"Imperfectly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 22-24.) What the first Adam lost by the fall, the last Adam will restore with interest, (1 Cor. ii. 9.) The felicity of the saints in glory can be represented only by sensible things; and even then but very imperfectly. (1 Cor. xiii. 12; 1 John ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... "A most engaging little creature, but it's not that. A most winning little voice, but it's not that. That has much to do with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to know this child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... with feelings of deep commiseration, that Carl looked on the two brothers. He was the only person present, whose time was comparatively his own; he spoke English, although imperfectly; and he owed a deep debt of gratitude ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... corner of the compound, to which no one ventures to penetrate, unless he is prepared to eat his dinner ever afterwards with misgivings. A certain suspicion of greasiness on the surface of the water is suggestive of cooking and of vessels imperfectly cleansed. It is always rather a problem to know how one is meant to use the water in the pail, which is usually scalding hot. A visitor emptying it into the big tub of cold water, and having a luxurious ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... she could bear it, and in about a month recovered her power of swallowing. This woman had suffered the complaint three years, and was greatly reduced, being totally unable to swallow solids, and liquids but very imperfectly.—Woodville's Med. Bot. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... that it had not ennobled her to him then; had not endeared; was taken for a foreign example of the childish artless, imperfectly suited to our English clime.' The tone of adorable utterances, however much desired, is never for repetition; nor is the cast of divine sweet looks; nor are the particular deeds-once pardonable, fitly pleaded. A second scaling of her window—no, night's black hills girdle the scene with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... good and proper chyle, the blood which is formed will not be good and perfect blood; or, lastly, if it seem to make good blood, it may still be faulty, so that the particles which should be applied to build up or repair the system, are either not used, or if used, answer the purpose but imperfectly. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... was stone; That was the first dull gleam of consciousness; I became conscious of a chilly self, A cold, immovable identity. I knew that I was stone, and knew no more! Then, by an imperceptible advance, Came the dim evidence of outer things, Seen—darkly and imperfectly—yet seen The walls surrounding me, and I, alone. That pedestal—that curtain—then a voice That called on Galatea! At that word, Which seemed to shake my marble to the core, That which was dim before, came evident. Sounds, that had hummed around me, indistinct, Vague, meaningless—seemed ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... Jeffrey's aid, obtained a situation at L300 a year as travelling physician to Lady Clare, and was enabled, as he promptly did, to pay back his debts. Alexander seems to have been still struggling with an imperfectly successful farm. In the same year, when Carlyle was in London, his father died at Scotsbrig, after a residence there of six years. His son saw him last in August 1831, when, referring to his Craigenputtock ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Nancy—with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience—should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge—singular, if we did not know that human ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... abode. And hence this Tale, while I was yet a Boy Careless of books, yet having felt the power Of Nature, by the gentle agency Of natural objects, led me on to feel 30 For passions that were not my own, and think (At random and imperfectly indeed) On man, the heart of man, and human life. Therefore, although it be a history Homely and rude, I will relate the same 35 For the delight of a few natural hearts; And, with yet fonder feeling, for the sake Of youthful Poets, who among these hills Will be ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... dressing-room. A small folding bedstead was the only piece of furniture. The crew consisted of Bosos, the true sailors of the Niger, of whose skill, patient endurance, and loyalty I had full experience. Alone among them, travelling through an imperfectly conquered, sometimes openly hostile country, never once did I feel that my safety was in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... a Redeemer from sin, a spiritual, a divine Remedy for its moral malady—and it strove after some remedial power. But it was equally conscious of failure and defeat. It could enlighten the reason, but it could only act imperfectly on the will. Platonic was a striking counterpart to Pauline experience prior to the apostle's deliverance by the power and grace of Christ. It discovered that "the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... pass over one whom I say in all seriousness has, when contrasted with others, won for himself immortal honors; I mean our worthy representative at St. Petersburg, who understanding no language but his own, and that very imperfectly, has the great good sense to say nothing, seclude himself from the society of the Czar, and seek only the enjoyment of his own melancholy contemplations. Now General; however much you may esteem the doings of your chosen, there is in Europe but one opinion of their manners; and ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the direct result of his reckless lack of common prudence. That which made him live, in a literary way, curtailed his years. The man was improperly and imperfectly nourished, physically. Men who live alone do not cook any more than they have to: men and women, both, cook for emulation. That is to say, we work for each other, and we succeed only as we ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... child, and not allow his prayers to be neglected; but not being able to repeat the Latin forms, and thinking them unprofitable to the boy himself, he prompted the saying of the Creed and Lord's Prayer in English, and caused them to be repeated after him, though very sleepily and imperfectly. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the Land of Cockaigne described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training, and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... had ever known. He died many years ago. He was the writer of the "letter from a friend now in New Zealand," from which a quotation is given in Life and Habit, Chapter V (pp. 83, 84). Butler kept a copy of his letter to T. W. G. Butler, but it was imperfectly pressed; he afterwards supplied some of the missing words from memory, and gave it ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... in good soil, must grow. It strengthens and deepens. Soon it begins to widen also. Social life, very rude and imperfect, appears. And the members of this social group support, help, and defend one another. And doing for one another and helping each other, however slightly and imperfectly, strengthens their affection for one another. The animal is still selfish, so is man frequently, but it is in a fair way to become unselfish, and this is all we ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... her experience, in which a mother is left alone through the day, with servants perhaps in a distant part of the house, and (God be thanked!) chiefly where there are no servants at all, she is attended by one sole companion, her little first-born angel, as yet clinging to her robe, imperfectly able to walk, still more imperfect in its prattling and innocent thoughts, clinging to her, haunting her wherever she goes as her shadow, catching from her eye the total inspiration of its little palpitating heart, and sending to hers a thrill of secret ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of the suppliant in enumerating his demerits, his serenely illogical demands of salvation in spite, or rather because, of them, his meek submission to the punishment of others, and the many similarly pleasing characteristics of this amusing work, being most imperfectly conveyed. By permitting myself a reasonable freedom of rendering—in many cases boldly supplying that "missing link" between the sublime and the ridiculous which the author, writing for the acute monkish apprehension ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... "it has been an exotic, and to the end of time will probably remain so, without a follower or imitator of the singular development of which it is the only example.... It has all the appearance of having been the work of a stranger, who was but imperfectly acquainted with the wants or customs of Italian architecture, working to some extent with the traditions of his own native school before him, but at the same time impressed with a strong sense of the necessity under ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... a few fathoms away, a great wall of spouting, leaping white breakers, evidently marking the position of the reef upon which we had struck so violently, and over which we now seemed to have beaten, for there were no further shocks. But imperfectly as I could distinguish objects in the darkness, I could still see enough to convince me that the schooner was a complete wreck and full of water, for both masts were over the starboard side, still attached to the ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... logic of the schools great advances had been made in the rules of scientific investigation; but these rules were not only imperfect in themselves, but their connection with the law of causation was but imperfectly realized, and their true relation ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... 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
... had very imperfectly revealed the person of Jem Mace. Now that Mrs Butt saw him slouching in all his native hideousness against her mantelpiece in the full blaze of a paraffin lamp, she inwardly congratulated herself that Mr Brooke was such a big strong man—almost a ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... merely telling of their rights. In zone "B," which mostly consists of the town of Celovec, the Church would naturally be more susceptible to German influence, apart from the fact that the Bishop himself is a Bavarian. For personal reasons—he is very imperfectly acquainted with the Slovene language—he wished even the clergy of zone "A" to correspond with him in German; but the priests pointed out that their faithful parishioners wanted to follow this correspondence and by far ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... princes of genius, ministers of genius; and then there were also noble minds and bourgeois minds, city talents and country talents. Clear at the foot of the ladder lay the gross industrial population, souls imperfectly outlined, excluded from the glory of the elect. All rhetorics are still filled with these impertinences, which monarchical interests, literary vanity, and socialistic hypocrisy strain themselves to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... as a body of institutions. It has been borrowed and imitated by the military and police state of the European continent so fast as they have felt the influence of the expanding industrial civilization; but they have realized it only imperfectly, because they have no body of local institutions or traditions, and it remains for them as yet too much a ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... monotonous, existence has been given, and though Ernestine deserves much more,—deserves to be known in her mind and her feelings, yes, and in her soul,—she must put up, as she did in life, with getting less than her deserts, and let her rough actions reveal her nature imperfectly. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... is imperfectly represented by our common use of the word "form," which stands often even in contrast to "reality." ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... was in manuscript, and imperfectly committed to memory. He laid it down on a little table at the back of the stage (returning to it occasionally to refresh his memory), and then, in a very natural and matter-of-fact way, walked to the footlights, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Darius without, gradually gain such an ascendency within the city as finally to have power to open the gates and let the besiegers in. Darius was to station a detachment of a thousand men near a certain gate, leaving them imperfectly armed, on the tenth day after Zopyrus entered the city. These Zopyrus was to destroy. Seven days afterward, two thousand more were to be stationed in a similar manner at another point; and these were also to be destroyed by a second sally. Twenty ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... motion (ataxia) is very marked, especially in the lower extremities; the walking becomes difficult and uncertain; there is difficulty in rising or rapid turning; the legs are wide apart; feet lifted too high and come down too forcibly; the length of the steps is irregular, and the body is imperfectly balanced. If the patient stands with his feet together and eyes closed he begins to sway, (Romberg's symptom), which is due to a defect in controlling the muscles from impairment of sensation. There may be imperfect use of the hands in dressing, writing, etc.; lancinating ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... tiers of narrow windows, separated from each other by little more than a simple string-course. Above these windows both become octagon, and continue so to the top; but in a very different manner. The northern one has obtuse angles, imperfectly defined; the southern has four projecting buttresses and four windows, alternating with each other. The form of the windows and their arrangement, afford farther marks of distinction. The octagon part is in both ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... more attention to the arts than to mechanics, and it was the period of beautiful watches of iron, copper, wood, silver, which were richly engraved, like one of Cellini's ewers. They made a masterpiece of chasing, which measured time imperfectly, but was still a masterpiece. When the artist's imagination was not directed to the perfection of modelling, it set to work to create clocks with moving figures and melodious sounds, whose appearance took all attention. Besides, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... standing up as high as the distant towers, their trunks like black columns without foliage. Openings here and there, with glimmering lights, looked like the mouths of mines; but of passengers there were scarcely any. A figure here and there flew along as if pursued, imperfectly seen, a shadow only a little darker than the space about. And in contrast with the sound of the city, here was no sound at all, except the low roar on either side, and a vague cry or two from the openings of the mine,—a scene all drawn in darkness, in variations ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... as the contest has gone on the pretense that civil government exists on the island, except so far as Spain is able to maintain it, has been practically abandoned. Spain does keep on foot such a government, more or less imperfectly, in the large towns and their immediate suburbs; but that exception being made, the entire country is either given over to anarchy or is subject to the military occupation of one or the other party. It is ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... beyond this, we may dwell, though all imperfectly, upon the features, familiar as they are, of that wonderful life of self-oblivious and self-sacrificing ministration to others. Think of the purity of the source from all which these wonders and blessednesses of service for man flowed. The life of Jesus Christ is self-forgetting ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... comfortable feeling over the whole body are among the results. M——, an oil-broker in New York, says that at thirty-six he had a weak voice, stood slouched over and inerect, was troubled with catarrh, and knew too well what it was to have the stomach and bowels work imperfectly. Most people can not inflate the chest so as to increase its girth over two inches. By steady practice at his little pipe, he in about a year got so that he could inflate five whole inches. But now his chest is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as any in a dozen. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the descendant of so great a poet. Dr. Birch describes him as a man somewhat advanced in years, but unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor which are wanting. The family has been since very imperfectly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... to the whereabouts of the Mourne Mountains, and utterly unable to draw an accurate map of the Balkan States. She scored a little on Canada, for she had learnt North America last term at Miss Harmon's, but with Australia and New Zealand she was imperfectly acquainted. She wrote away, getting hotter and hotter as she realized her deficiencies, winding up five minutes before the time allotted, in a flushed and decidedly ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... him carefully, and as the corporal sat in the middle thwart, with his face turned aft, catching but imperfectly the conversation of the men, the lad separated the painter with a sharp knife, and at the same time dropping his foot down, gave the bow of the boat a shove off, which made it round with the stream. The tide was then running five or ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and moon, backward and forward, for ten thousand years; we, with our vastly increased conceptions of the powers of the Grand Architect of the Universe, but our wholly material and mechanical view of that Universe itself; we cannot, even in the remotest degree, feel, though we may partially and imperfectly imagine, how those great, primitive, simple-hearted children of Nature felt in regard to the Starry Hosts, there upon the slopes of the Himalayas, on the Chaldean plains, in the Persian and Median deserts, and upon the banks of that great, strange River, the Nile. To them ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Taipi-kikino. "Captain, is it permitted to come on board?" were the first words we heard among the islands. Canoe followed canoe, till the ship swarmed with stalwart, six-foot men in every stage of undress; some in a shirt, some in a loin-cloth, one in a handkerchief imperfectly adjusted; some, and these the more considerable, tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns; some barbarous and knived; one, who sticks in my memory as something bestial, squatting on his hams in a canoe, sucking an orange and spitting it out again to alternate sides with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... docile, many of the best intellects we possess. The few who have sense and strength to assert their own place and supremacy, are driven into discouraged disease by their isolation, like Turner and Blake; the one abandoning the design of his 'Liber Studiorum' after imperfectly and sadly, against total public neglect, carrying it forward to what it is,—monumental, nevertheless, in landscape engraving; the other producing, with one only majestic series of designs from the book of Job, nothing for his life's work but coarsely ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... the rudiments of monarchical government. But it is yet far short of that establishment which is known in after ages by the name of monarchy. The distinction between the leader and the follower, the prince and the subject, is still but imperfectly marked: their pursuits and occupations are not different; their minds are not unequally cultivated; they feed from the same dish; they sleep together on the ground; the children of the king, as well as those of the subject, are employed in tending the flock; and the keeper ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... "I am very imperfectly acquainted with your present views. You originally designed, after having completed your academical and legal education, to return to America. If this should still be your intention, the enclosed will obviate some of your pecuniary embarrassments, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... But a mind imperfectly faithful, and impatient in its distress, or craving in its dulness for a more distinct and convincing sense of the Divinity, would endeavour to complete, or perhaps we should rather say to contract, its conception, into the definite figure of a woman wearing ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... there may at some remote period have been land connections with other regions which have facilitated the immigration of plants from various sides, is a matter on which science cannot yet pronounce, for both the geology and the flora of the whole African continent have been very imperfectly examined. It is, however, worth remarking that there are marked affinities between the general character of the flora of the south-western corner of South Africa and that of the flora of south-western Australia, and ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the heated air passed direct from the furnace at one end, lined with fire-bricks, to the chimney at the other. The combustion in the furnace was quickened by the adoption of the steam-blast in the chimney. The heat raised was sometimes so great, and it was so imperfectly abstracted by the surrounding water, that the chimney became almost red-hot. Such engines, when put to their speed, were found capable of running at the rate of from twelve to sixteen miles an hour; but they were better adapted for the heavy work of hauling ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... flippant enough to say that I could read and write a little, and the big policeman entered me as being imperfectly educated. That record stands against me unto ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... and even wickedly, exaggerated, but nevertheless it did us good. He knows the British character very imperfectly who does not see that the qualities in which it is unsurpassed among the races of mankind are those with which it meets adversity and confronts the darkest night. Within a few days of the report that our soldiers were ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... beyond the concession, the "native town"—the real Japanese city—stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To the average settler this native town remains a world of mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a student of native customs, but simply a man of business; ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... elm. A stool carried by one man showed its long legs grotesquely behind his back. There were six persons besides the prisoner, all soldiers except one, who wore the coarse, long, cord-girdled gown of a Capuchin. His hood was drawn over his face, and the torches imperfectly showed that he was of the bare-footed order and wore only sandals. He held up a crucifix and walked close beside Klussman. But the Swiss gazed all around the dark world which he was so soon to leave, and up at the fortress he had attempted to betray, and ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... 