"Deficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... equally well acquainted.[14] We do not pretend that political economy has never been prosecuted or taught in a contracted spirit. As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions. If a political economist is deficient in general knowledge, he will exaggerate the importance and universality of the limited class of truths which he knows. All kinds of scientific men are liable to this imputation, and M. Comte is never weary of urging it against them; reproaching them with their narrowness of mind, the ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... alternative, there is no room to hesitate a moment which to choose. This is not a matter of mere probability, it is the subject of physical demonstration. Should we find an old manuscript in a similar condition, we could not conclude with more certainty, that the deficient or intervening places had been destroyed, than we here conclude that the part which is now wanting, between the two remaining portions of the same rock or strata, had once connected those two portions, and had been destroyed by the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... its flashiness, but principally on account of its greater rest, is a good commentary on the proposition with which we began. It is not too much to say, that the deliberate employer of a cut-glass shade, is either radically deficient in taste, or blindly subservient to the caprices of fashion. The light proceeding from one of these gaudy abominations is unequal broken, and painful. It alone is sufficient to mar a world of good effect in the furniture subjected to its influence. Female loveliness, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... under such a general must be ignorant of their business indeed, if, upon the receipt of these orders, they should be deficient in the immediate means of answering them, by a prompt and ready co-operation. So that the general has only to issue out directions according to the growth of circumstances, and to rest satisfied that every division will act in conformity to his intentions; but if, on ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... houses are generally small and but illy constructed; a great majority of the inhabitants are miserably pour, illiterate and when at home excessively lazy, tho they are polite hospitable and by no means deficient in point of natural genious, they live in a perfect state of harmony among each other; and plase as implicit confidence in the doctrines of their speritual pastor, the Roman Catholic priest, as they yeald passive obedience to the will of their temporal master the commandant. a small garden ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the world over as being deficient in the knowledge of languages. I think we might as well admit that. While every other nation is teaching two or three languages in its schools we have failed to do so, and yet the requirements of international trade and commerce make it absolutely essential that ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... in love. Other womanly traits he had, such as the ingenuous blush with which he asked or did a favor, and a certain not very boyish fondness for softness and elegance of dress. Not that Clarian was effeminate, or in any material respect deficient in manly character; but his mother was a widow, and he her only son, and consequently he had been brought up like a girl, at home, without any slightest opportunity to acquire those rough-and-tumble experiences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... for Vinifera vines in its native country, but owing to the difficulty of propagation is seldom used for that purpose. In the early days of Texas, it was much used for the making of wine but as it is deficient in sugar, and as the must retains the acrid, pungent flavor, it does not seem to be well adapted for this purpose. It is not regarded as having great promise for southern horticulture and certainly has ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... or subtle—and this can be but barely suggested by the sculptor. The poet's visage was pallid, his figure slight, his voice feeble; he always dressed in black, and is spoken of as presenting a generally clerical aspect. He was remarkably deficient in ear for music—not certainly for the true chime and varied resources of verse. His aptitude for the art of design was probably greater than might be inferred from the many comic woodcut-drawings which he has left. These are irresistibly ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Sierra Leone, under the name of the Bush Cow, a specimen which serves more fully to establish the species. It differs from the Buffalo and all other oxen in several important characters, especially in the large size and particular bearding of the ears, and in being totally deficient in any dewlap. It also differs from the Buffalo in its forehead, being flatter and quite destitute of the convex form which is so striking in all the ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... on the blunders of our governments; and that these have proceeded from the heads rather than the hearts of most of the authors of them. What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited by each succeeding against each preceding session; so many admonitions to the people, of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted ...
— The Federalist Papers
... next," the latter went on, "that I'm too old to set about draining the marsh. Then, as to sundials: you're amazingly deficient in sundials. Now half a dozen here and there—and a fish-pond or two—unless you'd like to have a moat. I could run you a moat around the back, and keep it supplied with fresh water all the year round. By the way, talking of moats and fresh water, ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is not so very different from other people. We must not blame him if he is not always impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests and ever-changing sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered to us as one eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety. Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn and disfigured by long years of service, hang about our consciousness like old garments. They are used to us, and we are used to them. And all the accidents of our lives,—the house we dwell in, the living people round ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to which it gives rise unduly hasten the advent of puberty. Any decided enlargement of the labia and clitoris in a young girl may be taken as a positive evidence of the existence of the habit of self-abuse. Sterility, and atrophy of the breasts—their deficient development—when the vice is begun before puberty, is ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... find that I had nothing particular to say to him. I dared not tell him what occupied my thoughts, and for the rest invention failed me. But his gaiety and those pretty affectations on which he spent an infinity of pains, for the purpose, apparently, of hiding the sterling worth of a character deficient neither in courage nor backbone, were united to much good nature. Believing at last that I had sent for him in a fit of the vapours, he devoted himself to amusing me and abusing Bruhl—a very favourite pastime ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and private, but they had exposed themselves to his "Remarks," all-pungent as they were, by going into court and giving opinions founded upon "the most disgracefully deficient dissection ever made." The sore which they had inflicted upon themselves at the trial did not heal under the caustic of the "Remarks"; and so the doctor became a victim to local prejudice, passion, and persecution. But he gained to himself a world-wide reputation which outlived ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... of the most noteworthy contributions that the Teutonic race has made toward the material improvement of the world. So regarding it, Englishmen and Germans may take some pride to themselves from this great achievement of the Americans. The Teutonic race has its limitations. It is deficient in the gaiety of mind, the expansiveness of heart, which add so largely to human happiness. Its bent has lain in directions that are, superficially at all events, less attractive. But by its cult of cleanliness, self-control, and efficiency, it has given a new meaning to civilization; it has invented ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the line of least resistance. Though it may suffice for the acts of animals and children it is sadly deficient for our ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Though himself rough and uncouth of aspect, clumsy of gait and slow of speech, he was quick to see and admire beauty and wit in others. He had picked out Cherry from amongst her sisters for those qualities of brightness and vivacity in which he felt himself so deficient, and it seemed as though he took to Cuthbert for very much the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... this, and refused to allow the professional ability or standing of an expert to be called in question. The witness thus adjudged competent brought no results into court; had kept no laboratory notes; relied solely on a memory so deficient that although he had been teaching for thirty-five years, he could not tell the shape of a crystal of tartar emetic, the poison in question; and upon the stand made a statement different from one which he had furnished ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... so doing, O great king, one succeeds in acquiring a long life. One should never indulge in other people's calumny or self-reproach, for, O chief of the Bharatas, it is said that calumny is sinful, whether of others or of oneself. In wedding, one should avoid a woman that is deficient of any limb. A maiden too, if such, should also be avoided. A woman of the same Pravaras should also be avoided; as also one that has any malformation; as also one that has been born in the race to which one's ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... confer upon you this grace also. I thank God that you are taking orders, and finding your work in teaching. Forgive this lecture from one who has no right to speak, and who is himself strangely deficient in sympathy. ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... terror of his soul, was for the making of whisky instead of human broth—and the "hell" he thought his giants inhabited was but a private still. Andy felt as if a mountain had been lifted from his heart when he found it was but mortals he had to deal with; for Andy was not deficient in courage when it was but thews and sinews like his own he had to encounter. He still lay concealed, however, for smugglers might not wish their private haunt to be discovered, and it was possible ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and we have been told that to this day there are clothes worn at Killingworth made after "Geordy Steevie's cut." To give his own words:—"In the earlier period of my career," said he, "when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man; and how do you ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... at the two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their ancient edifice: they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old Constitution through the parts which were not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. They acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Marion's innocent heart; and she, always so grateful for any little attention, was not likely to receive with coldness those so cordially lavished on her by her new friend, whom she valued as a truly good man, and not for a polished exterior, in which Mr Budge was deficient. Nay, so cordial was their intimacy, and so much had Miss Marion regained health and cheerfulness, that with unwonted sportiveness, on more than one occasion she actually hid the ponderous brown ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... would not trust with a shilling. I will accept your offer as freely as it is made, and take L500, just to make a show for the few weeks that I am in suspense, and then you will find, that with all my faults, I am rot deficient in gratitude." I divided the money with the Major, and he ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... they are like. And I wish you to know, so that you will stop sending dolls to Mary who is sixteen, and cakes of scented soap to David who hates above all else to be washed. I find these children very difficult in some ways; many of them are mentally deficient, but it appears that no provision is made by the Government for dealing with such cases, and so there is nothing to do but take them in or let them starve. Some are very wild and none have the slightest idea of obedience when they ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... who affect to admire that deficient system of existence which they style simplicity of manners, and who are perpetually committing the blunder of supposing that every advance towards perfection only withdraws man further from his primitive ...
— English Satires • Various
... of Lavas.—Now, observation shows that, as bearing on the subject under consideration, lavas occur mainly under two classes as regards their density. The most dense (or basic) are those in which silica is deficient, but iron is abundant; the least dense (or acid) are those which are rich in silica, but in which iron occurs in small quantity. This division corresponds with that proposed by Bunsen and Durocher[6] for volcanic ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... and whatever the look had meant, Elfie was at no loss for the tone now "what do you consider yourself deficient in?" ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in which we are engaged has brought to our people some all-compelling truths. And the greatest of these is that our men, the flower of our racial stock, are deficient physically when put to the test before examining-boards. When one sees some two thousand men examined by draft boards to secure two hundred men for our army, as happened in some cases, when one reads that in a physical examination for the sanitary police force in Cleveland thirty-seven ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... Spring Hill too late in the day to accomplish anything, and Schofield himself has stated that his action was based on a cool calculation, made from his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, who had been deficient in mathematics as a cadet, and could make no accurate computation of the time required to overcome difficulties; that Hood, marching by a muddy country road, would arrive in front of Spring Hill tired, ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... it means deficient births. And what does that point out? Marriage postponed, licentious life, private ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... sentences, and thus went through each paper,—a long and laborious work. When he had completed a paper in this way, he carefully compared his Spectator with the original, and was able thereby to discover and correct many errors in his style. He found that he was very deficient in ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... minute, it bursts upon us an accomplished fact. We know this, and yet we would see the process; and not seeing it we lose faith, waver, hesitate, stop, and recoil—a going back pour mieux sauter it is with the choicer spirit; but we all are deficient in hope, all have our retrograde moments of despair. We do not look about us enough to see what is being done for others, how they are progressing, by what strange paths they are led. We keep our eyes on our own ground too much, and, because we will not compare cheerfully, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Arabic in general and of its dialects in particular are still deficient, and the dictionaries mostly content themselves with pouring old stuff from flask to flask, instead of collecting fresh and unknown material. Such are recueils of prayers and proverbs, folk-songs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Thou here speaks as an eye-witness of the marriage, I follow his description very closely. Histoire univ., iv. (liv. lii.) 469, 470. Agrippa d'Aubigne was not in Paris (Memoires, edit. Pantheon, p. 478), and his account is meagre and deficient in originality. Hist. univ., ii. 12 (liv. i., c. 3). It is quite in keeping with the brave Gascon's character, that, having come to Paris some days before, in order to obtain a commission to command a company of soldiers which he had raised for the war in Flanders, he had been obliged to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... person of a verb, singular and plural, join a noun, according to your taste or comic talent. Should you be deficient in the inventive faculty, apply for assistance to one of the senior boys, which, in consideration of your fagging for him, he will readily give you. If yourself a senior boy, apply ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. He who daily hears and reads well-framed sentences, will naturally more or less tend to use similar ones. And where there exists any mental idiosyncrasy—where there is a deficient verbal memory, or an inadequate sense of logical dependence, or but little perception of order, or a lack of constructive ingenuity; no amount of instruction will remedy the defect. Nevertheless, some practical result may be expected from a familiarity with the principles ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... even show her my trousseau," she complained, "all confidence is at an end between us. I should like to have had her opinion about my dresses—though she is sadly deficient in taste, poor child! and has never even learnt to put ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... enjoys the confidence of the parents. These latter have often been aware of such sexual manifestations in their children for a long time, but a false shame has prevented them from asking the advice of the physician. They have been afraid lest he should regard the child as intellectually or morally deficient, or as the offspring of a degenerate family. In addition, we have to take into account self-deception on the part of the parents, who, indeed, often deceive themselves willingly, saying to themselves that the matter is of no importance, and that ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... impurities, and is of necessity rich in microbes. As the rain water percolates into the soil, it loses its germ content, so that the normal ground water, like the deeper soil layers, contains practically no bacterial life. Springs therefore are relatively deficient in germ life, except as they become infected with soil organisms, as the water issues from the soil. Water may serve to disseminate certain infectious diseases as typhoid fever and cholera among human beings, and a number ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... with extreme caution on the deficient camp-stool and surveyed the situation. There were clouds across a waning moon, and it was fairly dark. She could see the outlines of the tents in black masses behind her; in front the field lay dim and shadowy, with a mist creeping from the water. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... is,' pursued Georgiana, 'that Ma being so endowed with awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it—I say it very badly—I don't know whether you can ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... woman of six-and-twenty, well-bred, and graceful in address, but deficient in frankness, warmth, or anything to say for herself. She piqued herself upon the elegance of her table appointments and of all her domestic arrangements; and this kind of vanity it was that constituted her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. Sir John was a sportsman; Lady Middleton ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... drawn up by Apolinario Mabini, and proclaimed by the Malolos Insurgent Government (January 22, 1899), was a fair proof of intellectual achievement. But that is not sufficient; the working of it would probably have been as successful as the Government of Hayti, because the Philippine character is deficient in disinterested thought for the common good. There is no lack of able Filipinos quite competent to enact laws and dictate to the people what they are to do; but if things are to be reversed and the elected assembly is to be composed of deputies holding the people's mandates, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... pages is the melancholy of a noble nature. The tone of thought reminds us of Bishop Butler, whose writings, defaced by a style even more tiresome, though less pompous than Johnson's, have owed their enduring reputation to a philosophical acuteness in which Johnson was certainly very deficient. Both of these great men, however, impress us by their deep sense of the evils under which humanity suffers, and their rejection of the superficial optimism of the day. Butler's sadness, undoubtedly, is that of a recluse, and Johnson's that of a man ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... which he received by his sense of sight; nor did he seem to have gained as much knowledge as he might have done, by the comparison of these ideas; yet it is said that he did not appear naturally deficient ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Louvois, reddening with auger, "you yourself were of the opinion that Prince Eugene of Savoy—" "Sir," interrupted the king, haughtily, "I am of opinion that when you scorned Prince Eugene, you were lamentably deficient in judgment; and that, if he is now shedding lustre upon the arms of Austria, it is because you repulsed him when he would have ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... contains all that the growing baby needs, and thus is a valuable addition to the milk; it nourishes all the organs but clogs none. Nine-tenths of the foods made for babies are made on wrong lines. They either contain too much sugar, or they are too starchy, or they are deficient in bone-forming materials, or in laxative principles, or else they ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of its stream, Which makes it so deserving Of honor at the Muses' hands, But 'tis the use it's serving, And 'gainst a raid, We hope its aid Will ever prove efficient, Its fords remain still overflowed, In water ne'er deficient. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... their desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of Martin Heemskirk or Franz Floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old inheritance ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... concerning the purpose of the questions. Such heaps of information might be used anyhow if they were really complete; but in fact since they have not been designed for any definite use they are generally deficient for any definite use, and remain mere masses of information on which no true judgments can be based. So far from revealing the missionary situation they obscure it. We have, therefore, taken the risk of explaining why we want each piece of information, ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... managed than the victory at Mutina. The two Consuls were both killed; but that, it may be said, was the chance of war. Antony with all his cavalry was allowed to escape eastward toward the Cottian Alps. Decimus Brutus seems to have shown himself deficient in all the qualities of a General, except that power of endurance which can hold a town with little or no provision. He wrote to Cicero saying that he would follow Antony. He makes a promise that Antony ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... assumed that nobody can attack the orthodox creed unless he is incapable of sympathizing with the noblest emotions of our nature. The adversary on purely intellectual grounds would be awed into silence by its moral beauty, unless he were deficient in reverence, purity, and love. It must therefore be said, distinctly, although it cannot be argued at length, that this ground also appears to me to be utterly untenable. I deny that it is impossible to speak the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... and went up into the temple with the king and Bernice, and began to rebuild the cloisters; the rulers also and senators divided themselves into the villages, and collected the tributes, and soon got together forty talents, which was the sum that was deficient. And thus did Agrippa then put a stop to that war which was threatened. Moreover, he attempted to persuade the multitude to obey Florus, until Caesar should send one to succeed him; but they were hereby more provoked, and cast ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... as to allow the victualling of Madras to go on uninterrupted. Mr. Pigot now instructed Charlie to hand over the command of that force to Peters; and, with fifty men, to make his way north and to effect a junction with Forde, who was entirely deficient in cavalry. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... letters, words, and phrases. One does not create these sentences, as in the normal state, but waits for them to produce themselves. Yet the mind is nevertheless associated therewith. The subject treated is in unison with one's ordinary ideas. The written language is one's own. If one is deficient in orthography, the composition will betray this fault. Moreover, the mind is so intimately connected with what is written, that if it ponders something else, if the thoughts are allowed to wander from the immediate subject, then the hand will pause, or ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion.' But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not his own fault? The ultimate ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... struck up a song, which, being deficient in taste, while its execution was defective as well as tuneless, did not seem to produce much effect on Quintal. He bore it with equanimity, until McCoy came to a note so far beyond his powers that he broke into ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Salii, were called Salick; those that belonged to the Francogalli, were called French. Eguinarthus in his Life of Charles the Great says thus:—"After he had assumed the Imperial Title, finding that his Peoples Laws were in many Things deficient, (for the Franks have two Laws very different from each other in many Cases,) he thought of adding such as were wanting."—The Author of the Preface to the Salick Law has this Passage.—"The renowned Nation of the Franks, before it was converted to the Catholick Faith, enacted ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... a situation? What could move the poet thus to mention a brave sufferer, a gallant prisoner, exposed to the view of all mankind? It was laying aside his senses, it was committing a crime, for which the law is deficient not to punish him! nay, a crime which man can scarce forgive or time efface! Nothing surely could have induced him to it but being bribed by a great lady,' &c. (to whom this brave, honest, worthy gentleman was guilty of no offence but forgery, proved in open court). But it is evident ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... means of getting across the gaps was by the principle of the "flotsam and jetsam," a theory which Darwin took over from Lyell and further elaborated so as to make it applicable to many kinds of plants and animals, but sadly deficient, often grotesque, in the case of most ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... make any sort of progress. However this may be, I have throughout the Orient been struck by the industriousness of the real working classes; but in practicability and inventiveness the Oriental is sadly deficient. On the way out I pause at the bazaar to drink hot milk and eat a roll of white bread, the former being quite acceptable, for the morning is rather raw and chilly; the wind is still blowing a gale, and a company of cavalry, out for exercise, are incased in their heavy ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... explanation to give. He had read the book, it seemed, without being forced, and without hope of getting a prize. He recited it as if he liked it. The remainder of the examination disclosed the fact that he was lamentably deficient in the rudiments of Greek grammar, and had the very vaguest ideas of the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the men in obtaining them; and that, that part of the community are treated with.least attention, when the act of procuring subsistence devolves intirely on the men in the vigor of life. It appears to me that nature has been much more deficient in her filial tie than in any other of the strong affections of the human heart, and therefore think, our old men equally with our women indebted to civilization for their ease and comfort. Among the Siouxs, Assinniboins and others on the Missouri who subsist by hunting it is a custom when ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... poets must suffer some subtraction from universal pre-eminence. Therefore we may frankly admit the deficiencies of Wordsworth,—that he was lacking in dramatic force and in the power of characterization; that he was singularly deficient in humor, and therefore in the saving grace of self-criticism in the capacity to see himself occasionally in a ridiculous light; that he has little of the romantic glamor and none of the narrative energy of Scott; that Shelley's lyrical flights leave him plodding along ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... presented a dingy and rusty appearance, eventually turning black. Asparagus cannot stand long-continued summer and autumn drought; it likes plenty of moisture, in free circulation but not stagnant. The crops that followed the appearance I have described were very deficient, proving that the growing season of one year's foliage is the time when next year's crop ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... studio lunch which contained too much starch and was deficient in nitrogen, Miss Ingate, putting on her hat and jacket, said ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Morton, and a match for Richard in numerous promising qualities, comprising the noble science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind too openly, and moreover would not be snubbed. There was no middle course for Richard's comrades between high friendship or absolute slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite habits and feelings which enable boys and men to hold together without caring much for each other; and, like every insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which he was quite aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior nature. Young Ralph was a lively talker: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for foreigners, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... advisedly, for I know that he appears to manifest the Rincon lack of decision. But so did I at his age. And who can say when the unfolding of his other powers, now so markedly indicated, may not force the development of those certain traits of character in which he now seems deficient, but which, developed, would make him a power in the world? Shall the Church permit this promising lad to stray from her, possibly later to join issue with her enemies and use his great gifts to propagate heresy and assault her foundations? Are we faithful to our beloved Mother if we do ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... neglecting its higher sides. If for instance the Mahanirvana Tantra which is a good specimen of these works be compared with Sankara's commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, or the poems of Tulsi Das, it will be seen that it is woefully deficient in the excellences of either. But many tantric treatises are chiefly concerned with charms, spells, amulets and other magical methods of obtaining wealth, causing or averting disease and destroying enemies, processes which even if efficacious have nothing to do with ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... to the Design of it. Let us, now GOD is calling us to Mourning and Lamentation, be searching and trying our Ways, that we may turn again unto the Lord[z]. Let us review the Conduct of our Lives, and the State and Tenour of our Affections, that we may observe what hath been deficient, and what irregular; that proper Remedies may be applied, and those important Lessons more thoroughly learnt, which I was mentioning under the former Branch of my Discourse. Let us pray, that through our Tears we may read our Duty, and that by the Heat of the Furnace ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... myself to the full, seizing the opportunity to read me a long homily on Christian forbearance, in which, I fervently believed at the time, he was almost as deficient as myself. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with kindness and politeness. I recognize no difference between the two shying classes—the men who shy their fellow-men because they are high, and the men who shy their fellow-men because they are low. Both are mean, both are unmanly, and both are deficient in the self-respect necessary to the constitution of a gentleman. There are no better friends in the world—no men who understand each other better—none who meet and converse more freely at their ease—none who have ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, had, in his capacity as the king's treasurer, caused to be issued throughout the country. One result of the trial was that whilst the city's weight of eight marks was discovered to be slightly deficient, the city's bushel was found to be more true than ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... uninhabited, there are no windows opened in their walls, which present a mass of whitewashed stone and lime, without an object to divert the eye, except here and there, where small shops have been opened in them, these being generally for selling rice, fruit, oil, &c., and entirely deficient in the glare or glittering colours of gay merchandise, nearly all of which is confined to the shops of the Escolta, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... to believe that you are not so crazy as we have all thought," he said. "Certainly," and he let his eyes rest upon Emma von der Tann, "you are not mentally deficient in so far as your judgment of a good-looking woman is concerned. I could not have made ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... being subject to one of the strongest temptations to be otherwise than honest, will incur heavier disgrace, and meet with less indulgence, if they disappoint us. Do we wish for sage conduct, our choice will fall upon those who have the wisdom that lurks in circumstances, to supply what may be deficient in their personal accomplishments. But, if there be a deficiency, the fault must lie with the Electors themselves. When persons of large property are confided in, we cannot plead want of opportunities for being acquainted ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... countries, the manner in which they have been brought up by their unnatural parent, Spain, should always be borne in mind. On the whole, perhaps, more credit is due for what has been done, than blame for that which may be deficient. It is impossible to doubt but that the extreme liberalism of these countries must ultimately lead to good results. The very general toleration of foreign religions, the regard paid to the means of education, the freedom of the press, the facilities offered to all foreigners, and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to the intellectual qualities and temperament of the Italian people. The common, or, at least, a very prevalent, notion concerning them is that they are an impassioned, imaginative, excitable, visionary race, capable of brilliant individual efforts, but deficient in the power of organization and combination, and in patience and practical sagacity. Some of us go, or have gone, farther, and have supposed that the Austrian domination in Italy was the necessary consequence of want ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... intelligence; and it was wholly from him, beyond any doubt at all, that Ernest and his younger brother Ronald inherited their moral or religious sincerity—for that was an element in which poor formally orthodox Lady Le Breton was wholly deficient. The good General had been brought up in the strictest doctrines of the Clapham sect; he had gone to India young, as a cadet from Haileybury; and he had applied his intellect all his life long rather to the arduous task of extending 'the blessings of British rule' to Sikhs and Ghoorkas, than to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... regard to their shape, size, or solidity, agreeably to the form of the vessel, and its probable centre of gravity. A badly stowed vessel cannot be properly handled, and is indeed dangerous to the lives of all on board. Owners and masters are legally liable to the losses by bad stowage or deficient ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... wish to apologize to you," the Dasorian said when Seaton had done. "Since you are evidently still land animals, I had supposed you of inferior intelligence. It is true that your younger civilization is deficient in certain respects, but you have shown a depth of vision, a sheer power of imagination and grasp, that no member of our older civilization could approach. I believe that you are right in your conclusions. We have no such rays nor forces upon this planet, and never have had; ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... painfully accumulated, he set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all men ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... which is commonly rejected as bran. A certain vitamine especially concerned with growth and development, the fat soluble B, is found in the green leaf along with lime and iron, all of which are deficient in seeds. Roots especially supply an abundance of alkaline salts which are highly necessary to balance up an excess of mineral acids found ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... the figure of the earth it must necessarily be spherical.... If it were not so, the eclipses of the moon would not have such sections as they have. For in the configurations in the course of a month the deficient part takes all different shapes; it is straight, and concave, and convex; but in eclipses it always has the line of divisions convex; wherefore, since the moon is eclipsed in consequence of the interposition ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... even those which bore the date of a long past sorrow had each its own blooming crown, or fresh nosegay. These good Throndhjemers must have much of what the French call la religion des souvenirs, a religion in which we English (as a nation) are singularly deficient. I suppose no people in Europe are so little addicted to the keeping of sentimental anniversaries as we are; I make an exception with regard to our living friends' birthdays, which we are ever tenderly ready to cultivate, when called on; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... written should be a political institute for all nations." It has not occurred to him that a Grecian history, perfectly written, should also be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts. Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for a Justice of the Peace: an estate to defray the charge of the office and to bear him up in a course of living above contempt; a competent knowledge in the laws, and a presence of mind or body, or both, to keep offenders in some awe; in all which he was deficient; for he was but a fellmonger by trade, accustomed to ride upon his pack of skins, and had very little estate, as little knowledge of the law, and of but a mean presence and appearance to look on. But as my father, I suppose, was the means of getting him ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... antic fury of Shields had induced two young ladies who took a lively interest in Illinois politics—and with good reason, for one was to be the wife of a Senator and the other of a President—to follow up the game with attacks in prose and verse which, however deficient in wit and meter, were not wanting in pungency. In his dilemma he applied to Lincoln, who, as he was starting to attend court at Tremont, told him to give his name and withhold the names of the ladies. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... accusation than that of inaccuracy or deficient authority lies against the writings which have come down to us from the second century. There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written with no other view than to deceive the simple-minded multitude who at that time formed the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... estate, renting a farm close to us, who was a Quaker, and very "strict" in his religious profession, had been for a long time grossly cheating him, relying, no doubt, on my poor brother's deficient intellect. But minds that are intellectually and in reason deficient, are often endowed with a large share of cunning and caution, especially in monetary affairs. Edmund guessed, watched, and discovered; but when the proof was in his hands, his proceedings ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... identical with the Gedrosians of later writers. This district, the modern Beloochistan, is still very imperfectly known, but appears to be generally mountainous, to have a singularly barren soil, and to be deficient in rivers. The nomadic life is a necessity in the greater part of the region, which is in few places suitable for cultivation, but has good pastures in the mountains or the plains according to the season of the year. The rivers of the country are for the most part mere torrents, which carry ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... as well protected against the evil effects of the education system as the healthy children. In fact, to a large extent the stupid children are the healthy ones by reason of their stupidity. It is, however, a great mistake to suppose that a stupid child necessarily implies one that is in any sense deficient mentally. The dull schoolboy often proves in after life to be the brilliant man. All that his dulness need be taken to signify is that his mind is not receptive to the subjects which are being forced upon it. Linnaeus was very stupid at Latin ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... of certain openings seems to us also incorrect and inconsistent. The Scottish school, whom Mr. Spayth has sometimes followed too closely, as in this instance, are singularly deficient as theorists, and have never given the game anything like a philosophical treatment. The Whilter is not "formed by the first three or five moves." The bare notion of forming one opening in two different ways is absurd and contradictory. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of Kanwa? The saintly man, though descended from the great Kasyapa, must be very deficient in judgment to habituate such a maiden to ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... excellent marksmen, and most of them, skilled in border warfare. Colonel David Shepherd, was a brave and resolute officer in whom the borderers had full confidence. The store-house was well-supplied with small arms, particularly muskets, but sadly deficient ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... moreover, look with true love to all that art and beauty in their manifold forms can supply to render life lovely and pleasant, and welcome all that can be written in their illustration. Our columns will never be deficient in tales, poetry and sketches, and that nothing may be neglected, we shall always devote full room to genial gossip with the reader, and to such original humors, quips, jests and anecdotes as chance or the kindness of correspondents may supply. And we would here entreat all our readers to be ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pillar of this society, shall we blame her? If she found for the present enough of content in the soft sunshine, the fragrant flowers, her baby, and her own home, with the intermittent companionship of the one man she had chosen to spend her life with, shall we consider her highly culpable, deficient in the moral or social sense? All the rest was much ado about nothing to Adelle, and, perhaps, as far as Bellevue went,—and a good deal like it in life elsewhere,—Adelle was not far wrong ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... appears to me a part of the natural evolution from barbaric law and restriction, and a necessary demonstration of the spiritual equality of the sexes. I regard it also as the nurse and developer of many small virtues in which women are especially deficient,—punctuality, unvarying quality of work, a sense of business honor and of personal fidelity, each to all and all to each. But I cannot feel that it is a permanent state, or that when the essential has been accomplished women will have the same need or the same desire that now rules. I believe ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... United States the Congregational churches, as a body, are free from slavery. [Cheers.] I do not think that there is a Congregational church in the United States in which a member could openly hold a slave without subjecting himself to discipline.[F] True, I have met with churches very deficient in their duty on this subject, and I am afraid there are members of Congregational churches who hold slaves secretly as security for debt in the Southern States. At the last great Congregational Convention, held in the city of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... he, like Moody in the Country Girl, lock up the faculties of his admirers in ignorance of all other fine things, painting, music, the antique, lest they should play truant to him? Methinks such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his own genius or their taste: it is deficient in dignity and in decorum. Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of an acquisition, he can bear not to have it spoken of every minute. If he knows he has an undoubted superiority in any respect, he will not be uneasy because every one he meets is not in the secret, nor ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... is the identification in the psychic of cognitive, volitional, and emotional faculties. But in every man these parts are found. They are constituents of human nature. There may be other elements as yet unanalysed; but there can be no complete humanity that is deficient in respect of any of these parts. We propose to take them singly in the above order, to show their existence in the historic Christ, and to expose the monophysite attempts ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... examination of the reports furnished by the Exposition Company, it will be observed that they were at all times deficient in that they did not show the outstanding liabilities of the company. The Commission assiduously endeavored to secure such amendment to the books of account kept by the company as would secure the incorporation of a statement of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... sir, you will understand me only to mean, that I am something deficient in the practical knowledge of the ordinary details of justice-business. I was indeed educated to the bar, and might boast perhaps at one time, that I had made some progress in the speculative, and abstract, and abstruse doctrines of our municipal code; but there is ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you the book you took with you on our way to Paramus. I believe it is an essay on health. Mrs. Paterson wants it, the idea you gave me of her is just. She is easy, polite, sensible, and friendly. Paterson is rather deficient in the graces, but he possesses every virtue that enters into the composition of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... moment of his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to have a dispute. Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one unchanging honeymoon. Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would have mattered not a crona baun. Phelim, on the contrary, promised to be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... OF BLANDFORD inherits, in no small degree, the book-collecting spirit of his illustrious ancestor. He is making collections in those departments of literature in which the Blenheim Library is comparatively deficient; and his success has already been such as to lead us to hope for as perfect a display of volumes printed by Caxton as there is of those executed by foreign printers. The Marquis's collection of Emblems is, I believe, nearly perfect: of these, there are a few elegantly ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... galore, copious, full, sufficient, lavish, replete, unstinted, prolific. Antonyms: scarce, deficient, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... partial saint, and even in the extremity of his first revolt his personal ideal had stood, like the angel with the flaming sword, between Adams and the quagmire of bodily materialism. He was not, perhaps, as yet even so much as a deficient stoic, but he had wrung from suffering a certain high loyalty to human fellowship and a half humorous, if wholly gallant, determination to keep fast at any cost until the very end. Why he had made the fight he did not ask ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Notwithstanding, there lies so seductive a charm in the possession of a specious art like this—an art which gives to all our cognitions the form of the understanding, although with respect to the content thereof we may be sadly deficient—that general logic, which is merely a canon of judgement, has been employed as an organon for the actual production, or rather for the semblance of production, of objective assertions, and has thus been grossly misapplied. Now general logic, in ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... that the Young Czechs, owing to their deficient organisation, had lost ground, especially among the country population, which formed the bulk of the nation. Among the workers Socialist doctrines were spreading with ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... endeavoured to creep through the undergrowth like one of those intelligent Indians of whom he had read so many years before in the pages of Mr Fenimore Cooper. In those days Dudley Pickering had not thought very highly of Fenimore Cooper, holding his work deficient in serious and scientific interest; but now it seemed to him that there had been something in the man after all, and he resolved to get some of his books and go over them again. He wished he had read them more carefully at the time, for they doubtless ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... out, when the pace began to be sharp, when it behoved a man either to ride or visibly to decline to ride, then—so at least said they who had not the de Courcy interest quite closely at heart—then, in those heart-stirring moments, the Honourable John was too often found deficient. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... damage and slander of all honest and true scriveners. Their apprentices caused them trouble, because they had not their "perfect congruity of grammar, which is the thing most necessary and expedient to every person exercising the science and faculty of the mystery." Every apprentice found deficient was ordered to be sent to a grammar school until "he be erudite in the books of genders, declensions, preterites and supines, equivox and sinonimes." Their first charter was granted in 1617. John Milton, the father of the poet, was a ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... exception to the supposed rule about Scotchmen being deficient in humour under the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... from a deficient sense of humor, listened with undisguised displeasure to this speech. It dispersed them, in fact; some turned away to bivouac for the rest of the night upon the arm-chairs and sofas, while others returned to their rooms. With the latter went Isabel. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not mix easily, not socially, not politically, nor educationally. How are we to mix freely with those who think we are heretics and damnable? How can we socially mix with a people so lordly in their claims and deficient in character as many are—a people who, when true to their profession, must be our secret or open enemies—who sink their manhood and parental claims, so as to depend upon the priest for forgiveness and on him for instruction? Thus, at the priest's command, the coming ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Mendelssohn, to regard as mannerism what is simply the exotic fragrance which betrays a foreign nationality. The ultro-Teutons still persist in their depreciation of Chopin. In the latest edition of Brockhaus's "Conservations-Lexicon" we read, apropos to Chopin's larger works, that "he was deficient in the profounder musical attainments"(!) Dr. Hanslick, generally considered the leading German critic of the period, in a 534-page collection of criticisms, discussing twenty concert seasons in Vienna, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... productivity of the soil is now diminished by 40 per cent and the effective quality of the live-stock by 55 per cent.[145] Of the European countries which formerly possessed a large exportable surplus, Russia, as much by reason of deficient transport as of diminished output, may herself starve. Hungary, apart from her other troubles, has been pillaged by the Romanians immediately after harvest. Austria will have consumed the whole of her own harvest for 1919 before the end of the calendar year. The figures are almost too overwhelming ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... a long lesson—a hard one; it was conned with bitter tears, wept long and alone in the darkness; it was a sorrow which lay down and rose up with me. It taught (or rather practiced me until I became expert in them) certain things in which I had been deficient; reticence, self-reliance, a quicker ability to decide in emergencies. It certainly made me feel old and sad, and Miss Hallam often said that Stella and I ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... pursue, As heaven may please. In vain abroad you range through science's ample space, Each man learns only that which learn he can; Who knows the moment to embrace, He is your proper man. In person you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousand ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... are compelled chiefly to resort, is a most equivocal authority. Like most biographers, his care is to exalt his hero, though at the expense of that hero's countrymen; and though an amiable writer, nor without some semi-philosophical views in morals, his mind was singularly deficient in grasp and in comprehension. He never penetrates the subtle causes of effects. He surveys the past, sometimes as a scholar, sometimes as a taleteller, sometimes even as a poet, but never as a statesman. Thus, we learn from him little of the true reasons for the ostracism, either of Aristides, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now for the man. In his own opinion, at least—for he was by no means deficient in self-conceit—the latter came in for an equal share of admiration; and certes, if impudence could help him to win it, he lacked not the recommendation. Staring most of the girls out of countenance, he leered at some of them ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... clear of the ragged edges of the cavernous opening, and moving about restlessly like evil spirits, hither and thither, afforded but partial glimpses of the deep vale below. Though Ben Nevis was at this time rather deficient in his snowy honours, considerable patches lay in the unsunned crevices of the precipice. It was a fine thing to occupy one's-self in tilting over huge boulders, and to see them gradually approach the edge of the gulf, and then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various |
