"Imperfect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this period, show no trace of such treatment. The receptacles for the viscera are sometimes found in their graves in the Sixth Dynasty, but are, as a rule, empty, being mere dummy vases. Even in the Middle Empire, the preservation of the bodies of the better classes was extremely imperfect. The bundles of wrappings have kept their form to the present day and it seems as if the mummy were still intact; but an examination of the interior shows only loose bones. Successful mummification appears ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... frock-coat that covered his heart, and bowed profoundly. It was obvious that he resented our presence and desired to wipe us out of our hostess's consideration. I glanced ironically at Dale's disgusted face, and smiled at the imperfect development of his sense of humour. Indeed, to the young, humour is only a weapon of offence. It takes a philosopher to use it as defensive armour. Dale burned to outdo Mr. Papadopoulos. I, having no such ambition, laid my hand on his arm and went ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and with the imperfect means of Gibbie for the embodiment of his thoughts, Ginevra ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... that many of the flavoring herbs now in use were similarly employed before the erection of the pyramids and also that many then popular no longer appear in modern lists of esculents. Of course, this statement is based largely upon imperfect records, perhaps, in many cases only hints more or less doubtful as to the various species. But it seems safe to conclude that a goodly number of the herbs discussed in this volume, especially those said to be natives of the Mediterranean region, overhung and perfumed the cradle of the human race ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... a plant must have its proper surroundings before germinating; and it was believed that the action of the philosopher's stone was to hasten this process, as man may hasten the growth of plants by artificial means. Gold was looked upon as the most perfect metal, and all other metals imperfect, because not yet "purified." By some alchemists they were regarded as lepers, who, when cured of their leprosy, would become gold. And since nature intended that all things should be perfect, it was the aim of the alchemist to assist her in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... principle. They thought that when they died, that was the last of them. The Catholic missionaries who undertook the unpromising task of converting them to Christianity, were at first obliged to depend upon the imperfect translations of half-breed interpreters. These "made the idea of soul intelligible to their hearers by telling them they had a gut which never rotted, and that this was their living principle!" Yet ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... actuating in a proper manner:—those organs, which are the vehicles, through which its meanings shoot forth into action, being either shrivelled, abraded by long use, or clogged up with humours, shew the soul but in an imperfect manner, often disguise it wholly, and it is for want of a due consideration only, that we are so apt to condemn the mind, for what, in reality, is nothing but the incumbrances laid on it by ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... what people called the conventionalities were a device of the far-seeing eye of the Most High to regulate the relations of His children. If any of these appeared to escape the ends for which they were made, she put down the failure to the imperfect construction of the human organism, the constant aberrations of which necessitated the restraints imposed by religion ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... is too recent to require much detail. It took its origin, as is well known, in a reservoir of water for the use of the mills, formed by a dam across the valley. This had been constructed in 1838, and in an imperfect manner. The embankment, eighty feet in height, sloped outwards and inwards, with facings of masonry, thus obeying the proper rule as to form; but the puddling, or clay-casing of the interior, was defective, and it is believed that a spring existed underneath. Some years ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... Jesus made mistakes, he is not necessarily compelled to become an atheist. All other Gods that have been worshipped by men have been found imperfect. The oft exposed errors of Jehovah do not prevent Christians and Jews from professing belief in God. Those who require support from outside themselves cling to the symbol of deity though not thoroughly crediting any personality ever described in ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... his eyes open. Yet his moral sense, though blunted, was never obliterated; and many traits of generosity and good feeling mingled with his excesses. Choosing satire as the field of his Muse, was partly the cause and partly the effect of an imperfect morale. We are far from averring that no satirist can be a good man, but certainly most satirists have either been very good or very bad men. To the former class have belonged Cowper, Crabbe, &c.; to the latter, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... birth nor alliances unworthy of their relation, whatever I may be and am of their admirable daughter: of whom they, every one of them, are at least as unworthy!—These, Madam, I call sufferings: justly call so; if at last I am to be sacrificed to an imperfect reconciliation—imperfect, I say: for, can you expect to live so much as tolerably under the same roof, after all that has passed, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... flung it off, with the results upon the body of the original as described. To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream. Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact—from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... eminence on which it stands, yet enough, in this level country, to give it a prospect of a score or two of miles in all directions. The Conqueror fell in love with the situation at first sight, and gave a stolen monastery in exchange for it. The home so won has provided a shelter—at times very imperfect, indeed—to British sovereigns for eight centuries. From the modest erection of William it has been steadily growing—with the growth of the empire, we were near saying, but its chief enlargements occurred before the empire entered upon the expansion of the past three centuries. It is more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... on papers. The machine which does this is perhaps one of the most ingenious ever constructed. Quantities of pins are thrown from time to time into a rapidly vibrating hopper, which causes them to pass, one by one, into a trough-like slide, that holds the pins by the head; consequently the imperfect ones are automatically rejected. They then slide along a groove to the main body of the machine, where they fall into slits properly distanced, and are pressed into the paper in rows, twelve in all, containing ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... conscious of so much kindly feeling towards them. The tide of friendship does not rise high on the bank of perfection. Amiable weaknesses and shortcomings are the food of love. It is from the roughnesses and imperfect breaks in a man that you are able to lay hold of him. If a man be an entire and perfect chrysolite, you slide off him and fall back into ignorance. My friends are not perfect—no more am I—and so we suit each other admirably. Their weaknesses keep mine in ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... rise of Christianity, his attitude to which resembled that of Renan. [140] Of Christ he says: "He had given an impetus to the progress of mankind by systematizing a religion of the highest moral loveliness, showing what an imperfect race can and may become." He then dilates on St. Paul, who with a daring hand "rent asunder the ties connecting Christianity with Judaism." "He offered to the great family of man a Church with a Diety at its ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Jan. 24, Feb. 12, May 29, June 4 and 6, 1862; and by Renan in the Etudes de l'Hist. Relig. p. 189, &c. Salvador's view is both Jewish and sceptical. Magnifying the Jewish system, he regards Christianity as an offshoot of it, imperfect in its kind; and looks to the spirit of Judaism as the future hope for the world. He professes a creed which is called by Franck Infinitheism. Whatever in his opposition to Christianity is not derived from the eclectic school is the result of his ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould. With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and began ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... her advances have been such as to make a more forward state, it is in science." After remarking that the two obstacles to the literary advancement of Scotland had hitherto been her deficiency in the art of printing and her imperfect command of good English, and that the first of these obstacles had been removed entirely, and the second shown by recent writers to be capable of being surmounted, it proceeds: "The idea therefore was that ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... said the Older Man, "to keep my advice to you in the note to which I think such advice should be set. I will not burden it with anything awful, nor weight an imperfect diction with absolute verities in which I do indeed believe, but which would be altogether out of place at this hour of the evening. I will not deny that from eleven till one, and especially if one be delivering an historical, or, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... deed in possession of Frank Sherman Benson, Esq. There is an imperfect copy in Ranger's Deeds of ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... have got the next door, as the locality is highly respectable. Tell Hen that I copied the Runic stone on the Castle Hill, Edinburgh. It was brought from Denmark in the old time. The inscription is imperfect, but I can read enough of it to see that it was erected by a man to his father and mother. I again write the direction for your next: George Borrow, Esq., Post Office, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland. God bless you and Hen. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... desire. Devotion wafts the mind above, But Heaven itself descends in Love; A feeling from the Godhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A ray of Him who formed the whole; A Glory circling round the soul! 1140 I grant my love imperfect, all That mortals by the name miscall; Then deem it evil, what thou wilt; But say, oh say, hers was not Guilt! She was my Life's unerring Light: That quenched—what beam shall break my night?[ei] Oh! would it shone ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... absurd to hold that the Creator would have given us the faculty of reason, or that the Redeemer would in so many varied forms of argument and persuasion have appealed to it, if it had been useless or impotent. I believe that the imperfect human understanding can be effectually exerted only in subordination to, and in a dependent alliance with, the means and aidances supplied by ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... was said above, if the train of facts or those in the pleading is imperfect, the modern spirit is to allow them to be made perfect. The only theory of law that is contrary to this spirit is what is known as the theory that every man is entitled to his day in court and the day being had it is unfair ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... so handsome, who cures our diseases, and loves us to so great an extent as to bear our image near her breast, must be superior to a human being." They, therefore, had a kind of veneration for her, and they would have offered their homage to her instead of to the Deity of whom they had only an imperfect knowledge. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... is infinite. Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use this word in the common sense which circumstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which aspires. These brief reasons show that the analogy is imperfect, and that therefore, although an ideal animal—a horse, a dog, a lion—must die, it does not follow that an ideal man must. He has a body possessed of exceptional recuperative powers, which, under proper conditions, continually repairs itself. He has a mind by which he can select remedies, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... said, "who are present now heard this morning from this pulpit words which must have sunk deep into the heart of every man and woman who feels an earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of the Master as closely as imperfect human nature will permit you. It is not for me to tell you to what extent those words must be taken literally. They were spoken earnestly and from the inmost depths of the preacher's own soul—may they sink into the inmost depths of yours! They put the most vital ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... set to work, and whenever the captain and his mates took an observation, I took one also, although I was, I must own, at first very far from correct. Sometimes my observation was imperfect; at other times I made ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... long as self-love reigns in their souls, almost without control, this will often blind and deceive them, and will easily infect even their good works, and their devotion will be liable to a thousand illusions, and always very imperfect. Hence religious persons, after many years spent in the rigorous observance of their rule, still fail upon the least trial or contradiction which thwarts their favorite inclination, and are stopped in their spiritual progress as it were by every grain of sand ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... peasant boy merely as her protege, her pet, her fine, intelligent dog! they believed Claudia secure in her pride and Ishmael absorbed in his studies. They were three-quarters right, which is as near the correct thing as you can expect imperfect human nature to approach; that is, they were wholly right as to Claudia and half right as to Ishmael. Claudia was secure in her pride; and half of Ishmael's soul—the mental half—was absorbed in ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... own faculty of the humanities. But there are some men who are born cultivated. A singular fruit, we thought, of our shaggy democracy,—as interesting a phenomenon in that regard as it has been our fortune to encounter. Where is the rudeness of a new community, the pushing vulgarity of an imperfect civilization, the licentious contempt of forms that marks our unchartered freedom, and all the other terrible things which have so long been the bugaboos of European refinement? Here was a natural product, as perfectly natural as the deliberate attempt ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... York office of the Syndicate there was great satisfaction. The news received was incorrect and imperfect, but it was evident that, so far, ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... at once, even in that imperfect light, for the moment Senior and myself stood up she tried to raise herself into a sitting posture; in an instant Suka sprang to her aid and pillowed her head upon his knees; weak as she was, she put out her hand to us, and then let it lie in the mate's broad palm, her deep, mysterious ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... were going to leave him.' The heart's apex beat in the sixth interspace in the nipple line, and the precordial dulness was somewhat increased. The pulse numbered 80 to 84. The muscles supplied by the ulnar nerve were very weak, but not much wasted, and ulnar sensation was imperfect. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... conversation. As may be easily supposed, the delicate and sensitive spirit of Emma was deeply wounded by the above conversation; and it was with much difficulty that she maintained her composure for the remaining portion of the day. For once her lessons were imperfect; and with a heavy heart she returned to her home. That evening she, for the first time, mentioned to her mother the daily annoyances she suffered from her companions at school; and concluded by relating the conversation she had that day chanced ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... European could expect or approve. But the assumption is wrong. In no country with which I am acquainted are logic and co-ordination of ideas more wanting than in the British Isles. This is not altogether a fault, for human systems are imperfect and the rigorous application of any one imperfect system must end in disaster. But the student of Asiatic psychology must begin his task by recognising that in the West and East alike, the thoughts of nations, though not always of individuals, are a confused mosaic where the pattern ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... charge of the province, wrote to the King, but his letter was written in imperfect English and was not understood. Matters were in a bad state, and were daily becoming worse, when the King appointed Henry Sloughter Governor ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... does. I see clearly that none of you will ever really be anything worth notice, however you may now fancy it. But do as you like, I shall not imitate you. I mean to keep clear of all these things, and criticize what you do. In every action something imperfect may be discovered, something not right, which I shall make it my business to find out and expose; that will be something, I fancy." And he kept his word, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... divisions that Jesus made. He puts folks into two classes, and only two. There were two gates, one was broad and the other narrow. There were two foundations on which a man might build, one was of sand and the other of rock. Mark you, He did not divide men into the perfect and the imperfect, but into those that had life and those that did not have it. And it was He that said, "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." So this question, if it means anything, means that there is such a thing as being saved and there is such a thing as being lost. That ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... God for redeeming the world, for "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." This view is the more appropriate as we have known in the history of God's providence with Israel, which presents them as a people prepared (so far as imperfect material could be prepared) to receive the model which God might desire to impress upon the nation. They were bound to each other by all the ties of which human nature is susceptible, and thus rendered compact ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... observances of the people, and the progress of civilization under a despotic system of government. Of these I have endeavored to give you such impressions as may be derived from a sojourn of a few weeks in Moscow and St. Petersburg—necessarily imperfect and superficial, but I trust not altogether destitute ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... perfectly himself what he does without the deliberation of reason, since the principal part of man does nothing therein: wherefore such is not perfectly a human act; and consequently it cannot be a perfect act of virtue or of sin, but is something imperfect of that kind. Therefore such movement of the sensuality as forestalls the reason, is a venial sin, which is something imperfect in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... must be conceded, and such men as I have spoken of were the first to admit it, that lives such as these are necessarily imperfect. The stunting or the atrophy of the religious instinct, the hunger and thirst for something beyond the sphere of sense when left totally unsatisfied, produces at length a restless, tormented feeling, which turns ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... quantity dissolves slowly into a clear colorless glass, which, when cold, remains clear, and cannot be rendered opaque with an intermittent flame. If a saturated bead, which has been allowed to cool, be reheated to incipient redness, it loses its rounded form and exhibits imperfect crystallization. ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... holding the bridles of the horses, which were attempting to escape. They were still confused, when they were fully restored to their waking senses by a second roar of the lion still nearer to them; and by the imperfect light of the stars they could now distinguish the beast at about one hundred yards' distance. Omrah put the bridles of their two horses in their hands, and motioned them to go on in the direction ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... understands an infinite number of creatable things, which he will never be able to create, for, if he created all that he understands, he would, according to this showing, exhaust his omnipotence, and render himself imperfect. Wherefore, in order to establish that God is perfect, we should be reduced to establishing at the same time, that he cannot bring to pass everything over which his power extends; this seems to be a hypothesis most absurd, and ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... hundreds of 'em, specially seductive pocket ones, with just the very streets that one wants to discover as short cuts to great centres carefully omitted. What is wanted is a correct map of London, divided into pocketable sections, portable, foldable, durable, on canvas,—but if imperfect, as so many of these small pocket catch-shilling ones are just now, although professedly brought up to date '91, they are worse than useless, and to purchase one is a waste of time, temper and money. We could mention an attractive-looking little map—which, but no— ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... and the agents of the diffusion of those religions, {25} it tells us nothing of the reasons for their adoption by the Romans. We perceive the how, but not the why, of their sudden expansion. Especially imperfect is our understanding of the reasons for the difference between the Orient and the Occident ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... reasoning, by which he concludes that like events must follow like objects, and that the course of nature will always be regular in its operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this nature they surely lie too abstruse for the observation of such imperfect understandings; since it may well employ the utmost care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe them. Animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by reasoning; neither ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... as editors upon the unhappy journal which it was intended that this article should redeem, no less than sixteen pickpockets, hoping they would steal him; but with an acute intelligence of which their writing conveyed but an imperfect idea, they shunned the glittering bait, as one walks to windward of the deadly upas tree. We have given him away to friends until we haven't a friend left; we have offered him at auction-sales, and been ourselves knocked down; we have ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... me to conclude my letters respecting those eventful days of October, which must ever be so deeply impressed upon the memories of us all. What may be called the military part of my narrative may be imperfect; the names of the generals who commanded, the positions of particular corps, and other circumstances of minor importance, may perhaps be incorrect; yet the circumstantial details which I have given ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... garret on the sixth story, and it had been expected among them that in a day or so he would present himself for inspection. But this he did not do, and when he encountered any of their number in his out-goings or in-comings he returned their greetings gently in imperfect French. He spoke slowly and with difficulty, but there was no coldness in his voice or manners, and yet none got much ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "I have only heard imperfect reports of it; but it is said that she gave offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had held an office of trust in the family, and who, after some incoherent threats, disappeared. This peculiar affection followed soon after. But ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... north, the northeast and the northwest, we had seen at a distance some of these great red regions, and had perceived the curious network of canals by which they were intersected. But that was a far-off and imperfect view. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... his story was to Basil like waking from a state of imperfect consciousness in which dream and reality had indistinguishably mingled. Since the fight with the brigands he had never been himself; the fever in his blood made him incapable of wonted thought or action; restored ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... been able to carry his point, matters might have moved more expeditiously. But pending the struggle between him and Shelburne no advance could be made at Paris. Grenville and Oswald could not work in unison. Franklin and de Vergennes became puzzled and suspicious, having only an imperfect inkling by report and gossip concerning the true state of affairs. They suspected, with good show of evidence, that the real object of English diplomacy was to drive in a wedge between the allies. Amid these perplexities, on April 22, Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Browne, in his "History of the Highlands," and by John S. Keltie, in his "History of the Scottish Highlands." Even Lieutenant-General Samuel Graham, who was a captain in the 76th, in his "Memoirs," gives but a slight account of his regiment. So a very imperfect view can only be expected in ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... all things have the character of emptiness; they have no beginning, no end, they are faultless and not faultless, they are not imperfect and not perfect. Therefore, O Sariputra, in this emptiness there is no form, no perception, no name, no concepts, no knowledge. No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, objects.... There is no knowledge, no ignorance, no destruction ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... I. sent forth a few vessels, to explore the western shores of Africa, while he prepared a great armament to attack the moors of Barbary, the art of navigation was still very imperfect, nor had the Portuguese ever ventured to sail beyond Cape Non. But what most powerfully contributed to give impulse and direction to the national ardour, was the enlightened enthusiasm, with which prince Henry of Portugal, a younger son of John I., espoused ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... book then being printed in Irish, the Bible. But my asking, timid with the fear of mockery, was unheeded. Yet I missed but by a little an opportunity that might have made me a real Irish scholar, and not as I am, imperfect, stumbling. For a kinsman learned in the language, the translator of the wonderful Silva Gaedelica had been sometimes a guest in the house, and would still have been welcomed there but that my mother, who ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... manifest correspondence with each other, and are such as may be credited, we necessarily attach to them a degree of belief, which we cannot extend to those of an opposite character. The evidence from this source is, however, exceedingly imperfect, since many narratives, almost entirely fictitious, appear so natural, as to impose upon the reader with all the strength of unvarnished truth. Robinson Crusoe has deceived thousands, and Damberger's Travels in Africa were not suspected to be otherwise than true, for a considerable time ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Pao-yue's notice. "I myself am aware," he speedily resumed, "that I'm worth nothing now; but, however imperfect I may be, I could on no account presume to become guilty of any shortcoming with you cousin. Were I to ever commit the slightest fault, your task should be either to tender me advice and warn me not to do it again, or to blow me ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he says, "that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye, to one complex and perfect, can be shown to exist, such gradation being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case" (certainly?), "if further," he continues, "the eye varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case" (most modern ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... or mother wit, as it is called, about the Spaniards, which renders them intellectual and agreeable companions, whatever may be their condition in life, and however imperfect may have been their education: add to this they are never vulgar, nature has endowed them with an inherent dignity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... be as much alarmed as if in the presence of Indians, when such a tribe of Germans is brought before you. Then go still further back into the pre-historic times, and form an image of the pile-builders and their mode of life, and of the cave-dwellers and their imperfect weapons and tools, and you will have to confess that these are separated from the present Europeans by a greater gap than are the uncultured inhabitants of the earth of to-day. And yet these cave-dwellers and pile-builders had ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... of a very imperfect day for Mr. Philip Kendrick. As he descended the stairs to the Canoe Club his thoughts were troubled. At that hour there was nobody about, but he let himself in with a special key which he carried for such contingencies. He found the suitcase undisturbed where ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... complete confession. He spoke of his youth and marriage, spoke with all possible forbearance and love of his wife. "There was no hope for her ever getting well again. I have nothing to reproach myself with in regard to her, except that I was a man merely of good intentions and imperfect achievement. But I may not have been the right husband for her in so far as I could not give her the repose of spirit that she needed and I myself lacked. When the collapse finally occurred and other misfortunes—they seldom come singly—and in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... lambs—such transformations occur in last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is difficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the different sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless, even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling of the soul. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... them.' This law, I am persuaded, is of God. Long have I lived, and never before have I seen it acted on till these Christians came amongst us. They do not, indeed, always practise as they teach; but they are imperfect, therefore they cannot practise fully as they teach, because they teach perfection. This law I shall henceforth follow as I best can. I follow it to-day. If I were in thraldom to you, Heika, just now, I would wish you to set me free, therefore I now ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear to have struck him very favourably. 'They learn French and history and German, and a great many more things than in England, but only imperfectly.' This was said from the standard of Rugby and Balliol, and the method that Clough calls imperfect had merits of its own. The pupil lost much in a curriculum that had a certain rawness about it, compared with the traditional culture that was at that moment (1820) just beginning to acquire a fresh ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... might wish to convert the Grand Signor to the Christian faith; but when I considered that I should probably be put to death without effectuating my purpose in any degree, I should keep myself quiet.' JOHNSON. 'Sir you must consider that we have perfect and imperfect obligations. Perfect obligations, which are generally not to do something, are clear and positive; as, 'thou shalt not kill.' But charity, for instance, is not definable by limits. It is a duty to give to the poor; but no man can say how much another should give to the poor, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Standard of Scotland, apparently a piece of venerable antiquity, for the field of gold had degenerated into a field of drab, and the figure in the centre showed less of leonine nobleness than of art in that imperfect state in which men are fain to content themselves with semblances doubtful and inexpressive, and less than half the result of chance. The entire pageant was such a one as Sir Walter himself could perhaps have improved. He would not have fired so many guns in the hollow, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the substance that had contain'd or enwrapp'd one of those Shels, on both which, the perfect impression either of the inside or outside of such Shells seem'd to be left, but for the most part, those impressions seem'd to be made by an imperfect or broken Shell, the great end or mouth of the Shell being always wanting, and often times the little end, and sometimes half, and in some there were impressions, just as if there had been holes broken ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... help besides mine, so I learned a good deal about general housework. A girl's preparation for life was, in those days, considered quite imperfect, who had no practical knowledge of that kind. We were taught, indeed, how to do everything that a woman might be called upon to do under any circumstances, for herself or for the household she lived in. It was one of the advantages ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... close of the octave, and the thought pause in the body of the first line of the sestet, is a form much employed by Mrs. Browning, but rigorously avoided by Dante Gabriel Rossetti with his more scrupulous ideal of sonnet construction. This imperfect transition is seen again in the fourth, fifth, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth sonnets. Its boldness certainly amounts to a technical fault in the two sonnets on King's ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Rio Grande, and spoke very highly of the Christians. He sent me in the evening some boiled rice and milk. I now endeavoured to procure information concerning my route to the westward, from a slave merchant who had resided some years on the Gambia. He gave me some imperfect account of the distance, and enumerated the names of a great many places that lay in the way; but withal told me, that the road was impassable at this season of the year. He was even afraid, he said, that I should find great difficulty in proceeding any farther, as the road crossed ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Christ; without thee I can do nothing! Christ is the true vine! O let me be a branch of that vine! What poor worms are we! O dear father, how lame and halting do we go on in the ways of God and salvation! We know but in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is imperfect shall be done away. O that I had attained to that now! But what are we ourselves? Not only weakness and nothingness, but wickedness: for the thoughts and imaginations of a man's heart are only evil, and that continually. ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... might be used with overmastering effect. It sufficed to point out to Ferdinand that a persecution of the New Christians would flood his coffers with gold extorted from suspected misbelievers. No merely fabled El Dorado lay in the broad lands and costly merchandise of these imperfect converts to the faith. It sufficed to insist upon the peril to the State if an element so ill-assimilated to the nation were allowed to increase unchecked. At the same time, the Papacy was nothing loth to help them in their undertaking. Sixtus V., one of the worst of Pontiffs, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the most useful of human beings—doctors, statesmen, poets, the best mechanics—is confined now to a feeble fragment of humanity made weak by disease, hereditary influence, discouragement or imperfect organization. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... whole, owing to the circuits, the obstacles, and the imperfect observations, the journey had been extended by fully one-fifth, and now that they had reached Mount Ikirangi, they ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... traveller, and much of his geographical information is the result of his own observations. It is probable he was much indebted to Eratosthenes, who preceded him by three centuries. The authorities of Strabo were chiefly Greek, but his work is defective from the imperfect notions which the ancients had of astronomy; so that the determination of the earth's figure by the measure of latitude and longitude, the essential foundation of geographical description, was unknown. The enormous strides which all forms ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... handicapped for five weeks certain, is the foreseen consequence of the decision of the Cabinet to postpone the measures necessary for the defence of the British colonies and for attack upon the Boer States. This decision is not attributable to imperfect information. It was regarded as certain so long ago as December last, by those in a position to give the best forecast, that the Boers of both States meant war with the object of establishing Boer supremacy. The Cabinet, therefore, ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... Herbert wreaking vengeance upon my supposed son, is really bringing destruction upon his own, which seems but justice. If he show mercy to me and mine, he is bestowing the blessed balm thereof on himself and his house. In this imperfect world, few events are ordered with such admirable equity as the capture of young Lord Wilhelm, by that haughty and bloodthirsty warrior, his father. Let us then await with patience the outcome, taking care not to interfere with the designs ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... there had been a tremendous cataclysm in that valley, the bottom of it having fallen out apparently, whereby the entire valley was submerged in the waters of the river. As nearly as he could ascertain from their imperfect methods of reckoning time, this occurred in 1851; and in that year, while in the town of Sonora, Screech and many others remembered to have heard a huge explosion in that direction which they then supposed was caused ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude. Green, true historian as he was, made more mistakes than Froude, and the mistakes he did make were more serious. He trespassed on the preserves of Brewer, who criticised him severely without deviating ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... one-room rural schools in the county which were of faulty construction, with poor equipment, and with imperfect teaching facilities, were largely responsible for the retardation found in ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... railways now under construction (the sod was cut at Ichang in 1909)[G]—and a single train and steamer does the work of hundreds of thousands of carters, coolies, and boatmen, it is wholly natural that their imperfect and short-sighted views should lead them to rise against a seeming ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... honest with us, because it is imperfect, and unconsciously we tell the best account of things, but I fancy I was wondering on this text when there came at my door the sharp rap of bony, hurried knuckles. "Enter!" I said, and in marched the corporal of the guard. His hand went ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting power, but our compound plate then becomes virtually an all-steel one, only differing in process of manufacture. The greatest faults of the compound plate are the imperfect welding of the parts and the lack of solidity of the iron. When fired at, the surface has a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... strides down the yard, waited within a foot or two of the man, who now proceeded to lift himself up by the window ledge preparatory to opening the barn window. With the aid of a claspknife he could very easily push back the quaint and imperfect fastening; then it was but to push in the glass, and he could enter the barn. He sat on the window ledge with his back to Nora. His huge, gaunt form looked larger than ever, intensified now by the light of the moon. He breathed quickly; his breathing ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... even availed himself of the corrections given in the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent, and has allowed some of the most extraordinary blunders to stand. These facts certainly favor the theory that Zckert himself had little or nothing to do with the second edition and its imperfect revision. This supposition finds further evidence in the fact that the ninth part of Shandy, as issued by Lange in the second (1772) and third (1774) editions, was still a translation of the spurious English volume, although the fraud was well known and the genuine volume ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... This very imperfect account is written more with a view to assist my own memory than to give information to others. I am neither a botanist nor a naturalist; and have not words to describe the productions of nature, either in the one branch of knowledge or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... your genius and respect your character, the enclosed sum of money, which I send you with my warmest wishes for your health and happiness. I know the sensitive edge of your temperament; but do not speak or think of obligation. It is only paying, in a very imperfect measure, the debt we owe you for what you have done for American Literature. Could you know the readiness with which every one to whom I applied contributed to this little offering, and could you have heard the warm expressions with which some accompanied ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... Stuart was immersed in that too common mixture of law and politics in which the former jealous mistress is apt to take the traditional revenge upon her half-hearted suitor. Such happened in this case; and these two partners, both making the same blunder of yielding imperfect allegiance to their profession, paid the inevitable penalty; they got perhaps work enough in mere point of quantity, but it was neither interesting nor lucrative. Such business, during the four years which he passed with Stuart, did not wean Lincoln from his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... finish my lecture on geography, which, though very imperfect, has yet exceeded the usual limits of our lessons; many interesting circumstances relating to the various countries I have mentioned, have been entirely omitted, as I was fearful that by telling you too much on the subject I should prevent you from remembering ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... though no longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the thought, perhaps, occurred to him, that her soul, no longer dependent on the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He started from the bedside, and covered his face with his hands, as if to hide it from those ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... depression at the junction of the floor and external wall of the nasal cavity, 22 mm. from the external nares. This patient had all her teeth; they were placed somewhat far from each other. The tooth resembled a milk canine; the end of the imperfect root was covered with a fold of mucous membrane, with stratified epithelium. The speaker suggested that part of the mucous membrane of the mouth with its tooth-germ had become impacted between the superior and premaxillary bones and thus cut off from the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... downe to her hammes; having most amorous cole-black eyes, a sweet and pleasant round face, with lips as red as a cherry; her cheekes of a rose colour, her mouth small, her neck white like a swan; tall and slender of personage; in summe, there was no imperfect place in her: she looked round about with a rolling hawkes eye, a smiling and wanton countenance, which neere-hand inflamed the hearts of all the students; but that they perswaded themselves she was a spirit, which made them ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power. For it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. And therefore he obtains ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... essay—the only one in "The Essays of Elia" volume which had not appeared in the "London Magazine"—is a pretty bit about "Valentine's Day." This is followed by an inquiry into the existence of "Imperfect Sympathies," the writer declaring that he had been trying all his life—without success—to like Scotsmen, and that he had the same imperfect sympathy with Jews. The Scotsmen are too precise, too matter of fact at once in their own statements and those to which alone they will attend. ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... of the Pharisee and Publican is invaluable. It is clear and perfectly intelligible to every candid and prayerful inquirer. When our author is proving the impossibility of a sinner's recommending himself to the divine favour by any imperfect good works of his own, he draws a vivid picture. A lord invites his friends to a sumptuous banquet, the provision is bountiful and in rich abundance, when some of the guests take a few mouldy crusts out of their pockets and lay them on their plates, lest the prince had not provided a sufficient ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... For it will not do to dismiss the Northern poems on the Volsung story as a mere set of popular variations on common themes. The more carefully they are examined, the less will be the part assigned to chance and imperfect recollection in producing the variety of the poems. The variation, where there are different presentations of the same subject, is not produced by accident or the casual and faulty repetition of a conventional type of poem, but by a ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... soul in the universe? But it would be absurd to say that the energies of every irrational soul are not the energies of that soul, but of one more divine; since they are infinite, and mingled with much of the base and imperfect. For this would be just the same as to say that the irrational enemies are the energies of the rational soul. I omit to mention the absurdity of supposing that the whole essence is not generative of its proper energies. For if the irrational soul is a certain essence, it will have peculiar ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... as if he were in a New York ball-room. His left hand clasped Katrine's and drew it high up close to his neck and shoulder, his right arm enclosed her waist and drew her to him so firmly that the two figures seemed fused into one as they glided together over the imperfect floor. Katrine was giving herself up wholly to the pleasure of the dance. Stephen saw, as her face turned towards him, that her eyes were half closed, and a little smile of deep satisfaction rested on her lips. The young fellow's face ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... comfortable word. We have seen that Irish history is what the dramatists call an internal tragedy, the secular disclosure and slow working-out of certain flaws in the English character. I am not to be understood as ascribing horns to England and a halo to Ireland. We Irish are not only imperfect but even modest; for every beam that we detect in another eye we are willing to confess a mote in our own. The English on the other hand have been not monsters ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... his campaign, say that he ought to have marched at once toward Jerusalem before Saladin should have had time to organize any new means of resistance. But it is impossible for those who are at a distance from the scene of action in such a case, and who have only that partial and imperfect account of the facts which can be obtained through the testimony of others, to form any reliable judgment on such a question. Whether it would be prudent or imprudent for a commander to advance after a battle ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Amulet now,' said the beautiful, terrible voice, 'to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is not of time ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... political grounds. But throughout the four years' controversy Government never betrayed an inkling of the appalling extent to which inferior secondary education had been allowed to degenerate in second-and third-rate schools with second-and third-rate masters into a mere teaching machine, clumsy and imperfect at that, for the passing of examinations that tested memory rather than intelligence, and character least of all. The unfortunate youths who could not stand even that test were left hopelessly stranded on the road, equally disqualified for a ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... stayed the coming of Islam at Tours? The brilliant career, the shining courage, best seen always where the dead were lying thickest, the heroic death of Charles Lowell, are good for us all to know and to remember. Yet this imperfect story of his life has not been placed here for these things alone. Many thousand others, officers and soldiers alike, in the great Civil War gave their lives as freely as he, and brought to the service of their country ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... soul-likings and longings, he has found another self, he has found a friend. Friendship is the communion of such souls, although they may be absent from one another. The highest friendship may grow more perfectly when friends are separated, then it is unmixed with the alloy of imperfect thought and action. Then it is nourished by the past, for only the past buries all faults; it is encouraged by the future, for only the future veils the awkwardness and shortcomings of the present. The character of friendship is determined by ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... To what better use could he put them than to make them light him as far as possible on his way? He struck one of them, it blazed up, and with it he lighted the stick of the imperfect one which he had not thrown away. He held them up before him, and, shielding the blaze with his hand, he moved ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems'. The 'poems' however were confined to 'The Traveller,' 'The Deserted Village,' 'Edwin and Angelina,' 'The Double Transformation,' 'A New Simile,' and 'Retaliation,'—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of 'Retaliation', with which he included 'The Hermit' ('Edwin and Angelina'), 'The Gift,' 'Madam Blaize,' and the epilogues to 'The Sister' and 'She stoops to Conquer'*; while to an edition of 'The Haunch of Venison', also ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... it high time to intervene. During the enactment of this little tableau she had stood looking on in mute bewilderment. Despite her imperfect knowledge of English, and especially the vernacular, she had a shrewd intuition of what had passed between ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... cattle in the stalls and styes of many a country Squire. And this is certainly our ultimate ambition, but for the present distress something might be done on the lines of district nursing, which is only in very imperfect operation. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... usually told that this unfortunate decline in the express powers of the brain is due to the wide and imperfect education of the populace ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... only by the junction of all three. For if any one of these elements be wanting, excellence must be so far deficient. For natural ability without training is blind: and training without natural ability is defective, and practice without both natural ability and training is imperfect. For just as in farming the first requisite is good soil, next a good farmer, next good seed, so also here: the soil corresponds to natural ability, the training to the farmer, the seed to precepts and instruction. I should therefore ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... On his workers he bestows the instruments for their work. Wherefore let us hope in the Lord. He makes the King's cause his own. Those who support it he will inspire with the wisdom necessary to make it triumphant. God leaves no work imperfect." ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... born capable of learning, but knowing nothing, perceiving nothing. The mind, bound up within imperfect and half grown organs, is not even aware of its own existence. The movements and cries of the new-born child are purely reflex, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... sound of which the faithful fall upon their knees. When, therefore, he learnt that the Republic had just been proclaimed in France he fancied that the whole world would enjoy a life of celestial beatitude. His knowledge, though imperfect, made him see farther than other workmen; his aspirations did not stop at daily bread; but his extreme ingenuousness, his complete ignorance of mankind, kept him in the dreamland of theory, a Garden of Eden where universal justice reigned. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... If we believe in democracy, we must recognize in politics the instrument, however imperfect, through which democracy works. Brand Whitlock knew politics, first as a political reporter, then as candidate for mayor in four campaigns, in each of which he was successful. Under his administration the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the contrary, beseems a perfect being. It is, therefore, evident, adds the same profound thinker, that reasoning bears the same relation to knowledge that motion does to repose, or as acquisition to possession. The one is of an imperfect nature, and the other of a perfect nature. Boethius compares the intellect to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... ingenious instrument, by means of which ellipses of all proportions, as well as circles and right lines, might be geometrically drawn on paper or on copper. He took his idea of this instrument from the trammel used by carpenters for drawing imperfect ellipses; and when he had succeeded in avoiding the crossing of the points, he proceeded to invent the straight-line motion. For this invention the Society of Arts awarded him their gold medal in 1818. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... by the Incas for the improvement of their territory; and, although imperfect, they must be allowed to show an acquaintance with the principles of agricultural science, that gives them some claim to the rank of a civilized people. Under their patient and discriminating culture, every inch of good soil ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... sense. My turn will soon come. When the job is finished we shall see to whom all this belongs." When the work was completed and they had pronounced all things good, in stepped the Devil, and in the twinkling of an eye rendered imperfect all that they had so labored to create perfect;'turning everything topsy-turvey, seducing the first pair of human beings, sowing the seeds of original sin, and at one stroke securing the wholesale damnation of our race. What were they about, to let him do all this with such consummate ease? ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... empty. So were all the rooms of the house, he soon enough found out. Not a sound but that of the steeple clock on the kitchen shelf, waddling on at its imperfect gait, loud for a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... for the Morse paper on the cylinder of the machine. On speaking to the tympanum, as the cylinder was revolved, a record of the vibrations was indented on the paper, and by re-passing this under the indenting point an imperfect reproduction of the sounds was heard. Edison 'saw at once that the problem of registering human speech, so that it could be repeated by mechanical means as often as might he desired, was solved.' [T. A. Edison, NORTH AMERICAN ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... executed a whole, which indeed I saw with my eyes, but did not comprehend, and how an individual object, which I had neither skill nor patience to follow out? My father's mode of training me in this respect was really to be admired. He kindly asked for my attempts, and drew lines round every imperfect sketch. He wished, by this means, to compel me to completeness and fulness of detail. The irregular leaves he cut straight, and thus made the beginning of a collection, in which he wished, at some future time, to rejoice at the progress ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