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 things; that we were His children, and that we, by ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... creates a parasitic class which in Japan is perhaps even more parasitic than in the West. A landowner in the West almost invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan a landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the State are often imperfectly understood. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... hazard a guess as to when the child comes through to a sharp distinction between himself and other things or other persons. But we are sure, I think, that this distinction is a matter of growth which extends over many years and that at two, three, and even four, it is imperfectly apprehended. We all know how long a child is in acquiring a correct use of the pronouns "me" and "you." And we know that long after he has this language distinction, he still calls everything he likes "mine." "This is my cow, this is my tree!" The only way to persuade him that it is not his ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... nobis incesta. Therefore he, the Roman, describes the Jews as a people dominated by superstition and hostile to religion, gens superstitioni obnoxia, religionibus adversa, while as regards Christianity, with which he was very imperfectly acquainted, scarcely distinguishing it from Judaism, he deemed it to be a pernicious superstition, existialis superstitio, inspired by a hatred of mankind, odium generis humani (Ab excessu Aug., xv., 44). And ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... of the valley in which Tor Abbey stands, is the best case I have seen. See above, Chapter 18.) No doubt some such exceptional cases may be met with in the course of future investigations, for we are still imperfectly acquainted with the entire fauna of the age of stone in Denmark as we may infer from an opinion expressed by Steenstrup, that some of the instruments exhumed by antiquaries from the Danish peat are made of the bones and horns of the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... the rest of the bed and upon an armchair at the side of it. She was quite close to the King, who was in his night-cap, she also, and in her bed-gown, both between the sheets, which were only very imperfectly hidden by the papers. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... outside the imagination of an American. I make no complaint of the fact that in a chequered past she had married both Carter's man-servant and the antiquated poet; but I do complain that her Cockney accent was imperfectly consistent both with her rustic origin an apple-cheeked lass, we were told, from somewhere in Kent) and her situation as maid to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... of Psychic Force is in itself merely the recognition of the now almost undisputed fact that under certain conditions, as yet but imperfectly ascertained, and within a limited, but as yet undefined, distance from the bodies of certain persons having a special nerve organization, a Force operates by which, without muscular contact or connexion, action at a distance is caused, and visible motions and audible ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... that the Gardener with the injured wing-covers had tempted his fellows by the sight of his imperfectly covered back. They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible subject for dissection. But do they respect one another when there is no previous wound? At first there was every appearance that their relations were perfectly pacific. During their sanguinary ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... link between the perfecting of group action in training and the end product of unity and economy of operations in battle has never been better than imperfectly expressed even by such masters as de Saxe and von Steuben, who felt it by profound instinct. The time-honored explanation is that when men accustom themselves to obeying orders, the time ultimately arrives ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... elder calmly, "when a person of your excitable nature can play so well the sombre, taciturn character of Cromwell. You have mounted several rungs, and the whole ladder lifts itself up before you. You have mastered two or three languages, while I know but one, and that imperfectly. You have studied the foreign drama, while I have not even read all the plays of Shakespeare. I can do a hundred parts conventionally well. You will, some day, do a great part as no other man on earth can act it, and then fame will come ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... quite as interesting and as well told. It derives its importance from its points of resemblance to the Genesis story, and from the deduction that some have drawn from these that it was the original of that story—or rather of the two stories—that we find imperfectly recombined ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... a tedious routine of learning by rote, and the teacher a tyrant, enforcing them by the terrors of the stick. The boy went to school a little, now and then, but learned little more than to read, write, and cipher, and these imperfectly. The only books he remembers using at school were the spelling-book and Testament. His real education was gained in working on his father's farm, helping to sail his father's boat, driving his father's horses, swimming, riding, rowing, sporting with his young friends. He was a bold rider ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... position from which it would most probably be impracticable to extricate ourselves without at least losing some of our horses; and even difficulties of a more serious nature might arise, which would prevent the more complete examination of the imperfectly known country to the southward of our present position, more especially as a successful advance to ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... a letter used by the Umbrians and Oscans, but it appears first in ordinary Latin about Cicero's time in the transliteration of Greek words. Before this time, ζ had been imperfectly represented in the Latin by s or ss, as sona for ζώνη, and badisso for βαδίζω. It was, in classical times, always regarded by the Romans as a Greek letter. Marius Victorinus remarks: "If z were essential to the Latin language, we should represent ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck
... Gray,[9] Bromeliaceae, and—the very thing I want—"Tillandsia, the black moss, or long moss, which, like most Bromelias, grows on the branches of trees." So the pineapple is really a moss; only it is a moss that flowers but 'imperfectly.' "The fine fruit is caused by the consolidation of the imperfect flowers." (I wish we could consolidate some imperfect English moss-flowers into little pineapples then,—though they were only as big as filberts.) But we cannot follow that farther ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... department in October, 1904, and though I have been most seriously pressed for time, and in many instances have dealt imperfectly with the problems treated, I must say that the task I set myself has proved interesting and agreeable, and the letters the department evoked have been a tremendous source of inspiration and encouragement to me along the hail-stony road I had set myself ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... foreground, connect it most definitely with the death of Christ, and in some passages seem to have a conception of that connection, which reminds us of Paul. But this just shews that they are dependent here on Paul (or on 1st Peter), and on a closer examination we perceive that they very imperfectly understand Paul, and have no independent insight into the series of ideas which they reproduce. That is specially plain in Clement. For in the first place, he everywhere passes over the resurrection (he mentions it only twice, once as a guarantee of our own resurrection, along ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... products in the intestine, more especially such as come from meat proteins, is well recognized; but the importance, in high pressure cases, of the absorption of toxins derived from imperfectly digested food remaining in the bowels over night is not sufficiently recognized. Patients with high blood pressure should not eat a heavy evening meal, and especially should they not eat meat. Willson [Footnote: ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... as to the progress of the war, a sound report we should have had. But as the Northern States raised no loans in Lombard Street (and could raise none because of their vicious paper money), Lombard Street did not care about them, and England was very imperfectly informed of the progress of the civil struggle, and on the whole matter, which was then new and very complex, England had to judge without having her usual materials for judgment, and (since the guidance of the "City" on political matter is very quietly and imperceptibly given) without knowing ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... singing their prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental taxation. But, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure benefited. None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... countries, and ages whatsoever. He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virgil, with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point out many passages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which bombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit of the version more than overbalances these and all its other deficiencies. ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... a foreigner, and therefore but very imperfectly acquainted with the English language, I judged to be no sufficient reason for keeping me from writing. The Christian reader being acquainted with this fact, will candidly excuse ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... such force as they could collect from Kyle and Cunningham, among whom were not less than 1000 horsemen. Sir John Grahame, Sir John of Tinto, and Auchinleck assembled about 3000 mounted troops and a large number of foot, many of whom, however, were imperfectly armed. Sir Ronald Crawford, Wallace's uncle, being so close to Ayr, could not openly join him, but secretly sent reinforcements and money. Many other ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... in thick masses, completely hiding the uplands from view. Nearly every gorge and valley was filled with heavy volumes of fog, whilst in some, a slight steam only rising, allowed the trees to be faintly discovered. There is nothing more grand than the aspect of lofty peaks and crags and precipices imperfectly revealed through a morning mist. It seems as though the darkness of night, unwilling to depart, lingers still fondly around them. Their hollows and recesses are still wrapt in gloom, when all else around is beaming ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Dioclesian were but imperfectly attained; the internal peace of the empire lasted only during his own reign; and with his abdication of the empire commenced the bloodiest civil wars which had desolated the world since the contests of the great triumvirate. But the collateral ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... tearing aside the slight calico that very imperfectly concealed his painted breast; "here are scars given by knives and bullets—of these a warrior may boast before his nation; but the gray-head has left marks on the back of the Huron chief that he must hide like a squaw, under this painted cloth of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... however imperfectly, a long-entertained intention of visiting Spain; and, although I had merely breathed Spanish air for a few hours, yet it has given me a sort of assurance that I shall, one day, be able to put my favourite project in execution—of travelling over that most poetical and interesting ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... adventures; at Como, in Valais, and elsewhere. I there saw many curious things, amongst others the Boroma islands, which are worthy of being described. But I am pressed by time, and surrounded by spies. I am obliged to write in haste, and very imperfectly, a work which requires the leisure and tranquility I do not enjoy. If ever providence in its goodness grants me days more calm, I shall destine them to new modelling this work, should I be able to do it, or ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... with almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious associations; this ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... experience, sat down to tell the story of their life. [4] In it there are no puerile whinings, no querulous curses that tropical Malays do not order their lives as did the people of the Spanish village where he may have been reared, no selfish laments of ingratitude over blessings unasked and only imperfectly understood by the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to the real conditions, but a patient consideration of the difficulties encountered, the good accomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident to any human ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... their hands at work in the face of a falling market, or no market at all. Shelves were packed with goods everywhere. We were on the eve of a great change, and it would be some time before values would become stable again. If the balance of trade (high-sounding, but imperfectly understood term) could once more turn in our favor; if we could export our surplus goods, and find new markets,—as no doubt we would,—every shop and factory would soon be ringing with the cheerful sound of labor. It would be a hard winter; but he, for one, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to be peculiar to the American continent. Buffon believes him to be of the same species with the laemmer-geyer (lamb-vulture) of the Alps. The similarity of their habitations favors this conjecture; but the truth is, the Condor of Peru has not been well examined, and his history is imperfectly known. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... that produced by the formula "related to Mme. de Beauseant." His position was not unlike that of some visitor permitted as a favor to inspect a private collection of curiosities, when by inadvertence he comes into collision with a glass case full of sculptured figures, and three or four heads, imperfectly secured, fall at the shock. He wished the earth would open and swallow him. Mme. de Restaud's expression was reserved and chilly, her eyes had grown indifferent, and sedulously avoided meeting those of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille.—But in square games (she meant whist) all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with honour, common to every species—though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... preserved exactly as they were spoken, it is doubly true when we have only the testimony of contemporaries as to the effect which the oration produced. The fiery utterances of Adams, Otis, and Quincy were either not reported at all or very imperfectly reported, so that posterity can judge of them only at second hand. Patrick Henry has fared better, many of his orations being preserved in substance, if not in the letter, in Wirt's biography. Of these the most famous was ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... do beseech you,— Though I perchance am vicious in my guess, As, I confess, it is my nature's plague To spy into abuses, and of my jealousy Shape faults that are not,—that your wisdom yet, From one that so imperfectly conceits, Would take no notice; nor build yourself a trouble Out of his scattering and unsure observance:— It were not for your quiet nor your good, Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom, To let ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... sun between the hot stones. For as Dionysus, the spiritual form of the vine, is of the highest human type, so the fig-tree and the reed have animal souls, mistakeable in the thoughts of a later, imperfectly remembering age, for mere abstractions of animal nature; Snubnose, and Sweetwine, and Silenus, the oldest of them all, so old that he has come to have the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Charles had remained at Windsor there had been proceedings in Parliament of which he was imperfectly informed. On the day he arrived there it was resolved by the Commons that he should be brought to trial. On January 2, 1649, it was voted that, in making war