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More "Exactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart, regularly ain't any name for the exactness of it! All the big cities in Europe used to set the clocks by it." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... corset-covers, which were already seamed together, and which I was shown how to "finish" with an embroidery yoke and ruffled edging about the arm's-eye. There is no basting, no pinning together of pieces; all the work is free-hand, and must be done with infinite exactness. I must hold the embroidery and the finishing strips of beading on the edge of the muslin with an exact nicety that will insure the edges of all three being caught in one seam; a process difficult enough on any sewing-machine, under any circumstances, but doubly so when the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the King's communications to the envoy, as appears from memoranda in the royal handwriting and from the correspondence of Margaret of Parma. Philip's exactness in conforming to his instructions is sufficiently apparent, on comparing his statements with the letters previously received from the omnipresent Cardinal. Beyond the limits of those directions the King hardly hazarded a syllable. He was merely the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at the critical moment Mike launched a second kick, which, however, was not delivered with the mathematical exactness of the first. It landed in the canine's neck and drove him back several paces, but he kept his balance, and came on again with the same headlong ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... Beauvais—couches that were made for conversation, not repose; cabinets exemplifying agreeable disposition of lines and masses in the inlaid adornment, containing tiny drawers that fitted with old-time exactness, and, without jamming, opened and shut at the touch. The marquis' character was stamped by these details; it was old, not new France, to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to which she had become accustomed. It was, in fact, part of his charm. Often, in past years, he had hurt her so much by his coldness that his coming brought a keener pleasure than the presence of a more ardent suitor might have done, if he could with any exactness be ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... it, and in my anguish (O pitiful human heart!) my first idea was about the remarkable exactness of my anticipations. I must say that the captain's reply belonged to the sublime order. He put his arms akimbo, eyed Monsieur de Lessay contemptuously from ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... of which I could not at first surmise. The guests, of whom the room was almost full, were all well-dressed and apparently of the smart world. The tourist element was lacking. There were a few men there in morning clothes, but these were dressed with the rigid exactness of the Frenchman, who often, from choice, affects this style of toilet. From the first I felt that the place possessed an atmosphere. I could not describe it, but, quite apart from Louis' few words concerning it, I knew that it had a clientele of its own, and that within its four ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tendency to go in flocks, their susceptibility to panic and to ferocity, to the terror that makes a man kill people, and "the terror that makes him lie down and beg." We remember, too, his dissection of St. Arnaud, as before all things a type of his nation; "he impersonated with singular exactness the idea which our forefathers had in their minds when they spoke of what they called 'a Frenchman;' for although (by cowing the rich and by filling the poor with envy), the great French Revolution had thrown a lasting gloom on the national ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... mentioned by the name of Encisso, which was his mother's surname, and which he had taken through affection, a thing common in Spain, put several questions to him concerning a number of family particulars, and knew at last by the exactness of his answers that he was the brother he had been so long seeking after; upon which both proceeding to a close embrace, a cannon ball struck off both their heads, without separating their bodies, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... his fourteenth year, he was able to assist his foster-father in his business. He wrote a fine hand, did much of his "father's" clerical work, and carried out all orders with exactness. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... is gregarious, and imitates any sound he hears with such exactness that he goes by no other name than that of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... till January, 1900, in a letter of President Lorenzo Snow, borne to St. Johns by Apostle (now President) Heber J. Grant. The several organizations of the northeastern districts are set forth, with official exactness, ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... errors of language in general, and of ours in particular. And in the drawing the tables for that work, which was Lloyd's province, he looked further into a natural purity and simplicity of style, than any man I ever knew; into all which he led me, and so helped me to any measure of exactness of writing, which may be thought to belong to me.' The above was originally designed to have followed the words, 'I know from them,' vol. i. p. 191, 1. 7, fol. ed. near the end ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... remember Mme. Alphonse Daudet more as the wife of the great Daudet than as a writer, although, according to M. Jules Lemaitre, she possessed the gift of ecriture artiste to a remarkable degree. According to him, sureness and exactness and a striking truth of impressions are her characteristics as a writer. She exercised a most wholesome power over Alphonse Daudet, taking him away from bad influences, giving him a home, dignity, and happiness, and saving him from brutality ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... scholastic nobody would deny, and the famous sarcasms of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, two centuries after our time, had been anticipated long before by satirists. But even the logical fribble, even the logical jargonist, was bound to be exact. Now exactness was the very thing which languages, mostly young in actual age, and in all cases what we may call uneducated, unpractised in literary exercises, wanted most of all. And it was impossible that they should have better teachers in it than the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... priest had scarcely even by now become accustomed to this extraordinary device invented a century ago and perfected through all those years to this precise exactness—that device by which with the help of a stick, a bundle of wires, and a box of wheels, something, at last established to be at the root of all matter, if not at the very root of physical life, spoke across the spaces of the world to a tiny receiver tuned by a hair's breadth to the vibration ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... more intentness than is usual among civilians the arrangement of the Union camps. This incident Emory reported to Wright for what it might be worth, and Wright, on his part, being already doubtful of the exactness of the information brought in by Harris, ordered Emory and Torbert each to send out a strong reconnoitring party in the early morning, to move in parallel columns on the valley road and on the back road, with the significant caution that they were to go far enough to find out ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... add that the sentiment in the last four lines of the last stanza of my verses was uttered by a shepherd with such exactness, that a traveller, who afterwards reported his account in print, was induced to question the man whether he had read them, which ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... be more fairly and correctly dealt with than by Bishop Westcott in the opening words of his chapter on Exactness in Grammatical Detail, in the valuable work to which I have already referred. What he states probably expresses very exactly the general view taken by the great majority, if not by all, of the Revisers ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... guard; at night when the guard would lie down to snatch an hour's sleep, another one was there ready to carry on. "Prepare to mount! Mount! Walk—march! Trot!" yelled the Sergeant in quick succession, each command being executed with clock-like exactness, and they trotted from under cover of the trees where they were concealed from the airplanes and proceeded rapidly up the road under shell fire, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... having speedways in which to confine aerenoids, travelling at the terrific velocity of one hundred miles a minute, was obvious, and what could be better adapted to the purpose than these magnificent waterways, which completely cover the surface of the planet with such geometrical exactness, that they have always been a source of great wonder to astronomers on Earth. Thousands and thousands of years old, the method of constructing this gigantic system of canals remains enshrouded in the same mystery to the Martians, as ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... for I had delayed eight or ten minutes longer than I ought, and this had upset the exactness of my calculations. The man obeyed; nevertheless, instead of reaching the top of Maxine's street at two or three minutes before twelve, as I had intended, it was nearly ten minutes past when I got out of my cab at the corner: and when I came ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... "General Politics," "Geneva Award," "Parliamentary Decisions," "Public Men," "State Politics," "Tariff," "The Press," "United States History," etc.; every valuable hint he could get being preserved in the cold exactness of black and white. When he chose to make careful preparation on a subject, no other speaker could command so great an array of facts. Accurate people are methodical people, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the simplicity of steps in a dance, the more beautiful it is; and requires the more attention in the performer to exactness and delicacy; for slowness and neatness being in the character of simplicity, afford the spectator both leisure and distinctness for his examination: whereas dances of intricate evolutions, or quick motions, in their confusion and hurry, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... be for him to get through the world. At the same time, a mere approximation to this exact point will protect him from destruction. There is, in consequence, a certain scope within the limits of exactness and fitness of this so-called proportion. The normal proportion is as follows. As the object of the intellect is to be the light and guide of the will on its path, the more violent, impetuous, and passionate the inner force of the will, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the {20} dog being the descendants of distinct wild stocks, is their resemblance in various countries to distinct species still existing there. It must, however, be admitted that the comparison between the wild and domesticated animal has been made but in few cases with sufficient exactness. Before entering on details, it will be well to show that there is no a priori difficulty in the belief that several canine species have been domesticated; for there is much difficulty in this respect with some other domestic quadrupeds ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... often superposed in certain parts upon the original sheet. In order to render such a disentanglement possible, it is indispensable to mark by hand, at least once every twenty-four hours, upon each curve, the date of the day corresponding to it. It is equally useful to verify the exactness of the indications given by the apparatus by making readings several times a day on a scale of tides placed alongside of the float. Nine times out of ten the rise of the waves renders such readings very difficult ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... precision for philosophical purposes was the language of Roman law, which by a singular fortune had preserved nearly all the purity of the Augustan age, while vernacular Latin was degenerating into a dialect of portentous barbarism. And if Roman jurisprudence supplied the only means of exactness in speech, still more emphatically did it furnish the only means of exactness, subtlety, or depth in thought. For at least three centuries, philosophy and science were without a home in the West; and though metaphysics ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... collection alone, the assistance and advantages derived from it on every occasion, when it was necessary to investigate a military system, or determine an important operation, suggested the idea of assembling it under a form and classification more methodical. Greater attention and exactness were exerted in enriching the Depot with every thing that might complete the theoretical works and practical elucidations of all the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... had been the subject of their conversation. Felicia greeted me timidly. There were signs of tears in her face, and I felt that by some means or other this man had been able to reassert his influence over her. Delora himself was a changed being. He was dressed with the almost painful exactness of the French man of fashion. His slight black imperial was trimmed to a point, his moustache upturned with a distinctly foreign air. He wore a wonderful pin in his carefully arranged tie, and a ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absence of temptation to misstate the truth; these things may secure great credibility, but they are no guarantee for minute and circumstantial exactness. Two historians, though with equal gifts and equal opportunities, never describe events in exactly the same way. Two witnesses in a court of law, while they agree in the main, invariably differ in some particulars. It appears as if men could not relate facts precisely as they saw ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... with fair exactness, though much less exactly on such regions as the back than on the hands or lips. If you were asked how you distinguished one point from another on the back of the hand, you could only answer that they felt different; and if you were further asked whether a pencil point ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... were views which she had painted from memory, of scenes in the New Forest, near her grandmother's cottage. That cottage was drawn with an exactness that proved how fresh it was in her remembrance. Many