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More "Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wasn't Douglas who held his eye. It was the two Lani who followed him into the room. Every line of their bodies was perfection that spoke volumes about generations of breeding for physical elegance. They moved with a co-ordinated grace that made Douglas look even more clumsy by contrast. And they were identical, twin cream-and-gold works of art. They ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... of you for it, though you must never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word between you and the poor devil upstairs. And up to a certain point, Bunny, I really thought you played the scene to perfection." ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Custom-House, on a regular income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... relating to the individual. Although after puberty the sexual organs are capable of reproduction, yet it by no means follows that they should be used for that purpose. Their early activity is intended for the perfection of the body and mind, and not for the continuation of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... There was not a tailor in Gotham who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the privilege of making Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers were his especial passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice. He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he would ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... part with his last dollar sooner than with it. Such treasures of the lens-maker's art can not, perhaps, be commanded at will, yet, they are turned out with increasing frequency, and the best artists are generally able, at all times, to approximate so closely to perfection that any shortcoming may ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... both be new. Similarly it was said that the rope which turned the roller should be new; if possible it should be woven of strands taken from a gallows rope with which people had been hanged, but this was a counsel of perfection ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... until they find the truffles. Good truffles are easily distinguished by their agreeable perfume; they should be light in proportion to their size, and elastic when pressed by the finger. To have them in perfection, they should be quite fresh, as their aroma is considerably diminished by any conserving process. Truffles are stimulating and beating. Weak stomachs digest them with difficulty. Some of the culinary uses to which they are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... others. Gallic in its love of beauty, loving life and all its loveliest expressions, it was a court of dance and song—the heart of hearts of Gruyere, itself the centre and the very definition of Romand Switzerland. Often intermarried, the Burgundian counts preserved in its perfection the blond beauty of their ancient race, surpassing in athletic skill the strongest of their subjects, and with the same bonhomie with which their conquering ancestors had mingled with their vassals, they ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... enforce this lawe vpon vs? If we do contrarie to that which thou doest commaunde / verely we synne / and yf we go not about to do it we synne / we shall synne also yf we go aboute to do that which thou commaundest / for we want of perfection / neyther do we obey as we sholde do: wherfore do what we will / we shall not auoyde synne: vnto this the Lorde wolde aunswer. The thinges that I do propounde to be obserued of you are iuste and perfect / no man can accuse them of wickednes / But in that ye are weake and do fall / and faile ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... except as waste and disorder and carelessness were painful to him. He suffered to promote a better state of things, as many a woman whose love is for books or pictures or society suffers for the perfection of her housekeeping, and sacrifices her taste to achieve it. He would have liked better to read, to go to lectures, to hear sermons; with the knowledge of Mr. Evans's life as an editor and the incentive of a writer near him, he would have liked to try again if he could not write something, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... way so well as by association of this sort can be created the feeling of solidarity in our literature, and the recognition of its power. It is not expected to raise any standard of perfection, or in any way to hamper individual development, but a body of concentrated opinion may raise the standard by promoting healthful and helpful criticism, by discouraging mediocrity and meretricious smartness, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Nature alone that can bring light out of darkness, and order out of confusion. Who is he that causeth the mole, from his secret path of darkness, to throw up the gem, the gold, and the precious ore? The same that from the mouths of babes and sucklings can extract the perfection of praise, and who can make the most abject of his creatures instrumental in bringing the most ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Ossiander, having obtained the approbation of his friend Cranmer, published the laborious work of the Harmony of the Gospels in 1537. In 1534 the archbishop completed the dearest wish of his heart, the removal of every obstacle to the perfection of the Reformation, by the subscription of the nobles and bishops to the king's sole supremacy. Only bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More made objection; and their agreement not to oppose the succession, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Thomas here in all his force. He offers suggestion rather than proof;—apology—the weaker because of obvious effort to apologize—rather than defence, for Infinite Goodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a new proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a machine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force. Rigid ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... problem even thus limited is exceedingly great. The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we should expect. Lord Macaulay tells us that 'In every experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two principles operating everywhere and always, might well have been expected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' Indeed, taking verifiable progress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... women. A single defect—a thick ankle, a hoarse voice, a glass eye—was enough to make him utterly indifferent. And here for the first time in his life he was beside a girl who seemed to him the incarnation of physical perfection. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... any danger; the last discharge had done its work to perfection, and with his knees bent under him, the boar lay just as he had plowed into the mire, having not even ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... of life is to renew and augment your power by its expenditure. It was intimated some eighteen centuries since that the highest are obtained only by loss of the same; and the transmutation of loss into gain is the essence and perfection of all spiritual economies. Now of this art of arts he is already master who steadily draws upon his own spiritual resources. The soul is an extraordinary well; the way to replenish is to draw from it. It is more miraculous than the widow's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... is interesting to look into the past, particularly to those centuries known as the Middle Ages, in which the handicrafts flourished in special perfection, and to see for ourselves how these crafts were pursued, and exactly what these arts really were. Many people talk learnedly of the delightful revival of the arts and crafts without having a very definite idea of the original processes which are being ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... observer would never dream of bestowing upon the slight, frail creature who timidly shrunk from notice, any more flattering epithet than 'rather a pretty girl,' while those who admired only the rosy beauty of physical perfection pronounced her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... he, imitating the marshal's voice to perfection, "I see it's no use picking and choosing among such a trashy lot. Give me the first crown that comes to hand, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... now riches flowed in to Agrippa by his enjoyment of so large a dominion; nor did he abuse the money he had on small matters, but he began to encompass Jerusalem with such a wall, which, had it been brought to perfection, had made it impracticable for the Romans to take it by siege; but his death, which happened at Cesarea, before he had raised the walls to their due height, prevented him. He had then reigned three years, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... wonderful age we live in! Fancy bringing the art of teaching to such perfection that the blind can be taught to sew! Our young folks ought to be very thankful that they are growing up at a time when teachers endeavor to make learning a pleasure as well as ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... surprised; and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... own superior height and superior muscular development,—but what were these physical advantages compared to the classic perfection of Sah-luma's beauty?—beauty combining the delicate with the vigorous, such as is shadowed forth in the artist-conceptions of the god Apollo. His features, faultlessly regular, were redeemed from all effeminacy by the ennobling impress of high thought ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... we quickened our pace, making the branches fall off more than ever. Then—'The wheelbarrow,' said the professor, 'amazes us by its combined simplicity and perfection. The conception of a man of universal genius and vast erudition,—I allude to Leonardo da Vinci, the marvellous Florentine,—it has for upwards of three hundred years served mankind as a humble but valued ally. In every ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... Coming back to it last evening from a round of ruins one felt as if the humbler Sisters sacrificed to spare it were pleading with one not to forget them in the contemplation of its dearly-bought perfection. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... of the sacrifices which its hierophants undergo in order to minister to our pleasure the sturdiest Hedonist cannot escape misgivings. Still, we may find consolation in the thought that sacrifice is necessary to perfection. Such sacrifices take various forms. In the case of NIJINSKY we see a man of immense brain power specialising in a most exhausting form of physical culture to remedy his extreme delicacy. At the opposite extreme we find cases ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... Othello. In short, it was from first to last a gem of the noblest kind, which can be no otherwise defined than leaving every one at liberty to attach as much excellence to it as he can conceive, and then suppose Barry to have reached that point of perfection. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... and pretty Parisian winter dress arranged to perfection, contemplating with approval the sitting-room that had been appropriated to her, the October sunshine lighting up the many- tinted trees around the smooth-shaven dewy lawn, and a bright fire on the hearth, shelves and chiffoniers awaiting her property, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reacts stimulatingly on that which gave it birth, as the vitality of children reacts stimulatingly on the vitality of parents. It provides a concrete symbol of that which is invisible and intangible, and mankind is not yet so advanced in the path of spiritual perfection that we can afford to dispense with concrete symbols. Now, if we maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a festival—and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... finely executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... from some human being, it was still possible to find the utmost satisfaction for every need and craving. He could imagine as existing, as waiting for him, he knew not where, a completeness of understanding, a perfection of response, that would reach all the gamut of his feelings and sensations from the most poetical to the most entirely physical, a beauty of relationship so transfiguring that not only would she—it went without saying that this completion was a woman—be perfectly beautiful in its light but, what ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the higher law of the Tarykat, or "path" to perfection. The knowledge of this is not for the common people, but for those only who endeavor to obey the commands of Allah, not as external ordinances and ceremonies, but because they appreciate their justness, and who practise ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... eventide the rustics delighted to meet. As experience gave him increased command over the hill harp, his ambition to produce strains of greater beauty and refinement also increased. By and by his minstrel numbers manifested a vigour and perfection which rendered them the admiration of persons of higher rank, and more competent powers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... next lull. "He who to the perfection of Rome hath added the perfection of the East; who to the arm of conquest, which is Western, hath also the art needful to the enjoyment of dominion, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... slightest suspicion, or jealous feeling in D'Effernay's mind. She thanked him in her heart for this forbearance, but her thoughts were in another world; she took little heed of what passed around her. Her husband was in an excelled temper; he played the part of host to perfection and when the two officers were established comfortably by the fire, in the captain's room, smoking together, they could not but do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... occurred, and there was another in which a pictorial address of Daniel in the lion's den found its rightful owner, who had become talked about by his visit to a menagerie just before. But in case they should all think that at last perfection had been reached, there was another circumstance that he could relate from his own personal experience. Wanting to send a parcel to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, he foolishly sent it to his private address, at 40, Portman Square, instead of his official residence, he being Chancellor of Exchequer ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... riches are the result of labor. They increase in the same ratio as the result does to the effort. Absolute perfection, of which God is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz., effort ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... made to feel that his or her absence would have detracted from the happiness of the rest; and that is the true art of treating one's guests—an art which both the vicar and Miss Pimpernell had apparently studied to perfection, although it really ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all our own work," explains the Captain. "Our men built the hut, and the materials only cost about Rs. 25!" Certainly this is the perfection of cheapness in the way of house building! A little further inside the enclosure you come to more huts, in some of which the men live, while others serve for quarters for the native officers who assist ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... grandfather, or Mr. Horne of Braehead, Mr. Leckie of Peebles, Mr. Harper of Lanark, as inveterate in argument as he was warm in heart, Mr. Comrie of Penicuik, with his keen, Voltaire-like face, and much of that unhappy and unique man's wit, and sense, and perfection of expression, without his darker and baser qualities. I can hear their hearty talk, can see them coming and going between the meetinghouse and the Tent on the side of the burn, and then the Monday dinner, and the cheerful talk, and the many clerical stories and pleasantries, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... theory and the working hypothesis. It regards the fossil not as a petrified skeleton, but as having belonged to a moving and feeding animal; every joint and facet has a meaning, each cusp a certain significance. Rising to the philosophy of the matter, it brings the mechanical perfection and adaptiveness of different types into relation with environment, with changes of herbage, with the introduction of grass. In this survey of competition it speculates upon the causes of the rise, spread, and extinction ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... type, to completely exhaust the possibilities of which is of late announced as the sum of human destiny. They lived under the hallucination of dawning literature, when printed books implied sacred and classical perfection; and they could by no means have foreseen the royal folios of the "New York Herald" and "Tribune," or the marvellous inanities about the past, present, and future, which figure in an indescribable list of duodecimo fiction, theology, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... calm so peaceful, no peace so idyllic as that which is to be found on a Western ranch on a fine summer evening. Life at such a time and in such a place is at its smoothest, its almost Utopian perfection. The whole atmosphere is laden with a sense of good-fellowship between men and between beasts. The day's work is over, and men idle and smoke, awaiting the pleasures of an ample fare with appetites healthily sharp-set, and lounge contentedly, contemplating their coming ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... dressed in Feisul's clothes; and though he didn't look a bit like Feisul from a yard away, in the mist at ten yards, provided you were looking for Feisul, you'd have taken your Bible oath he was the man; for he had the gesture and mannerism copied to perfection. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air—a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby's perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late she had managed not to be left alone ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conscience; its exquisite study and choice of effect; its deference paid to decorum,—decorum, we mean, in taste, as distinguished from morals; its infinite patience and labor of art, achieving the perfection of grace and of ease,—in one word, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... and those hard sayings that make men turn away:—the imagined dread of losing life to find it; the counsel of perfection that the neighbor shall be loved as self; the fancied injury and outrage that made it hard for rich men to enter the kingdom. Of these, as of a hundred other sayings, he saw the necessary truth. It all seemed easy now. The world would see it with him; it ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... appealed to the opposite sex quite generally and irresistibly as a worthy helpmate. The only trouble was that she began to bore her suitors somewhat too early in the game, and they never got far enough to propose marriage. Flaws in her apparent perfection appeared from day to day and chilled the growth of the various young loves that had budded so auspiciously. She always agreed with everybody and everything in sight, even to the point of changing her mind on the instant, if circumstances seemed ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that men who at first will not allow the verdict of perfection they pronounce upon their sweethearts or wives to be disturbed by God's own testimony to the contrary, will, once suspecting their purity, morally hang them upon evidence they would be ashamed to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... important commercial avenue of the Rhone valley from Massilia (Marseilles), from Greece (via Venetia), and possibly from Etruria. Prehistoric archaeology affords abundant proofs that, in countries of Celtic speech, metal-working in bronze, iron, and gold reached a remarkably high pitch of perfection, and this is a clear indication that Celtic countries and districts which were on the line of trade routes, like the Rhone valley, had attained to a material civilisation of no mean character before the Roman conquest. In Britain, too, the districts that were in touch with continental commerce ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... With that end in view, he could see why Patsy's shack had been chosen for the attack. Patsy's shack was the closest to where they had been holding the cattle. It was absurdly simple, and evidently the ruse had worked to perfection. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... devotion; and they often received, in the most literal sense, those rigid precepts of Christ and the apostles, to which the prudence of succeeding commentators has applied a looser and more figurative mode of interpretation. Ambitious to exalt the perfection of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self-mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve, in our present state of weakness and corruption. A doctrine so extraordinary ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... (Aug. 1820) remarks of this portion of the poem (184 fol.): "Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry has never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main purpose of his ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... excellent orchestra here, playing the musical game of "follow my leader" to perfection, and kept together, as sheep, by a CROOK. Mr. HARRY MONKHOUSE is very droll in the little he has to do. Mr. SHALE's speech as the Court Painter is capitally given, but there isn't enough of it. A touch more, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... both men and women,—because the ideal, which the mind created, is realized to a greater or less degree, although the loftier the archetype, the less seldom is it found. Nor is it necessary that perfection should be found. A person may have faults which alienate and disenchant, but with these there may be virtues so radiant that the worship, though imperfect, remains,—a respect, on the whole, so great that the soul is lifted to admiration. Who can love this perishable ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... a lack of balance. It is an almost inevitable defect, arising from its very grandeur. A mediocre work may quite easily be perfect of its kind; but it is rarely that a work lofty aim attains perfection. A landscape of little dells and smiling meadows is brought more readily into pleasing harmony than a landscape of dazzling Alps, torrents, glaciers, and tempests; for the heights may sometimes overwhelm ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... before mentioned have walks around and across them, and are the common promenade of all who choose to use them. In the season of harvest or vintage, nothing can be more charming than these walks; the French gaiety and simplicity, not to say puerility, is then seen in all its perfection; it is then a common sport amongst the ladies and the gallants of the town to chase each other amongst the standing corn, and as they endeavour to keep to the furrows, which are too narrow for their feet, the chace is generally terminated by ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... may say with more truth that we show you hospitality with ready good-will, we will give you amusement and pleasure by making one of our comrades sing: he will be here before long, and he is a very intelligent youth and deep in love, and what is more he can read and write and play on the rebeck to perfection." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the camelia was his flower, so proudly beautiful! His soul was 'permeated with loveliness,' and asked no fragrance. Regina is a great white creature, lovely to behold, and, perfectly conscious of her perfection, no more actively charming than the Ino of Foley. He won Milly White's favor by applauding her love for wild flowers, declaring that a field of buttercups reminded him of the 'spangled heavens,' and that on summer ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers after the [Greek: to kalon].[242] We must recognize the fact that the Romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the Greeks, and, having described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should it ever be attained. It is so in the De Oratore, as to which we must begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... of the Marquise was wrinkled with surprise. She stood amidst all the wonders of her magnificent drawing-room like a dainty Dresden doll—petite, cold, dressed to perfection. Her manner and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... certificates describing the owner (age, height, color of eyes, hair, complexion, and occupation), describing boat (a pine dugout), certifying to the strict loyalty and good citizenship of the owner, signed by general superintendent, and approved by general commanding. Isn't that red tape to perfection? They never went to Coffin's to take the boats, nor did they ever go there to get soldiers—strange, when it is thought by many that there is nearly a regiment on that plantation. Perhaps they feared ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent looking. To run your eyes over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of his own weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn't run that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct that was positively grewsome for divining when work was to be done and for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying lost he was nothing short of inspired. But when it came to work, the way that intelligence dribbled out ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... in God obliges Him to be IMMUTABLE. He is actuality, through and through. Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change. Furthermore, He is IMMENSE, BOUNDLESS; for could He be outlined in space, He would be composite, and this would contradict his indivisibility. He is therefore OMNIPRESENT, indivisibly there, at every ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... since thou hast seen what is the form of perfect and imperfect good, now I think we must show in what this perfection of happiness is placed. And inquire first whether there can be any such good extant in the world, as thou hast defined; lest, contrary to truth, we be deceived with an empty show of thought. But it cannot be denied that there is some such thing extant which is as it were the fountain ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... thankful to say that we both showed up pretty well. Peter told his story to perfection, not pitching it too high, and asking me now and then for a name or to verify some detail. Captain Zorn ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... suit of blue serge, a panama hat, and patent-leather shoes which hurt his feet. Moreover, he carried a new walking stick with a great gold head and there was a huge pearl scarf-pin in his necktie Besides all this, his hair and beard had been trimmed to perfection by a Holland House barber. Every morning his wife was obliged to run a flatiron over his trousers to perpetuate the crease. Altogether Anderson was a revelation not only to his family and to the town at large, but to himself as well. He fairly staggered every time he got a glimpse of himself ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... change in the Ministry, and might array the two Houses of Parliament in angry hostility against each other. But here lay the consummate skill of the Premier. He was playing a most difficult role, and he played it to perfection. He could not rely on the support of the Radicals. He must therefore make amends for their possible defection by drawing largely on the Conservative strength. The great danger was, that, while conciliating the Conservatives by a show of concession, he should alienate his own party ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... success adequate to their endeavors. The system of modern France on this subject he investigates and applauds, as "one of those attempts to improve the condition of human kind, which, although it may ultimately fail, deserves admiration, as approaching more nearly than any other to the ideal perfection of uniformity in weights and measures." After stating the difficulties which prevented other nations from seconding the endeavors of France, Mr. Adams concludes this elaborate treatise with the opinion that universal uniformity on the subject can only be effected by a general ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... mediaevalism, the cleaning and whitewashing of the apartments, have probably induced the spectre to take up his quarters elsewhere, for his old haunts are hardly recognizable, and he can have no grudge against the soldiers of a republic who carried out his plans with a perfection and promptness of which ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... broken-hearted or the Healer of the blind Bartimoeus, but He "who feedeth among the lilies"—the Alpha and Omega of all aesthetic conception. Christianity he looked upon as the highest moral expression of artistic perfection, and he regarded it with the same admiration he accorded to the Antinous and the Venus of Milo. He was not, however, by nature a pagan as some men are—men who, in the words of De Musset, "Sont venu trop tard dans ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... can have only a sure and certain foundation—that there will be no need of announcing to them, in the manifest danger that threatens, the arousing and quickening of the great and ardent desire that I have always had, that I might succeed in seeing this state in some condition of perfection, and in such repair and defense that it may await, with courage and confidence (after the protection of God), any attack whatever from surrounding enemies, who are known here—until, with the lapse ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... and lamenting on one side of the hearth, while the old Marchioness, on the other, strained her eyes over an embroidery in which the pattern repeated itself like the invocations of a litany, and Don Gervaso, near the smoking oil-lamp, read aloud from the Glories of Mary or the Way of Perfection ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the Streets of London and Westminster, the Countenances of all the young Fellows that pass by me, make me wish my self in Sparta; I meet with such blustering Airs, big Looks, and bold Fronts, that to a superficial Observer would bespeak a Courage above those Grecians. I am arrived to that Perfection in Speculation, that I understand the Language of the Eyes, which would be a great misfortune to me, had I not corrected the Testiness of old Age by Philosophy. There is scarce a Man in a red Coat who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... adapting each created thing to its special purpose, and from the whole realm of nature may they be taught lessons in parables, and their hearts be led upward to God Himself, who made all things to reflect His own perfection ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... Basaltic lavas are frequently spongy or pumiceous, especially near their surfaces; and, in course of time, the steam cavities become filled with secondary minerals such as calcite, chlorite and zeolites. Another characteristic of this group of rocks is the perfection with which many of them show prismatic or columnar jointing, a structure often called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the fifty-first—the words never more sincerely accepted, even when chanted to all the perfection of choral music, in the Sistine Chapel or in St. Peter's, than when, in the ears of constant sufferers for their Christian faith, ribald voices contemptuously sang or drawled ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... eyes and beseeches the brother she loves to hearken to what she will tell him while the Furies are at peace for the moment.... As I read and re-read this translation, I seemed to be aware of a kind of fog that shrouded the forms of Greek perfection, a fog I could not drive away. I pictured the original text to myself as more nervous and pitched in a different accent. Feeling a keen desire to get a precise idea of the thing, I went to Monsieur Gail, who was the Professor ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... admired friend Lord Bolingbroke. For as to the fear of sea-sickness, that did not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would not have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover to Calais. It is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so constant. But it is certain that, long before he passed the meridian of his life, Pope had come to view this confinement ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... think children ought to be beaten. The ill-tempered vulgarity that instinctively strikes at and hurts a thing that annoys it (and all children are annoying), and the simple stupidity that requires from a child perfection beyond the reach of the wisest and best adults (perfect truthfulness coupled with perfect obedience is quite a common condition of leaving a child unwhipped), produce a good deal of flagellation among people who not only do not lust after it, but who hit the harder because they are ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... advance of natural science in our day. This advance is due to the vast improvements in the instruments used in sense-observation. And it is in the very nature of man to bring some of his faculties to a certain degree of perfection at the expense of others. Exact sense-observation, which has been evolved to such an important extent by natural science, was bound to leave in the background the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the hidden worlds. But the time has come ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... civilisation has reason to be proud, it is the amelioration that has been effected in punishment for crimes. Nor is it yet very long since we began to get quit of the shame of our folly and inhumanity, if we have not traces of these yet, coming out like sympathetic ink dried by the choler of self-perfection and a false philosophy, as in such writings as the latter-day pamphlets. How a man who loves his species, and has a heart, will hang his head abashed as he turns his vision back no further than the sixteenth century, and sees the writhing creatures—often ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... glorious region, and we send you the enclosed sketch to show our picture of comfort and perfection. I assure you, nightly as we sit down to our evening repast, or later round our wood fire in our "parlour," we congratulate each other, and fancy we would not change places with the highest of the land, the air and life are ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... remarkable train. Not merely did its construction, length, tonnage and ultimate mileage set up new records, but in it the idealist's dream of perfection ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... those who had the pleasure of listening to William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the limpidity of his scales, the neat finish of his phrasing. Old style, I hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching more nearly perfection than the splashing, floundering, fly-by-night, hysterical, smash-the-ivories school of these latter days. Music, not noise—that's what we are after in piano playing, the higher piano playing. All the rest ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... toes did in front somewhat after the pattern of Ebony's pedal arrangements, as Rosco remarked when they were being fitted on for another trial. At last, by dint of perseverance, the wooden legs were perfected, and Rosco re-acquired the art of walking to such perfection, that he was to be seen, almost at all times and in all weathers, stumping about the village, his chief difficulty being that when he chanced to fall, which he often did, he was obliged either to get some one to help him up, or to crawl home; for, being unable to get his knees ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... "You should have heard her solicitude when no word came from you, and was there not some joy in her face when you appeared that could not have put itself into words?" cried Allin Wharton eagerly, for he always resented the least suspicion of a non-perfection ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... has succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... in their respective religions. For myself, I cannot but believe that the world has only yet begun. It is impossible that the Creator should destroy the world in its present imperfect state. No—the world will go on yet thousands of years on years in the path of improvement unto (shall I say?) perfection. At any rate, I belong to those whose aspirations are for the future and not for the past. I am not enamoured with Hebrew patriarchal innocence, or Grecian classic polish and freedom, or Christian mediæval chivalry of the past. I am of the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... bought up the factories of my competitors, so as to control the market, and as I used so much tin-plate I became interested in the manufacture of this product, and invested a good deal of money in the production and perfection of American tin. My factories were now scattered all along the coast, even to California, where I made the cans for the great quantities of canned fruits they ship from that section every year. Of course the business made me rich, and I bought real estate with my extra money, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... with' supernatural qualities, and inhabiting the recesses of the earth. Resembling men in their general appearance, the manner of their existence, and their habits of life, they far excel the miserable Laplanders in perfection of nature, felicity of situation, and skill in mechanical arts. From all these advantages, however, after the partial conversion of the Laplanders, the subterranean people have derived no farther credit, than to be confounded with the devils and magicians of the dark ages ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... but the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance, hovers ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... wrings the last drop of agony out of that subject which it is so easy to make pathetic and effective. Dickens could not have done it, Bret Harte could not have done it, Kipling could not do it: Cladel did it only once, with this perfection. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... husband's life, had foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruction of her quick and intelligent daughter in an art of far more importance then than now—that of artistic, needlework. Nay, of so much importance was this beautiful art, and to such perfection was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, embroidered by the hand, with its profuse imitations of natural objects, flowers, and birds, and strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds Scots, that a sight of one of those operose achievements ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... you that it was Mary who went to her lord simply, who was commended, and not Martha who troubled about many things. Learn from the Mary of Faith and not from these Marthas of the Creeds. Let us abandon the presumptions of an ignorant past. The perfection of doctrine is not for finite men. Give yourselves to God. Give yourselves to God. Not to churches and uses, but to God. To God simply. He is the first word of religion and the last. He is Alpha; he is Omega. Epitelesei; it is He who will ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Carter was born prior to the year 1836. His mother, Malvina Gardner was a slave in the home of Mr. Gardner until a man named D.B. Smith saw her and noticing the physical perfection of the child at once purchased her ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... window. All that Agricola had told her of the charms of his protectress, appeared to her a thousand times below the reality; and never, even in her secret poetic visions, had she dreamed of such rare perfection. Thus, by a singular contrast, a feeling of mutual surprise came over these two girls—extreme types of deformity and beauty, wealth and wretchedness. After rendering, as it were, this involuntary homage to Adrienne, Mother Bunch ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "is very much obliged to the pity which would thus exterminate them; but as one of them, I should decidedly object to so sweeping a mode of improving the picturesque. Besides, I suppose you make an exception in favor, yourself, otherwise the picturesque would vanish just when it was brought to perfection. I am often inclined to say with Paley, though I remember well having sometimes felt as you do, 'It is a happy world after all.' I admit, however, that a buoyant, cheerful, habitual conviction of this will depend on the constitution of the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... "Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies. Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... word I was fond of, since I married, without being nagged at about it. She loved me for my vices, and yet she hasn't let me keep a single one—not even the smallest—not even cigarettes. Nag! Good God! She's nagged me to perfection ever since the day of our wedding when she made me sign the pledge before she let me ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... the Priory were now at the very perfection of their beauty. The supreme moment had come of flowing wealth of foliage and delicate splendour of blossom, yet the paleness of green and tenderness of texture were ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... if I can possibly help it. I can't afford to lose my faith in my sister's perfection, or Philip's, especially now. But I must go; I have loitered too long, and Arnaud ought to go to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and many others, thrive and abound on this favoured island. With poultry, butchers' meat, fish, and vegetables, Batavia and Java generally are abundantly supplied; while the residents on its mountains may enjoy strawberries and cream in perfection. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... complaint might fairly be made by those who do complain on such subjects. Her dress was high round her neck, and the cap on her head was indisputably a widow's cap; but enough of her brown hair was to be seen to tell of its rich loveliness; and the black dress was so made as to show the full perfection of her form; and with it all there was that graceful feminine brightness that care and money can always give, and which will not come without care and money. It might be well, she had thought, to surrender her income, and ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... article; but the year 1817, memorable in this connection, from its being the date of the organization of the Colonization Society, found our exports augmented to 95,660,000 lbs., and her consumption enlarged to 126,240,000 lbs. Carding and spinning machinery had now reached a good degree of perfection, and the power loom was brought into general use in England, and was also introduced into the United States. Steamboats, too, were coming into use, in both countries; and great activity prevailed in commerce, manufactures, and the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... need of it now in England, although in France, where factions are constantly fighting against each other, it is well that every man should hold himself secure from attack. But now that cannon are getting to so great a point of perfection, walls are only useful to repel sudden attacks, and soon crumble when cannon can be brought against them. Me thinks the time will come when walls will be given up altogether, especially in England, where the royal ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... detailed work—does not mean the stultification of the imagination. It takes more imagination to see the interesting things in statistical or record work than to write a novel. Therefore employers should make it a point to help their employees to realize the significance of the perfection of each detail and the importance of each man's part. The other day a father said to me, "I want my boys to be as ashamed to do work in which they are not interested as to accept graft." When interest in work and efficiency in work are regarded as of more ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... until he reached the age of threescore, when God the Most High vouchsafed him a son, whom he named Ali Shar. The boy grew up like the moon on the night of its full, and when he came to man's estate and was endowed with all kinds of perfection, his father fell sick of a mortal malady and calling his son to him, said to him, 'O my son, the hour of my death is at hand, and I desire to give thee my last injunctions.' 'And what are they, O ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... at any rate, dissembled his mirth to perfection. The look which he shifted from me to Susannah and back was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a suburban town will doubtless recall what handsome specimens of equine perfection may be found in the local ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... gave it to me, and I have practised till I can do it to perfection. Your brother had an odd way of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... play in the formation of the various tissues and organs, and in applying the theory of evolution to the cells and the tissues they compose, raised the theory of germinal layers, at least as far as it regards the vertebrates, to a high degree of perfection. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... dish is Miroton de la Concierge, and it is currently held that only concierges can do it to perfection. Put a handful of minced onion to fry in butter; when it is nearly cooked, but not quite, add a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir it till all is well colored. Pour on it a little gravy, or meat-juice of some kind, and let it simmer for ten minutes after it begins to steam again. Then take your ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon Thy servants over all the earth to this effect, and stored up their voices as the sound of many waters about Thy throne. . . . O perfect and accomplish Thy glorious acts; for men may leave their works unfinished, but Thou art a God; Thy nature is perfection. . . . The times and seasons pass along under Thy feet, to go and come at Thy bidding; and as Thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many revelations, above all their foregoing ages since Thou tookest the flesh, so Thou ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... personal prowess and feats of endurance were the admiration of veteran soldiers. Women loved him, and he loved them. Enjoying life thoroughly, he was temperate in all things. To no man has it been given to approach more nearly to the perfection of human nature—complete, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... buckled straight, but loose, and so low, that it rest on the tender Grissle of his Nose, to make him the more sensible of his Fault, and Correction; and so as you see you win his Head, bring him straighter by degrees; let him but gently feel it, till his Head be brought to its true Perfection. ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... the score must be settled and the debt paid. He it is who, by a memory delightfully oblivious of his task and his table-book, is tenacious to the life of what you said to Fanny; how you put your head under Lucy's bonnet; he can imitate to perfection the way you kneeled upon the grass; and the wretch has learned to smack his lips like a gourmand, that he, may convey ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was—it's always one's best friend that does it! But I used to read them sometimes—ten years ago. I daresay they were in general rather stupider then; at any rate it always seemed to me that they missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away—still missing it, I mean, deliciously. You miss it, my dear fellow, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... anything that took shape before me, though when it came to people I was less credulous of their perfection because they pressed forward their not always certain credentials upon me. I reverenced them then too much for an imagined austerity as I admire them now perhaps not enough for their charm, for it is the charm of things ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Miss Ashton, after a moment's pause, "to add anything to these expressive and solemn Bible words. They convey in the most forcible way what seems to me the highest good for which we can aim in this life,—the perfection of Christian character. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... mind is no less affected with these stately ruins, than they would have been when standing and entire. They breed in generous minds a kind of pity, and sets the thoughts a-work to make out their magnifice as they were taken in perfection. These remains are "tanquam Tabulata Naufragii", that after the revolution of so many years and governments, have escaped the teeth of Time, and (which is more dangerous) the hands of mistaken Zeal. So that the retrieving of these forgotten things from oblivion, in some sort ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... difficult for her to heal the wounds she makes, whereas I can wound and heal together. We are absolutely unlike, and therefore there could not possibly be rivalry between us, unless indeed we quarreled over the greater or less perfection of our extremities, which are similar. I take after my father, who is shrewd and subtle. I have the manner of my grandmother and her charming voice, which becomes falsetto when forced, but is a sweet-toned chest voice at the ordinary pitch of a ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of much amusement to all, as the women were able to know who their partners were and chaff them at pleasure, while the men had all their time cut out to recognize the gay deceivers. At the beginning of the ball I had seen a masked lady who appeared to me just perfection. She was sylph-like; her figure was slight, of medium height, feet as perfect as Spanish women's feet can be; a head whose shape rivalled those of Murillo's angels, blue-black tresses adorning it, and eyes—oh! what eyes—looking at you through the openings in the mask. I lost no time in asking ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Martyr or Confessor lie concealed in the flourishing Times of Christianity. Some Virtues are only seen in Affliction, and some in Prosperity; some in a private, and others in a publick Capacity. But the great Sovereign of the World beholds every Perfection in its Obscurity, and not only sees what we do, but what we would do. He views our Behaviour in every Concurrence of Affairs, and sees us engaged in all the Possibilities of Action. He discovers the Martyr and Confessor without the Tryal of Flames and Tortures, and will hereafter ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... steps. 'Taking it altogether,' says Fergusson,[425] 'it is perhaps the most complete and elegant church of its class now known to exist in or near the capital, and many of its details are of great beauty and perfection.' ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... a very agreeable thing in its way, and De Quincey has carried it to a point of perfection never reached by any other rigmaroler. Despite his undoubted possession of a kind of humour, it is a very remarkable thing that he rigmaroles, so far as can be made out by the application of the most sensitive tests, quite seriously, and almost, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a dear little baby, one of the type the Temple women prize, and will take so much trouble to rear. The little head was finely formed, and the tiny face, in its minute perfection of feature, looked as if some fairy had shaped it out of a cream rose-petal. Alas, there was that look we know so well and fear so much—that look of not belonging to us, the elsewhere, other-world look. But we could not do this work at all, we would not ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... seems, in no respect, below the common standard of mankind. Their improvements in agriculture, and the perfection of their manufactures, are certainly adequate to the circumstances of their situation, and the natural advantages they enjoy. The eager curiosity with which they attended the armourer's forge, and the many expedients they had invented, even before we left the islands, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... really did seem perfection. It was some weeks before Mrs. Salisbury realized that Lizzie was not truthful; absolutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie could not be believed in the simplest statement. Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... rotund little butter rolls, with fingers like wee sausages, and I have also gazed upon long, slender hands as perfect of form and proportion as any hand ever put into a Gainsborough masterpiece. And both have been called beautiful. Of course, we all know that the Gainsborough model is perfection, but nevertheless we can content ourselves with the knowledge that really ideal hands are as rare as a few other nice things in this world, and that we can struggle along very well with our good imitations providing we are able to keep them clean ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... excel all other islands of Polynesia in their luxuriant and picturesque beauty—they produce all kinds of tropical fruits and vegetables—the bread-fruit, of which there are nine kinds, flourishes in great perfection; the banana, cocoa-nut, and chestnut, the orange, the lemon, and the guava, the pine-apple, and the nutmeg, are all to be found; and the yam, which attains the length of above four feet, is the principal food of the inhabitants; besides these, the sugar-cane and turmeric are largely cultivated, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... inventions and discoveries, has almost invariably commenced with some simple principle, and gradually developed it from one degree of perfection to another. The first hint that we have of the use of electricity was Franklin's drawing it from the clouds with his kite. Now it is the instrument of conveying thought from mind to mind, with a rapidity that surpasses time. The great propelling power that drives the wheel of the engine over our ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or ...
— The Republic • Plato
... faint description of a true wrestling bout among the robust dwellers in these remote villages. It may seem cruel, but it is to my mind the perfection of muscular strength and skill, combined with keen subtle, intellectual acuteness. It brings every faculty of mind and body into play, it begets a healthy, honest love of fair play, and an admiration of endurance and pluck, two qualities of which Englishmen certainly ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... after his arrival was to declare the liberal policy, and this was done in a manifesto which was published almost at once. [Footnote: History of Brattle St. Church, p. 20.] The efficiency of the Congregational organization depended upon the perfection of the guard which the ministers and the congregations mutually kept over each other. On the one hand no dangerous element could creep in among the people through the laxness of the elder, since all candidates for the communion had to pass through ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... period alone. Now, my lord, none can know better than yourself the charms of that society, or how much it is calculated to win and engage the heart of any one whose bosom was totally free, and had never beheld before a woman equal in the slightest degree to his ideas of perfection. I will confess, my lord, that I struggled very hard against the feelings which I found growing up in my own bosom. At that time I struggled the more and with the firmer determination, because I had always entertained ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... in some moods seems the greatest of them all—"The Shepherdess" (Pl. 9), that is, or used to be, in the Chauchard collection. In this nobly tranquil work, in which there is no hint of sadness or revolt, are to be found all his usual inevitableness of composition and perfection of draughtsmanship—note the effect of repetition in the sheep, "forty feeding like one"—but the glory of the picture is in the infinite recession of the plain that lies flat, the exact notation of the successive positions upon it of the things that stand upright, from the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Jesus did very many miracles, in Egypt, which are neither to be found in Gospel of the Infancy nor in the Gospel of Perfection. ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... military character can be built; for while no toleration should be shown to the absurd belief that military eminence leaps fully grown into the arena, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter—that, unlike every other kind of perfection, it grows wild and owes nothing to care, to arduous study, to constant preparation—it is still true that it can be developed only upon great natural aptitudes. The distinction conveyed by a phrase of Jomini, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and spedie reading ouer, those forenamed good bokes of Tullie, Terence, Csar, and Liuie, and by this second kinde of translating out of your English, tyme shall breed skill, and vse shall bring perfection, than ye may trie, if you will, your scholer, with the third kinde of translation: although the two first wayes, by myne opinion, be, not onelie sufficent of them selues, but also surer, both for the Masters teaching, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... general tenour of the explanations here given, it will perhaps be inferred that the perfection of the Atlas has been the principal object of concern; in fact, having no pretension to authorship, the writing of the narrative, though by much the most troublesome part of my labour, was not that upon which any hope of reputation was founded; a polished style ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... felt the reflex influence of these political and social relations. The cavalry was throughout the predominant arm; alongside of which among the Belgae, and still more in the British islands, the old national war-chariots appear in remarkable perfection. These equally numerous and efficient bands of combatants on horseback and in chariots were formed from the nobility and its vassals; for the nobles had a genuine knightly delight in dogs and horses, and were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ask, why could these naturalists not let the nomenclature of the boors alone? If a better name than "wilde-honden" (wild hounds) can be given to these animals, I should like to hear it. Why, it is the very perfection of a name, and exactly expresses the character of the animal to which they apply it—that character, which coming under their everyday ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the bishops is a usurpation devoid of scriptural authority, that the Mass, Confession, Purgatory, and Intercession of the Saints are to be rejected as derogatory to the merits of Christ, and finally, that clerical celibacy and monastic vows, instead of being counsels of perfection, are only cloaks for sin and hypocrisy. The Bishop of Constance refused to take part in such a disputation. His vicar-general, Johann Faber of Constance, however, attended the meeting, not indeed to take ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... copying these manuscripts, has at last applied to me to find him an expert drawer; and so I have been thinking of you, dear Herr Anselmus, for I know that you both write very neatly, and likewise draw with the pen to great perfection. Now, if in these bad times, and till your future establishment, you would like to earn a speziesthaler in the day, and this present over and above, you can go tomorrow precisely at noon, and call upon the Archivarius, whose ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... and stumps, and bottle up his frightful energy for the final fearsome leap. His whole makeup is sacrificed to efficiency in that leap; on that depends his life; his very existence turns on the wondrous perfection of the sneak, of which the leap is the culmination. Hunters in all parts where these creatures abound, agree in calling Wildcat, Lynx, and Cougar by the undignified but descriptive name ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to God for having withdrawn his veil of clouds from this threshold of the heavenly vestibule, and brought us across the Atlantic to behold. And as our eyes, blinded by the dazzling vision,—which we might reside here years without beholding in such perfection,—filled with tears, we were forced to turn them away and hide them, or fasten them upon the dark range of Jura on the other side of us, until they were able to gaze again. Thus we rode onward, obtaining ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as Anthony looked on the canvas, was that living, moving face and figure. What more could He have done that He did not do? What perfection could be dreamed of that was not ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... flattery. I had my share of that when I was younger, though I must say your grandfather knew how to turn a compliment to perfection. Ah, my dear, there are not many like him now-a-days. Not many!" ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... dare to call themselves patriots. And those, Lenore, who live to see their country's hopeless ruin, plunge into a sadness at heart that no other loss can equal, no remaining blessing mitigate,—neither the devotion of a wife nor the perfection of a child. You have seen exiles from a lost land? Pride is dead in them, hope is dead, ambition is dead, joy is dead. Tell me, would you choose me to suffer the personal loss of love and you, a loss I could hide in my aching soul, or to bear those black marks of gall and melancholy which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... warm September day, the calm trees, and the flowers that were pure untroubled beauty (how I envied them their dispassionate lives, their tranquil growth, their effortless attainment of perfection, and their unconscious dying!)—all these had a strangely harmonizing influence upon my discordant spirit. We spoke little, and of the war not at all. Indeed, the war suddenly seemed curiously remote and I could hardly hear the throbbing of the guns. I knew that ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... wrote verse in all three of the manners just named, but he will certainly be longest remembered for his serranillas, the fine flower of the Provencal-Galician tradition, in which the poet describes his meeting with a country lass. Santillana combined the freshest local setting with perfection of form and left nothing more to be desired in that genre. He also wrote the first sonnets in Castilian, but they are interesting only as an experiment, and had no followers. Juan de MENA (1411-1456) was purely ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... commandment: for so the righteous man is described; Job i. 8; ii. 3. As it is said of Zacharias and Elisabeth his wife, "They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless;" Luke i. 5, 6. Here the perfection, that is, the universality, of their negative holiness is implied, and the universality of their positive holiness is expressed: they walked in all the commandments of the Lord; but that they could not ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Faustus thought he had at length opened the door to riches, honour, and enjoyment. He exerted himself to the utmost, in order to bring the art to perfection, and he now laid his discovery before mankind; but their lukewarmness quickly convinced him that, although the greatest inventor of his age, he and his family would soon perish with hunger unless his genius ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... since Brensius worked. We see from a representation of a Viol in the above-mentioned work that the sound-holes are better formed, the scroll is artistically designed, and the whole harmonious. These steps towards perfection were mounted by Duiffoprugcar and Gasparo da Salo, both of whom rapidly developed the art. With Gasparo da Salo, or a contemporary, was witnessed the rejection of the crescent-formed sound-hole, and the adoption of that which has held its own for upwards of three centuries. The sound-holes of the ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... perfection. The prisoners had always been quiet and well-behaved, and had never made any attempt to escape, so no suspicions now suggested themselves to the guards. They hastily unlocked the doors and dashed in, with rifles held ready to shoot—and the next moment they were on the floor, with ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... The life-torches worked to perfection. As our friends carried them, there arose about their bodies a cloud of invisible vapor, which, however, was as great a protection from the poisonous gases as a coat of ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... Newton or John Bunyan. And yet the change in him was marked enough to furnish an exhibition of contrast, showing the power of Christ's teachings and example upon him, until he reached an unwonted degree of perfection. He combined the noblest traits of the loftiest manhood and womanhood, with the simplicity of childhood. His human kinship to Jesus illustrated but faintly the closer and tenderer relation formed by the transforming of his ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... cold iron floats upon molten iron. In company with my friend Sir William Armstrong, I had repeated opportunities of witnessing this fact in his works at Elswick, 1863. Faraday, I remember, spoke to me subsequently of the perfection of iron castings as probably due to the swelling of the metal on solidification. Beyond this, I have given the subject no special attention; and I know that many intelligent iron-founders doubt the fact of expansion. It is quite possible that the solid floats ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... and sheep; yellow and strong. Takes one year to mature and is very popular both in Sicily where it is made to perfection and in Southern Colorado where it is imitated by and for ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... us some models, in different arts and sciences, which have been found inimitable, the moderns, on the other hand, have carried their inventions and improvements, in a variety of instances, to an extent and a degree of perfection of which the former could entertain no ideas. Among those discoveries in which we have stepped so far beyond our masters there is none more striking, or more eminently useful, than the means which the ingenuity of some, and the experience of others, have taught mankind, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... and ever had for your Lordship and your Great Family. Still, I say, I did admire you, still I wish'd and pray'd for you; 'twas all I cou'd or durst: But, as my Esteem for your Lordship daily increased with my Judgment, so nothing cou'd bring it to a more absolute height and perfection, than to observe in these troublesome times, this Age of Lying, Peaching, and Swearing with what noble Prudence, what steadiness of Mind, what Loyalty and Conduct you have evaded the Snare, that 'twas to be fear'd was laid for all the Good, the Brave, and Loyal, for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... of opinion, that personal beauty in slaves so purchased was of itself sufficient to render them proper substitutes for wives, which, often on account of alliance or interest in families, men are obliged to marry, though they are not always possessed of any perfection, either of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... so, my son, more or less," interrupted the holy bonze. "You were wrong to expect perfection, and must abide by your bargain now. It is no use getting angry, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am but ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... moreover, such an assumption would be contradicted by what we actually observe. For the (energies of) seeing, hearing, noticing, cognising constitute the character of the individual soul, and that character is observed to exist in full perfection, even in the case of that individual soul which has not yet risen beyond the body. Every individual soul carries on the course of its practical existence by means of the activities of seeing, hearing, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... just right. Liquid crystal, sparkling sapphire, perfection! Come, you must have your swimming lesson. Forget the cheerful swain,—behold the ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... to his noble friend and former pupil, the M— of G—, and, forgetting that he is now turned of seventy, sacrificed so liberally to Bacchus, that next day he was seized with a fit of the apoplexy, which has a little impaired his memory; but he retains all the oddity of his character in perfection, and is going back to Italy by the way of Geneva, that he may have a conference with his friend Voltaire, about giving the last blow to the Christian superstition — He intends to take shipping here for Holland or Hamburgh; for it is a matter of great indifference ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the mental vision. In theatrical representation, a man with a bush of thorn and lantern must 'present moonshine' and another, with a bit of plaster, the wall which divides Pyramus from his Thisbe; but in Mr. Lanier's readings, a poet's quick imagination brought forth in full perfection all the accessories of the play. When he read, in the Johns Hopkins lecture hall, that scene from 'Pericles' in which Cerimon restores Thaisa's apparently lifeless body to animation, a large audience listened with breathless ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the poor famishing starving infants. This moving story was accompanied with tears; upon which, the maid ran in to acquaint the ladies with this melancholy tale, while the good grandmother kept pinching one or other of the children, that they might play their parts to greater perfection; the maid soon returned with a half crown from the ladies, and some good broth, which he went into the court-yard to eat, (understanding the gentlemen were not in the house,) and got one of the under-servants, whom he met, to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... keep his hand steady, and instantly drew a perfect circle. "Tell his holiness that this is my design," said he. His friends tried to persuade him not to send such a thing to the pope; but he persisted in doing so. Pope Benedict was a learned man, and he saw that Giotto had given the best evidence of perfection in his art. He invited the painter to Rome, and honored and rewarded him. "Round as Giotto's O," from that time, became an Italian proverb. But I must give a glance at the early history of this man. In the year 1276—according to that invaluable ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... eyes came a look of infinite trust and infinite joy. She had no qualms about the Scotch marriage. She had heard of them again and again, and they were mere commonplaces to her. It did seem strange, walking away with him alone, but she had given him her heart's love, and she had a perfection of ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... over his face at her words, she blushed. She unquestionably blushed and hurried on, scarcely waiting for his reply. Some days later, as she was taking a favorite walk over a path among the thickets on the slope of Laurel Hill, whence the hazy Indian Summer landscape could be seen to perfection beneath the thin but wonderfully bland sunshine of November, she again met him face to face. Perhaps it was the color in her cheeks ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... consented, leaving Edith with Lucy to learn straw plaiting, if she liked, and to listen to her artless talk. Lucy had less veneration for the name of Queen Victoria than for that of Schomberg. Emilie was to her the very perfection of human nature, and accordingly she sang her praises loud ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... the play worked to perfection. At the snap of the ball Neil Durant started swiftly to the right and drew after him the major part of the Jefferson secondary defense. For the moment Teeny-bits seemed to have been forgotten: it did not ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the whole room carefully, she looking after their lodgings, and he seeing what chances there were of food, and what kinds of it, for Mr. Mouse was rather dainty in his eating, if he were not hard up for food, as they had been a good deal lately. They found everything perfection. As to lodgings, Mrs. Mouse found a hole which delighted her extremely. It was obscurely hid in the wainscot under the wardrobe, where nobody could possibly see them going in and out—just to her liking. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... play hath a great moral—thou shalt learn to use thy brain or die. Now, there be many perils in this land o' the woods—so many that all its people must learn to think or perish by them. A pretty bit o' wisdom it is, sor. It keeps the great van moving—ever moving, in the long way to perfection. Now, among animals, a growing brain works the legs of its owner, sending them far on diverse errands until they are strong. Mind thee, boy, perfection o' brain and body is the aim o' Nature. The cat's paw an' the serpent's coil are but the ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... dragged across a scene of unparalleled violence. The last I saw was Hermann's niece with the baby Hermann in her arms standing apart from the others. Magnificent in her close-fitting print frock she displayed something so commanding in the manifest perfection of her figure that the sun seemed to be rising for her alone. The flood of light brought out the opulence of her form and the vigour of her youth in a glorifying way. She went by perfectly motionless and as if lost in meditation; only the hem of her skirt stirred in the draught; ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... poems, tragedies, and pastorals, with surprising facility; song, epigram, or rebus, was all one to him; though, it is observed, he could never finish an acrostick. In short, the fairy who presided at his birth had endowed him with almost every perfection; or, what was just the same, his subjects were ready to acknowledge he possessed them all; and, for his own part, he knew nothing to the contrary. A prince so accomplished, received a name suitable to his merit; and he was called Bonbenin-bonbobbin-bonbobbinet, which signifies Enlightener ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... by the doubly painful experience of my defective hearing! and yet it was not possible for me to say to people, 'Speak louder—bawl—for I am deaf!' Ah! how could I proclaim the defect of a sense that I once possessed in the highest perfection—in a perfection in which few of my colleagues possess or ever did possess it? Indeed, I cannot! Forgive me, then, if ye see me draw back when I would gladly mingle among you. Doubly mortifying is my misfortune ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Mosaic work, of inlaid stones or composition of varying shades and colors, gradually superseded painting in Rome; it was first used for floors, and finally walls and ceilings were ornamented with it. It is true, the ancients could show no such exquisite perfection of colors, tints, and shades as may be seen to-day in the wonderful reproductions of world-renowned paintings on the walls of St. Peter's at Rome; but many ancient mosaics have been preserved which attest beauty of design of the highest character,—like the Battle of Issus, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Who is it? When was it? Where was it? How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never came out before—positively say things! William Buffy carries one of these smartnesses from the place where he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... bare issue which, viii. 275. 'Ware how thou hurtest man with hurt of hearts, ii. 197. 'Ware that truth thou speak, albe sooth when said, x. 23. Was't archer shot me, or was't shine eyes, v. 33. Watch some tall ship she'll joy the sight of thee, ii. 20. Watered steel-blade, the world perfection calls, vii. 173. Waters of beauty e'er his cheeks flow bright, viii. 299. We joy in full Moon who the wine bears round, viii. 227. We left not taking leave of thee (when bound to other goal), viii. 63. We lived on earth a life of fair content, v. 71. We lived till saw we all the marvels Love can ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... as her mother was depressing. She was very young at this time and had the physical perfection—at least as regards body—that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect carriage of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... house and half a mile from Broadstone Station, and have succeeded in buying three acres, chosen by myself, from Lord Wimborne at what is really a reasonable price. In its contour, views, wood, and general aspect of wild nature it is almost perfection; and Annie, Violet, and Will are all pleased and satisfied with it. It is on the slope of the Broadstone middle plateau, looking south over Poole Harbour with the Purbeck Hills beyond, and a little eastward out to the sea.... The ground is good loam in the orchard, with some sand and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... blonde for whom we have seen him masquerading as Romeo. But this union, which was on the one part only a matter of spite, and on the other one of fancy, could not last long. The girl was after all only a light of love, warbling to perfection the gamut of trickery, witty enough to note the wit of others and to make use of it on occasion, and with only enough heart to feel heartburn when she had eaten too much. Add to this unbridled self-esteem and a ferocious ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... a twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he examined the dark oblong at one end. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... knowledge and official surveys, and what I chiefly aim to establish is the true cause of the results which are already known to the whole world; and it may be a relief to many to know that I shall publish no other, but, like the player at cards, will "stand;" not that I have accomplished perfection, but because I can do no better with the cards in hand. Of omissions there are plenty, but of wilful ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... politician whatever himself, to exercise his wits on their account, and brought his machine to such a pitch of perfection, that it was the identical one used in the memorable attempt—' (Dare whispered the remainder of the sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... from what Phoebe hath informed me of yonder wretch's opinions, it is much to be regretted that his brains had not been beaten out in his cradle, rather than that he had grown up to be one of those Grindlestonians, or Muggletonians, in whom is the perfection of every foul and blasphemous heresy, united with such an universal practice of hypocritical assentation as would deceive their ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... around with the sucker for some time; then running, I mounted the horse and galloped off. The game worked to perfection. The old fellow bawled out that I had stolen a horse, and the owner mounted the other horse and pushed hard after me. When I had gone about four miles I slackened up and let him overtake me, and we reached another train going ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... admiration for this masterpiece, showered Keldermans with honors; made him director of construction of the towns of Antwerp, Brussels, and Malines, putting thus the seal of artistic perfection upon his dynasty. ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. The nest was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cunningly and securely together by the long horse-hairs, of which there were not more than three or four. Human fingers could not have done it so deftly. Probably the bird that built the nest and laid the eggs did not weigh, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... patristic texts on property, which we quoted in the section dealing with that subject, and asks: 'What conclusion should one draw from these different passages? It is that in Christ there are no rich and no poor, no mine and no thine; that in Christian perfection all things are common to all men, but that nevertheless property is legitimate and derived from human law. Is it not in the same sense that the Fathers condemned slavery as contrary to divine law, while respecting it as comformable to human law? The ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... me the full expression of a healthy love of nature, possible only to a moral sanity in the man—a cheery Wordsworthian enjoyment of her, which as a rule I have never found in perfection out of the English school and its derivatives; the outpouring of a robust nature which prefers to see the outer world with the spectacles of no school, and through the memory of no other man; not self-taught in the sense of owing nothing to another mind, but in the sense ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... "Anwendung der Darwin'schen Lehre auf Bienen," "Verhandl. d. naturhist. Vereins fur preuss. Rheinld. u. Westf." 1872. References to Muller's paper occur in the second edition of the "Descent of Man.") I really have no criticisms or suggestions to offer. The perfection of the gradation in the character of bees, especially in such important parts as the mouth-organs, was altogether unknown to me. You bring out all such facts very clearly by your comparison with the corresponding organs in the allied hymenoptera. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... did; and as I was always somewhat of a dandy, I went to the extreme of Dyak fashion, except in the matter of putting those big rings in my ears, and chewing betel-nut; in fact I now take the lead in dress, and am looked upon as the very pink of perfection. I have learned their language, and adapted myself to their ways; but I have begun to get rather tired of this sort of life, and have been lately considering how I can best take my departure, and in what direction I ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... dependent on, the wills of men. There is therefore some other Spirit that causes them; since it is repugnant that they should subsist by themselves. See sect. 29. But, if we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole, but above all the never-enough-admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the instincts or natural inclinations, ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... think that passion, when it is pure and happy, leads man to a state of perfection; it simply leads him, as we have noted, to a state of oblivion. In this situation, man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets to be good. Gratitude, duty, matters essential and important to be remembered, vanish. At any other time, Marius would have behaved ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... feet or body at all. The throw is, of course, not so swift as by first wheeling toward the base and then throwing, but it will catch a runner oftener. "Smiling Mickey" Welch plays the point to perfection, and last season caught many men "napping" in this way. Its advantage is that it is entirely legitimate. Some pitchers, in order to catch a runner at first, make a slight forward movement, visible to ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... spirit, the matter is beyond controversy; but when we come to consider the incidents of the story, we find deviations from Homer even more serious than any of those from the Cyclic poets. And the strange thing is, that each of these deviations is a manifest detriment to the perfection of his poem; in each of them the writer has missed, or has rejected, a magnificent opportunity. With regard to the slaying of Achilles by the hand of Apollo only, and not by those of Apollo and Paris, he might have pleaded that Homer himself here ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... only a month ago she had stood in this room in the moonlight, waiting to go and meet Ishmael in the field? Her fingers shook a little as she took a few blossoms of creamy-yellow toadflax he had picked for her out of their vase and laid them tentatively against her gown. They harmonised to perfection, but Blanche, after a moment's hesitation, flung ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... orderly composition. For all things throughout, there is but one and the same order; and through all things, one and the same God, the same substance and the same law. There is one common reason, and one common truth, that belongs unto all reasonable creatures, for neither is there save one perfection of all creatures that are of the same kind, and ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... though not equal in beauty and perfection to the "Muette de Portici" by the same author, is notwithstanding, a happy {91} invention of Auber's, particularly because the local tints are so well caught. The banditti are painted with bright and glowing colors, and the part of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... is not intended for smokers who are satisfied with any old stuff that will burn and give off smoke. It is used by people who want nothing but the best and know it when they get it. It's the perfection of pipe tobacco. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... Eloquence may be "logic on fire" as Dr. Lyman Beecher defined it. Oratory may be, as Emerson said, "the noblest expression of purely personal energy." But it is so far personal, so allied to grace of gesture, to charm of manner, to melody of voice, to perfection of speech, to a commanding presence, that it carries to the future but a fraction of its power. The cold type and the insentiate page constitute at best only the record ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... Dedlock—to be in a cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the lower classes to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... fear, I walked on to the front of the stage. My chairman, Mr. Arthur Hill (Corporation Counsel of the City of Boston), in introducing me spoke with the greatest ease, and I observed that every word he said was heard; but it was obvious from the perfection of his speech that he had addressed a thousand audiences before and this was only my second ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... justifieth, and which secureth the soul from the curse of the law; by hiding, through its perfection, all the sins and imperfections of the soul. Hence it follows, "Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... at seventy, she was very pretty, quite a woman to look at with pleasure. Her feet and hands were exquisitely made, and she was very proud of them. She wore her own grey hair of which she showed very little, but that little was always exquisitely nice. Her caps were the perfection of caps. Her green eyes were bright and sharp, and seemed to say that she knew very well how to take care of herself. Her mouth, and nose, and chin, were all well-formed, small, shapely, and concise, not straggling about her face as do the mouths, noses, and chins of some old ladies—ay, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... pleasant face your sailor friend has, Mr. Rankin! He has been so frank and truthful with us. You know I don't think anybody can pay me a greater compliment than to be quite sincere with me at first sight. It's the perfection of natural good manners. ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... what on earth have I been saying now. I quite believed I was doing the heavy father to perfection and teaching Tommy ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... tee the Potent Noble looked down at the heavy fog which was rolling in through the Golden Gate. He addressed the ball. He jumbled around on his feet and took a couple of practice swings. Perfection was in every movement. Then, as he drove, the Wildcat sneezed. There followed a blast of profanity whose equal the Wildcat had not heard since his army days. He edged over towards the Mud Turtle. "Neveh seed a boy change so quick. Heah ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the perfection of its conic form. Owing to the perpendicular walls of lava formed on the slopes all around, it would seem impossible to reach the crater. The elevation of the peak has been computed at between 8,200 and 8,400 feet. I have been around the base on the E. and S. sides, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... with which she was acquainted, Arethusa loved best a thunder-storm. She felt no slightest tinge of fear; to be out of doors in the wind and rain with thunder crashing and rolling and great flashes of lightning splitting wide the heavens, every now and then, left nothing to be desired towards the perfection of the situation. She had sometimes fancied, after an unusually wide and vivid flash, that she had really been able to see a wee bit of a way into that Heavenly City which she had been taught was high above her, behind all that sky, in ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... in his most rapturous visions; had they but good figures, they would excite envy on the Alamedas of Andalusia; in short, they are the veriest little ducks in the world, and dress with Parisian perfection. No wonder, then, reader, when I tell you that "loafing" up and down Broadway is a favourite occupation with the young men who have leisure hours to spare. So attractive did my young friend of the Household Brigade find it, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... be first in power and arms, made him from want of leisure give up the first rank, to which his natural talents invited him, and consequently his attention to military matters and political affairs by which he got the supreme power, did not allow him to attain perfection in oratory. Accordingly at a later period, in his reply to Cicero about Cato,[445] he deprecates all comparison between the composition of a soldier and the eloquence of an accomplished orator who had plenty of ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... delicate sisterhood; yet shapely, perfect in outline and development, exquisite, enchanting in its never fully-analyzed tints, yet compelling the admiration of every one, and recalling its admirers again and again by the unspoken appeal of its own perfection—its ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... at last. Mrs. Castleton's rooms were lighted to perfection, and she herself dressed with exquisite taste, looking the fitting priestess of the elegant shrine over which she presided. Emma, with her brothers, came early—and one glance satisfied Mrs. Castleton. The simplicity ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the Kingdom of Dreams. No epoch in all literary history is so hopelessly entangled in the meshes of subtle philosophical speculation, derived from the most complex sources. To deal with the facts of classic art, which is concerned with seeking a clearly-defined perfection, is a simple matter compared with the unbounded and undefined concepts of a school which waged war upon "the deadliness of ascertained facts" and immersed itself in vague intimations of glories that were to be. Its most authorized exponent ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Speed into the game—maybe Medford spirit won't rise sky high!" chuckled Milt. "Boy, I guess maybe we didn't play our parts to perfection! We ought to get ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... been bathed in the dew of the morning, the better to harmonize with the delicate complexion of her lovely face, nestled in her hair, and above it, more magnificent than anything yet seen in Innsbruck, and setting off to perfection the dazzling lustre of her yellow ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... matter and light were co-eternal; they supposed that was all one unformed and tenebrous mass; and from the former they established the principle of evil and of all imperfection, while they regarded the latter as sovereign perfection. Creation, or, one might better say co-ordination, was only the emanation of light which penetrated chaos, but the mixture of light and matter was the cause of all the inevitable imperfections of the universe. The soul of man was part and parcel ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... would be speaking against faith, as we have seen in the chapter on "Virginity." The "Catechism of the Council of Trent" says: "As it is the duty of the pastor to propose to himself the holiness and perfection of the faithful, his earnest desires must be in full accordance with those of the Apostle when, writing to the Corinthians, he says: 'I would that all men were even as myself;' that is," continue the Fathers ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous
... it affords good evidence that the most refined beauty may serve as a sexual charm, and for no other purpose. We must conclude that this is the case, as the secondary and primary wing-feathers are not at all displayed, and the ball and socket ornaments are not exhibited in full perfection until the male assumes the attitude of courtship. The Argus pheasant does not possess brilliant colours, so that his success in love appears to depend on the great size of his plumes, and on the elaboration of the most elegant patterns. Many will declare that ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that the evolution of humanity has been an unbroken progress towards perfection; you may maintain that there has been no progress at all, and that man remains the same poor creature that he ever was; or, lastly, you may say with the author of the 'Contrat Social,' that men were purest and best ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... truce!" cried Mayence sternly. "Again we are running into a moral catalogue impossible of embodiment. Is there any such man in your mind, or are you merely treating us to a counsel of perfection?" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... before or behind them; and thus general vigilance became the rule of all. By these and various other means the business of the concern was admirably done, and the carrying trade of the country was brought to as high a state of perfection as was compatible with the then state of the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Prince Aribert, in a curious tone. 'Impossible. He is the perfection of health. In three months he will be married. No, I shall never be anything but a Serene Highness, the most despicable ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... be that we in letters trace The pure exactness of a woodbird's strain, And name it song; or with the brush attain The high perfection of a wildflower's face; Or mold in difficult marble all the grace We know as man; or from the wind and rain Catch elemental rapture of refrain And mark in music to due time and place: The aim of art is nature; to unfold Her truth and beauty to the souls of men In close suggestions; in whose ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... contiguous atmosphere gives indications of the influence of the light and shade. To these principles the art is indebted for breadth and fulness of effect, which constitute the distinct characteristics between the early state and its maturity—and to Rembrandt we owe the perfection of this ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... a coil of iron. Then, with a peculiar twist of his hand, known only to himself, and resembling that remarkable system known under the name of jiu jitsu among the Japanese, who are the only ones that understand it in all its frightful perfection, he bent the hand of the chief remorselessly over and backward, until the palm gaped like the mouth of a dying fish and the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... business, and in the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,—the torpor of her Flemish blood conjoined with Oriental indolence; and with all the rest, ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket brought to perfection. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... her by—being Alan. There could have been no completer reward. He was the key to the meaning of life, the justification of what must have seemed as incomprehensible as it was odious, had it not all-sufficingly ended in himself. He was a perfect son, and Mrs. Quentin had always hungered for perfection. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... times as if Heaven itself were opened for him, and for days the melodies she played would come ringing through his heart. Often he would sit absorbed at the piano when he should have been practicing his lesson, picking out those melodies and trying with a poignant yearning for perfection to find their proper harmonies. But at such times after he had frittered away a few minutes, Mrs. Nesbit would call down to him, "You, Kenyon," and he would sigh and take up his scales and runs ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... showing such astonishment at its minuteness and perfection of shape that it was immediately apparent she had heard nothing of the amethyst box displayed by Mr. Sinclair in the library. 'I never saw a bottle as small as this before. What is in it, and why were you so afraid of my ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... must be made here as elsewhere for the novelist's tendency to exaggeration—exaggeration of virtue no less than of vice or weakness. In Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool this characteristic is pronounced. The first, according to John Ruskin, being a dramatic monster, and the second a dramatic perfection. The story first appeared serially in "Household Words" between April 1 and August ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... lord been. And if I had done so at that time, with my heart, will, and thought, I had passed all the knights that were in the Sangreal except Sir Galahad, my son. And therefore, lady, sithen ye have taken you to perfection, I must needs take me to perfection, of right. For I take record of God, in you I have had mine earthly joy; and if I had found you now so disposed, I had cast me to have had you into ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... strictly and literally true. The consequence of such strange blunders is what might be naturally expected; the voice, forced out of its natural compass, prematurely gives way, and at a period of life when the vocal organ, if properly trained and developed, should have arrived at maturity and perfection, the singer's powers are gone, and, in the prime of life, he is compelled to abandon his profession, and subsides into the mere singing-master, to misinstruct the rising generation, and to mar the prospects of others who succeed him, as his own hopes were blighted by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that happy frame of mind which is best described as the shutting out of all that pertains to the morbid, the gloomy, the fretful, and the discontented. The perfection of cheerfulness is displayed in general good temper united to much kindliness of heart. It arises partly from personal goodness, and partly from belief in the goodness of others. Its face is ever directed toward happiness. It sees "the glory in the grass, the sunshine ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... of this profession than by those of all the others. This is a great step in moral civilization; for the country that most feels the ascendancy of the law, and that least feels that of arms, is nearest to the summit of human perfection. When asked which profession takes rank in America, I tell them the law in influence, and the church in deference. Some of my moustachoed auditors stare at this reply; for here the sword has precedence ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... forth Ferrers anxiously, but the door opened, and Lieutenant Dick Prescott strode in, looking the perfection ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which flashes ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... room, pretty and tasteful, but not so superb; into Rose's, very disordered, and littered, and characteristic; into papa's, big, carpetless, fireless, dreadfully grim and unlike papa himself; into Grace's, the perfection of order and taste, and then Eeny stopped, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... in rapt admiration. Across the river a shower had fallen, and the clouds, clearing away abruptly, had left there a twin rainbow of matchless perfection. Its double arch was poised as accurately over the town as if it had been painted there. Each hoop was flawless in form, lovely in hue, tenderly luminous, exquisite in purity. Never had I seen the double iris ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and spanker. She was now upon the larboard tack. Having stood on a sufficient distance, Captain Blyth went in stays, and the ship was again headed for the barque. Now came the only delicate part of the operation. But the skipper was an accomplished seaman, and he managed his part of the work to perfection, bringing the Flying Cloud up alongside the barque so close to leeward that there was only bare room for the boat between the two hulls; and at the proper moment the main-topsail was backed and the way of the ship stopped. A rope's-end, to which the other end ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... society success he was in Boston. That has a great deal to do with it from the first. Then another thing is caution— discreetness; not saying anything censorious or critical of other men, no matter what they do. And Dan Mavering is the perfection of prudence, because he's the perfection ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the passion for visible beauty, and chiefly the visible beauty of our land, will here show itself clearly,—a sense of nature not merely sensuous, but thrilling with hidden and mystic life. We shall find such perfection in this more emotional and poetic side of Irish character as will leave little for coming ages to add. In these two early epochs we shall see the perfecting of the natural man; the moulding of rounded, gracious and harmonious lives, inspired with ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... will be more than that of Bodies. We'll get Subjects for the King, and Servants for Christ, and where will the Unchastity of this Matrimony be? And who can tell but we may live together like Joseph and Mary? And in the mean Time, we'll learn to be Virgins, we don't arrive at Perfection all at once. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... responsible Englishmen in time of war to "speak and write as though they belonged to the enemy,"—whether due to an exaggerated regard for our traditional freedom of speech, or to a failure to recognise that the altered conditions produced by the extension and perfection of telegraphic communication, and the development of the Press throughout the civilised world, gave such utterances a value in international relations altogether different from that possessed (say) by similar utterances on the part of the anti-nationalists during the Napoleonic wars—is a circumstance ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and, therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten corner of a forgotten room. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... sanctity of the mortified monks made a deep and solemn impression on the tender hearts of the young visitors, who felt the delicacy of their position in enjoying a forbidden hospitality. The example of the evangelical perfection practised by these holy servants of God insensibly drew Charles and Henry to love the sublime virtues they practised. Nothing impressed them more than the solemn chant of the Office at midnight. The slow, solemn enunciation of each word by a choir of hoary anchorets rolled in majestic ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... yourself with watching one little rough place that whirls swiftly round, stops with a jerk, turns hesitatingly one side and the other, then, yielding to a new impulse, flies round and round again till you are dizzy. You look with great complacency at the tightening twist, now brought almost to perfection. You turn it carelessly in your fingers, scarcely noticing its convulsive starts for freedom. Ah! your imprudent friend, without any warning, gives it a final pull to stretch it into shape. The twine slips from your ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... was probably a lady's nightgear, of imperial splendour. So she probably had spoken rather at random; and, indeed, seemed to think apology necessary. She took advantage of the end of an episode to say, while contemplating the perfection of two unimpeachable cuffs:—"So long as the others don't give theirselves no airs." Isolated certainly, as to structure; but, after all, has speech any use except to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... pines, so gray and old, Storms to brave, with thunderbolts to sport? And, ye hills, that ye the heavens uphold? And, ye heavens, that ye the suns support! Boasts the graybeard, who on haughty deeds As on billows, seeks perfection's height? Boasts the hero, whom his prowess leads Up to future glory's temple bright! If the gnawing worms the floweret blast, Who can madly think he'll ne'er decay? Who above, below, can hope to last, If the young man's life thus ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Hurst" was, as befitted its Chatelaine, the most Elizabethanly complete abode in Riseholme, the rest of the village in its due degree, fell very little short of perfection. It had but its one street some half mile in length but that street was a gem of mediaeval domestic architecture. For the most part the houses that lined it were blocks of contiguous cottages, which had been converted either singly or by twos and threes into dwellings containing ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... astonishment, although I had been accustomed to fast vessels. The Francesca was an exceedingly fine and handsome vessel, of enormous beam, and sitting very low upon the water, but the pace at which she was travelling conclusively demonstrated that, beamy as she was, her lines must be the very perfection of draughting; indeed this was proved by the ease with which she appeared to glide along the surface of, rather than through, the water, her progress being marked by singularly little disturbance of the element, considering her very high rate of speed. ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Academy; the society papers humbly reported her doings, her sayings, and her conquests; royalties smiled approvingly on this queen of fashion, and not a single soul, Lady Lucille herself least of all, realized that this perfection was but the hollow husk and shell of beauty without heart or soul; that behind the lovely face, within the graceful form, lurked as selfish and ignoble a nature as that which stirs the blood of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... right to be angry; she was not sinful, like nurse, when she got into her tantrums. As to father, he was never cross. He did look tired and disturbed sometimes. It must be because he was sorry for the rest of the world. Yes, father and mother were perfection. It was a great support to know this. It was a very great honor to have been born their little girl. Every morning when Sibyl knelt to pray, and every evening when she offered up her nightly petitions, she thanked God most earnestly for having given her as parents those two perfect people known ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... no time, but, actually, the restricted Peninsula suits the Turkish tactics to a 'T.' They have always been good at trench work where their stupid men have only simple, straightforward duties to perform, namely, in sticking on and shooting anything that comes up to them. They do this to perfection; I never saw braver soldiers, in fact, than some of the best of them. When we advance, no matter the shelling we give them, they stand right up firing coolly and straight over their parapets. Also they have unlimited ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the very dawning of life, reach at a single tide the high-water-mark of my earthly bliss—never to be reached again by me on this side of the ivory gate—and discover that to make the perfection of human happiness endure there must be something more than a sweet French garden, a small French wheelbarrow, and a nice little English boy who spoke French and had the love of approbation—a fourth dimension ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of these, however, I must except the beauteous nymph Fayaway, who was my peculiar favourite. Her free pliant figure was the very perfection of female grace and beauty. Her complexion was a rich and mantling olive, and when watching the glow upon her cheeks I could almost swear that beneath the transparent medium there lurked the blushes ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the balls. Young ladies go invariably with chaperones; following each dance there is a brief promenade, whereafter the young ladies are returned to their duennas—who, if they be Charleston dowagers in perfection, usually carry turkey-feather fans. Cards are filled months in advance. As lately as the year 1912 every other dance was a square dance; since then, however, I believe that square dances have gone the way of candle-light. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... hast seen what is the form of perfect and imperfect good, now I think we must show in what this perfection of happiness is placed. And inquire first whether there can be any such good extant in the world, as thou hast defined; lest, contrary to truth, we be deceived with an empty show of thought. But it cannot be denied that there is some such thing extant which is as it were ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... look for perfection in a man," his mother informed him seriously. "He is criticized much less severely than a woman. It seems to be the universal rule, though I have sometimes thought it wasn't absolutely just and that it had its drawbacks. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... dark, but dull, and without meaning; the hair was black and glossy, but coarse; and there was the admired crop—a long crop, much like the tail of a horse—a switch tail. The fine figure was meagre, prim, and constrained. The beauty, the grace, and the elegance existed, no doubt, in their utmost perfection, but only in the imagination of her partial young sister. Her father, as Harriet told me, was familiarly called 'Jew Westbrook,' and Eliza greatly resembled one of the dark-eyed daughters ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... bobolink chatters in notes of perfection, The oriole sings a love-song to his mate, The whippoorwill clings to his perch for protection, The crow laughs ha! ha! when the ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... even yet, that we find a writer wholly unembarrassed by and in revolt against the old theory of the necessity of perfection in some one at least of the characters of his story. "Neither Luther nor John Bunyan," says the author of this book, "would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is excellent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... dropping in upon him, and conversing with him, as best the few and labored English phrases at his command would allow. Frowenfeld soon noticed that he never entered the shop unless its proprietor was alone, never sat down, and always, with the same perfection of dignity that characterized all his movements, departed immediately upon the arrival of any third person. One day, when the landlord was making one of these standing calls,—he always stood' beside a high glass case, on the side of the shop opposite the counter,—he noticed in Joseph's hand a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... mistakes, but never failed to report such mistakes to Shoop. Lorry preferred to give his own version of an affair that he had mishandled rather than to have to explain some other version later. He was no epitome of perfection. He was inclined to be arbitrary when he knew he was in the right. Argument irritated him. He considered his "Yes" or ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the children of adulterers, they shall not come to their perfection, and the seed of an unrighteous ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... that all parts of the organizations and instincts offer, at least, individual differences; that there is a struggle for existence, which leads to the preservation of profitable deviations of structure or instinct; and, lastly, that gradations in the state of perfection of each organ may have existed, each good of its kind." He says, over and over, that if beauty or any variation of structure can be shown to be intended, it would "annihilate his theory." His doctrine is that such unintended variations, which happen to be useful ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... nothingness. Each plays its part, however small. We can't all be included in the wonderful final chords. Our place may seem trivial to us, and yet in some sense we may be sure we are all contributors to the unity and perfection of the whole. That ought to be enough. No one note achieves individual immortality, but each does something to assure the immortality of the composition of which it forms a part. If we don't believe ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... necessitous, but if we turn our eye to his make and temper, his agility, his courage, his arms, and his force, we shall find that his advantages hold proportion with his wants.... In man alone this unnatural conjunction of infirmity and of necessity may be observed in the greatest perfection. Not only the food which is required for his sustenance flies his search and approach, or at least requires his labour to be produced, but he must be possessed of clothes and lodging to defend him against ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... peaceful, no peace so idyllic as that which is to be found on a Western ranch on a fine summer evening. Life at such a time and in such a place is at its smoothest, its almost Utopian perfection. The whole atmosphere is laden with a sense of good-fellowship between men and between beasts. The day's work is over, and men idle and smoke, awaiting the pleasures of an ample fare with appetites healthily sharp-set, and lounge contentedly, contemplating their coming evening's ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... her all due praise for her domestic acquirements, justice compels us to remark that Aunt Comfort was not a literary character. She could get up a shirt to perfection, and made irreproachable chowder, but she was not a woman of letters. In fact, she had arrived at maturity at a time when negroes and books seldom came in familiar contact; and if the truth must be told, she cared very little ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... world peacefully busied for the most part upon armaments and the perfection of explosives, war came; came the shock of realising that the guns were going off, that the masses of inflammable material all over the world ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the greatest man intellectually that Ori had ever met, so John L. Sullivan, the famous fighter, was the greatest man in that line of his time. The islanders, in common with other primitive peoples, admire physical perfection tremendously, and feats of strength are celebrated in fable, song, and story. To Ori there was nothing incongruous in placing John L. Sullivan, the famous prizefighter, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the noted ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... contrasted colour in a room, and to select beautiful things in the way of furniture and belongings; but what is to save her from the thousand and one mistakes possible to inexperience in this combination of things which make lasting enjoyment and appropriate perfection in a house? How can she know which rooms will be benefited by sombre or sunny tints, and which exposure will give full sway to her favourite colour or colours? How can she have learned the reliability or want of reliability ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... equivalent to saying that with him oratory had not degenerated into rhetoric. The few fragments that survive awaken our wonder, first for their marvellous simplicity and clearness: then, for the dexterous perfection of their form. The balance of the rhythmic clauses never obscures or overloads the sense. Gracchus could tell a tale, like that of the cruel wrongs inflicted on the allies, which could arouse a thrill of ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... told us last winter in a club at Washington that Wagner’s was the only European music that he appreciated and enjoyed. “You see,” he added, “music is a much older art with us than in Europe, and has naturally reached a far greater perfection. The German school has made a long step in advance, and I can now foresee a day not far distant when, under its influence, your music will ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... them with whips; Sir Thomas More would chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the Utopia, the friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of the human character. The lives of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... herself to perfection, fully conscious of the influence which a woman's costume is apt to exercise over the heart of the man ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... horse and was a goin' to de house talkin' all de time 'bout crops. Spyin' de dogs lyin' 'round in de shade, him say: 'Dr. Wright, I am a 'culiar man. I love de ladies and admire them much but, if you'll pardon my weakness, a fine hound dog comes nearer perfection, in my eye, than anything our Father in heaven ever made to live on this ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... classical tradition was never broken.... In the social dissolution of the last century, all disappeared except this ideal. In fact, in that first enthusiasm, when the minds of men confidently sought final perfection, it passed from the schools into life, ruled the imagination, inflamed the will. People lived and died Romanly.... The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies have a visible relation to ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of the American quilt at its best is found in the "Indiana Wreath." Its pleasing design, harmonious colours, and exquisite workmanship reveal to us the quilter's art in its greatest perfection. This quilt was made by Miss E. J. Hart, a most versatile and skilful needlewoman, in 1858, as shown by the small precise figures below the large wreath. The design is exceedingly well balanced in that the entire quilt surface is uniformly covered and ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... who is the perfection of tact and diplomacy—probably on that account he failed for the Diplomatic—chipped in with an anecdote about a man who was rating the waiter at an adjoining table, and I held my peace. But as Red Tabs rose to go, a little later, he held my hand for a minute ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... neighbors to him in any striking way. We know that he wrought no miracles until after he had entered upon his public ministry. We can think of him as living a life of unselfishness and kindness. There was never any sin or fault in him; he always kept the law of God perfectly. But his perfection was not something startling. There was no halo about his head, no transfiguration, that awed men. We are told that he grew in favor with men as well as with God. His religion made his life beautiful and winning, but always so simple and natural that it drew no unusual attention to itself. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... do it? Point out to me the way of this perfection, And I will follow you; for you have made My soul enamored with it, and I cannot Rest satisfied until I find it out. But lead me privately, so that the world Hear not my steps; I would not give occasion For talk among ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... faithfully ushered in the last guest, and had hurried to his place in order to see General Jackson step down the long line of dancers and bow to his partner. Not for worlds would he have missed that bow, to him the perfection of grace ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... no inscriptions, but the beauty of the materials of which it is composed, and the perfection of the work, lead us to attribute its construction to some prince of the XIIth dynasty. An ancient causeway runs from its entrance to what was probably at one time the original margin of the lake. The continual sinking of the level of the Birkeh has left this temple ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... me now put in a word, and tell his reverence a few mortifying truths. Brother monk, thou hast formed in thy solitary cell a phantom of perfection, and wouldst fain thrust that into people's heads, which, when there, poisons the brain, as the gangrene corrupts all the flesh around it. There were men long ago who ventured to judge of the innermost of their ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... and, as she thoroughly understands the art of transformation, became a perfect German woman before she took possession of her purchase. In order not to arouse suspicion on the part of the fugitives, she carefully avoided meeting either of them, and played to perfection the role of a lady that had ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... bethought him of a resource. At intervals, during his life, he had aided his father in the occupation of gardening. He could dig, plant, and sow. He could prune trees, and propagate flowers to perfection. He understood the management of the greenhouse and hothouse, the cold-pit and the forcing-pit; nay, more—he understood the names and nature of most of the plants that are cultivated in European countries; in other words, he was a botanist. His ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... said the contributor, penitently taking himself to task for forgetting the hero of these excellent misfortunes in his delight at their perfection, "how am I to sleep to-night, thinking of that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty? Never mind,—I'll be up early, and run over and make sure that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he gets out here, and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of his native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions. You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection. It is not. Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books. The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things grow from ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... exceptionally short of cannon bone and long from hock to stifle as a greyhound; with a breadth of chest and a depth of barrel beneath the withers that indicated most unusual lung capacity, behind the throat-latch Sol showed, in extraordinary perfection, all the best points of a thoroughbred hunter that make for speed, jumping ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... years his junior. He had purposely selected a young, pretty, harmless, well-dressed doll, as the being best suited to further his ends in the great world. He admired her sincerely. She reached the exact mental stature and standard which he looked upon as perfection in womanhood, and her absolute despotism in ruling the modes and creeds of the beau monde were to him the highest proof of her superiority over ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "contributing with our utmost Power to the Satisfaction and Happiness of all about us." And in these pages we have Fielding's philosophy of goodness and greatness, delivered in words that already display an unrivalled perfection of style. Speaking of his third volume, that poignant indictment of devilry the Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great, it is thus that Fielding exposes the iniquity of villains in "great" places:—"But without considering Newgate as ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... supernatural qualities, and inhabiting the recesses of the earth. Resembling men in their general appearance, the manner of their existence, and their habits of life, they far excel the miserable Laplanders in perfection of nature, felicity of situation, and skill in mechanical arts. From all these advantages, however, after the partial conversion of the Laplanders, the subterranean people have derived no farther credit, than to be confounded ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped through them could only be seen and felt. But descriptions of beauty are never satisfactory. It must, therefore, be left to the imagination of the reader to conceive of something not more than mortal, nor, indeed, quite the perfection of mortality, but charming men the more, because they felt, that, lovely as she was, she was of like ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arrangement of that pool who shall describe? In this small space may be found animal and vegetable life of all kinds, anemonae, lovely weeds, zoophytes, curious fish, sponges, shells, coral, and a hundred other things, all in such perfection and orderly wildness that no artificial aquarium can ever hope to present, for they are made by hands, and can never vie with Nature in the formation of the wild and picturesque ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... grandmother, to fail in the due ordering of a house was a cardinal sin. And my poor mother sinned, not indeed by intention, hardly even in labour, but in that appearance of easy perfection, which in a household is the result of excellent plans thoroughly and timeously carried out. She was apt to be found late of an afternoon in a chair with a book—and the dinner dishes still unwashed. Then Agnes Anne, my sister, would come in without ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to render the people of this continent tributary to the mother country - Having finished their part of the plan, their indefatigable Randolph was dispatched to Great-Britain to communicate it to the fraternity there, in order that it might be ripen'd and bro't to perfection: But even before his embarkation, he could not help discovering his own weakness, by giving a broad hint of the design - This parricide pretended that his intention in making a voyage to England at that time, was to settle a private affair of his own; ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... farmer and a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at their highest pitch of efficiency. She demanded efficiency, and, on the whole, she got it; she gave it by a sort ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... penetration, accuracy, polish; any thing is rather the characteristic of the historian, than the flow of eloquence, and the flame of genius. Far therefore from classing him in this respect with such writers as the immortal Hume, who have perhaps carried the English language to the highest perfection it is capable of reaching; we are inclined to rank him below Dr. Johnson, though we are by no means insensible to the splendid faults of ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... captain or unskilful crew. These disadvantages were not felt when opposed to navies in which they existed to an even greater extent, but became very apparent when brought into contact with a power whose few officers knew how to play their own parts very nearly to perfection, and, something equally important, knew how to make first-rate crews out of what was already good raw material. Finally, a large proportion of James' abuse of the Americans sufficiently refutes ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grapple with his pursuers, but he controlled himself, and trusting to the perfection of his disguise to screen him, without a moment's hesitation he boldly answered in ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... time, would not melt or even soften at any degree of heat, that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from exposure to any degree of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat necessary for the perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... to do away, as far as himself was concerned, this merited reproach, operated as one among other causes to induce him to be particularly watchful over his thoughts and actions, and to endeavour to attain that purity of heart, without which he conceived there could be no perfection of the Christian character. Accordingly, in the twenty-second year of his age, he had given such proof of the integrity of his life, and of his religious qualifications, that he became an acknowledged minister of the Gospel in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... daguerreotype, which presupposed hours of exposure, to the instantaneous photograph which fixes the picture of the outer world in a small fraction of a second. We are not concerned here with this technical advance, with the perfection of the sensitive surface of the photographic plate. In 1872 the photographer's camera had reached a stage at which it was possible to take snapshot pictures. But this alone would not have allowed the ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... stretching from the Cumberland River back to some high hills about one mile distant. That part lying on the river was like a garden of the Lord for richness of soil. In this land Indian corn, tobacco, cabbage, and potatoes grew to perfection. Midway between the river and the high hills was a narrow ridge which ran parallel with the river. This natural backbone of land reached its greatest height on Mr. LeMonde's farm. But the highest point of all had been increased in size by artificial ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... the concert-giver, "the king of the fete, who was overwhelmed with bravos." The pianoforte performances of Chopin took up by far the greater part of the programme, which was varied by two arias from Adam's "La Rose de Peronne," sung by Mdme. Damoreau—Cinti, who was as usual "ravissante de perfection," and by Ernst's "Elegie," played by the composer himself "in a grand style, with passionate feeling and a purity worthy of the great masters." Escudier, the writer of the notice in the "France Musicale," says of Ernst's playing: "If you wish to hear the violin weep, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. Even the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... modern art the statue breathes life and action in the perfection of its every detail, representing a Rough Rider who is about to draw his weapon while reining his terrified horse as it rears in a last lunge. This is indicated by the steed's gaping mouth, distended nostrils, the bent knees, knotted chords ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... bloom of youth Spoils its frail complexion; Let the young grape gently grow Till it reach perfection; Hope within my heart doth glow Of ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... this special attribute. His hair was of a dense black, and his whiskers of the same sombre hue. These carefully-arranged whiskers were another of the dentist's strong points; and the third strong point was his teeth, the perfection whereof was a fine advertisement when considered in a professional light. The teeth were rather too large and square for a painter's or a poet's notion of beauty, and were apt to suggest an unpleasant image of some sleek brindled creature crunching human bones in an Indian jungle. But ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... long in bearing fruit. On the hall table lay a card, and pausing on her way upstairs she examined it through her jewelled lorgnette. Charlotte, halfway down, leaned over the rail and watched her, admiring the sweep of her gown, the perfection of the gloved hand that held ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... Scholastic, and the rich Romantic culture—of the Mediaeval Era. The Elizabethan Men of Letters are men who found in those new and dazzling stores of art and literature which the movements of their age brought in all their freshly restored perfection to them, only the summons to their own slumbering intellectual activities,—fed with fires that old Eastern and Southern civilizations never knew, nurtured in the depths of a nature whose depths the northern antiquity had made; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... pleases, and he rests in that, because the operation of the intelligence is not a work of movement but of quiet; from thence alone he derives that barb which, killing him, constitutes the consummation of perfection. He burns with one fire alone; that ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... be said to cut both ways, or hustle both ways; for if they hustle in, they also hustle out. It may not at first sight seem the very warmest compliment to a gentleman to congratulate him on the fact that he soon goes away. But it really is a tribute to his perfection in a very delicate social art; and I am quite serious when I say that in this respect the interviewers are artists. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to come to the point, particularly the sort of point which American journalists are supposed, with some exaggeration, to ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... imagination. There are not enough survivors now. But we have vague idea of the grandeur of these dead. They have given all; by degrees they have given all their strength, and finally they have given themselves, en bloc. They have outpaced life, and their effort has something of superhuman perfection. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... can not refrain from writing to remind you of your promise to us; this must be about the time fixed upon, (at least we all feel as if it was), and the season is so delightful, not to mention the strawberries which will be in great perfection this week—these reasons, together with our great desire to see you, determined me to give you warning that we are surely expecting you, and hope to hear very soon from you to say when we may send to ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... of artists; but on the perverse principle, then common, that training is either useless to native capacity or ruins it, he remained untaught, and his vigorous draughtsmanship, invaluable as it was in his scientific career, never reached its full technical perfection. But the sketches which he delighted to make on his travels reveal the artist's eye, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... art is that of weaving, and how much the human race of today owes to the patient endeavors of the "little brown woman" of the past for the perfection to which she brought this,—one of the most primitive ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... to supposed perfection, some twenty years ago, it was believed that the pole would easily be reached, but there were always the wild and wicked winds, in which no steering apparatus could be relied upon. We may steer ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... striding amongst them, evidently a jockey and a stranger, looking at them and occasionally asking a slight question of one or another of their proprietors, but he did not buy. He might in age be about eight-and-twenty, and about six feet and three-quarters of an inch in height; in build he was perfection itself—a better-built man I never saw. He wore a cap and a brown jockey coat, trowsers, leggings, and highlows, and sported a single spur. He had whiskers—all jockeys should have whiskers—but he had what I did not like, and what no genuine jockey should have, a moustache, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... converted was sometimes shut up, the case being then made to revolve rapidly till the victim lost consciousness; and lastly of fetters used when taking prisoners from one town to another, and brought to such perfection, that when they were on the prisoner could ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the gods. The sublime calm which imparts to great works of art a hint of eternity is born of complete mastery of life; all the stages of evolution have been accomplished, the whole movement of growth has been fulfilled, before the hand of art sets the seal of perfection on the thing that is done. Shadow and light, heat and cold, tempest and quiet days, have all wrought together before the blooming of the flower which in its perfect grace and beauty gives no hint of its troubled growth. As the consummation ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... by all bitters else which interpose Before enjoyment of this choicest sweet, Love is augmented, to perfection grows, And takes a finer edge; to drink and eat, Hunger and thirst the palate so dispose, And flavour more our beverage and our meat. Feebly that wight can estimate the charms Of peace, who never knew the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... very thin. Some of the coins are oblong, some square, and others round. The chief circulating coins are of copper or iron. The workmen are very skilful: they manufacture cutlery and sword-blades to perfection. They show great skill also in gold and silver work. Their mirrors are of bronze, the reflecting surface being of silver, and polished, the back and handle ornamented with various devices. Everything, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... up-and-down life. It is an upward and onward life; on our knees, if you will, but upward and upward and, like the stairs in Ezekiel's vision, still upward. And the Scriptures encourage us forward, bidding us leave the word of the beginning of Christ and go (not crawl) on unto perfection. ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... which is at once so comfortable and so hopeless—secure alike against the risk of "scenes" and the hope of reconciliation, shut fast in its exemption from amantium irae against all possibility of redintegratio amoris. To such perfection, indeed, had the feeling been cultivated on both sides, that Sterne, in the letter above quoted, can write of his conjugal relations in this ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... want of reflection and in-sight into character, was a young woman of strong feelings, and loved, when she did love, with something like blind idolatry. Thus she loved her husband. He was every thing to her, and she believed him as near perfection as a mortal could well be. The first few months of her married life passed swiftly away in the enjoyment of as high a degree of felicity as her mind seemed capable of appreciating. After that, a shadow fell upon her spirit—dim and ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... thing into consideration, Miss Milner," added he, "I rejoice that your sentiments happen to be such as you have owned. For, although my Lord Frederick is not the very man I could have wished for your perfect happiness; yet, in the state of human perfection and human happiness, you might have fixed your affections with perhaps less propriety; and still, where my unwillingness to thwart your inclinations might not have permitted ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... traced from Swift to Addison, from Addison to Pope, and—with marked reservations—from Pope to Goldsmith. It would be unjust to charge all, or indeed any, of these with the narrowness of view betrayed in Johnson's verdicts on individual writers. To arrive at this perfection of sourness was a work of time; and the nature of Addison and Goldsmith at least was too genial to allow of any approach to it. But, with all their difference of temperament, the method of the earlier critics is hardly ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the different Changes, which have happen'd in Poetry, and by what degrees it has arrived to the Perfection, we now find it; I have spoken of it already in my Commentaries on Horace's Art of Poetry, and shall say more in explaining, what Aristotle writes in ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... evening of the day preceding that of the picnic, using recipe for "Perfection Potato Cake," which Aunt Sarah considered her best recipe for raised cakes, as 'twas one used by her mother for ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... of her own for preferring rosy complexions, turn-up noses, and "runaway" chins, might quarrel with the Major's fine Roman profile and jet-black moustache and hair; but—there was no denying it—he was, even at forty, a remarkably handsome man; one of the old school of Chesterfield perfection, which is ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to know if it were really a human being or a poised boulder squatting there. There came no call from below; the hawk wheeled and wheeled, lost interest, drifting away. In the little hollow where the lake glinted it was very still with the soft perfection of the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... rapture. But Rutherford does not mean that, as he is careful to explain. He means, as he says, 'die believing.' It will be your last act as a believer, therefore do it well. You have been practising faith all your days; show that practice makes perfection at the end. As Rutherford said to George Gillespie when he was on his deathbed, 'Hand over all your bills, paid and unpaid, to your surety. Give him the keys of the drawer, and let him clear it out ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... yo' color always,—taking in your height and complexion, Jule," said Miss Sally demurely, yet not without a feminine consciousness that it really did set off her cousin's graceful figure to perfection. "But you can't keep up this gait always. You know some day you might ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the old world, stating numbers common to Europe and Asia; (b) indigenous species, but belonging to genera found in the old world; and (c) species belonging to genera confined to America or the New World. To make (according to my ideas) perfection perfect, one ought to be told whether there are other cases, like Erica, of genera common in Europe or in Old World not found in your area. But honestly I feel that it is quite ridiculous my writing to you at such length on ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... could fail to see that the slight girlish figure was of ravishing perfection. The waist was slender, the partly revealed arms were as delicate as lilies, the tiny hands with their tapering fingers were like those of a fairy, while the countenance was one of the fairest that ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... might be sutured; the wound of the tendon sheath as well as that of the skin carefully united by means of gut sutures, the leg bandaged and immobilized with leather splints and recovery follow in a reasonable percentage of cases so treated. These cases afford an opportunity for the perfection of practical means of treatment by those who frequently meet with ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... something drew Rollo's steps that way; slow, quiet steps, which however brought him to Gyda's side, whom Hazel had seated at the table. While he was safe with her, Wych Hazel watched her chance, and the next thing Dr. Maryland knew, she had brought and set down by him on the table the perfection of a cup of tea. Without a word she was away again and back in her place behind the tea urn; where with Gyda et her side and the delight of Gyda's eyes standing there near the table, Hazel took up the sugar tongs again and tried to remember what amount of sweetening ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... two. Nevertheless, set beside the great masters of fiction who were to come, and who will be reviewed in these pages, they are seen to have been excelled in art and at least equaled in gift and power. So much we may properly claim for the marvelous growth and ultimate degree of perfection attained by the best novel-makers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It remains now to show what part was played in the eighteenth century development by certain other novelists, who, while not of the supreme importance of these two leaders, yet each and all contributed ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... found a friend on his way up to sign his name, and as he had a story to tell him, the whole show was held up for a bit, but after all, it may have been a good story. All the "frocks" did all their tricks to perfection. President Wilson showed his back teeth; Lloyd George waved his Asquithian mane; Clemenceau whirled his grey-gloved hands about like windmills; Lansing drew his pictures and Mr. Balfour slept. It was all over. The "frocks" had won (p. 119) the war. The "frocks" had signed the Peace! ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... be ascertained. "Joy," he said, anticipating Spinosa—that, for the attainment of which men are ready to surrender all beside—"is but the name of a passion in which the mind passes to a greater perfection or power of thinking; as grief is the name of the passion in which it ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... have been Evelyn's "Sculptura, or the History and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper," published in 1662. The translation of Freart's "Idea of the Perfection of Painting demonstrated" was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... contrast to Bacon both in disposition and in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating, impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory to allow them to ripen to perfection; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent, unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. To this corresponds a profound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequately characterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground the mathematical ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... unbroken supply of true Spinach during the burning summer months. But the weather which makes it almost impossible to produce a satisfactory crop of Spinacia oleracea brings New Zealand Spinach to perfection. The latter is prized by some persons because it lacks the peculiar bitterness of the former. The plant is rather tender, and therefore to obtain an early supply the seed must be raised in heat. It may be sown in pots or pans at the end of March or beginning of April. Transfer ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word is thrown away, and not a word missed ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... How may the First Commandment be broken? A. The First Commandment may be broken by giving to a creature the honor which belongs to God alone; by false worship; and by attributing to a creature a perfection which ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Morey was methodically checking every control as Arcot called out the readings on the control panel. Everything was working to perfection. Their every calculation had checked out in practice so far. But the real test ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... not heard, but, had he done so, the words would have left a sting. He possessed an inherent regard for physical perfection, rendered the greater by his own tormented childhood. He was strong and vigorous and of well-knit sinews, but he would have given his muscle for Dudley Webb's hands and his brains ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... the earth to the depth apparently of some hundred feet, would thenceforth preserve them from decay. The tusks form an article of considerable trade, the ivory selling from a shilling to one and ninepence a pound, according to the perfection of the tusks. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... efficient in any open place clear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of the albatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might have brought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; these inventions had never been used in warfare. The last great international struggle had occurred before the usurpation ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... tastes from all creatures, even as inconstancy sucks up truth. In that itself dwell, and from that emerge, the seven Rishis who are crowned with ascetic success, with those seven having Vasishtha for their foremost. Glory, effulgence, greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection, and energy, these seven always follow this same like rays following the sun. Hills and mountains also exist there, collected together; and rivers and streams bearing waters in their course, waters ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... But "if * * * the whole proceeding is a mask—* * * [if the] counsel, jury and judge * * * [are] swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and * * * [if] the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent" intervention by the Supreme Court to secure the constitutional rights of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... ripened into written laws and were likewise woven into social, political, and religious life, the resultant effect of which, on human existence in America, is never to end. One year later still, cotton was first planted in the virgin soil of America, where it grew to perfection, and thenceforth becoming the staple production, made slavery and slave-breeding profitable to the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... so much to be desired?' she replied. 'Oh! when my mind wanders, it goes higher. The angel of perfection, the beautiful angel Gabriel, often sings in my heart. If I were rich, I should work, all the same, to keep me from soaring too often on the many-tinted wings of the angel, and wandering in the world of fancy. There are meditations which are the ruin of us women! I owe ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... ideal of religion is a marriage, a union of faith and reason—but this is idle talk. What does anybody know of such perfection as I ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... as happened on all other occasions, neither the day nor the hour was fixed, until we were told on the evening of the 15th that we would set out early on the morning of the 16th. I passed the night like all the household of his Majesty; for in order to carry out the incredible perfection of comfort with which the Emperor surrounded himself on his journeys, it was necessary that everybody should be on foot as soon as the hour of departure was known; consequently I passed the night arranging the service of his Majesty, while my wife packed my own baggage, and had ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... safety you—communicate."{39} "Sanctity"—the quality of awfulness and mystery—rather than divinity or personality, may have been what primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40} When we use the word "spirit" in connection with the pagan sacramental practices of Christmastide, it is well to bear in mind the possibility that at the origin of these customs there may have been ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... had painted a little girl holding a basket of strawberries. One of his friends, who was at the time a great admirer of his genius, wishing to show the perfection of the picture, said to some people who were looking at it, 'These strawberries are so very natural and perfect, that I have seen birds coming down from the trees to peck them, mistaking them ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... whatever increases their knowledge and appreciation of fellowship and its positive importance, must necessarily tend to remove all prejudices, and all ill-feelings, and bring the two races, and indeed the world, nearer that degree of perfection to which all things show us it is approaching. Therefore I want identical rights, for equal rights ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... It has never received winter protection thus far, either in this region or in Michigan, where it is largely raised, but it may be found necessary to shield it somewhat in some localities. It is both absurd and dishonest to claim perfection for a fruit, and the Cuthbert, especially as it grows older and loses something of its pristine vigor, will, probably, like all other varieties, develop faults and weaknesses. We cannot too much deprecate the arrogant spirit often manifested in introducing new fruits. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... men in our universities and colleges a most honorable career, leading such institutions to establish courses of instruction with reference to such a service—courses which were established long since in Germany, but which have arrived nearest perfection in two of our sister republics—at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, and in the ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... homely garments, but that served to enhance the beauty of her figure, and she had on the plainest of little bonnets, but that only tended to make her face more lovely. Ruby thought it was perfection. He glanced at Lieutenant Lindsay, and perceiving that he thought so too (as how could he think otherwise?) a pang of jealousy shot into his breast. But it passed away when the lieutenant, after politely assisting Minnie into the boat, sat down beside the captain and ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... thought? Or did this form arise within him without will or effort of his—vivid if not clear—certain if not outlined? Ruskin (and better authority we do not know) will assert the latter, and we think he is right: though perhaps he would insist more upon the absolute perfection of the vision than we are quite prepared to do. Such embodiments are not the result of the man's intention, or of the operation of his conscious nature. His feeling is that they are given to him; that from the vast unknown, where time ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... affairs of the world each thing strives for its perfection and the preservation of its being, so on the other hand does man interest himself in the different concerns of others on some account, either for the public good, or to acquire, apart from the common interest, praise and reputation with some profit. Wherefore many have ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... sung the praises of Tarentum—that beautiful maritime city of the Calabrian Gulf, whose attractions were such as to make the delights of Tarentum a common proverbial expression. But what were these delights as celebrated by our poet?—the perfection of its honey, the excellence of its olives, the abundance of its grapes, its lengthened spring and temperate winter. For these, its merits, did Horace prefer, as he tells us, Tarentum to every other spot on the wide earth—his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... by which to obtain inherent response to a given order is so to train a man in minute details, by constant, inflexible insistence on perfection, that it becomes part of his being to obey ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... at last, it seemed as if I was about to prosper in my suit. Each time that I came, Jessie appeared yet more pleased to see me—more willing to give me that attractive confidence which can only exist in full perfection between acknowledged lovers; less disposed to analyze her mind's emotion with any critical severity, or speculate whether this or that feeling had, or had not, passed the line between friendship and love; more ready, at times, to surrender the struggle and self-examination, confess herself ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... have foibles, and perhaps many of them, I shall not deny. I should esteem myself, as the world would, vain and empty, were I to arrogate perfection." ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... features, not Grecian, are yet faultless; the mouth, the brow, the ripe and exquisite contour, all are human and voluptuous; the expression, the aspect, is something more; the form is, perhaps, too full for the perfection of loveliness, for the proportions of sculpture, for the delicacy of Athenian models; but the luxuriant fault has a majesty. Gaze long upon that picture: it charms, yet commands, the eye. While you gaze, you call back five centuries. You see before you the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an English steamer, where I was to take another for my destination; but I liked the islands so well that I remained there all the winter. My principal amusement was boating; and I learned the whole art to perfection. I used to go through the openings in the reefs, and sail out of sight of land. I had a boat ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... becoming of her diaphanous black evening dresses, and, as she sat to the right of her host, each of her three feminine critics admitted to their secret selves that she was that rather rare thing, a genuinely pretty woman. Features, colouring, hair, were all as near perfection as they well could be, while her slight, rounded ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... lust to kill; but pure appreciation—and something more; something that made the two almost kin. And they were much alike; almost startlingly alike. Each was graceful in every movement, in every line. Each was of its kind physical perfection. Each unmistakably bore a message of the wild; of solitude, of magnificent distances. Each was a part of its setting; as much so as the all-surrounding silence. Last of all, each stood for one quality dominant, one desire overtowering all others; ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... candle powers, but is known on Mars as Ki-kans, or a unit of light derived from a platinum wire one millimetre thick, carrying 100 volts current. We could see the varying radiations, and came upon rayless sections, which from admixture of impurities or imperfect chemical perfection, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... composed of a dozen syllables, clear, sonorous, and harmonious, which runs over an extensive scale. At first, it entertained us with its own song, but in a short time began imitating those of other birds, which it did to perfection; indeed, Jup told us, and Carlos corroborated the statement, that it can imitate the human voice, as well as the hissing of serpents, the roar of alligators, the gobbling of turkeys, and the cry of all other birds. Lejoillie tried it by whistling a tune, when the bird imitated him, introducing ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... unworthily or only formally assumed, yet it includes within its widest embrace the best men and women this earth possesses, or has ever possessed. There is a certain kind of character which all men whose moral sense is not blunted recognise as the culminating point and perfection of humanity. They may not themselves attempt to realise it, or they may deem it unattainable, but nevertheless the idea of what constitutes a good or perfect man is no sooner presented to their minds than conscience accepts it as that which ought to be. Now, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... sanctity of Francis gained in the world, could not be unknown to young Clare.—Aware that this wonderful man renewed a perfection on the earth which was almost forgotten, she wished much to see him and to have conversations with him. Francis also, having heard the reputation of Clare's virtues, had an equal desire to communicate with her, that he might tear her ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... that he pushed his great theories of perfection rather hard in his earlier years; and he came back to his native village of Thorpe-Michael full of high intentions to lift the place higher than where it already stood. He had an unyielding habit of tidiness and hated to see children playing in a road; and he hated worse to see a motor-car ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... charms of that society, or how much it is calculated to win and engage the heart of any one whose bosom was totally free, and had never beheld before a woman equal in the slightest degree to his ideas of perfection. I will confess, my lord, that I struggled very hard against the feelings which I found growing up in my own bosom. At that time I struggled the more and with the firmer determination, because I ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... too much of a dramatic perfection or a supposed indication of structural design in a hymn. Textual equations, such as distinguish Dr. Bonar's beautiful stanzas, are not necessarily technical. To emphasize them as ingenious by an ingenious tune seems, somehow, a reflection on the spontaneity ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... which each of us assumes the responsibilities of citizenship. Those who have gone before us conquered a wilderness, expanded and preserved the Union. But it is not for us complacently to accept the result. Much has been done, but much more remains to be done. Our goal is the greatest possible perfection of our economic, social and political life. Each age may be said to have its peculiar burdens and responsibilities: the prime task of the colonist was to foster the tender shoot of democracy; that of the western pioneer was ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... mien and manner than the duke, were his two sons, Thomas, Earl of Ossory, and Lord Richard Butler, afterwards Earl of Arran. My lord of Ossory was no less remarkable for his beauty than famous for his accomplishments: he rode and played tennis to perfection, performed upon the lute to entrancement, and danced to the admiration of the court; he was moreover a good historian, and well versed in chronicles of romance. No less was the Earl of Arran proficient in qualifications befitting his birth, and gifted with attributes ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... will consist of physical training by the latest and most approved methods, with the special intention of developing the body and mind, so that the best possible results may be obtained looking to perfection of base-ball playing. Daily instruction will be had in the theory and practice ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... with the shore without intermission from the moment we left Ireland, and began to pay out. It will be continued, if all goes well, until we land the other and in Newfoundland. The tests are threefold,—first, for insulation, which, as you know, means the soundness and perfection of the gutta-percha covering that prevents the electricity from escaping from the wires, through the sea, into the earth; secondly, for continuity, or the unbroken condition of the conductor or copper core throughout its whole length; and, thirdly, to determine the resistance of the conductor, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... to visitors, showing a polite regard to every wish expressed, and giving precedence to them, in all matters of comfort and convenience, can be easily combined with the easy freedom which makes the stranger feel at home; and this is the perfection of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... voiced the ideal conditions of an advantageous naval position for attack, as conceived by the average officer of the day; and, as though most effectually to demonstrate once for all how that sort of thing would work, the adjunct circumstances approached perfection. The admiral was thoroughly wedded to the old system, without an idea of departing from it, and there was a fair working breeze with which to give it effect, for the ships under topsails and foresail would go about ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... every thing, animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their highest perfection. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... to Temple's Letters, says:—'It is generally believed that this author has advanced our English tongue to as great a perfection as it can well bear.' Temple's Works, i. 226. Hume, in his Essay Of Civil Liberty, wrote in 1742:—'The elegance and propriety of style have been very much neglected among us. The first polite prose we have was writ by a man who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... appeared to have the contrary effect, and to bring him positive relief. When it was borne in on him, as it was soon to be borne in on all, that her mind was not what it was, and that the beautiful Carmel had lost something besides her physical perfection in the awful calamity which had made shipwreck of the whole family, he grew noticeably more cheerful and less suspicious in his manner. Was it because the impending inquiry must go on without her, and proceedings, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... us all. To all of us, sometimes, our lives seem barren and poor; and we feel as if we had brought forth no fruit to perfection. Let us get nearer to Him and He will see to the fruit. Some poor stranded sea-creature on the beach, vainly floundering in the pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes, leaping and rushing over the sands, and bears ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... mutton chops require only a table-spoonful of hot water to be poured over. Slice an onion in the dish before you put in the steaks or chops, and garnish both with rasped horse-radish. To have viands served in perfection, the dishes should be made hot, either by setting them over hot water, or by putting some in them, and the instant the meats are laid in and garnished, put on a pewter dish cover. A dinner looks very enticing, when the steam rises from each dish on removing the covers, and if it be judiciously ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and his own sins to Madame de Stael and others in Switzerland, declaring himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast himself at the feet of that serene perfection, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him and gave a start. It was the young Englishman who had come out of the doctor's house, the man she had seen before somewhere—she still did not recall where. Studied at close range he revealed points of interest. He was dressed with that perfection crowned with negligence which the Englishman of the upper classes so admirably achieves. He was, in fact, unmistakably a gentleman, at least by birth, though his bored manner held a hint of insolence, a suggestion of the bounder. His hazel eyes, glancing about with irritable ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... fact, in war as it is in painting, or in music. Perfection in either art grows out of innate talent, but it never can be acquired without them. Study and perseverance may correct ideas, but no application, no assiduity will give the life and energy of action; these are the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in so far as they are referred to God, are true (II:xxxii.), that is (II:Def.iv.) adequate; and therefore (by the general Def. of the Emotions) God is without passions. Again, God cannot pass either to a greater or to a lesser perfection (I:xx.Coroll.ii.); therefore (by Def. of the Emotions:ii., &iii.) he is not affected by any ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... sunny harmony of the last ten days had suddenly changed to gloom. Pixie's thoughts made a lightning review of those different days. How perfectly, incredibly happy they had been! Until this moment she had not fully realised their perfection. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... that bears his name; Because he justly deems such praise The easiest way himself to raise. 'Tis my conclusion in the case, That many a talent here below Is but cabal, or sheer grimace,— The art of seeming things to know— An art in which perfection lies More with the ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted, and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... to give a detailed account of all that Pericles did to make his native city the most glorious in the ancient world. Greek architecture and sculpture under his patronage reached perfection. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylaea, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his life, industry and commerce ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... any male masculant came into his court[FN490] complaining about his rib he would deliver his decision that the man was a wrong-doer and that the woman was wronged. On such wise he did because he saw that his wife was the pink of perfection and he opined that the whole of her sex resembled her, and he knew naught of the wickedness and debauchery of the genus and their sorcery and their contrariety and the cunning contrivance wherewith they ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... downward, and with it go, in their greatest strength, all those affections that unite families and kindred. We learn to know our parents in the fullness of their reason, and commonly in the perfection of their bodily strength. Reverence and respect both mingle with our love; but the affection, with which we watch the helplessness of infancy, the interest with which we see the ingenuous and young profiting by our care, the pride of improvement, and the magic of hope, create ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a peculiarly elevated frame of mind. He felt that something greater and finer than himself had taken up its abode within him and would grow on to perfection there. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... resembling a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. But his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... Tennyson we note the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes's as perhaps the very perfection of slobbery incapacity. He appears to be delivering a course of addresses on the poet. The first of these escaped our attention; the second is before us in the supplement to last week's Methodist Times. We have read it with great attention and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of artists to nature. To do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does not in some degree possess,—powers, namely, of observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. But until this cultivation has been bestowed, and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... light-hearted woman is suddenly plunged into that perfection of misery, the BLUES, it is a sad picture. It is ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... domestic whirlwind. The intelligence office had sent out Ellen—Ellen, the deft-handed cook, the silent, self-effacing, competent servant of every housekeeper's dreams. Her good luck seemed incredible. Ellen was perfection, was middle-aged and settled, never went out in the evenings, kept her kitchen spotlessly clean, trained the rattle-headed second girls who came and went, to be good waitresses and made pastry that moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was plenty of meat, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in the matter than, to use the poet's expression, the executioner's axe following the conscious thought as its unconscious instrument. Sulla carried out that part with rare, in fact superhuman, perfection; but within the limits which it laid down for him, his working was not only grand but even useful. Never has any aristocracy deeply decayed and decaying still farther from day to day, such as was the Roman aristocracy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... an unflagging interest I have often thought what a deal of cleverness—what stores of practical ability—were lost to the world in these out-at-elbow fellows, who speak every language fluently, play every game well, sing pleasingly, dance, ride, row, and shoot, especially with the pistol, to perfection. There they are, with a mass of qualities that win success! and, what often is harder, win goodwill in life! There they are, by some unhappy twist in their natures, preferring the precarious existence of the race-course ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... days when she had argued with Hilda, she had been told of the power and perfection of Prussian rule. "Everything is at loose ends in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... wisdom of the framers of the Federal Constitution. Under all circumstances the result of their labors was as near an approximation to perfection as was compatible with the fallibility of man. Such being the estimation in which the Constitution is and has ever been held by our countrymen, it is not surprising that any proposition for its alteration or amendment should be received with reluctance and distrust. While this sentiment deserves ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "Dreams of Grecian perfection," explained Boots. And, lowering his voice, "You ought not to eat everything they bring you; there'll be doings to-morrow if you do. Eileen is ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... always carried the kettle to the well; and when she came back Daisy could hear the iron clink of the stove as the kettle was put on. Presently Juanita came in then from her kitchen, and began the work of putting the house in order. How nicely she did it! like the perfection of a nurse, which she was. No dust, no noise, no bustle; still as a mouse, but watchful as a cat, the alert old woman went round the room and made all tidy and all clean and fresh. Very likely Juanita would change the flowers in a little vase which stood on the mantelpiece ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... kept sprinkling shrapnel over Bluebank with their usual steadiness and perfection of aim. The enemy's gun was soon either silenced or withdrawn. The rifle fire died down. Not a Boer was to be seen upon the ridge, but three galloped away over the plains behind as though they had enough of it. The Light Horse dismounted ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... unmusical, should be given its chance, at any rate up to the age of twelve years. During this time, the stress should be placed, for the unmusical child, not so much on perfection of technique, but on the ability of playing easy pieces really well, and to read at sight such things as ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... you in Edinburgh street, and inhaled, by juxtaposition, your sweet fraternal breath. How the Fates have since sundered us! How have you been going on, fattening and beautifying from one degree to another of poetical perfection, while I have, under the chilling shade of the Ochil Hills, been dwindling down from one degree of poetical extenuation to another, till at length I am become the very shadow and ghost of literary leanness! I should now wish to see you, and compare you as you are now ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this fourth word a degree finer spun, a stage farther on, and higher up, the word husband. This is the word on the man side for the most hallowed relationship of earth. This is the lover relationship in its perfection stage. With men husband is not always a finer word than lover. The more's the pity. How man does cheapen God's plan of things; leaves out the kernel, and keeps only an empty shell sometimes. In God's thought ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... very quietness is beginning to alarm him. It shakes him from his customary perfection of manners]. The Lady Bantocks do not as a rule receive circus girls in ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... garden, round which it is his highest pleasure to lead the unwilling guest. Whenever he is not in the kitchen, he is hanging round loose, seeking whom he may show his garden to. Much of my time is passed in studiously avoiding him, and I have brought the art to a very extreme pitch of perfection. The fox, often hunted, becomes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thy feet, Or hew thy passage through the embattled foe, And clear thy way to fame; inspired by thee The nobler chase of glory shall pursue 30 Through fire, and smoke, and blood, and fields of death. Nature, in her productions slow, aspires By just degrees to reach perfection's height: So mimic Art works leisurely, till Time Improve the piece, or wise Experience give The proper finishing. When Nimrod bold, That mighty hunter, first made war on beasts, And stained the woodland green with purple dye, New and unpolished was the huntsman's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... everywhere her finger marks plainly to be seen. He was tall and robust, with light eyes and blonde whiskers, and a general air of insisting upon his immense superiority to all the world. That he secretly felt some doubts of the perfection of his social knowledge, there were indications in his manner, but on the whole the complacency of a portly bank account overcame all misgivings of this sort. His character might have been easily inferred from the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... you of a friend who has been suddenly placed in new circumstances, in whom there is much that you recognise, and much that is entirely strange. How purely, divinely white when the last snowflake has just fallen! How exquisite and virginal the repose! It touches you like some perfection of music. And winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. Pluck a single ivy leaf from the old wall, and see what a jeweller he is! How he has silvered over the dark-green reticulations with ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... counting-house, to do small drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office. Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local charities. Rowland's third was an easy competence, and he never felt a moment's jealousy ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... anthropology and botany from university days to recognize the reverted, twisted and stringy little degenerate wild-potato root which had once served the Aztecs and Pueblo Indians for food, and could again, with proper cultivation, be brought back to full perfection. Likewise with the maize, the squash, the wild turnip, and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you. That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition — very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don't know — I think of your dear circle at home — and though I cannot wish the heaven over your heads to be a whit less bright, I cannot ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... avoided. The air and feed pumps are combined in one casting let into the engine room floor, quite out of the way, and worked by a crank pin in a small disk on the forward end of the propeller shaft. This is an admirable arrangement, and works to perfection. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... rigorous discipline at the Bartletts' it was like slipping out of the harness to be back at the Martels'. They held him up to no standard, and offered no counsel of perfection. He could tell his best stories without fear of reproof, laugh as loud as he liked, and whistle and sing without disturbing anybody. Rose mended his clothes, doctored him when he was sick, petted him in ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the laws, that we must seek for the main peculiarity affecting the condition of the Roman Csar, which peculiarity it was, superadded to the other three, that finally made those three operative in their fullest extent. It is in the perfection of the stratocracy that we must look for the key to the excesses of the autocrat. Even in the bloody despotisms of the Barbary States, there has always existed in the religious prejudices of the people, which could not be violated with safety, one check more upon the caprices of the despot ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness. Report has been accustomed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... God to be kept in mind, if we are to grasp the meaning of the "Hound of Heaven," is the omniscient character, the infinite perfection, of God's knowledge. God sees each of us as fully and completely as if there were no one else and nothing else to see except us. Practically speaking, God gives each one of us His undivided attention. And through this spacious channel of His Divine and ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... the parts which lie above the sea-side places, those situated in the middle, which they call the hills, 180 are ripe for the gathering in; and as soon as this middle crop has been gathered in, that in the highest part of the land comes to perfection and is ripe; so that by the time the first crop has been eaten and drunk up, the last is just coming in. Thus the harvest for the Kyrenians lasts eight months. Let so much as has been said ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them tremendously. Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in automobiles, and remain and buy summer places. The State would have its money back ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... serve two masters. The mind of man is so constituted, and the influences bearing upon it are so peculiar in their orderly arrangements, that the more it is concentered upon one object and pursuit, the more perfection and certainty attend its action. But if it be divided between two objects and pursuits, and especially if both of these require much thought, its action will be imperfect to a certain degree in both, or one will suffer while the other ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... not addressed his companion as "Tony" he would have fancied he was one of the masters, he spoke with such an air of condescension. Stephen felt very uncomfortable, too, to hear what had been told him about Oliver. If he had not been told, he could not have believed his brother was anything but perfection. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... most important of the two, "is particularly observable the curiosa felicitas, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language." So far there can be no dispute. The style has the highest degree of technical perfection, and it is generally added that the poems are as pathetic as they are exquisitely written. Bowles, no hearty lover of Pope, declared the Eloisa to be "infinitely superior to everything of the kind, ancient or modern." The tears shed, says Hazlitt of the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
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