"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing seemingly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... music was most cultivated by the people of the Netherlands, who carried the art towards much perfection, producing several fine composers, and furnishing the leading musical instructors for the other parts of Europe. Among some of the ablest musicians of the Netherlands may be mentioned Dufay, Jan of Okenheim, and Josquin Despres, the latter being ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... was capacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that was remarkable in any book he ever read. He had no despotical power over his affections and passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, but as large a political power over them as any stoic or man of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment that he hath very rarely been known to have been overpowered with any of them. His aspect and conversation were grave and sober; there was ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... on to the end of their journey, and were the perfection of quiet, well-bred travellers, he disguising a slightly vexatious constraint and sense of unduly severe punishment, and she secretly exulting over the fact that he ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... one who will be doing any thing towards its accomplishment in his own lifetime unless he does it himself, he will not listen to the voice of authority, and he spoils a good work in his own century, in order that another man, as yet unborn, may not have the opportunity of bringing it happily to perfection in the next. He may seem to the world to be nothing else than a bold champion for the truth and a martyr to free opinion, when he is just one of those persons whom the competent authority ought to silence; and, though the case may not fall within that ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... wasn't Douglas who held his eye. It was the two Lani who followed him into the room. Every line of their bodies was perfection that spoke volumes about generations of breeding for physical elegance. They moved with a co-ordinated grace that made Douglas look even more clumsy by contrast. And they were identical, twin cream-and-gold works of art. They ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... of you for it, though you must never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word between you and the poor devil upstairs. And up to a certain point, Bunny, I really thought you played the scene to perfection." ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... relating to the individual. Although after puberty the sexual organs are capable of reproduction, yet it by no means follows that they should be used for that purpose. Their early activity is intended for the perfection of the body and mind, and not for the continuation of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... There was not a tailor in Gotham who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the privilege of making Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers were his especial passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice. He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he would ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... part with his last dollar sooner than with it. Such treasures of the lens-maker's art can not, perhaps, be commanded at will, yet, they are turned out with increasing frequency, and the best artists are generally able, at all times, to approximate so closely to perfection that any shortcoming may ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... both be new. Similarly it was said that the rope which turned the roller should be new; if possible it should be woven of strands taken from a gallows rope with which people had been hanged, but this was a counsel of perfection ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... until they find the truffles. Good truffles are easily distinguished by their agreeable perfume; they should be light in proportion to their size, and elastic when pressed by the finger. To have them in perfection, they should be quite fresh, as their aroma is considerably diminished by any conserving process. Truffles are stimulating and beating. Weak stomachs digest them with difficulty. Some of the culinary uses to which they are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... others. Gallic in its love of beauty, loving life and all its loveliest expressions, it was a court of dance and song—the heart of hearts of Gruyere, itself the centre and the very definition of Romand Switzerland. Often intermarried, the Burgundian counts preserved in its perfection the blond beauty of their ancient race, surpassing in athletic skill the strongest of their subjects, and with the same bonhomie with which their conquering ancestors had mingled with their vassals, they ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... enforce this lawe vpon vs? If we do contrarie to that which thou doest commaunde / verely we synne / and yf we go not about to do it we synne / we shall synne also yf we go aboute to do that which thou commaundest / for we want of perfection / neyther do we obey as we sholde do: wherfore do what we will / we shall not auoyde synne: vnto this the Lorde wolde aunswer. The thinges that I do propounde to be obserued of you are iuste and perfect / no man can accuse them of wickednes / But in that ye are weake and do fall / and faile ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... except as waste and disorder and carelessness were painful to him. He suffered to promote a better state of things, as many a woman whose love is for books or pictures or society suffers for the perfection of her housekeeping, and sacrifices her taste to achieve it. He would have liked better to read, to go to lectures, to hear sermons; with the knowledge of Mr. Evans's life as an editor and the incentive of a writer near him, he would have liked to try again if he could not write something, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... way so well as by association of this sort can be created the feeling of solidarity in our literature, and the recognition of its power. It is not expected to raise any standard of perfection, or in any way to hamper individual development, but a body of concentrated opinion may raise the standard by promoting healthful and helpful criticism, by discouraging mediocrity and meretricious smartness, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Nature alone that can bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. Who is he that causeth the mole, from his secret path of darkness, to throw up the gem, the gold, and the precious ore? The same that from the mouths of babes and sucklings can extract the perfection of praise, and who can make the most abject of his creatures instrumental in bringing the most ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Ossiander, having obtained the approbation of his friend Cranmer, published the laborious work of the Harmony of the Gospels in 1537. In 1534 the archbishop completed the dearest wish of his heart, the removal of every obstacle to the perfection of the Reformation, by the subscription of the nobles and bishops to the king's sole supremacy. Only bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More made objection; and their agreement not to oppose the succession, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Thomas here in all his force. He offers suggestion rather than proof;—apology—the weaker because of obvious effort to apologize—rather than defence, for Infinite Goodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a new proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a machine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force. Rigid ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... problem even thus limited is exceedingly great. The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we should expect. Lord Macaulay tells us that 'In every experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two principles operating everywhere and always, might well have been expected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' Indeed, taking verifiable progress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... women. A single defect—a thick ankle, a hoarse voice, a glass eye—was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to him the incarnation of physical perfection. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... any danger; the last discharge had done its work to perfection, and with his knees bent under him, the boar lay just as he had plowed into the mire, having not even ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... of life is to renew and augment your power by its expenditure. It was intimated some eighteen centuries since that the highest are obtained only by loss of the same; and the transmutation of loss into gain is the essence and perfection of all spiritual economies. Now of this art of arts he is already master who steadily draws upon his own spiritual resources. The soul is an extraordinary well; the way to replenish is to draw from it. It is more miraculous than the widow's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... is interesting to look into the past, particularly to those centuries known as the Middle Ages, in which the handicrafts flourished in special perfection, and to see for ourselves how these crafts were pursued, and exactly what these arts really were. Many people talk learnedly of the delightful revival of the arts and crafts without having a very definite idea of the original processes which are being ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... observer would never dream of bestowing upon the slight, frail creature who timidly shrunk from notice, any more flattering epithet than 'rather a pretty girl,' while those who admired only the rosy beauty of physical perfection pronounced her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... he, imitating the marshal's voice to perfection, "I see it's no use picking and choosing among such a trashy lot. Give me the first crown that comes to hand, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... now riches flowed in to Agrippa by his enjoyment of so large a dominion; nor did he abuse the money he had on small matters, but he began to encompass Jerusalem with such a wall, which, had it been brought to perfection, had made it impracticable for the Romans to take it by siege; but his death, which happened at Cesarea, before he had raised the walls to their due height, prevented him. He had then reigned three years, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... wonderful age we live in! Fancy bringing the art of teaching to such perfection that the blind can be taught to sew! Our young folks ought to be very thankful that they are growing up at a time when teachers endeavor to make learning a pleasure as well as ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... surprised; and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... own superior height and superior muscular development,—but what were these physical advantages compared to the classic perfection of Sah-luma's beauty?—beauty combining the delicate with the vigorous, such as is shadowed forth in the artist-conceptions of the god Apollo. His features, faultlessly regular, were redeemed from all effeminacy by the ennobling impress of high thought ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... we quickened our pace, making the branches fall off more than ever. Then—'The wheelbarrow,' said the professor, 'amazes us by its combined simplicity and perfection. The conception of a man of universal genius and vast erudition,—I allude to Leonardo da Vinci, the marvellous Florentine,—it has for upwards of three hundred years served mankind as a humble but valued ally. In every ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... Coming back to it last evening from a round of ruins one felt as if the humbler Sisters sacrificed to spare it were pleading with one not to forget them in the contemplation of its dearly-bought perfection. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... of the sacrifices which its hierophants undergo in order to minister to our pleasure the sturdiest Hedonist cannot escape misgivings. Still, we may find consolation in the thought that sacrifice is necessary to perfection. Such sacrifices take various forms. In the case of NIJINSKY we see a man of immense brain power specialising in a most exhausting form of physical culture to remedy his extreme delicacy. At the opposite extreme we find cases ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... Othello. In short, it was from first to last a gem of the noblest kind, which can be no otherwise defined than leaving every one at liberty to attach as much excellence to it as he can conceive, and then suppose Barry to have reached that point of perfection. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • 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 her property, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reacts stimulatingly on that which gave it birth, as the vitality of children reacts stimulatingly on the vitality of parents. It provides a concrete symbol of that which is invisible and intangible, and mankind is not yet so advanced in the path of spiritual perfection that we can afford to dispense with concrete symbols. Now, if we maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a festival—and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... finely executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... from some human being, it was still possible to find the utmost satisfaction for every need and craving. He could imagine as existing, as waiting for him, he knew not where, a completeness of understanding, a perfection of response, that would reach all the gamut of his feelings and sensations from the most poetical to the most entirely physical, a beauty of relationship so transfiguring that not only would she—it went without saying that this completion was a woman—be perfectly beautiful in its light but, what ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the higher law of the Tarykat, or "path" to perfection. The knowledge of this is not for the common people, but for those only who endeavor to obey the commands of Allah, not as external ordinances and ceremonies, but because they appreciate their justness, and who practise ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... eventide the rustics delighted to meet. As experience gave him increased command over the hill harp, his ambition to produce strains of greater beauty and refinement also increased. By and by his minstrel numbers manifested a vigour and perfection which rendered them the admiration of persons of higher rank, and more competent powers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... next lull. "He who to the perfection of Rome hath added the perfection of the East; who to the arm of conquest, which is Western, hath also the art needful to the enjoyment of dominion, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... slightest suspicion, or jealous feeling in D'Effernay's mind. She thanked him in her heart for this forbearance, but her thoughts were in another world; she took little heed of what passed around her. Her husband was in an excelled temper; he played the part of host to perfection and when the two officers were established comfortably by the fire, in the captain's room, smoking together, they could not but do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... occurred, and there was another in which a pictorial address of Daniel in the lion's den found its rightful owner, who had become talked about by his visit to a menagerie just before. But in case they should all think that at last perfection had been reached, there was another circumstance that he could relate from his own personal experience. Wanting to send a parcel to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, he foolishly sent it to his private address, at 40, Portman Square, instead of his official residence, he being Chancellor of Exchequer ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... 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
... made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; and that is the true art of treating one's guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all our own work," explains the Captain. "Our men built the hut, and the materials only cost about Rs. 25!" Certainly this is the perfection of cheapness in the way of house building! A little further inside the enclosure you come to more huts, in some of which the men live, while others serve for quarters for the native officers who assist ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the Tent on the side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasantries, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... theory and the working hypothesis. It regards the fossil not as a petrified skeleton, but as having belonged to a moving and feeding animal; every joint and facet has a meaning, each cusp a certain significance. Rising to the philosophy of the matter, it brings the mechanical perfection and adaptiveness of different types into relation with environment, with changes of herbage, with the introduction of grass. In this survey of competition it speculates upon the causes of the rise, spread, and extinction ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... type, to completely exhaust the possibilities of which is of late announced as the sum of human destiny. They lived under the hallucination of dawning literature, when printed books implied sacred and classical perfection; and they could by no means have foreseen the royal folios of the "New York Herald" and "Tribune," or the marvellous inanities about the past, present, and future, which figure in an indescribable list of duodecimo fiction, theology, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... calm so peaceful, no peace so idyllic as that which is to be found on a Western ranch on a fine summer evening. Life at such a time and in such a place is at its smoothest, its almost Utopian perfection. The whole atmosphere is laden with a sense of good-fellowship between men and between beasts. The day's work is over, and men idle and smoke, awaiting the pleasures of an ample fare with appetites healthily sharp-set, and lounge contentedly, contemplating their coming ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... dressed in Feisul's clothes; and though he didn't look a bit like Feisul from a yard away, in the mist at ten yards, provided you were looking for Feisul, you'd have taken your Bible oath he was the man; for he had the gesture and mannerism copied to perfection. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air—a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby's perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late she had managed not to be left alone ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conscience; its exquisite study and choice of effect; its deference paid to decorum,—decorum, we mean, in taste, as distinguished from morals; its infinite patience and labor of art, achieving the perfection of grace and of ease,—in one word, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... and those hard sayings that make men turn away:—the imagined dread of losing life to find it; the counsel of perfection that the neighbor shall be loved as self; the fancied injury and outrage that made it hard for rich men to enter the kingdom. Of these, as of a hundred other sayings, he saw the necessary truth. It all seemed easy now. The world would see it with him; it ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... appealed to the opposite sex quite generally and irresistibly as a worthy helpmate. The only trouble was that she began to bore her suitors somewhat too early in the game, and they never got far enough to propose marriage. Flaws in her apparent perfection appeared from day to day and chilled the growth of the various young loves that had budded so auspiciously. She always agreed with everybody and everything in sight, even to the point of changing her mind on the instant, if circumstances seemed ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that men who at first will not allow the verdict of perfection they pronounce upon their sweethearts or wives to be disturbed by God's own testimony to the contrary, will, once suspecting their purity, morally hang them upon evidence they would be ashamed to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... important commercial avenue of the Rhone valley from Massilia (Marseilles), from Greece (via Venetia), and possibly from Etruria. Prehistoric archaeology affords abundant proofs that, in countries of Celtic speech, metal-working in bronze, iron, and gold reached a remarkably high pitch of perfection, and this is a clear indication that Celtic countries and districts which were on the line of trade routes, like the Rhone valley, had attained to a material civilisation of no mean character before the Roman conquest. In Britain, too, the districts that were in touch with continental commerce ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... With that end in view, he could see why Patsy's shack had been chosen for the attack. Patsy's shack was the closest to where they had been holding the cattle. It was absurdly simple, and evidently the ruse had worked to perfection. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... devotion; and they often received, in the most literal sense, those rigid precepts of Christ and the apostles, to which the prudence of succeeding commentators has applied a looser and more figurative mode of interpretation. Ambitious to exalt the perfection of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self-mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve, in our present state of weakness and corruption. A doctrine so extraordinary ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... (Aug. 1820) remarks of this portion of the poem (184 fol.): "Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry has never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main purpose of his ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... excellent orchestra here, playing the musical game of "follow my leader" to perfection, and kept together, as sheep, by a CROOK. Mr. HARRY MONKHOUSE is very droll in the little he has to do. Mr. SHALE's speech as the Court Painter is capitally given, but there isn't enough of it. A touch more, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... both men and women,—because the ideal, which the mind created, is realized to a greater or less degree, although the loftier the archetype, the less seldom is it found. Nor is it necessary that perfection should be found. A person may have faults which alienate and disenchant, but with these there may be virtues so radiant that the worship, though imperfect, remains,—a respect, on the whole, so great that the soul is lifted to admiration. Who can love this perishable ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... a lack of balance. It is an almost inevitable defect, arising from its very grandeur. A mediocre work may quite easily be perfect of its kind; but it is rarely that a work lofty aim attains perfection. A landscape of little dells and smiling meadows is brought more readily into pleasing harmony than a landscape of dazzling Alps, torrents, glaciers, and tempests; for the heights may sometimes overwhelm ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... before mentioned have walks around and across them, and are the common promenade of all who choose to use them. In the season of harvest or vintage, nothing can be more charming than these walks; the French gaiety and simplicity, not to say puerility, is then seen in all its perfection; it is then a common sport amongst the ladies and the gallants of the town to chase each other amongst the standing corn, and as they endeavour to keep to the furrows, which are too narrow for their feet, the chace is generally terminated by ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... may say with more truth that we show you hospitality with ready good-will, we will give you amusement and pleasure by making one of our comrades sing: he will be here before long, and he is a very intelligent youth and deep in love, and what is more he can read and write and play on the rebeck to perfection." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the camelia was his flower, so proudly beautiful! His soul was 'permeated with loveliness,' and asked no fragrance. Regina is a great white creature, lovely to behold, and, perfectly conscious of her perfection, no more actively charming than the Ino of Foley. He won Milly White's favor by applauding her love for wild flowers, declaring that a field of buttercups reminded him of the 'spangled heavens,' and that on summer ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers after the [Greek: to kalon].[242] We must recognize the fact that the Romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the Greeks, and, having described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should it ever be attained. It is so in the De Oratore, as to which we must begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... of the Marquise was wrinkled with surprise. She stood amidst all the wonders of her magnificent drawing-room like a dainty Dresden doll—petite, cold, dressed to perfection. Her manner and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... certificates describing the owner (age, height, color of eyes, hair, complexion, and occupation), describing boat (a pine dugout), certifying to the strict loyalty and good citizenship of the owner, signed by general superintendent, and approved by general commanding. Isn't that red tape to perfection? They never went to Coffin's to take the boats, nor did they ever go there to get soldiers—strange, when it is thought by many that there is nearly a regiment on that plantation. Perhaps they feared ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent looking. To run your eyes over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of his own weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn't run that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct that was positively grewsome for divining when work was to be done and for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying lost he was nothing short of inspired. But when it came to work, the way that intelligence dribbled out ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... in God obliges Him to be IMMUTABLE. He is actuality, through and through. Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change. Furthermore, He is IMMENSE, BOUNDLESS; for could He be outlined in space, He would be composite, and this would contradict his indivisibility. He is therefore OMNIPRESENT, indivisibly there, at every ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... since thou hast seen what is the form of perfect and imperfect good, now I think we must show in what this perfection of happiness is placed. And inquire first whether there can be any such good extant in the world, as thou hast defined; lest, contrary to truth, we be deceived with an empty show of thought. But it cannot be denied that there is some such thing extant which is as it were the fountain ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... thankful to say that we both showed up pretty well. Peter told his story to perfection, not pitching it too high, and asking me now and then for a name or to verify some detail. Captain Zorn ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... suit of blue serge, a panama hat, and patent-leather shoes which hurt his feet. Moreover, he carried a new walking stick with a great gold head and there was a huge pearl scarf-pin in his necktie Besides all this, his hair and beard had been trimmed to perfection by a Holland House barber. Every morning his wife was obliged to run a flatiron over his trousers to perpetuate the crease. Altogether Anderson was a revelation not only to his family and to the town at large, but to himself as well. He fairly staggered every time he got a glimpse of himself ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... change in the Ministry, and might array the two Houses of Parliament in angry hostility against each other. But here lay the consummate skill of the Premier. He was playing a most difficult role, and he played it to perfection. He could not rely on the support of the Radicals. He must therefore make amends for their possible defection by drawing largely on the Conservative strength. The great danger was, that, while conciliating the Conservatives by a show of concession, he should alienate his own party ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... success adequate to their endeavors. The system of modern France on this subject he investigates and applauds, as "one of those attempts to improve the condition of human kind, which, although it may ultimately fail, deserves admiration, as approaching more nearly than any other to the ideal perfection of uniformity in weights and measures." After stating the difficulties which prevented other nations from seconding the endeavors of France, Mr. Adams concludes this elaborate treatise with the opinion that universal uniformity on the subject can only be effected by a general ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... mediaevalism, the cleaning and whitewashing of the apartments, have probably induced the spectre to take up his quarters elsewhere, for his old haunts are hardly recognizable, and he can have no grudge against the soldiers of a republic who carried out his plans with a perfection and promptness of which ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... broken-hearted or the Healer of the blind Bartimoeus, but He "who feedeth among the lilies"—the Alpha and Omega of all aesthetic conception. Christianity he looked upon as the highest moral expression of artistic perfection, and he regarded it with the same admiration he accorded to the Antinous and the Venus of Milo. He was not, however, by nature a pagan as some men are—men who, in the words of De Musset, "Sont venu trop tard dans ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... can have only a sure and certain foundation—that there will be no need of announcing to them, in the manifest danger that threatens, the arousing and quickening of the great and ardent desire that I have always had, that I might succeed in seeing this state in some condition of perfection, and in such repair and defense that it may await, with courage and confidence (after the protection of God), any attack whatever from surrounding enemies, who are known here—until, with the lapse ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... and lamenting on one side of the hearth, while the old Marchioness, on the other, strained her eyes over an embroidery in which the pattern repeated itself like the invocations of a litany, and Don Gervaso, near the smoking oil-lamp, read aloud from the Glories of Mary or the Way of Perfection ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the Streets of London and Westminster, the Countenances of all the young Fellows that pass by me, make me wish my self in Sparta; I meet with such blustering Airs, big Looks, and bold Fronts, that to a superficial Observer would bespeak a Courage above those Grecians. I am arrived to that Perfection in Speculation, that I understand the Language of the Eyes, which would be a great misfortune to me, had I not corrected the Testiness of old Age by Philosophy. There is scarce a Man in a red Coat who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... adapting each created thing to its special purpose, and from the whole realm of nature may they be taught lessons in parables, and their hearts be led upward to God Himself, who made all things to reflect His own perfection ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... Basaltic lavas are frequently spongy or pumiceous, especially near their surfaces; and, in course of time, the steam cavities become filled with secondary minerals such as calcite, chlorite and zeolites. Another characteristic of this group of rocks is the perfection with which many of them show prismatic or columnar jointing, a structure often called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the fifty-first—the words never more sincerely accepted, even when chanted to all the perfection of choral music, in the Sistine Chapel or in St. Peter's, than when, in the ears of constant sufferers for their Christian faith, ribald voices contemptuously sang or drawled ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... eyes and beseeches the brother she loves to hearken to what she will tell him while the Furies are at peace for the moment.... As I read and re-read this translation, I seemed to be aware of a kind of fog that shrouded the forms of Greek perfection, a fog I could not drive away. I pictured the original text to myself as more nervous and pitched in a different accent. Feeling a keen desire to get a precise idea of the thing, I went to Monsieur Gail, who was the Professor ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... admired friend Lord Bolingbroke. For as to the fear of sea-sickness, that did not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would not have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover to Calais. It is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so constant. But it is certain that, long before he passed the meridian of his life, Pope had come to view this confinement ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... think children ought to be beaten. The ill-tempered vulgarity that instinctively strikes at and hurts a thing that annoys it (and all children are annoying), and the simple stupidity that requires from a child perfection beyond the reach of the wisest and best adults (perfect truthfulness coupled with perfect obedience is quite a common condition of leaving a child unwhipped), produce a good deal of flagellation among people who not only do not lust after it, but who hit the harder because they are ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... advance of natural science in our day. This advance is due to the vast improvements in the instruments used in sense-observation. And it is in the very nature of man to bring some of his faculties to a certain degree of perfection at the expense of others. Exact sense-observation, which has been evolved to such an important extent by natural science, was bound to leave in the background the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the hidden worlds. But the time has come ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... civilisation has reason to be proud, it is the amelioration that has been effected in punishment for crimes. Nor is it yet very long since we began to get quit of the shame of our folly and inhumanity, if we have not traces of these yet, coming out like sympathetic ink dried by the choler of self-perfection and a false philosophy, as in such writings as the latter-day pamphlets. How a man who loves his species, and has a heart, will hang his head abashed as he turns his vision back no further than the sixteenth century, and sees the writhing creatures—often ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... glorious region, and we send you the enclosed sketch to show our picture of comfort and perfection. I assure you, nightly as we sit down to our evening repast, or later round our wood fire in our "parlour," we congratulate each other, and fancy we would not change places with the highest of the land, the air and life are ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the idealist's dream of perfection ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... those who had the pleasure of listening to William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the limpidity of his scales, the neat finish of his phrasing. Old style, I hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching more nearly perfection than the splashing, floundering, fly-by-night, hysterical, smash-the-ivories school of these latter days. Music, not noise—that's what we are after in piano playing, the higher piano playing. All the rest ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... toes did in front somewhat after the pattern of Ebony's pedal arrangements, as Rosco remarked when they were being fitted on for another trial. At last, by dint of perseverance, the wooden legs were perfected, and Rosco re-acquired the art of walking to such perfection, that he was to be seen, almost at all times and in all weathers, stumping about the village, his chief difficulty being that when he chanced to fall, which he often did, he was obliged either to get some one to help him up, or to crawl home; for, being unable to get his knees ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... "You should have heard her solicitude when no word came from you, and was there not some joy in her face when you appeared that could not have put itself into words?" cried Allin Wharton eagerly, for he always resented the least suspicion of a non-perfection ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... has succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... in their respective religions. For myself, I cannot but believe that the world has only yet begun. It is impossible that the Creator should destroy the world in its present imperfect state. No—the world will go on yet thousands of years on years in the path of improvement unto (shall I say?) perfection. At any rate, I belong to those whose aspirations are for the future and not for the past. I am not enamoured with Hebrew patriarchal innocence, or Grecian classic polish and freedom, or Christian mediæval chivalry of the past. I am of the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... bought up the factories of my competitors, so as to control the market, and as I used so much tin-plate I became interested in the manufacture of this product, and invested a good deal of money in the production and perfection of American tin. My factories were now scattered all along the coast, even to California, where I made the cans for the great quantities of canned fruits they ship from that section every year. Of course the business made me rich, and I bought real estate with my extra money, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... with' 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 with the devils and magicians of the dark ages ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... but the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance, hovers ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... wrings the last drop of agony out of that subject which it is so easy to make pathetic and effective. Dickens could not have done it, Bret Harte could not have done it, Kipling could not do it: Cladel did it only once, with this perfection. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an art of far more importance then than now—that of artistic, needlework. Nay, of so much importance was this beautiful art, and to such perfection was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, embroidered by the hand, with its profuse imitations of natural objects, flowers, and birds, and strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds Scots, that a sight of one of those operose achievements ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... you that it was Mary who went to her lord simply, who was commended, and not Martha who troubled about many things. Learn from the Mary of Faith and not from these Marthas of the Creeds. Let us abandon the presumptions of an ignorant past. The perfection of doctrine is not for finite men. Give yourselves to God. Give yourselves to God. Not to churches and uses, but to God. To God simply. He is the first word of religion and the last. He is Alpha; he is Omega. Epitelesei; it is He who will ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Carter was born prior to the year 1836. His mother, Malvina Gardner was a slave in the home of Mr. Gardner until a man named D.B. Smith saw her and noticing the physical perfection of the child at once purchased her ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... window. All that Agricola had told her of the charms of his protectress, appeared to her a thousand times below the reality; and never, even in her secret poetic visions, had she dreamed of such rare perfection. Thus, by a singular contrast, a feeling of mutual surprise came over these two girls—extreme types of deformity and beauty, wealth and wretchedness. After rendering, as it were, this involuntary homage to Adrienne, Mother Bunch ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "is very much obliged to the pity which would thus exterminate them; but as one of them, I should decidedly object to so sweeping a mode of improving the picturesque. Besides, I suppose you make an exception in favor, yourself, otherwise the picturesque would vanish just when it was brought to perfection. I am often inclined to say with Paley, though I remember well having sometimes felt as you do, 'It is a happy world after all.' I admit, however, that a buoyant, cheerful, habitual conviction of this will depend on the constitution of the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... "Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies. Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... word I was fond of, since I married, without being nagged at about it. She loved me for my vices, and yet she hasn't let me keep a single one—not even the smallest—not even cigarettes. Nag! Good God! She's nagged me to perfection ever since the day of our wedding when she made me sign the pledge before she let me ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the Priory were now at the very perfection of their beauty. The supreme moment had come of flowing wealth of foliage and delicate splendour of blossom, yet the paleness of green and tenderness of texture were ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... if I can possibly help it. I can't afford to lose my faith in my sister's perfection, or Philip's, especially now. But I must go; I have loitered too long, and Arnaud ought to go to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and many others, thrive and abound on this favoured island. With poultry, butchers' meat, fish, and vegetables, Batavia and Java generally are abundantly supplied; while the residents on its mountains may enjoy strawberries and cream in perfection. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... complaint might fairly be made by those who do complain on such subjects. Her dress was high round her neck, and the cap on her head was indisputably a widow's cap; but enough of her brown hair was to be seen to tell of its rich loveliness; and the black dress was so made as to show the full perfection of her form; and with it all there was that graceful feminine brightness that care and money can always give, and which will not come without care and money. It might be well, she had thought, to surrender her income, and ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... article; but the year 1817, memorable in this connection, from its being the date of the organization of the Colonization Society, found our exports augmented to 95,660,000 lbs., and her consumption enlarged to 126,240,000 lbs. Carding and spinning machinery had now reached a good degree of perfection, and the power loom was brought into general use in England, and was also introduced into the United States. Steamboats, too, were coming into use, in both countries; and great activity prevailed in commerce, manufactures, and the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... need of it now in England, although in France, where factions are constantly fighting against each other, it is well that every man should hold himself secure from attack. But now that cannon are getting to so great a point of perfection, walls are only useful to repel sudden attacks, and soon crumble when cannon can be brought against them. Me thinks the time will come when walls will be given up altogether, especially in England, where the royal ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... detailed work—does not mean the stultification of the imagination. It takes more imagination to see the interesting things in statistical or record work than to write a novel. Therefore employers should make it a point to help their employees to realize the significance of the perfection of each detail and the importance of each man's part. The other day a father said to me, "I want my boys to be as ashamed to do work in which they are not interested as to accept graft." When interest in work and efficiency in work are regarded as of more ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... until he reached the age of threescore, when God the Most High vouchsafed him a son, whom he named Ali Shar. The boy grew up like the moon on the night of its full, and when he came to man's estate and was endowed with all kinds of perfection, his father fell sick of a mortal malady and calling his son to him, said to him, 'O my son, the hour of my death is at hand, and I desire to give thee my last injunctions.' 'And what are they, O ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... at any rate, dissembled his mirth to perfection. The look which he shifted from me to Susannah and back was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a suburban town will doubtless recall what handsome specimens of equine perfection may be found in the local ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... gave it to me, and I have practised till I can do it to perfection. Your brother had an odd way of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... play in the formation of the various tissues and organs, and in applying the theory of evolution to the cells and the tissues they compose, raised the theory of germinal layers, at least as far as it regards the vertebrates, to a high degree of perfection. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... dish is Miroton de la Concierge, and it is currently held that only concierges can do it to perfection. Put a handful of minced onion to fry in butter; when it is nearly cooked, but not quite, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir it till all is well colored. Pour on it a little gravy, or meat-juice of some kind, and let it simmer for ten minutes after it begins to steam again. Then take your ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon Thy servants over all the earth to this effect, and stored up their voices as the sound of many waters about Thy throne. . . . O perfect and accomplish Thy glorious acts; for men may leave their works unfinished, but Thou art a God; Thy nature is perfection. . . . The times and seasons pass along under Thy feet, to go and come at Thy bidding; and as Thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many revelations, above all their foregoing ages since Thou tookest the flesh, so Thou ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... personal prowess and feats of endurance were the admiration of veteran soldiers. Women loved him, and he loved them. Enjoying life thoroughly, he was temperate in all things. To no man has it been given to approach more nearly to the perfection of human nature—complete, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... buckled straight, but loose, and so low, that it rest on the tender Grissle of his Nose, to make him the more sensible of his Fault, and Correction; and so as you see you win his Head, bring him straighter by degrees; let him but gently feel it, till his Head be brought to its true Perfection. ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... the score must be settled and the debt paid. He it is who, by a memory delightfully oblivious of his task and his table-book, is tenacious to the life of what you said to Fanny; how you put your head under Lucy's bonnet; he can imitate to perfection the way you kneeled upon the grass; and the wretch has learned to smack his lips like a gourmand, that he, may convey ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was—it's always one's best friend that does it! But I used to read them sometimes—ten years ago. I daresay they were in general rather stupider then; at any rate it always seemed to me that they missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away—still missing it, I mean, deliciously. You miss it, my dear fellow, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... anything that took shape before me, though when it came to people I was less credulous of their perfection because they pressed forward their not always certain credentials upon me. I reverenced them then too much for an imagined austerity as I admire them now perhaps not enough for their charm, for it is the charm of things ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Miss Ashton, after a moment's pause, "to add anything to these expressive and solemn Bible words. They convey in the most forcible way what seems to me the highest good for which we can aim in this life,—the perfection of Christian character. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... mind is no less affected with these stately ruins, than they would have been when standing and entire. They breed in generous minds a kind of pity, and sets the thoughts a-work to make out their magnifice as they were taken in perfection. These remains are "tanquam Tabulata Naufragii", that after the revolution of so many years and governments, have escaped the teeth of Time, and (which is more dangerous) the hands of mistaken Zeal. So that the retrieving of these forgotten things from oblivion, in some sort ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... difficult for her to heal the wounds she makes, whereas I can wound and heal together. We are absolutely unlike, and therefore there could not possibly be rivalry between us, unless indeed we quarreled over the greater or less perfection of our extremities, which are similar. I take after my father, who is shrewd and subtle. I have the manner of my grandmother and her charming voice, which becomes falsetto when forced, but is a sweet-toned chest voice at the ordinary pitch of a ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of much amusement to all, as the women were able to know who their partners were and chaff them at pleasure, while the men had all their time cut out to recognize the gay deceivers. At the beginning of the ball I had seen a masked lady who appeared to me just perfection. She was sylph-like; her figure was slight, of medium height, feet as perfect as Spanish women's feet can be; a head whose shape rivalled those of Murillo's angels, blue-black tresses adorning it, and eyes—oh! what eyes—looking at you through the openings in the mask. I lost no time in asking ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Martyr or Confessor lie concealed in the flourishing Times of Christianity. Some Virtues are only seen in Affliction, and some in Prosperity; some in a private, and others in a publick Capacity. But the great Sovereign of the World beholds every Perfection in its Obscurity, and not only sees what we do, but what we would do. He views our Behaviour in every Concurrence of Affairs, and sees us engaged in all the Possibilities of Action. He discovers the Martyr and Confessor without the Tryal of Flames and Tortures, and will hereafter ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... steps. 'Taking it altogether,' says Fergusson,[425] 'it is perhaps the most complete and elegant church of its class now known to exist in or near the capital, and many of its details are of great beauty and perfection.' ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... a very agreeable thing in its way, and De Quincey has carried it to a point of perfection never reached by any other rigmaroler. Despite his undoubted possession of a kind of humour, it is a very remarkable thing that he rigmaroles, so far as can be made out by the application of the most sensitive tests, quite seriously, and almost, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a dear little baby, one of the type the Temple women prize, and will take so much trouble to rear. The little head was finely formed, and the tiny face, in its minute perfection of feature, looked as if some fairy had shaped it out of a cream rose-petal. Alas, there was that look we know so well and fear so much—that look of not belonging to us, the elsewhere, other-world look. But we could not do this work at all, we would not ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... seems, in no respect, below the common standard of mankind. Their improvements in agriculture, and the perfection of their manufactures, are certainly adequate to the circumstances of their situation, and the natural advantages they enjoy. The eager curiosity with which they attended the armourer's forge, and the many expedients they had invented, even before we left the islands, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... really did seem perfection. It was some weeks before Mrs. Salisbury realized that Lizzie was not truthful; absolutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie could not be believed in the simplest statement. Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... rotund little butter rolls, with fingers like wee sausages, and I have also gazed upon long, slender hands as perfect of form and proportion as any hand ever put into a Gainsborough masterpiece. And both have been called beautiful. Of course, we all know that the Gainsborough model is perfection, but nevertheless we can content ourselves with the knowledge that really ideal hands are as rare as a few other nice things in this world, and that we can struggle along very well with our good imitations providing we are able to keep them clean ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... excel all other islands of Polynesia in their luxuriant and picturesque beauty—they produce all kinds of tropical fruits and vegetables—the bread-fruit, of which there are nine kinds, flourishes in great perfection; the banana, cocoa-nut, and chestnut, the orange, the lemon, and the guava, the pine-apple, and the nutmeg, are all to be found; and the yam, which attains the length of above four feet, is the principal food of the inhabitants; besides these, the sugar-cane and turmeric are largely cultivated, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... inventions and discoveries, has almost invariably commenced with some simple principle, and gradually developed it from one degree of perfection to another. The first hint that we have of the use of electricity was Franklin's drawing it from the clouds with his kite. Now it is the instrument of conveying thought from mind to mind, with a rapidity that surpasses time. The great propelling power that drives the wheel of the engine over our ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or ...
— The Republic • Plato
... faint description of a true wrestling bout among the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill, combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities of which Englishmen certainly ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis |
