"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, as she thoroughly understands the art of transformation, became a perfect German woman before she took possession of her purchase. In order not to arouse suspicion on the part of the fugitives, she carefully avoided meeting either of them, and played to perfection the role of a lady that had ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... bethought him of a resource. At intervals, during his life, he had aided his father in the occupation of gardening. He could dig, plant, and sow. He could prune trees, and propagate flowers to perfection. He understood the management of the greenhouse and hothouse, the cold-pit and the forcing-pit; nay, more—he understood the names and nature of most of the plants that are cultivated in European countries; in other words, he was a botanist. His ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... said the contributor, penitently taking himself to task for forgetting the hero of these excellent misfortunes in his delight at their perfection, "how am I to sleep to-night, thinking of that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty? Never mind,—I'll be up early, and run over and make sure that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he gets out here, and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of his native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions. You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection. It is not. Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books. The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things grow from ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... exceptionally short of cannon bone and long from hock to stifle as a greyhound; with a breadth of chest and a depth of barrel beneath the withers that indicated most unusual lung capacity, behind the throat-latch Sol showed, in extraordinary perfection, all the best points of a thoroughbred hunter that make for speed, jumping ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... years his junior. He had purposely selected a young, pretty, harmless, well-dressed doll, as the being best suited to further his ends in the great world. He admired her sincerely. She reached the exact mental stature and standard which he looked upon as perfection in womanhood, and her absolute despotism in ruling the modes and creeds of the beau monde were to him the highest proof of her superiority over ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "contributing with our utmost Power to the Satisfaction and Happiness of all about us." And in these pages we have Fielding's philosophy of goodness and greatness, delivered in words that already display an unrivalled perfection of style. Speaking of his third volume, that poignant indictment of devilry the Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great, it is thus that Fielding exposes the iniquity of villains in "great" places:—"But without considering Newgate as ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... supernatural qualities, and inhabiting the recesses of the earth. Resembling men in their general appearance, the manner of their existence, and their habits of life, they far excel the miserable Laplanders in perfection of nature, felicity of situation, and skill in mechanical arts. From all these advantages, however, after the partial conversion of the Laplanders, the subterranean people have derived no farther credit, than to be confounded ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped through them could only be seen and felt. But descriptions of beauty are never satisfactory. It must, therefore, be left to the imagination of the reader to conceive of something not more than mortal, nor, indeed, quite the perfection of mortality, but charming men the more, because they felt, that, lovely as she was, she was of like ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arrangement of that pool who shall describe? In this small space may be found animal and vegetable life of all kinds, anemonae, lovely weeds, zoophytes, curious fish, sponges, shells, coral, and a hundred other things, all in such perfection and orderly wildness that no artificial aquarium can ever hope to present, for they are made by hands, and can never vie with Nature in the formation of the wild and picturesque ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... grandmother, to fail in the due ordering of a house was a cardinal sin. And my poor mother sinned, not indeed by intention, hardly even in labour, but in that appearance of easy perfection, which in a household is the result of excellent plans thoroughly and timeously carried out. She was apt to be found late of an afternoon in a chair with a book—and the dinner dishes still unwashed. Then Agnes Anne, my sister, would come in without ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to render the people of this continent tributary to the mother country - Having finished their part of the plan, their indefatigable Randolph was dispatched to Great-Britain to communicate it to the fraternity there, in order that it might be ripen'd and bro't to perfection: But even before his embarkation, he could not help discovering his own weakness, by giving a broad hint of the design - This parricide pretended that his intention in making a voyage to England at that time, was to settle a private affair of his own; ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... farmer and a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at their highest pitch of efficiency. She demanded efficiency, and, on the whole, she got it; she gave it by a sort ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... penetration, accuracy, polish; any thing is rather the characteristic of the historian, than the flow of eloquence, and the flame of genius. Far therefore from classing him in this respect with such writers as the immortal Hume, who have perhaps carried the English language to the highest perfection it is capable of reaching; we are inclined to rank him below Dr. Johnson, though we are by no means insensible to the splendid faults of ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... captain or unskilful crew. These disadvantages were not felt when opposed to navies in which they existed to an even greater extent, but became very apparent when brought into contact with a power whose few officers knew how to play their own parts very nearly to perfection, and, something equally important, knew how to make first-rate crews out of what was already good raw material. Finally, a large proportion of James' abuse of the Americans sufficiently refutes ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grapple with his pursuers, but he controlled himself, and trusting to the perfection of his disguise to screen him, without a moment's hesitation he boldly answered in ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... time, would not melt or even soften at any degree of heat, that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from exposure to any degree of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat necessary for the perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... to do away, as far as himself was concerned, this merited reproach, operated as one among other causes to induce him to be particularly watchful over his thoughts and actions, and to endeavour to attain that purity of heart, without which he conceived there could be no perfection of the Christian character. Accordingly, in the twenty-second year of his age, he had given such proof of the integrity of his life, and of his religious qualifications, that he became an acknowledged minister of the Gospel in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... daguerreotype, which presupposed hours of exposure, to the instantaneous photograph which fixes the picture of the outer world in a small fraction of a second. We are not concerned here with this technical advance, with the perfection of the sensitive surface of the photographic plate. In 1872 the photographer's camera had reached a stage at which it was possible to take snapshot pictures. But this alone would not have allowed the ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... stretching from the Cumberland River back to some high hills about one mile distant. That part lying on the river was like a garden of the Lord for richness of soil. In this land Indian corn, tobacco, cabbage, and potatoes grew to perfection. Midway between the river and the high hills was a narrow ridge which ran parallel with the river. This natural backbone of land reached its greatest height on Mr. LeMonde's farm. But the highest point of all had been increased in size by artificial ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... the concert-giver, "the king of the fete, who was overwhelmed with bravos." The pianoforte performances of Chopin took up by far the greater part of the programme, which was varied by two arias from Adam's "La Rose de Peronne," sung by Mdme. Damoreau—Cinti, who was as usual "ravissante de perfection," and by Ernst's "Elegie," played by the composer himself "in a grand style, with passionate feeling and a purity worthy of the great masters." Escudier, the writer of the notice in the "France Musicale," says of Ernst's playing: "If you wish to hear the violin weep, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. Even the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... modern art the statue breathes life and action in the perfection of its every detail, representing a Rough Rider who is about to draw his weapon while reining his terrified horse as it rears in a last lunge. This is indicated by the steed's gaping mouth, distended nostrils, the bent knees, knotted chords ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... bloom of youth Spoils its frail complexion; Let the young grape gently grow Till it reach perfection; Hope within my heart doth glow Of ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... this special attribute. His hair was of a dense black, and his whiskers of the same sombre hue. These carefully-arranged whiskers were another of the dentist's strong points; and the third strong point was his teeth, the perfection whereof was a fine advertisement when considered in a professional light. The teeth were rather too large and square for a painter's or a poet's notion of beauty, and were apt to suggest an unpleasant image of some sleek brindled creature crunching human bones in an Indian jungle. But ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... long in bearing fruit. On the hall table lay a card, and pausing on her way upstairs she examined it through her jewelled lorgnette. Charlotte, halfway down, leaned over the rail and watched her, admiring the sweep of her gown, the perfection of the gloved hand that held ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... Scholastic, and the rich Romantic culture—of the Mediaeval Era. The Elizabethan Men of Letters are men who found in those new and dazzling stores of art and literature which the movements of their age brought in all their freshly restored perfection to them, only the summons to their own slumbering intellectual activities,—fed with fires that old Eastern and Southern civilizations never knew, nurtured in the depths of a nature whose depths the northern antiquity had made; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... pleases, and he rests in that, because the operation of the intelligence is not a work of movement but of quiet; from thence alone he derives that barb which, killing him, constitutes the consummation of perfection. He burns with one fire alone; that ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... be said to cut both ways, or hustle both ways; for if they hustle in, they also hustle out. It may not at first sight seem the very warmest compliment to a gentleman to congratulate him on the fact that he soon goes away. But it really is a tribute to his perfection in a very delicate social art; and I am quite serious when I say that in this respect the interviewers are artists. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to come to the point, particularly the sort of point which American journalists are supposed, with some exaggeration, to ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... imagination. There are not enough survivors now. But we have vague idea of the grandeur of these dead. They have given all; by degrees they have given all their strength, and finally they have given themselves, en bloc. They have outpaced life, and their effort has something of superhuman perfection. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... can not refrain from writing to remind you of your promise to us; this must be about the time fixed upon, (at least we all feel as if it was), and the season is so delightful, not to mention the strawberries which will be in great perfection this week—these reasons, together with our great desire to see you, determined me to give you warning that we are surely expecting you, and hope to hear very soon from you to say when we may send to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... of artists; but on the perverse principle, then common, that training is either useless to native capacity or ruins it, he remained untaught, and his vigorous draughtsmanship, invaluable as it was in his scientific career, never reached its full technical perfection. But the sketches which he delighted to make on his travels reveal the artist's eye, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... art is that of weaving, and how much the human race of today owes to the patient endeavors of the "little brown woman" of the past for the perfection to which she brought this,—one of the most primitive ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... to supposed perfection, some twenty years ago, it was believed that the pole would easily be reached, but there were always the wild and wicked winds, in which no steering apparatus could be relied upon. We may steer ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... striding amongst them, evidently a jockey and a stranger, looking at them and occasionally asking a slight question of one or another of their proprietors, but he did not buy. He might in age be about eight-and-twenty, and about six feet and three-quarters of an inch in height; in build he was perfection itself—a better-built man I never saw. He wore a cap and a brown jockey coat, trowsers, leggings, and highlows, and sported a single spur. He had whiskers—all jockeys should have whiskers—but he had what I did not like, and what no genuine jockey should have, a moustache, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... converted was sometimes shut up, the case being then made to revolve rapidly till the victim lost consciousness; and lastly of fetters used when taking prisoners from one town to another, and brought to such perfection, that when they were on the prisoner could ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the gods. The sublime calm which imparts to great works of art a hint of eternity is born of complete mastery of life; all the stages of evolution have been accomplished, the whole movement of growth has been fulfilled, before the hand of art sets the seal of perfection on the thing that is done. Shadow and light, heat and cold, tempest and quiet days, have all wrought together before the blooming of the flower which in its perfect grace and beauty gives no hint of its troubled growth. As the consummation ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... by all bitters else which interpose Before enjoyment of this choicest sweet, Love is augmented, to perfection grows, And takes a finer edge; to drink and eat, Hunger and thirst the palate so dispose, And flavour more our beverage and our meat. Feebly that wight can estimate the charms Of peace, who never knew the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... very thin. Some of the coins are oblong, some square, and others round. The chief circulating coins are of copper or iron. The workmen are very skilful: they manufacture cutlery and sword-blades to perfection. They show great skill also in gold and silver work. Their mirrors are of bronze, the reflecting surface being of silver, and polished, the back and handle ornamented with various devices. Everything, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... up-and-down life. It is an upward and onward life; on our knees, if you will, but upward and upward and, like the stairs in Ezekiel's vision, still upward. And the Scriptures encourage us forward, bidding us leave the word of the beginning of Christ and go (not crawl) on unto perfection. ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... which is at once so comfortable and so hopeless—secure alike against the risk of "scenes" and the hope of reconciliation, shut fast in its exemption from amantium irae against all possibility of redintegratio amoris. To such perfection, indeed, had the feeling been cultivated on both sides, that Sterne, in the letter above quoted, can write of his conjugal relations in this ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... want of reflection and in-sight into character, was a young woman of strong feelings, and loved, when she did love, with something like blind idolatry. Thus she loved her husband. He was every thing to her, and she believed him as near perfection as a mortal could well be. The first few months of her married life passed swiftly away in the enjoyment of as high a degree of felicity as her mind seemed capable of appreciating. After that, a shadow fell upon her spirit—dim and ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... thing into consideration, Miss Milner," added he, "I rejoice that your sentiments happen to be such as you have owned. For, although my Lord Frederick is not the very man I could have wished for your perfect happiness; yet, in the state of human perfection and human happiness, you might have fixed your affections with perhaps less propriety; and still, where my unwillingness to thwart your inclinations might not have permitted ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... traced from Swift to Addison, from Addison to Pope, and—with marked reservations—from Pope to Goldsmith. It would be unjust to charge all, or indeed any, of these with the narrowness of view betrayed in Johnson's verdicts on individual writers. To arrive at this perfection of sourness was a work of time; and the nature of Addison and Goldsmith at least was too genial to allow of any approach to it. But, with all their difference of temperament, the method of the earlier critics is hardly ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the different Changes, which have happen'd in Poetry, and by what degrees it has arrived to the Perfection, we now find it; I have spoken of it already in my Commentaries on Horace's Art of Poetry, and shall say more in explaining, what Aristotle writes in ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... evening of the day preceding that of the picnic, using recipe for "Perfection Potato Cake," which Aunt Sarah considered her best recipe for raised cakes, as 'twas one used by her mother for ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... of her own for preferring rosy complexions, turn-up noses, and "runaway" chins, might quarrel with the Major's fine Roman profile and jet-black moustache and hair; but—there was no denying it—he was, even at forty, a remarkably handsome man; one of the old school of Chesterfield perfection, which is ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to know if it were really a human being or a poised boulder squatting there. There came no call from below; the hawk wheeled and wheeled, lost interest, drifting away. In the little hollow where the lake glinted it was very still with the soft perfection of the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... rapture. But Rutherford does not mean that, as he is careful to explain. He means, as he says, 'die believing.' It will be your last act as a believer, therefore do it well. You have been practising faith all your days; show that practice makes perfection at the end. As Rutherford said to George Gillespie when he was on his deathbed, 'Hand over all your bills, paid and unpaid, to your surety. Give him the keys of the drawer, and let him clear it out ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... yo' color always,—taking in your height and complexion, Jule," said Miss Sally demurely, yet not without a feminine consciousness that it really did set off her cousin's graceful figure to perfection. "But you can't keep up this gait always. You know some day you might ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the old world, stating numbers common to Europe and Asia; (b) indigenous species, but belonging to genera found in the old world; and (c) species belonging to genera confined to America or the New World. To make (according to my ideas) perfection perfect, one ought to be told whether there are other cases, like Erica, of genera common in Europe or in Old World not found in your area. But honestly I feel that it is quite ridiculous my writing to you at such length on ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... could fail to see that the slight girlish figure was of ravishing perfection. The waist was slender, the partly revealed arms were as delicate as lilies, the tiny hands with their tapering fingers were like those of a fairy, while the countenance was one of the fairest that ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... might be sutured; the wound of the tendon sheath as well as that of the skin carefully united by means of gut sutures, the leg bandaged and immobilized with leather splints and recovery follow in a reasonable percentage of cases so treated. These cases afford an opportunity for the perfection of practical means of treatment by those who frequently meet with ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... something drew Rollo's steps that way; slow, quiet steps, which however brought him to Gyda's side, whom Hazel had seated at the table. While he was safe with her, Wych Hazel watched her chance, and the next thing Dr. Maryland knew, she had brought and set down by him on the table the perfection of a cup of tea. Without a word she was away again and back in her place behind the tea urn; where with Gyda et her side and the delight of Gyda's eyes standing there near the table, Hazel took up the sugar tongs again and tried to remember what amount of sweetening ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... two. Nevertheless, set beside the great masters of fiction who were to come, and who will be reviewed in these pages, they are seen to have been excelled in art and at least equaled in gift and power. So much we may properly claim for the marvelous growth and ultimate degree of perfection attained by the best novel-makers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It remains now to show what part was played in the eighteenth century development by certain other novelists, who, while not of the supreme importance of these two leaders, yet each and all contributed ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... found a friend on his way up to sign his name, and as he had a story to tell him, the whole show was held up for a bit, but after all, it may have been a good story. All the "frocks" did all their tricks to perfection. President Wilson showed his back teeth; Lloyd George waved his Asquithian mane; Clemenceau whirled his grey-gloved hands about like windmills; Lansing drew his pictures and Mr. Balfour slept. It was all over. The "frocks" had won (p. 119) the war. The "frocks" had signed the Peace! ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... be ascertained. "Joy," he said, anticipating Spinosa—that, for the attainment of which men are ready to surrender all beside—"is but the name of a passion in which the mind passes to a greater perfection or power of thinking; as grief is the name of the passion in which it ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... have been Evelyn's "Sculptura, or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper," published in 1662. The translation of Freart's "Idea of the Perfection of Painting demonstrated" was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... contrast to Bacon both in disposition and in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating, impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory to allow them to ripen to perfection; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent, unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. To this corresponds a profound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequately characterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground the mathematical ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... unbroken supply of true Spinach during the burning summer months. But the weather which makes it almost impossible to produce a satisfactory crop of Spinacia oleracea brings New Zealand Spinach to perfection. The latter is prized by some persons because it lacks the peculiar bitterness of the former. The plant is rather tender, and therefore to obtain an early supply the seed must be raised in heat. It may be sown in pots or pans at the end of March or beginning of April. Transfer ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word is thrown away, and not a word missed ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... How may the First Commandment be broken? A. The First Commandment may be broken by giving to a creature the honor which belongs to God alone; by false worship; and by attributing to a creature a perfection which ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Morey was methodically checking every control as Arcot called out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working to perfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... not heard, but, had he done so, the words would have left a sting. He possessed an inherent regard for physical perfection, rendered the greater by his own tormented childhood. He was strong and vigorous and of well-knit sinews, but he would have given his muscle for Dudley Webb's hands and his brains ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... the earth to the depth apparently of some hundred feet, would thenceforth preserve them from decay. The tusks form an article of considerable trade, the ivory selling from a shilling to one and ninepence a pound, according to the perfection of the tusks. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... efficient in any open place clear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of the albatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might have brought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; these inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before the usurpation ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... tastes from all creatures, even as inconstancy sucks up truth. In that itself dwell, and from that emerge, the seven Rishis who are crowned with ascetic success, with those seven having Vasishtha for their foremost. Glory, effulgence, greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection, and energy, these seven always follow this same like rays following the sun. Hills and mountains also exist there, collected together; and rivers and streams bearing waters in their course, waters ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... But "if * * * the whole proceeding is a mask—* * * [if the] counsel, jury and judge * * * [are] swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and * * * [if] the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent" intervention by the Supreme Court to secure the constitutional rights of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... ripened into written laws and were likewise woven into social, political, and religious life, the resultant effect of which, on human existence in America, is never to end. One year later still, cotton was first planted in the virgin soil of America, where it grew to perfection, and thenceforth becoming the staple production, made slavery and slave-breeding profitable to the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... so much to be desired?' she replied. 'Oh! when my mind wanders, it goes higher. The angel of perfection, the beautiful angel Gabriel, often sings in my heart. If I were rich, I should work, all the same, to keep me from soaring too often on the many-tinted wings of the angel, and wandering in the world of fancy. There are meditations which are the ruin of us women! I owe ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... ideal of religion is a marriage, a union of faith and reason—but this is idle talk. What does anybody know of such perfection as I ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... as happened on all other occasions, neither the day nor the hour was fixed, until we were told on the evening of the 15th that we would set out early on the morning of the 16th. I passed the night like all the household of his Majesty; for in order to carry out the incredible perfection of comfort with which the Emperor surrounded himself on his journeys, it was necessary that everybody should be on foot as soon as the hour of departure was known; consequently I passed the night arranging the service of his Majesty, while my wife packed my own baggage, and had ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... safety you—communicate."{39} "Sanctity"—the quality of awfulness and mystery—rather than divinity or personality, may have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40} When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility that at the origin of these customs there may have been ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... had painted a little girl holding a basket of strawberries. One of his friends, who was at the time a great admirer of his genius, wishing to show the perfection of the picture, said to some people who were looking at it, 'These strawberries are so very natural and perfect, that I have seen birds coming down from the trees to peck them, mistaking them ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... whatever increases their knowledge and appreciation of fellowship and its positive importance, must necessarily tend to remove all prejudices, and all ill-feelings, and bring the two races, and indeed the world, nearer that degree of perfection to which all things show us it is approaching. Therefore I want identical rights, for equal rights ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... It has never received winter protection thus far, either in this region or in Michigan, where it is largely raised, but it may be found necessary to shield it somewhat in some localities. It is both absurd and dishonest to claim perfection for a fruit, and the Cuthbert, especially as it grows older and loses something of its pristine vigor, will, probably, like all other varieties, develop faults and weaknesses. We cannot too much deprecate the arrogant spirit often manifested in introducing new fruits. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... riches are the result of labor. They increase in the same ratio as the result does to the effort. Absolute perfection, of which God is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz., effort ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... men in our universities and colleges a most honorable career, leading such institutions to establish courses of instruction with reference to such a service—courses which were established long since in Germany, but which have arrived nearest perfection in two of our sister republics—at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, and in the ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... homely garments, but that served to enhance the beauty of her figure, and she had on the plainest of little bonnets, but that only tended to make her face more lovely. Ruby thought it was perfection. He glanced at Lieutenant Lindsay, and perceiving that he thought so too (as how could he think otherwise?) a pang of jealousy shot into his breast. But it passed away when the lieutenant, after politely assisting Minnie into the boat, sat down beside the captain and ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... thought? Or did this form arise within him without will or effort of his—vivid if not clear—certain if not outlined? Ruskin (and better authority we do not know) will assert the latter, and we think he is right: though perhaps he would insist more upon the absolute perfection of the vision than we are quite prepared to do. Such embodiments are not the result of the man's intention, or of the operation of his conscious nature. His feeling is that they are given to him; that from the vast unknown, where time ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... affairs of the world each thing strives for its perfection and the preservation of its being, so on the other hand does man interest himself in the different concerns of others on some account, either for the public good, or to acquire, apart from the common interest, praise and reputation with some profit. Wherefore many have ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... sung the praises of Tarentum—that beautiful maritime city of the Calabrian Gulf, whose attractions were such as to make the delights of Tarentum a common proverbial expression. But what were these delights as celebrated by our poet?—the perfection of its honey, the excellence of its olives, the abundance of its grapes, its lengthened spring and temperate winter. For these, its merits, did Horace prefer, as he tells us, Tarentum to every other spot on the wide earth—his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... by which to obtain inherent response to a given order is so to train a man in minute details, by constant, inflexible insistence on perfection, that it becomes part of his being to obey ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... at last, it seemed as if I was about to prosper in my suit. Each time that I came, Jessie appeared yet more pleased to see me—more willing to give me that attractive confidence which can only exist in full perfection between acknowledged lovers; less disposed to analyze her mind's emotion with any critical severity, or speculate whether this or that feeling had, or had not, passed the line between friendship and love; more ready, at times, to surrender the struggle and self-examination, confess herself ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... perfection to your judgment, Hargrave. For by myself, I should never have thought of building such a craft," said Lord Reginald. "She will be more perfect, however, when we get the bulwarks and deck on her, the thwarts ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... have foibles, and perhaps many of them, I shall not deny. I should esteem myself, as the world would, vain and empty, were I to arrogate perfection." ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... features, not Grecian, are yet faultless; the mouth, the brow, the ripe and exquisite contour, all are human and voluptuous; the expression, the aspect, is something more; the form is, perhaps, too full for the perfection of loveliness, for the proportions of sculpture, for the delicacy of Athenian models; but the luxuriant fault has a majesty. Gaze long upon that picture: it charms, yet commands, the eye. While you gaze, you call back five centuries. You see before you the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an English steamer, where I was to take another for my destination; but I liked the islands so well that I remained there all the winter. My principal amusement was boating; and I learned the whole art to perfection. I used to go through the openings in the reefs, and sail out of sight of land. I had a boat ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... becoming of her diaphanous black evening dresses, and, as she sat to the right of her host, each of her three feminine critics admitted to their secret selves that she was that rather rare thing, a genuinely pretty woman. Features, colouring, hair, were all as near perfection as they well could be, while her slight, rounded ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... lust to kill; but pure appreciation—and something more; something that made the two almost kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude, of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality dominant, one desire overtowering all others; ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... that happy frame of mind which is best described as the shutting out of all that pertains to the morbid, the gloomy, the fretful, and the discontented. The perfection of cheerfulness is displayed in general good temper united to much kindliness of heart. It arises partly from personal goodness, and partly from belief in the goodness of others. Its face is ever directed toward happiness. It sees ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... candle powers, but is known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... composed of a dozen syllables, clear, sonorous, and harmonious, which runs over an extensive scale. At first, it entertained us with its own song, but in a short time began imitating those of other birds, which it did to perfection; indeed, Jup told us, and Carlos corroborated the statement, that it can imitate the human voice, as well as the hissing of serpents, the roar of alligators, the gobbling of turkeys, and the cry of all other birds. Lejoillie tried it by whistling a tune, when the bird imitated him, introducing ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... unworthily or only formally assumed, yet it includes within its widest embrace the best men and women this earth possesses, or has ever possessed. There is a certain kind of character which all men whose moral sense is not blunted recognise as the culminating point and perfection of humanity. They may not themselves attempt to realise it, or they may deem it unattainable, but nevertheless the idea of what constitutes a good or perfect man is no sooner presented to their minds than conscience accepts it as that which ought to be. Now, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... sanctity of Francis gained in the world, could not be unknown to young Clare.—Aware that this wonderful man renewed a perfection on the earth which was almost forgotten, she wished much to see him and to have conversations with him. Francis also, having heard the reputation of Clare's virtues, had an equal desire to communicate with her, that he might tear her ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... that he pushed his great theories of perfection rather hard in his earlier years; and he came back to his native village of Thorpe-Michael full of high intentions to lift the place higher than where it already stood. He had an unyielding habit of tidiness and hated to see children playing in a road; and he hated worse to see a motor-car ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... charms of that society, or how much it is calculated to win and engage the heart of any one whose bosom was totally free, and had never beheld before a woman equal in the slightest degree to his ideas of perfection. I will confess, my lord, that I struggled very hard against the feelings which I found growing up in my own bosom. At that time I struggled the more and with the firmer determination, because I ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... too much of a dramatic perfection or a supposed indication of structural design in a hymn. Textual equations, such as distinguish Dr. Bonar's beautiful stanzas, are not necessarily technical. To emphasize them as ingenious by an ingenious tune seems, somehow, a reflection on the spontaneity ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... which each of us assumes the responsibilities of citizenship. Those who have gone before us conquered a wilderness, expanded and preserved the Union. But it is not for us complacently to accept the result. Much has been done, but much more remains to be done. Our goal is the greatest possible perfection of our economic, social and political life. Each age may be said to have its peculiar burdens and responsibilities: the prime task of the colonist was to foster the tender shoot of democracy; that of the western pioneer was ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... mien and manner than the duke, were his two sons, Thomas, Earl of Ossory, and Lord Richard Butler, afterwards Earl of Arran. My lord of Ossory was no less remarkable for his beauty than famous for his accomplishments: he rode and played tennis to perfection, performed upon the lute to entrancement, and danced to the admiration of the court; he was moreover a good historian, and well versed in chronicles of romance. No less was the Earl of Arran proficient in qualifications befitting his birth, and gifted with attributes ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... will consist of physical training by the latest and most approved methods, with the special intention of developing the body and mind, so that the best possible results may be obtained looking to perfection of base-ball playing. Daily instruction will be had in the theory and practice ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... with the shore without intermission from the moment we left Ireland, and began to pay out. It will be continued, if all goes well, until we land the other and in Newfoundland. The tests are threefold,—first, for insulation, which, as you know, means the soundness and perfection of the gutta-percha covering that prevents the electricity from escaping from the wires, through the sea, into the earth; secondly, for continuity, or the unbroken condition of the conductor or copper core throughout its whole length; and, thirdly, to determine the resistance of the conductor, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to visitors, showing a polite regard to every wish expressed, and giving precedence to them, in all matters of comfort and convenience, can be easily combined with the easy freedom which makes the stranger feel at home; and this is the perfection of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... voiced the ideal conditions of an advantageous naval position for attack, as conceived by the average officer of the day; and, as though most effectually to demonstrate once for all how that sort of thing would work, the adjunct circumstances approached perfection. The admiral was thoroughly wedded to the old system, without an idea of departing from it, and there was a fair working breeze with which to give it effect, for the ships under topsails and foresail would go about ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... every thing, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their highest perfection. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... to Temple's Letters, says:—'It is generally believed that this author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it can well bear.' Temple's Works, i. 226. Hume, in his Essay Of Civil Liberty, wrote in 1742:—'The elegance and propriety of style have been very much neglected among us. The first polite prose we have was writ by a man who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... appeared to have the contrary effect, and to bring him positive relief. When it was borne in on him, as it was soon to be borne in on all, that her mind was not what it was, and that the beautiful Carmel had lost something besides her physical perfection in the awful calamity which had made shipwreck of the whole family, he grew noticeably more cheerful and less suspicious in his manner. Was it because the impending inquiry must go on without her, and proceedings, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... us all. To all of us, sometimes, our lives seem barren and poor; and we feel as if we had brought forth no fruit to perfection. Let us get nearer to Him and He will see to the fruit. Some poor stranded sea-creature on the beach, vainly floundering in the pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes, leaping and rushing over the sands, and bears ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... mutton chops require only a table-spoonful of hot water to be poured over. Slice an onion in the dish before you put in the steaks or chops, and garnish both with rasped horse-radish. To have viands served in perfection, the dishes should be made hot, either by setting them over hot water, or by putting some in them, and the instant the meats are laid in and garnished, put on a pewter dish cover. A dinner looks very enticing, when the steam rises from each dish on removing the covers, and if it be judiciously ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and his own sins to Madame de Stael and others in Switzerland, declaring himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast himself at the feet of that serene perfection, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him and gave a start. It was the young Englishman who had come out of the doctor's house, the man she had seen before somewhere—she still did not recall where. Studied at close range he revealed points of interest. He was dressed with that perfection crowned with negligence which the Englishman of the upper classes so admirably achieves. He was, in fact, unmistakably a gentleman, at least by birth, though his bored manner held a hint of insolence, a suggestion of the bounder. His hazel eyes, glancing about with irritable ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... fact, in war as it is in painting, or in music. Perfection in either art grows out of innate talent, but it never can be acquired without them. Study and perseverance may correct ideas, but no application, no assiduity will give the life and energy of action; these are the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in so far as they are referred to God, are true (II:xxxii.), that is (II:Def.iv.) adequate; and therefore (by the general Def. of the Emotions) God is without passions. Again, God cannot pass either to a greater or to a lesser perfection (I:xx.Coroll.ii.); therefore (by Def. of the Emotions:ii., &iii.) he is not affected by any ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... sunny harmony of the last ten days had suddenly changed to gloom. Pixie's thoughts made a lightning review of those different days. How perfectly, incredibly happy they had been! Until this moment she had not fully realised their perfection. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... that bears his name; Because he justly deems such praise The easiest way himself to raise. 'Tis my conclusion in the case, That many a talent here below Is but cabal, or sheer grimace,— The art of seeming things to know— An art in which perfection lies More with the ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted, and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... to give a detailed account of all that Pericles did to make his native city the most glorious in the ancient world. Greek architecture and sculpture under his patronage reached perfection. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylaea, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his life, industry and commerce ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... any male masculant came into his court[FN490] complaining about his rib he would deliver his decision that the man was a wrong-doer and that the woman was wronged. On such wise he did because he saw that his wife was the pink of perfection and he opined that the whole of her sex resembled her, and he knew naught of the wickedness and debauchery of the genus and their sorcery and their contrariety and the cunning contrivance wherewith they ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... downward, and with it go, in their greatest strength, all those affections that unite families and kindred. We learn to know our parents in the fullness of their reason, and commonly in the perfection of their bodily strength. Reverence and respect both mingle with our love; but the affection, with which we watch the helplessness of infancy, the interest with which we see the ingenuous and young profiting by our care, the pride of improvement, and the magic of hope, create ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a peculiarly elevated frame of mind. He felt that something greater and finer than himself had taken up its abode within him and would grow on to perfection there. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... resembling a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. But his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... Tennyson we note the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes's as perhaps the very perfection of slobbery incapacity. He appears to be delivering a course of addresses on the poet. The first of these escaped our attention; the second is before us in the supplement to last week's Methodist Times. We have read it with great attention and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of artists to nature. To do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does not in some degree possess,—powers, namely, of observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. But until this cultivation has been bestowed, and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... light-hearted woman is suddenly plunged into that perfection of misery, the BLUES, it is a sad picture. It is ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... domestic whirlwind. The intelligence office had sent out Ellen—Ellen, the deft-handed cook, the silent, self-effacing, competent servant of every housekeeper's dreams. Her good luck seemed incredible. Ellen was perfection, was middle-aged and settled, never went out in the evenings, kept her kitchen spotlessly clean, trained the rattle-headed second girls who came and went, to be good waitresses and made pastry that moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was plenty of meat, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in the matter than, to use the poet's expression, the executioner's axe following the conscious thought as its unconscious instrument. Sulla carried out that part with rare, in fact superhuman, perfection; but within the limits which it laid down for him, his working was not only grand but even useful. Never has any aristocracy deeply decayed and decaying still farther from day to day, such as was the Roman aristocracy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... an unflagging interest I have often thought what a deal of cleverness—what stores of practical ability—were lost to the world in these out-at-elbow fellows, who speak every language fluently, play every game well, sing pleasingly, dance, ride, row, and shoot, especially with the pistol, to perfection. There they are, with a mass of qualities that win success! and, what often is harder, win goodwill in life! There they are, by some unhappy twist in their natures, preferring the precarious existence of the race-course ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... days when she had argued with Hilda, she had been told of the power and perfection of Prussian rule. "Everything is at loose ends in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... wisdom of the framers of the Federal Constitution. Under all circumstances the result of their labors was as near an approximation to perfection as was compatible with the fallibility of man. Such being the estimation in which the Constitution is and has ever been held by our countrymen, it is not surprising that any proposition for its alteration or amendment should be received with reluctance and distrust. While this sentiment deserves ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "Dreams of Grecian perfection," explained Boots. And, lowering his voice, "You ought not to eat everything they bring you; there'll be doings to-morrow if you do. Eileen is ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... always carried the kettle to the well; and when she came back Daisy could hear the iron clink of the stove as the kettle was put on. Presently Juanita came in then from her kitchen, and began the work of putting the house in order. How nicely she did it! like the perfection of a nurse, which she was. No dust, no noise, no bustle; still as a mouse, but watchful as a cat, the alert old woman went round the room and made all tidy and all clean and fresh. Very likely Juanita would change the flowers in a little vase which stood on the mantelpiece ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... kept sprinkling shrapnel over Bluebank with their usual steadiness and perfection of aim. The enemy's gun was soon either silenced or withdrawn. The rifle fire died down. Not a Boer was to be seen upon the ridge, but three galloped away over the plains behind as though they had enough of it. The Light Horse dismounted ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... unmusical, should be given its chance, at any rate up to the age of twelve years. During this time, the stress should be placed, for the unmusical child, not so much on perfection of technique, but on the ability of playing easy pieces really well, and to read at sight such things as ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... you in Edinburgh street, and inhaled, by juxtaposition, your sweet fraternal breath. How the Fates have since sundered us! How have you been going on, fattening and beautifying from one degree to another of poetical perfection, while I have, under the chilling shade of the Ochil Hills, been dwindling down from one degree of poetical extenuation to another, till at length I am become the very shadow and ghost of literary leanness! I should now wish to see you, and compare you as you are now ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this fourth word a degree finer spun, a stage farther on, and higher up, the word husband. This is the word on the man side for the most hallowed relationship of earth. This is the lover relationship in its perfection stage. With men husband is not always a finer word than lover. The more's the pity. How man does cheapen God's plan of things; leaves out the kernel, and keeps only an empty shell sometimes. In God's thought ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... very quietness is beginning to alarm him. It shakes him from his customary perfection of manners]. The Lady Bantocks do not as a rule receive circus girls in ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... garden, round which it is his highest pleasure to lead the unwilling guest. Whenever he is not in the kitchen, he is hanging round loose, seeking whom he may show his garden to. Much of my time is passed in studiously avoiding him, and I have brought the art to a very extreme pitch of perfection. The fox, often hunted, becomes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thy feet, Or hew thy passage through the embattled foe, And clear thy way to fame; inspired by thee The nobler chase of glory shall pursue 30 Through fire, and smoke, and blood, and fields of death. Nature, in her productions slow, aspires By just degrees to reach perfection's height: So mimic Art works leisurely, till Time Improve the piece, or wise Experience give The proper finishing. When Nimrod bold, That mighty hunter, first made war on beasts, And stained the woodland green with purple dye, New and unpolished was the huntsman's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... everywhere her finger marks plainly to be seen. He was tall and robust, with light eyes and blonde whiskers, and a general air of insisting upon his immense superiority to all the world. That he secretly felt some doubts of the perfection of his social knowledge, there were indications in his manner, but on the whole the complacency of a portly bank account overcame all misgivings of this sort. His character might have been easily inferred from the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... you of a friend who has been suddenly placed in new circumstances, in whom there is much that you recognise, and much that is entirely strange. How purely, divinely white when the last snowflake has just fallen! How exquisite and virginal the repose! It touches you like some perfection of music. And winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. Pluck a single ivy leaf from the old wall, and see what a jeweller he is! How he has silvered over the dark-green reticulations with ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... counting-house, to do small drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office. Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local charities. Rowland's third was an easy competence, and he never felt a moment's jealousy ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... anthropology and botany from university days to recognize the reverted, twisted and stringy little degenerate wild-potato root which had once served the Aztecs and Pueblo Indians for food, and could again, with proper cultivation, be brought back to full perfection. Likewise with the maize, the squash, the wild turnip, and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you. That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition — very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don't know — I think of your dear circle at home — and though I cannot wish the heaven over your heads to be a whit less bright, I cannot ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... avoided. The air and feed pumps are combined in one casting let into the engine room floor, quite out of the way, and worked by a crank pin in a small disk on the forward end of the propeller shaft. This is an admirable arrangement, and works to perfection. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... and pretty Parisian winter dress arranged to perfection, contemplating with approval the sitting-room that had been appropriated to her, the October sunshine lighting up the many- tinted trees around the smooth-shaven dewy lawn, and a bright fire on the hearth, shelves and chiffoniers awaiting ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rigorous discipline at the Bartletts' it was like slipping out of the harness to be back at the Martels'. They held him up to no standard, and offered no counsel of perfection. He could tell his best stories without fear of reproof, laugh as loud as he liked, and whistle and sing without disturbing anybody. Rose mended his clothes, doctored him when he was sick, petted him in ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the laws, that we must seek for the main peculiarity affecting the condition of the Roman Csar, which peculiarity it was, superadded to the other three, that finally made those three operative in their fullest extent. It is in the perfection of the stratocracy that we must look for the key to the excesses of the autocrat. Even in the bloody despotisms of the Barbary States, there has always existed in the religious prejudices of the people, which could not be violated with safety, one check more upon the caprices of the despot ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness. Report has been accustomed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... God to be kept in mind, if we are to grasp the meaning of the "Hound of Heaven," is the omniscient character, the infinite perfection, of God's knowledge. God sees each of us as fully and completely as if there were no one else and nothing else to see except us. Practically speaking, God gives each one of us His undivided attention. And through this spacious channel of His Divine and ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... the parts which lie above the sea-side places, those situated in the middle, which they call the hills, 180 are ripe for the gathering in; and as soon as this middle crop has been gathered in, that in the highest part of the land comes to perfection and is ripe; so that by the time the first crop has been eaten and drunk up, the last is just coming in. Thus the harvest for the Kyrenians lasts eight months. Let so much as has been said ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them tremendously. Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in automobiles, and remain and buy summer places. The State would have its money back ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... serve two masters. The mind of man is so constituted, and the influences bearing upon it are so peculiar in their orderly arrangements, that the more it is concentered upon one object and pursuit, the more perfection and certainty attend its action. But if it be divided between two objects and pursuits, and especially if both of these require much thought, its action will be imperfect to a certain degree in both, or one will suffer while the other ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... not addressed his companion as "Tony" he would have fancied he was one of the masters, he spoke with such an air of condescension. Stephen felt very uncomfortable, too, to hear what had been told him about Oliver. If he had not been told, he could not have believed his brother was anything but perfection. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... most important of the two, "is particularly observable the curiosa felicitas, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language." So far there can be no dispute. The style has the highest degree of technical perfection, and it is generally added that the poems are as pathetic as they are exquisitely written. Bowles, no hearty lover of Pope, declared the Eloisa to be "infinitely superior to everything of the kind, ancient or modern." The tears shed, says Hazlitt of the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen |
