"Perfectness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impression given by your numerous testimonials as to the character of the word gradely, is one of decency, order, rightness, perfectness. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... and in her voice as she spoke was a quality of zylophone music made the more charming by that slight French accent which years abroad had given her. Beauty is so variant of type, so often vaunted and so rarely found in true perfectness, that Carl Bristoll had accepted the newspaper reports of this girl's loveliness with a discounted credence. Now he was convinced. The quality of her coloring and expression would have made her face beautiful even had it lacked its allurement of line ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was something that lived and improved on strife. Barbarians, Indians, savages were the most perfect specimens of nature's handiwork; and in proportion to their development toward so-called civilized life their physical prowess and perfectness—that was to say, their strength to resist and live and reproduce ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... "figure," as when the Scripture says, Ye shall break down their images, Ex. 23, 24, in which passage the original term signifies nothing more than the figures, or statues, or images erected by men. But demuth signifies "a likeness," or "the perfectness of an image." For instance, when we speak of a lifeless image, such as that which is impressed on coins, we say, This is the image of Brutus or of Caesar. That image, however, does not reproduce the likeness, nor ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... his works. The true basis of morality is universal order. The true end of morality is life, the sum of moral laws being identical with the sum of the conditions in accordance with which the fruition of the functions of life can be secured with nearest approach to perfectness, perpetuity, and universality. The true sanctions of morality are the manifold forms in which consciousness of life is heightened by harmony with universal order or lowered by discord with it. The true law of moral sacrifice or resistance to temptation is misrepresented ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... toward the sphere above—must be vitalized afresh. Then from a mass of all but homogeneous "protoplasm" the organism must pass through all the stages of differentiation and integration, growing in perfectness and beauty under the unfolding of the higher Evolution, until it reaches the Infinite Complexity, the Infinite Sensibility, God. So the spiritual carries on the marvelous process to which all lower Nature ministers, and perfects it when the ministry ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... ceased; but huge fantastic masses of cloud, tinged with lurid copper-colour by the setting sun, still towered afar off over the horizon, and were reflected in a deeper hue on the calm surface of the sea, with a perfectness and grandeur that I never remember to have witnessed before. Not a ship was in sight; but out on the extreme line of the wilderness of grey waters there shone one red, fiery spark—the beacon of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Before us, the green ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... should be one! There should be one. And there's the bitterness Of this unending torture-place for men, For the proud soul that craves a perfectness That might outwear the rotting of all things Rooted in earth. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... and sits there, wielding the forces of the universe, as we believe He does, then to Him belongs the divine prerogative of imparting His nature and His character to them that love Him. Then His righteousness is not a solitary, uncommunicative perfectness for Himself, but like a sun in the heavens, which streams out vivifying and enlightening rays to all that seek His face. If it be true that Christ has risen, then it is also true that you and I, convicted of sin, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... But if you doubt these generalities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the slain pig that was fat to eat? Was Van Horn's darkness as the darkness of the blue-bottle fly that his fly-flapping maid smashed and disrupted in mid-flight of the air?—as the darkness into which passed the mosquito that knew the secret of flying, and that, despite its perfectness of flight, with almost an unthought action, he squashed with the flat of his hand against the back of his ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... will sway it forevermore. As in the past they have evolved order out of disorder, heterogeneous beauty out of homogeneous crudity, progressive individuality of being and thought out of chaotic vapor, so will they continue their evolving force through all time, till the boasted perfectness of this day of ours, perfect because it is our day, will be as primitive to the later denizens of this globe as the barbarity of the cave savages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... a freely willing being cannot be foreknown, the ignorance of them does not detract from the perfectness of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot make two and two five. Omnipotence cannot do what is intrinsically impossible. No more can Omniscience know what ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... threatened to do with me; at least, sweetheart, you would then have lived in widowhood and I have died a glorious death in observing the law that true love enjoins. But through breaking it I am now in life, and you, through perfectness of love, are dead; for your pure, clear heart could not bear to know the wickedness ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... is not retributive justice but moral perfectness, which to a good man will be joy, and to a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... up there amidst the blue waters and green forests like a dream of enchantment, a hymn of glory, with not one false, harsh note in it to mar the glory and perfectness of the song. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... presented in response to that vague agitation of our soul, we feel its inadequacy to our need in spite of, or perhaps on account of, its own particular perfection. We then say that the classic does not satisfy us, and that the "Grecian cloys us with his perfectness." We are not capable of that concentrated and serious attention to one thing at a time which would enable us to sink into its being, and enjoy the intrinsic harmonies of its form, and the bliss of its immanent particular heaven; we flounder in the vague, but ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... indicated shipwreck and troubled waters on the sea of life. Woman's bard, and such he deserves to be entitled, should only have thought of her as the "fair and gentle maid," or the "pleasing wife," placens uxor—the perfectness of man's nature, by whom he is united to goodness, gentleness, the two, man and woman united, making the complete one—as "Mulier est hominis confusio"—malevolent would he be that would mistranslate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... various Christian graces, and urging the Colossians to put them on, Paul adds: "And above all these things, put on charity," or love, "which is the bond of perfectness" (Col. iii. 14). These graces were garments, and love was the girdle which bound and held them together; and so love is the bond that holds ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... 9:46 46 Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear; that ye may not remember your awful guilt in perfectness, and be constrained to exclaim: Holy, holy are thy judgments, O Lord God Almighty—but I know my guilt; I transgressed thy law, and my transgressions are mine; and the devil hath obtained me, that I am a prey ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... charming taste, and polished manners; and, above all, a thorough self-understanding and discipline. Though past thirty, she still had admirers and lovers; yet, till now, her brother, insensibly to herself, had blocked up the doorway of her heart; and the perfectness of the fraternal friendship had prevented the wish and the longing by which some fortunate man might have found ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... though, indeed, the fulfilment of divine justice is removed from the scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be uniform and universal, and not varying and partial, as it would be if acting only upon general and secondary laws; because such perfect justice flows of necessity from perfectness of knowledge to conceive, perfectness of love to will, and perfectness of ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... only the constitutional exercise of higher force over forces organized to be swayed. If law were perfectly rigid, there could be but one force; but many grades exist from cohesion to mind and spirit. The highest forces are meant to have victory, and thus give the highest order and perfectness. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... all these things put on charity; which is the bond of perfectness." Col. 3:14. Throw the mantle of love over every act and thought in life. Love purely, love sincerely, love fervently. Nothing is so great as love. All the graces have their seat in love; you can not be compassionate, kind, humble, ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... and forgiving, so is the Father; if the Son is long-suffering and slow to anger, yet not afraid to denounce sin and call to account the wicked, so likewise may we represent the Father. All the noble attributes which we find in the Son exist in perfectness ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... believer has recognized the perfectness of the will of God and has thrown his whole being open to His power and guidance. As a little child may avail himself of the wisdom and experience of his parents through obedience, so the believer has become willing to do whatever the infinite wisdom and love of God may choose for ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... point, to give an idea of the perfectness of his organization, the manager raised his cane; his gesture was instantly repeated from end to end of the park, with the result that all the musical societies, all the trumpets, all the tambourines burst forth in unison in the majestic strains of the familiar ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena, color, mellowness, and perfectness, to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by Nature. At our annual Cattle Shows and Horticultural Exhibitions, we make, as we think, a great show of fair fruits, destined, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio,[23] in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers tossing ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... difference between those trees seen in themselves, and seen in the conception of their nature's perfectness which has been previously realized, is the difference between man seen in himself and seen in Christ. We are feeble, dwarfish, stunted specimens of Humanity. Our best resolves are but withered branches, our holiest deeds unripe and blighted fruit; but to the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the queen o' the heaven's blue, To whom earth's honour shall be paid? We believe in Mary, of grace who grew, A mother, yet a blameless maid; To wear her crown were only due To one who purer worth displayed. For perfectness by none gainsaid, We call her the Phoenix of Araby, That flies in faultless charm arrayed, Like to the ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... the gentlest fashion John's temper, which found difficulty in even the perfect personality of Jesus, and made that which should have been the 'sure foundation' of his spirit a stone of stumbling. Our Lord's consciousness of absolute perfection of moral character, and of absolute perfectness in His office and work, is distinct in the words. He knows that 'there is none occasion of stumbling in Him,' and that whoever finds any, brings it or makes it. He knows and warns us that all blessedness lies for us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... perfection of a song, while in fact he is only listening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the great paradox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits; it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude every moment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness; finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are but completeness manifested in ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... had effected it, but somehow, methought our part in this sickening warfare was accomplished, and we were home again. Oh the joy of it! oh the joy of it! Even amid my dream, methought we questioned its reality, so unearthly in its perfectness, it seemed. We stood upon the college-green, and the sun was going down with a strange, darkling splendor; and from afar, ever and anon came the thunder roll of battle; but we had nought to do with it; our part was done; our time was out; we were to fight no more. ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... was her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back—watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes—and wearing at the same time an expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that made all her movements large and emphatic, and yet, at the same time, nothing could exceed the delicate finish of the physical structure itself. What was indeed characteristic in her was this combination of extraordinary perfectness of detail, with a flash, a warmth, a force of impression, such as often raises the lower kinds of beauty into excellence and picturesqueness, but is seldom found in connection with those types where the beauty is, as it were, sufficient in and by ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whether 'tis in the Action, or out of it, is of no moment to the Perfectness of a Pastoral. Tho' I must needs say, I am for what Aristotle call's the Peripatie, or change of Fortune in Pastoral; but I think the Action that produces the Change may be either in the Poem, or have happen'd some ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... he did not cease to learn. Michelangelo was already in Rome, and now Raphael came more immediately under his influence, although not to submit to it but to use it for his own ends. In Rome were revealed to him the culture of an older and riper civilization and the glories and perfectness of an elder art. Raphael laid antiquity under contribution to the consummation of his art and the fulfillment and complete realization of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... forces that rule and guide our lives. These are ever operating to help us to live above the purely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement along the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls vistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... with his love. They are often almost as inarticulate, these old singers, as the birds from whom they copied their notes; the thinnest chain of thought links together some bird- like refrain: but they make up for their want of logic and reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine- forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own voice; and he breaks out, with the very ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. But our dull wit cannot come unto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. Yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. If we want to sharpen our reason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once found the right path we may, step by step, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... perfection of the symbolism of the temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In like manner the Mysteries, says Christie, "were termed [Greek: teletai], perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled [Greek: teloume/noi], and [Greek: tetelesme/noi], that is, brought to perfection."—Observations on Ouvaroff's Essay on ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... but there was no evading the perfectness of his contracts. His searching and large hazel eyes, almost proud and quite unkindly, and his Indian-like hair, were the leading elements of a face not large, but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long frivolous family had been restored and concentrated in this ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... sell them to thee,' replied she, 'save on condition that thou fast a whole month, watching by night and fasting by day for the love of God the Most High: but if thou wilt do this, they are thine, to use as thou pleasest.' The King wondered at the perfectness of her piety and devotion and abnegation and she was magnified in his eyes, and he said, 'May God make this pious old woman to profit us!' So he agreed to her proposal, and she said to him, 'I will help thee with my prayers.' Then she called ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... revelation of God is the highest truth. Till the end of time men will turn to His life for their clearest knowledge and happiest certainty of their Father in heaven. There is nothing limited or local in His character or works. In His meek beauty and gentle perfectness, He stands so high above us all that, to-day, the inspiration of His example and the lessons of His conduct touch us as much as if He had lived in this generation, and will always shine before men as their best and most blessed law of conduct. Christ will not be antiquated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... temper sometimes and seemed to those who were too ready to judge him to fail in the putting on of that Charity which "thinketh no evil" and which is "the bond of perfectness," he was still a good man, honest, conscientious, just, and he could never willingly have sought to harm or to alarm any helpless or suffering creature. But then neither would his conscience let him consent to suffer sin in one whom he might, ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... however, comprise all his notable compositions. And about these notable compositions which do not rank with his masterpieces, either because they are of less significance or otherwise fail to reach the standard of requisite perfectness, I shall first say ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... may judge with the same certainty from one exhibition, as from many. The praise of a poet, therefore, is to be determined not by the nature of the work which he undertakes, but by the kind of mastery which he shows; not by the breadth of surface over which he toils, but by the perfectness of the result which he attains. Mr. Wordsworth has vindicated the capacity of the sonnet to be a casket of the richest gems of fame. We have no doubt that the song may give evidence of a genius which shall deserve to be ranked with the constructor ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... most amusing. To see a Zouave gravely cheat a Turk, or trip up a Greek street-merchant, or Maltese fruit-seller, and scud away with the spoil, cleverly stowed in his roomy red pantaloons, was an operation, for its coolness, expedition, and perfectness, well worth seeing. And, to a great extent, they escaped scatheless, for the English Provost marshal's department was rather chary of interfering with the eccentricities of our gallant allies; while ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... waters whose substance have formed the earth be gathered together, and let the earth and the waters stand in perfectness in their orders. And let the firmament beneath the heaven of electricity remain unmovable, and let there be a door as a gateway from the heaven to the earth ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... a mountain-top encounters and removes obstacles, which none of those who come after him need to meet; he makes the path for them. When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world's sinfulness, and looked off to the summit of His Father's perfectness, He felt a separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end it. We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the temptations He faced, from the experience in ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... quite so well executed, and from the pen of a writer of inferior genius. It should seem that the best rule to follow would be, first, to pitch upon the sonnets which are best both in kind and perfectness of execution, and, next, those which, although of a humbler quality, are admirable for the finish and happiness of the execution, taking care to exclude all those which have not one or other of these ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... philosophers reached this conclusion is not clearly set forth, but it may be surmised that in general there were two lines of thought that led to this inference: first, a metaphysical conception of unity as something that was demanded by the sense of perfectness in the world; and, secondly, observation of facts that appeared to characterize the world as a unit. Among several different peoples, and apparently in each independently, the idea arose that the divine manifests ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; 13 forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: 14 and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body; and be ye thankful. 16 Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, and ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... matter of colonial inferiority, that they had proved to their own perfect satisfaction, which was the same thing as disposing of the question without appeal, that man and beast, plant and tree, hill and dale, lake, pond, sun, air, fire, and water were all wanting in some of the perfectness of the old regions. It was plain we could never hope to reach the exalted excellence they enjoy; and while he respected the patriotism that held the contrary view, he could not, out of deference to it, afford to doubt what had been demonstrated (p. 100) ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... which, under the influence of erroneous principles, they at first gave rise to, are either already, or soon will be, sunk in oblivion, even because from their very mistakes they contrived to advance towards greater purity and perfectness; their works will live, and in them, to say the least, we have the foundation of a dramatic school at once essentially German, and governed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... perfectness of his own character. And think how different the divine and the human standards of perfection! Not the outward fair colour and proportion merely, not the perfect fitness and adaptation, not the most utilitarian employment ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... calls charity the "bond of perfectness;" alluding to the girdle of the Orientals, which was not only ornamental and expensive, but was put on last, serving to adjust the other parts of the dress, and keep the whole together. It is a bond which holds all the Christian graces in harmonious union, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... God's will, then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. In the Scriptures we have vague intimations concerning God's will, growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through history to Jesus. In the dogma we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of God was from the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... sympathize with it, and rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly; and at the end of your day's work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same way. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... with the significant suggestion that the redemption results from the Unity. They correspond with the two "bonds," or uniting principles spoken of by St. Paul, "the Unity of the Spirit which is the Bond of Peace," and "Love, which is the Bond of Perfectness." ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of human lives. We cannot merely grow into strength, beauty, nobleness, and power of helpfulness, without discipline, pain, and cost. It is written even of Jesus himself that he was made perfect through suffering. There was no sin in him; but his perfectness as a sympathizing Friend, as a helpful Saviour, came through struggle, trial, pain, and sorrow. Not one of the apostles reached his royal strength as a man, as a helper of men, as a representative of Jesus, without enduring loss and suffering. No man who ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Infinite, and Whom I bless! Glow of embodied perfectness! O Sea of supersensuous Being, Whose tides ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... form of words in which the meaning is set forth. At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a while"—which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his touchstones of literary style—the thing that really moves the audience in the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to a world ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... was born to lean on her alone—dependent on her providence for life—then hour after hour, step after step, in the progress of infant destinies, had the reason of the mother grown in the child's growth, adapting itself to each want that it must foresee, and taking its perfectness and completion from the breath of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fair as a dream of Greece, in her serene, marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns, her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling—both under the care of that stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there were the sisters Percy, twins in age ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles leapt and moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock, was fair as the fairest woman's. I remember his putting his hand up to feel of the wound ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... describe so often in his beautiful epistles. "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved," he says to the Colossians, "bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering"; and, "above all these things, put on love which is the bond of perfectness." None of these things are regarded as intrinsic qualities in us, but as imparted graces from the hand of Jesus. And even in the later years of his life, and after the mature experience of a quarter of a century we find him exclaiming, "I count all things but loss for the excellency ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... always made it impossible for him to enjoy the moment in its flight, again possessed his mind: he had known it from a child, the ambition to follow, follow, follow, in the hope that somewhere, perhaps behind the setting sun, he might arrive at the land of perfectness for ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... adequately describe the beauty of the circulatory system. The constant vital flow through the larger vessels, and the incessant activity of those so minute that they are almost imperceptible, fully illustrate the perfectness of the mechanism of the human body, and the wisdom and goodness of Him who ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... with the stern humour of his kind, let loose the usual assortment of sounds, it seemed as though the roadway below boiled over. Horses reared, plunged and stampeded, while high above the head of a long-tailed chestnut a countryman floated forth into space, a vision, in its brief perfectness, delightfully photographed ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... we had spent on the moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its perfectness, we came back to the castle; and, because the sunset was of such unearthly radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace until the last soft touch of gold had died out and left the pure, still, clear, ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ease Deserted me; I strove to talk, And stammer'd foolishness; my walk Was like a drunkard's; if she took My arm, it stiffen'd, ached, and shook: A likely wooer! Blame her not; Nor ever say, dear Mother, aught Against that perfectness which is My strength, as once it was my bliss. And do not chafe at social rules. Leave that to charlatans and fools. Clay grafts and clods conceive the rose, So base still fathers best. Life owes Itself to bread; enough thereof And easy days condition love; ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... above even the passion of love between man and woman, and carrying men and women unwedded to their graves for sake of love of mother or father. When we realize what such friendship is, it seems incredible that parents can forego it, or can risk losing any shade of its perfectness, for the sake of any indulgence of the habit of command or ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... All is "calm and free," and "full of life," it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!—what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!—what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!—what modesty and submission! what self-possession!—what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... hope to prepare them for receiving the historic testimony which tells of the Divine plan for human redemption: leading them from the sense of sin to Him who saves from sin; from the inward to the outward; from Christ to Christianity; from Christian doctrine to the perfectness of Christian faith. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek;—but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... in editing the English Grammar of Urcullu, made great improvements by the addition of what he modestly calls "notillas," (little notes,) but which greatly add to the perfectness of the book. The important table of the verbs of the language by Hernandez and the officers of the Spanish academy, and the chapter on terms of courtesy in the United States, are most valuable additions. This book is most valuable as a supplement to the Spanish Grammar, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... condition in which you find yourself placed; but I do say that if, with your human sympathies and your devoted love, you can feel the presence of that Jesus behind the words that He said, the personal perfectness, the divine life manifested in the human life, there is not a single sin or temptation to sin that will not ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived, Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, 190 Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage— Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced The perfectness of others yet unseen. Conceding which—had Zeus then questioned thee "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Thou wouldst have answered, "Ay, by making each ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it)—and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak—was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of study from another point of view, we have an illustration of the value of a method for cultivating the faculty of memory, which differs widely from any thing known to ordinary systems of education. From this illustration, we perceive that the perfectness and permanency of memory, is dependent on the foundations which have been laid for it, by the quantity and quality of sensations and images, regarding the things to be remembered, which have been registered or planted in brain-cell formation. These ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... soil and lifts it, growth by growth, to the beauty and the sweetness of the flower. Under the same law of unconscious growth every true poem, every great work of art, and every genuine noble character, has fashioned itself and come at last to conscious perfectness and recognition. Genius is nearer Nature than talent; it is only when it strays away from Nature, and loses itself in mere dexterities, that it degenerates into skill and becomes a tool with which to work, and not a gift from heaven. The silence of the deep ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... appears in the productions of the Celts, or of the English, or of the French, to appear in the productions of the Germans also, or in the productions of the Italians; but there will be a stamp of perfectness and inimitableness about it in the literatures where it is native, which it will not have in the literatures where it is not native. Novalis[275] or Rueckert,[276] for instance, have their eye fixed on nature, and have undoubtedly ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the "Paradise Lost" as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';—nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... showers Give them the force consummate life to win: Even so we, poor prisoners of Time, Victims of others' evil and our own, Cannot expand in this tempestuous clime, But full of excellences in us sown, Must wait that better life, and there, full blown, In spiritual perfectness sublime The prizes of our nature we shall gain, Which now we struggle for ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... nothing more for you, nor you for him; but he may be rich in juices wherewithal to nourish the heart of another man, and their two lives, set together, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness of fruit, while you and he would only have languished into ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."—Luke 10:27. "And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."—Col. 3:14. "But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him."—1 John 2:5. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... earnestness and spirituality of feeling, and smoothness of diction, they are all, without exception, good—if they are not great. If no one rises to the height which other poets have occasionally reached, they are, nevertheless, always free from those defects which sometimes mar the perfectness of far greater productions. Each portrays some human thirst or longing, and so touches the heart of every thoughtful reader. There is a sweetness running through them all which comes from a higher than earthly source, and which human ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... distinguished by magnificence, in the highest sense of the word, by the most brilliant display of great qualities of all kinds; and the hero of the Faerie Queene seems to be the personification of the splendid attributes of the age. A prevailing sentiment, in the mind of Spenser, was the perfectness of character to which the gentlemen of his time aspired, and on this model he fashioned his hero. He observes that "the general end, therefore, of all the books is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in gentle and virtuous discipline." And again, "I labor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... considerable, especially so in the realm of Synthetic Chemistry. But it must be understood that the individual is taught that dependence must be placed rather on one's own dexterity, born of that God-given faculty of Intuition, than on the perfectness of a man-made machine, the ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... account for all this? By the simplest and yet the most comprehensive answer. By declaring the stupendous fact that all creation is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of the Most High—that order in the utmost perfectness of its relation pervades His works, because it exists as in its centre and highest fountain-head in Him the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers, that Man himself, the Prince and Head of this creation, passes in the earlier stages ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... farther their perfectness. The impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as I can judge, so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. It stands ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... was the substratum of that earnestness has accomplished the rest. 'Ruskinism,' in its least invective and censorious form, has a host of followers and disciples. Take as its text the noble view of it contained in the following words descriptive of the book:—'It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the works of God, and tests all works of man by concurrence with ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and cities still support gymnasia of greater or less size and perfectness. But the modern gymnasium has two great deficiencies: the lack of open air, and of the emulation arising from publicity. The first is a very grave objection. Not a tithe of the benefits of exercise can be obtained within-doors. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various |