recollections rushed forcibly into Clarence Hervey's mind at the sight of this cottage. The charming image of Virginia, as it first struck his fancy,—the smile, the innocent smile, with which she offered ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the 'license of the time', or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... and even light guns over rough country, which wheels cannot traverse. With their trunks they lift up enormous logs of wood, and place them exactly as directed when roads are being formed, and they will even build up piles of logs, placing each with the greatest exactness. I have heard of elephants taking up children in their trunks and playing with them, and putting them down again, without doing them the slightest injury. They can, as the natives say, do everything but talk, indeed they seem to understand what is said to them, and I ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... refused to read them or to sign. Therefore Mr. Tate did that service for his superior, signing: "Capt. Aaron Sproul, Chairman. Per Consetena Tate, Secretary." He piled the letters, sealed, before the Cap'n, and the latter counted them carefully and issued stamps with scrupulous exactness. Replies came in printed return envelopes; but, though they bore his name, Cap'n Sproul scornfully refused to touch one of them. The stern attitude that he had assumed toward the Smyrna centennial celebration was this: Toleration, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... pages on "Household Cookery." Here we will only say, that for both mistress and servants, as well in large as small households, it will be found, by far, the better plan, to cook and serve the dinner, and to lay the tablecloth and the sideboard, with the same cleanliness, neatness, and scrupulous exactness, whether it be for the mistress herself alone, a small family, or for "company." If this rule be strictly adhered to, all will find themselves increase in managing skill; whilst a knowledge of their daily duties ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Price and her mother?" said Old Chester; and it looked sidewise at Miss North with polite curiosity. This was not altogether because of her mother's romantic past, but because of her own manners and clothes. With painful exactness, Miss North endeavored to follow the fashion; but she looked as if articles of clothing had been thrown at her and some had stuck. As to her manners, Old Chester was divided; Mrs. David Baily said, with delicate disgust, ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... with much less exactness than they merited, and acted perhaps too capital a part amongst the devotees, I hastened to the inn, luckily hard by, and one of the best I am acquainted with. Here I soon fell asleep in defiance of sunshine. 'Tis true my slumbers were not a little agitated. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... with which implication should be effected depends, like exactness of articulation, upon the gravity, complexity, fervor, grace, beauty, or other distinguishing and elevated quality of the thoughts and sentiments contained in the words to be read. Common-place ideas are couched, as a rule, in common-place language, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... see conceit; there where we want little, much is given—now a blank eyed riddle,—dark with excess of self,—now a giant thought—vast but repulsive,—and now angel visitors startling us with wisdom and touches of heavenly beauty. Every where is seen exactness; but it is the exactness of hesitation, and not of knowledge—the line of doubt, and not of power: all the promises for ripeness are there; but, as yet, all are immature. And mature art is presented when all these rude scaffoldings are thrown down—when the man ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... immigration has played in producing these changes it is of course difficult to say with exactness, but unquestionably the part has been very great. The twenty-three millions of aliens admitted into the United States since 1820 brought their habits and customs and standards of living with them; brought also their religion or want of it; and it would be absurd to imagine ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... our time, if merely in respect of longevity, must be reckoned Lady Louisa Stuart, sister and heir of the last Earl of Traquair. She was a friend and correspondent of Sir Walter Scott, who in describing "Tully Veolan" drew Traquair House with literal exactness, even down to the rampant bears which still guard the locked entrance-gates against all comers until the Royal Stuarts shall return to claim their own. Lady Louisa Stuart lived to be ninety-nine, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... paper was photographed the door of M. Fauvel's safe. The impression of every detail was perfect. There were the five movable buttons with the engraved letters, and the narrow, projecting brass lock: The scratch was indicated with great exactness. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... that if courage, devotion to an Idea, love of the Father- or Mother-land, Fidelity of comrade to comrade, Efficiency, daring in Adventure, exactness in Organization, and so forth, are the qualities which in the past have made the profession of arms great and glorious, it is these very qualities which will be demanded and evoked for all future time in the great ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... not, he says, so full, so animated, and so circumstantiated, as Somerville's. Barely to say, that one performance is not so good as another, is to criticise with little exactness. But Pope has directed, that we should, in every work, regard the author's end. The stag-chase is the main subject of Somerville, and might, therefore, be properly dilated into all its circumstances; in Pope, it is only incidental, and was to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... said of the elaborately artificial poem to Camerius (c. lv.), and the almost unapproachable Attis (c. lxiii.). Here, at least half the interest lies in the varied turns of the metre; if these can be represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain in exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment, to counterbalance the possible ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... entered was a wonder for preciseness and order. The walls were decorated with prints, much-faded photographs, stuffed birds, heads of deer and a quaint collection of old-fashioned guns, pistols and bayonets, but all arranged with an exactness and taste that would drive mad the modern artistic decorator. On one side of the window hung a picture of Wellington: on the other, that of Sir Colin. To the right of the clock, on a shelf, stood a stuffed mallard; to the left on a similar shelf, stood a stuffed ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... work exhibits throughout want of exactness in recording just what the Indians told him. It is in deductions and explanations that error is liable to arise. A story made up from the recital of several Indians is likely to exhibit their attempts to explain doubtful ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The question is asked, whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or some nature higher than either; and if the latter, how pleasure and wisdom are related to this higher good. (2) Before we can reply with exactness, we must know the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But still we may affirm generally, that the combined life of pleasure and wisdom or knowledge has more of the character of the good than either of them when isolated. (4) to determine which of them partakes ...
— Philebus • Plato
... within the letter of the law, in the eye of the world, who were as yet strangers to her miraculous conception. And her humility making her perfectly resigned, and even desirous to conceal her privilege and dignity, she submitted with great punctuality and exactness to every humbling circumstance which the law required. Pride indeed proclaims its own advantages, and seeks honors not its due; but the humble find their delight in obscurity and abasement, they shun all distinction and esteem, which they clearly see their own nothingness and baseness ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Forget, if you can, your favours and that right which they claim over me; allow me to be indifferent. Why use your eloquence to reproach me for my flight and for my silence? Spare the recital of our assignations and your constant exactness to them; without calling up such disturbing thoughts I have enough to suffer. What great advantages would philosophy give us over other men if, by studying it, we could learn to govern our passions? What a troublesome ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and with both her supple white hands tore it with insulting precision exactly in half. "There, sir and there, sir" (exactly in four); "and there" (in eight, with malicious. exactness); "and there"; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to tiny bits. She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but thought better of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Cleena set the child to take out and replace with exactness the few treasured letters and cards, or papers, which were Amy's own, and kept in her big ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... different conceptions of life. This characteristic, aided by the perspicacity which is bestowed upon every jealous woman, perchance enabled her to read the mysterious Sibyl with some approach to exactness. Were it so, prudence should have warned her against a struggle for mere hatred's sake with so formidable an antagonist. But the voice of caution had never long audience with Alma, and was not likely, at any given moment, to prevail against a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the vehicles of such consequences to the occupants of the garden, stood, had a real existence and geographical site. Now I need hardly remark that the Mosaic narrative unquestionably professes a geographical exactness and a literal existence of the garden, as no fabled locality—no Utopia or garden of the Hesperides. I need only refer to the data afforded to us ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... the net of courtship was charming. For this purpose he has contrived a Housekeeper's Leger, a plain and easy plan of keeping accurate accounts of the expenses of housekeeping, which, with only one hour's attention in a week, will enable you to balance all such accounts with the utmost exactness; an acceptable acquisition to all who admit that order and economy are the basis ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... well as men, for this objection does not in the least weaken my proof; and their reasoning can never serve to account for the motions we admire most in them. Will any one affirm that they know the nicest rules of mechanics, which they observe with perfect exactness, whenever they are to run, leap, swim, hide themselves, double, use shifts to avoid pursuing hounds, or to make use of the strongest part of their bodies to defend themselves? Will he say that they naturally understand the mathematics which men are ignorant of? Will ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... brother long since dead, was coming to live with him. As he had contemplated, no one spoke to him; but some people did no doubt talk among themselves. Whether or not the exact truth was surmised by any, it matters not to say; with absolute exactness, probably not; with great approach to it, probably yes. By one person, at any rate, no guess whatever was made; no thought relative to Dr Thorne's niece ever troubled him; no idea that Mary Scatcherd had left a child in England ever occurred to him; and ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Diatessaron, or Harmony, or combined narrative now forgotten, exercised an influence over them, and whether consciously or not,—since it is difficult always to keep designed and unintentional mistakes apart, and we must not be supposed to aim at scientific exactness in the arrangement adopted in this analysis,—induced them to adopt alterations ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... spoke of has No. LII. in the Grenville collection, British Museum; it is a folio of 114 pages numbered with a pencil; bound with the arms of the Rt. Honble. Thos. Grenville. Page 114, the exactness of this copy is thus certified: "Apographum collatum cum prototypo, quod in Bibliotheca Palatina Vindobonensi adservatur. Illo quidem, qui descripsit, recitante ex prototypo, me vero hoc apographum ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the effects of fire, which they supposed was intended to drive wild animals from the coast. They could not discover a tree suitable for a mast, and were unsuccessful in obtaining water. A small map, which sketched the form of the coast with considerable exactness, accompanied the account of this voyage, and tended to awaken the French to the importance of ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... no doubt, study the Classics. There are those (I am well aware) who are disposed to object to modern American Scholarship as an excessive attention to minutiae: but personally, I confess, I am no enemy even to a meticulous exactness, which alone can save us from an incurious and slipshod rhetoric! . . . And what, then, are the points of scholarship which it has been your endeavour to elucidate? Have you followed in the steps of the lamented Professor Drybones of Chicago, who died before he could prove, by a complete ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Old World family is found in America. It is a brown, much mottled bird, that creeps spirally around and around the trunks of trees in fall and winter, pecking at the larvae in the bark with its long, sharp bill, and doing its work with faithful exactness but little spirit. It uses its tail as a prop in climbing, like the woodpeckers. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... obey and, though the back of the settle hid the result from me, I judged from the look and attitude of those below that the old colonel's calculations had been made with great exactness, and that the one comfortable seat on the rude and cumbersome bench had been so placed that this leaden weight in descending would at the chosen moment strike the head of him who sat there, inflicting death. That the weight should ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... passion for exactness, have added to what might have been expected of Mr. Belloc's sincerity and unlimited capacity for enthusiasm. In that admirable phrase of Buffon, too often quoted and too little applied, the style is the man. This is a ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... which, in symmetry of structure, in flexibility and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the language of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration which communicates the superhuman thought, must be the gradual development ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... absolutely: I meant not any absolute or supreme sacrifice (which is all that the Law forbids), but relative and inferior only. I regulated my intentions with all imaginable care, and my esteem with the most critical exactness. I considered the other Gods, whom I sacrificed to, as inferior only and infinitely so; reserving all sovereign sacrifice to the supreme God of Israel." This, or the like apology must, I presume, have brought off the criminal with some applause for his acuteness, if your principles ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Holland, where, as I have been inform'd, the knowledge of accounts makes a part of female education, she not only sent me as clear a state as she could find of the transactions past, but continued to account with the greatest regularity and exactness every quarter afterwards, and managed the business with such success, that she not only brought up reputably a family of children, but, at the expiration of the term, was able to purchase of me the printing-house, and establish her ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... physician, and brought up in the rigors of scientific method, Flaubert believed this method to be efficacious in art as in science. For instance, in the writing of a romance, he seemed to be as scientific as in the development of a history of customs, in which the essential is absolute exactness and local color. He therefore naturally wished to make the most scrupulous and detailed observation of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... For I have seen among them a fair large Map of this Place, the best I believe extant, yet very faulty: the ordinary Maps in use among us are much more so; I have procured a new one to be drawn, with as much truth and exactness as I could, and his Judgment will not be deemed altogether inconsiderable, who had for Twenty Years Travelled about the Iland, and knew almost every step of those Parts, especially, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... and, having become popular in Austria through the poem, was adopted by Kurenberg for his purposes. As to the date of the poem, in its present form it cannot go back further than about 1190, because of the exactness of the rhymes, nor could it have been written later than 1204, because of certain allusions to it in the sixth book of "Parzival", which we know to have been written at this date. The two Low German poems which probably form the basis of our epic may have been united about 1150. It was ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... act depends on illusions for its appeal, it will, of course, be well supplied with the machinery to produce the required sounds. And those that do not depend on exactness of illusion can usually secure the effects required by calling on the drummer with his very effective box-of-tricks ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... between good volunteer regiments and regulars, as the mode of enforcing it. There were plenty of volunteer regiments that could not be excelled in drill, in the performance of camp duty, or in the finish and exactness of all the forms of parades and of routine. But it was generally brought about by much milder methods of discipline. A captain of volunteers was usually followed by his neighbors and relatives. The patriotic zeal of the men of the company as well as their self-respect ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... little fox in my eye, who is most active and most mischievous in despoiling the vines of domestic happiness,—in fact, who has been guilty of destroying more grapes than anybody knows of. His name I find it difficult to give with exactness. In my enumeration I called him Self-Will; another name for him—perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... from (1) vividness and (2) exactness of thought, and from a corresponding (1) vividness and (2) exactness in the ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... term used by the private soldiers, signifying a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; or, as the term is, till their cagg is out: which vow is commonly observed with the strictest exactness. Ex. I have cagg'd myself for six months. Excuse me this time, and I will cagg myself for a year. This term is also used in the same sense among the common people of Scotland, where it is performed with ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... "Vestigium vetus creandi equites seu milites." It is with reason that Sainte-Palaye comments in the very same way upon the text of the Germania, and that a scholar of our own days exclaims with more than scientific exactness, "The true origin of miles is this bestowal of arms which among the Germans marks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... consequence was the same. Scientific research, or light literature; the ordinary occurrences of the day, recorded in the newspapers, or detailed by an occasional visitor—all were remembered, and with truthful exactness. Dates, days, names, and events fastened upon his memory tenaciously, and remained there without an effort. Hence, the fund of information possessed by him astonished the best informed, who were gray with years ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... poet, and occasionally employed hours which should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... table the belt taken from Dubois, and lifted out its precious contents with careful exactness. The men crowded around. Even amidst the exciting events of the hour, the sight of the fateful stones which had caused so much turmoil and bloodshed could not fail to be ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... an answer to my assertion that the Irish editor attempted to unite the two fragments, C. proceeds to prove that he did not unite them. The procedure is rather defective in point of logical exactness. It proves only what was not denied. Malone refers to the will of John Shakspere, found by Joseph Moseley, with sufficient clearness; and it is charitable to assume that the Irish editor intended to observe the instructions of his precursor. He failed, it seems—but why? It would ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... a great irregularity in the old Scotch songs, a redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness of accent and measure that the English poetry requires, but which glides in, most melodiously, with the respective tunes to which they are set. For instance, the fine old song of "The Mill, Mill, O,"[153] to give it a plain prosaic reading, it halts prodigiously ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... confined to any one country. Sweating is not a peculiarity of Great Britain. Practically the same trades experience the same evils in all other industrial countries. France, Germany, Austria, and America reproduce with great exactness under similar economic conditions the same social evils, and in those countries, as in ours, Sweated Industries—by which I mean trades where there is no organisation, where wages are exceptionally low, and conditions subversive of ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... that are attractive in a sovereign: affability, gentleness, kindliness, generosity. She had a way of convincing every one of her personal interest. She had an excellent memory, and surprised those with whom she talked by the exactness with which she recalled the past, even to details they had themselves nearly forgotten. The sound of her gentle, penetrating, and sympathetic voice added to the courtesy and charm of her words. Every one listened ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... his wife holding fast to the other. At sight of us he dropped the weapon and roared joyously, and Cicely, running to us, clasped our hands in hearty welcome. So we sat down all four, and while we quaffed the ale Godby described our late encounter with great exactness. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... which it was to be "flyed," occupied more time, and required more care, than any other portion of their work. Every strand had to be twisted with the greatest exactness; and almost every fibre tested, as to its strength and fitness. Could they have used a rope of stouter build, it would not have been necessary to be so particular; but a thick rope would have been too heavy for the kite to carry—just as it had been too heavy for the strength of the eagle. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... will depict on a narrow panel of wood an entire city with its houses and towers and walls, so you have painted in a few words my soul and my similitude with a wondrous exactness. And I am altogether what you describe. But if I followed perfectly the rule etablished by St. Francis, that Angel of God, and if I practised spiritual poverty to the full, I should be the lily of the fields and I should have the good part ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... of a man of letters. For all these there is not often equal opportunity; excellence, therefore, is not often attainable; and most men fail in one or other of the ends proposed, and are full without readiness, or without exactness. Some deficiency must be forgiven all, because all are men; and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in the greater part of the world, because none can confer upon himself abilities, and few have the choice of situations proper for the improvement of those which nature ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... summer holidays, Jan had more time for sketching. But the many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with wonderful exactness. He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and condense his effects to a very small scale to ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... general improvement of the understanding, and not merely the cultivation of poetic taste. In the instance which we have just given, the pleasure which the boy received from the poem, seemed to increase in proportion to the exactness with which it was explained. The succeeding year, on May-day 1797, the same poem was read to him for the third time, and he appeared to like it better than he had done upon the first reading. If, instead of perusing Racine ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... and policy, which were not very barbarous for barbarians, consisted wholly of traditions and customs, observed with so great exactness that it was not considered possible to break them in any circumstance. One was the respect of parents and elders, carried to so great a degree that not even the name of one's father could pass the lips, in the same way as the Hebrews [regarded] the name ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... characterized every manoeuvre of the past three days, and the exactness with which each corps and division fell into its allotted place on the evening of the 30th, indicated that at the outset of the campaign a well-digested plan of operations had been prepared for us; and although ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... for not obeying your commands, in sending the lace you ordered me. Upon my word, I can yet find none, that is not dearer than you may buy it at London. If you want any India goods, here are great variety of penny-worths; and I shall follow your orders with great pleasure and exactness; being, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... word, dismounted, seized his instruments, and began to note his position with extreme exactness. The little band, drawn up in the rear, watched his ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... extraordinarily rich one. A German authority credits it with a vocabulary three times as large as that of France, the poorest, in number of words, of all the great languages. With such an enormous fund of words to choose from it seems as if we should be able to express our thoughts not only with unparalleled exactness and subtlety, but also with unequalled variety of sound. Further it is probable that English surpasses the other three great languages of song, German, Italian, and French, in number of distinguishable vowel sounds, but in questions of ear authorities usually differ, and it is hazardous ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... sciences." But a science may be a science even if it is not an exact science; we may know certain important principles sufficiently well to use them scientifically, even if we do not know them with sufficient exactness to permit us to use them as confidently as we should like. We may know, for instance, that it is folly to divide a military force in the presence of an active enemy into such small forces, and at such distances apart, as to let the enemy defeat each small force, one after the other, even if we do ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... and our object being the exposition of the law of the Roman people, we think that the most advantageous plan will be to commence with an easy and simple path, and then to proceed to details with a most careful and scrupulous exactness of interpretation. Otherwise, if we begin by burdening the student's memory, as yet weak and untrained, with a multitude and variety of matters, one of two things will happen: either we shall cause him wholly to desert the study of law, or else we shall bring him at last, after great ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... her ineffable courtesy. The story, based upon actual experience, is ordered not in literal conformity with fact, but according to the ideal of the imagination; and its reality does not consist in the exactness of its record of events, but in the truth of its poetic conception. Under the narrative lies an allegory of the power of love to transfigure earthly things into the likeness of heavenly, and to lift the soul from things material and transitory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... serious affairs of adult life. Boys who have been to the theatre come home to imitate the celebrated actors, and to extemporize mimic theatricals for themselves. Feigned sickness and "playing the doctor," imitating with ludicrous exactness the pomp and solemnity of the real man of pills and powders, and the misery of the patient, are the diversions of very young children. Dinners, tea-parties, and even weddings and funerals, are ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... there is room for honest differences of opinion. Of such nature are questions of sanity and insanity. It must be remembered that these are, after all, relative terms. Reason leaves its seat by almost imperceptible steps. Who can determine with exactness the line that separates eccentricity from madness—responsibility from irresponsibility? Moreover, the phenomena upon which opinion is based are, in such cases, so hidden, so complex, so obscure, that in the half-lights of a few short interviews they will often be seen differently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... charge. Bronson came in to get him ready for his breakfast. There was about the old man an air of suppressed excitement. He hurried a little in his preparations for the General's bath. But everything was done with exactness, and it was not until the General was shaved and sitting up in his gorgeous mandarin robe that Bronson said, "I'd like to go out for an hour or two this morning, if you ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... feel the effects of solitude strongly. Solitude revives the simple instincts of primitive man, and lonely country nooks afford rich soil for wayward emotions. Moreover, idleness waters those unconsidered impulses which a short season of turmoil would stamp out. It is difficult to speak with any exactness of the bearing of such conditions on the mind of the Baron—a man of whom so little was ever truly known—but there is no doubt that his mind ran much on Margery as an individual, without reference to her rank or quality, or to the question whether she would marry Jim Hayward that ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... balance with two scales and a beam, that shall equal the extent of the heavens and the earth; wherein the works [of men] shall be weighed by the power of God. At which time weights not heavier than atoms, or mustard-seeds, shall be brought out, that things may be balanced with the utmost exactness, and perfect justice administered. Then the books of the good works, beautiful to behold, shall be cast into the balance of light, by which the balance shall be depressed according to their degrees, out of the favor of God. But the books ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... pretended that in one of my romances I have painted his [Chopin's] character with a great exactness of analysis. People were mistaken, because they thought they recognised some of his traits; and, proceeding by this system, too convenient to be sure, Liszt himself, in a Life of Chopin, a little exuberant as regards style, but nevertheless full of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... beginning of the fifteenth century European explorers had the benefit of the traditional ancient geography, of the new exactness of knowledge drawn from the observations of recent travellers, of the accurate but limited portolani of the Italian navigators, and finally of the more pretentious, if vague and often misleading, world maps of learned geographers. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Emperor was awake, in which he was not mistaken. He dressed in all haste, and had been ten minutes at his post when the Emperor, descending the staircase with Marshal Duroc, perceived him. His Majesty usually took pleasure in showing that he remarked exactness in fulfilling his orders; therefore he stopped a moment, and said to M. Colas, "Ah! already awake, Colas?"—"Yes, Sire; I have not forgotten that valets should be on foot when the masters are awake."—"You have a good ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... have followed is that of Hartzenbusch in his edition of Calderon's Comedias, Madrid, 1856 ("Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles"). His arrangement of the scenes has been followed throughout, thus enabling the reader in a moment to verify for himself the exactness of the translation by a reference to the original, a crucial test which I rather ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... not require that the first half of the remark which was made to me by my benefactor shall be quoted with exactness, for it was not striking, and could be forgotten; but its closing fifteen words are quite striking, and I think easily rememberable; unless THESE shall be accurately reproduced, let the applicant be regarded as an impostor. My benefactor began by saying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life sciences have high rank. In addition to furnishing the very conception itself that we have been trying to phrase, they give illustrations of all the historic occasions, kinds, and modes of adaptation; in lacking the exactness of the mathematical and physical sciences they furnish precisely the degree of uncertainty and openness of opportunity and of mental state which the act of living itself demands. In other words the science of life is, if properly presented, the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... writer says, "A favorite cat sometimes accompanied the Egyptians on these occasions [of sport], and the artist of that day intends to show us by the exactness with which he represents her seizing her prey, that cats were trained to hunt and carry water-fowl." There are old Egyptian paintings representing sporting scenes along the Nile, where the cats plunge into the water of the marshes ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... apt to attach to a word the first meaning that they learn in connection with it. Only with the increase of experience can a word come to have more than one meaning. Moreover, the child will apply what he hears with fatal exactness and literalness. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... management. The chorus was large and efficient, every member doing his and her part; and, to all appearances, there was no 'dead wood' among them. It must be understood, besides, that all the music was sung; every part in harmony being taken with exactness and precision, whether ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... second one is called in, and preferred before you, study her well. See how it is that she wins the patient's confidence, when you did not. Try to find out, in a quiet way, wherein lies her charm. If it is quietness, exactness, cheerfulness, or ready tact—it must be something—and if you are clever you must see how it happens that she is preferred. It will be a good lesson for you. Perhaps you will never have such another chance for learning what you have ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... been asserted by de Freval, in the first of the introductory letters to Pamela, that with this way of writing 'the several Passions of the Mind must ... be more affectingly described, and Nature may be traced in her undisguised Inclinations with much more Propriety and Exactness, than can possibly be found in a Detail of Actions long past;'[19] and von Haller carries the charge even further by claiming not only that it allows the author a greater degree of psychological veracity but also that the convention ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... himself was a neat, quiet, orderly sort of a man, regular as clockwork, and steady as time, the very pink of punctuality and the essence of exactness. He had been in business nearly forty years, in the same shop, conducted precisely in the same style as in the days of his predecessors; he lacked not store of clothes or change of wigs, but his clothes and wigs and three cornered hats were so like each other, that they seemed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... chests, bringing out linen, cloth, furs, curtains, and tapestry. I help her as well as I can; she is sometimes good enough to ask my opinion; she is so scrupulous, so much afraid of not dividing our shares equally. She is so particular, that she even sends for the chaplain to judge of the exactness of the division. The tailors and lace-makers who have come from Warsaw to make up the trousseau will hardly be able to finish their work during the next month. The linen is all ready. The young ladies belonging ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... With surprising exactness du Picq, speaking in the abstract, foretold an engagement in which the mistakes of the enemy would be counterbalanced by their energy in the face of French passivity, lack of any control conception. Forty years later in the Ecole de Guerre, Foch explained ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was planted as in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a French cook, one of the governor's servants, whom he had constantly made the butt of his ridicule, by mimicking his voice, gait, and other peculiarities, all of which he again went through with his wonted exactness and drollery. He asked also particularly for a lady from whom he had once ventured to snatch a kiss; and on being told that she was well, by way of proving that the token was fresh in his remembrance, he kissed Lieutenant Waterhouse, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon only pressing her hand with a look ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... your career in life, you appeared to us short-sighted mortals, to possess more than your share of the good things of this world; such a union of riches, beauty, independence, talents, education and virtue, seemed a monopoly to raise general envy and discontent; but mark with what scrupulous exactness the good and bad is ever balanced! You have had a thousand sorrows to which those who have looked up to you have been strangers, and for which not all the advantages you possess have been equivalent. There is evidently throughout this world, in things as well as persons, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the door of M. Fauvel's safe. The impression of every detail was perfect. There were the five movable buttons with the engraved letters, and the narrow, projecting brass lock: The scratch was indicated with great exactness. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the great circular yellowish flame that he pointed out, and Sarka, always the scientist whose science was one of exactness, tried to estimate just where, on the Earth's surface, the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... begun as a medical treatise on morbidness, arranged and divided with all the exactness of the schoolmen's demonstration of doctrines; but it turned out to be an enormous hodgepodge of quotations and references to authors, known and unknown, living and dead, which seemed to prove chiefly that "much study is a weariness to the flesh." By some freak of taste ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of Magellan and the adjacent coasts vary greatly in their characteristics; some have the impassive bearing we associate with the Indian, and some are imitative, reproducing sounds and gestures with surprising exactness. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... was attended with two very considerable inconveniences; first, with the trouble of weighing, and secondly, with that of assaying them. In the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great difference in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires at least very accurate weights and scales. The weighing of gold, in particular, is an operation of some nicety In the coarser metals, indeed, where a small error would be of little consequence, less accuracy would, no doubt, be necessary. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... her, and saw in her wasted form and her face that, if he did read it, he should kill her; so he played the man: he restrained himself by a mighty effort, and said, "My dear, excuse me; but on this matter I have more faith in Mary Meyrick's exactness than in yours. Besides, I know your heart, and don't care to be told of your errors in judgment, no, not even by yourself. Sorry to offend an authoress; but I decline to read your book, and, more than that, I forbid you the subject entirely ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Woolums' mouth flew open—Lightning copied his style with such exactness. Again the instrument clicked and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played the violin in a little ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... greatest importance to attend with the utmost exactness in all moral judgements to the subjective principle of all maxims, that all the morality of actions may be placed in the necessity of acting from duty and from respect for the law, not from love and inclination for that which the actions are to produce. ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... What is the use of knowing the Pythagorean problem, if we cannot prove it? What would be the use of knowing that the French larme is the same as the German Zhre (tear), if we could not with mathematical exactness trace every step by which these two words have diverged till ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... of these that one can be sure what stone he has in hand. It must next be our task to find exactly what is meant by each of these numerical properties, and how one may determine each with ease and exactness. ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... appeal when they are questioned." He calls these "startling words," p. 39. Yet here again he illustrates their truth; for in his own case, he has acted on them in this very controversy with the most happy exactness. Surely he referred to my sermon on Wisdom and Innocence, when called on to prove me a liar, as "a proximate description of his feelings about me, in the shape of argument," and he has "continued in the same course though it has been ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... lost her third husband—by divorce—had received from Mr. Yahi-Bahi a glimpse into the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had effected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the table arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. Over these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... and tapestry. I help her as well as I can; she is sometimes good enough to ask my opinion; she is so scrupulous, so much afraid of not dividing our shares equally. She is so particular, that she even sends for the chaplain to judge of the exactness of the division. The tailors and lace-makers who have come from Warsaw to make up the trousseau will hardly be able to finish their work during the next month. The linen is all ready. The young ladies belonging to our suite have aided materially. They have been sewing at linen during ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reached his fourteenth year, he was able to assist his foster-father in his business. He wrote a fine hand, did much of his "father's" clerical work, and carried out all orders with exactness. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... those qualities which distinguish the Germans from the French are found to such a high degree in Alsace-Lorraine, that the inhabitants of this country formed—I may say it without fear of seeming presumption—an aristocracy in France as regards proficiency and exactness. They were better qualified for service, and more reliable in office. The substitutes in the army, the gendarmes, and the civil officers were from Alsace-Lorraine in numbers entirely out of proportion to the population of these provinces. There were one and one half million Germans who knew how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... some anachronisms and other things to criticise; but the anachronisms are deliberate, and even as in writing of Canada and Australia, which I know very well, I have here, perhaps, sacrificed superficial exactness while trying to give the more intimate meaning and spirit. I have never thought it necessary to apologise for this disregard of photographic accuracy,—that may be found in my note-books,—and I shall not begin to do so now. I shall be sufficiently grateful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... canons of taste, exhibited their adolescent vigour with affected graces and showed themselves senile in their cradles." In the field of literature to-day the standards are more numerous, but more distinctive, than those of the Elizabethans. Our ideals are classified with almost scientific exactness, and we wear the labels proudly. But the very splendour of the Renaissance was due to the fact that in the same group, in the same artist, were to be found the most diverse ideals and the most opposite ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... any of this wildly swift rapidity. He seized a package of counterfeit assignats, and, at the risk of being crushed, succeeded in throwing it between the wheels of the carronade. This decisive and perilous movement could not have been made with more exactness and precision by a man trained in all the exercises described in Durosel's "Manual ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... piece, and after about four minutes the remainder of the composition came back to him and he played it to the end correctly. This annoyed him greatly and he played the next number upon the program with the greatest exactness, but, strange to say, it lost the wonderful charm of the interpretation of the piece in which his memory had failed him. Rubinstein was really incomparable, even more so perhaps because he was full of human impulse and his playing very far removed ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... both had been plundered,—reduced to ashes. The Churches of Branderode and Zeuchfeld, with several other Churches, were plundered; the altars broken, the altar-cloths and other vestures cut to pieces, and the sacred vessels and cups carried away,—except [for we have a notarial exactness, and will exaggerate nothing] that in the case of Branderode they sent the cup back. Of the pollution of the altars, and of the blasphemous songs these people sang in the churches, one cannot think ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... word "religious." Like all persons trading on falsehood and living in deception, her orthodoxy was undoubted, and the most rigid investigation could not have discovered an unsound spot anywhere. She would as soon have thought of questioning her own existence as of doubting the literal exactness of the first chapter of Genesis, and she thought science an awfully wicked thing because it went to disprove the story of the six days. She firmly believed in the personality of Satan and material fires for wicked souls; and the sweet way in which she lamented the probable paucity of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... clear that the stone must have carried out his thoughtless wish with scrupulous and conscientious exactness in every detail. He had wanted, or said he wanted, to be a boy again like Dick, and accordingly he had become a perfect duplicate, even to the contents of the pockets. Evidently nothing on the face of things showed the slightest difference. Yet—and here lay the sting of the metamorphosis—he ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... close to them they appeared enormous, but their magnitude was not fully appreciated until some hours later, after we had tramped through the sand around the four sides of great Cheops. After that walk, a distance of more than half a mile, we could judge with greater exactness the immense proportions of the extensive base. The slope of the sides prevented a fair conception of their height when looking upward at them; but after reaching the top of Cheops, panting with the exertion of the laborious climb in which we had been assisted ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... rare; but art appears not to have been used. Even in plants, we find this sort of resemblance. There is a species of the orchis, where Nature has formed a bee, apparently feeding in the breast of the flower, with so much exactness, that it is impossible at a very small distance to distinguish the imposition. Hence the plant derives its name, and is called the BEE-FLOWER. Langhorne elegantly notices ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fortunately for him. He had a little book in his hand, and seemed disturbed when I gave him my message. He did not hesitate, however. Being of an unsuspicious nature, he never dreamed that all was not as I said, especially as he knew my brother well, and was thoroughly acquainted with the exactness with which he always executed an errand. But he did not want to go; that I saw clearly, and laid it all to the little book; for he was the kindest man who ever lived, and never was known to shirk a duty because it was unpleasant ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... a representation of the foot of an emu in the bark of a gum-tree; and he had performed it with all the exactness of a good observer. It was the first specimen of the fine arts we had witnessed ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... added, for I had delayed eight or ten minutes longer than I ought, and this had upset the exactness of my calculations. The man obeyed; nevertheless, instead of reaching the top of Maxine's street at two or three minutes before twelve, as I had intended, it was nearly ten minutes past when I got out of my cab at the corner: and when I came to the ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... frightened attendant gathered up the flowers and the basket and carried them out of the apartment, She came to herself after a time, but exhausted and then wandering. In her delirium she talked constantly as if she were in a cave, with such exactness of circumstance that Helen could not doubt at all that she had some such retreat among the rocks of The Mountain, probably fitted up in her own fantastic way, where she sometimes hid herself from all human eyes, and of the entrance to which she ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... preparation in order profitably to address their fellow-men, and that the best informed and most accustomed to study might be best trusted to speak without the labor of written composition. That it has been thought otherwise, is probably owing, in a great measure, to the solicitude for literary exactness and elegance of style, which becomes a habit in the taste of studious men, and renders all inaccuracy and carelessness offensive. He who has been accustomed to read and admire the finest models of composition in various languages, ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... band of spectators cheered the Duke, calling loudly to inform him that he was the only man who ever had stuck that long. The Duke waved his hat in acknowledgement, and put it back on with deliberation and exactness, while old Whetstone, as mad as a wet hen, tried to roll down suddenly and ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... man of a serious, but a great and gallant spirit. Poor Jack Careless! This is his letter: you see how it is folded: the air of it is so negligent, one might have read half of it by peeping into it, without breaking it open. He had no exactness. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... from the "Sin Tsi Hia," is a literary masterpiece because of the exactness with which the punishment follows upon the act, long after the latter has been forgiven, and all chance of mishap seemed ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... but especially that they did not at all intermit their religious services, even when they were surrounded with darts on all sides; for, as if the city were in full peace, their daily sacrifices and purifications and all their religious rites were still carried out before God with the utmost exactness. Nor when the temple was taken and they were slain about the altar daily, did they cease from those things that are appointed by their law to be observed. For it was in the third month of the siege before the Romans ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... plans, it is highly desirable that the classes should be trained to military precision and exactness in these manipulations. What I mean by this, may perhaps be best illustrated, by describing a case: it will show, in another branch, how much will be gained by acting upon numbers at once, instead of upon ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... variations here indicated. The parade of exact dates with reference to very early times is generally fallacious, unless it be understood as adopted simply for the sake of convenience. In the history of Assyria, however, we may make a nearer approach to exactness than in most others of the same antiquity, owing to the existence of two chronological documents of first-rate importance. One of these is the famous Canon of Ptolemy, which, though it is directly a Babylonian ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... authority for his statements and judgments. In a word, Carleton was a man who, having mapped the irrigated country and the stream's mouth, resolutely set his face towards the fountains to find them. There is an increasing exactness and care in ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... way distinguishes us from what our orators call "the effete civilization of the Old World"? Is there a politician among us daring enough (except a Dana[39] here and there) to risk his future on the chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of superstitious communities like England? Is it certain that we shall be ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our bond? I hope we shall be able to answer all these questions with a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... restless shifting in his early years is apparent. For the discontent that marked his unquiet youth made for a firm retention of impressions. Observation, in the saying of Balzac, springs from suffering, and Hauptmann saw the Silesian country-folk and the artists of Breslau with an almost morbid exactness of vision. Actual conflict sharpened his insight. Three weeks after entering the art-school he received a disciplinary warning and early in 1881 he was rusticated for eleven weeks. Nevertheless he remained ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... privilege of sleeping as long as I choose," cried the Electoral Prince, with a mocking laugh. "My house moves like clockwork, in which there is no comfort or rest whatever, but where each must perform his prescribed service with mathematical exactness, that ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... pyrometers usually employed are almost all based on the expansion of some fluid or other, or upon that of different metals. The first can only be constructed with glass tubes, thus rendering them fragile. The second are often wanting in exactness, because of the change that the molecules of a solid body undergo through heat, thus preventing them from returning to exactly their first ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... dark opaque Bodies receiving light, and depending upon those Suns respectively for such light, and then reflecting that light again upon and for the Use of one another; To see the Beauty and Splendor of their Forms, the Regularity of their Position, the Order and Exactness, and yet inconceivable Velocity of their Motions, the certainty of their Revolutions, and the Variety and Virtue of their Influences; and then, which was even to the Devils themselves most astonishing, That after all the rest of their Observations they ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... how her cousins, and even Miss Morley, could venture to disregard orders given in that decided manner; but she soon perceived that they trusted to Mrs. Lyddell's multifarious occupations, which kept her from knowing all their proceedings with exactness, and left them a good ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the names of the Roman numerals, beginning with Unus and Duo, and going up to Decem. Decem was, of course, the biggest cow of the party, or at least she was the ruler of the others, and had the place of honor in the stable and everywhere else. I admire cows, and especially the exactness with which they define their social position. In this case, Decem could "lick" Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so on down to Unus, who could n't lick anybody, except her own calf. I suppose I ought to have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Colchester bays in foreign markets, where to open the side of a bale and show the seal has been enough to give the buyer a character of the value of the goods without any further search; and so far as they abate the integrity and exactness of their method, which I am told of late is much omitted; I say, so far, that reputation will certainly abate in the markets they go to, which are principally in Portugal and Italy. This corporation is governed by a particular set of men who are called governors of the Dutch Bay Hall. ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... obeyed orders, and at the critical moment Mike launched a second kick, which, however, was not delivered with the mathematical exactness of the first. It landed in the canine's neck and drove him back several paces, but he kept his balance, and came on again with the same headlong fierceness ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... the King's prisons, and we are determined to treat such prisoners precisely as our countrymen are treated in England, to give them the same allowance of provisions and accommodations and no other. We, therefore, request you to inform us with exactness what your allowance is from the government, that ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... propriety and necessity of such Sunday exercises. They could remember that in their younger days their father always had been there with them. They could remember, indeed, that he, with something of sternness, would require from them punctuality and exactness in this duty. Now and again,—perhaps four times in the year,—he would go to the Rolls Chapel. So much they could learn, But they believed that beyond that his Sundays were kept holy by no attendance at divine service. And it may be said at ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a marking gauge, and set the marking point to half the thickness of the wood. The distance may be measured, and its exactness tested, by pricking a small hole from each side of the wood with the marking gauge and carefully noting that the pricked holes coincide. The gauge mark is clearly shown in the various illustrations. ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... carrying exactness to excess, and it is not given as an example to be followed, but it had the advantage of letting me know how my time expenditure was running. In this way it became clear that if I intended to be an artist the time given ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... months he appealed to the assembly, and presented the consequences of the new heresy. With his slight figure, his commanding intellectual force, his conservative tendencies, his clearness of statement, his logical exactness and fascinating persuasiveness, he was to churchmen what Alexander Hamilton was to statesmen. He gave a constitution to the Church, and became a theological authority scarcely less than Augustine in the next generation, or Lainez ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... to see him both before and afterwards constantly fighting on foot. It is however better, perhaps, that the poet and player should by overpowering impressions dispose us to forget this, than by literal exactness to expose themselves to external interruptions. With all the disadvantages which I have mentioned, Shakspeare and several Spanish poets have contrived to derive such great beauties from the immediate representation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... all! One shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender ankle, and a glimpse of black above the leather. The desire for exactness alone compels a reference to the fact that the boundary lines of this silhouetted black area diverge perceptibly as they recede from the shoe. It is only a detail, but even Florian notices it, and thinks about it afterward. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... intuition; proved by the facility and fervour with which she could adapt her mind to widely different conceptions of life. This characteristic, aided by the perspicacity which is bestowed upon every jealous woman, perchance enabled her to read the mysterious Sibyl with some approach to exactness. Were it so, prudence should have warned her against a struggle for mere hatred's sake with so formidable an antagonist. But the voice of caution had never long audience with Alma, and was not likely, at any given moment, to prevail ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... to realize this condition of exact neutrality, but it is possible to approach it with sufficient exactness for analytical purposes, since substances are known which, in solution, undergo a sharp change of color as soon as even a minute excess of H^{} or OH^{-} ions are present. Some, as will be seen, react sharply in the presence of H^{} ions, and others with OH^{-} ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... to the imagination as numerical estimates; they speak a volume in themselves, saving a world of periphrasis and argument; nothing is so difficult to form with exactness, or even probability, when they relate to an early period; and nothing more carelessly received, and confidently circulated. The enormous statements of the Jewish exiles, and the baseless ones of the Moorish, are not peculiar to Llorente, but have been repeated, without the slightest ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... England might follow it back to the East Anglian shires of the mother-country; one-sixth might follow it to those southwestern countries—Devonshire, Dorset, and Somerset—which so long were foremost in maritime enterprise; one-sixth to other parts of England. I would not insist upon the exactness of such figures, in a matter where only a rough approximation is possible; but I do not think they overstate the East Anglian preponderance. It was not by accident that the earliest counties of Massachusetts were called Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, or that Boston in Lincolnshire gave its ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... I. p. 254, (English translation) gives the following account of its capture:—"The King succeeded better at Louviers: this town kept a priest in its pay; who, from the top of a belfry, which he never left, played the part of a spy with great exactness. If he saw but a single person in the field, he rung a certain bell, and hung out at the same side a great flag. We did not despair of being able to corrupt his fidelity, which two hundred crowns, and a promise of a benefice worth three thousand ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... to make any further mention of this kind, it is well known that this person managed all his affairs with such exactness as if he had made it his study, above all other things, not to give occasion of offence, but rather suffer many inconvencies to avoid; being never heard to reproach or revile any, what injury soever he received, but rather to rebuke those that did; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... side, a tall figure in a long overcoat. The collar of dark brown fur brought out the premature whiteness of his hair. He held a cane in his gloved hand, and struck away the pebbles with it impatiently. Why does his image return to me at this hour with an unendurable exactness? It is because, as I observed him walking along the wintry road, with his head bent forward, I was struck as I had never been before with the sense of his absolute unremitting wretchedness. Was this due to the influence of our conversation of that afternoon, to the dejection which his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science, she said, and spoke of a book. I forget altogether what that book was called, though I remember to this day with the utmost exactness the purplish magenta of its cover. She said she would lend it to me ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... of water and rustling dried reed, where the starlings roosted and came and went in well-marshalled clouds, all moving as if carefully drilled to keep at an exact distance one from the other, ready to wheel and turn or swoop up or down with the greatest exactness in the world. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... seen during the day moving about on the edge of Hupp's Hill, as if engaged in noting with more intentness than is usual among civilians the arrangement of the Union camps. This incident Emory reported to Wright for what it might be worth, and Wright, on his part, being already doubtful of the exactness of the information brought in by Harris, ordered Emory and Torbert each to send out a strong reconnoitring party in the early morning, to move in parallel columns on the valley road and on the back road, with the significant caution that they were to go far enough to find out whether Early ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... which brings his punishment, or reward. If this fundamental principle could be investigated by responsible scientists, unhampered by theological influences, and with no prejudice as to the idea's being regarded as a mere culte, its exactness could perhaps be mathematically proved beyond a cavilling doubt. Possibly then the doctrine might be allowed to be taught in the public schools, to the everlasting benefit ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... amusements of the children in-doors are mere imitations of the serious affairs of adult life. Boys who have been to the theatre come home to imitate the celebrated actors, and to extemporize mimic theatricals for themselves. Feigned sickness and "playing the doctor," imitating with ludicrous exactness the pomp and solemnity of the real man of pills and powders, and the misery of the patient, are the diversions of very young children. Dinners, tea-parties, and even weddings and funerals, are imitated in ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... as I think needful by way of Introduction; I would turn my Thoughts more immediately to the Work before me; I have, as you directed me, Sir, read it over with the greatest Distinction, and Exactness I was able; I've enter'd as much, as was possible for me, into the Spirit and Design of the Author: By the strictest Examination I've endeavoured to sift every material Passage; and I persuade my self the Drift ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... man of the most exact habits, painfully conscientious in all his dealings, and absolutely devoid of vices, unless, indeed, his extravagance in the purchase of old furniture might be classed under that head. To people of slipshod habits, his painstaking exactness was of course highly exasperating, and I often myself felt that he was in need of a redeeming vice. If I could have induced him to smoke, take snuff, or indulge in a little innocent gambling, I believe it would have given me a good ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... upon the method of the study of medicine: "In writing therefore, such a natural history of diseases, every merely philosophical hypothesis should be set aside, and the manifest and natural phenomena, however minute, should be noted with the utmost exactness. The usefulness of this procedure cannot be easily overrated, as compared with the subtle inquiries and trifling notions of modern writers, for can there be a shorter, or indeed any other way of coming at the morbific causes, or discovering the curative ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... of religion in the hour of death. A single monk therefore was chosen, either by lot or by some other fair appeal to destiny. Being thus singled out, he was to go forth into the plague-stricken city, and to perform with exactness his priestly duties; then he was to return, not to the interior of the convent, for fear of infecting his brethren, but to a detached building (which I remember) belonging to the establishment, but at some little distance from the inhabited ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... although he could not exactly make out what it was. But Crusoe made memoranda in the note-book of his memory. He jotted down the peculiar phases of his master's new disease with the care and minute exactness of a physician; and, we doubt not, ultimately added the knowledge of the symptoms of homesickness to his ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... of our nature, such as it is, to render men better, even with their imperfections, to assist them by a moral code suited to their strength, or rather to their weakness. His "Characters of our Age" is distinguished for the exactness and variety of the portraits, as well as for the excellence of its style. The philosophy of La Bruyere is unquestionably based on reason, and not ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... even in past days to matters of diet and modes of life. This is still to-day a test of larger applicability. There are those of my profession who have a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... proposed to make other people as wise as themselves, wise in that sort of wisdom [100] regarding which we can really test others, and let them test us, not with the merely approximate results of the Socratic method, but with the exactness we may apply to processes understood to be mechanical, or to the proficiency of quite young students (such as in fact the Sophists were dealing with) by those examinations which are so sufficient in their proper place. It had been as delightful ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... further for the sake of exactness. The light which falls upon a body is divided into two portions, one of which is reflected from the surface of the body; and this is of the same colour as the incident light. If the incident light be white, the superficially reflected light will also be white. ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... intended to mark with particular exactness the day of the journey to Canterbury, he would not have taken such unusual precautions to protect his text from ignorant or careless transcribers. We find him not only recording the altitudes of the sun, at different hours, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... took place, of course, in the woods, but our imagination really supplied the setting. Most stories, however, whatever their character, use setting as carefully and as effectively as possible. Time and place are often given with exactness. Thus Bret Harte says: "As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night." This definite ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... majestic array of war. The British officers gazed with admiration and professional ardour upon the long lines of compact infantry and the well-marshalled cavalry, mustered in their relative proportions and positions with scientific exactness. The sirdar's batteries were chiefly masked by jungle. The scene was striking in its aspect, from the magnitude of the events associated with it, and the excitement it stirred up within the hearts of the brave. Alas, how many noble hearts were necessarily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the Confederate force under command of Lee?" it may be asked. The present writer is unable to state this number with any thing like exactness. The official record, if in existence, is not accessible, and the matter must be left to conjecture. It is tolerably certain, however, that, even after the arrival of Jackson, the army numbered less than seventy-five thousand. Officers ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... travelling at the terrific velocity of one hundred miles a minute, was obvious, and what could be better adapted to the purpose than these magnificent waterways, which completely cover the surface of the planet with such geometrical exactness, that they have always been a source of great wonder to astronomers on Earth. Thousands and thousands of years old, the method of constructing this gigantic system of canals remains enshrouded in the same mystery to the Martians, as that which surrounds ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... disciples could most readily identify. The mere circumstance that almost all the events which attended the close of our Saviour's ministry are crowded into one scene, covered by the roof of a single church, might excite a very justifiable doubt as to the exactness of the topography maintained by the friars of Mount Moriah. "This edifice," says Mr. Maundrell, "is less than one hundred paces long, and not more than sixty wide; and yet it is so contrived, that it is supposed to contain under its roof twelve ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... further reflection, confirmed this judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was the storm-center. This discovery made plain the right and wise course to pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and forecast ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... detailed account of the "deal" Magnus had made with the two delegates. It was pitiless, remorseless, bald. Every statement was substantiated, every statistic verified with Genslinger's meticulous love for exactness. Besides all that, it had the ring of truth. It ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and thus the force of the ventricle in propelling the blood through the system at large come to be neutralized, it is that these mitral valves excel those of the right ventricle in size and strength and exactness of closing. Hence it is essential that there can be no heart without a ventricle, since this must be the source and store-house of the blood. The same law does not hold good in reference to the brain. For almost no genus of birds has a ventricle in the brain, as is ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... consider what result they achieved, and the evidence thus afforded respecting their skill and scientific attainments. In our own time, of course, the astronomer has no difficulty in determining with great exactness the position of any given latitude-parallel. But at the time when the great pyramid was built it must have been a matter of very serious difficulty to determine the position of any required latitude-parallel with a great degree of exactitude. The most ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... deep-voiced, soft-footed, mountain carpenters who worked leisurely and fitfully with Creed were always mightily amused by the exactness of the "town ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... quizzed one another, and they laughed and rivalled one another in speed of work, which they did faithfully and interestedly. It was a good school of human nature, and sooner or later each one was sized up with a deal of exactness. With the sounding of the horn the hoes were left in the field or put on the shoulder for the march to the barn, where, in its little room, the toilet for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the very expert Li Keen appears to have gone beyond himself; the Commander Ling, who is herein represented as being slain by the enemy, is, indeed, the person who is standing before you, and all the other statements are in a like exactness." ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... both, corresponding to what we call sleep. He also showed that the passage of life in the plant, as in the animal, is marked by an unmistakable spasm. He invented, an instrument (Morograph) with which he recorded the critical point of death of a plant with great exactness. He demonstrated, in the most conclusive manner, that there is an essential unity of physiological effects of drugs on plant and animal tissues and showed the modifications which are introduced into these effects by the factor of individual 'constitution.' ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... two mighty suns upon each other many facts about them may be found out. By the most minute and careful measurements, by the use of the spectroscope, and by every resource known to science, astronomers have, indeed, actually found out with a near approach to exactness how far some of these great suns lie from each other, and how large they are in comparison ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... supposed from this that the Emperor was awake, in which he was not mistaken. He dressed in all haste, and had been ten minutes at his post when the Emperor, descending the staircase with Marshal Duroc, perceived him. His Majesty usually took pleasure in showing that he remarked exactness in fulfilling his orders; therefore he stopped a moment, and said to M. Colas, "Ah! already awake, Colas?"—"Yes, Sire; I have not forgotten that valets should be on foot when the masters are awake."—"You have a good ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... definitions, and our object being the exposition of the law of the Roman people, we think that the most advantageous plan will be to commence with an easy and simple path, and then to proceed to details with a most careful and scrupulous exactness of interpretation. Otherwise, if we begin by burdening the student's memory, as yet weak and untrained, with a multitude and variety of matters, one of two things will happen: either we shall cause ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... citizens of greater abilities. But perhaps, sir, such a letter as this may be, for the singularity of it, entertaining to you, who correspond with the politest and most learned men in Europe. But I am satisfied you will excuse its want of exactness and perspicuity, when you consider my education, my being unaccustomed to writings of this nature, and, above all, those calamitous objects which constantly surround us, sufficient to disturb the cleanest imagination, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Folio 1,164, Sheet 10," ordered Powart with his usual decisive exactness. The attendant disappeared, and in less than a minute returned with a large sheet of parchment. Powart immediately located ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... were established courses in science, in literature, and in philosophy, differing from each other mainly in the proportion observed between ancient languages, modern languages, and studies in various sciences and other departments of thought. Each of these courses was laid down with much exactness for the first two years, with large opportunity for choice between subjects in the last two years. The system worked well, and has, from time to time, been modified, as the improvement in the schools of the State, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... lose, thought Rudolph; and rising, measured his distance with a painful, giddy exactness. He would have counted to himself before leaping, but his throat was too dry. He flinched a little, then shot through the air, and landed heavily, one knee on each side, pinning the fellow down as he grappled underneath for the throat. Almost in the same movement he had bounded on foot ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... She got pen and ink and began to write her stepmother's name, over and over, slowly, like a little careful machine: "S. Maitland," "S. Maitland." In her desire to please she discarded her own neat script, and reproduced with surprising exactness the rough signature which she knew so well. But all the while her anxious thoughts were with her brother. She wished he had not rushed off with Elizabeth. If he had only come himself into the detested dining-room, his mother would have bidden him sign the letters; ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... depends on illusions for its appeal, it will, of course, be well supplied with the machinery to produce the required sounds. And those that do not depend on exactness of illusion can usually secure the effects required by calling on the drummer with his very effective box-of-tricks to help out ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... out her brother's instructions with great exactness, and was in a great fright when her aunt came in to see her in bed, lest she should notice that the window was open. However, the night was a quiet one, and the curtains fell partly across the blind, so that Miss Scudamore suspected nothing, but Rhoda felt great relief when she said good-night, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... observation. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement, swell before their eyes into enormities. As they discern with great exactness, they comprehend but a narrow compass, and know nothing of the justness of the design, the general spirit of the performance, the artifice of connection, or the harmony of the parts; they never, conceive how small a proportion that which they are busy in contemplating bears to the whole, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... abject dependants was interested in the support of the actual government from the dread of a revolution, which might at once confound their hopes and intercept the reward of their services. In this divine hierarchy (for such it is frequently styled) every rank was marked with the most scrupulous exactness, and its dignity was displayed in a variety of trifling and solemn ceremonies, which it was a study to learn, and a sacrilege to neglect. [74] The purity of the Latin language was debased, by adopting, in the intercourse of pride and flattery, a profusion ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... express our thoughts with greater exactness we may need to expand a word modifier into several words; as, A long ride brought us there A ride of one hundred miles brought us to Chicago. These groups of words, of one hundred miles and to Chicago—the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... face. But we neither of us knew where she was, we scarcely remembered her married name! And so there was nothing to be done—except, what I did at once in spite of Herbert's rallying, to mark down the day and hour with scrupulous exactness ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... to Saxe; and he could see that, except where the piece was broken away, they exactly matched, every angle on the one side having its depression on the other, the curves following each other with marvellous exactness, just as if the fracture were one of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... temperament in trying not to have a school! A priori, I spurn them, every one. The people whom I see often and whom you designate cultivate all that I scorn and are indifferently disturbed about what torments me. I regard as very secondary, technical detail, local exactness, in short the historical and precise side of things. I am seeking above all for beauty, which my companions pursue but languidly. I see them insensible when I am ravaged with admiration or horror. Phrases make me swoon with pleasure ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... published by M. Buisson, M. Maggiolo, director of these vast statistics, has given the proportion of literate and illiterate people for the different departments; now, from department to department, the figures furnished by the signatures on marriage records correspond with sufficient exactness to the number of schools, verified moreover by pastoral visits and by other documents. The most illiterate departments are Cantal, Puy-de-Dome, Nievre, Allier, Vienne, Haute-Vienne, Deux-Sevres, Vendee and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... days went by, as orderly as in a Religious House; he rose at a fixed hour, observed the greatest exactness in his devotions, and did his utmost to prevent any visitors being admitted to see him, or any from another cell coming into his own, until he had finished his first meditation and said his office. And there began to fall upon him a kind of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... brandy; then undid the fastening of his wallet, and selected from amid its contents a neatly and skilfully made hump, which, having previously removed his coat, he dexterously transferred to his shoulder, and then donned a jacket into which the hump fitted with extraordinary exactness. He next drew from his bosom a small hand-glass, and painted and dyed his face with different preparations, so that even Barbara would have failed to recognise her friend and admirer. Having placed a patch over one eye, and stuck a chin-tuft of black hair under his lip, he seemed ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... evident the good service that Francisco Bravo rendered your Majesty. He also rendered service on this expedition; for he embarked on the flagship, and took with him twelve men at his own cost. His presence proved of great importance, for he attended to his orders with great energy, exactness, and labor, while his advice and counsel were among the best that the general had. The latter declared the same to me, and that Bravo should be highly esteemed for the manner in which he distinguished himself in your Majesty's service on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... shortly before Christmas, undeniably glad to be back and very gentle with them all. She set to work almost immediately on the gifts, wrapping them and tying them with methodical exactness, sticking a tiny sprig of holly through the ribbon bow, and writing cards with neatness and care. She hung up wreaths and decorated the house, and when she was through with her work she went to her room and sat with her hands folded, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wondering what was coming. Lawyer Ripley thereupon plunged into a narration of the happenings of the day before, telling it all with a lawyer's exactness of statement. ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... Constitution. All the stipulations, contained in the Constitution, in favor of the slaveholding States which are already in the Union, ought to be fulfilled, and so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter."!!! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... so used to this sort of loose comparison, this reckless waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless it is driven in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. With the irritating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straight lines which lights up every truly American eye, you will certainly ask when this exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get the dates, you will doubt the facts. It is your own fault if they are tiresome; you might easily read them all in the "Iconographie de ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... made an early display of classical taste, and the diligent cultivation of it. Some of his school exercises are extant, and show more than a promise of that refinement and exactness, which afterwards distinguished his performances at Christ Church. The Latin version of the fragment of Simonides, as beautiful as any thing in the whole range of poetical imitation, though published ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... conclusion, to deal with the administration of these treaties and to consider the future of these interesting aboriginal races. I remark in the first place that the provisions of these treaties must be carried out with the utmost good faith and the nicest exactness. The Indians of Canada have, owing to the manner in which they were dealt with for generations by the Hudson's Bay Company, the former rulers of these vast territories, an abiding confidence in the Government of the Queen, or the Great Mother, as they style her. This must not, at all hazards, ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... the Council, stood at the head of each section and department of the new organization. To his approval every measure in the Church was referred, and the Jesuits executed his instructions with punctual exactness. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Imperial fete-days with scrupulous exactness, and their loyalty to the emperor is much akin to religious awe. The whole Imperial family is the object of great respect, and whatever is commanded in the name of the emperor meets the most cheerful acquiescence. One finds the portrait of Alexander in almost every house, and I never heard ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... men were subscribers to the cult: no detail was too small for them in their search for truth. They applied it to the art of the present as well as to that of the past: and they analyzed the private life of certain of the more notorious of their contemporaries with the same passion for exactness. It was a queer thing that they were possessed of the smallest details of scenes which are usually enacted without witnesses. It was really as though the persons concerned had been the first to give exact information to the public out ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... these mirrors, these reflections of the heavens, showed like white patches on the green water, and in them the leaves of the ivy which had spread along the wall over the well were repeated with marvellous exactness. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... by numerous little globules of mercury deposited over them. Just the right quantity of mercury leaves the impression of a transparent, pearly white tone, which improves in the highest degree in gilding. To mercurialize with exactness is a nice point. If there is reason to suspect having timed rather short in the camera, reduce the time over mercury in a corresponding proportion. A dark impression will be ruined by the quantity of mercury which would only ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... author endowed with such talents should consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in the representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers can be supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of their exactness. To write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be much such a fantasy as to build a modern abbey, or an English pagoda. For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius; but a second ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... eight o'clock, and reconnoitred with great exactness, the stranger began to steer gradually nearer and nearer, till at length it was judged that she was within range. A gun was accordingly fired from the 'Volcano,' and another from the transport; the balls from both of which ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... teachings of the Lord stand for ever, yet unto none is it possible to follow them in exactness, and therefore is there none that may attain unto supreme enlightenment in these last days of the ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... psychology to explore the principles of this subtile mental power, and might go far to give us a philosophy of Anticipation. The men of facts, men of the understanding, observers,—as we might suppose,—universally show a disposition to shun theorizing, as opposed to the exactness of demonstrative science. And yet it is quite certain, that, in proportion as one rises to a more liberal apprehension, the immense provisional power of speculative ideas becomes apparent. Laplace asserted that no great discovery was ever made without a great guess; and long before, Plato had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... have built up the most sure and most solid of all the sciences, refuse to invite others to join them in vain speculation. The writer has, therefore, in this short History, tried to follow that great master, Airy, whose pupil he was, and the key to whose character was exactness and accuracy; and he recognises that Science is impotent except in her ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... honor of laying before your Lordships yesterday, and in what I may further trouble you with to-day, I wish to observe a distinction, which if I did not lay down so perfectly as I ought, I hope I shall now be able to mark it out with sufficient exactness and perspicuity. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the Spartacides' camp with as much exactness as he could, and even drew a rough map of the surrounding country, marking the place where he had seen the American prisoner ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... be in many things. To go no further than the last example which has been given—the mathematician could perceive the derangement in the planetary orbits, could demonstrate that it must ensue from the mutual action of the heavenly bodies on each other, could calculate its progress with the utmost exactness, could tell with all nicety how much it would alter the forms of the orbits in a given time, could foresee the time when the whole system must be irretrievably destroyed by its operation as a mathematical certainty. Nothing, that we call evil can be much ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... monkey-bread tree, which the Woloffs call goui in their language. Its height was nothing extraordinary, being but about sixty feet; but its trunk was of prodigious dimensions. I spanned it thirteen times with my arms stretched out, but it was more; and, for greater exactness, I at last measured it with twine, and found its circumference to be sixty-five feet, its diameter consequently nearly twenty-two feet. I believe there has never been any thing seen equal to it in any country; and, I am persuaded ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... {20} dog being the descendants of distinct wild stocks, is their resemblance in various countries to distinct species still existing there. It must, however, be admitted that the comparison between the wild and domesticated animal has been made but in few cases with sufficient exactness. Before entering on details, it will be well to show that there is no a priori difficulty in the belief that several canine species have been domesticated; for there is much difficulty in this respect with some other domestic quadrupeds and birds. Members of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... have formed as many distinguished pupils as Massart, for in 1843 he was appointed professor of violin at the Paris Conservatoire, where his energy, care, exactness, and thoroughness brought him an immense reputation. Lotto, Wieniawski, Teresina Tua, and a host of other distinguished violinists studied under him: among them also was Charles M. Loeffler, of the ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged from Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and even the identical sow, which had served as a guide to Aeneas, was preserved well pickled in the Roman temple of Vesta. With the lying disposition of a poet these chroniclers of rank combine all the tiresome exactness of a notary, and treat their great subject throughout with the dulness which necessarily results from the elimination at once of all poetical and all historical elements. When we read, for instance, in Piso ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... were woven especially to fit certain pieces of furniture. The tapestry weavers now used thousands of colors in place of the nineteen used in the early days, and this enabled them to copy with great exactness the charming pictures of Watteau and Boucher. The idea of sitting on beautiful ladies and gentlemen airily playing at country life, does not appeal to our modern taste, but it seems to be in accord with ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... aspired to the character of a wit and a poet, and occasionally employed hours which should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more rare, and more extraordinary facts, found only among some favored beings. These facts, known for a long time, surrounded with some mystery, and attributed in a vague manner "to the power of the imagination," have been studied in our own day with much more system and exactness. For our purpose we need to recall only a few ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... exactness are indispensable in a narrative, and the habit of exaggerating destroys the power of accurate observation and recollection which would render the story truly interesting. If, instead of trying to embellish her account with the ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... put down with exactness all that happened, as well as I can remember, since last I made an entry. Not a detail that I can recall must be forgotten. In all calmness I ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... before which reclined innocent pussy, with eyes half-closed, gazing intently at the flames as they crept slowly around the logs, and uniting, darted suddenly up the wide-mouthed chimney. The pine floor and splint chairs were scoured with scrupulous exactness; a small, oblong looking-glass, crowned with shrubs of evergreen, rested upon the high mantle-piece; the two windows were adorned with curtains of coarse, but milk-white linen, and, in one corner, stood a quaint bedstead ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... butt was yet to be ascertained; and this, though apparently a simple operation, cost me a good deal of consideration, before I could get at it with any degree of exactness. You may fancy that it would have been easy enough to get at the length, by just placing the stick parallel to the cask, and notching it square with the ends of the latter? And so it might be easy enough, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... making reply such as might have been expected from one of his mathematical exactness, Professor Featherwit gave a cry of dismay, while hurriedly moving to and fro in their contracted quarters, for the time being forgetful of all other ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... plains which extend endlessly in all directions. But for this very reason everything appears like a sharply designed and perfectly colored map, and nowhere is the eye gratified by really beautiful landscapes—just as we German compilers, owing to the honorable exactness with which we attempt to give all and everything, never appear to think of giving the details in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of his knowledge impressed me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... in a position to speak with authority or exactness of the events which will shortly take place in the British fleet. I am a mere soldier, you understand. But let us suppose a case. King William sails early to-morrow, with Rear-Admiral Rooke's squadron, for the Maese. Let us suppose that no sooner is his Majesty ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... contained in the Constitution in favor of the slave-holding States which are already in the Union ought to be fulfilled, and, so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit and to the exactness of their letter. Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves; they have never submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I shall concur, therefore, in no ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and ends of mighty chiefs, the heads of the great families which dwelt in this or that district of the island. These were told by men who lived on the very spot, and told with a minuteness and exactness, as to time and place, that will bear the strictest examination. Such a Saga is that of Njal, which we now lay before our readers in an English garb. Of all the Sagas relating to Iceland, this tragic story bears away the palm for truthfulness and beauty. To use the ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... translations have been revised in accordance with the best critical texts available. The aim in the revision has been accuracy and closeness to the original without too gross violation of the English idiom, and with exactness in the rendering of ecclesiastical and theological technical terms. Originality is hardly to be expected in such ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... had turned the primed propellers, the four mighty wings whirred—and four Minims were hurled head over heels a foot away, snapped from their positions. The sound of the wings was almost too exact an imitation of the snarl of a starting plane—the comparison was absurd in its exactness of timbre and resonance. It was only a test, however, and the moment the queen became quiet the upset mechanics clambered back. They crawled beneath her, scraped her feet and antennae, licked her eyes and jaws, and went over every shred of wing tissue. Then again she ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... was a far greater test of Columbus's skill as a navigator than the first voyage had been. If his navigation had been more haphazard he might never have found again the islands of his first discovery; and the fact that he made a landfall exactly where he wished to make it shows a high degree of exactness in his method of ascertaining latitude, and is another instance of his skill in estimating his dead-reckoning. If he had been equipped with a modern quadrant and Greenwich chronometers he could not have made a quicker voyage nor a ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the lapse of years been hopelessly maimed or totally wrecked while trying to traverse that roadway I shall not presume to say, for as a man of science I glory in exactness and I eschew surmise. This much I know, for I have seen it time and again during the last four months: nothing that moves on wheels has ventured upon that roadway that it did not sink slowly but ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... of structure, in flexibility and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the language of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration which communicates the superhuman thought, must be the gradual development ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
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