"Imperfectly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of an imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know, and that from his own lips, tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a 'tight place,' he went back to his own country ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... exists on the subject, I shall not further dwell upon it here, except to say that I am not in the least convinced by the arguments which have been put forward that the thirty- five letters of Cromwell which Carlyle printed in Fraser's Magazine for 1847 were forged by his imperfectly educated correspondent William Squire. Squire was living at Yarmouth at this time, and as FitzGerald was frequently in his neighbourhood Carlyle asked him to endeavour to see him and examine the papers which he professed to have. In reply to Carlyle's letter ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... a tendency to conservation, a tendency which is never realised except imperfectly; while, on the contrary, we notice that the failure of the vital impulse is most infallibly interpreted by the appearance of mechanism. Reality falling asleep or breaking up is the figure under which we finally observe matter: matter ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... as of magnetism and electricity, are yet imperfectly understood, and seem to depend both on chemical affinity, and on gravitation; and also on the peculiar repulsions of the particles of bodies, and on the general repulsion of ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... means of developing magnetism in soft iron were imperfectly understood. The electro-magnet made by Sturgeon, and copied by Dana, of New York, was an imperfect quantity magnet, the feeble power of which was developed by a single battery. It was entirely inapplicable ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... admiration of all who knew him. He died in Rome on the 7th of July 1573. He was an eminent upholder of the classic style at a period when the style known as baroque was corrupting the architecture of Italy. The term baroque owes its origin to the Spanish word barrueco or berrueco, an imperfectly round pearl, and is not derived from the architect Barocchio, whose name so much resembles it. Yet it is curious that it was much used to describe a debased form of architecture encouraged by the Jesuits whose church in Rome was built ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... breath of political discussion, the result of its weekly occupation under the authority of the Board as a Tribune for the enunciation of party principles and devotion to the Liberties of the People. There were a few dog-eared hymn-books on the teacher's desk, and the blackboard but imperfectly hid an impassioned appeal to the citizens of Indian Spring to "Rally" for Stebbins as Supervisor. The master had been struck with the size of the black type in which this placard was printed, and with a shrewd perception of its value ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... technical terminology. Bentham tried the far wider and far more fruitful method of a minute investigation of particular facts. His work, therefore, will stand, however different some of the results may appear when fitted into a different framework. And, therefore, however crudely and imperfectly, Bentham did, as I believe, help to turn speculation into a true and profitable channel. Of that, more will appear hereafter; but, if any one doubts Bentham's services, I will only suggest to him to compare Bentham with any of his British contemporaries, and to ask where he can find ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... base his calculations partly upon the Bills of Mortality, which had been imperfectly begun under Elizabeth, but fell into disuse, and were revived, as a weekly record of the number of deaths, beginning on the 29th of October, 1603; notices of diseases first appeared in them in 1629. The weekly bills were published every Thursday, and any householder could have them supplied to ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers and that he was easy in his mind. I was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it. In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out, throw my great-coat over his head, pinion him, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... folks at the British Institution. But when this diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said, "Lecture? No, thank you. Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr. Johnson's opinion about lectures: "Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a book?" I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture; that I can vow. As for sermons, they are different; I delight in them, and they cannot, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... translation she partially accomplished, though somewhat imperfectly; and the whole occurrence impressed Mr. Muller as an indication that God was once more leading him in the direction of Germany, for another season of labour in his native land. Much prayer deepened his persuasion that he had not misread God's signal, and that His time had now fully come. He records ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... contained upon the management of the child-voice. The rigidity of the adult larynx, the strength of the tensor and adductor muscles and the elastic firmness of the vocal ligaments, are to those of the child as the solid bony framework and strongly set muscles of maturity are to the imperfectly hardened bones and soft muscles of childhood. Nature makes no fixed limits of the vocal registers until full maturity is reached. A fixed register in a childish throat involving a completely developed larynx would be a startling anomaly. The laryngeal muscles ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... something exceedingly prepossessing in his countenance. I wished that he would deny the attempt; but how was it possible to save a man who was determined to sacrifice himself? The Emperor asked Staps whether he could speak French, and he answered that he could speak it very imperfectly, and as you know (continued Rapp) that next to you I am the best German scholar in Napoleon's Court, I was appointed interpreter on this occasion. The Emperor put the following questions to Staps, which I translated, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... been more particular in the narrative of this case, partly because Dr. Darwin has related it rather imperfectly in the notes to his son's posthumous publication, trusting, I imagine, to memory, and partly because it was a case which gave rise to a very general use of the medicine in that ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... liberal observation in respect of Tupia, but it is liable to much objection as a general maxim. Besides the greater number of impracticable prejudices which attach themselves to imperfectly cultivated minds when placed in new situations, and which often render well-meant exertions unavailing, it is certain, that superior knowledge both affords greater aptitude of accommodation to unusual circumstances by the speedy discovery it enables ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... vegeto-animal existence in the wilderness, unable to extricate himself therefrom—his own will being too feeble to call forth the requisite muscular exertion. His muscles not being exercised, the respiration is imperfect, and the blood is imperfectly vitalized. Torpidity of body and hebetude of mind are the effects thereof, which disappear under bodily labor, because that expands the lungs, vitalizes the blood, and wakes him up to a sense of pleasure and happiness unknown to him ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect distinctly the very spot where this first struck me. It was on the way between Hawkshead and Ambleside, and gave me extreme pleasure. The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... I remember, sir, though imperfectly, a story which I heard in my travels, of an army in which some troops received a penny a day less than the rest; a parsimony which cost dear in the day of battle; for the disgusted troops laid down ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... therefore, epic poetry shows two divergent tendencies. In Ionia and the islands the epic poets followed the Homeric tradition, singing of romantic subjects in the now stereotyped heroic style, and showing originality only in their choice of legends hitherto neglected or summarily and imperfectly treated. In continental Greece [1101], on the other hand, but especially in Boeotia, a new form of epic sprang up, which for the romance and PATHOS of the Ionian School substituted the practical and matter-of-fact. It dealt in moral and practical maxims, in information on technical ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... had been freeing himself from the ropes, with which he was imperfectly bound. At last he detached them entirely, and began to make ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... service." M. de la Chalotais and his comrades were exiled to Saintes. They demanded a trial and a legal justification, which were refused. "It is enough for them to know that their honor is intact," the king declared. A Parliament was imperfectly reconstructed at Rennes. "It is D'Aiguillon's bailiff-court," was the contemptuous saying in Brittany. The governor had to be changed. Under the administration of the Duke of Duras, the agitation subsided in the province; the magistrates who had resigned ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... place. A page belonging to Count Paris, who had witnessed the fight between his master and Romeo, had given the alarm, which had spread among the citizens, who went up and down the streets of Verona confusedly exclaiming, A Paris! a Romeo! a Juliet! as the rumour had imperfectly reached them, till the uproar brought Lord Montague and Lord Capulet out of their beds, with the prince, to inquire into the causes of the disturbance. The friar had been apprehended by some of the watch, coming from the churchyard, trembling, sighing, and weeping, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... not really himself until he was again on the river, doing a little dredging and sounding on his own account. At Cairo he expanded almost as much as his subject, and for a long while afterward was never weary of tracing the blue and yellow currents that fuse so reluctantly and imperfectly that out in the Gulf of Mexico, it is said, one comes upon patches of the Missouri of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... confusion has been caused by setting the two against each other. Society consists of an aggregation of individuals, but it is something more than that in just the same sense as a house is something more than an aggregation of bricks. It is an organism, though as yet an imperfectly developed one. While the units of which it is composed have distinct and independent lives within certain limits, they are, outside of those limits, interdependent and inter-related. Man is governed by two great forces. On the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood. Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was because this grand ideal is the basis on which the Hebrew nationality was founded that Jesus made this statement. This foundation had been lamentably misconceived by the Jewish people; but nevertheless, however imperfectly, they still held by it, and from them this ideal has spread throughout the Christian world. Here also it continues to be lamentably misconceived, nevertheless it is still retained, and only needs to ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... though no women appeared. Several stragglers looked at me, as they passed by, one after another, and at last one of them stopped to examine me. I told him as well as I could, for I spoke German very imperfectly, that I was a British officer, and had been plundered already; he did not desist, however, and pulled ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... architecture of the Cork Mansion House has but one fault, but that fault is a grand one, and a strong evidence of how unsuited English architects are to provide buildings for a people whose tastes and habits they but imperfectly understand—be it known, then, that the descent from the hall-door to the street was by a flight of twelve stone steps. How I should ever get down these was now my difficulty. If Falstaff deplored "eight yards of uneven ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy shows the early birth-date of his guilt. He is all-powerful without strength; he wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means; conscience distinctly warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... time. Through latter-day inspiration we learn that "it is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance" (Doc. and Cov. 131:6), and that "The glory of God in intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth" (Doc. and Cov. 93:36). The Baptist's inquiry showed that he was then lacking in knowledge, imperfectly enlightened and unable to comprehend the whole truth of the Savior's appointed death and subsequent resurrection as the Redeemer of the world. But we must not lose sight of the fact, that Jesus in no wise intimated that John would remain less than the least in the kingdom ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... and subscribers in the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States, extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned. It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon their practice, they would have learned long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... caused by the trichina spiratis, a parasite introduced into the body by eating imperfectly cooked flesh of infected hogs. The "embryos" pass from the bowel and reach the voluntary muscles, where they finally become "encapsulated larvae,"—muscle trichinae. It is in the migration of these embryos that the group of symptoms ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... tell you, are nothing in themselves,—only our way of looking at things. You are right, I think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being quite as applicable to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intellectual circle include the curves of many other minds of which he is cognizant. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... feared. A Head-master who is not feared should be at once dismissed from his post. And, besides being feared, he was profoundly detested by bad boys. The worse the boy's moral character, the more he hated Butler. But boys who were, in any sense or degree, on the right side; who were striving, however imperfectly, after what is pure and lovely and of good report, felt instinctively that Butler was their friend. His preaching in the School Chapel (though perhaps a little impeded by certain mannerisms) was direct, interesting, and uplifting in no common degree. Many of his sermons made ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... we must not forget that others besides the teacher may be responsible for overwork and overworry. The parents and pupils themselves are quite as often to blame as are the teachers. An unwillingness on the part of pupils to review work imperfectly done, and a desire on the part of parents to have their children get into a higher class, or to graduate, frequently cause pupils to cram for examinations and to work unduly at a time when the body is least able to bear the extra strain. Again, children are frequently ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... partially seized it, being defeated by its very vastness; yet, ambitious to reveal it to mankind, he hesitated not to exhibit it in the form and with the completeness he best could. It was necessary, therefore, that what he but half knew himself, should be imperfectly and darkly stated, and dimly comprehended by others. For this reason, his writings are obscure—obscure, not because of truths for their vastness beyond the reach of our minds, but because they abound in conceptions but half formed—in inconsequential ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... sort of knowledge. But the science of the modern school pretends merely to be a teaching of useful knowledge; the vistas, the tremendous implications of modern science are conscientiously disregarded, and it is in effect too often no more than a diversion of school energies to the acquisition of imperfectly analyzed misstatements about entrails, elements, and electricity, with a view—a quite unjustifiable view—to immediate profitable hygienic and commercial application. Whether there is any educational value in the school-teaching of science we may discuss later. For the present we may note it simply ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... view of the dome, and of the path that led to it. The first painted itself with sufficient distinctness on her fancy, but was undistinguishable by the eye from the rocky mass on which it was erected. The second could be imperfectly seen; but her husband had already passed, or ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... a ridiculous point of view: a certain sign of mediocrity. Adieu, my Gabrielle. I must send you the pictures, whether engaging or forbidding, of those with whom your Olivia is destined to pass her time. When I have no events to relate, still I must write to convey to you my sentiments. Alas! how imperfectly!—for I have interdicted myself the expression of those most interesting to my heart. Leonora, calmly prudent, coolly virtuous, knows not what it costs me to be faithful to this cruel promise. Write to me, my ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and the theory it had been evoked to describe was misunderstood. We are hardy enough to prophesy a similar career and fate for the theory of Relativity. The technical physical theory, at present imperfectly understood, will become still more vague and dim. History repeats itself, and Relativity, like Evolution, after receiving a number of intelligible but somewhat inaccurate popular expositions in its scientific aspect, will be launched on a world-conquering career. We suggest ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the valleys subject to Piedmont. The French Government was unwilling to suffer them to remain in this asylum. The Duke Victor Amadeus II enjoined the refugees to quit his territory (November 4th). The order was imperfectly executed, and Louis XIV demanded more. The Duke, by an edict of February 1, 1686, prohibited the exercise of heretical worship, and ordered the schools to be closed under penalty of death. The barbes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He, therefore, remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... beautiful pages in all the book of history. Blots there must needs have been, and inconsistencies, selfishnesses, follies; for they too were men of like passions with ourselves; but let us look at the fair vision as a whole, and thank God that such a thing has for once existed even imperfectly on this sinful earth, instead of playing the part of Ham and falling under his curse,—the penalty of slavishness, cowardice, loss of noble daring, which surely falls on any generation which is 'banausos,' to use Aristotle's word; which rejoices in its forefathers' shame, and, unable to believe ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... material for the poet, here is a land that is waiting for its singer. Such a singer Gordon was not. He remained thoroughly English, and the best that we can say of him is that he wrote imperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... or rather turf roof of a sort of outhouse, suddenly gave way under him, and he gently descended among some hay, with which the place was nearly filled. It may be supposed his curiosity received a sudden check by this adventure. An imperfectly constructed partition divided him from the party whose voices he had heard aloft. You might have heard his heart beat for two or three minutes, as it was very probable that the noise of his fall would have disturbed the inmates—but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... Winchester, but at Winchelsea. In 1809 and 1810 they were back at Dereham, which was then the home of Eleanor Fenn, his "Lady Bountiful," widow of the editor of the "Paston Letters," Sir John Fenn. He had "increased rapidly in size and in strength," but not in mind, and could read only imperfectly until "Robinson Crusoe" drew him out. He went to church twice on Sundays, and never heard God's name without a tremor, "for I now knew that God was an awful and inscrutable being, the maker of all ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... been thus imbued with intellect, are held in peculiar respect by the vulgar, and are thought to be in every way superior to those whose understandings are entire. The laws by which two objects, so far apart, operate on each other, have been, as yet, but imperfectly developed, and the wilder their freaks, the more they are the objects of wonder and admiration. "The science of lunarology," he observed, "is yet in its infancy. But in the three voyages I have made to the moon, I have acquired so many new facts, and imparted ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... to the flat and sandy coast region, occupying the greater portion of Persia Proper. It is about two hundred miles in width, and consists of an alternation of mountain, plain, and narrow valley, curiously intermixed, and hitherto mapped very imperfectly. In places this district answers fully to the description of Nearchus, being, "richly fertile, picturesque, and romantic almost beyond imagination, with lovely wooded dells, green mountain sides, and broad plains, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... think so," said the old man. "I have been occupied upon it five-and-thirty years, and I am still very imperfectly acquainted with it; at least, I frequently find upon my crockery sentences the meaning of which to me is very dark, though it is true these sentences are mostly verses, which are, of course, more difficult to understand than ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... much indisposition in these days. It is all too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not be upset so easily—no, it cannot be the war; so I must try and think what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... represents. Napoleon at his fall was replaced not by his natural heir, but by the heir of kings. The latter incarnated an ancient principle, while the son of the Emperor personified ideas that were as yet imperfectly ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... matters a difficulty of understanding; for the attention and memory are alike apt to be careless where the mind is not interested; and how can we understand that to which we scarcely listened, and which we imperfectly remember? Nature herself seems to lead the old and the young two different ways: and when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful, it seems as if they were but calling them to a state contrary to their nature; and the call is ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... BROTHER,—General Count von der Groeben has brought me the official letter of your Majesty, as well as the confidential one,[21] and I send your kind messenger back, with these two answers to you. He will be able to tell you, orally, what I can express only imperfectly in writing, how deep my pain is, after our going so far, faithfully, hand in hand, to see you, at this weighty moment, separating yourself from us. My pain is still further increased by the fact that I cannot even conceive the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... had impressed him so deeply, though scarcely as yet quite consciously, was a natural dread of the hardships that might still be in store for him, sharpened by what he had gone through; and this, though in its effect for the present imperfectly understood, became by degrees a passionate