against the Parliament, he had been guilty of treason; and a high court was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... So did the others. The Old Man examined their contents and said hopefully, "I reckon that's enough; he don't need much. You hold on all o' you for a spell, and I'll be back"; and vanished in the closet with an old flannel shirt and the whiskey. The door closed but imperfectly, and the following ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... aimed at this upon the foot of philosophy appear to have had better success in eradicating the affections of tenderness and compassion than they had with the passions of envy, pride, and resentment: these latter, at best, were but concealed, and that imperfectly too. How far this observation may be extended to such as endeavour to suppress the natural impulses of their affections, in order to form themselves for business and the world, I shall not determine. But there does not appear any capacity or relation to be named, in which men ought to be ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... under the command of Admiral Byng, was sent out to the Mediterranean. With his squadron but imperfectly manned, he sailed from Spithead on the 7th of April. When off Minorca, then held by the English, and besieged by the Spaniards, a French fleet appeared in sight. The next day, the weather being hazy, the French fleet was not seen till noon, when ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... organs, both external and internal, remain in an embryonic and non-functional state, not only in the embryo but for a long time in the child. The organs and their elements exist, but they are still small, imperfectly developed, and in a state of rest. At the time of puberty, which varies in different individuals, the sexual glands and the other copulatory apparatus enlarge and begin to functionate. In the European races puberty occurs between the age of twelve and seventeen years ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... was to retire out of sight, for the window was open and he himself imperfectly concealed by the muslin blind. Then, as he was on the point of retiring, he distinctly heard the sound of his own name. The two men were speaking in a low tone, but a slight breeze was blowing into the room. Julien stood still and ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Fig.1 represents an imperfectly prepared surface of two pieces of malleable iron about to be welded. The result of their concavity of form is that the scoriae are almost certain to be shut up in the hollow part,—as the pieces ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... their bridges totally. The infuriated brute then ran for an old buggy, and, by supreme perseverance, kicked it over, and its two Hebrew occupants, into the road, where they fell, head-foremost, into the mire, growling profanely, like tigers that have learned German imperfectly, and were trying to swear, in choice Teutonic, about the peculiar qualities of Limburger cheese. In their sudden subversion, the Israelites dropped three fine watches out of their pockets, and the mule, with an unprecedented voracity, and determined on ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... interest, in twofold motives, in views and wishes more than could be told, that Fanny could not have remained insensible of his drift, had she been able to attend; but her heart was so full and her senses still so astonished, that she could listen but imperfectly even to what he told her of William, and saying only when he paused, "How kind! how very kind! Oh, Mr. Crawford, we are infinitely obliged to you! Dearest, dearest William!" She jumped up and moved in haste towards the door, crying out, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... minutes, after which the irritation became unendurable. Reflection suggested that, besides the smoke, there must be numerous hydrocarbons produced, which, being in a state of vapour, would be very imperfectly arrested by the cotton-wool. These, in all probability, were the cause of the residual irritation; and if these could be removed, a practically perfect ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... up with a circuit of seventeen hundred feet of copper wire stretched back and forth in that long room. Professor Daubeny, Professor Torrey, and Mr. Alfred Vail were present among others. This exhibition of the telegraph, although of very rude and imperfectly constructed machinery, demonstrated to all present the practicability of the invention, and it resulted in enlisting the means, the skill, and the zeal of Mr. Alfred Vail, who, early the next week, called at the rooms ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... as the idea of Brahma had attained fixity in the Hindu mind, and simultaneously with it, cast was developed, as we find it (but imperfectly) in the earliest records of Hindu philosophy, ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... 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 often recognizes these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius. On ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... become so now. A vessel freighted with furs would have caused much excitement of itself; but, by some means or other, the deacon's great secret of the buried treasure had leaked out, most probably by means of some of his lamentations during his illness, and, though but imperfectly known, it added largely to the expectations connected with the unlooked-for return of the schooner. In short, it would not have been easy to devise a circumstance that should serve to increase the liveliness of feeling that, just then, prevailed on the subject of Deacon Pratt ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper |
