"Precision" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subtle shades of thought which had developed through thirteen centuries, and which often necessitated a sacrifice of classic form. With the Schoolmen, as with modern writers on scientific subjects, precision was the first requisite, and terminology was of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gleam of a new expression. It was as if he had at the moment recognised something which filled him with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for. That he did not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There was a brief silence in which it passed away. He spoke after it, with disagreeable precision. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... carriage road; so that the walking population have nothing to annoy them. The sea is immediately below both, and you see the little rock-encircled bays animated with groups of those sturdy fishermen with bare legs; which you admire in Claude and Salvator, throwing before them, with admirable precision, their epervier net, whose fine wrought meshes sometimes hang, veil-like, between you and the ruddy sunset, or plashing, as they fall nightly into the smooth sea, contribute the pleasure of an agreeable sound to the magic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise, the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door, and then out into the ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... had shewn a disposition to attack the Victory, passed to windward; and fired their broadsides not only into her and the Temeraire, but also into the French and Spanish captured ships indiscriminately: and they were seen to back or shiver their topsails for the purpose of doing this with more precision.[20] The two Midshipmen of the Victory had just boarded the Redoutable, and got their men out of the boat, when a shot from the Enemy's van ships that were making off cut the boat adrift. About ten minutes after taking possession of her, a Midshipman came to ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... condition to that of the present—of the application of the inductive system of science and thought; and you know that it is by constant and close mathematical study of analogy—of probability—that we exclude error little by little from our observations—we improve more and more our instruments of precision—we count out the errors of our observation; and we are constantly seeking those laws which are not transient and ephemeral only, but which are eternal and immortal. Upon those laws, finally, must rest all our real, certain knowledge; and it is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the precision of a merchant making a calculation what was the state of his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... originality, your uniqueness, the very you-ness of you, will be absorbed in a round of missionary meetings, and prayer-meetings, and choir practises, and Sunday-school classes. The hard routine, my dear, will take the sparkle from you, and give you a sweet, but un-Carol-like precision and method. Oh, yes, you are happy, but thank you, dear, I think I'll keep my Self and do my work, and—be ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... its fire upon the battery on the Trocadero, and with so accurate an aim that at the end of that time it was reduced to silence. While the fire was going on, those on the roof went below, for although the precision with which the artillerymen fired was so excellent that there was but slight danger, the trial to the nerves from the rush of the heavy shell was so great that they were glad to leave the roof and to take their ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... and six-pounders could not reach their batteries. But in the after part of the day, when the contending forces were nearer together, Rickett's and Griffin's Batteries, the most celebrated at that time in the Northern Army, could not stand the precision and impetuosity of Kemper's, the Washington, Stannard's, Pendleton's, and Pelham's Batteries as they graped the field. The Second and Eighth South Carolina coming up at a double quick, joined Hampton's Legion, with Early, Cox, and the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... their need for clearness, and with this they are content. Antithesis is in the Frenchman's blood; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on the platform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either A or not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision and sharp analysis facilitates the formation of closed parties, whereas each individual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own. The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and the sanguine return ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general, equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision and stability of public faith, and bearing no mark of that ingenuous simplicity and native candor and integrity which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of joyous music being the signal, form in two lines, and simultaneously, with military precision, kneel, fold and raise their hands, and bow till their foreheads touch the carpet before their lord. Then suddenly springing to their feet, they describe a succession of rapid and intricate circles, tapping ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... were absolutely miraculous. Her voice embraced three complete octaves, extending from the contralto D to the D upper soprano, and, though sufficiently powerful to have filled the San Carlos, executed, with the minutest precision, every difficulty of vocal composition-ascending and descending scales, cadences, or fiorituri. In the final of the Somnambula, she brought about a most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Overland Express. Looking back over the active, energetic career that had led up to this, however, Ralph realized that the climax had been reached a step at a time through patience, perseverance and genuine hard work. It was a proof to him that any person following discipline and having as a motto precision and finality, was bound to succeed. It was a most enjoyable breathing spell to realize that all the anxiety, dash and novelty of the experimental trips over the Mountain Division were past, and he now felt that he knew the route and all ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... accordance with the number of those who enter heaven and who enter hell; and this amounts to several thousands daily. The Lord alone, and no angel, can know and perceive this, and regulate and equalize it with precision; for the Divine that goes forth from the Lord is omnipresent, and sees everywhere whether there is any wavering, while an angel sees only what is near himself, and has no perception in himself of what is taking place even in his ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... gentle calisthenics invented by her father, combined with breathing exercises, she had developed a body of rarest grace. Her head had corners, as once Professor O. S. Fowler told us that a woman's head must have, if she is to think and act with purpose and precision. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the mental tests in the school will be worse than useless unless the tests are given with the greatest care and scientific precision. Every test should be most carefully explained to the children so that they will know exactly what they are to do. The matter must be so presented to them that they will put forth all possible effort. They must take the tests seriously. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... in ships and do business in great waters, returning laden with the spoils of the commercial world, have perforce to render tribute unto Caesar; but Mr. Commissioner Coventry little guessed, when he enunciated his corollary with such nice precision, to what it was destined to lead in the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... though this was less the result of moral convictions than of a fastidious temperament. The man had an instinctive aversion for anything that was ugly or unpleasant. His companion, dressed with an equal precision, looked different, more virile, coarser; he was fuller in ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... 335 he went out from Macedonia northwards, struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass, frustrating the mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision of discipline which, probably, no other army of the time could have approached, and traversed the land of the Triballians (Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or strike the imagination of the world he took his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... punctiliously shaving, although it was now practically dark; in another corner the devotee of some system of how to get strong and how to stay so, stripped to the skin, was slowly and with solemn precision raising and lowering a pair of light dumb-bells. Some saluted as private soldiers would; some bowed almost as to a friend, with a cheery "Guten Abend, Herr Baron!" There seemed, indeed, to be a very pleasant relation between this gentleman soldier and his gentlemen ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... inconveniences of their number have been distressing to the last degree, though, as yet, they have been employed in work which could be done in the lump. They are now proceeding to instruments, every word of which must be weighed with precision. Heretofore, too, they were hooped together by a common enemy. This is no longer the case. Yet a thorough view of the wisdom and rectitude of this assembly disposes me more to hope they will find some means of surmounting the difficulty of their numbers, than to fear that yielding ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... able, fifteen hours before a shot was fired in the battle, to prescribe the movements of the different organizations of his command, and to outline the plan of battle as it was finally carried out, with a degree of precision which can be fully appreciated only by those to whom the plan was communicated in advance. In spite of slight changes, made necessary by local failures and unforeseen circumstances; in spite of the very poor cooperation of the artillery arm; in spite of the absence of cavalry, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the middle of September when the old yellow omnibus rolled up for Miss Barbara and her trunk. This time there was no returning in mad haste after forgotten property. With a precision that was almost fussiness, she had packed her trunk days before her departure, and her bonnet was on an hour ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I could see cavalrymen in stable-jackets, whitewashing walls and out-buildings and ill-smelling stalls, while others dug shovelfuls of slaked lime from wheelbarrows and spread it through stable-yards and dirty alleys. Everywhere quiet, method, order, prompt precision reigned; I even noticed a big, red-fisted artilleryman tying up tall, blue larkspurs, dahlias, and phlox in a trampled garden, and he touched the ragged masses of bloom with a tenderness peculiar to a flower-loving and sentimental people, whose ultimate ambition ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... to make a dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin". The Quarterly was much too hard on the earlier cadeau scene, with Rochester and Jane and Adele, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and precision. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... looked inquiringly at her mother, and received a smile of assent. She then took her lute and sang a romaunt of the day. Although but twelve years old, she was a well-taught and painstaking musician. Her little claw swept the chords with Courage and precision, and struck out the notes of the arpeggio clear, and distinct, and bright, like twinkling stars; but the main charm was her voice. It was not mighty, but it was round, clear, full, and ringing like a bell. She sang with a certain modest ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Precision in the Meaning of Dynamical Terms: accompanied with an Appendix on Duodenal Arithmetic and Metrology. By JOHN W. NYSTROM, C.E. Illustrated. ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... twenty feet across space at the dizzy heights of the forest top, and grasp with unerring precision, and without apparent jar, a limb waving wildly in the path of an ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precision equipment (bearings, radio and telephone parts, armaments), wood pulp and paper products, processed ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... might be made a direct and successful engine in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city missionary, the Rev. William ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and judgement, are not, I think, entitled to the first praise amongst the various parts of this immense work. The definitions have always appeared to me such astonishing proofs of acuteness of intellect and precision of language, as indicate a genius of the highest rank[854]. This it is which marks the superiour excellence of Johnson's Dictionary over others equally or even more voluminous, and must have made it a work of much greater mental labour than mere Lexicons, or Word-books, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... habits. He affected to despise artificial manners; and, though frequenting polished circles in Edinburgh, then in London, and afterwards in Madras and Calcutta, he persevered in an indomitable aversion to the use of the English tongue, which he so well knew how to write with precision and power. He spoke the broadest provincial Scotch with singular pertinacity. His voice was extremely dissonant, but, seemingly unconscious of the defect, he talked loud; and if engaged in argument, raised his voice to a pitch which frequently proved more powerful than ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... upon them.[59] It was not a very great or remarkable speech, but it was a good one, and not conceived in the fervid and florid style which defaced his youthful efforts; he spoke sensibly, clearly, and with precision of thought; he sought his strength in the facts, and went in straight pursuit of the truth; his best intellectual qualities were plainly visible. The resolutions were not acted upon, and doubtless their actual ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... sand, wondering of what nature her husband's secret could be, and why it compelled him to absent himself occasionally from her. Though he kept an accurate calculation of the lapse of time, and counted the passing days with unvarying precision, yet she retained no such faithful calendar in her memory, and had not observed that his absence always occurred on the last day ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was his inhibition. He never unbent. In his football days, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he grew. He was noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with the inhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows, guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and too controlled to permit himself to put a pound more weight into a punch than he ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... rather appears that their answers were unsatisfactory. But Amphiaraus maintained his credit undiminished, while Apollo at Delphi, more omniscient than Apollo at Branchidae, solved the question with such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional argument against persons who might be disposed to scoff at divination. No sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian priestess, on the day named, "What is Croesus now doing?" than she exclaimed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... sketch-books were later on developed with the utmost care, being written out again and again, with fresh alterations and additions each time, until every trace of crudeness had disappeared, and the finished work stood out with such clearness and precision as to suggest that it had been but that moment created. Nothing, indeed, has struck those who have followed the gradual development of his work from the first sketches which have been preserved more than ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... committed the task of meeting infantry with cavalry in an open field. Placing the Fifth New York in support of Elder's battery, which was exposed to a galling fire, but made reply with characteristic rapidity, precision, and slaughter, Farnsworth quickly ordered the First Virginia, First Vermont, and Eighteenth Pennsylvania in line of battle, and galloped away and charged upon the flank of the advancing columns. The attack was sharp, brief, and ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... short legs, and huge arms so long that even when the brute stood upright its clenched fists reached to within a foot of the ground. As it started to wade ashore its advance was momentarily checked by a terrific volley of stones, hurled with amazing force and precision; then, emitting a series of those dreadful, shrieking roars, it dashed forward with outstretched arms, seized the nearest native and, without apparent effort, literally tore the unfortunate man's head ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... encyclopaedias form a very notable feature in all Chinese libraries. These works show great research, clearness, and precision, and are largely drawn upon by European scholars. Early in the last century one of the emperors appointed a commission to reprint in one great collection all the works they might think worthy of preservation. The result was a compilation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... value. The French Commander-in-Chief paid tribute to their skill. His message ran: 'Please express most particularly to Marshal French my thanks for the services rendered to us every day by the English Flying Corps. The precision, exactitude, and regularity of the news brought in by them are evidence of their perfect organization and also of the perfect training ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... luckee," and a diabolical fire-work with an irregular spasmodic activity that would sometimes be prolonged until the next morning. In return, I gave him some apparently hopeless oral lessons in English, and certain sentences to be copied, which he did with marvelous precision. I remember one instance when this peculiar faculty of imitation was disastrous in result. In setting him a copy, I had blurred a word which I promptly erased, and then traced the letters more distinctly ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... of John Smith, since John Smith may change his residence or abandon his occupation without ceasing to be called by his name. Indirectly then definition serves the purpose of distinguishing things in the mind, but its direct object is to unfold the intension of terms, and so impart precision to our thoughts by setting plainly before us the meaning of the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... hard and earnestly, and dealt his blows with the precision of a blacksmith; Julia the while standing silently by his side, and regarding rather the workman than the work. He was a handsome fellow; she told herself she had never seen such beautiful arms. And suddenly, as though he had overheard ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... of new districts received the royal sanction. Barcelona thus comprises an old town, still consisting for the most part of irregular and narrow streets, and a new town built with all the symmetry and precision of a premeditated scheme. The buildings of the old town are chiefly of brick, from four to five storeys in height, with flat roofs, and other oriental peculiarities; while in the new town hewn stone is very largely employed, and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... tavern. They had a good supper, and port wine, but the occasion was more than food and drink to Boswell. "The orthodox high-church sound of the Mitre,—the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson,—the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... suspicious, inclined to wrong-doing, full of capacity for evil, and he judges it with his ready gossip of depreciation. He may be in all this reporting what is true, or he may be stating what is untrue; but one truth he is reporting with entire precision,—the fact that he is himself a suspicious and ungenerous man; and this disclosure of his own heart, which, if another hinted at it, he would resent, he is without any disguise making of his own accord. The cynic looks over the world and finds it hopelessly bad, but the one obvious fact is not ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... commanded Sir Robert Keith, the Marshal of Scotland, with those four hundred men at arms whom he had kept in reserve for the purpose, to make a circuit, and charge the English bowmen in the flank. This was done with a celerity and precision which dispersed the whole archery, who, having neither stakes nor other barrier to keep off the horse, nor long weapons to repel them, were cut down at pleasure, and almost ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... than the words "some such state." Although we are distinctly told by your Lordship, that the extreme degree of imbecility or incapacity will not constitute this "some such state" that may be denominated unsoundness; yet I feel highly satisfied with the force and precision by which it is expressed in the words "whatever degree," which if a scale were constructed on which imbecility might be estimated, would imply the ultimate gradation; and whenever any subject can be regulated by definite quantity, expressed in numbers, it conveys the most certain ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... of the vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D'Alembert said to Voltaire, relative to the recueil by Condorcet, "Some one asked me the other day what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece, 'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.'" And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read, while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its departments as the eloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more modest ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... silver to one pound avoirdupois of copper, which are rolled together, and then, with much labour and great nicety, by a process of hammering and polishing, formed to the parabolic curve of a mould made with mathematical precision. The focal distance of the curve is four inches. The diagram for the Bell-Rock reflectors was drawn by Professor Leslie, and the mould was made by Mr. Adie the optician. The powers of this elegant production of the mechanical ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... men do not let themselves be arrested. Those who are lost are brutes who go straight ahead, or the half-intelligent, who use their skill and cunning to combine a complicated or romantic act, in which their hand is plainly seen. As for him, he was a man of science and precision, and he would not compromise himself by act or sentiment; there would be nothing to fear during the action, and nothing afterward. Caffie strangled, suspicion would not fall upon a doctor, but on a brute. When doctors wish to kill any ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... while the tories were pale with rage." After a few moments, James Putnam, the leader of the tories, arose. Putnam was said to be "the best lawyer in North America. His arguments were marked by strong and clear reasoning, logical precision and arrangement, and that sound judgment whose conclusions were presented so forcibly as to command assent." He made such a speech against the resolutions as had never before been heard in Worcester; and when he sat down, the same informant said that "not a man of the whig ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... only varieties, in No. 3. No author tells me why the first is called polite, but its blue seems more intense than that of agrestis; and as it is above described with attention, vol. i., p. 75, as an example of precision in flower-form, we may as well retain it in our list here. It will be therefore our twenty-first variety,—it is Loudon's fifty-ninth and last. He translates 'polita' simply 'polished,' which is nonsense. I can think of nothing to call it but 'dainty,' ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... one hundred feet, and even this requires very careful work.(8) A fall of six inches in one hundred feet is recommended whenever it can be easily obtained—not as being more effective, but as requiring less precision, and consequently ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... rose stiffly from his knees beside the extended figure and strode heavily across toward where they were sitting, lifting his hand in soldierly salute, his heels clicking as he brought them sharply together in military precision. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... one, my Lord," said Captain Spruce, a debonair personage with a well-turned silk hat arranged a little aside, his coloured cravat tied with precision, his whiskers trimmed like a quickset hedge. Spruce, who had earned his title of Captain on the plains of Newmarket, which had witnessed for many a year his successful exploits, had a weakness for the aristocracy, who knowing his graceful infirmity patronized him with condescending dexterity, acknowledged ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... cheek, he belonged to that type which Nature would seem to have already used to excess in the production of the continental musician. Rose herself was violinist, and the instruments dashed into the opening allegro with a precision and an entrain that took the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in her enthusiasm used an alarm clock to make the test, specialists have decided that the volume of sound differs in watches to such a degree as to make the watch test unreliable. The examination of the eye has been reduced to mathematical precision, due altogether to the anatomy of that organ. As yet there is no instrument for the ear comparable to the ophthalmoscope. The acoumeter is largely used by aurists and can be obtained from the optician. This instrument has an advantage over the whisper or watch ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... somewhat sluggish before he had taken the morphine, now was working clearly and accurately again, with that fateful and undeviating precision which had made him master of billions of dollars and uncounted millions of human lives; which had woven his network of possession all over the United States, Europe and Asia and even Africa; which had drawn, as into a spider's web, the world's railroads and ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... from fanaticism. But it does not even do that. On the contrary, it creates and renews fanaticism with a force quite peculiar to itself. This is at once so strange and so true that I will ask the reader's attention to it with a little more precision. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... said with some precision, "Do you mean to say that you fancy all this trouble is to be got over that way? Do you know so little of Sheila, after the time you have been married to her, as to imagine that she has taken this step out of some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the disadvantage he laboured under, and he called out "Heave!" as he found the cutter was falling close under the counter of the ship, and would be in her wake in another minute. The bowman of the boat cast a light grapnel with so much precision that it hooked in the mizzen rigging, and the line instantly tightened so as to tow the cutter. A seaman was passing along the outer edge of the hurricane-house at the moment, coming from the wheel, and with the decision ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the shattered window with a precision that presaged evil to any of the defenders who were rash enough to try to gain the other end of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... intimacy with the artists of that town, had made him acquainted with mechanical processes for working in metals, which he adapted, on his return to Mainz, to the art of printing. These new means enabled him to cast movable leaden types in a copper matrix, with greater precision than before, and thus to give great neatness to the letters. It was by this new process that the Psalter, the first book bearing a date, was printed in 1457. Soon afterward the Mainz Bible, recognized as a masterpiece of art, was produced under the direction of Gutenberg, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court, and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate, when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. "I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not been received by me through ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... him and the captain, and the extreme coolness and precision with which the latter spoke, was very amusing. It was as if he were rehearsing a speech from a play. "I always speak frankly," said Don Miguel, in an angry tone. "And I," said the captain, in a polite, measured voice, "am also accustomed to speak my mind with extreme ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... away from the pool he saw a large flock of sheep approaching. They were very closely, even densely, packed, in a solid slow-moving mass and coming with a precision almost like a march. This fact surprised Shefford, for there was not an Indian in sight. Presently he saw that a dog was leading the flock, and a little later he discovered another dog in the rear of the sheep. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... still more remarkable so far forth as the charge of fraud is concerned, with what logical precision the Citizen pursues his inquiry.—One is naturally led to expect from his positive rant, nothing short of point blank demonstration at least, that the fraud, (which if there was any originated with Mr. Young's colleagues) had produced the desired effect. That the attempt ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... Thence we pass to the eighteenth century, when English prose was freed from its involutions and irregularities and brought to uniformity and to a standard. The age of Anne gave to English prose balance, precision and settled form. There have been periods of greater originality, but the eighteenth century at least lived up to Pope's doctrine, set forth in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... upon human life of a disparity of weight of metal in naval action. No skill could avoid the brutal precision of mechanical and material superiority. Von Spee had it at Coronel, Sturdee at the Falklands, and there is no reason to suppose that if the persons had been exchanged, the result would have been ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... scene had played itself out before the eyes of Paul, who did not want it; of Etta, who desired it; and of Catrina, who did not exactly know what she wanted, with the precision of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... breach, which is abundant proof of the lack of accuracy. They must either have been dispersed over the surface of the fort, or else missed it altogether, and this could have been due only to a want of the precision which was attained by the battery. The constantly preferred complaint of motion in the ships was not to be urged, because on the day of cannonading Sebastopol, there was scarcely a breath of wind, and the ships were too large to be ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... with anxiety, as had Persano turned and renewed the battle from a distance, he could have revenged his defeat at close quarters without receiving a shot, owing to the longer range of his guns. But for such an operation skilful manoeuvring was wanted, and also, perhaps, more precision in firing than the Italian gunners possessed. At any rate, Persano had no mind for new adventures. He took what remained of his fleet straight back to Ancona, where the Affondatore sank in the harbour from injuries received during the battle. For three ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... guards were stationed at the gates of the royal palace to protect Charles and Catharine from any possibility of danger. Many of the houses were illuminated, that by the light blazing from the windows, the bullet might be thrown with precision, and that the dagger might strike an unerring blow. Agitation and alarm pervaded the vast metropolis. The Catholics were rejoicing that the hour of vengeance had arrived. The Protestants gazed upon the portentous gatherings of this storm in ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... his lips, and it seemed as if he had been stricken dumb. Accordingly it was M. de Coralth who made a statement of the case, and he did it well. The narrative thus gained considerably in clearness and precision; and even M. Wilkie noticed that his friend understood how to present the events in their most favorable light, and how to omit them altogether when his heartless conduct would have appeared too odious. He also noticed—and he considered ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sentiments of Binning. He distinguished, with logical precision, between faith in Christ and its consequences. In regard to the doctrine of the Antinomians, he says, "That every man is bound to persuade himself at the first, that God hath loved him, and Christ redeemed ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the plan, it is utterly impossible to ascertain, with any precision, the exact length to which it may extend; but, so far as can be judged of at present, it is not expected to exceed eighteen or twenty volumes. Throughout the whole work, a series of Maps and Charts will be inserted in their proper ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... synonymous with expense these days, when the general patterns and colors of costly papers are successfully reproduced in the cheaper grades. Tapestry papers are too heavy for bedrooms. Those figured with that mathematical precision which drives the beholder to counting and thence to incipient insanity, and others on which we fancy we can trace the features of our friends, are always distracting, especially during illness, when restfulness is so essential. The plain cartridge-papered wall with frieze ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Marquis, that it may be only by essential qualities that you can succeed in pleasing women? It is simply a question of knowing what meaning you attach to this expression. Do you call essential qualities, worth, firmness of character, precision of judgment, extent of learning, prudence, discretion, how can I tell the number of virtues which often embarrass you more than they make you happy? Our minds are not in accord upon this matter. Reserve all the qualities I have specified for the intercourse ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... effects of the landscape which he had seen, were his highest qualities; his retention of the minutest details of the generic or specific characteristics of tree, rock, or cloud was unsurpassed by the work of any landscape painter whose work I know, and everything he knew he rendered with a rapidity and precision which were simply inconceivable by one who had not seen him at work. I think that his vision and retention of even the most transitory facts of nature passing before him must have been at the maximum of which the human mind is capable, but he had no comprehension of the higher and broader ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... at a house always pleasant from that reminiscence, with the consent of parent and pupil, and to his own great delight, the hour designed for the scholar's scales and exercises was given to the master's playing. He was fond of Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," and he played it with force and precision and the utmost delicacy. Mr. Timm had a pale, smooth, sharp face, a rather prim manner, and a quick, modest gait. He was most simple-hearted, and loved a joke; and his fun was all the more effective from his very sober face and his lisp. It was his wife who was long ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the report almost in silence, only making a few short observations in return. But when Anton proceeded, with the utmost delicacy indeed, but still with the precision of a man of business, to state the obligations under which the baron at present lay, and his inadequate means of fulfilling them, the nobleman writhed in his chair like a victim on the rack. And Anton keenly felt how painful it must needs be to him to have a stranger thus introduced ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... meum, ejus dicendum, cujus dicendum. [That is, my speaking, his speaking, whose speaking.] In truth, these phraseologies appear to me, not only repugnant to the idiom of the language, but also unfavourable to precision and perspicuity.'"—Grant's Latin Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the air-shaft, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... in which team work is more important than in football. Eleven boys of moderate ability and comparative light weight who can execute their plays with skill and precision can beat a team of heavier boys or superior players who may lack their skill and organization. In the case of a school team it is almost always possible to secure the services of a coach from among the graduates. If such a one has had experience on a college ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... action simple and vivid and PRESENT. Absolutely nothing is to be gained by attempted "fine writing," yet it is true that the best-paid writers today are for the most part the ones who are giving attention to clearness and precision of detail and description when writing the third division of their scripts. But description does not mean hifaluting word painting—it means clear, concise setting forth of exactly what a ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... therefore, he places before me the events of fourteen days, this gives at least fourteen different actions, however small they may be." No doubt, if the poet were so unskilful as to wind off the fourteen days one after another with visible precision; if day and night are just so often to come and go and the characters to go to bed and get up again just so many times. But the clever poet thrusts into the background all the intervals which are connected with no perceptible progress in the action, and in his picture annihilates ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... force of occupation. At the head rode a general of brigade, a sombre, stern-eyed man, accompanied by his staff. And behind him marched thousands of green-gray German infantry keeping step with a marvelous precision. These men had been fighting hard, but they looked fresh and trim. And as they marched they sang, raising their deep voices in a splendid, ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... there was a parade of all the troops in review order for the inspection of the Prince, who was pleased to express his complete satisfaction and approval of 'the steadiness under arms, soldier-like bearing, and precision of movement, which distinguish the corps of the three armies assembled at ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... sobbing out entreaties for mercy. And Amaryllis felt a wave of cold fear run down her spine when she heard the voice and words of her lover's reply—words not meant for her hearing she knew for the voice was so low that it was only the precision of the speaker's passion which carried them, against ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... original. The problem of the descent or ascent of man, and other particular cases of evolution, had attracted not a few naturalists before Darwin's day, though no one [except Herbert Spencer in the psychological domain (1855)] had come near him in precision and thoroughness ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... taught, &c.; I was teaching, &c. This mode of conjugation expresses the continuation of an action or state of being; and has, on some occasions, a peculiar propriety, and contributes to the harmony and precision of language. When the present participle of an active verb is joined with the neuter verb to be, the two words united, are, by some grammarians, denominated an active verb, either transitive or intransitive, as the case may be; as, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... that of absolute violence to our language" may be highly desirable; it is commonly called a "crib"; and a crib contrived by one who is not only a scholar but a man of genius will now and again yield a word or a phrase of felicitous precision. But that a translation "literal at every cost" should be put into verse is a wrong both to the original and to the poetry of the language to which the original is transferred; it assumes a poetic garb which in assuming it rends to tatters. A translation into verse implies ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was down that morning, sitting at table with her stick beside her, her head topped with a great tower of snowy cap, her old face now ivory-yellow, but with a wonderful precision of feature, for she had been a great beauty in her day, so alert and alive with the ready comprehension of her black eyes, under slightly scowling brows, that naught escaped her that was within her reach of vision. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... stuff. Every imaginable precaution would be taken to make sure that a critically essential device like the pilot gyro assembly would get safely where it belonged. It would be—it was being—treated as if it were a crate of eggs instead of massive metal, smoothed and polished and lapped to a precision practically unheard of. But just the same Joe was worried. He'd seen the pilot gyro assembly made. He'd helped on it. He knew how many times a thousandth of an inch had been split in machining its bearings, and the breath-weight balance of its moving parts. He'd have liked to be ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... which is not justifiable by any electrodynamical facts, supplies us then with that particular law of motion which has been confirmed with great precision in recent years. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... thing may be said in adverse criticism of Professor Sloane's book, and that is, that his style is too mathematical and too little imaginative for the subject which he has in hand. His rather cold precision, however, we concede to him; for it is, no doubt, the natural method of his expression. We do our part to acknowledge and welcome the remarkable work which he has produced, and to commend it to all readers as the best existing ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... by the Barratarians, who served their pieces with the steadiness and precision of veteran gunners. In the first attack of the enemy, a column pushed forward between the levee and river; and so precipitate was their charge that the outposts were forced to retire, closely pressed by the enemy. Before the batteries could ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... this was not the answer of men who knew what they were about. A little more precision was necessary in dictating a message which was to have such consequences, and especially since the gentleman could not fail to acquaint the persons he spoke with that the Chevalier was not able to carry men ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... frightened creature had scarcely halted, when the great hen-hawk came at him with a whistling rush, and sent him back to the other side. The male bird had by this time turned and now darted with such suddenness and precision, that the squirrel, unable to pass round the tree again, sprang off into the air. Guided by his broad tail the hawk followed, and before the squirrel could reach the ground, the bird was seen to strike. Then with a loud scream he rose into the air, with ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... count their petals, but take one from their neighbor or leave another behind them," it is because she knows how peculiarly this fantastic variableness belongs to the rue-leaved species, so unlike the staid precision of its cousin, the wind-flower, from which not one pedestrian in a hundred can yet distinguish it. If she simply says, "great armfuls of blue lupines," she has said enough, because this is almost the only wild-flower whose size, shape, and abundance naturally tempt one to gather it thus: imagine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for his hat, and he led the way to Clementina's gondola at his garden gate, in greater haste than she. At the telegraph office he framed a dispatch which for expansive fullness and precision was apparently unexampled in the experience of the clerk who took it and spelt over its English with them. It asked an answer in the vice- consul's care, and, "I'll tell you what, Miss Claxon," he said with a husky weakness in his voice, "I wish you'd let ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their rams. Although it was now generally believed that motor-bombs from a repeller might destroy a man-of-war, it was also considered probable that the accurate calculations which appeared to be necessary to precision of aim could not be made when the object of the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... the precision of the shots that the measures gave no appreciable difference. If they were not exactly in the mathematical center of the line, the distance between the needles was so small as to be invisible to ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Gens. Banks and Fremont in the valley of Virginia, were expected to cooeperate in the movement. A line of fire was slowly but steadily being drawn around Richmond. These plans, as I have said, had been well conceived and were being executed with great precision and skill. ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... life in the benevolent farmer. He became more collected; made a clear and satisfactory confession; received the sacrament of Extreme Unction; and felt himself able to speak with tolerable distinctness and precision. The effects of all this were astonishing. A placid serenity, full of hope and confidence, beamed from the pale and worn features of him who was but a few minutes before in a state of terror altogether indescribable. ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the hatchway. As he looked down between the eddies of smoke into that slaughterous pit, it was like looking from the verge of a cataract down into the yeasty pool at its base. Watching, his chance, he dropped one grenade with such faultless precision, that, striking its mark, an explosion rent the Serapis like a volcano. The long row of heaped cartridges was ignited. The fire ran horizontally, like an express on a railway. More than twenty men were instantly killed: nearly forty wounded. This blow restored ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the vocabulary, the word for destroy being different in vv. 7 and 13. Verses 14-22 continue the previous section with precise and minute instructions for the building of the ark, and in the later verses (cf. 18, 20) the precision tends to become diffuseness. The last verse speaks of the divine Being as God (Elohim), so that both the language and contents of vv. 9-22 show it to be a homogeneous section. Note that here, vv. 19, 20, two animals of every kind are to be taken into the ark, no distinction being ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... which proved of permanent service to him throughout all his subsequent career. To this precise and order-loving uncle he owed his first thorough grounding in the elements of music, and also his persevering industry and sense of method and precision. As uncle and nephew shared the same sitting-room and the same sleeping-chamber, and as the former would never suffer any departure from the established routine of things, the boy Ernst began not only to look ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and half an hour had not passed. But after that it was another story. The good spellers remained. They spelled carefully and quietly and a hush fell upon the whole room as Miss Cramp gave out the words with less haste and more precision. ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... races, extending from Morocco in the west to India in the east. The disturbances which he predicted would come he traced in the first instance from our annexation of Cyprus, and the consequent invasion of Tunis by France. He foretold with great precision the rise of the Mahdi, and the growth of religious fanaticism in the Soudan; and he indicated that through Asia Minor, Persia, and Afghanistan a wave of unrest was running which must have serious consequences for the Christian Powers ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... The Chubb was soon, however, crippled and became unmanageable. She drifted within the enemy's lines and was compelled to surrender. The whole fire of the enemy was now concentrated upon the Confiance, and still the latter fired broadside after broadside with much precision and so rapidly that every gun on board of the Saratoga on one side was disabled and silenced, although she lay at such a distance that she could not be taken possession of. But Captain Downie had fallen. The Confiance was now commanded by Lieutenant Robertson, who ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... is to say, if a physician can diagnose a case of love from such symptoms as devouring glances and an attentiveness so marked that it quite disgusted Maitland, who repeatedly measured his rival with the apparent cold precision of a mathematician, albeit ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of letters, which were usually adversely criticised.[290] On this subject I am not going to give you any advice at this time of day, for it is too late; and you cannot but be aware that I have often warned you in various ways and with precision. But I have, on a hint from Theopompus, intrusted him with this message to you: do see by means of persons attached to you, which you will find no difficulty in doing, that the following classes of letters ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... manufactured his moulds. In the round bay window were his operating chair, his dental engine, and the movable rack on which he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand store, ranged themselves against the wall with military precision underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, which he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for the money. Over the bed-lounge hung a rifle manufacturer's advertisement calendar which he never used. The other ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... and matter of any kind not essential, are to be omitted. Where great accuracy is desirable, omissions are to be indicated by three dots (...). The titles of books especially valuable for antiquity or rarity may be given in full, with all practicable precision. The phraseology and spelling, but not necessarily the punctuation, of the title are to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the military king who never suffered himself to be ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... that it seemed as if the whole south end of the pavilion was rising. As 1,800 scarlet-covered chorus books were hoisted into view, the whole amphitheater seemed aflame as if for an exaggerated incantation scene of Fra Diavolo. Then there was another motion of the baton, with the precision of a machine fifty bows scraped upwards over fifty violins and 150 other instruments, and 1,800 ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... the barbarian of fifteen, so he soon began his antics. He was called to the platform, told to lay aside his jacket, and, thereupon, with much astonishment received from the mild Quaker maiden, with a birch rod applied calmly but with precision, an exposition of the argumentum ad hominem based on the a posteriori method of reasoning. Thus Susan departed from her principles, but ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... leaned forward from the window-sill, and stretched his arms towards the approaching rescuers. That same instant a heavy fragment of stone, hurled with deadly force and precision, struck him upon the temple. The violence of the blow flung him back into the room; he dropped to his knees, threw out a hand as if to save himself, then sank face foremost upon the floor. Not a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... have been consonant with the law of competence. There are various local matters which come quite properly within the province of the noble, who in those days took the place of the magistrate. All that was wanted was that such matters should have been defined with precision and that in every case appeal should ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... strangest manner, did M. de Cambrai little service. If people were offended to find it supported upon no authority, they were much more so with its confused and embarrassed style, its precision so restrained and so decided, its barbarous terms which seemed as though taken from a foreign tongue, above all, its high-flown and far- fetched thoughts, which took one's breath away, as in the too subtle air of the middle region. Nobody, except the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... greatly impaired. Their prows were also much higher than the prows of their antagonists. While their shot passed harmlessly over the enemy, his balls struck their galleys close to water-mark with fatal precision. The fire of the Christians was the more murderous because many of the Turkish vessels were crowded with soldiers both on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... executed a flank movement, and attempted to take the hill by storm. At the same time one of their batteries appeared on the top of a ridge opposite, and began to play on the hill with terrible precision. To counteract this a Russian battery of three guns was despatched. I saw the horses come galloping in from the rear; one of the guns was limbered up, and off they went like the wind. At that moment a shell from the Turkish battery fell right under the ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... from Lee. The rising sun shot golden beams through the smoke and disclosed him clearly. His face was calm and his voice did not shake as he issued his orders with rapidity and precision. The lion at bay was never more ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... during an advance of 350 yards—by rifle fire at a range of 350 yards' distance, and by the extremely quick fire of the machine guns, each of which delivered from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the field-trench, a soldier enjoyed far greater security than he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely fifteen inches deep. He had merely to stoop down a little to disappear below the level of the ground ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... nevertheless quite virginal in effect. A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory proceedings, and a singular want of sociability was visible in the "sociable" part of the entertainment. People talked in whispers or with that grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities; conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk to rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like water drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the floor. The widow became ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... difficulties and delays likely to attend the plan of casting howitzers of English calibre in France. The scarcity of materials, the great danger of a want of precision in the proportions, and the facility with which we cast shells in America, induced me to substitute six inch howitzers of French calibre, to those demanded by the Board of War. This size, in the opinion of the most experienced artillerists, is preferable to the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Paris looked dirty and decadent. Her building fronts were grimy, her streets were dirty, and there was a general carelessness where before had been art, precision, and cleanliness. To-day Paris streets are clean. There is even more evidence of rebuilding and of modern conveniences. Motor street-sweepers whirl through the squares, not singly but in pairs and more ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... there will not be War," Mrs. Grant put in with great precision; "the idea is impossible nowadays. And may I ask what a ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... near the Mo-lo-ya (Malaya) mountain. But apparently he did not visit it and this makes it probable that it was not a religious centre but a mountain in the south of which Buddhists in the north wrote with little precision.[26] There is no evidence that Avalokita was first worshipped on this Potalaka, though he is often associated with mountains such as Kapota in Magadha and Valavati in Kataha.[27] In fact the connection of Potala with ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... meet! Did he not, before her face, Seek to brand me with disgrace? From the chiselled lips of wit Let the fire-flakes lightly flit, Scorching as the snow that fell On the damned in Dante's hell? With keen-worded opposition, playful, merciless precision, Mocking the romance of Youth, Standing on the sphere of Truth, He on worldly wisdom's plane Rolled it to and fro amain.— Doubtless there it could not lie, Or walk an orbit but the sky.— I, who glowed in every limb, Knowing, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... returned Orsetti. "Don't you see him twirling round like a teetotum, with Marchesa Amici 'of the swan-neck?'" And he pointed to a pair who were waltzing with such precision that they never by a single step broke the circle—Baldassare gallantly receiving the charge of any free lancers who ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... chief, excepting that, instead of a bangwan, each carried a slender white wand, about twelve feet in length, in his right hand. For a period of about five minutes these terrible beings whirled and flashed hither and thither in bewildering confusion; then, with the precision of highly trained soldiers, they suddenly halted, and I became aware that Machenga, their chief, was again upon his feet, standing in their midst. Then, while the cloud of dust raised by their mad gyrations still hovered in the air, half obscuring the company, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... seen in the drawings of John Leech, circa 1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision. Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open—looking like an empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag, the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with shining rabbit teeth, smiling as if ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... reckless girl, replied: "They shall not go, neither Miss Martha nor Miss Emma; not that I care a fiddlestring for their primness or their precision; nobody shall prevent me from thinking, and acting, and doing as I please to-day; from being, in short, what I was made to be—Fanny Brighton, ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... baffling allusiveness of the expert. The Italian landscape is painted, not with richer imagination, for nothing in Browning exceeds some passages of the earlier books, but with more depth of colouring, more precision of contour and expression. And he has taken the "sad disheveled form," Humanity, for his bride, the mate of an art which will disdain no evil and turn away from nothing common, in the service of man. Doubtless the result was not all gain. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn't exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... with his plan, and in 1862 called to his side one of the most extraordinary statesmen of modern times, Bismarck. The new minister conceived a scheme for laying Austria low and exalting Prussia, which he succeeded in carrying out with startling precision. He could not, however, reveal it to the lower chamber; he would, indeed, scarcely hint its nature to the king himself. In defiance of the lower house and of the newspapers, he carried on the strengthening of the army without formal appropriations, on the theory ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was large, his jaws wide, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small and gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the rat resemblance, its puny, white teeth seemed borrowed from that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner and a stealthy softness in his tread not often seen in combination, which might have impressed a close observer as indicative of a bold, pompous, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
