"Imperfectly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... robes hung over them in cold weather. Examples have been seen that seem to have been constructed with this object in view, for a slight pole, of the same kind as those used in the lintels, is built into the masonry of the jambs a few inches below the lintel proper. Openings imperfectly closed against the cold and wind were naturally placed in the lee walls to avoid the prevailing southwest winds, and the ground plans of the exposed mesa villages were undoubtedly influenced by this circumstance, the tendency being to change them from the early inclosed ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the first head is purely algebraical, and the second nearly so: but they are closely related to observational science, and to the physical subjects which follow. Some of the subjects which I exhibit on my list are partially, but in my opinion imperfectly, taught at present. I entirely omit from my list Physical Optics, Geometrical Astronomy, and Gravitational Astronomy of Points: because, to the extent to which Academical Education ought to go, I ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Hence the king, starting as a magician, tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice. And while the distinction between the human and the divine is still imperfectly drawn, it is often imagined that men may themselves attain to godhead, not merely after their death, but in their lifetime, through the temporary or permanent possession of their whole nature by a great ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... scattered throughout the routes, are far from being within hail of each other, and far from possessing the control of the road mid-way. Nay, they are themselves tenanted by men so fierce by nature, and so imperfectly disciplined, that some people might fear the guards more than the robbers. They are not detachments of the regular forces, but men taken chiefly from the Xebeques, whose manners and dress are sufficiently distinct from those of the ordinary Turks. Each of these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... you back the page from the letter of your friend Barbes, whose real biography I know very imperfectly. All I know of him is that he is honest and heroic. Give him a hand-shake for me, to thank him for his sympathy. Is he, BETWEEN OURSELVES, as intelligent as he ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... faintly the picture I saw dimly through dust and smoke from my own standpoint. Being under no one's orders, I could go where I pleased, and I tried to find the vital points. Of course, there was much heavy fighting that I saw nothing of, movements unknown to me or caught but imperfectly. During the preliminary conflict I remained on the right of Burnside's command near the Sudley Road by which our army had ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... au xviii siecle." Some of his financial proposals were put into practice by Turgot. But his significance in the development of the revolutionary ideas which were to gain control in the second half of the eighteenth century has hardly been appreciated yet, and it was imperfectly appreciated ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... civilisation. Nothing can surpass the innocence of the ladies' shoe-shops, the artificial-flower repositories, and the head-dress depots. They are in strange hands at this time of year—hands of unaccustomed persons, who are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder. The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities in the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. Their youthful ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Christianity. Let reformers who love Him take heart as they consider that they are indeed following in the footsteps of the Master, who has at no time said that the revelation which He brought, and which has been so imperfectly used, is the last which will come to mankind. In our own times an equally great one has been released from the centre of all truth, which will make as deep an impression upon the human race as Christianity, though no predominant ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he is often looked on—apparently with more reason—as the first of the Realists. His object in writing was, he tells us, to represent mankind as he saw it, to be the historian of the nineteenth century, and to classify human beings as Buffon had classified animals. No doubt this scheme was very imperfectly carried out: certainly the powerful mind of Balzac with its wealth of imagination, often projected itself into his puppets, so that many of his characters are not the ordinary men and women he wished to portray, but ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... the fact that 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 similar affinities between the flora of south-eastern and tropical ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... politicians, bent upon regaining their ascendency at any cost, stultifying their own minds by vague sophistries and high-sounding phrases, which deceived none but those who wished to be deceived, and these but imperfectly; and dulling the public conscience by a loud clamor in which the calm voice of truth was for the moment silenced. So the cause ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... were the two great factors in the art of the Renaissance—the study of nature, and the study of the Antique: both understand slowly, imperfectly; the one counteracting the effect of the other; the study of nature now scaring away all antique influence, the study of the antique now distorting all imitation of nature; rival forces confusing the artist and marring the work, until, when each could receive ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... subject of the Catholic religion, which I only knew by name. The French master was an emigre priest, but he was simply made a butt, as French masters too commonly were in that day, and spoke English very imperfectly. There was a Catholic family in the village, old maiden ladies we used to think; but I knew nothing but their name. I have of late years heard that there were one or two Catholic boys in the school; but either we were carefully kept from knowing this, or the knowledge ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... not to wait for death and resurrection to endue us with that power because it is the gift of God to us here, that gift of enternal life which our Lord came to bestow upon us. Only the gift which we realise imperfectly or not at all at its bestowal we come to understand in something of its real power; and henceforth we live in the possession and fruition of it, growing up "into Him in all things, which is the Head, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... came in with 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 gentlemen joined ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... house, he stood for a while without the door and out of sight, listening to hear what was said, for Morgan was then speaking in the meeting. But certainly he heard very imperfectly, if it was true which we heard he said afterwards among his companions, as an argument, that Morgan was a Jesuit—viz., that in his preaching he trolled over his Latin as fluently as ever he heard any ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... the meal, not even pretending a desire to eat, exchanging vague phrases, hanging our heads over the empty plates. But the regular footsteps of the boatswain left in charge hesitated, stopped near the skylight. He said in an imperfectly assured voice, "Seems as if there was a steadier draught coming now." At this we rose from the table impetuously, as though he had shouted an alarm of fire, and Mrs. Williams, with a little cry, ran round to Seraphina. Leaving the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... specially occupied with this theme. In almost every Greek city we hear of "mysteries", the most celebrated being, of course, those of Eleusis in Attica. What exactly these "mysteries" were we are very imperfectly informed; but so much, at least, is clear that by means of a scenic symbolism, representing the myth of Demeter and Kore or of Dionysus Zagreus, hopes were held out to the initiated not only of a happy life on earth, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... at Boston, I met there with a Dr. Spence, who was lately arrived from Scotland, and show'd me some electric experiments. They were imperfectly perform'd, as he was not very expert; but, being on a subject quite new to me, they equally surpris'd and pleased me. Soon after my return to Philadelphia, our library company receiv'd from Mr. P. Collinson, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a present of a glass tube, with some account of ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... to you our arms, and we heartily meet your wishes in the assurance that we contribute to the development of the ideas of peace and steadiness, without which the evolution of a people can only be accomplished imperfectly and at the cost of ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... in paying a higher price per piece, or per unit, or per job, if the work is done in the shortest possible time and without imperfection, than is paid if the work takes a longer time or is imperfectly done. To illustrate—suppose 20 units, or pieces, to be the largest amount of work of a certain kind that can be done in a day. Under the differential rate system, if a workman finishes 20 pieces per day, and all of these pieces are perfect, he receives, say, 15 cents per piece, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... that wins the most on the affections, although this opinion is formed from a knowledge of the general fact that objects which astonish so greatly at first, do not, as a rule, continue the longest to afford pleasure, for I never saw the former spectacle but twice and on one of those occasions, imperfectly. No dilettanti were ever more punctual at the opening of the orchestra, than we are at this evening exhibition, which, very much like a line and expressive harmony, grows upon us at each repetition. All this ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Democracy, and Mixed Governments. The American form is none of these, nor any combination of them. It is original, a new contribution to political science, and seeks to attain the end of all wise and just government by means unknown or forbidden to the ancients, and which have been but imperfectly comprehended even by American political writers themselves. The originality of the American constitution has been overlooked by the great majority even of our own statesmen, who seek to explain it by analogies borrowed from the constitutions of other states rather than by a profound ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... he was generally very resolute in speaking Latin. It was a maxim with him that a man should not let himself down, by speaking a language which he speaks imperfectly. Indeed, we must have often observed how inferiour, how much like a child a man appears, who speaks a broken tongue. When Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the dinners of the Royal Academy, presented him to a Frenchman of great distinction, he would not deign ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... are held in peculiar respect by the vulgar, and are thought to be in every way superior to those whose understandings are entire. The laws by which two objects, so far apart, operate on each other, have been, as yet, but imperfectly developed, and the wilder their freaks, the more they are the objects of wonder and admiration. "The science of lunarology," he observed, "is yet in its infancy. But in the three voyages I have made to the moon, I have acquired so many new facts, and imparted so many to the learned men of that ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Shawe. Unable to do this, he bought half-a-dozen newspapers, and read all the leading articles and the political news with close attention. As a rule, this kind of study had little attraction for him; he was anything but well-informed on current politics; he understood very imperfectly the British constitution, and had still less insight into the details of party organisation and conflict. All that kind of thing he was wont to regard as unworthy of his scrutiny. For him, large ideas, world-embracing theories, the philosophy of civilisation. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of an imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know, and that from his own lips, tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a 'tight place,' he went back to his own country from the land he had tried to invade, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... itself a delightful occupation, and that there is no enemy to thinking so deadly as a false simplicity. Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored. ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words, 'Let me see ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... removed from the extreme of savageness that they admit of having certain principles in common, and are able to submit themselves individually to the system which rises out of those principles; that they do recognize the ideas of government, property, and law, however imperfectly; though they still differ from civilized polities in those main points, which I have set down as analogous to the difference between ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and silk, of various colours, and that they understood Arabic; and adds, that they informed De Gama there were white people to the eastwards, who sailed in ships like those of the Portuguese. Osorius likewise says, that one of the natives spoke Arabic very imperfectly, and that De Gama left two of his convicts at this place, which he called ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... finer and larger specimens, and they, in consequence, fell back, disengaged from the harpoon, in the attempt to land them, he succeeded in getting a good many of the smaller ones. Old John Clark the gardener—far advanced in life at the time, and seeing too imperfectly to discover the crevice which opened high amid the obscurity of the loft—was in a perfect maze regarding the evil influence that was destroying his apples. The harpooned individuals lay scattered over the floor ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... wild boy, who is mentioned in Lord Monboddo's Origin of Language,[11] had all his senses in remarkable perfection. He lived at a farm house within half a mile of us in Hertfordshire for some years, and we had frequent opportunities of trying experiments upon him. He could articulate imperfectly a few words, in particular, King George, which words he always accompanied with an imitation of the bells, which rang at the coronation of George the Second; he could in a rude manner imitate two or three common ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... indicated as the fitting theatre of their exploits, he beheld a great source of the wealth of nations which had been reserved for these times, and he perceived that this wealth was rapidly developing classes whose power was imperfectly recognised in the constitutional scheme, and whose duties in the social system seemed altogether omitted. Young as he was, the bent of his mind, and the inquisitive spirit of the times, had sufficiently prepared him, not indeed to grapple with these questions, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 falling back from Mons, the old cry "Your King and country need you" went ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... every revengeful sentiment against her father's enemies; to distrust her filial sensibility, and to make this sacrifice for her father's own sake. This done, he marched downstairs, and having by an artful stratagem thrown Madame Vernet off her guard, he went out at ten o'clock in the morning imperfectly disguised into the street. This was the fifth of April 1794. By three in the afternoon, exhausted by fatigue which his strict confinement for nine months made excessive, he reached the house of a friend in the country, and prayed for a night's shelter. His presence excited less pity than ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... done to and for China is as yet but imperfectly known, for those whose duty it is to transfer to posterity a record of this great man are either so wrapped in speculation as to how to build themselves up on his deeds of the past time, or are so fearful that any comment on any subject regarding him may detract from their ability, that ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... one parasang on the road to Persia, and then received their dismissal. Our journey was propitious, and nothing took place in it worthy of notice from the day of our departure until our arrival in Persia. At Erivan we heard the news of the day, though but imperfectly; but at Tabriz, the seat of Abbas Mirza's government, we were initiated into the various questions which then agitated the country and the court. The principal one was the rivalry between the French and English ambassadors; the object of the former, who ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... no opportunity of diminishing. It seems that, before you married, De Chauxville was pleased to consider himself in love with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. Whether he had any right to think himself ill-used, I do not know. Such matters are usually known to two persons only, and imperfectly by them. It would appear that the wound to his vanity was serious. It developed into a thirst for revenge. He looked about for some means to do you harm. He communicated with your enemies, and allied himself to such men as Vassili of Paris. He followed us to ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... heard it on the shore—and all Farlingford was there by this time—only laughed curtly. Some of the women exchanged a glance and made imperfectly developed gestures, as of a tolerance understood between mothers for anything that ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... my lot to be surrounded by examples of faulty vocalism, such as prevailed in a country town, and to be subjected to the errors then in vogue, having at the same time small opportunity for training in the application of principles, even as then imperfectly taught. At middle life I had given up all attempt at singing and had difficulty in speaking so as to be heard at any considerable distance or for any considerable length of time. Professional obligations ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... gates, which had, previously, been the objects of attack. It was not, however, the policy of the insurgents to place themselves in open collision with the soldiers; but the clandestine and shifting mode of warfare which they had adopted with so much success, was but imperfectly counteracted by the presence of a military force. Under cover of the night, and with the advantages afforded by a knowledge of the country, and the sympathy of the population, they could sweep down a gate, which was but the work of a few minutes, with very little ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... limitations in such matters—how far she as yet was from the knowledge necessary to forming a permanent and self-expressive style. She was prepared to be most cautious in giving play to an individual taste so imperfectly educated as hers ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... whitest, and, in other cases, when the spark is red, there is reason to think that the electric matter passes with difficulty, and with less rapidity: it is possible that the inflammable air may contain particles which conduct electricity, though very imperfectly; and that the whiteness of the spark in the fixed air, may be owing to its meeting with no conducting particles at all. When an explosion was made in a quantity of inflammable air, it was a little white in the center, but the edges of it were still tinged with a beautiful purple. The degree of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... departments of development in later years. But an endeavour has been made to follow, as comprehensively as such circumstances permit, the general course of the Railway's growth; and it is in the hope that, however imperfectly, it may serve to recal seventy years of struggle, triumph and romance in Welsh railway annals that to Lt.-Col. David Davies, M.P., its last Chairman, and Mr. Samuel Williamson, its last General Manager, and his numerous other friends among ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... Very imperfectly I have described the varied work of a man of limitless energy, with an exceptionally keen appreciation of men and things. A great man has passed away, and we are ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... frequency with which it has come to be thought justifiable to practise them; what we do again and again we are apt in the end to do well, whereas that which we turn to only in despair and as rarely as possible, we do clumsily and imperfectly. Listerism has been unjustly alleged by a few to be unworthy of the appreciation in which it is held by the great majority of medical men of all countries; simple cleanliness, it has been urged, is quite as efficient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... balderdash, is probably responsible, at least in part, for the reluctance of women to enter upon the sacerdotal career. In those Christian sects which still bar them from the pulpit—usually on the imperfectly concealed ground that they are not equal to its alleged demands upon the morals and the intellect—one never hears of them protesting against the prohibition; they are quite content to leave the degrading imposture to men, who are ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... motion to the sails of a black windmill drawn therein, a broken tin soldier, some Hong-Kong coppers with holes in them, and a quantity of little cogged wheels from the inside of a watch; while a further search was rewarded by an irregular lump of toffee imperfectly enfolded ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... others is no longer, open. If there is anything vitally important to the happiness of human beings, it is that they should relish their habitual pursuit. This requisite of an enjoyable life is very imperfectly granted, or altogether denied, to a large part of mankind; and by its absence many a life is a failure, which is provided, in appearance, with every requisite of success. But if circumstances which society is not yet skilful enough to overcome, render such failures often for the present inevitable, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... adventure, was to be ascribed to a human creature, who actually stood in the hall when he uttered it. It was of no moment, he said, that we could not explain by what motives he that made the signal was led hither. How imperfectly acquainted were we with the condition and designs of the beings that surrounded us! The city was near at hand, and thousands might there exist whose powers and purposes might easily explain whatever ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... of toil, with the shadow of failure darkening all, fell from me like the horror of an evil dream. The only new book which I remember to have read in those two or three years at Dayton, when I hardly remember to have read any old ones, was the novel of 'Jane Eyre,' which I took in very imperfectly, and which I associate with the first rumor of the Rochester Knockings, then just beginning to reverberate through a world that they have not since left wholly at peace. It was a gloomy Sunday afternoon when the book came under my hand; and mixed with my interest ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... near her, papers scattered upon 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Ferdinand Count Fathom came into my mind, though no women appeared. Several stragglers looked at me, as they passed by, one after another, and at last one of them stopped to examine me. I told him as well as I could, for I spoke German very imperfectly, that I was a British officer, and had been plundered already; he did not desist, however, and pulled me ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... then more hazardous than peace; because it was necessary to give to the people a palpable proof of the necessity of the war, in order to their cordial concurrence with that system of finance, without which the war could not be successfully carried on; because our allies were then but imperfectly lessoned by experience; and finally, because the state of parties then in France was less Jacobinical than at any time since that era. But will it follow that I was then insincere in negotiating for peace, when peace was less insecure, and war more hazardous; ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... probably attributable, in part, to the constant weeding out of the sickly by discharges from the service. The fact is notorious, that medical inspection of recruits, on enlistment, has been, as a rule, most imperfectly executed; and the city of Washington is constantly thronged with invalids awaiting their discharge-papers, who at the time of their enlistment were physically unfit for service."[45] In addition to this, it must be remembered, that, although all recruits are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... contribute to the emancipation of the slaves, mainly, I imagine, by showing that under proper management they were not unfitted for freedom. The fate of that philanthropic scheme is too well known to make it necessary for me to rehearse the story of it here, imperfectly known to me as it is. The upshot was, that my mother and brother were induced to go to Cincinnati and attempt other plans, the final result of which was also a failure. I had had no share in these Transatlantic projects, being at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Welsh, Irish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, Danish, French, Italian, and Portuguese—rarely goes with philological depth any more than with idiomatic purity. Borrow learnt some languages to translate, many to speak imperfectly. {22} ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... not all. If you expect to gain health and strength by your dinner, you must eat it in a proper manner; that is, slowly. Otherwise nature's work will be imperfectly done, and your food become a source of bodily ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... us put a hand on the saddle and swam over, I on one side and Mike on the other. Though swept down for some distance, we got safe on shore at last, but we had to trudge on in our wet clothes. Not only were we wet, but so was our imperfectly dried meat; the consequence was, that when we came to cook it in the evening it was scarcely eatable. Our clothes, too, were damp when we ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... conquered to the conqueror; but government can be taught only by governing, therefore only by the governors; politics can only be learnt in this school. The most uncivilised of the barbarians, whilst they slowly and imperfectly learned the arts of Rome, at once remodelled its laws. The two kinds of civilisation, social and political, are wholly unconnected with each other. Either may subsist, in high perfection, alone. Polity grows like language, and is part of a people's nature, not dependent ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... original of the above under a considerable sum of money! It always refreshes my brain to go back to it—and I laugh as often as one laughs, and re-laughs at Pickwick!—the way the pronouns become entangled and after making an imperfectly distinctive stand at "he said," jump desperately to the pith of the matter in "what price the LOT is." All difficulties of punctuation being disposed of by the process of omitting stops ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... very imperfectly and the Swiss dialect (which is hard to acquire and bears the same relation to German that Genoese has to Italian) not at all, I began to speak Latin, and asked the abbot if the church had been built for long. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... t'other brush with them; who dare to build in our dominions?—Thus leaving us something heated with just passion, away they trooped, every man having a gun, pistol, and sword, muttering some threatening words, that we could then but imperfectly understand. That night they designed to murder their two companions, and slept till midnight in the bower, thinking to fall upon them in their sleep: not were the honest men less thoughtful concerning them; for at this juncture they were coming to find them out, but in a much ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... have arisen in the first instance from the merest inadvertency of the scribes. That such was the case in a vast number of cases is in fact demonstrable. [Inaccuracy in the apprehension of the Divine Word, which in the earliest ages was imperfectly understood, and ignorance of Greek in primitive Latin translators, were prolific sources of error. The influence of Lectionaries, in which Holy Scripture was cut up into separate Lections either with or without an introduction, remained with habitual hearers, and led ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... Epictetus. Imperfectly, not being born in Italy; and the noble pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance from the pumping up of foul words against thieves, cut-throats, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... gold is offered for sale in a very imperfectly separated state, and then considerable judgment is required in deciding as to its value. In alluvial gold there is always a certain proportion of chips of iron, which have flown from the picks used in striking and turning up the gravel. These pieces ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... higher knowledge than that which they who see them possess. That is why what I did seemed like miracles to those who watched. But this Franklin Marmion, as he is called in this life, has attained to a higher knowledge than mine, wherefore I am able only to understand imperfectly, but not myself to do, that which he does. Yet, as the High Gods live, he did this thing; and to do it he must have passed to the higher life through the gate ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... demanded why he asked—the prince had not patience to spell the question over again on his fingers, but bawled it as loud as he could to no purpose. The courtiers ran in, and catching up the prince's words, and repeating them imperfectly, it soon flew all over Pekin, and thence into the provinces, and thence into Tartary, and thence to Muscovy, and so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for aught I know) ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... system. He thinks that, although much may be done without mechanical restraint of any kind, there are occasionally cases in which it may not only be necessary, but beneficial. The superintendent of the Suffolk Asylum considers that in certain cases, and more especially in a crowded and imperfectly constructed asylum, like the one under his charge, mechanical restraint, judiciously applied, might be preferable to any other species of coercion, as being both less irritating and more effectual. The superintendent ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... paper was of foreign manufacture. The handwriting presented a strongly marked character; and the composition plainly revealed the mistakes of a person imperfectly acquainted with the English language. The contents of the letter, after alluding to the means supplied for the support of the child, announced that the writer had committed the folly of inclosing a sum of a hundred pounds in a banknote, "to pay expenses." In a postscript, an appointment ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... you, I would endeavour to become imperfectly well; a little imperfection in that direction might make you ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still ahead of the liberties of our age. The general principles which are the groundwork of modern constitutions—principles which were imperfectly known in Europe, and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, in the seventeenth century—were all recognized and determined by the laws of New England: the intervention of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of authorities, personal liberty, and ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... fro, smoking his bedtime cigar, and their mother began her invariable running comment concerning the day's events, rallying her children, tenderly tormenting them with their shortcomings—undarned stockings, lessons imperfectly learned, little household tasks neglected—she was always aware of and ready at bedtime to point out every sin ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... countenance. I wished that he would deny the attempt; but how was it possible to save a man who was determined to sacrifice himself? The Emperor asked Staps whether he could speak French, and he answered that he could speak it very imperfectly, and as you know (continued Rapp) that next to you I am the best German scholar in Napoleon's Court, I was appointed interpreter on this occasion. The Emperor put the following questions to Staps, which I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... for himself, but would have it manipulated with such discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal, he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered them. They could not, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... three limited areas alone there are 1258 forms of life which occur nowhere else upon the globe—not to speak of the peculiar aquatic species, nor of the presumably large number of peculiar species of all kinds not hitherto discovered in these imperfectly ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... attack from any quarter. The military experience of the last seven months proves that the defense, by the temporary intrenchment method, has a great advantage over the attack; so that in future wars the aggressor will always be liable to find himself at a serious disadvantage, even if his victim is imperfectly prepared. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... purposes of 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 blow, which he ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... had come up to the place. A page belonging to Count Paris, who had witnessed the fight between his master and Romeo, had given the alarm, which had spread among the citizens, who went up and down the streets of Verona confusedly exclaiming, A Paris! a Romeo! a Juliet! as the rumour had imperfectly reached them, till the uproar brought Lord Montague and Lord Capulet out of their beds, with the prince, to inquire into the causes of the disturbance. The friar had been apprehended by some of the watch, coming from the churchyard, trembling, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... of our island, in which we are clothed, is very imperfectly to be traced on the books of the Custom-House: but I know that our woollen manufactures flourish. I recollect to have seen that fact very fully established, last year, from the registers kept in the West Riding of Yorkshire. This year, in the West of England, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... me to lumber these pages with an account of what we so imperfectly strove to teach them. The memorable fact is what they taught us, or some faint glimpse of it. And at present, our major interest was not at all in the subject matter of our talk, but ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... continental winds which drive it back, bringing these northeasterly storms to us, nearly always from a southwest quarter. We enlarge upon this class of rain-storms for the purpose of showing, though imperfectly, their non-prevalence over the State of Minnesota. This is important if it can be, even but partially, established; since it is this particular class of storms and winds, last referred to, that are to be so much avoided ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... accomplished writers, and much time for the completion of the task. I shall not be able to relate an hundredth part of what could be told respecting these matters; but I will endeavor to describe, in the best manner in my power, what I have myself seen; and, imperfectly as I may succeed in that attempt, I am fully aware that the account will appear so wonderful as to be deemed scarcely worthy of credit; since even we who have seen these things with our own eyes, are yet so amazed as to be unable to comprehend their reality. But your Majesty may be assured ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... political accounts we had (though imperfectly,) received at the island: he sent me the treaty of alliance formed between the Kings of Great-Britain and Prussia, and also that between the States-General and these two sovereigns, which was a very pleasing ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... he said; and then he told her about his father. After that he philosophised a little, telling something of the best that he conceived might be if men sought the highest ideal in lowly walks of life, instead of seeking to perform imperfectly some nobler business. It was wonderful how much better he could speak to her than to his brother, but Sophia listened with such perfect assent that his sense of honour ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... eccentric painters would have given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs, the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a steam-dredger in the river, like a giant ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 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 you ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... now why Archie was able to echo his wife's rejoicing in Claude's change of heart. In this new turn to the situation, which he had but imperfectly seized from what had been written, he could get the same kind of consolation that a father draws from the death of a son in a war with which he has no sympathy. It was the death of a brave man, when all was said and done. It was also death ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... as is still to be seen in many parts of the country. The first great building taken in hand was the ancestral temple. Than-fit would make a home for the spirits of his fathers, before he made one for himself. However imperfectly directed, the religious feeling asserted the supremacy ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... simply stupid and nonsensical. As the number of musical creations remaining will not be very large, let him retain for the present all that are not positively bad or inane; a few old song melodies have, through long usage, lost their original associations, and hence, though perhaps only imperfectly adapted to devotional purposes, are yet, on the whole, unobjectionable, and perhaps ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the king. The history of the closing catastrophe is as obscure as it is strange, and the account of the manner in which it was brought about is unfortunately incomplete in many important particulars. The outline only can be apprehended, and that very imperfectly. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and public actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known: but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression, faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people, who sympathized in their distress, who had studied the causes of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 never once ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... wounds. They are also found in the internal organs of the body as the result of injuries which have healed. The scar represents a very imperfect repair. In the skin, for example, the scar tissue never contains such complicated apparatus as hair and sweat glands; the white area is composed of an imperfectly vascularized fibrous tissue which is covered with a modified epidermis. The scar is less resistant than the normal tissue, injury takes place more easily in it and heals ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... regular employment. He did not want it. He had his own peculiar position. He was an expert. An expert in—how shall I say it?—in intricate navigation. He was supposed to know more about remote and imperfectly charted parts of the Archipelago than any man living. His brain must have been a perfect warehouse of reefs, positions, bearings, images of headlands, shapes of obscure coasts, aspects of innumerable islands, desert and otherwise. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... participles and of absolute constructions gives the effect of heaviness. The descriptive portion of the Timaeus retains traces of the first Greek prose composition; for the great master of language was speaking on a theme with which he was imperfectly acquainted, and had no words in which to express his meaning. The rugged grandeur of the opening discourse of Timaeus may be compared with the more harmonious beauty of a similar passage ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... broken and dangerous, and was in some places only very imperfectly lighted. Neil, with his sailor's training, swung himself from point to point, sometimes drawing Marjorie up to a ledge, and sometimes instructing her where to set her feet. At last the welcome daylight burst upon them, and grasping ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... lakes—and of the sources of the Mississippi River, which continued to be a subject of dispute between geographical writers. In the autumn of 1819 Governor Cass, of Michigan Territory, projected an expedition for exploring what was so imperfectly known, and yet so worthy of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... welcome letter, so far from being a waste of time, is a gain, for it obliges me to make myself clear and understood on matters which I have evidently put forward imperfectly and with obscurity. I have devoted the whole of this week to working and writing out the flora question, for I now feel strong enough to give my promised evening lecture on it at the Royal Institution on Friday, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to supply the pencil of genius, and though the portraiture be imperfectly sketched, yet its author has been gratified by the sympathy of readers, not only of her own people, but of those of distant nations; and that the principles of heroic virtue which she sought to inculcate in her narrative were pronounced by its great patriot subject, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... since the war broke out Germany and her allies are everywhere on the defensive, and everywhere they have been and are ceding ground. Their enemies, imperfectly prepared two years ago, are now the rivals of Germany in preparation; England has millions of men where she had hundreds of thousands in August, 1914; France and Britain both have heavy artillery, and Russia is demonstrating her wealth of munitions and her resources in men. Such is ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... a single cell will, on attaining its growth, separate into two or more new cells. The process is quite complex and is imperfectly understood. It is known, however, that the act of separation is preceded by a series of changes in which the attraction sphere and the nucleus actively participate, and that, as a result of these changes, the contents of the old cell are rearranged to form the new cells. Some of the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... is true, of course, that every person must determine for himself whether or not pastry desserts are wholesome enough to be eaten by him. Indigestion is almost sure to result from heavy, soggy, imperfectly baked pastry, because the quantities of fat it contains may be slow to digest and much of the starchy material may be imperfectly cooked. Consequently, it is often not the pie itself but the way in which it is made that is responsible for the bad reputation that this very attractive dessert ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... 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 ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or ill ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Galloway was at the office considerably before his usual hour; consequently, before Roland Yorke. Upon looking over Roland's work of the previous day, he found that a deed—a deed that was in a hurry, too—had been imperfectly drawn out, and would have to be done over again. The cause must have been sheer carelessness, and Mr. Galloway naturally felt angered. When the gentleman arrived, he told him what he thought of his ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the liver is the largest. Its chief office is to secrete from the blood all matter not properly supplied with oxygen. For this purpose, a set of veins carries the blood of all the lower intestines to the liver, where the imperfectly oxidized matter is drawn off in the form of bile, and accumulated in a reservoir called the gall-bladder. Thence it passes to the place where the smaller intestines receive the food from the stomach, and there it mixes with this food. Then it passes through the long ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... recollect That by some means I knew that I 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 ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... man, with intense humility. "I heard only a very little at the end, and that so imperfectly that I don't think I ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... perhaps no great social question so imperfectly understood among us at the present day as that which refers to the line which divides sanity from insanity. That this man is sane and that other unfortunately mad we do know well enough; and we know also that one man may be subject to various hallucinations,—may fancy himself to be a teapot, or ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... circumstances, it is proposed to raise an immediate sum of L2,000 in furtherance of the Projector's views, and as some protection to the parties who may embark in the matter, that this is not a visionary plan for objects imperfectly considered, Mr Colombine, to whom the secret has been confided, has allowed his name to be used on the occasion, and who will if referred to corroborate this statement, and convince any inquirer of the reasonable prospects of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian |
