Imperfect
The imperfect, often inaccurately called the imperfect tense in the classical grammars of several Indo-European languages, denotes a grammatical combination of past tense and imperfective aspect, and so may be more precisely called past imperfective. In English, the term refers to a form of the verb that combines past tense with similar aspects, such as incomplete, continuous, habitual, or coincident with another action.
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Famous quotes containing the word imperfect:
“Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,—the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)