resolve, even while he was yielding to circumstances, not to be what circumstances were conspiring to make him. All that was involved in what he had suffered and sunk into, could not have been known to him at the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... rule confining the coachers to a limited space the coacher at third base sometimes played a sharp trick on the second baseman. When the catcher threw the ball, the coacher started down the base-line toward home, and the sec-mid baseman, seeing only imperfectly, mistook him for the runner and returned the ball quickly to the catcher. The result was that the runner from first trotted safely to second, the runner at third remained there, and everybody laughed except the ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... German, who knew the tract only as translated into German through a Dutch version of the English text, and therefore imperfectly, gave it serious consideration, and had little difficulty in finding inconsistencies and contradictions. Some of his questions went to the root of the matter. It was a Dutch ship which first found the Isle ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... return to his own country, and be effaced from her life. And then, her story unknown, she might form a more suitable alliance. Fiery young creature though she was—true De Mauleon in being so fiery—she interested me strongly. I should say that she was wonderfully handsome; and though imperfectly educated, and brought up in circumstances so lowly, there was nothing common about her—a certain je ne sais quoi of stateliness and race. At all events she did with me what she wished. I agreed to aid her desire of a refuge and hiding-place. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down in a corner. In a minute or two, she fancied she saw strange figures moving about, generally near the floor, and very imperfectly developed. Sometimes only a hand, sometimes only a foot, shadowed itself out of the dim obscurity. She tried to persuade herself that it was all done, somehow or other, by Funkelstein, yet she could not help watching with a curious dread. She was not a ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... leaders on both sides were slain, but none so remarkable as the Indian Camaram. He had been educated by the Jesuits; he understood Latin, wrote, read, and spoke Portuguese perfectly, but on all occasions of ceremony used an interpreter, that he might not in public do any thing imperfectly, and thereby derogate from the dignity of his chieftainship. When a number of Indians were taken among the Dutch, at one of the strong posts of the latter, a relation of Camaram's was found among them. These men had all been ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good. Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly, and most imperfectly at best: for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God? But see then whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relations of God to man; ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... willing to serve the Great Master, thinking we may be able to do much for him afterwards, when it will more accord with our situation in life. But, alas! this time may never come; if we thus put by the acceptable season, our lives may close with our only having performed very imperfectly the part which had been designed for us in the Church militant. Painful would be the sting when appealing to the Judge of the earth, in a moment when we no longer possessed the capability of serving him, should the declaration ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... residue remaining after the disintegration of the fused mass by acid indicates that the substance has been but imperfectly decomposed. Such a residue should be filtered, washed, dried, ignited, and again fused with the alkaline flux; or, if the quantity of material at hand will permit, it is better to reject the analysis, and ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... extent. But the emigration to Canada was left to the individual greed of shipowners, and the emigrant-ships rivalled the cabins of Mayo or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen. Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds, says an eyewitness, were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths occurred in myriads. The survivors, on their arrival in the new country, continued to die and to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... bows. In breaking up the hard prairies, this plough had a difficult task to perform and was often broken; but, by the assistance of men employed in clearing obstacles, such as sage bushes, etc., the task was imperfectly gone through with. The Mexican axe is another curious tool, which resembles as much the common pick of our laborers as it does the axe used by American woodsmen. The sickle is used in harvesting to this day in these parts, performing ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the cry for some time that Schools of Art turned out only academic students. And one certainly associates a dead level of respectable mediocrity with much school work. We can call to mind a lot of dull, lifeless, highly-finished work, imperfectly perfect, that has won the prize in many a school competition. Flaubert says "a form deadens," and it does seem as if the necessary formality of a school course had some deadening influence on students; and that there was some important part of the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... carried near this point by those telepathic influences which have as yet been so imperfectly studied. It was only that morning, after the lapse of a week since Burnamy's furtive reappearance in Carlsbad, that Miss Triscoe spoke to her father about it, and she had at that moment a longing for support and counsel that might well have made its ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Governments. The American form is none of these, nor any combination of them. It is original, a new contribution to political science, and seeks to attain the end of all wise and just government by means unknown or forbidden to the ancients, and which have been but imperfectly comprehended even by American political writers themselves. The originality of the American constitution has been overlooked by the great majority even of our own statesmen, who seek to explain it by analogies borrowed from the constitutions of other states rather than by a profound study ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... with roughly hewn wheels without tires, and whose creaking can plainly bo heard a mile away. At present the Servian tills his little freehold with the clumsiest of implements, some his own rude handiwork, and the best imperfectly fashioned and forged on native anvils. His plow is chiefly the forked limb of a tree, pointed with iron sufficiently to enable him to root around in the surface soil. One would think the country might offer a promising field for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... realization, since the consciousness is, at all times. It always has been, it will always be. Our relation to it changes, as we develop from the sense conscious to the self-conscious state and finally to what we term the "cosmic" conscious state. This latter must of necessity have been as yet only imperfectly realized, even by those of the Illuminati, who are known to the world ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... number, and of various sizes. Their height is very considerable, and as irregular in figure as can well be imagined in land whose hummocks are no one of them more lofty than another. This small group appears to be formed of granite, which is imperfectly concealed by long straggling dwarfish brush, and some few still more diminutive trees, and seems cursed with a sterility that might safely bid defiance to Chinese industry itself. Nature is either working ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... them only with awe and dread. But Christianity, in its anthropomorphism, which is its strongest hold on faith and trust, insures for the individual man in a Divine Humanity precisely what friends might essay to do yet could do but imperfectly for him. It proffers the tender sympathy and helpfulness of Him who bears the griefs and carries the sorrows of each and all; while the near view that it presents of the life beyond death inspires the sense of unbroken union with friends in heaven, and of the fellow- feeling of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... Bazaar of Khanyunis is formed by two streets lined with wretched Turkish shops, with mud or clay projections for seats. The doors are made to flap upward, but they close imperfectly; the roofs are, as usual, made of the Artemisia shrub. The goods exposed in these shops come for the most part from Gaza and Jaffa; but the caps of camel's hair and of cotton, as well as the white and ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... amount of food necessary to supply needs; and a decrease in the amount taken, in proportion to the age and the activity of the subject, must be made or health will suffer. The system will become clogged, the blood filled with imperfectly elaborated material, and gout, rheumatism, apoplexy, or other diseased conditions will be the inevitable result. The digestion of heavy meals is a tax upon vital powers at any time of life, but particularly so as age advances; and for him who has passed his first half-century, over-feeding ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... combination, and are not "boiled'' after being formed. It is found that the ingot of calcium carbide formed in the furnace, although itself consisting of pure crystalline calcium carbide, is nearly always surrounded by a crust which contains a certain proportion of imperfectly converted constituents, and therefore gives a lower yield of acetylene than the carbide itself. In breaking up and sending out the carbide for commercial work, packed in air-tight drums, the crust is removed by a sand blast. A statement ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... published, for the self-evident reason that what I have published is not sufficiently "pretentious" for his purpose. Disinterested anxiety for the public welfare, and tender sorrow over the "harm to careful inquiry" which my book is doing by "getting influence over immature or imperfectly trained minds," constrain him to accuse me of "frequently making of late extravagant pretensions as to the originality and profundity" of my "still ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... it, than rents. The wholesale trade, in the great articles of commerce, is really under the dominion of competition. But retail price, the price paid by the actual consumer, seems to feel very slowly and imperfectly the effect of competition; and, when competition does exist, it often, instead of lowering prices, merely divides the gains of the high price among a greater number of dealers. The influence of competition is making itself felt more and more ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... fall within the scope of my present design to extend this chronicle to the length of an autobiography. With what pain and labour my poor parent recovered from his memory, and then very imperfectly, of course, my third page; how he grew more melancholy of countenance at each of my successive returns to the house of my birth and formative years; how I sometimes remained away for months at a time, and how once an office boy mis-addressed me to a lady in New Jersey who ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... signification. They finally digested them for the most part into a species of hexameter verse. We may suppose the supplicants during this ceremony placed at a proper distance, so as to observe these things imperfectly, while the less they understood, they were ordinarily the more impressed with religious awe, and prepared implicitly to receive what was communicated to them. Sometimes the priestess found herself in a frame, not entirely equal to her function, and refused ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... very imperfectly developed, but while the war emphasized its imperfections, it also furnished evidence if its reality. Its existence depends upon the presence of recognized common purposes and of organized teamwork in accomplishing these purposes, as in the case of any community. The war ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... of Oriental archaeology have come with a rude shock to disturb both the conclusions of this imperfectly-equipped criticism and the principles on which they rest. Discovery has followed discovery, each more marvellous than the last, and re-establishing the truth of some historical narrative in which we had been called upon to disbelieve. ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... with more reason—as the first of the Realists. His object in writing was, he tells us, to represent mankind as he saw it, to be the historian of the nineteenth century, and to classify human beings as Buffon had classified animals. No doubt this scheme was very imperfectly carried out: certainly the powerful mind of Balzac with its wealth of imagination, often projected itself into his puppets, so that many of his characters are not the ordinary men and women he wished to portray, but are inspired by the fire of genius. This fact does not, however, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... studied in watching them come out, than by attempting to dissect them, unless the scholars are sufficiently advanced to use the microscope easily. It is always bad for a pupil to attempt to describe what he sees but imperfectly. He will be sure to jump at any conclusions which he thinks ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... can never be a refined judge; never what the comic poet calls elegans formarum spectator. The excellence and force of a composition must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect on the minds of any, except we know the temper and character of those minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts are but in a very low and imperfect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... war were scarcely cicatrized, and the peace had left the allies imperfectly satisfied. Their dispersed armies gathered again about Cinna and Sertorius. Old Marius, who had been hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... dealing with the hypothesis that consciousness may belong to the cosmic ether. This hypothesis has not been lightly dismissed by him; and even while proving its inadequacy, he seems to intimate that it may represent imperfectly some truth yet inapprehensible by the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Some account of beliefs connected with these will be given in the following two chapters. We conclude this chapter by describing the spirits of the third class, spirits or intelligent powers vaguely conceived, of minor importance, but imperfectly individualised and not regularly envisaged in any visible forms or embodied in any material objects. The generic Kayan name for spirits of this class is TOH. All the spirits of this class seem to be objects of fear, to be malevolent, or, at least, easily offended and capable of bringing misfortunes ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of it may go to swell the surplus of the United States Treasury, and finds it an impracticable task to ascertain the novelty of an invention in a reasonable time for such a sum. To perform it, however imperfectly, he feels authorized to delay the granting; of patents, sometimes for several months, simply because Congress will not allow him to apply the moneys paid by inventors to their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... characterized in the private judgment of politicians as one of the completest southern remedies ever submitted to popular action.... The proposition to revive, or more properly to reopen, the slave trade is as yet but imperfectly understood, in its intentions and probable results, by the people of the South, and but little appreciated by them. It has been received in all parts of the country with an undefined sort of repugnance, ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... give myself away. Do find out what he means, Miss Kilburn, won't you?" She took hold of Annie's unoffered hand, and pressed it in a double leathern grasp, and ran out of the room with a lightness of spirit which her physical bulk imperfectly expressed. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... but could get no nearer than "tepasses," and "trepasses." "Alas!" says Fuller, it is a shibboleth to a child's tongue wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and then he continues, "What the child could not pronounce the parents do not practise. O how lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this petition: As we forgive them that trespass against us." In the old Greek and Roman world, we have been told, people not only did not forgive their enemies, but did not ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... longed for by the sick and weary! How imperfectly appreciated by those whose chief thoughts and experiences of night are fitly expressed ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... restored to good condition it is poor economy to use them. Imperfectly sealed jars are probably responsible for more spoiled canned goods than any other cause. Good tops and good rubbers are ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... St. Francis, at the Cameronians among their Scottish hills, or the little persecuted flock who in a dark and godless time gathered around Wesley by pit mouths and on Cornish cliffs—Look, too, at the great societies of our own days, which, however imperfectly, still lovingly and earnestly do their measure of God's work at home and abroad; and say, when was there ever real union, co-operation, philanthropy, equality, brotherhood, among men, save in loyalty to Him—Jesus, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... word. Nay, sir, not only so, but it is a step in defiance of the laws of revealed religion as given to men. If there be one institution which it seems to me has affected the character of this country, which has affected the whole character of modern civilization, the results of which we can but imperfectly trace and but partly recognize, it is the effect of the institution of Christian marriage, the mysterious tie uniting the one man and the one woman until they shall become one and not two persons. It is an institution which is mysterious, which is beyond the reach and the understanding ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or suspecting the latter in any serious degree (supposing such degree of it to be), by observation or philosophy; for that, probably, his nature, by its opposition, imperfectly qualified, or from it wholly exempted. For the rest, he might have been five and fifty, perhaps sixty, but tall, rosy, between plump and portly, with a primy, palmy air, and for the time and place, not to hint of his years, dressed with ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to the ear, the next organ in importance to the eye, we are repeatedly deceived by such sounds as are imperfectly gathered up and erroneously apprehended. From the false impressions received from this organ also arise consequences similar to those derived from erroneous reports made by the organs of sight. A whole class of superstitious observances arise, and are grounded ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... orders for the burial of the deceased. The wiser Egyptian is overruled and has to do the burying. Now it takes a simply monstrous hole to hold a camel, and the result of the clash of English and Egyptian ideas is a very imperfectly buried carcase, just covered from the beneficent influence of the sun, but filling the surrounding air with its ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maim'd, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly! And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. 'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him: let them neglect my version, because they have no need of it. I made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they, when that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... better. And of others they say other things. But my opinion is that he who knows how to draw well and merely does a foot or a hand or a neck, can paint everything created in the world; and yet there are painters who paint everything there is in the world so imperfectly and so much without worth that it would be better not to do it at all. One recognises the knowledge of a great man in the fear with which he does a thing the more he understands it. And on the contrary, the ignorance of others ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... then, called in consultation to a case in which this remedy failed; but this was only two days previous to death, and during the existence of swelled cheek, and of a thick gangrenous eschar, and it was in fact only once imperfectly applied. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... has operated much to the disadvantage of these brethren during the years of drought; and the system required readjustment without delay. The incomes of all the missionaries, especially of those within the Cape Colony, were insufficient, and the education of the young was in general very imperfectly provided for. ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... proteids, but even more energetically, and only in an alkaline media. The proteolitic ferment is called trypsin. The pancreatic, the most important of the digestive fluids, contains other ferments; one called amylopsin, takes up the digestion of any remaining or imperfectly converted starch left from the salivary digestion. Amylopsin is much more powerful and rapid than the ptyalin of the saliva, especially on uncooked starch. Its absence from the pancreatic juice of infants is an indication that starch should not be given them. ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... proximity of the two great continents of Asia and America. In short,— to use the words of his biographer, which compress the nature and value of the great navigator's services into a small and easily comprehended point—"if we except the sea of Amur and the Japanese Archipelago, which still remain imperfectly known to Europeans, he has completed the hydrography ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... His eye had suddenly fallen on an object imperfectly concealed beneath a blank sheet ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... school-room. He has since declared that the only books he remembers using at school were the New Testament and the spelling-book. The result was, that he merely learned to read, write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was passionately fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when his father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now recalls with evident pride the fact that when but six years ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... and as he lay half awake and half asleep he smiled with enjoyment to see the deft fingers move here and there, wiping away the oil. A green hand will spend half a day cleaning a gun, and then do the work imperfectly; an expert does the job efficiently in ten minutes. This ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of "Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... cry she flung her arms round her mother, and hiding her face in her lap gave way to a violent burst of grief that seemed for a few moments as if it would rend soul and body in twain. For her passions were by nature very strong, and by education very imperfectly controlled; and time, "that rider that breaks youth," had not as yet tried his hand upon her. And Mrs. Montgomery, in spite of the fortitude and calmness to which she had steeled herself, bent down over her, and folding ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner |
