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Precise   /prɪsˈaɪs/  /prisˈaɪs/   Listen
Precise

adjective
1.
Sharply exact or accurate or delimited.  "Specified a precise amount" , "Arrived at the precise moment"
2.
(of ideas, images, representations, expressions) characterized by perfect conformity to fact or truth ; strictly correct.  Synonyms: accurate, exact.  "A precise measurement"



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"Precise" Quotes from Famous Books



... to call upon him at the "Albion" at his earliest convenience. In about an hour that functionary appeared. He was a tall and stoutly-built man, of a decidedly military carriage; slightly bald, with a peculiarly searching eye, and thin decided lips. His manner was remarkably quiet, and his language precise and deliberate. He evidently always thought before he spoke, and then spoke what he thought, and nothing more. Taking the seat offered him by Sir Thomas, but declining any refreshment, he put himself in the attitude of listening, as one accustomed to weigh evidence, and to put every ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... York for many years, and had learned to know the representatives of newspapers, one from the other, by generic manner and appearance. Three correspondents rode by at the time, neither of whom he knew personally, but designated them promptly, with their precise connections. In short, we became familiar directly, and he told me that his name was O'Gamlon, Quartermaster of Meagher's Irish brigade, Sumner's corps. He was established with the elderly gentleman,—whose name was Michie,—and had two horses in the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... a couple of rods in this manner, when a faint sound from the bell caught his ear, but was instantly suppressed, as though some one had stopped at the instant he started to sway it. Faint as was the tinkle, however, he was able to locate the precise point whence it came, and after a little hesitation he ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... study of the conditions influencing the virulence (including its maintenance, exaltation and attenuation) of an organism, and precise observations upon the pathogenic effects produced by its entrance into, and multiplication within the body tissues can obviously only be carried out by means of experimental inoculation; whilst many points relating to ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... almost startled by perceiving Roger Hamley in the centre of a group of gentlemen, who were all talking together eagerly, and, as it seemed to her, making him the object of their attention. He made a hitch in his conversation, lost the precise meaning of a question addressed to him, answered it rather hastily, and made his way to where Molly was sitting, a little behind Lady Harriet. He had heard that she was staying at the Towers, but he was almost as much surprised as she was by his unexpected ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... It is a story which is hardly a story at all, told by comment, evasion, and recurrence, by 'little images, recollections, and circumstances of past pleasures' or distresses; with something vague and yet precise, like a dream partially remembered. Here and there is the creation of a mood and moment, almost like Coleridge's in the Ancient Mariner; but these flicker and go out. The style would be laughable in its simplicity if there were not in it some ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... not obtain another situation as governess; for, as I always stated where I had been, and did not choose to give the precise reason for quitting, merely stating that I was not comfortable, whenever the lady was called upon for my character, she invariably spoke of me so as to prevent my obtaining a situation. At last I was engaged as teacher to a school. I had better have taken a situation ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... so clear, so precise, and logical, is taken from a letter of Watt's, dated April 26, 1783. The letter was communicated by Priestley to several of the scientific men in London, and was transmitted immediately afterward to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, to ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... sleep," she murmured, pushing back her rumpled curls and yawning prodigiously. "I wonder why it is I always have to wake up first," and then, her eyes happening to fall on Evelyn at this precise moment, she cried, "Oh, I saw you wink, Evelyn; you can't fool me! You're playing possum," and, springing quickly out of bed, she gave that young lady a vigorous shake, which caused her to open her ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... true of you, Mr. Roberts, however high are our hopes that you will have such explanations ready as will relieve our minds from further doubts, and send us home rejoicing. Shall I be frank in stating the precise reasons which seem to justify ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be gone muttered a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of the room. Lescot and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less than a minute the two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained the only occupants of the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean official in rusty black, who throughout the conference had sat ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... home-brewed beer, and they were to bring with them such of the rescued miners as might be in a condition to feast and drink copiously. When he found that neither Hope nor his son could join these festivities, he was very sorry he had named so early a day; but he was so punctilious and precise that he could not make up his mind to change one day for another. So a great confectioner at Derby who sent out feasts was charged with the affair, and the Colonel's own kitchen was at his service too. That was not all. Bartley ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... Mr. G. was rather short and slender, but with an erectness of carriage, and a somewhat precise observance of the usages of refined society, which gave him an unfailing dignity of appearance. A certain quaintness of manner and expression was an irresistible charm about him. Sure I am, that one little girl will always remember the kind hand stretched out to seize ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... prophet—then, according to the views of the supranaturalist, they might—nay, they must—be admitted to be correct. But it is in the Maccabaean Daniel and in the apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves that they brought the names ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. Yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, she could not for some time determine on the precise course of procedure that should promise success to her aspirations. Primarily, her desire was to work out some alteration in the status of all concerned by which the domestic ideal might be maintained in all its splendid ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... themselves diligently to making their children miserable, is to frequently predict to the children the remorse which they (the children) will feel after they (the parents) are dead. In such cases, it would be difficult to specify the precise things which the children are to feel remorseful about. It must just be, generally, because they were so wicked, and because they did not sufficiently believe the infallibility and impeccability of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... think that the oath by which the crusaders had solemnly bound themselves, ought to be as literally obeyed. But Peter the Hermit, who had a place in the council, and possessed great weight, declared it as his opinion, "That since the precise observance of their vow would tend to diminish the forces of the crusade, it was in fact unlawful, and should not be kept according to the literal meaning, if, by a fair construction, it could ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... between the irony of Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the exact words of Homer, but very idiotic ...
