He had heard of the towns and population of the republic; but one gets a very imperfect notion of any fact of this sort by report, unless previous experience has prepared the mind to make the necessary comparisons, and fitted it to receive the images intended to be conveyed.
— from Oak Openings by James Fenimore Cooper

They are all marked by a peculiar kind of artificial pathos—the recording angel's tear, Uncle Toby's fly, the dead ass, the caged starling, Maria of Moulines (I name them as they occur to me)—and they give a very imperfect notion of the true Shandean flavour.
— from Shelburne Essays, Third Series by Paul Elmer More

You must know such gentry are very ingenious, not only in keeping their own pigeons safe, but in adding to their numbers by attracting those of other people.
— from The Swiss Family Robinson; or, Adventures on a Desert Island by Johann David Wyss

It is plain, and Plateau makes this remark himself, that such experiments upon the power of unaided vision in Insects, give a very inadequate notion of the facility with which an Insect flying at large can find its way.
— from The Structure and Life-history of the Cockroach (Periplaneta orientalis) An Introduction to the Study of Insects by L. C. (Louis Compton) Miall

Bushes of box in the deserted garden at Vaucluse in Newport, Rhode Island, are fifteen feet in height, and over them spread the branches of forest trees that have sprung up in the garden beds since that neglected pleasaunce was planted, over a century ago.
— from Home Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle

But he who accomplishes a truly human work, he who does something really great and victorious, is never spurred to his task by those trifling attractions called by the name of "prizes," nor by the fear of those petty ills which we call "punishments."
— from The Montessori Method Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in 'The Children's Houses' with Additions and Revisions by the Author by Maria Montessori

Mr. Lane in his translation of the Thousand and One Nights gives a very interesting narrative which he believes to be founded on an historical fact in which Haroun Al Raschid plays the part of the good Duke of Burgundy, and Abu-l-Hasan the original of Christopher Sly.
— from The Wonder-Working Magician by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Gegania, a vestal, i. Numa, ch. 10. ——, mother-in-law of Thalæa, i. Comparison of Lykurgus and Numa, ch. 3.
— from Plutarch's Lives, Volume 4 (of 4) by Plutarch