"Perfection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her want of reflection and in-sight into character, was a young woman of strong feelings, and loved, when she did love, with something like blind idolatry. Thus she loved her husband. He was every thing to her, and she believed him as near perfection as a mortal could well be. The first few months of her married life passed swiftly away in the enjoyment of as high a degree of felicity as her mind seemed capable of appreciating. After that, a shadow fell upon her spirit—dim and almost imperceptible at first, ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... houses of the nondescript village pattern, made neither for comfort nor looks. God knows why they built such houses—perhaps it was in accordance with the old Puritan idea that any kind of physical perfection is blasphemy. Some of these were kept in paint and window glass, but there were enough poor relations ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... seat of thin wood perforated in rosettes, the display of shoe-trees and tin boxes of blacking, the lithograph of a smirking young woman with cherry cheeks who proclaimed in the exalted poetry of advertising, "My tootsies never got hep to what pedal perfection was till I got a pair ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... for them. Instinctively it avoids all those things which multiply racial handicaps. Under such circumstances we can hope that the "melting pot" will refine. We shall see that it will save the precious metals of racial culture, fused into an amalgam of physical perfection, mental strength and spiritual progress. Such an American race, containing the best of all racial elements, could give to the world a vision and a leadership ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Western school who made important contributions to medical doctrine—in which relation alone we need consider him—was Pythagoras of Samos (c. 580-c.490 B. C.). For him number, as the purest conception, formed the basis of philosophy. Unity was the symbol of perfection and corresponded to God Himself. The material universe was represented by 2, and was divided by the number 12, whence we have 3 worlds and 4 spheres. These in turn, according at least to the later Pythagoreans, give rise to the four elements, earth, air, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy. In contemplating what we have still to perform, the heart of every citizen must expand with joy when he reflects how near our Government has approached to perfection; that in respect to it we have no essential improvement to make; that the great object is to preserve it in the essential principles and features which characterize it, and that is to be done by preserving the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... surprize, why the people of Connecticut should complain? They see every man indulged in worshiping God as he pleases, and they see many indulged in neglecting his worship entirely—They see men every where enjoying the liberty of doing what is right—and such liberty they rightly decide is the perfection of freedom. ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... I thank my stars we have no city folks putting on airs around our house. I suppose you think her perfection. You looked ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... rays fell upon the calm, stately face of Lady Helena, upon the grave countenance of her son, upon the bright, handsome features of Lord Airlie. They sparkled on the delicate silver, and showed off the pretty china to perfection. The breakfast was upon the table, but the three occupants of the room had been waiting. Lady ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... at certain intervals, in the development of every modern nation, I conceive its most illuminating example to be that intellectual limitation of caste which, during the French Revolution, led to the creation of those political criminal tribunals which reached perfection with Robespierre. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse, will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire substance and its relations to things, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This is called the perfection of knowledge [3].' And knowledge must be thus perfected before we can achieve the sincerity of our thoughts, and the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... dreadful wisdom of their evoked dead, have, so far, culled nothing but inanities and platitudes. I would wish him to enlarge his sympathies by patient and loving observation while he grows in mental power. It is in the impartial practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection for his art can be found, rather than in the absurd formulas trying to prescribe this or that particular method of technique or conception. Let him mature the strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth, which it is his business to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... them, as he observed, requiring a very delicate process of study to find out; whereas the possible faults in bread, which are not less in number, require no study at all for the defection; they publish themselves through all varieties of misery. But the perfection of barbarism, as regards our island cookery, is reserved for animal food; and the two poles of Oromasdes and Ahrimanes are nowhere so conspicuously exhibited. Our insular sheep, for instance, are so ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. The girl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was not a cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown, gorgeous flower, imperfect at telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark perfection, good blood that had shaped her long ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... asked them how they could be so cruel, they being harmless, inoffensive fellows: that they were putting themselves in a way to subsist by their labour, and that it had cost them a great deal of pains to bring things to such perfection as they were ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... It is a great cause, a mighty project, commanding the noblest enthusiasms and the highest efficiency of effort, the project of bringing this whole world to salvation. And that not the salvation of a mental condition but of the perfection of its whole being, the realization of its highest possibilities, the full noontide of the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... fragments of Whose teachings have come down to us, are worthy of all imitation. That Life is an undenied and undeniable Gospel. Its teachings cannot be passed by and discarded. All must admit that it would be happiness to follow and perfection to imitate Him. None ever felt for Him a sincere emotion of contempt, nor in anger accused Him of sophistry, nor saw immorality lurking in His doctrines; however they may judge of those who succeeded Him, and claimed to be His apostles. Divine or human, inspired or ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... drawing-master. She could chatter, on occasion, so that a room full of people instinctively listened. And she had read voraciously, especially poetry, where they were content with picture-papers and the mildest of novels. Hester brought nothing to perfection; but there could be no question that in every aspect of life she was constantly making, in comparison with her family, a dashing or dazzling effect all the more striking because of the unattractive milieu out of which ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gardens are not natives of our cold and variable climate, but of one much warmer; and if we delay to sow the seed of such plants and flowers till the warm days of summer are fully set in, the plant has scarcely time to grow into perfection before the chills of autumn come on, and they perish before their blossoms, fruit, or seeds come to perfection. But this may be obviated by means of a frame and hot-bed, which every young gardener ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... the price of the other for the one. All I can say is that such another live piece of English criticism of English literature as this I do not know anywhere. What is alive is very seldom perfect: to get perfection you must go to epitaphs. But, once more, though I could pick plenty of small holes in the details of the actual critical dicta, I know no picture of the division of literature here concerned from which a fairly intelligent person will derive a better impression of the facts than from this. Addison ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when he says: "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." This is not a contrast between the imperfections of our day and the perfection of heaven, but between the imperfection of the apostolic church and the perfection of the church of to-day. That which is perfect has come; a perfect revelation of Christian character, a perfect gospel, a perfect ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... extreme North, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment. Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have,—the common which each village possesses, its true paradise, in comparison with which all elaborately and wilfully wealth-constructed parks and gardens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... helped to this decision by the extraordinary perfection of the weather. The weather of late had been a revelation to Ginger. It was his first experience of America's Indian Summer, and it had quite overcome him. As he stood on the roof of Mrs. Meecher's establishment on the Saturday morning, thrilled by the velvet ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... part of all the life that had ever been upon the earth she became, not infinitesimal, but newly significant. Widened outlook brought deepened feeling. Newly understanding, she sat there brooding over Ann anew, pain in the perfection of ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... native literature, and who respects himself, ought to own a comprehensive and inclusive library of English literature, in comely and adequate editions. You may suppose that this counsel is a counsel of perfection. It is not. Mark Pattison laid down a rule that he who desired the name of book-lover must spend five per cent. of his income on books. The proposal does not seem extravagant, but even on a smaller percentage than five the average reader of these pages may become the ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... do I become the envied bride of PETER, justly surnamed PARAGON; and much I wonder what in me he found (he, who Perfection so personifies) that he could condescend an eye to cast on faulty, feather-headed EMILY! How solemn is the stillness all around me! (A loud bang is heard behind screen.) Methought I heard the dropping of a pin!—perhaps I should arise and search for it.... Yet why, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... that has been characteristic of the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it was in itself not complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never seen in the existing ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... sufficiently visible, and I have not unsparingly shewn them; but we must judge men, not according as they approach perfection, but according as their good or bad qualities preponderate—their talents or their weaknesses—the benefits they effected, the evil they wrought. For a man who rose to so great a power, Rienzi's faults were singularly few—crimes he committed none. He is ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "He bought another rifle the other day—paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study. You seldom run across such a combination of physical perfection and child-like irresponsibility. He was complaining about his limited income the other day—'inkum' in his inimitable pronunciation. I suggested that right here in this valley he could earn a considerable number of shekels if he cared ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... official surveys, and what I chiefly aim to establish is the true cause of the results which are already known to the whole world; and it may be a relief to many to know that I shall publish no other, but, like the player at cards, will "stand;" not that I have accomplished perfection, but because I can do no better with the cards in hand. Of omissions there are plenty, but of wilful ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not for sacred chastity,— Who loves for that?—nor for thy sprightly wit; I love thee not for thy sweet modesty, Which makes thee in perfection's throne to sit; I love thee not for thy enchanting eye, Thy beauty['s] ravishing perfection; I love thee not for unchaste luxury, Nor for thy body's fair proportion; I love thee not for that my soul doth dance And leap with pleasure, when those lips of thine Give musical and graceful utterance To ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Major was speaking again. "For years the sole aim and goal of the German house of Hohenzollern has been the perfection to a marvelous degree of her policy of militarism. Why, there is not a man in the whole German Empire, who, at the command of his country, could not take his place, a trained soldier, in the tremendous, perfected military machine that is ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... and ornaments, lest they should think it the paid chaplain who spoke and not the honest acquaintance. I know pious men, Highland and Lowland, but my lord of Argile has more than any of them the qualities of perfection. At home yonder, he rises every morning at five and is in private till eight. He prays in his household night and morning, and never went abroad, though but for one night, but he took his write-book, standish, and English ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and prose writers of the past." By these we may be inspired, as the Pythoness by Apollo. From the genius of the past "an effluence breathes upon us." The writer is not to imitate, but to keep before him the perfection of what has been done by the greatest poets. He is to look on them as beacons; he is to keep them as exemplars or ideals. He is to place them as judges of his work. "How would Homer, how would Demosthenes, have been affected by what I have written?" This is practical counsel, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction to set off the meanest things. . . . It is the perfection of the mock-heroic."* ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... half-finished yet.—All that he does is wise; all that he tries, succeeds; all that he has, he shares; and when he speaks, let no dog bark! When we read about impossible heroes in books we called them 'Gerard'; when we wanted to express the acme of perfection, we called a thing 'Gerardy.' Jill read aloud the Swiss Family Robinson to Pam, and called the good proper papa 'Mr Gerard' all the ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... replied jestingly. "No one is perfect, and I least of all. If you expect perfection in this world you will be disappointed when ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... work and study, and a firm determination to stop short of nothing less than the perfection of art, those early years of Clara Morris's life on the stage went swiftly by, and in her third season she was more than ever what she herself called "the dramatic scrape-goat of the company," one who was able to play any part at a ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a state in which we shall simply rest from our labours and sit down to enjoy the fruits of them does not promise satisfaction either, and so cannot be the end or ideal. Our desire and our endeavour is not for a moveless, changeless, undeveloping perfection. In fact, so often as the dream of such a state attained has presented itself, it has to thoughtful minds appeared anything but attractive or desirable. Our desire is to go on, and for that we are willing to pay a price—nay, it is for more than merely to go ...
— Progress and History • Various
... defence, namely, of culprits arraigned for heavy crimes, and in this he was, if not unrivalled, at least unequalled. Rivals he had, who, thick as the skins of such men may be presumed to be, not unfrequently writhed beneath the lashes which his tongue could inflict. To such a perfection had he carried his skill and power of fence, so certain was he in attack, so invulnerable when attacked, that few men cared to come within the reach of his forensic flail. To the old stagers who were generally opposed to him, the gentlemen who conducted prosecutions on the part of the Crown, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Ridge was to him the perfection of natural beauty. He was warm in his friendships and true to his kinships. Always dignified, there was a heartiness in his greetings that was irresistible. He was as broad as his acres. Riding or driving over his vast estate or in its vicinity, ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... accrue to the reader in finding these masters side by side for comparison and for gauging Dr. Lord's unique life-work by recognized standards, keeping well in view the purpose no less than the perfection of these literary performances, all of which, like those of Dr. Lord, were aimed at setting forth the services of selected ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... hidden fortification, the invisible rampart of the capital; its numerous agents are the detached forts. Fouche was the Vauban of this wonderful system, and since Fouche's time, the art has been steadily approaching perfection. There is to-day, in every dark corner of the city an eye that watches over our fifty-four gates, and an ear that hears the pulsations of all the streets, those great ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... floods," the moon in placid beauty shed her soft influence upon the mind, and mitigated the horrors of the scene. The thunders which bellowed from the abyss, and the loveliness of the falling element, which glittered like molten silver in the moonlight, seemed to complete in absolute perfection the rare union of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... not make vows of living and dying aunt Eleanors, or Lady Gertrudes; all three of them good honest souls! chaste, pious, and plain. It is a charming situation, when a woman is arrived at such a height of perfection, as to be above giving or receiving temptation. Sweet innocents! They have my reverence, if not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!—I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing. Miss Clements, you ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... as for his soles, they are much at reparation, and often faine to be removed. Nature seems to have spent an apprentiship of yeares to make you such a one, for it is full seven yeares ere hee comes to this perfection, and be fit for the saddle: for then (as we,) it seemes to come to the yeares of discretion, when he will shew a kinde of rationall judgement with him, and if you set an expert rider on his backe, you shall see how sensiblie they will talke together, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... life was just what suited St. Martin, and he was very happy. He lived apart with God, and yet had work to do in training his monks in the way of perfection and teaching the Faith to the ignorant pagans. But he had not yet arrived at the end of God's great plan for him. And if God now called him away from the life he loved to a life he did not want at all, we must not be surprised, ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... Toussaint. He was also a proprietor of estates in the island. He was the man who planned the renovation of its agriculture after the abolition of slavery, and one of the great instruments in bringing it to the perfection mentioned by Lacroix. In the year 1801, he was called upon by Toussaint to repair to Paris, to lay before the Directory the new constitution, which had been agreed upon in St. Domingo. He obeyed the summons. It happened, that he arrived in France just ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... to rest some soldier told him something of interest. Gunners explained the watch-like perfection of their guns. Snipers told thrilling tales of long shots. The cooks showed him how cleverly the big field stoves came apart, and how they could be assembled ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... O my!" groaned Kate. "Once let a boy begin to dote on a colt, particularly if he calls it his colt, and he can soon see beauty, size, speed, everything else in it, in matchless perfection. It's a kind of disease, a horse-disease that gets into his eye. Tom's got it badly. Please ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the chlorine combined with the sodium is lost partly as NaCl and partly as CaCl2; none of the innumerable attempts at recovering the chlorine from the waste liquor has been made to pay, and success is less likely than ever since the perfection of the electrolytic processes. (See CHLORINE.) For all that, especially in consequence of the small amount of fuel required, and the total absence of the necessity of employing sulphur compounds as an intermediary, the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... important point where inclination ever ought to be made the rule of conduct. But for years she had hoped that Lucia's affection for Maurice would grow, unchecked and untroubled, till it attained that perfection which she thought the beau ideal of married love; and even now, she held tenaciously to such fragments of her old hope as still remained. This morning, after a night of the most painful anxiety and foreboding, her mind naturally caught at ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... those human beings who possessed the devilish spirit. During that period of three and a half years he was indeed a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; but all this suffering was necessary for his perfection as a new creature. (Hebrews 5:8,9) Because of his faithfulness, his fidelity and loyalty to God even unto death, he won the great victory, became an overcomer. Hence we read: "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... genius, at the same time that a new stimulus is being constantly supplied by the events and experience of each succeeding day, the work will go on, and weapon after weapon, engine after engine, will be thrown into the world's great market, constantly approaching nearer to the perfection of destructive power. And as there is no poison without its antidote, so the originating faculties of the American mind will be as fully exerted in the creation of defences against those very engines of destruction. Armed thus at all points, and containing within ourselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... same manner as nature multiplies her works by imitating, or repeating her own act, when she seems most to run into variety. In this manner it was that comedy had its birth, its increase, its improvement, its perfection, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... see some specimens of that mosaic-work which all ancient writers upon Mexico have celebrated, and which was nowhere brought to such perfection as in Pascuaro. It was made with the most beautiful and delicate feathers, chiefly of the picaflores, the humming-birds, which they called huitzitailin. But we are told that it is now upwards of twenty years since the last artist ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... privet or hawthorn. Japanese money is very thin. Some of the coins are oblong, some square, and others round. The chief circulating coins are of copper or iron. The workmen are very skilful: they manufacture cutlery and sword-blades to perfection. They show great skill also in gold and silver work. Their mirrors are of bronze, the reflecting surface being of silver, and polished, the back and handle ornamented with various devices. Everything, indeed, that a Japanese artisan produces, exhibits ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and no man might ever hope to know unless he himself chose to reveal it. In his many encounters with the police he had assumed the speech, the characteristics, and, indeed, the facial attributes of each in turn, and assumed them with an ease and a perfection that were simply marvellous, and had gained for him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among the police, and of "The Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and reporters of newspaperdom. That he came, in time, to possess another name than these was due to his own ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... he says, "to express, by any words at my command, the peculiar charm which Professor Putnam's scholarship and character had for me. I never heard him recite without being impressed with the wonderful perfection of his scholarship. His translation was so faultlessly accurate, and yet in such exquisite taste, his analysis and parsing were so philosophical and minutely exact, and his information upon illustrative ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... it was said that the rope which turned the roller should be new; if possible it should be woven of strands taken from a gallows rope with which people had been hanged, but this was a counsel of perfection rather ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... an inch. "These things are not to be decided by sentiment, dear. There are meanings in marriage far beyond mere romance, far beyond the fate of the two individuals who make the contract. We doctors must uphold the ideal of physical perfection lest the race suffer. Moreover Bettina does not know, she cannot know, what life would mean under such conditions. She does not know her own strength, her own weakness. She must learn something of life ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... picked up various small accomplishments on the Continent—he could talk French and Italian—draw landscapes, sing very tolerably—dance divinely; but, above all, he had been wounded at Waterloo:—what girl of seventeen, well read in poetry and romance, could resist such a mirror of chivalry and perfection! ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... is an ice-chest. In the liquor, for perfection, the water used has first to be frozen. That chest contains ice, and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... read that story of his about a painter who was always striving to attain perfection, could never let a picture alone, was for ever adding new touches, painting details out and other details in? One day he called in his friends to see his masterpiece. When they came they found a mere mess of paint ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... regime—tall and stately, with her own grey hair crepe, and surmounted by a high cap of the most dazzling blonde. She had been one of the earliest emigrants, and had stayed for many months with my mother, whom she professed to rank amongst her dearest friends. The duchesse possessed to perfection that singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so peculiar to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last tragedy with the emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same breath that she would ask, with Marie ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foundations of his compositions has been mentioned; but without following his life from year to year we can have only a very imperfect conception of the actual amount of labour which was involved in bringing to perfection the long list of works that we see appended to the biographies of the composer. When we follow the story of his life in detail, we are struck by the fact of his unceasing toil. Nothing seems to have checked the constant flow of composition; yet many causes were at work to hinder it, such ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... attendance at Balmoral. The Queen and Prince occupied their new home for the first time on the 7th of September; it was not yet completed, but, the Queen wrote, "the house is charming, the rooms delightful, the furniture, papers, everything, perfection."] ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Margaret grew older, her beauty both of face and form approached nearer to perfection than I had foreseen, closely as I watched her. But neither her mind nor her disposition kept pace with her beauty. I studied her closely, with the same patient, penetrating observation, which my experience of the world has made it a habit with me to direct on every one with whom ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... seventeen, tall and fair, and so exquisitely shaped—you may talk of your Venus de Medicis, your Dianas, your Nymphs, and Galateas; but if Praxiteles, and Roubilliac, and Wilton, were to lay their heads together, in order to make a complete pattern of beauty, they would hardly reach her model of perfection.—As for complexion, poets will talk of blending the lily with the rose, and bring in a parcel of similes of cowslips, carnations, pinks, and daisies.— There's Dolly, now, has got a very good complexion.—Indeed, she's the very picture of health and innocence—you are, indeed, my pretty ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... of conversing these French people carry to great perfection. It is not frivolous, though it is light and sparkling; it is still less argumentative, but it has the knack of bringing out different opinions and different views of them. We pity the French for their want of political liberty, but the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... rationalistic appeal nor to ritualistic observance, but expressing the whole range of human aspiration toward the unknown. Rational men and women of feeling must combine with reverent men and intelligent women to create a belief and a service which will express all the longings of humanity toward perfection. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... is not an easy thing in the stress of the visible to remember the greater power of the Invisible. The most earnest Christian worker is sometimes overwhelmed by discouragement or, again, unduly confident because of the perfection of system and method, forgetting that God knows no obstacle, and that He alone can put life ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... remarks of this portion of the poem (184 fol.): "Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry has never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... sweetly-scented flowers, the gravel walks without a weed in them, and the hedges carefully trimmed. Then when Tom and I were shown to the room we were to occupy, I was struck by the white dimity hangings to the beds, the fresh curtains and blinds, the little grate polished to perfection, and a bouquet of flowers on the dressing-table. Tom was not so impressed as I was, though he said it reminded him of his own home. Miss Fanny was considerably younger than Nettleship, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, sweetly-smiling, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... a form so commanding that a king might exult at the prospect of his crown descending on such a head; of a perfection of strength and masculine excellence that will almost justify the dangerous exultation of health and vigor; of a reason that is riper than his years; of a virtue of proof; of all qualities that we respect, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the perfection the Parlor Organ has reached, the variety of musical effects of which it is capable, and how desirable an addition it is to the parlor. These instruments have created much interest and enthusiasm by reason of their quality of tone, elegance of ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... discipline is highly respectable. The Military Academy, on which the Army essentially rests, and to which it is much indebted for this state of improvement, has attained, in comparison with any other institution of a like kind, a high degree of perfection. Experience, however, has shewn that the dispersed condition of the corps of artillery is unfavorable to the discipline of that important branch of the military establishment. To remedy this inconvenience, eleven companies have been assembled at the fortification erected at Old Point Comfort as a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... degree here, if we may judge from the melody of some sorts of their songs. It is also sufficiently comprehensive, though, in many respects, deficient, if compared with our European languages, which owe their perfection to long improvement. But a small specimen is here subjoined, from which some judgment may be formed. I collected a great many of their words, both now and in the course of our former voyage; and being equally attentive, in my enquiries, about the languages of the other islands throughout the South ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... stones; the first crushes the grain, the second brays it, and the third reduces it entirely to powder." It will be seen how exactly this description fits both the arrangement and the use of this mill at the present time. The perfection of mechanical devices and the refinement of methods here exhibited would seem to be in advance of the achievement of this ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... not to please herself, but in obedience to the exigencies of the position which her husband aspired to take. In society her beautiful voice and the perfection of her singing could always gain the social success so gratifying to a young woman; but what was social success to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart or her hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, moreover, she seldom felt at her ease in salons, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... more, to give the essence of this Concord philosophy. "The Divine Being exists for himself as one object. This gives us the Logos, or the only-begotten. The Logos knows himself as personal perfection, and also as generated, though in an infinite past time. This is its recognition of its first principle and its unbegotten 'Father.' But whatever it knows in self-consciousness, it creates or makes to exist," and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... think enough has been said on the supposition that we should believe that the body which Christ received was not taken from Mary. But if it was taken from Mary and the human and divine natures did not continue, each in its perfection, this may have happened in one of three ways. Either Godhead was translated into manhood, or manhood into Godhead, or both were so modified and mingled that neither substance kept its proper form. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... will acknowledge that the slaves of a kind owner may be as well cared for, and as happy, as the dogs and horses of a merciful master; but the latter condition—i.e. that of happiness—must again depend upon the complete perfection of their moral and mental degradation. Mr. ——, in his letter, maintains that they are an inferior race, and, compared with the whites, 'animals, incapable of mental culture and moral improvement:' to this I can only reply, that if they are incapable of profiting ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... onward of your way, that you have forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse. You are gone beyond it; and to continue where you are, is to lodge in the open fields, betwixt two inns. You have lost that which you call natural, and have not acquired the last perfection of art. But it was only custom which cozened us so long; we thought, because Shakespeare and Fletcher went no farther, that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that, because they excellently described passion without rhime, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... sure it cares nothing about lovers—less about poets—and thinks the old days, when the world was a heaving splitting chaos, and glaciers were tearing what was already made of it to bits, were vastly superior to the finished perfection of form today. Like all old things. If it has the gods in there, no doubt it wakes them up periodically to remind them how much better things were in their time. Myself, I prefer the sun. It is far ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... it turned to a draught bitter to her and to others. There were more joys in this life than the fierce love for man: the joy over a child, which had been given to her and taken away; the joy of triumph, the joy—but why should she remember the others? Her joy had its own perfection. For all the tears and waste of living, this one passion had been given—a joy that warmed her body in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... she declared. "She loves it! She grumbles at the milk, and we have the butter from Tredowen. Everything else she finds perfection. She doesn't even mind the five flights ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... imprison'd lies, To watch for glances every hour From her divine and sacred eyes: Heigh ho, for Rosaline! Her paps are centres of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame, Where Nature moulds the dew of light To feed perfection with the same: Heigh ho, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... injurious.[734] He confessed, as we have seen, that he was quite wrong in his theory of the Divine origin of Episcopacy, and in his estimate of his own state of mind previous to his conversion in 1738. He very materially modified his doctrine of Christian perfection when he found it was liable to practical abuse, and appended notes to an edition of hymns in which that doctrine was too unguardedly stated.[735] He confessed his error on the subject of Christian assurance in a characteristically outspoken ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... true. I told Nero that if Orpheus put wild beasts to sleep with song, his triumph was equal, since he had put Vespasian to sleep. Ahenobarbus may be blamed on condition that to a small criticism a great flattery be added. Our gracious Augusta, Poppaea, understands this to perfection." ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his opponents, the greatest name in human philosophy. He is the supreme authority of the idealistic philosophy—that is, of all philosophy which believes that ideas govern the world, and that the world is progressing towards a perfection which is somewhere and which directs and attracts it. For those even who are not of his school, Plato is the most prodigious of all the thinkers who have united psychological wisdom, dialectical strength, the power of abstraction and creative ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... region, and we send you the enclosed sketch to show our picture of comfort and perfection. I assure you, nightly as we sit down to our evening repast, or later round our wood fire in our "parlour," we congratulate each other, and fancy we would not change places with the highest of the land, the air and life are ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... die in our sins, we shall be obliged to live again on the earth; and it will not be, perhaps, till after many lives that the necessity for fresh births will be exhausted. But when we have attained perfection, the evil spell is broken; and 'then the wise man,' it is said, 'is extinguished as this lamp.' The highest life was one of seclusion and asceticism. The founder of Buddhism was met, during his first preaching, with the objection that his system, if carried out ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... bird's table manners, which were entirely unknown to me and may be to others. At irregular intervals he leaped into the air, now in one direction, now in another, captured an insect, and flew back to the top of the flag. Some of his evolutions were quite wonderful, and all of them were the perfection of grace. He described all kinds of curves and loops. On alighting he uttered a low, hollow chuck suggestive of the sepulchral. Another notch had to be cut in the tally-stick of my ornithological journey—I had learned ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... were so dignified that on two occasions he was mistaken for a bishop. Cowper appreciated snuff, but did not care for smoking, and when he wrote to Unwin, describing his new-made friend in terms of admiration, he concluded—"Such a man is Mr. Bull. But—he smokes tobacco. Nothing is perfection 'Nihil est ab omni parte beatum.'" Bull, however, was not excessive in his smoking, for his daily allowance was but three pipes. In his garden at Newport Pagnell, Bull showed Cowper a nook in which he had placed a bench, where he said he ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... now a luxury to breathe. These spring days are the perfection of delightful weather. Imagine the delicious temperature of our Indian summer joined to the life and freshness of spring, add to this a sky of the purest azure, and a breeze filled with the odor of violets,—the most ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... of a railroad engineer who tells his fireman of a locomotive's moods and teaches him the tricks of management. They might help each other some day. Well equipped, too, was Morgan for the service. No shallow graduate of some mere diploma-manufactory, but one who believed in the perfection of means for an end,—an advocate ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, 210 And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos. Say, doth the dull soil Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... childishness of manner as natural at her age,[9] showed an anxiety for every thing which could amuse or gratify her, which afforded a marked contrast to his ordinary apathy. And, though in so young a girl it was rather the promise of future beauty than its developed perfection that her feat-* as yet presented, they already exhibited sufficient charms to exempt those who extolled them from the suspicion of flattery. A clear and open forehead, a delicately cut nose, a complexion ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... seventeenth century, the finer manufactures of woollen and silken goods having been carried to great perfection in France, her exports in these articles were greatly increased. In the political testament of Richelieu, we are informed that a considerable and lucrative trade in these articles was carried on with Turkey, Spain, Italy, &c., and that France ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... alarmed, mother," said Zell bitterly. "We can scarcely start one of the forlornest hash species on ten dollars. I admit I would rather keep house for a good husband, and it seems to me I could soon learn to give him the perfection of a good home," and her eyes filled with wistful tears. Dashing them scornfully away, she added, "The idea of a woman loving a man, and letting his home be dependent on the cruel mercies of foreign servants! If it's a shame that girls ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... can truly be said to cut both ways, or hustle both ways; for if they hustle in, they also hustle out. It may not at first sight seem the very warmest compliment to a gentleman to congratulate him on the fact that he soon goes away. But it really is a tribute to his perfection in a very delicate social art; and I am quite serious when I say that in this respect the interviewers are artists. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to come to the point, particularly the sort of point which ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... end, in wandering mazes lost. Indeed, Bain's words are so untrue that in reflecting men it is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection, that the craving for further explanation, the ontological wonder-sickness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer says, "The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... humour (for example) has never been suggested. The possibility of such a thing will doubtless be denied. I am quite certain, however, that they are capable of great development, and that they may be brought to attain, if not perfection, at all events a high degree of excellence. The proof, to those who choose to look for it, is plain enough even as matters stand. Use and opportunity are already producing scores of examples of it; ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of the British sailor, some six thousand feet high and lying twenty-five miles behind the new port.[EN36] Passing it to left on the route to El-Mednah, I heard the fables which imposed upon Abyssinian Bruce: "All sorts of Arabian fruits grew to perfection on the summit of these hills; it is the paradise of the people of Yenbo, those of any substance having country-houses there." This was hardly probable in Bruce's day, and now it is impossible. The mountain is held by the Beni Harb, a most turbulent tribe, for which ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... pot-flowers massed beneath them along the base of the house. It was a fairy world upon which Julius looked forth. Nor did it need suitable inhabitants. Pacing slowly down the centre of the terrace came Richard and Katherine Calmady, hand in hand. Tall, graceful, strong in the perfection of their youth and their great devotion, amid that ethereal brightness, they seemed as two heroic figures—immortal, fairy lovers moving through the lovely wonder of that fairy-land. As they drew near, Katherine ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... packs of Sussex at the present time may be interesting in this connection. Chief is the Southdown Fox Hounds, a very fine, fast pack brought to a high state of perfection by the late master, the Hon. Charles Brand. They hunt the open and hill country between the Adur and Cuckmere, between Haywards Heath and the sea. In the north are the Crawley and Horsham Fox Hounds, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... given to Ellen Huntley. She was a lovely girl, three or four years older than Harry, with pretty features and soft dark eyes. What is more, she was a good girl—a noble, generous-hearted girl, although (you know no one is perfection) with a spice of self-will. For the latter quality I think Ellen was more indebted to circumstances than to Nature. Mrs. Huntley was dead, and a maiden sister of Mr. Huntley's, older than himself, resided with them and ruled Ellen; ruled her with a tight ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and whether the Ugliness, as it was a Beauty in Witchcraft, did not encrease according to the meritorious Performance in the Black-Trade? These are all Questions of Moment to be decided, (if human Learning can arrive to so much Perfection) ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the world a good deal by each other, in those months before their marriage, when surprising perfection and new tenderness were daily developed, the gay and busy city ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in others with the character of the latter: generally speaking, it assimilates itself to both. The simplicity of the principal lines betray its analogy to its predecessors; whilst the form of the arch equally displays the approach of greater beauty and perfection. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... time will come as certainly as the precession of the equinoxes, when the literary method of historical research will be laid aside as out of date, in the case of all original work. People among us who are capable of exercising astral clairvoyance in full perfection—but have not yet been called away to higher functions in connexion with the promotion of human progress, of which ordinary humanity at present knows even less than an Indian ryot knows of cabinet councils—are still very few. Those who know what the few can do, and through ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... here his conquering ancestors were nursed; And Ireland but translated England first: By this reprisal we regain our right, Else must the two contending nations fight; 50 A nobler quarrel for his native earth, Than what divided Greece for Homer's birth. To what perfection will our tongue arrive, How will invention and translation thrive, When authors nobly born will bear their part, And not disdain the inglorious praise of art! Great generals thus, descending from command, With their own toil provoke the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... remainder to Benozzo and the others. I am led to this not only by their different style, but the heads of the prophets, although they are disposed one above the other, as the space demands, show the more dignified style, and perfect execution of the Florentine monk. That perfection ought to be seen also in the Christ, which seems to me to be a little inferior ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... We had now brought our House and Ground to such a perfection that few Noble mens Seats in the Land did excel us. On each side was a great Thorn Gate for entrance, which is the manner in that Countrey: the Gates of the City are of the same. We built also another House in the Yard all open for Air, for our selves ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... not so handsome as Philadelphia. Their architecture is in the most wretched style I ever saw, not meaning to except America, where it is bad, nor even Virginia, where it is worse than in any other part of America which I have seen. The mechanical arts in London are carried to a wonderful perfection. But of these I need not speak, because, of them my countrymen have unfortunately too many samples before their eyes. I consider the extravagance which has seized them, as a more baneful evil than toryism was during the war. It is the more so, as the example is set by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and all that IS is necessary, the category of possibility has no application. In this world crimes and horrors are regrettable. In that totalized world regret obtains not, for "the existence of ill in the temporal order is the very condition of the perfection of the eternal order." ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... was open, and the Italians came in stealthily—an art they had learned to perfection. One little turn of the hand-organ and the bear rose to his hind legs. The open door of the cottage was suddenly filled. Round-faced, rosy, fair-haired, and eager were they all—father and mother and six boys. They had evidently been disturbed at a meal, for in their hands ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... prairie. They were simply wild with delight at its vastness and inimitable beauty. Seeing it as they did, in this early summer time, with its rich grasses at the greenest and its brilliant spring flowers at the perfection of their beauty, it was no wonder that they were in such raptures of delight. Twenty miles of travel brought them to Upper Fort Garry. This old historic fort had long played a prominent part in the history of that country. Here ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... she saw Arthur Noyes standing with his back against a closed door. She read pity in his eyes, comprehension, great wonder, and what she did not know then was the love that came to a rare perfection between them and has never faded—and has ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... boys hardly knew how to reply to this absurd reflection. Sam was the first to thoroughly understand them, and so in the richest brogue of his own green isle, which we will not try to produce in all its perfection, he said: ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the occasional poetry of Jonson has a peculiar merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of literary finish. He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the careless singer of an idle day; and he believed that Apollo could only be worthily served in singing robes and laurel crowned. And yet many of Jonson's lyrics ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... by means of vessels impregnated by long use with a strong smell, and the remains of sour milk, that sudden souring which developes a spirituous principle. This fermentation of a rare species, and entirely sui generis, can only be brought to the desired perfection by frequent repetition of the process, just as, according to Russel,[5] the thick milk (leban), which the Arabs habitually use for making cheese, can only be obtained by producing the coagulation of the fresh milk by means of a milk previously curdled, or, in other words, by the cohobation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... clear to her that he would never change his mind on that subject. He wanted to secure to his pupil one of those debuts which are an apotheosis; and he had decided, as he told her, that she should not appear in public till she had reached the full perfection of her voice and her talent,—certainly not before her nineteenth or ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... a boy with straight back and strong legs. The first day she hated him for the tides of pain and hopeless fear he had caused; she resented his raw ugliness. After that she loved him with all the devotion and instinct at which she had scoffed. She marveled at the perfection of the miniature hands as noisily as did Kennicott, she was overwhelmed by the trust with which the baby turned to her; passion for him grew with each unpoetic irritating thing she had to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... welcome to the castle. He finished his speech by saying: "Enter, your worship, into this paradise, for here you will find stars and suns to accompany the heaven your Worship brings with you. Here you will find arms in their supreme excellence, and beauty in its highest perfection." ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... gathered volume, and with a fine gesture of his hand he said that he could only deliberately affirm that physically, intellectually, and morally, Arthur Hallam approached more nearly to an ideal of human perfection than any one whom he had ever seen. And yet the picture of Hallam at Eton represents a young man of an apparently solid and commonplace type, with a fresh colour, and almost wholly destitute of distinction or charm; while his extant fragments of prose ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... religions this world has ever known, have been but the aftermath of the ethics of one or another holy person; "as soon as character appears be sure love will"; "the intuition of the moral sentiment is but the insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul"; but these laws ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... walls and dark oak furniture. A bed which looked to Tembarom incredibly big, with its carved oak canopy and massive posts, had a presiding personality of its own. It was mounted by steps, and its hangings and coverlid were of embossed velvet, time-softened to the perfection of purples and blues. A fire enriched the color of everything, and did its best to drive the shadows away. Deep windows opened either into the leafless boughs of close-growing trees or upon outspread spaces of heavily timbered park, where ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lower races of animals. For these purposes, the activity, secrecy, acuteness, and sagacity of man in an uncivilised state are almost incredible; nor could we have supposed, were not the truth shown in numberless instances, that the senses of human beings were capable of so great perfection, their bodies and limbs of such exertion and agility, as they gain by continual practice and early training in the forests of America or Australia. In these bodily excellencies, the inhabitants of the last-named continent might safely challenge the whole ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... accompanying group like sparks from a skyrocket. Those related by the ties of harmony joined; those that were alien fell back and down. And up in the distant, inaccessible heights there rang out with deceiving clarity, like the last vision of earthly perfection, the melody of love, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Byzantine patriot expatiates with zeal and truth on the eternal advantages of nature, and the more transitory glories of art and dominion, which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine. Yet the perfection of the copy still redounds (as he modestly observes) to the honor of the original, and parents are delighted to be renewed, and even excelled, by the superior merit of their children. "Constantinople," says the orator, "is situate on a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... best with a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were—oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the wind; there were—goodliest sight of all—certain enormous quadrupeds only seen to perfection in our native isle, led about by dapper grooms, their manes ribanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha!—how distinctly do they ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... and manfulness become stronger; the old, selfish, covetous, savage, cunning, cowardly, brutal Adam dying out, the new, loving, brotherly, civilised, wise, brave, manful Adam growing up in you, day by day, to perfection, till you are changed from grace to grace, and glory to glory into the likeness of ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... sort, and had no air of being studied or achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to be settled from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that she was unconscious of them. And behind this perfection there was an even ampler perfection of what Mrs. Adams called "background." The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and Mildred's father and mother were part of it. They stood beside her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... was one entire mirror. The throne was one single pearl, hollowed like a shell; the princess sat, surrounded by her maidens, none of whom could compare with herself. In her was all the innocent sweetness of youth, joined to the dignity of maturity; in truth, she was perfection; and so thought the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... romantic heights with a thud! Then we reflected that as Louis was the greatest man intellectually that Ori had ever met, so John L. Sullivan, the famous fighter, was the greatest man in that line of his time. The islanders, in common with other primitive peoples, admire physical perfection tremendously, and feats of strength are celebrated in fable, song, and story. To Ori there was nothing incongruous in placing John L. Sullivan, the famous prizefighter, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the noted writer—two ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... filled with aught but the scaly products of the sea. Our inspector was regaled with a scant fish-feast, and allowed to digest it over the genuine license. Rafael complained sadly of hard times and poverty;—in fact, the drama of humility was played to perfection, and, finally, the functionary signed our license, with a certificate of our loyalty, and pocketed a moderate ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... him to bed, and Melchior also assisted at the performance. As the old lady looked from mother to child a great pity filled her heart for the dear son of her late master who had staked his happiness on a creature so ethereal that the first wind might blow her away; such delicate perfection as that, if her experience did not deceive her, was hardly adapted to the needs of an everyday German husband. But then did Melchior look ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... become less solicitous about the treatment, and inclined to suspect those who had gone a step beyond him. "He was for many years a valuable attendant at Bethlem, but it would be very easy to advance many degrees from the practice of that establishment, and yet be at an inconceivable distance from perfection."[98] Mr. Dunstan observed, "You carry kind treatment too far at the Retreat—beyond safety. If you had many of our patients they would turn you topsy-turvy presently." Mr. Tuke replied, "It is certainly possible to carry a good general principle ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... of adequate funds, we commenced the concrete base on which this pedestal was to rest; and no structure of that kind, of that magnitude, of that necessity, of that perfection and permanence has ever been accomplished in the works of masonry before. [Cheers.] Commencing on the ninth of October, 1883, it was completed on the seventeenth day of May, 1884—and then commenced the work of the structure proper, of the pedestal, and it went on, and it went ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... money in his purse; London awaited him with expectant arms, the very air was fraught with a magic whereby the impossible might become concrete fact, wherein dreams might become realities; was not she herself, as she stood before him lithe and vigorous in all the perfection of her warm young womanhood—was she not the very embodiment of those dreams that had haunted him sleeping and waking? Verily. Therefore with this magic in the air might he not meet Sir George Annersley at the next cross-roads or by-lane, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... thoughts, very possibly enforced work; but there were no more spontaneous affairs of her own individuality, until the one entitled "Almost a Heroine." In this work, which treated of the possible perfection of marriage, the whole womanly nature of the writer asserted itself by virtue of the mere fact of humanity. After this came a number of juvenile stories, some commonplace, others infiltrated with that subtile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... from Cachar, says:—"The Bhimraj is very common, frequenting thick jungle; it often goes in company with other birds, which it mimics to perfection. It lays about four eggs in a shallow nest made of grass similar to the above; it is very easily tamed. The hill-tribes use the long tail-feathers ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... The breeders are called fanciers. The principal breeders of certain animals such as rabbits, pigeons or poultry, form an association or club and agree to an imaginary type of the animal called the ideal or "Standard of Perfection." ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... humor would dispute the fact that Clementine Willis was a strikingly handsome girl. One might even be moved, by a burst of enthusiasm, to declare her beautiful. There was about her that subtle, elusive charm of perfection in minute detail, possible only to the wealthy who can discriminate between art and that which is artificial, and who can take advantage of all of art's magic resources, without imparting ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... greatest defence and ornament: it is it's antient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island; an army, from which, however strong and powerful, no danger can ever be apprehended to liberty: and accordingly it has been assiduously cultivated, even from the earliest ages. To so much perfection was our naval reputation arrived in the twelfth century, that the code of maritime laws, which are called the laws of Oleron, and are received by all nations in Europe as the ground and substruction of all their marine ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... over six feet in height; and, though then little more than nineteen years old, was well developed in proportion to his stature. His boxing, rowing, and other athletic exercises had done wonders towards bringing his naturally vigorous, upright frame to the perfection of healthy muscular condition. Tall and strong as he was, there was nothing stiff or ungainly in his movements, He trod easily and lightly, with a certain youthful suppleness and hardy grace in all his actions, which set off his fine bodily formation to the best advantage. He had keen, quick, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... in silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perfection, the Highlands must be passed immediately after the fall of the leaf. The scene is then the finest, for neither the scanty foliage which the summer lends the trees, nor the snows of winter, are present ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... William Cowper. He had the wit," he added, "with the underlying moral seriousness." As for the wit, I doubt it. Cowper had not the wit that inevitably hardens into "jewels five words long." Laboriously as he sought after perfection in his verse, he was never a master of the Horatian phrase. Such phrases of his—and there are not many of them—as have passed into the common speech flash neither with wit nor with wisdom. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... bankruptcy; for four years his mind had been giving way, very slowly and softly, and now he was living, without knowing it, on what Laura wrote. Nobody but Laura knew what heavy odds she fought against, struggling to bring her diminutive talent to perfection. Poverty was always putting temptation in her way. She knew that she had chosen the most expensive and the least remunerative form of her delightful art. She knew that there were things she could do, concessions she could make, sacrifices, a thousand facile extensions ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... by the enterprise of Boydell, and wood-engraving was brought to perfection by the brothers Bewick. In sculpture, Flaxman, Nollekens, and Bacon did first-rate work. Music alone of the arts really interested the king. The public taste was stimulated by the establishment of Handel commemoration concerts; the opera was well attended, and church ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... temper. And yet he strongly felt her charm; the eddies had a strange fascination! Roderick, in the glow of that renewed admiration provoked by the fixed attention of portrayal, was never weary of descanting on the extraordinary perfection of her beauty. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... intrude into the firing line of an artillery duel. And such an occasion was the present. For the first time in the history of the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he was presenting to its guests the dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection which almost amounts to scandal. Canetons a la mode d'Ambleve. In thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. And yet how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Rafael had learned to value the companionship of his relations; now he had it in perfection. For every word that he said appreciative laughter was ready—it really sparkled round him. When he disagreed with prevailing tastes, prejudices, and morals, they disagreed too. When his precocious intelligence burst upon them, they were always ready ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... addition of considerable manure, and poor ones will need a good deal. To secure a strong, luxuriant stand of grass it is very essential that it should be fed well. While grass will grow almost anywhere, it is only on rich soils that you see it in perfection, and the ideal lawn demands a sward as ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... in doing it to perfection; and an admirable piece of horsemanship it was. The horse, suddenly checked in his impetuous gallop, upon the very brink of the zequia, and drawn back on his haunches, with head erect, starting eyeballs, and open smoking nostrils, formed a noble picture to look upon. Several, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... opposite side of the brook, stood two young ladies! They were evidently city girls. Their morning toilets were the perfection of simple elegance—hats, parasols, gloves, dresses, the very cream ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... was there—not a difficult matter, when he had in its perfection the secretarial manner of complete self-effacement. Said she reflectively, like one puzzling out ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... might be the fifty-first—the words never more sincerely accepted, even when chanted to all the perfection of choral music, in the Sistine Chapel or in St. Peter's, than when, in the ears of constant sufferers for their Christian faith, ribald voices contemptuously sang ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and hence his long series of efforts relating to the flame-engine, the caloric engine, the gas-engine, and finally the solar engine,—with either steam or heated air as the medium for carrying the heat. During the last years of his life some of his most patient and careful study was given to the perfection of a solar engine, or engine for utilizing directly the heat of the sun instead of that of coal or other carbon compounds. Besides this direct line of study and experimentation, he gave during these years much thought to various scientific problems connected with solar energy, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... at Verdayne Place, and May at Verdayne Place was altogether different from May in any other part of the world. The skies were of a far deeper and richer blue; the flowers reached a higher state of fragrant and rainbow-hued perfection; the sun shining through the green of the trees was tempered to just the right degree of shine and shadow. To an Englishman, home is the beginning and the end of the world, and Paul ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... since the King's visit in 1822, when I met you in Edinburgh street, and inhaled, by juxtaposition, your sweet fraternal breath. How the Fates have since sundered us! How have you been going on, fattening and beautifying from one degree to another of poetical perfection, while I have, under the chilling shade of the Ochil Hills, been dwindling down from one degree of poetical extenuation to another, till at length I am become the very shadow and ghost of literary leanness! I should now wish to see you, and compare you as you are now ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... snorted, and squealed, too, with fierce pleasure. He jerked and curveted him with a brutal playfulness, and after a few minutes' turning and wheeling, during which everybody had leisure to admire the perfection of his equitation, he cantered round to a point exactly opposite his enemy, and pulled up his ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces comically anglicized by leg-of- mutton whiskers. The truth is, the lasagnone does not flourish in the best caffe; he comes to perfection in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich. It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with a little anisette, is the order over which he sits a whole evening. He knows the waiter intimately, and does not call him "Shop!" (Bottega,) as less ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells |
