Literary notes about precision (AI summary)
The term "precision" weaves through literature to evoke both the tangible and the abstract, capturing a sense of meticulous exactness and clarity in diverse contexts. It appears in descriptions of physical accuracy, as when details are rendered with the exactitude of a surgeon’s hand or the careful design of a clock ([1], [2]), and in character portrayals where measured language or deliberate action reflects a disciplined mindset ([3], [4]). At the same time, writers deploy the word to signal intellectual exactness, where debates on knowledge and expression are pursued with clear, methodical precision ([5], [6]), and even in artistic expressions where the harmony of balance and detail elevates aesthetic perception ([7], [8]). This multiplicity of senses illustrates how precision, whether in gesture, thought, or language, becomes a tool to communicate rich layers of meaning.
- No wonder that Ruskin finds in the sure strokes of the surgeon the perfection of control and delicate precision for the artist to emulate.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller - In this room, as in most of the others, there is Bohemian glass in great profusion, and a "one year chronometer" of great precision.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit Kirillovitch's, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more precision.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - But I ought to express myself with more precision.
— from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft - As time went on, he grew ever more and more anxious to define the deep meaning of this book with greater precision and clearness.
— from The Birth of Tragedy; or, Hellenism and Pessimism by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - We do not yet know with any precision what we mean by "knowledge," and we must admit that in any given instance our memory may be at fault.
— from The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell - This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - And he who cannot draw with great precision the ordinary cold aspect of things cannot hope to catch the fleeting aspect of his finer vision.
— from The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed
