your Lordship, that the extreme degree of imbecility or incapacity will not constitute this "some such state" that may be denominated unsoundness; yet I feel highly satisfied with the force and precision by which it is expressed in the words "whatever degree," which if a scale were constructed on which imbecility might be estimated, would imply the ultimate gradation; and whenever any subject can be regulated by definite quantity, expressed in numbers, it conveys the most certain ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... of the vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D'Alembert said to Voltaire, relative to the recueil by Condorcet, "Some one asked me the other day what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece, 'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.'" And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read, while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its departments as the eloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more modest ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... silver to one pound avoirdupois of copper, which are rolled together, and then, with much labour and great nicety, by a process of hammering and polishing, formed to the parabolic curve of a mould made with mathematical precision. The focal distance of the curve is four inches. The diagram for the Bell-Rock reflectors was drawn by Professor Leslie, and the mould was made by Mr. Adie the optician. The powers of this elegant production of the mechanical ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... men do not let themselves be arrested. Those who are lost are brutes who go straight ahead, or the half-intelligent, who use their skill and cunning to combine a complicated or romantic act, in which their hand is plainly seen. As for him, he was a man of science and precision, and he would not compromise himself by act or sentiment; there would be nothing to fear during the action, and nothing afterward. Caffie strangled, suspicion would not fall upon a doctor, but on a brute. When doctors wish to kill any ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... while the tories were pale with rage." After a few moments, James Putnam, the leader of the tories, arose. Putnam was said to be "the best lawyer in North America. His arguments were marked by strong and clear reasoning, logical precision and arrangement, and that sound judgment whose conclusions were presented so forcibly as to command assent." He made such a speech against the resolutions as had never before been heard in Worcester; and when he sat down, the same informant said that "not a man of the whig ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... only varieties, in No. 3. No author tells me why the first is called polite, but its blue seems more intense than that of agrestis; and as it is above described with attention, vol. i., p. 75, as an example of precision in flower-form, we may as well retain it in our list here. It will be therefore our twenty-first variety,—it is Loudon's fifty-ninth and last. He translates 'polita' simply 'polished,' which is nonsense. I can think of nothing to call it but 'dainty,' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... one hundred feet, and even this requires very careful work.(8) A fall of six inches in one hundred feet is recommended whenever it can be easily obtained—not as being more effective, but as requiring less precision, and consequently ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... rose stiffly from his knees beside the extended figure and strode heavily across toward where they were sitting, lifting his hand in soldierly salute, his heels clicking as he brought them sharply together in military precision. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... one, my Lord," said Captain Spruce, a debonair personage with a well-turned silk hat arranged a little aside, his coloured cravat tied with precision, his whiskers trimmed like a quickset hedge. Spruce, who had earned his title of Captain on the plains of Newmarket, which had witnessed for many a year his successful exploits, had a weakness for the aristocracy, who knowing his graceful infirmity patronized him with condescending dexterity, acknowledged ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... cheek, he belonged to that type which Nature would seem to have already used to excess in the production of the continental musician. Rose herself was violinist, and the instruments dashed into the opening allegro with a precision and an entrain that took the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in her enthusiasm used an alarm clock to make the test, specialists have decided that the volume of sound differs in watches to such a degree as to make the watch test unreliable. The examination of the eye has been reduced to mathematical precision, due altogether to the anatomy of that organ. As yet there is no instrument for the ear comparable to the ophthalmoscope. The acoumeter is largely used by aurists and can be obtained from the optician. This instrument has an advantage over the whisper or watch ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... somewhat sluggish before he had taken the morphine, now was working clearly and accurately again, with that fateful and undeviating precision which had made him master of billions of dollars and uncounted millions of human lives; which had woven his network of possession all over the United States, Europe and Asia and even Africa; which had drawn, as into a spider's web, the world's railroads and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... from fanaticism. But it does not even do that. On the contrary, it creates and renews fanaticism with a force quite peculiar to itself. This is at once so strange and so true that I will ask the reader's attention to it with a little more precision. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... said with some precision, "Do you mean to say that you fancy all this trouble is to be got over that way? Do you know so little of Sheila, after the time you have been married to her, as to imagine that she has taken this step out of some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the disadvantage he laboured under, and he called out "Heave!" as he found the cutter was falling close under the counter of the ship, and would be in her wake in another minute. The bowman of the boat cast a light grapnel with so much precision that it hooked in the mizzen rigging, and the line instantly tightened so as to tow the cutter. A seaman was passing along the outer edge of the hurricane-house at the moment, coming from the wheel, and with the decision ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the shattered window with a precision that presaged evil to any of the defenders who were rash enough to try to gain the other end of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... intimacy with the artists of that town, had made him acquainted with mechanical processes for working in metals, which he adapted, on his return to Mainz, to the art of printing. These new means enabled him to cast movable leaden types in a copper matrix, with greater precision than before, and thus to give great neatness to the letters. It was by this new process that the Psalter, the first book bearing a date, was printed in 1457. Soon afterward the Mainz Bible, recognized as a masterpiece of art, was produced under the direction of Gutenberg, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court, and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate, when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. "I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not been received by me through ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... him and the captain, and the extreme coolness and precision with which the latter spoke, was very amusing. It was as if he were rehearsing a speech from a play. "I always speak frankly," said Don Miguel, in an angry tone. "And I," said the captain, in a polite, measured voice, "am also accustomed to speak my mind with extreme ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... away from the pool he saw a large flock of sheep approaching. They were very closely, even densely, packed, in a solid slow-moving mass and coming with a precision almost like a march. This fact surprised Shefford, for there was not an Indian in sight. Presently he saw that a dog was leading the flock, and a little later he discovered another dog in the rear of the sheep. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... still more remarkable so far forth as the charge of fraud is concerned, with what logical precision the Citizen pursues his inquiry.—One is naturally led to expect from his positive rant, nothing short of point blank demonstration at least, that the fraud, (which if there was any originated with Mr. Young's colleagues) had produced the desired effect. That the attempt ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... Thence we pass to the eighteenth century, when English prose was freed from its involutions and irregularities and brought to uniformity and to a standard. The age of Anne gave to English prose balance, precision and settled form. There have been periods of greater originality, but the eighteenth century at least lived up to Pope's doctrine, set forth in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... upon human life of a disparity of weight of metal in naval action. No skill could avoid the brutal precision of mechanical and material superiority. Von Spee had it at Coronel, Sturdee at the Falklands, and there is no reason to suppose that if the persons had been exchanged, the result would have been ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... scene had played itself out before the eyes of Paul, who did not want it; of Etta, who desired it; and of Catrina, who did not exactly know what she wanted, with the precision of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... breach, which is abundant proof of the lack of accuracy. They must either have been dispersed over the surface of the fort, or else missed it altogether, and this could have been due only to a want of the precision which was attained by the battery. The constantly preferred complaint of motion in the ships was not to be urged, because on the day of cannonading Sebastopol, there was scarcely a breath of wind, and the ships were too large to be ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... with anxiety, as had Persano turned and renewed the battle from a distance, he could have revenged his defeat at close quarters without receiving a shot, owing to the longer range of his guns. But for such an operation skilful manoeuvring was wanted, and also, perhaps, more precision in firing than the Italian gunners possessed. At any rate, Persano had no mind for new adventures. He took what remained of his fleet straight back to Ancona, where the Affondatore sank in the harbour from injuries received during the battle. For three ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... guards were stationed at the gates of the royal palace to protect Charles and Catharine from any possibility of danger. Many of the houses were illuminated, that by the light blazing from the windows, the bullet might be thrown with precision, and that the dagger might strike an unerring blow. Agitation and alarm pervaded the vast metropolis. The Catholics were rejoicing that the hour of vengeance had arrived. The Protestants gazed upon the portentous gatherings of this storm in ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... his lips, and it seemed as if he had been stricken dumb. Accordingly it was M. de Coralth who made a statement of the case, and he did it well. The narrative thus gained considerably in clearness and precision; and even M. Wilkie noticed that his friend understood how to present the events in their most favorable light, and how to omit them altogether when his heartless conduct would have appeared too odious. He also noticed—and he considered ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sentiments of Binning. He distinguished, with logical precision, between faith in Christ and its consequences. In regard to the doctrine of the Antinomians, he says, "That every man is bound to persuade himself at the first, that God hath loved him, and Christ redeemed ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the plan, it is utterly impossible to ascertain, with any precision, the exact length to which it may extend; but, so far as can be judged of at present, it is not expected to exceed eighteen or twenty volumes. Throughout the whole work, a series of Maps and Charts will be inserted in their proper ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... synonymous with expense these days, when the general patterns and colors of costly papers are successfully reproduced in the cheaper grades. Tapestry papers are too heavy for bedrooms. Those figured with that mathematical precision which drives the beholder to counting and thence to incipient insanity, and others on which we fancy we can trace the features of our friends, are always distracting, especially during illness, when restfulness is so essential. The plain cartridge-papered wall with frieze ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Marquis, that it may be only by essential qualities that you can succeed in pleasing women? It is simply a question of knowing what meaning you attach to this expression. Do you call essential qualities, worth, firmness of character, precision of judgment, extent of learning, prudence, discretion, how can I tell the number of virtues which often embarrass you more than they make you happy? Our minds are not in accord upon this matter. Reserve all the qualities I have specified for the intercourse ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... effects of the landscape which he had seen, were his highest qualities; his retention of the minutest details of the generic or specific characteristics of tree, rock, or cloud was unsurpassed by the work of any landscape painter whose work I know, and everything he knew he rendered with a rapidity and precision which were simply inconceivable by one who had not seen him at work. I think that his vision and retention of even the most transitory facts of nature passing before him must have been at the maximum of which the human mind is capable, but he had no comprehension of the higher and broader ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... at a house always pleasant from that reminiscence, with the consent of parent and pupil, and to his own great delight, the hour designed for the scholar's scales and exercises was given to the master's playing. He was fond of Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," and he played it with force and precision and the utmost delicacy. Mr. Timm had a pale, smooth, sharp face, a rather prim manner, and a quick, modest gait. He was most simple-hearted, and loved a joke; and his fun was all the more effective from his very sober face and his lisp. It was his wife who was long ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the report almost in silence, only making a few short observations in return. But when Anton proceeded, with the utmost delicacy indeed, but still with the precision of a man of business, to state the obligations under which the baron at present lay, and his inadequate means of fulfilling them, the nobleman writhed in his chair like a victim on the rack. And Anton keenly felt how painful it must needs be to him to have a stranger thus introduced ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... meum, ejus dicendum, cujus dicendum. [That is, my speaking, his speaking, whose speaking.] In truth, these phraseologies appear to me, not only repugnant to the idiom of the language, but also unfavourable to precision and perspicuity.'"—Grant's Latin Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the air-shaft, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... in which team work is more important than in football. Eleven boys of moderate ability and comparative light weight who can execute their plays with skill and precision can beat a team of heavier boys or superior players who may lack their skill and organization. In the case of a school team it is almost always possible to secure the services of a coach from among the graduates. If such a one has had experience on a college ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... action simple and vivid and PRESENT. Absolutely nothing is to be gained by attempted "fine writing," yet it is true that the best-paid writers today are for the most part the ones who are giving attention to clearness and precision of detail and description when writing the third division of their scripts. But description does not mean hifaluting word painting—it means clear, concise setting forth of exactly what a ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... therefore, he places before me the events of fourteen days, this gives at least fourteen different actions, however small they may be." No doubt, if the poet were so unskilful as to wind off the fourteen days one after another with visible precision; if day and night are just so often to come and go and the characters to go to bed and get up again just so many times. But the clever poet thrusts into the background all the intervals which are connected with no perceptible progress in the action, and in his picture annihilates ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... force of occupation. At the head rode a general of brigade, a sombre, stern-eyed man, accompanied by his staff. And behind him marched thousands of green-gray German infantry keeping step with a marvelous precision. These men had been fighting hard, but they looked fresh and trim. And as they marched they sang, raising their deep voices in a splendid, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... there was a parade of all the troops in review order for the inspection of the Prince, who was pleased to express his complete satisfaction and approval of 'the steadiness under arms, soldier-like bearing, and precision of movement, which distinguish the corps of the three armies assembled at ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... sobbing out entreaties for mercy. And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard the voice and words of her lover's reply—words not meant for her hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision of the speaker's passion which carried them, against ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... original. The problem of the descent or ascent of man, and other particular cases of evolution, had attracted not a few naturalists before Darwin's day, though no one [except Herbert Spencer in the psychological domain (1855)] had come near him in precision and thoroughness ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... taught, &c.; I was teaching, &c. This mode of conjugation expresses the continuation of an action or state of being; and has, on some occasions, a peculiar propriety, and contributes to the harmony and precision of language. When the present participle of an active verb is joined with the neuter verb to be, the two words united, are, by some grammarians, denominated an active verb, either transitive or intransitive, as the case may be; as, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... that of absolute violence to our language" may be highly desirable; it is commonly called a "crib"; and a crib contrived by one who is not only a scholar but a man of genius will now and again yield a word or a phrase of felicitous precision. But that a translation "literal at every cost" should be put into verse is a wrong both to the original and to the poetry of the language to which the original is transferred; it assumes a poetic garb which in assuming it rends to tatters. A translation into verse implies ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was down that morning, sitting at table with her stick beside her, her head topped with a great tower of snowy cap, her old face now ivory-yellow, but with a wonderful precision of feature, for she had been a great beauty in her day, so alert and alive with the ready comprehension of her black eyes, under slightly scowling brows, that naught escaped her that was within her reach of vision. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... stuff. Every imaginable precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged. It would be—it was being—treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He'd seen the pilot gyro assembly made. He'd helped on it. He knew how many times a thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He'd have liked to be ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... which is not justifiable by any electrodynamical facts, supplies us then with that particular law of motion which has been confirmed with great precision in recent years. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... thing may be said in adverse criticism of Professor Sloane's book, and that is, that his style is too mathematical and too little imaginative for the subject which he has in hand. His rather cold precision, however, we concede to him; for it is, no doubt, the natural method of his expression. We do our part to acknowledge and welcome the remarkable work which he has produced, and to commend it to all readers as the best existing ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... by the Barratarians, who served their pieces with the steadiness and precision of veteran gunners. In the first attack of the enemy, a column pushed forward between the levee and river; and so precipitate was their charge that the outposts were forced to retire, closely pressed by the enemy. Before the batteries could ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... this was not the answer of men who knew what they were about. A little more precision was necessary in dictating a message which was to have such consequences, and especially since the gentleman could not fail to acquaint the persons he spoke with that the Chevalier was not able to carry men ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... frightened creature had scarcely halted, when the great hen-hawk came at him with a whistling rush, and sent him back to the other side. The male bird had by this time turned and now darted with such suddenness and precision, that the squirrel, unable to pass round the tree again, sprang off into the air. Guided by his broad tail the hawk followed, and before the squirrel could reach the ground, the bird was seen to strike. Then with a loud scream he rose into the air, with ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... count their petals, but take one from their neighbor or leave another behind them," it is because she knows how peculiarly this fantastic variableness belongs to the rue-leaved species, so unlike the staid precision of its cousin, the wind-flower, from which not one pedestrian in a hundred can yet distinguish it. If she simply says, "great armfuls of blue lupines," she has said enough, because this is almost the only wild-flower whose size, shape, and abundance naturally tempt one to gather it thus: imagine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for his hat, and he led the way to Clementina's gondola at his garden gate, in greater haste than she. At the telegraph office he framed a dispatch which for expansive fullness and precision was apparently unexampled in the experience of the clerk who took it and spelt over its English with them. It asked an answer in the vice- consul's care, and, "I'll tell you what, Miss Claxon," he said with a husky weakness in his voice, "I wish you'd let ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their rams. Although it was now generally believed that motor-bombs from a repeller might destroy a man-of-war, it was also considered probable that the accurate calculations which appeared to be necessary to precision of aim could not be made when the object of the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... the precision of the shots that the measures gave no appreciable difference. If they were not exactly in the mathematical center of the line, the distance between the needles was so small as to be invisible to ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Gens. Banks and Fremont in the valley of Virginia, were expected to cooeperate in the movement. A line of fire was slowly but steadily being drawn around Richmond. These plans, as I have said, had been well conceived and were being executed with great precision and skill. ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... life in the benevolent farmer. He became more collected; made a clear and satisfactory confession; received the sacrament of Extreme Unction; and felt himself able to speak with tolerable distinctness and precision. The effects of all this were astonishing. A placid serenity, full of hope and confidence, beamed from the pale and worn features of him who was but a few minutes before in a state of terror altogether indescribable. ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the hatchway. As he looked down between the eddies of smoke into that slaughterous pit, it was like looking from the verge of a cataract down into the yeasty pool at its base. Watching, his chance, he dropped one grenade with such faultless precision, that, striking its mark, an explosion rent the Serapis like a volcano. The long row of heaped cartridges was ignited. The fire ran horizontally, like an express on a railway. More than twenty men were instantly killed: nearly forty wounded. This blow restored ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the vocabulary, the word for destroy being different in vv. 7 and 13. Verses 14-22 continue the previous section with precise and minute instructions for the building of the ark, and in the later verses (cf. 18, 20) the precision tends to become diffuseness. The last verse speaks of the divine Being as God (Elohim), so that both the language and contents of vv. 9-22 show it to be a homogeneous section. Note that here, vv. 19, 20, two animals of every kind are to be taken into the ark, no distinction being ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... which proved of permanent service to him throughout all his subsequent career. To this precise and order-loving uncle he owed his first thorough grounding in the elements of music, and also his persevering industry and sense of method and precision. As uncle and nephew shared the same sitting-room and the same sleeping-chamber, and as the former would never suffer any departure from the established routine of things, the boy Ernst began not only to look ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and half an hour had not passed. But after that it was another story. The good spellers remained. They spelled carefully and quietly and a hush fell upon the whole room as Miss Cramp gave out the words with less haste and more precision. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... races, extending from Morocco in the west to India in the east. The disturbances which he predicted would come he traced in the first instance from our annexation of Cyprus, and the consequent invasion of Tunis by France. He foretold with great precision the rise of the Mahdi, and the growth of religious fanaticism in the Soudan; and he indicated that through Asia Minor, Persia, and Afghanistan a wave of unrest was running which must have serious consequences for the Christian Powers ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... The Chubb was soon, however, crippled and became unmanageable. She drifted within the enemy's lines and was compelled to surrender. The whole fire of the enemy was now concentrated upon the Confiance, and still the latter fired broadside after broadside with much precision and so rapidly that every gun on board of the Saratoga on one side was disabled and silenced, although she lay at such a distance that she could not be taken possession of. But Captain Downie had fallen. The Confiance was now commanded by Lieutenant Robertson, who ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is to say, if a physician can diagnose a case of love from such symptoms as devouring glances and an attentiveness so marked that it quite disgusted Maitland, who repeatedly measured his rival with the apparent cold precision of a mathematician, albeit ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of letters, which were usually adversely criticised.[290] On this subject I am not going to give you any advice at this time of day, for it is too late; and you cannot but be aware that I have often warned you in various ways and with precision. But I have, on a hint from Theopompus, intrusted him with this message to you: do see by means of persons attached to you, which you will find no difficulty in doing, that the following classes of letters ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... manufactured his moulds. In the round bay window were his operating chair, his dental engine, and the movable rack on which he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand store, ranged themselves against the wall with military precision underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, which he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for the money. Over the bed-lounge hung a rifle manufacturer's advertisement calendar which he never used. The other ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... and matter of any kind not essential, are to be omitted. Where great accuracy is desirable, omissions are to be indicated by three dots (...). The titles of books especially valuable for antiquity or rarity may be given in full, with all practicable precision. The phraseology and spelling, but not necessarily the punctuation, of the title are to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the military king who never suffered himself to be ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... that it seemed as if the whole south end of the pavilion was rising. As 1,800 scarlet-covered chorus books were hoisted into view, the whole amphitheater seemed aflame as if for an exaggerated incantation scene of Fra Diavolo. Then there was another motion of the baton, with the precision of a machine fifty bows scraped upwards over fifty violins and 150 other instruments, and 1,800 ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... the barbarian of fifteen, so he soon began his antics. He was called to the platform, told to lay aside his jacket, and, thereupon, with much astonishment received from the mild Quaker maiden, with a birch rod applied calmly but with precision, an exposition of the argumentum ad hominem based on the a posteriori method of reasoning. Thus Susan departed from her principles, but ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... leaned forward from the window-sill, and stretched his arms towards the approaching rescuers. That same instant a heavy fragment of stone, hurled with deadly force and precision, struck him upon the temple. The violence of the blow flung him back into the room; he dropped to his knees, threw out a hand as if to save himself, then sank face foremost upon the floor. Not a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... have been consonant with the law of competence. There are various local matters which come quite properly within the province of the noble, who in those days took the place of the magistrate. All that was wanted was that such matters should have been defined with precision and that in every case appeal should ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... strangest manner, did M. de Cambrai little service. If people were offended to find it supported upon no authority, they were much more so with its confused and embarrassed style, its precision so restrained and so decided, its barbarous terms which seemed as though taken from a foreign tongue, above all, its high-flown and far- fetched thoughts, which took one's breath away, as in the too subtle air of the middle region. Nobody, except the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... greatly impaired. Their prows were also much higher than the prows of their antagonists. While their shot passed harmlessly over the enemy, his balls struck their galleys close to water-mark with fatal precision. The fire of the Christians was the more murderous because many of the Turkish vessels were crowded with soldiers both on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... executed a flank movement, and attempted to take the hill by storm. At the same time one of their batteries appeared on the top of a ridge opposite, and began to play on the hill with terrible precision. To counteract this a Russian battery of three guns was despatched. I saw the horses come galloping in from the rear; one of the guns was limbered up, and off they went like the wind. At that moment a shell from the Turkish battery fell right under the ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... from Lee. The rising sun shot golden beams through the smoke and disclosed him clearly. His face was calm and his voice did not shake as he issued his orders with rapidity and precision. The lion at bay was never more ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... during an advance of 350 yards—by rifle fire at a range of 350 yards' distance, and by the extremely quick fire of the machine guns, each of which delivered from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the field-trench, a soldier enjoyed far greater security than he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely fifteen inches deep. He had merely to stoop down a little to disappear below the level of the ground ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... nevertheless quite virginal in effect. A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory proceedings, and a singular want of sociability was visible in the "sociable" part of the entertainment. People talked in whispers or with that grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities; conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk to rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like water drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the floor. The widow became ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... difficulties and delays likely to attend the plan of casting howitzers of English calibre in France. The scarcity of materials, the great danger of a want of precision in the proportions, and the facility with which we cast shells in America, induced me to substitute six inch howitzers of French calibre, to those demanded by the Board of War. This size, in the opinion of the most experienced artillerists, is preferable to the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Paris looked dirty and decadent. Her building fronts were grimy, her streets were dirty, and there was a general carelessness where before had been art, precision, and cleanliness. To-day Paris streets are clean. There is even more evidence of rebuilding and of modern conveniences. Motor street-sweepers whirl through the squares, not singly but in pairs and more ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... there will not be War," Mrs. Grant put in with great precision; "the idea is impossible nowadays. And may I ask what a ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... near the Mo-lo-ya (Malaya) mountain. But apparently he did not visit it and this makes it probable that it was not a religious centre but a mountain in the south of which Buddhists in the north wrote with little precision.[26] There is no evidence that Avalokita was first worshipped on this Potalaka, though he is often associated with mountains such as Kapota in Magadha and Valavati in Kataha.[27] In fact the connection of Potala with ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... meet! Did he not, before her face, Seek to brand me with disgrace? From the chiselled lips of wit Let the fire-flakes lightly flit, Scorching as the snow that fell On the damned in Dante's hell? With keen-worded opposition, playful, merciless precision, Mocking the romance of Youth, Standing on the sphere of Truth, He on worldly wisdom's plane Rolled it to and fro amain.— Doubtless there it could not lie, Or walk an orbit but the sky.— I, who glowed in every limb, Knowing, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... returned Orsetti. "Don't you see him twirling round like a teetotum, with Marchesa Amici 'of the swan-neck?'" And he pointed to a pair who were waltzing with such precision that they never by a single step broke the circle—Baldassare gallantly receiving the charge of any free lancers who ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... chief, excepting that, instead of a bangwan, each carried a slender white wand, about twelve feet in length, in his right hand. For a period of about five minutes these terrible beings whirled and flashed hither and thither in bewildering confusion; then, with the precision of highly trained soldiers, they suddenly halted, and I became aware that Machenga, their chief, was again upon his feet, standing in their midst. Then, while the cloud of dust raised by their mad gyrations still hovered in the air, half obscuring the company, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... seen in the drawings of John Leech, circa 1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision. Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open—looking like an empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag, the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with shining rabbit teeth, smiling as if ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... reckless girl, replied: "They shall not go, neither Miss Martha nor Miss Emma; not that I care a fiddlestring for their primness or their precision; nobody shall prevent me from thinking, and acting, and doing as I please to-day; from being, in short, what I was made to be—Fanny Brighton, ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... baffling allusiveness of the expert. The Italian landscape is painted, not with richer imagination, for nothing in Browning exceeds some passages of the earlier books, but with more depth of colouring, more precision of contour and expression. And he has taken the "sad disheveled form," Humanity, for his bride, the mate of an art which will disdain no evil and turn away from nothing common, in the service of man. Doubtless the result was not all gain. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn't exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... with his plan, and in 1862 called to his side one of the most extraordinary statesmen of modern times, Bismarck. The new minister conceived a scheme for laying Austria low and exalting Prussia, which he succeeded in carrying out with startling precision. He could not, however, reveal it to the lower chamber; he would, indeed, scarcely hint its nature to the king himself. In defiance of the lower house and of the newspapers, he carried on the strengthening of the army without formal appropriations, on the theory ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was large, his jaws wide, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small and gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the rat resemblance, its puny, white teeth seemed borrowed from that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner and a stealthy softness in his tread not often seen in combination, which might have impressed a close observer as indicative of a bold, pompous, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... One after another closed his obscure adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron's dule-tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice, which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. The exhilaration of their exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, and the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Indian acquitted herself with great propriety; for although she did not perform so well as the greater part of the company, yet she was never awkward; and when at a loss for the figure, she listened with modesty, and obeyed with precision the rules laid down to her. Many of the party now assembled were amiable and obliging, but in so large a number, some were of course present, whose manners were less agreeable: but as Matilda considered herself one of the family, so she deemed ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... in the first month of 1799 the experiment was made with such success that admission into the ranks of the camelry came to be viewed as a favour. Each animal carried two men with their arms and baggage: the uniform was sky-blue with a white turban; and the speed and precision of their movements enabled them to deal terrible blows, even at distant tribes of Bedouins, who bent before a genius that could outwit them even in ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the possibilities in the case. She remembered the clearness and precision of the Wanderer's first impression, when he first told her how he had seen Beatrice in the Teyn Kirche, and she reflected that the name was a very uncommon one. The Beatrice of his story too had a father and no other relation, and was supposed to be travelling ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... preserve foods successfully and with ease, the housewife should realize the importance of carrying out details with precision and care. The exactness with which the ingredients are measured, the choice and care of utensils, the selection and preparation of the food to be canned—all have a direct bearing on whether her results ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... single expression is sufficient offence to a heart like mine. You entreat me to be reasonable. Reasonable!—did ever man talk of reason to a woman he loved? When once a man has recourse to reason and precision, there is an end of love. No just cause of offence!—What, have I no cause to be indignant, when I find you thus trifle with my feelings, postpone from week to week, and month to month, our departure ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Scripture; and it not only changes the way of acceptance, but it takes away the rule and standard of righteousness, and substitutes a vague notion, called sincerity, in its place, which never was, nor can be, defined with precision-(Scott). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Maubeuge to the time when they settled at Fere-en-Tardenois has a unique value. The French Commander-in-Chief paid tribute to their skill. His message ran: 'Please express most particularly to Marshal French my thanks for the services rendered to us every day by the English Flying Corps. The precision, exactitude, and regularity of the news brought in by them are evidence of their perfect organization and also of the perfect training ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... he said, and looked at me and cackled. He was a little, thin, old man with meager whiskers and a curious precision of speech; and I think he got some enjoyment out of watching my expression at such remarks as this. He elaborated his assumption that the universe was conducted for his benefit, in order to see my silent revolt at the suggestion. "I'll not have it snowing." ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... went forth on any expedition or to your meeting him when he returned: one who on festivals admitted even the populace to his home, but on other days greeted even the senate only in its chambers? How could one forget the number and precision as well of his laws, which contained for the wronged an all-sufficient consolation and for the wrongdoers a not inhuman punishment? Or his rewards offered to those who married and had children? Or the prizes given to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... every different flavour which could be devised. The gentleman, with the greatest solemnity, used to dip a bit of bread in each, and taste it, giving his orders upon the subject with as much earnestness and precision as if he had been signing papers for the government of a kingdom. When this important affair was thus concluded, he would throw himself upon a couch, to repair the fatigues of such an exertion, and refresh himself ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... ruse succeeded, and the dogs lost the trail; but the hunter, coming up, passed by chance near the stump, when out bounded the fox, his cunning availing him less than he deserved. On another occasion the fox took to the public road, and stepped with great care and precision into a sleigh-track. The hard, polished snow took no imprint of the light foot, and the scent was no doubt less than it would have been on a rougher surface. Maybe, also, the rogue had considered the chances ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... numbered not less than four or five. Once let a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl, they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It was the fears of the besiegers now simply that ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... thousand copies sold in Germany, may begin to prick up its ears, and to think that this is one of the easily-read philosophies of modern times, of which Taine and Michelet have the secret. It is not so: abstractions stated with scientific precision in their elliptic slang or technicality are not and cannot be made easy reading: the strong hands of condensation which Schwegler pressed down upon the material he controlled so perfectly have not left it lighter or more digestible. The reader of this manual, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... visible the perpetual contrast of his destiny,—a mingling of the most abstruse researches and the most extravagant frivolities. Jewels sparkled upon his hands and bosom; the varicose veins on his temples throbbed with a feverish precision; the fumes of the wine-cup flushed his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... pronounced several criticisms on his acting, which were as remarkable for sound judgment as for womanly penetration. Mikhalevich mentioned music; she sat down to the piano without affectation, and played with precision several of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then only just coming into fashion. Dinner time came. Lavretsky would have gone away, but they made him stop, and the General treated him at table with excellent Lafitte, which the footman ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the game; she played, now with the rhythm and precision of a calculating machine, now with the blind impetus and swoop of some undeviating natural force. It was not will, it was not intelligence; it was something beyond and above them both, infinitely more detached, more monotonous ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... were not chosen until the whole country had been reconnoitred, and it was a highly creditable performance for artillery to get their field guns and heavy howitzer batteries through to the time-table. But the clockwork precision of the movements reflected even more highly on the staff working out the details than on the infantry and artillery, and it may be said with perfect truth that the staff made no miscalculation or mistake. ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... so-called arm of precision scores only by lucky hits, Though the 'heavies' and high explosives may possibly blow you to bits; I saw one corpse on my 'joy-ride,' the head had been blown away, And the thought of this painless ending produced in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... on, "the space co-ordinates with great precision. That is how we have been able to select the destination for this carrier now. You cannot travel upon impulse by this method. Our engineers, as you might call them, must go in advance with recording apparatus. ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... going rapidly over an invoice of cloth, as his eye and hand passed in quick succession from piece to piece, in the most miscellaneous assortment, he could tell instantly the value of each, with a degree of precision, and a certainty of knowledge, hardly credible. A single glance of the eye, a single touch, transient as thought, gave the result. His own knowledge of the subject, in short, was perfect, and it was rapidly winning ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... contributed to Punch on October 11, 1845; which has accordingly been kept back from its original associates to be inserted here. All things considered, it gives the lines which are followed in the later lectures with remarkable precision: and it is not at all improbable that Thackeray actually, though not of necessity ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be hinted at before a truly refined Bath audience. How particular we are growing—in word! I am much afraid my father will shock them with the speech of that scamp Mercutio in all its pristine purity and precision. Good-by, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... "Sweet and Low"), and some pieces for the organ. As a conductor he possessed the qualities as well as the defects of the typical north-countryman; if he was wanting in the higher kind of imagination or ideality, he infused into those who sang under him something of his own rectitude and precision. He was largely instrumental in stimulating the love for Gounod's sacred music among the less educated part of the London public, although he displayed little practical sympathy with opera. On the other hand, he organized a remarkable concert performance of Parsifal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... In a New England township the people directly govern themselves; the government is the people, or, to speak with entire precision, it is all the male inhabitants of one-and-twenty years of age and upwards. The people tax themselves. Once each year, usually in March but sometimes as early as February or as late as April, a "town-meeting" is held, at which all the grown men of the township are ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... In absolute precision the Gridley High School boys moved at their work, their swift, deft, strong strokes sending the birch bark craft darting over the water in a fashion that brought a cheer ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... as if he had been alone in the counting-house, and wrote. I looked over his shoulder, admiring his clear, firm hand-writing; the precision, concentrativeness, and quickness, with which he first seemed to arrange and then execute his ideas. He possessed to the full that "business" faculty, so frequently despised, but which, out of very ordinary material, often makes a clever man; and without ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... reentering into worldly life, which was nevertheless quite virginal in effect. A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory proceedings, and a singular want of sociability was visible in the "sociable" part of the entertainment. People talked in whispers or with that grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities; conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk to rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like water drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the floor. The widow became a helpless, religious ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... embarrassed color burned in her cheeks as she helped him undress and tried to decide on the proper moment to speak of—prayers. But David took the matter into his own hands. As he stepped into his little night-clothes, buttoning them around his waist with slow precision, he said: ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... applied, and with still greater precision, to Cock-fighting, to Lotteries, Raffles, Backgammon, Cribbage, Put, All Fours, and Whist, showing all the chances of holding any particular card or cards. Thus, it is 2 to 1 that your partner has not one certain card; 17 to 2 that he has ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... mate, and the two flew off together to cover before the falcon had realised whence the onset came. This crow not only showed great courage in facing both the falcon and the sportsman, but timed its interference with the greatest judgment and precision. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... an undeniable click, straightening his shoulders, stiffening both arms to rigidity at his sides. And for a bare thought his eyes rolled almost wildly in their deep sockets. Then he bowed twice, from the hips, with mechanical precision, profoundly to Victor, with ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... possession of the rifles that lay hidden behind counters and walls. Here, there, everywhere, all about the city, other instructed men were waiting for the signal that was to tell them to hustle deadly firearms from the beds of green-laden market wagons. It was all arranged with deadly precision. There could be no blunder. The Iron Count and his deputies ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... whitewashing walls and out-buildings and ill-smelling stalls, while others dug shovelfuls of slaked lime from wheelbarrows and spread it through stable-yards and dirty alleys. Everywhere quiet, method, order, prompt precision reigned; I even noticed a big, red-fisted artilleryman tying up tall, blue larkspurs, dahlias, and phlox in a trampled garden, and he touched the ragged masses of bloom with a tenderness peculiar to a flower-loving and sentimental people, whose ultimate ambition ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... every person transported thither since Midsummer 1625, and ... continue the same course to all persons transported thither until it shall otherwise be determined by His Majesty." The loose use of the terminology "to" and "for" recurred in subsequent years and again reflected the lack of precision in this matter as well as the seeming misapprehension in England that the servant was entitled to a fifty-acre grant. Under the articles of the treaty of 1651 between Virginia and the commissioners of the Commonwealth, the reversion to the term "for every ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... emphasize that none of this had the quality of a dream; it was clear-cut, as vivid as anything I had ever experienced; my mind worked with an unusual precision and clarity, and not even a fleeting doubt came to me of the reality of my observations. "This is some sort of bombing attack," I remember reflecting, "some assault of super-monsters of the skies, perfected by a super science." And I did not have to be told the fact; ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... the distinction of classes in the state. It is, therefore, natural to conclude, that the tactics of the Roman armies underwent important changes when the revolutions mentioned in the preceding chapters were effected, though we cannot trace the alterations with precision, because no historians appeared until the military system of the Romans had been ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Pere Duchesne. Through his ally Chaumette, he controlled the municipality of Paris, and all that depended from it. Through Bouchotte and Vincent, he managed the War Office, with its vast patronage and command of money, and distributed his journal in every camp. To a man of order and precision like Robespierre, the personage was odious, for he was anarchical and corrupt, and was the urgent patron of incapable generals; but Robespierre could not do without his support in the Press, and was obliged to conciliate him. Between Hebert ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... with a whitening face. She asked no questions. Lucas supplied every detail with the precision that characterised most of his utterances. Finally he spoke of her position, advised her strongly to employ an agent for the estate, and promised his help in this or any other matter in which she might care ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... been coached before he came. With slender, long-fingered hands, which trembled at first, he selected certain tools with nice precision, made some rapid measurements of the weapon and of the cleared space around it, and began to adjust the parts of a queer little machine. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... province the perplexities are numberless and distracting. Never surely was there a career more beset with insoluble riddles and unmanageable dilemmas. At each step, in the relation of the most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events, appears unattainable. Fiction is ever elbowing fact, so that it might be supposed contemporaries had with one accord been conspiring to disguise the truth from posterity. The uncertainty is deepened tenfold when motives have to be measured and appraised. Ralegh was the best hated ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... literature came into being largely on French and Latin models, and as French is but a degraded Latin and retains Latin roots largely, in our older English poets the Latin forms of these names are generally used. In our own generation, with the precision now so much courted, a fashion has come in, of designating Mars by his Greek name of "Ares," Venus by her name of "Aphrodite," and so on. But in this book, as our object is to make familiar the stores of general English literature which refer to such subjects, we shall retain, in general, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... botanist's paradise. Tropical treasures from Nature's storehouse, collected by successive Directors, are arranged with care and precision characteristically Dutch. It was established in 1817 by Professor Reinwardt, and many distinguished botanists who have left their mark in the scientific world studied here and added to the collections. As may be imagined, the Dutch were not content with a mere show place ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only confusion, arising from a want of precision in classifying the different forms of the verb. But when the Greek terminology was transplanted to Rome, real mischief began. Instead of rhma geniktaton, we now find the erroneous, or, at all events, inaccurate, translation, modus infinitus, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... never apprehend. By the help of this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, living beings feel ever with greater definiteness, and hence formulate their feelings in thought with more and more precision. The higher evolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and the consequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reacted upon thought. These things are as power and desire, or supply and demand, each one of which ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... in mounting to a good place inside the great palisade, where I could command a view of what was going on, and soon saw that a couple of lines of men had been made with military precision, extending from the gate to the General's house, which had been voted the first to be cleared; and between these lines, under the command of Colonel Preston, a strong body of the slaves—men only ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... because it expresses with extreme precision and clearness the common-sense principle which we apply to all supernatural stories of our own time, which Protestant theologians employ against the whole cycle of Catholic miracles, and which M. Renan is only carrying to its ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of vivid light upon the silver and maroon leather furnishings of the writing-table, upon the young man's bent head, and upon his restless hands as they grasped, and straightened, and then tore, with measured if impatient precision, the letters and papers lying ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... other,—as, indeed, they did in Merimee himself. The principles as well as the practice of narrative are here at once reduced to their lowest and exalted to their highest terms. The thing is not merely fermented but distilled; not so much a fact as a formula, with a formula's precision but without its dryness. If we take the familiar trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit and apply it to subject, style, and narrative power in a story, we shall find them all perfectly achieved ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Industrial production: growth rate NA% Electricity: 23,000 kW capacity; 150 million kWh produced, 5,340 kWh per capita (1989) Industries: electronics, metal manufacturing, textiles, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, food products, precision instruments, tourism Agriculture: livestock, vegetables, corn, wheat, potatoes, grapes Economic aid: none Currency: Swiss franc, franken, or franco (plural - francs, franken, or franchi); 1 Swiss franc, franken, or franco (SwF) 100 centimes, rappen, or centesimi Exchange rates: ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... said Professor Owlsdarck, with great precision of utterance, "I have endeavored to impress upon my scholars that Socratic wisdom which condemned books as silent: a testimony, as I take it, of great importance to those who would perfect the instrument of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... miniature whip that Abel made him, and later with Abel's own long dog whip, to wield the long lash with precision. He and Jimmy would practice for hours at a time clipping a small bit of ice no larger than an egg from a hummock ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... obtained the Prix de Rome from the American Academy, which prize allowed him to study in Rome and Greece for three years, from 1909 to 1912. His study in Greece gave a most interesting, individual touch to his work, for he united to his fresh, vigorous western style the classic precision of the Greek. He has a certain archaistic mannerism in his work recalling the Aeginetan marbles, which individuality puts a Manship stamp upon his work, striking a distinctly personal note. His statuettes are most charming and natural - little bursts of spirit and intense ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... Folding.—The teacher will give directions as to inscription and folding. He will indicate what information he wishes, such as name, class, date, etc., and where it is to be written. Each page should be numbered. If the paper is folded, it should be done with neatness and precision. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... frightened. Instead of giving her father's name, she gave her own with shy precision—"Fidelia Ames Lennox," she said, retiring into her ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... exact spot, near the Pointe-a-Pitre, where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of that island, whom he then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the Gold Bug. When money was the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... were his words. And he hung up the receiver, cranked up his car, and flew up here at lawless speed. He marched straight to Sterry, impelled by a fine Scotch rage, and he discharged the man with such vigor and precision, that the carriage house window was shattered ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... however, to geographical precision, that so soon as New Holland and New South Wales were known to form one land, there should be a general name applicable to the whole; and this essential point having been ascertained in the present voyage, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Mrs. Kinloch. I hoped to find you in a more complaisant humor. There are topics which cannot be discussed with the square precision of legal rules,—thoughts that require sympathy before they can be expressed." And he dropped his eyes with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... said, with slow precision. "I thank you, Senor Russell, in the name of the women ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... himself by raising his rifle, a weapon of unusual length, with admirable precision, and firing the instant it had got its level. The Iroquois on the opposite shore was in the act of aiming when the fatal messenger from Killdeer arrived. His rifle was discharged, it is true, but it was with the muzzle in the air, while the man himself ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... disconnectedly through her mind, Mrs. Bunting went on with her cooking, preparing the cheese, cutting it up into little shreds, carefully measuring out the butter, doing everything, as was always her way, with a certain delicate and cleanly precision. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... distinctively his own, the dramatic monologue. In his best poems in this last form he has no competitor. It is in the presentation of character through the medium of dramatic monologue that he most fully reveals the unerring precision of his analysis, his lightning glance into the heart of a mystery, the ease with which he tracks a motive or mood or thought to its last hiding place, and his consequent passion and fire of sympathy ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... swiftness and precision they got under arms. There were but fifteen hundred or so in all—six squadrons of French Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small body of ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... betray our position as Efaw Kotee had been betrayed, because the breeze continued from him to us, and also for the equally good reason that the bite of an axe in soggy palmetto does not sound with anything like the ring that is caused by hardwood. So our walls grew, being fitted with nice precision that gave them more than enough strength to sustain the filling of sand—which, in turn, was kept from sifting through the interstices by a double ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... use of distinctly scientific methods, and there seems no reason why his suggestions should not lead to an exact and definite system of color essentials. The Munsell photometer, which is briefly referred to, is an instrument of wide range, high precision, and great sensitiveness, and permits the valuations which are necessary in his system to be accurately made. We all appreciate the necessity for some improvement in our ideas of color, and the natural inference ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... with curious precision that the shrine was first erected in the year 5911 of the Dvapara age and this fantastic chronology shows that in our tenth century it was regarded as ancient. As at Mi-son, the original buildings were probably ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... F. Skene, Robert Chambers, Joseph Robertson, etc., he declined to accept them. His mother died lately and he was travelling, he said, to divert and throw off his melancholy. He talked very freely on all subjects that one broached, but not with precision, and he appeared to me to be an amiable man and a gentleman, but, withal, something of a projector, if not an adventurer. He is certainly eccentric. I asked him to take wine, etc., and he declined. He said he was bred at the High School of Edinburgh, and that he was there in 1813, and mentioned ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... producers; the kind of office-boy who is addicted to shrill, clear whistling unless very firmly dealt with. No one in the outer office realized how faultless, how rhythmic were the arpeggios and cadences that issued from those expertly puckered lips. There was about his performance an unerring precision. As you listened you felt that his ascent to the inevitable high note was a thing impossible of achievement. Up—up—up he would go, while you held your breath in suspense. And then he took the high note—took it easily, insouciantly—held it, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... guard; the crush of traffic in the city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads, disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because he was to travel by a fast ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... somewhere in the machinery of this plunging globe of ours. Everything organic, and inorganic, bears testimony to a miserable derangement. There is not a department of earth where harmony reigns. True, the stars are serene, and move in their everlasting orbits, with fixed precision, but they are not of earth; here there is nothing definite, nothing certain. The seasons are regular, but they are determined by other worlds. Verily, the contest is still fiercely waged between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and the last has the best of it, so far. The three ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... on the fourth I cut the rope, and wheeling round upon him, I gave chase, and shot him through the body with one of my pistols. The noose at every cast formed such an exact circle, and fell with such precision, the centre above my head, and the circumference reaching from the neck to the tail of my horse, that if I had not thrown away my rifle, lance, bow, and quiver, I should immediately have been dragged to the ground. All the western Indians ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... manner as he spoke well accorded with the spirit of what he said. The landlord, with much coolness and precision, replied:— ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... best games for training self-control under excitement, as the precision needed for a long shot, especially with the Indian club, is very ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the men executed with agility and precision some of the ordinary military movements. They then practised individually at a mark, and showed extraordinary dexterity in the management of the pistol and firelock. They took aim, standing, sitting, leaning, or lying prostrate, as they were commanded, and always with effect ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... A line of six shiny new slaggers came rumbling into the open with military precision. They moved along slowly, prolonging the pleasures of anticipation, then broke rank, each seeking its assigned point around the pile of appliances gathered ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... suggested the appropriate expression of enthusiasm, which, once safely deposited in the note-book, the enthusiasm itself can be quietly indulged in, or permitted to evaporate. At the dinner-table, even when champagne is circulating, if a jest or a story falls flat, they see with an Aristotelian precision the cause of its failure, and how an additional touch, or a more auspicious moment, would have procured for it a better fate; they stop to pick it up, they clean it, they revolve the chapter and the page to which it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... before syntax; but it should be chiefly taught by a direct analysis of entire sentences, and those so plainly written that the particular effect of every word may be clearly distinguished, and the meaning, whether intrinsic or relative, be discovered with precision. The parts of speech are usually named and defined with reference to the use of words in sentences; and, as the same word not unfrequently stands for several different parts of speech, the learner should be early taught to make for himself the proper application of the foregoing ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... passage. He grasped, and rendered in turn with perfect accuracy, shades of meaning and subtleties of language; and the fine expression of relations difficult to solve surprises and charms the reader by its precision. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... considered as a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting; and its object, like that of all the liberal arts, is, or ought to be, to move the affections under the controul of good sense; that is, those of the best and wisest: but, speaking with more precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the affections, and, surely, as I have said, the affections of those who have the deepest perception of the beauty of Nature; who have the most valuable feelings, that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... had reached the Beaver, and from Laggan westward the construction gangs were strewn along the line in straggling camps, straggling because, though the tents of the railway men were set in orderly precision, the crowds of camp-followers spread themselves hither and thither in disorderly confusion around ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... brighten as she sat there freeing her mind upon every subject that came up, from the delicate little shirts Mrs. Sterling knit in spite of failing eyesight, to the fall of Richmond, which, the prophetic spirit being strong within her, Mrs. Wilkins foretold with sibylline precision. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... determination to call that number, was known. The inconveniences of their number have been distressing to the last degree, though, as yet, they have been employed in work which could be done in the lump. They are now proceeding to instruments, every word of which must be weighed with precision. Heretofore, too, they were hooped together by a common enemy. This is no longer the case. Yet a thorough view of the wisdom and rectitude of this assembly disposes me more to hope they will find some means of surmounting the difficulty of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... criticism or question, as well as the hostility towards all other forms of religion and philosophy, have necessarily had a very narrowing influence on Muhammadan thought. While the formal and lifeless precision of the religious services and prayers, as well as the belief in divine interference in the concerns of everyday life, have produced a strong spirit of fatalism and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... had not led him much, of late years at least, into its general or bustling scenes, nor had he mingled often in the society which enables the observer to "shoot folly as it flies." The consequence perhaps was, that the characters wanted that force and precision which can only be given by a writer who is familiarly acquainted with his subject. The author, however, had the satisfaction to chronicle his testimony against the practice of gambling, a vice which the devil has contrived to render all his own, since it is deprived of whatever ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... command of spaces and masses is only half his power. He spreads further than any one else, but he also touches the detail of the scene, the single episode, the fine shade of character, with exquisite lightness and precision. Nobody surpasses, in some ways nobody approaches, the easy authority with which he handles the matter immediately before him at the moment, a roomful of people, the brilliance of youth, spring sunshine in a forest, a boy on a horse; whatever his shifting panorama brings into ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... channels by which the currents bore us into the war of 1812 are described with such surprising simplicity that one almost fails to realize how admirable a piece of condensation the single chapter is; and the annexation of Texas is told with equal precision. The earliest traces of our present policies, such as the Monroe Doctrine, the protective tariff and free-silver issues, are explained so clearly and impartially that the author's brevity helps rather than mars the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep; into the true centre of the matter; and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... strict letter of the law, or some forced interpretation of it: or if none of these, that the royal prerogative ought with conscientious judges to outweigh all other considerations." We are startled at the precision with which More describes the processes by which the law-courts were to lend themselves to the advance of tyranny till their crowning judgement in the case of ship-money. But behind these judicial ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... even by the Attic elegance of a Plato. And in the second place, it contains almost a history in miniature of the highest speculations of philosophy, both in earlier and in later times, and points out, with a clearness and precision the more valuable because uninfluenced by recent controversies, the exact field on which the philosophies of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned come into collision, and the nature of the problem which they ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... printed tracts, might be called his 'Works.' They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system—but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his associates in office, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... increase every year amid dizzy enthusiasm. The relentless torture of precision seizes me. We do three years of military training; our children will do five, they will do ten. We pay two thousand million francs a year in preparation for war; we shall pay twenty, we shall pay fifty ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast; tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers upon them, when the artillery of France, levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, played upon them, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset—tell me if for one instant, when to hesitate ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... ever forget how they circled about us. One of their clan, as they supposed, was in dire danger and they functioned as only a fatu-liva can. Flying at an immense height, in battle formation, they began laying eggs with marvelous precision. The first two struck the wak-wak square on the nose and he screamed with pain. The third, landing corner-wise, put out his right eye and he began to thrash in helpless circles. The fourth was a direct hit ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the overture to Mozart's Nozze. Before they were half through, it was clear that we should not enjoy that evening the delight of perfect music added to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, the complete subordination of all details to the whole. In rendering German music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or through imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... took the place of the oblong helmets of the French along the parapet; British soldiers were in billets in place of the French in the villages at the rear and British guns moved into French gun-emplacements with the orderly precision which army training with its discipline alone secures; while the French Army was on board railway trains moving at given intervals of headway over rails restricted to their use on their way to Verdun where, under that simple French staff system which is the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the familiar battle pictures, — the battalions in manoeuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent to danger, galloping about on their chargers. But now the German guns, moved back, began to get our range, and the shells to burst over and around batteries and troops, many with admirable precision. Here my best comrade was struck down by shrapnel at my ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... by denial, to furnish such demonstration of its truth as the nature of the matter allows of, we say that, in our judgment, there is no professed writer of songs, in this day, who has conceived the true character of this delicate and peculiar creation of art, with greater precision and justness than Mr. Morris, or been more felicitous than he in dealing with the subtle and multiform difficulties that beset its execution. It is well understood by those whose thoughts are used to be conversant with the suggestions of a deeper analysis than belongs ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... last came on shore, and took to gardening, but as he usually pulled up the flowers instead of the weeds, he was directed to confine himself to sweeping the walks, which he did effectually, with delightful slowness and precision. He was one day in summer found sprinkling the housemaid's tea leaves over them, as he remarked, to lick up ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... following may be read with great advantage, for the purpose of acquiring distinctness and precision in articulation. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... strange pseudo-French Continental mongrels with whom age always brings cynicism, she tries to account for the virtue of Englishwomen by accidental, and often rather nasty, necessities. Mme. d'Albany writes with the freedom and precision of a Continental woman of the world of eighty years ago; and her remarks lose too much or gain too much by translation into our chaster language. "The charm of intimate society," she winds up, conscious ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... suggest, and seem to authorise a special use of this idiom of Gaelic Syntax, which, if uniformly observed, might contribute much to the perspicuity and precision of many common expressions. When a compound term occurs, made up of a Noun and an Infinitive governed by that Noun, it often happens that this term itself governs another Noun in the Genitive. Let the two parts of ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... river, under the pilotage of members of the Coast Survey, who, already partly familiar with the ground, were to push their triangulation up to the forts themselves and establish the position of the mortars with mathematical precision; a service they performed with courage and accuracy. The work of the surveyors was carried on under the guns of the forts and exposed to the fire of riflemen lurking in the bushes, who were not wholly, though they were mostly, kept in check by the gunboats patrolling the river. On the 16th the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hopeless a business it was in those days, not so long past, to pursue after wild life with a camera; but a thousand disheartening failures left him still grasping the inviolable shade, still confident that in photography, if it could only be given with rapidity and precision, lay the naturalist's hope. Blurred negatives were all the spoil, and, sorry enough, we bore back after long days of tossing and climbing among the Outer Islands; but we had the reward of living among the birds. They filled our thoughts, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... When absent from Mrs. C. he wrote everything to her in the greatest detail. Canning's industry was such that he never left a moment unemployed, and such was the clearness of his head that he could address himself almost at the same time to several different subjects with perfect precision and without the least embarrassment. He wrote very fast, but not fast enough for his mind, composing much quicker than he could commit his ideas to paper. He could not bear to dictate, because nobody could write fast enough for him; ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... to the days of Copernicus. It was, indeed, quite impossible to be certain of the real shape of the earth or the reality of its motions until knowledge became more extended and scientific instruments much greater in precision. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... strength, rapidity of movement, and rate of fatigue they have a very decided advantage. These three forms of superiority are probably all expressions of one and the same fact—the greater muscular strength of men. Men are very slightly superior to women in precision of movement. This fact is probably also connected with their superior muscular force. In the formation of a new co-ordination women are superior. The superiority of men in muscular strength is so well known that it is a ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Mees Gwendolyn," chided Mademoiselle, irritably (she spoke with much precision and only a slight accent), "how ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... his pen on his desk with almost painful slowness and precision. Slowly he slid off his chair, and slowly he picked up his cap and put it on his head. He did not say a word. His brow was drawn into deep wrinkles, and his eyes glittered as he walked up to the box with almost supernaturally stately tread and picked ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... assist the reader to realise with somewhat greater precision the bearing of the foregoing remarks, it may be worth while to give an outline sketch of one of the most celebrated of the Greek tragedies, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... turned reluctantly, but pushed out of the door at Coleman's annoyed growl. Jon sat down against the wall, his mind sorting out the few facts with lightning precision. There was no room in his thoughts for Druce, the man had become just one more ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... points are justly awarded has to be determined in so crude a manner as it is at present. It is true that formerly all characteristics were determined in equally crude manner and we should be glad that all others can be determined with precision but still having one quality not precisely determined, to a certain extent prevents exact determination of the others having the value it otherwise would. We can make only about five graduations in quality which ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... a perceptible slackening in the speed of the approaching horsemen. Then, as the English continued their work, firing with machine-like precision and deadly accuracy, the Germans came to ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... know, find a dividing line that would be mutually satisfactory to them; but, Sir, they can find no such line to which the western country can assent." But it was Abraham Lincoln who stated the issue with the greatest precision, and who voiced most clearly the nationalism of the Middle West, when he declared, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... mutton—baa, baa, baa...? Or the shepherd? Yes, decidedly, he felt himself to be the shepherd now. He was the master, the protector. A wave of courage swelled through him, warm as wine. He turned his head, and began to kiss her face, at first rather randomly, then, with more precision, on the mouth. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... while busy trailers followed on with their lanterns down the eastward bank, and were presently seen flitting like fireflies far south among the willows, Turner himself, with a score of his men, hastened back to quarters. There was saddling in hot haste, yet with the precision of long practice. By half past two all sight or sound of the trailers and the pursuing horsemen was lost in the distance, and a corporal, trotting back from the Sanchez place, reported that Munoz and some of his fellows had joined in the search, and already with important result. Captain ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... contemptuously on his heel, with military precision. Then he chuckled Dolores under the chin with a leer, to have his hand indignantly pushed aside. As the girl glared at him with a flash of hatred in her eyes, he stalked into the taproom, followed by ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... where barbarians with a Latin varnish emulated each other in being more than Ciceronian. Whether it be want of culture, for the highest outcome of that is simplicity, or for whatever reason, it is certain that very few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country. We use it like Scotsmen, not as if it belonged to us, but as if we wished to prove that we belonged to it, by showing our intimacy with its written rather than with its spoken dialect. And yet all the while our popular ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... our unlimited approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age, or poverty of customers, vested the office of trouser-cutter and coat architect in the same functionary, coats were without soul, and "inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... taken, recriminating upon the commons, and expressing the most fervent zeal, duty, and affection to her majesty. In her answer to this representation, which was drawn up with elegance, propriety, and precision, she professed her sorrow for the misunderstanding which had happened between the two houses of parliament, and thanked them for the concern they had expressed for the rights of the crown and the prerogative; which she should never exert so willingly as for the good of her subjects, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... approached the Mission of Tai-o-hae, that once pompous and powerful center of the diffusion of the faith throughout the Marquesas. The road was lined with guavas, mangos, cocoanuts, and tamarinds, all planted with precision and care. The ambitious fathers who had begun these plantings scores of years before had provided the choicest fruits for their table. All over the world the members of the great religious orders of Europe have carried the seeds of the best varieties of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... bureau, and the sound pervaded the room with its steady throb. Her feelings, her thoughts, seemed to pulsate in concert with its rhythm. The words which expressed her dominant emotions hammered themselves into her brain with the steady precision of ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... five distinct counts against her, set forth in ponderous and damning legal phraseology and briefed alphabetically with a precision that carried conviction: ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... These gallant and skilful soldiers immediately faced about, and after some file-firing charged, rear-rank in front. At this critical moment, Deane's battery arrived, and drove back the enemy by the precision of their fire. Several guns were here captured by the British. The heroism and losses of the 2nd regiment were very great. While the infantry had thus been engaged in close and deadly battle, the cavalry also ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sharp precision and obeyed. Three paces took him out of the firelight into the overhanging shadow. He made a gesture of sorrow and anger. "Who says that magic's dead? Now, how long will that potion hold him?" He stumbled in the loose, bare earth, swamp and creek below him. He looked ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... standing against the wall. It was one of those tall, wooden frames in which, behind the glass, the heavy, polished disk of the pendulum, alternated slowly back and forth with wearisome precision. And with every stroke of the seconds there was a faint, metallic clangor in the clock—a falter like that which comes in the voice of a very old man. And the sound of this clock took possession of every silence ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... Doria from his anchorage at Sessola saw the sea white with the sails of the enemy, the blue water churning to foam beneath the strokes of his oars; the Ottoman fleet was issuing from the Gulf of Arta manoeuvring with precision and deploying into a single line abreast; which line being slightly concave, either from accident or design, resembled the form of a crescent. In advance came six great fustas commanded by Dragut; the left wing hugged the shore as closely as possible; the Ottoman commander-in-chief ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... vivid precision her queer start when she heard the rustle of my approaching feet, her surprise, her eyes almost of dismay for me. I could recollect, I believe, every significant word she spoke during our meeting, and most of what I said to her. At least, it seems I could, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... endeavour to understand the bearing of Bentham's teaching on the problems of his own time and on the subsequent development of Liberal thought. For this purpose we will keep to what is real in his doctrine, even if it is not always defined with academic precision. The salient points that we note, then, are (1) the subordination of all considerations of right to the considerations of happiness, (2) the importance of number, and (3) as the other side of the same doctrine, the insistence on equality or impartiality between man and man. The ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... little more than a child, was there still. I was always susceptible to this virtue, and delicate hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed thereon, were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty. I noticed that the gloves, though mended, fitted with the same precision, and that her dress was unwrinkled and perfectly graceful. Whatever she might have had to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred satisfaction ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... with the instantaneous precision of automata newly greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the class respecting ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... attitude of command, he gently inclines his body to the left, leads his disposable force rapidly upwards in that direction, where, having surprised the post against which they were dispatched, he recovers his swerve, and they retrace with equal precision and rapidity their course from the wings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... discretion. A diversion was caused when they reached the kennels. He watched her among the leaping hounds. She employed the same tactics to quiet them that she had used with himself. With a coaxing word and a caress she had them crouching at her feet. He listened to the precision of her orders and the definiteness of ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Witchcraft," by John Cotta, "Doctor in Physike," published in 1616, is extremely instructive. The writer is evidently in advance of his time in his opinions upon the principal subject with which he professes to deal, and weighs the evidence for and against the reality of witchcraft with extreme precision and fairness. In the course of his argument he has to distinguish the symptoms that show a person to have been bewitched, from those that point to a demoniacal possession.[1] "Reason doth detect," says he, "the sicke to be afflicted by the immediate supernaturall power of the devil two wayes: ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... fare from Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely, for the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia. "What on earth has Euston got to do with it?" "You hailed me just outside Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then you said——" "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?" I said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west corner of Leicester-square." "Leicester-square," he exclaimed, loosening a kind of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been near Leicester-square ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... legs, and huge arms so long that even when the brute stood upright its clenched fists reached to within a foot of the ground. As it started to wade ashore its advance was momentarily checked by a terrific volley of stones, hurled with amazing force and precision; then, emitting a series of those dreadful, shrieking roars, it dashed forward with outstretched arms, seized the nearest native and, without apparent effort, literally tore the unfortunate man's head ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the Presidential office, and directly within the law of 1871, already cited, I endeavored, by regulation made on the 22d day of June, 1877, to put some reasonable limits to such abuses. It may not be easy, and it may never perhaps be necessary, to define with precision the proper limit of political action on the part of Federal officers. But while their right to hold and freely express their opinions can not be questioned, it is very plain that they should neither be allowed to devote to other subjects the time needed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with forms and things which, professing completion, are yet not exact nor complete, as in the vulgar with wax and clay and china figures, and in bad sculptors with an unfinished and clay-like modelling of surface, and curves and angles of no precision or delicacy; and in general, in all common and unthinking persons with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine, as church-wardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash, and as the modern Italians scrape away and polish ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... drawing lines in the sand, and Lidgerwood sat on a cross-tie end and conned his lesson. Below the siding the big crane was heaving the derailed cars into line with methodical precision, but now it was Gridley's shop foreman who was giving the orders. The master-mechanic had gone aside to hold converse with a man who had driven up in a buckboard, coming from the direction in which ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... was executed with precision, and with all possible secrecy and success. It was on the 1st of February, 1702, at break of day, that the surprise was attempted. The Marechal de Villeroy had only arrived in the town on the previous night. The first person who got scent of what was going forward was the cook ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis—larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that such a choice may be scientifically determined and produced, at any operator's pleasure, by a definite number of ingredients, so much youth, so much beauty, so much talent &c. &c., with the same certainty and precision that another kind of operator will construct you an artificial volcano with so much steel filings and flower of sulphur and what not. There is more in the soul than rises to the surface and meets the eye; whatever does ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Plato remarks that precision in the use of terms, though sometimes pedantic, is sometimes necessary. Here he makes the opposite reflection, that there may be a philosophical disregard of words. The evil of mere verbal oppositions, the requirement ...
— Statesman • Plato
... rosy-cheeked man, turned pale. His gloves lay on the table at his elbow, and his fingers trembled a little as he picked them up and began fitting them on with meticulous precision. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... production, especially as regards the chief characters, who as a whole could not be regarded as belonging to the flower of Berlin opera, left me unmoved, and though the effect never reached a point that could be even distantly compared to that produced upon me by Schroder-Devrient, yet the exceptional precision, fire, and richly organised rendering of the whole was new to me. I gained a fresh insight into the peculiar dignity of big theatrical representations, which in their several parts could, by well-accentuated rhythm, be made to attain the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... consummate assurance of her own abilities.—Call with Mr. Robinson (who, by the bye, I find to be a worthy, much respected man, very modest; warm, social heart, which with less good sense than his would be perhaps with the children of prim precision and pride, rather inimical to that respect which is man's due from man) with him I call on Miss Clarke, a maiden in the Scotch phrase, "Guid enough, but no brent new:" a clever woman, with tolerable pretensions to remark and wit; while time had ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... knew that, of old, the barge was often used by Porphyrius' guests, though he did not happen to have heard who were its present occupants—bowed, with military politeness and precision, to the pretty girl lounging on the deck. Dada returned the greeting; but this seemed likely to be the end of their acquaintance, for the soldier walked on without turning round. He looked handsomer even than he had seemed the day before; his hair was freshly oiled and curled, his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... justify the expectation that its wings might be separated from each other, and a complete victory be obtained. Had the American troops possessed the advantages given by experience; had every division of the army performed with precision the part allotted to it, there is yet reason to believe that the hopes inspired by this favourable commencement would not have been disappointed. But the face of the country, and the darkness of the morning produced by a fog of uncommon density, co-operating with the want ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion on the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says, "One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims, by ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... endeavored to throw the chains of precision over the spirit of this beautiful trifle, require too much from Anacreontic philosophy. Among others, Gail very sapiently thinks that the poet uses the epithet [Greek: melainae], because black earth absorbs moisture more quickly than any other; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... first victim showed the ruthless precision with which Cromwell was to strike. In the general opinion of Europe, the foremost Englishman of the time was Sir Thomas More. As the policy of the divorce ended in an open rupture with Rome, he had withdrawn silently from the ministry, but his silent disapproval of the new ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... blanket over him, so as to darken the water and conceal himself from observation; in this position he will remain for hours, patiently watching the approach of his prey, which he strikes with admirable precision as soon as it appears within the reach of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... a written form, and it is the most marked of professional distortions, the most unintelligible to the illiterate, who think waveringly and who do not, happily for them, suffer the continual servitude to precision of word and ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... moment he saw his smooth, ageless, kindly face, surmounted by a huge pair of spectacles that were hooked behind two large ears, above which his pale yellow hair, parted in the middle, was drawn back with plaster-like precision. A mayor and a constable had been appointed, and the Hon. Sam had just finished his first case—Squire Morton and the Widow Crane, who ran a boarding-house, each having laid claim to three pigs that obstructed traffic in the town. The Hon. Sam ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... information in their power, and supplying them with crabs; but of course they did not fail to ask for bread, of which as much as could be spared was given them. On May 8th, they conducted Lieutenant Stewart's party back to Middle Head, and he expresses great surprise at the precision with which they found their way in the bush without having any apparent means to guide them. I have before alluded to this instinctive power ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
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