— Ion • Plato

... The precise location of the Boer laagers does not appear to have been known, but it was certain that a considerable number of them were scattered about thirty miles or so to the west of Klerksdorp and the Schoonspruit line. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... engravings of Luther's room, the church, &c. To show how immutable every thing has been in Wittenberg since Luther died, let me mention that on coming back through the market-place, we found spread out for sale upon a cloth about a dozen pairs of shoes of the precise pattern of those belonging to Luther, which we had seen in Frankfort—clumsy, rude, and heelless. I have heard that Swedenborg said, that in his visit to the invisible world, he encountered a class of spirits who had ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... knife and fork, that, at the end of the second remove, he had actually disposed of more food than any other person at table. He now began to converse, and we shall open the conversation at the precise point in the dinner, when it was in the power of Aristabulus to make one of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... understand it. No other Freudian publication which the reviewer has seen can boast of the same simplicity. The other point is that absolutely everything concerning sex which could possibly be objectionable has been ruled out. There is not a word or a sentence in the book that a precise maiden lady need hesitate to read to her Sunday School class or at a pink tea. In doing this Dr. Coriat has indeed achieved the impossible as all will readily agree. This book is probably too elementary ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... hills were behind me, and the sea must be somewhere before me, but as to my precise locality, and the distance of the nearest settler's house, I was quite at a loss. In vain I tried to satisfy myself as to whether I was much to the south of the bivouac. I was growing dizzy with hunger and weariness, and no longer felt any wonder at the confusion of mind which seizes upon ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... quality of grave majesty which Alessio's works share with those of Piero della Francesca and others of Domenico Veneziano's following. They probably belong to the years 1460-1465. In the later of his preserved works, while there is no abatement of precise and laborious finish, we find beginning to prevail a certain harshness and commonness of type, and a lack of care for beauty in composition, the technical and scientific searcher seeming more and more to predominate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... tree near him, and, looking, saw something which looked surprisingly like a pair of boots, trying to force themselves out between two of the exposed roots. Then he heard retreating footsteps within the space enclosed by the circle of roots, and began to suspect the precise state of affairs. Examining the boots he discovered that they were his own, and he quickly guessed the truth that Jake had pushed them out from the inside, under the impression that he was driving them into a hole in the ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... reduce unemployment, to encourage direct foreign investment, and to privatize remaining state-owned enterprises. The economy contracted in 2002-03 mainly due to a decline in tourism. Growth should be positive in 2004, the precise level largely dependent on economic conditions ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... I'm just careless, and so I come to grief. But I never mean to be careless any more. I'll be as precise as you. I'll balance my books every week—every day if you like—exactly as you do at that ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... rise of romanticism. Like Claude, like Chardin, he stands somewhat apart; but he has distinctly the romantic inspiration, constrained and regularized by classic principles of taste. He is the French Correggio in far more precise parallelism than Lesueur is the French Raphael. With a grace and lambent color all his own—a beautiful mother-of-pearl and opalescent tone underlying his exquisite violets and graver hues; a color-scheme, on the one hand, and a sense of design in line and mass more suave and graceful than anything ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... and it frightened her; she could not understand that what was dead through all these years was now alive, that the ideal she had clung to, evoking it until it had become part of her, was real—an actual and splendid living power. In this vivid resurgence she seemed to lose her precise recollections of him ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... figured a few thousand years to return to the Solar System, Rajcik? Well, the computer agrees with you. Twenty-three hundred years, to be precise. Therefore, it has given us a ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley

... worth saying, because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that he would never go to any social gathering except those of his precise social equals, because he was afraid of making mistakes of etiquette. Etiquette is not a matter of principle; it was not one of the things of which Moses saw the pattern in the Mount! The only rule is not to be pretentious or ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... arms were inordinately long; hands, feet and eyebrows were large; skin swarthy; hair coarse, black and generally unkempt. Only the amazing, dreamful eyes, and a fineness in the texture of the skin, redeemed the face and gave it distinction.(3) Why did precise, complacent Miss Todd pick out so strange a man for her mate? The story that she married him for ambition, divining what he was to be—like Jane Welsh in the conventional story of Carlyle—argues too much of the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... The precise form of this also depends on individual preferences. We are not undertaking here to give exact recipes, only a ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... on which rested the knuckle of one clenched hand, stood Gideon Strong, the master of Feldwick Hall Farm. It was at his bidding that these people had come together; they waited now for him to speak. His was no common personality. Neat in his dress, precise though local, with a curious mixture of dialects in his speech, he was feared by every man in Feldwick, whether he stood over them labouring or prayed amongst them in the little chapel, where every Sunday he took the principal ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... are named as laid out by Hippodamus. Aristotle tells us that he planned the Piraeus, the port of Athens, with broad straight streets. He does not add the precise relation of these streets to one another. If, however, the results of recent German inquiries and conjectures are correct, and if they show us his work and not—as is unfortunately very possible—the work of some later man, his design included ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... on the genius for ugliness in English dissent, and the supreme need of bringing a current of new ideas to play upon the unintelligent use of its traditional formulae. And Matthew Arnold would have been right. These are the precise subjects of Browning's somewhat rough-and-ready satire. But Browning adds that in Mount Zion, love, at least in its rudiments, is present, and where love is, there ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... descendants of whose union with the cavalier Spasiano still live here, and in a manner keep the memory of the poet green with the present generation. I am indebted to a gentleman who is of this lineage for many favors, and for precise information as to the position in the house that stood here of the very room in which Tasso was born. It is also minutely given in a memoir of Tasso and his family, by Bartolommeo Capasso, whose careful researches ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... into account the survivors whom he had just named; having classified these, he knew what they were capable of, but he was full of keen curiosity regarding the children who were still infants. He had written to a confrere in Noumea for precise information regarding the wife whom Etienne had lately married there, and the child which she had had, but he had heard nothing, and he feared greatly that on that side the tree would remain incomplete. He was more fully furnished ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... been accorded to the See of Rome. Thus Pius IV. was triumphant in obtaining conciliar sanction for Pontifical absolutism, and in maintaining the fabric of the Roman hierarchy unimpaired, the cardinal dogmas of Latin Christianity unimpeached and after formal inquisition reasserted in precise definitions. A formidable armory had been placed at the disposal of the Popes, who were fully empowered to use it, and who had two mighty engines for its application ready in the Holy Office and the Company ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... orator, Csar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Csar, as though in some exclusive sense, or ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous films—wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as though that light were lead—sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble again beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt strike ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... and myself to the era of autochthonous Sicily, when the children of the Cyclops inhabited the land, and Demeter in her search for Proserpina wept on this hill, and Charybdis lay stretched out under these bluffs watching the sea. It is precise enough to say that Taormina began eighty years before the Trojan War. Very dimly, it must be acknowledged, the ancient Sicani are seen arriving and driven, like all doomed races, south and west out of the land, and in their place the Siculi ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... positive man can seldom be proved wrong. Still, in literature it is very desirable to preserve a moderate measure of independence, and we, therefore, make bold to ask whether it is as plain as the 'old hill of Howth,' that Carlyle was a greater man than Johnson? Is not the precise contrary the truth? No abuse of Carlyle need be looked for here or from me. When a man of genius and of letters happens to have any striking virtues, such as purity, temperance, honesty, the novel task of dwelling ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... an exact and faithful copy of the hollyhocks, and she had just thrown on another sheet a whole bunch of imaginary flowers, of dream-flowers, extravagant and superb. She had, at times, these abrupt shiftings, a need of breaking away in wild fancies in the midst of the most precise of reproductions. She satisfied it at once, falling always into this extraordinary efflorescence of such spirit and fancy that it never repeated itself; creating roses, with bleeding hearts, weeping tears of sulphur, lilies like crystal urns, flowers without any known form, even, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... went to bed at ten o'clock, but May, having made herself at ease in the sitting-room, sat there reading until after twelve. Nevertheless, she was up very early next morning, and, before going out for a sharp little walk (in a heavy shower), she gave precise directions about her breakfast. She wanted only the simplest things, prepared in the simplest way, but the tone of her instructions vexed and perturbed Mrs. Rockett sorely. After breakfast the young lady made a searching ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was exactly the foreman to give respectability to his employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing in aspect and manner, with a great fund of animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assurance and conceit, respectability was, to say the truth, the precise qualification which ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford

... from St. John's was obdurate. Not a hint escaped her in response to the baiting and awkward interrogation of Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl; and the more they besought her, the more suspicious she grew. She was an obstinate young person—she was precise, she was scrupulous, she was of a secretive, untrustful turn of mind; and as she was ambitious for advancement from the dreary isolation of Point-o'-Bay Cove, she was not to be entrapped or entreated into what she had determined was a breach of discipline. Moreover, it appeared to her suspicious ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... At that precise moment Mohammed Ali brought in the coffee. It was served in the native fashion, in small enamelled brass bowls, on a brass tray. When he handed the tray to Mrs. Mervill he pointed to a small object lying ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... his friends or even himself could have desired. It was unanimously voted that his conversation was as agreeable as his writing; but, oddly enough, its agreeableness was of an entirely different kind. His literary knack of chatty criticism had required a new word to convey its precise effect. To "birrell" is now a verb as firmly established as to "boycott," and it signifies a style light, easy, playful, pretty, rather discursive, perhaps a little superficial. Its characteristic ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... impossible, and must be checked by some means. We are, nevertheless, seldom able with certainty to tell in any given species, at what period of life, or at what period of the year, or whether only at long intervals, the check falls; or, again, what is the precise nature of the check. Hence probably it is that we feel so little surprise at one, of two species closely allied in habits, being rare and the other abundant in the same district; or, again, that one should be abundant in one district, and another, filling the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Tarra returns, send him forward to us without delay. He should be back before noon to-day." John was thus precise to deliver the instructions, because he did not know what their reception was likely to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... himself from thence, till he could resolve to visit them without a Crime; and she protested, if he did not do this, and master his foolish Passion, she would let her Father understand his Conduct, who was a Man of temper so very precise, that should he believe, his Son should have a thought of Love to a Virgin vow'd to Heaven, he would abandon him to Shame, and eternal Poverty, by disinheriting him of all he could: Therefore, she said, he ought to lay all this to his Heart, and weigh it with his unheedy Passion. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... she say, Austin?" repeated Aunt Charlotte, sternly. "I insist upon knowing her exact words. Of course it doesn't really matter what a poor old thing like that may have said, but I always like to be precise, and it's just as well to know how one strikes a stranger. It wasn't anything rude, I hope, for I'm sure ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... Mills, Spruce Swamp, Duck Pond, and Moderation was "haying." There was a perfect frenzy of haying, for it was the Monday after the "Fourth," the precise date in July when the Maine farmer said good-bye to repose, and "hayed" desperately and unceasingly, until every spear of green in his section was mowed down and safely under cover. If a man had grass of his own, he cut it, and if he had none, he assisted in ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was under the guidance of a kind and sympathetic novice-master, who allowed him to study quietly in his cell to his heart's content; and during this period he composed what he calls an epitome or breviary of Plato. Its precise character he does not specify, but its second title suggests that it may have been a collection of extracts from Plato: not from the Greek, for he had little acquaintance with that yet, but presumably from such of Plato's works as had been translated ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... hearing, which was one of the characteristics of Deerfoot, enabled him not only to assure himself of the precise direction of the sound, but to fix the point whence it came. Gaining sight of the ridge, he was convinced that the lad who fired it was in that vicinity. He therefore pointed out the portion which was to be examined by the Sauk, while he reserved a similar area to be ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... What was the precise aspect of our county when the Normans possessed themselves of the land, it might be deemed an effort of the imagination perhaps to portray. "Yet," says Dr Whitaker, in one of his happier moods, "could a curious observer of the present day carry himself nine or ten centuries ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... responsible ministerial officer. He wore a tight frock coat and an immaculate white tie; under his arm he carried the regulation portfolio, or lawyer's bag, stuffed full of reports, dispositions, and documents dealing with cases in hand. He was altogether a very precise and natty little personage, quiet and unpretending in demeanour, with a mild, thoughtful face in which two small ferrety eyes blinked and twinkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. But when things went ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... '32 exactly corresponds, save that the speaker is Prin., not Qu.; ore-rules is written as two words without the hyphen, and strives for striues. I have been thus precise, because criticism is to me not "a game," nor ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... requiring ventilation for the common good Mrs. Bowers could conceive of no instrument so sure as the Widow Weatherwax, who providentially dropped in to borrow flour at the precise moment Mrs. Bowers had decided that if she ever meant to run over and copy the widow's unequalled recipe for floating island, this was the time to do it. Quite in the same breath with her greetings, therefore, Mrs. Bowers intimated that were she one of those odious persons who carried tales, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... William Wadsworth, from Genesee, commands the troops on our frontiers. His aids are Major Adam Hoops and Major W. H. Spencer. His head quarters are now at Lewistown. It is impossible to state the precise number of troops under his command, because the militia ordered on the lines are returning, and the companies composing the regiments under his command have not all arrived; but from what we learn, there ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... shrunk, became usual: some of the great physicians, such as Herophilus and Erasistratus, being noted for the completeness of their study of anatomy. In the art of the third century B. C. we see the inevitable result of such studies in a more precise and learned rendering of the muscles and the skin. And artists no longer hesitated to represent bodies wasted with toil and exposure to the weather, or emaciated with fasting. There are many such figures in our museums, showing a marvellously close study of the forms of peasants and old ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... intoxication was not only a triumph over himself, but, what was still more, a triumph over his brother, who had so often prevented him from falling into their snares and joining in their brutal excesses. It so happened, however, that about this precise period, Art had, unfortunately, contracted an intimacy with one of the class I speak of, an adroit fellow with an oily tongue, vast powers of flattery, and still greater powers of bearing liquor—for Frank could ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... unconventional ways of "the Golden Shoemaker" gave great offence; and that was Mr. Bounder, the coachman. As a coachman, Bounder was faultless. His native genius had been developed and matured by a long course of first-class experience. In matters of etiquette, within his province, Bounder was precise. Right behaviour between master and coachman was, in his opinion, "the whole duty of man." He held in equal contempt a presuming coachman and a master who ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... in a dry, precise voice: "Eyes are the windows of the soul; but Quid tibi praecipiam molles vitare fenestras?—and you are courtier enough, De Brantome, to appreciate ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... do. You see, now, that a man will never drop a link in his chain. He cannot. If he made up his mind to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link—a thought bound to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the first ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... of the pair did not attract her. He was a tall, dark man whose tight, precise mouth and rather high cheeks bones gave him an appearance vaguely sinister. He had the dusky look of the clean-shaven man whose life is a perpetual struggle with a determined beard. He certainly shaved twice a day, and just as certainly had the self-control not to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... adherents—military theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws—laws of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... characteristic of Apicius for incompleteness and want of precise directions, without which the experiment in the hands of an inexperienced operator would result ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... fell on her knees, and spread out her hands to the moon. She could not in the least have told what was in her mind, but the action was in reality just a begging of the moon to be what she was—that precise incredible splendor hung in the far-off roof, that very glory essential to the being of poor girls born and bred in caverns. It was a resurrection—nay, a birth itself—to Nycteris. What the vast blue sky, studded with tiny sparks ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... against the independence of the mind. The censorship was exercised with grotesque stupidity. It was still the aim of Government to isolate Austria from the ideas and the speculation of other lands, and to shape the intellectual world of the Emperor's subjects into that precise form which tradition prescribed as suitable for the members of a well-regulated State. In poetry, the works of Lord Byron were excluded from circulation, where custom-house officers and market-inspectors chose to enforce the law; in history and political literature, the leading writers of modern ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... impossible for a person educated according to nature to form an idea of the depraved state of society. It is easy to form a precise notion of order, but not of disorder. Beauty, virtue, happiness, have all their defined proportions; deformity, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... were then acting. I do not believe it was meant that they might receive England, Ireland, Holland, &tc. into it, which would be the case on your construction. When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... require clear and strong evidence to induce the belief that the framers of the Constitution, after having limited the powers of Congress to certain precise and specific objects, intended by employing the words "dispose of" to give that body unlimited power over the vast public domain. It would be a strange anomaly indeed to have created two funds—the one by taxation, confined to the execution of the enumerated powers delegated to Congress, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... was but newly opened, the third within eight years. They are great builders here in Hiva-oa; I saw in my ride paepaes that no European dry-stone mason could have equalled, the black volcanic stones were laid so justly, the corners were so precise, the levels so true; but the retaining-wall of the new graveyard stood apart, and seemed to be a work of love. The sentiment of honour for the dead is therefore not extinct. And yet observe the consequence ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... human wants and interests. But those wants and interests are, like the laws of the universe, extremely multifarious, and the order of preference among them in all their different gradations (for it varies according to the degree of each) cannot be cast into precise general propositions. M. Comte's subjective synthesis consists only in eliminating from the sciences everything that he deems useless, and presenting as far as possible every theoretical investigation as the solution of a practical problem. To this, however, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... eyebrows and full white beard, dressed in a frock-coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks, but plenty of the martinet; a dry, precise man, who might pass for a preacher in some rigid sect; and, whatever he was, not the Captain Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, standing apart on the poop ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... poet's bed room. One seemed to see in all this arrangement how snug, and cozy, and comfortable the poet had thus ensconced himself, to give himself up to his beloved labors and his poetic dreams. But there was a cold and desolate air of order and adjustment about it which reminds one of the precise and chilling arrangements of a room from which has just been carried out a corpse; all ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... honored me on the subject of the claims of Mr Izard to goods captured in the Nile. I observed to you, in my letter of the 17th inst. that the government could only interfere when the laws were insufficient; and that its interposition would be misplaced, when they were plain and precise. You must feel all the justice of this principle better than any person whatever, and I do not doubt that cases may occur in which you may yourselves ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... as a means of taming refractory children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous existences—inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... hands behind his back and his loin cloth smartly tied, is quite sufficiently reminiscent of Bellini's figure of 1473 to make us believe that Basaiti was at once transferring his allegiance to that reigning master. In his earlier phase he has the round heads and the dry precise manner of the Muranese. In his large picture in the Academy, the "Calling of the Sons of Zebedee," he produces a large, important set piece, cold and lifeless, without one figure which arrests us, or lingers in the memory. "The Christ on the Mount" ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... undoubtedly genuine. But it is surely a strange paradox to maintain that the words 'Many were created but few shall be saved' are nearer in meaning to 'Many are called but few chosen' than the repetition of those very words themselves. Our author has forgotten to notice that Barnabas has used the precise word [Greek: klaetoi] just before; indeed it is the very point on which his argument turns, 'because we are called do not let us therefore rest idly upon our oars; Israel was called to great privileges, yet they were abandoned by God as we see them; let us therefore also take heed, for, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... that excitement and fear caused his pallor; but as a matter of fact it was in him an unfailing sign of happiness and success. Landis had manners enough to rise as they approached. He found himself being presented to the smaller man. He heard the cool, precise voice of Donnegan acknowledging the introduction; and then the red-headed man went back to his table; and Jack Landis was alone with ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... any disturbance of the functions may take place: but this has its limits, beyond which if the excitement be brought, on either side, it is evident that an uneasy or unpleasant exercise of the functions must take place. There is not, however, any precise line or boundary between this state, and that in which the functions begin to be disturbed; on the contrary, the law of continuity and gradation seems to extend throughout every part of nature. This departure ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... stepped into the little office tent occupied by the owner of the Great Sparling Combined Shows. Shaking the water from his dripping cap, he brought a hand to his forehead in precise military salute. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... report is spread, (says Voltaire in one of his works,) that there is, in some country or other, a giant as big as a mountain; and men presently fall to hot disputing concerning the precise length of his nose, the breadth of his thumb, and other particulars, and anathematize each other for heterodoxy of belief concerning them. In the midst of all, if some bold sceptic ventures to hint a doubt as to ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable; and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... possibly with wheels of such a size as will enable them to traverse almost all sorts of ground.[40] The aeronauts, provided with large scale maps of the hostile country, will mark down to the gunners below the precise point upon which to direct their fire, and over hill and dale the shell will fly—ten miles it may be—to its billet, camp, massing ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... military talent has not been well tried by the standard of experience, the general is peculiarly exposed to the chance of employing not the best instruments. In a country, too, which is covered with wood, precise information of the numbers composing different columns is ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... logarithms, and proved the accuracy of his work by different methods. The manuscripts fill several quires of paper, and are remarkable for the care with which they were kept, the neatness and uniformity of the handwriting, the beauty of the diagrams, and a precise method and arrangement in copying out tables and columns of figures. These particulars will not be thought too trivial to be noticed when it is known he retained similar habits through life. His business papers, day-books, ledgers, and letter-books, in which, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... and precise account, which should appeal directly to the professional astronomer, will not be needed, since ARAGO has already fulfilled this want in his "Analyse de la vie et des travaux de Sir WILLIAM HERSCHEL," published in 1842. The few misconceptions there contained will be ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... aside for a time, Lord Cochrane was not idle. He had frequent interviews, not only with Admiral Miaoulis and the other native seamen of ability, but also with Dr. Gosse, and with Captain Abney Hastings, who joined him on the 22nd, and provided him with much precise information as to the naval strength of Greece, the character of the officers and crews, and the best methods of attacking the Turks with advantage. Information as precise about the land forces was derived ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... stuck by its lower end into a little plinth of wood, presenting their edge to the view. The fibres of the wood you know are dilated, but not lengthened by moisture. The slip, therefore, whose grain is lengthwise, becomes a standard, retaining always the same precise length. That which has its grain crosswise, dilates with moisture, and contracts for the want of it. If the right hand piece be the cross grained one, when the air is very moist, it lengthens, and forces its companion to form a kind of interior annulus ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... realistic biography because it reveals so much that is important and even sacred about a man's life. The real objection to it will rather be found in the fact that it reveals about a man the precise points which are unimportant. It reveals and asserts and insists on exactly those things in a man's life of which the man himself is wholly unconscious; his exact class in society, the circumstances ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... cause a shower of abuse, then fisticuffs, and, finally, a fatal blow: so that it would really be a more decorous proceeding to omit the intermediate steps and appeal to arms at once. An appeal to arms has its own special formalities; and these have developed into a rigid and precise system of laws and regulations, together forming the most solemn farce there is—a regular temple of honor dedicated to folly! For if two intrepid persons dispute over some trivial matter, (more important affairs are ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... associated—the deep easy chair in the library in which she would bury herself for hours with an interesting book; her baby grand piano, still open with the sheets of music scattered about; her private chamber with the bed undisturbed, closets empty, furniture arranged in precise order, and already beginning to accumulate dust—he realized for the first time all that she had been to him. He had not married young like most men. She had come into his life when his habits and opinions were already ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... exercise of the powers of sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the National Government and partly to the state Governments. This division of functions is made in the federal Constitution. If differences arise, as they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the decision rests—not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had said—but with the federal courts, which were established in part for that very purpose. No State has a right to "nullify" a federal law; ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... McDonald," said the officer, courteously; "but our orders are precise; no one can leave the island ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... he was entirely insensible to everything for which I most cared. Before our marriage he had affected a sort of interest in my pursuits, but in reality he was indifferent to them. He was cold, hard, and impenetrable. His habits were precise and methodical, beyond what is natural for a man of his years. I remember one evening— strange that these small events should so burn themselves into me—that some friends were at our house at tea. A tradesman in the town was mentioned, a member of our ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... to understand what is the precise meaning of the expression twamrite. Literally it means without thee. Whether however, the speaker means that all the princes will meet with destruction except thee or that they will be destroyed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Another early work of his, and one which, like the verses To the Moon, affords marked evidence of the impression which he had received from Keats's poetry, is the unfinished drama (or, as he termed it, "romance") of Lamia: I do not find its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversified talent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... improve our wit as well as wine, Say at what age a poet grows divine? 50 Shall we, or shall we not, account him so, Who died, perhaps, an hundred years ago? End all dispute; and fix the year precise When British bards begin ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... of King Stephen, and he made his descent in the year 1153. Whether there ever were such a person as the knight Owain, or whether he was a mere invention of Henry of Saltrey is uncertain. Saltrey's account is precise as to the various stages through which Owain passed, and it is a vulgar rendering of the common stories of visits to purgatory, of which Dante's is the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... young person with whom I have had free and open conversation has been free from serious thoughts of suicide," but these are forgotten later. A typical case of many I could gather is that of a lady, not yet in middle life, precise and carefully trained, who, on hearing a lecture on the typical phases of adolescence, declared that she must have been abnormal, for she knew nothing of any of these experiences. Her mother, however, produced her diary, and there she read for the first time ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... the tropics; fruit which he had never before seen, supplies for the table unknown to him; a bright sky, a glowing sun, hills covered with vines, a deep-blue sea, a picturesque and novel costume; all meet and delight the eye, just at the precise moment when to have been landed, even upon a barren island, would have been considered as a luxury. Add to all this, the unbounded hospitality of the English residents, a sojourn too short to permit satiety; and then is it to be ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... in very formal and precise squares are the camps of the various brigades, the sharp-pointed tents ranged in exact order and looking from far off like symmetrical little flower-beds pricked out on ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps

... great event was the sight of Enver. He was a slim fellow of Rasta's build, very foppish and precise in his dress, with a smooth oval face like a girl's, and rather fine straight black eyebrows. He spoke perfect German, and had the best kind of manners, neither pert nor overbearing. He had a pleasant trick, too, of appealing all round ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... its redemption. Indeed, Mr. Judson appeared to think that anything drawn from the Bible was good, whether he made any moral application of it or not. I have heard him preach a whole sermon, giving the most precise and detailed description of the building of the Tabernacle, without one word of comment, [16] inference, or instruction. But he was a good and kindly man; and when, as I was going to college at the age of eighteen, he laid his hand ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... consciousness of what he is doing, of his party, of the situation, of the revolution, while the crude expressions which, in the tones of his bull's voice, he flings out as he passes along, are but a vivid statement of the precise truth "We are the rabble! We spring from the gutters!" With the normal principles of mankind, "we should soon get back into them. We can only rule through fear!"[3153] "The Parisians are so many j... f...; a river of blood must flow between them and the emigres."[3154] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... are not so definitely described that we can determine their precise character. This fact is in favour of the idea that the heresies belong to the 1st century rather than to the 2nd. Stress has been laid upon statements which seem to imply Gnostic heresy, and heresy of a "Docetic" character, i.e. teaching a denial ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... centre of the transverse bulkhead, two large travelling trunks and three or four smaller cases, broken open and the contents strewn upon the carpeted deck, and prone among them, bound hand and foot and lashed together, were the figures of a man and woman, both evidently elderly, although their precise ages could hardly be guessed by the imperfect light that streamed in from the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... took my cottage, in 1837, and was told that the oak staircase in it had belonged to the veritable 'Rosamond's Bower,' and was the only relic of it that existed; and when I found that the name had no longer a precise 'local habitation' in Fulham, I ventured, purely from motives of respect for the memory of the past, and not from any affectation of romance, to revive an ancient parochial name which had been suffered to die out, 'like the snuff of a candle.' ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... only imperfectly to the works of Shakespeare.[6] I shall, therefore, confine myself to the idea of conflict in its more general form. In this form it is obviously suitable to Shakespearean tragedy; but it is vague, and I will try to make it more precise by putting the question, Who are ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... determine the precise meaning of Bawsin, I think I may venture to say that there is no older or better authority for rendering it large, than Skinner. ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... however, of undoubted authority) says that he was assisted in his government by the counsel of twelve superintendants, selected from the twelve tribes of Israel. But we know too little, from authentic materials, of the precise system adopted at that remote period, to enable us to make any historical deductions ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... tattered Army List. My own accomplishment was of another character—took, as it seemed to me, a wider and a more untrammelled range. Dragoons might have swaggered in Lincoln green, riflemen might have donned sporrans over tartan trews, without exciting notice or comment from me. But did you seek precise information as to the fauna of the American continent, then you had come to the right shop. Where and why the bison "wallowed"; how beaver were to be trapped and wild turkeys stalked; the grizzly and how to handle him, and the pretty pressing ways of the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... of lofty sentiment, or pathetic tenderness. We feel ourselves in company with a voluble retail talker, whose language is exuberant but not exact, and to whom we should never think of referring for precise information or for well-digested thought and experience. His argument continually slides into wholesale assertion and vague declamation, and in his love of ornament he frequently becomes tawdry. For example, he tells us ("Apoc. Sketches," p. 265) that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Almanac and found that on that very day, June 7, the sun was behind time 1 minute and 26 seconds, and that it was catching up at a rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. The chronometer said that at the precise moment of taking the sun's altitude it was twenty-five minutes after eight o'clock at Greenwich. From this date it would seem a schoolboy's task to correct the Equation of Time. Unfortunately, I was not a schoolboy. Obviously, at the middle of ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... seen, the Ripleys were between the two and Linna on the one hand, and the single Seneca on the other. He knew the precise location of the fugitives as well as if they had been in his field of vision ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis

... dress as to pass without being noticed; neither precise nor formal, slovenly nor dandyish; dress like a man or woman. Conduct yourself as one ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... is the precise word. Take Pennsylvania, for instance; that is one of the richest communities in the civilized world; its coal and iron alone would make any country affluent, and a portion of its agricultural population is one of the most affluent I know of. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... of making an appeal. He knew that along with the property, Kennedy had taken over the carriage and capitally matched horses of the late laird of Glen Marrick. Perhaps he would lend them to a kinsman in order to oblige a Royal Duke. He need not be too precise as to what the Royal Duke wanted them for if the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... however mistaken you may have been, you spoke very eloquently, too eloquently almost, it seemed to me—of the infamy of such a deed as the act of summary justice upon this thieving fellow Mabey, or whatever his name may be. Infamy was the precise word you used. You did not retract that word when I had the honour to inform you that it was by my orders that my gamekeeper ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... Caricature does not lend itself easily to precise definition. Etymologically it connects itself with the Italian caricare, to load or charge, thus corresponding precisely in derivation with its French equivalent Charge; and—save a yet earlier ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... you are desirous of ascertaining the precise date?" asked the squire. "Are you intending to pay off ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!—I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... was by his side, looking affable and bland; Tsz-lu also, looking careless and intrepid; and Yen Yu and Tsz-kung, firm and precise. The Master was cheery. "One like Tsz-lu there," said he, "does not ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... from your having on your glasses and I not. I endeavored to set it down in the precise place from which ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... straight. This causes her to cleave the wave with the minimum of disturbance, and this boat had no desire to cleave anything else. None the less, from time to time, she heard a mine grate, or tinkle, or jar (I could not arrive at the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant) on her plates. Sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began to hope she was clear. At other times they were numerous, but when at last she seemed ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... German "men in possession," they pursued the even tenor of their way in the precise yet phlegmatic German manner. Their guards kept the gates and bridges as if they meant to hold the place till the crack of doom, instead of being under orders to clear out within the week. The recruits drilled on the citadel esplanade, straightening their legs and pointing ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... hours of the night?[34] "I have never closed my eyes all night," an answer as frequently made when the speaker has had several hours' sleep as when he has had none, would then be less often said. Lies, intentional and unintentional, are much seldomer told in answer to precise than to leading questions. Another frequent error is to inquire whether one cause remains, and not whether the effect which may be produced by a great many different causes, not inquired after, remains. As when it is asked, whether there was noise in ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale

... still in progress to ascertain the precise mineral requirements of the crop as well as the most suitable stage at which to apply them. During the first five months the moisture content undergoes a steady decrease, from 87.13 percent to 65.77 percent, but during the final ripening ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angelique. She had received from her precise information respecting the movements of the Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivieres on urgent affairs, and might be absent for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... feeling approaching regret; for although the six pursy little volumes composing it—full of quaint drawings, plans, and odd attempts at topographical maps—reveal a prolix writer, Pre Labat is always able to interest. He reminds you of one of those slow, precise, old-fashioned conversationalists who measure the weight of every word and never leave anything to the imagination of the audience, yet who invariably reward the patience of their listeners sooner or later by reflections of surprising profundity or theories of a totally novel ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... fifth brother, "There is something very precise about him; he has a good head-piece, but he does nothing." And on that very account they thought he ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... step by step with his usual dignity, stopping from time to time to say a word or make a sign with head or hand. Behind him, two steps lower, came Chamillard, moving and stopping as the king moved and stopped, and answering the questions which His Majesty put to him in a respectful but formal and precise manner. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... races, however savage they may have been, were not wanting in intelligence. The earliest inhabitants of Russia placed their dwellings near rivers above the highest flood-level known to or foreseen by them. The Scandinavians were most precise in the orientation of their homes, and M. de Quatrefages points out that the kitchen-midding of Soelager is set against a hill in the best position for protecting those who lived near it from the north winds, which are so trying in these districts on account of their violence. At Havelse, says ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... they were pounced upon by half-a-dozen policemen and forced to back ignominiously up a little slit between the houses where they did not mean to go, amid the shouts of the hindered drivers; and it was her nervous recollection of that event which caused Mrs. Belmaine to be so precise in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... as to the conflict of opinion concerning the period of Geoffrey Chaucer's birth, the precise date of which is very unlikely ever to be ascertained. A better fortune has attended the anxious enquiries which in his case, as in those of other great men have been directed to the very secondary question of ancestry and descent,—a question to which, in the abstract at all events, no man ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... felt more comfortable. For at once, with a haughty and precise air, which was her idea of how the socially elect bear themselves, with a set smile on her quaint face, and modulating her voice affectedly, she took Mr. Perkins's arm and went for a walk around Seward Park (the table), discussing the weather as she strolled, the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... the ears, Whilst in his sheath his sleeping sword doth bide; A gull is he which wears good handsome clothes, And stands in presence stroking up his hair, And fills up his unperfect speech with oaths, But speaks not one wise word throughout the year: But, to define a gull in terms precise,— A gull is he which seems and is ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... AM is not bounded nor compressed within the narrow limits of physical humanity, nor can 256:15 He be understood aright through mortal con- cepts. The precise form of God must be of small importance in comparison with the sublime ques- 256:18 tion, What is infinite ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... been my occupation at quiet moments to devise conversation against the time of this precise miracle. I had dreamt that it might come to pass, even as it did, and I knew that talk for it should be stored safely away. This talk had been the coinage of my leisure. As we walked I would say, lightly,—"Do you like it here as well as ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... was a very old man is certain, but there is doubt as to his precise age, as also as to the cause of his blindness. According to one account he had been blinded, or all but blinded, by the Greeks, and in a treacherous manner, when sent, at an earlier date, on an embassy to Constaritinople-whence his bitter hostility to the Greek Empire. I agree, however, ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... suspected of any design of assisting the Celts to build up a pedigree, has happily supplied the deficiency. Josephus writes:[45] "Magog led out a colony, which from him were named Magoges, but by the Greeks called Scythians." But Keating specifies the precise title of Scythians, from which the Irish Celts are descended. He says they had established themselves in remote ages on the borders of the Red Sea, at the town of Chiroth; that they were expelled by the grandson of that Pharaoh who had been drowned in the Red Sea; and that he persecuted ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack



Words linked to "Precise" :   fine, distinct, finespun, skillful, exact, on the button, right, to be precise, imprecise, very, hairsplitting, nice, dead, specific, punctilious, meticulous, correct, on the nose, accurate, microscopic



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