"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stones." Mr. Arnold remarked, after having carefully examined them through a microscope; "very pure and clear, most of them without a flaw. So far as I can see, there is not one of them that is ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... integrity, fully satisfies the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... $400.00 and he agreed to guarantee the sale of $400.00 worth in the U.S. at least. The next day I met Rev. Crath at the Exhibition display. We met off and on for two or three days. I could see no flaw in the project, so I raised the $400.00 by a bank-note. The banker thought I was crazy—and the missionary was on his way by ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... when a boy, had made a discovery of one blunder full of laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... not been demolished, but tell their whole story still, in spite of wide gaps and breaks—ay, and with a far more soul-moving voice than when they could show to the enemy their crenated parapets without a flaw, when not a stone was wanting to any tower or gateway, and when the twang of the cross-bow might have been heard from every loophole. There are heaps of stones where the lizard runs, where the coiled snake basks ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... number of Christians has increased during the last decade at a certain ratio. Given the continuance of this uniform rate of increase, it will follow that within a computable period India will be a Christian land. One flaw in this method of calculation is that it takes for granted that Brahmans, high-caste Hindus, and Mohammedans will be Christianised at the same rate of progress as prevails at present ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... had one flaw. He was a fanatic on formality, and he only addressed me in the third person—to the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... marble without flaw, Or alabaster blemishless and rare, Ruggiero might have fancied what he saw, For statue-like it seemed, and fastened there By craft of cunningest artificer; Save in the wistful eyes Ruggiero thought A teardrop ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... only way. She dare not give him time to question, to suspect; she must sweep him along to conviction. She was by no means sure that there wasn't a flaw in the scheme somewhere, something that would betray her; and she could hardly wait till it was over, till he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... seconds must be divided into hundredths, and action must be instantaneous, instinctive, and without flaw. McGee felt one of the spreading limbs brush against his right wing tip, felt the plane swerve for a moment, then respond to rudder and aileron. It was a case where one moment he was supremely thankful for ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... bow which clasps the withers and sits on the shoulders spread out in the form of iron wings or plates. The saddle, at some time in its history, had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Bell requested; but on testing them out, great was the surprise of the inventor to find that his idea, so feasible in theory, refused to work. Nevertheless, his faith was not shaken. He insisted on trying to discover the flaw in his logic and correct it, and as Watson had now completed some work that he had been doing for Moses Farmer, the two began a series of experiments that ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... this!!! Oh that Juvenal or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende—quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil:—the pen of the historian won't rate it worth ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall, and had put the bulky ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... our fundamental active and emotional powers with no object outside of themselves to react-on or to live for. Any one of these defects is fatal to its complete success. Some one {126} will be sure to discover the flaw, to scout the system, and to seek another ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... puny efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for a time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and disappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the bufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on their sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... protest, By this white Gloue (how white the hand God knows) Henceforth my woing minde shall be exprest In russet yeas, and honest kersie noes. And to begin Wench, so God helpe me law, My loue to thee is sound, sans cracke or flaw, Rosa. Sans, sans, I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... characteristically and purely Russian. An Englishman may be in love with an idea, and start out bravely to follow it; but if he finds it leading him into a position contrary to the experience of humanity, then he pulls up, and decides that the idea must be false, even if he can detect no flaw in it; not so the Russian; the idea is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... like a man who has suddenly discovered a flaw in his calculations. "I was thinking of the front parlor ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... standpoint of the Chimney Corner it appears that too many even of the most gifted and liberal-minded of the leaders in the woman's rights movement have not yet discovered this flaw in their logic. They seek to individualize women, not seeing, apparently, that individualized women, old maids, and individualized men, old bachelors, though they may be useful in certain minor ways, are, after all, to speak with the relentlessness of science, ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... would be open to any objection by you. The reasoning may be very stupid, but I believe that the observation is sound. Will you, therefore, look over the few pages which I have sent, and tell me whether you find any flaw, or whether you think I should change the form of expression? You have been so unhandsomely and uncandidly dealt with by a friend of yours and mine that I should be sorry to find myself in the position ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not contain, without being modified or enlarged. This has been the case with political economists to a remarkable extent; a fact which John Stuart Mill notices and complains of as injurious to the science.[319] The chief flaw in Mr. M'Culloch's apology for Absenteeism (as his essay may well be called) is, that he entirely overlooks the peculiar nature of Irish exports. Those exports consist almost exclusively of raw, or, to use Adam Smith's word, of rude produce; and where this is the case Mr. M'Culloch's principle ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... his Escape from it through the several Greek Dialects, when he was pressed with it in any particular Syllable. For the most apt and elegant Word in the whole Language was rejected, like a Diamond with a Flaw in it, if it appeared blemished with a wrong Letter. I shall only observe upon this Head, that if the Work I have here mentioned had been now extant, the Odyssey of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have been oftner quoted by our learned ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... position as an engaged man was very comical. So was the entire change from his former abasement and devotion to Nan to a somewhat lordly air with his little betrothed; for Dora made an idol of him, and resented the idea of a fault or a flaw in her Tom. This new state of things suited both, and the once blighted being bloomed finely in the warm atmosphere of appreciation, love, and confidence. He was very fond of the dear girl, but meant to be a slave ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... yachts, Adriatic liners, all brilliant with illumination, and hundreds of gondolas, bobbing, bobbing, like captive leviathans, bunched round the gaily-lanterned barges of the serenaders. There was only one flaw to this perfect dream: the shrill whistle of the ferry-boats. They had no place here, and their presence ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill, and fidelity that he displayed atoned ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... as a prince (of the kingdom). To be prepared for unforeseen dangers, Be cautious of what you say; Be reverentially careful of your outward behaviour; In all things be mild and correct. A flaw in a mace of white jade May be ground away; But for a flaw in speech Nothing can ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... remove that which seems to have proved a stumbling-block to many—namely, the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent. Unless the arguments set forth in the Prolegomena, in the simplest language at my command, have some flaw which I am unable to discern, this seeming paradox is a truth, as great as it is plain, the recognition of which is fundamental for ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Obviously, then, Mark had killed his brother: accidentally, as Cayley believed, or deliberately, as Elsie's evidence seemed to suggest. There was no point in looking for a difficult solution to a problem, when the easy solution had no flaw in it. But at the same time Birch would have preferred the difficult solution, simply because there was more credit attached to it. A "sensational" arrest of somebody in the house would have given him more pleasure than a commonplace pursuit of Mark Ablett across country. Mark must be found, guilty ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... turned out to be a good driver of aeroplanes," commented Roy, as he watched; "see that flaw strike them! There! he brought the Cobweb through it like an old ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... which ranks affairs of the mind immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can win to heaven only through repentance, and the initial step toward repentance is to do something to repent of. There is no flaw in this logic, and in its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory human laws as may be suggested by reason and the consciousness that nobody is looking, take on the aspect ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... stranger had landed shortly before Rastignac was born, however, he would have noticed that all was not as serene as it was supposed to be among the different species. The cause for the flaw in the former Eden might have puzzled him if he had not known the previous history of L'Bawfey and the fact that the situation had not changed for the worst until the introduction of Human Changelings ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... which sounds so modern, so praiseworthy and enlightened, had one serious flaw. What was a fact? And how did you know? This important problem, so significant for the growth of scientific medicine, we can study quite readily in the works ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... structure. An example of this was specially seen in the great Cullinan diamond, the splitting of which was perhaps the most thrilling moment in the history of precious stones.[A] The value of the enormous crystal was almost beyond computation, but it had a flaw in the centre, and in order to cut out this flaw it was necessary to divide the stone into two pieces. The planes of cleavage were worked out, the diamond was sawn a little, when the operator, acknowledged ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... said Varney; "the use lies here. Men will wager their lands and lives in defence of a rich diamond, my lord; but were it not first prudent to look if there is no flaw in it?" ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... penal days, When Ireland hopelessly complained. Oh! weep those days, the penal days, When godless persecution reigned; When year by year, For serf and peer, Fresh cruelties were made by law, And filled with hate, Our senate sate To weld anew each fetter's flaw. Oh! weep those days, those penal days— Their memory still on ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... occupation—at least she always said the services were soothing. She was genuinely shocked by a sign of irreverence, and would sing the most jingling nonsense as a hymn with perfect gravity and without perceiving that there was any flaw in it. In these matters she showed no originality at all. She would repeat "my duty towards my neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as I would that they should do unto me" fervently, and come out and cut Mrs. Chrimes to the quick just afterward because ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ginooine statesman should be on his guard, Ef he must hev beliefs, nut to b'lieve 'em tu hard; For, ez sure ez he doos, he'll be blartin' 'em out 'Thout regardin' the natur' o' man more 'n a spout, Nor it don't ask much gumption to pick out a flaw In a party whose leaders are loose in the jaw: An' so in our own case I ventur' to hint Thet we'd better nut air our perceedins in print, Nor pass resserlootions ez long ez your arm Thet may, ez things heppen to turn, do us harm; For when you've done ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Jack, emphatically. "When we got caught in that flaw yesterday afternoon he wanted to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... give me the greatest pleasure to recount to you my daily occupations, and in return I beg you to reform me, where you find some flaw or ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... have tried to show in another place, it is not very difficult to find a flaw in the theory that beauty is the essential quality in a work of art—that is, if the word "beauty" be used, as Whistler and his followers seem to have used it, to mean insignificant beauty. It seems that the beauty about which they were talking was the beauty of ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... would have realised for himself had he not been obsessed by the new conviction that the real diamonds, now virtually Alan's, were hidden in the clock in that upper room. Further, it contained a serious flaw, in that it allowed nothing for the possibility of Alan's making a fresh will. And finally, if one may be permitted to put the primary objection last, it depended on the possession of the Green Box which had just ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... money upon his subjects. The people, who were acquainted with the immense treasures which he had amassed, could ill brook the new impositions raised on every slight occasion; and it is probable that the flaw which was universally known to be in his title, made his reign the more subject to insurrections and rebellions. When the subsidy began to be levied in Cornwall, the inhabitants, numerous and poor, robust and courageous, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... admirable new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw sub voce Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be defined as "a founded, artificial sea-mark, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flaw in Mark's crystal clear world. When a year ago they had quarrelled over his avowed dislike of Will Starling, she had gone back to her solitary walks and he conscious, painfully conscious, that she ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of news to give you, Eliza. In the first place it has been discovered that there was a very serious flaw in the title to Fairclose, and that the sale to me was altogether illegal. Mr. Hartington has behaved most kindly and generously in the matter, but the result is he comes back to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... most was some idea that would simplify, and nothing would do this so much as the fact that he was done for and finished. If it had been in such a light that he had just detected in his cup the dregs of youth, that was a mere flaw of the surface of his scheme. He was so distinctly fagged-out that it must serve precisely as his convenience, and if he could but consistently be good for little enough he might ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... long life. We must also be able to appreciate fully the value of that interdependence of each part of our organism, which often, owing to a want of equilibrium of strength and resistance in some part when compared to the rest, causes the whole to give way, just as a flaw in a levee will cause the whole of the solidly-constructed mass to give way, or a demoralized regiment may entail the utter rout of an army. As described by George Murray Humphry, in his instructive work on "Old ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... like to know that your generosity can be supreme—without a flaw. Love at its highest should be ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... that you Christian people need more to have dinned into you than this, that your continuance in the state of a redeemed man, with all the security and blessing that attach thereto, depends upon your continuing to be righteous. Every sin, every flaw, every dropping beneath our own standard in conscience of what we ought to be, has for its inevitable result that we are robbed for the time being of consciousness of the walls of the city being about us and of our being citizens thereof. 'Who shall ascend into the hill ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... her wit. Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big desolate empty room, warming ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... twenty-five miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-coloured lambas of many folded kilts—the women work hardest—the potters slap and ring their earthenware all round, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads, the women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets, strapped to the shoulders and forehead, and their hands are full ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the farmer to his yellow fields The reaping-hind came bringing, even in act To lop the brittle barley stems, have I Seen all the windy legions clash in war Together, as to rend up far and wide The heavy corn-crop from its lowest roots, And toss it skyward: so might winter's flaw, Dark-eddying, whirl light stalks and flying straws. Oft too comes looming vast along the sky A march of waters; mustering from above, The clouds roll up the tempest, heaped and grim With angry showers: down falls the height of heaven, And with a great rain ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... would say—'doctor is a foul word. It should not be used to ladies. It implies disease. I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation, that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, have washed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; I am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah, believe me, it is she who has the cestus! And here, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boiler, came down upon the gale and flew past, when it disappeared. I followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the night. I was not certain.—"A sail, broad on the lee bow." The captain answered from the quarter-deck—"Thank ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... than this, she saw Who reigned in Philip's house and heart. Far off, he seemed without a flaw; Close by, her tasteless counterpart, And slave to ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could have been half so lovely when she ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... light, Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight; Yet being mine own, at length affection would Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: I wash'd thy face, but more defects I saw, And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw. I stretcht thy joynts to make thee even feet, Yet still thou run'st more hobling then is meet; In better dress to trim thee was my mind, But nought save home-spun Cloth, i' th' house I find In this array, mong'st Vulgars mayst thou roam In Critick's hands, beware thou dost not come; And take ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... characteristic account, conveying the impression that while he was willing to waste all the resources of his colored inks and literary ingenuity on our friendship, I must pay the freight. I think he had a superstition that it would cause a flaw in his title of "The Good Knight, sans peur et sans monnaie" if he were to add the price of a two-cent postage ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... she was given the task of packing them for market. And oh! the joy of it! the pleasure she took in laying the rich brown and creamy-white eggs in cosy nests in the sweet-smelling hay; her pride in their appearance! The only flaw in her happiness was the fact that she could not carry the basket and dispose of the contents herself to the customers. She pictured herself turning back the snow-white cloth from the top of the basket, and counting out her beloved treasures one ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... or an Arthur's quoit {49b} raised as a memorial of the purchase and boundaries. People have not the courage to do so nowadays, but more cunning, knavery, and written parchment, wide as a cromlech, is necessary to bind the bargain, and for all that it would be strange if no flaw existed or were contrived therein." "Well, well," said Taliesin, "I would not be worth a straw there, I may as well be here; truth will never be found where there are many bards, nor justice where many lawyers, until health be found where there be ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... brag about his farm; How fine his hogs an' hosses air; How slick his cattle, till my arm Gits tired at all the jollies there! An' then they tell Ma she's a peach, A honey-lulu without flaw, A angel fur beyond their reach, When canderdates ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... aware that in its honest and well-meaning way it bores the people with uninflammable truisms about doing good; bores them with correct compositions on charity; bores them, chloroforms them, stupefies them with argumentative mercy without a flaw in the grammar or an emotion which the minister could put in in the right place if he turned his back and took his finger off the manuscript. And in doing these things the pulpit is doing its duty, and let us believe that it is likewise doing its best, and doing it in the most harmless and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... defect was, we conjecture, a consequence of that other and more fundamental flaw to which we have already drawn attention. If Miss Coleridge's artificers played truant, it was because she lacked strength to keep them at their task. For an indolent and lawless imagination force of character ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... said, "that I wanted to look after you—that I wanted our friendship to be what it has proved to be—without the flaw of sentiment. I wouldn't spoil a single hour by any thought of yours or mine that led us away from ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... proposed to dictate his will to a notary in the presence of witnesses, lest his sanity should be called in question and the Camusots should attempt upon that pretext to dispute the will. At the name of Trognon he caught a glimpse of machinations of some kind; perhaps a flaw purposely inserted, or premeditated treachery on La Cibot's part. He would prevent this. Trognon should dictate a holograph will which should be signed and deposited in a sealed envelope in a drawer. Then Schmucke, hidden in one of the cabinets in his alcove, should see La Cibot ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... made a note and deferred to another day seeing the property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages and defects—for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise, ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch—such an inviting expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your porch—faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... his boastful brow, and flaunt it in Her face, rejoicing in her woe? No! No! This priceless gem shall ever deck her crown, And grace its setting with a ray more pure For that, nor flood, nor fire, can flaw its heart. Yes, Canada, thy sons, at least, maintain The ancient honour of their British blood, In that their loyalty contracts no stain From proffered gifts or gold. But I must on. I may not loiter, while ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... everything—no flaw in the perfect harmony of the seen. No limit to its onapproachable beauty. Yes, the glory of that seen as it bust onto my raptured vision will go with me through life, and won't never be outdone and replaced by anything more perfect, till ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... wholeheartedly to the only life they loved, and the prizes of a crowded haven and bursting granaries were the result. If a nation does not recover from such a blow, there must be some permanent defect in its economic life or some fatal flaw in its administrative system. The devastation caused by war merely accelerates the process of decay by creating a temporary impoverishment, which reveals the severity of the preceding struggle for existence and renders hopeless ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... rose to depart that the hand of fate intervened. I had only one lamp burning in the room, a table-lamp; and at this moment, preceded by a sudden accession of light due to some flaw of the generating plant, the filament expired, plunging the room into darkness! I stood up with a startled cry. I do not deny that I felt ill at ease in the gloom with my strange visitor; but worse was to come. Looking across the darkened room to the chair ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... a Governor, or of a United States Senator, who urges such objections on behalf of a State? Do we not feel as if the State were some miserable culprit on trial, and some pettifogging lawyer was endeavoring to screen him from punishment, by picking a flaw in the indictment. Yet such are the pleas on behalf of a State, urged by Governor McNutt and Senator Jefferson Davis. On reference to the letter before referred to, of Jefferson Davis, it will be found that he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but not as he thought. He believed that he had gained his point; and the relief of that thought melted him. He believed, that is, that I should presently make an excuse to get hold of my servant and send him off to delay the King's coming. Then, I suppose, he saw the one flaw in his design; and he strove, very pitifully, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Denver School Board, discussed Our Gains and Our Losses, and said in closing: "We have learned that in politics we must have a machine, only it should be used for good government, not for corruption. Make your machine as perfect as you can, without a flaw in it anywhere, and then use it for good ends." Mrs. Mary B. Clay (Ky.) gave a careful survey of conditions resulting from The Removal of Industries from the Home, which had forced woman to follow them and made her an industrial factor in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... in one quarter, she was all the less disposed to accept a check elsewhere. Her will to resist a hopeless love was broken down, but that only increased the strength of her determination to conceal the weakness from every eye, to continue the struggle of life as though there were no flaw in her armor, and to work indefatigably for the independence of thought and feeling and action which she valued above ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... way toward the little settlement, wondering meanwhile what could possibly be the explanation of certain whiffs of a singularly vile and offensive odour which now and then assailed his nostrils when there occurred an occasional flaw in the trade-wind which was sweeping briskly over the island. He might, of course, have asked, but the thought occurred to him that by doing so he might perhaps be betraying his ignorance, and so lay himself open to the chance of being misled ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once Of ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... older grew the documents as the lawyer's hand travelled downward; any flaw or failure must have been healed by lapse of time long and long ago; dust and grime and mildew thickened, ink became paler, and contractions more contorted; it was rather an antiquary's business now than a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... bring these rhymes to you Who brought the cross to me, Since on you flaming without flaw I saw the sign that Guthrum saw When he let break his ships of awe, And ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... commit crimes too dreadful for women to think of. She would not believe that Bertram was one of these; but it was fearful to think that any one should so call him. Caroline, perhaps, would not so much have minded this flaw in her future husband's faith if it had not been proof of his unsteadiness, of his unfitness for the world's battle. She remembered what he had said to her two years since on the Mount of Olives; and then ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... planet. He seemed, indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether in his own little province of art. A creature more unsullied by the world it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in his artistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than this ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... say,—"This could never have been: a virtuous and noble young man could not for years have been believed to be the most hateful of mankind; the laws of Nature and the laws of the human mind forbid it: so vast a web of falsehood could not have been woven without a flaw: we can credit much of the organized and pitiless despotism of Venice, but could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... last parts together. The idea of building an air-ship had come to him while he lay dying with scurvy, as they thought, in a Confederate prison, and he had never abandoned it. He had been a teacher and a student, and was a trained mathematician. There could be no flaw in his calculations. He had worked them out again and again. The energy developed by his plan was great enough to float a ship capable of carrying almost any burden, and of directing it against the strongest head winds. Now, upon ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... one morning in a perfectly still white world. It had snowed heavily during the night, and the house was surrounded by a glistening white carpet which stretched away to the "sapinette" at the top of the lawn without a speck or flaw. There was no trace of path or road, or little low shrubs, and even the branches of the big lime-trees were heavy with snow. It was a bright, beautiful day—blue sky and a not too pale winter sun. Not a vehicle of any kind ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... that on the south considerably lower. The two boats stood on, the cutter keeping about a hundred fathoms astern of the launch. Harry placed Paul Lizard at the helm, he himself going forward, holding on by the foremast. The oars were got out, to be in readiness should any flaw come off the shore, and all hands not required to pull them, or tend the sheets, were ready with buckets to bail out the water should a sea come on board. Mrs Rumbelow had taken possession of the largest she could find, ever ready to set her companions a good example. She perhaps, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... awful! You can't make him jealous! I think it's a positive flaw in his character! Not like—us, ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Brahms concerto is not technically as hard as, say, Paganini—but in interpretation!... And in the Beethoven concerto, too, there is a simplicity, a kind of clear beauty which makes it far harder to play than many other things technically more advanced. The slightest flaw, the least difference in pitch, in intonation, ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... at least adequate if not exactly brilliant, save as regards a few individual players, assist the drama by giving a chance to the unacted of seeing their works on the stage? In many cases plays now rejected by managers because they have an instinctive feeling that there is some flaw which defies precise indication might, after such a production, be corrected ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Abbey, and were never inside of that historic cathedral, as I have known persons to live forty years not fifty miles distant from Niagara, and never to have heard the organ speech of that great cataract. This is a common flaw in intellect. We tend to underestimate the near, and exaggerate the remote. Another application of the same frailty is noticeable in literature. Homegrown literature is, with not a few, depreciated. According to their ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... large, dashing, Napoleonic scale. He said, 'Open the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the open; then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience coming out of a theatre. Then we closed in on them to bring off the big drive. For about thirty seconds it looked as if we might do it. Then Bob, the Hired Man's dog, an animal who ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... been an easy dupe," he said. "A child in intrigue should have picked the flaw though he were half asleep. Yet it was a pretty enough story—a loving lady, a frowning King, a false abduction. . . And all ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... occasion, after (I do believe) months of sobriety; that there was no concealment about it; and that though obstinate at first as to how little drunk, etc., he was very repentant afterwards—I cannot let this one flaw weigh against the general good of the man. I cannot if I would: what then is the use of trying? But my confidence in that respect must be so far shaken, and it vexes me to think that I can never be sure of his not being overtaken so. I declare that it makes me ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... propositions which require qualification. The Cambridge man's explanation, therefore, does not suit the meaning. I have always supposed that salis was added to denote a small grain. I find in Forcellini that the Romans called a small flaw in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... Committees in Europe to the effective way in which the Act was dealing with the traffickers in America, and urged them to get a similar one passed in their own country, when, to our intense disappointment the Judges of the Supreme Court in America, discovered a flaw in one of its chief clauses, and, I am told that in consequence, hundreds of men and women, who had been convicted as traffickers, were immediately let loose upon society, to again engage in this ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... one," as Origen says, "kindles the flame of his own appropriate fire." Superior spirits must look on a corrupted human soul with a sorrow similar, though infinitely profounder, to that with which the lapidary contemplates a splendid pearl with a dark flaw in its centre. The Koran says, "Men sleep while they live, and when they die they wake." The sudden infliction of pain in the future state comes from the sudden unveiling of secrets, quickening of the moral consciousness, and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... one flaw for Rosalind in this "As You Like It" life and that was the persistence of the secret association with Nicky. It was the strangest ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... resolutions which Clara made in the first hour of solitude which came to her after her engagement; and they would have been wise resolutions but for this flaw that the stronger was submitting itself to the weaker, the greater to the less, the more honest to the less honest, that which was nearly true to that which was in great part false. The theory of man and wife that special theory in accordance with which the wife ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... appeared quite conscious of their newness, for he let down the bars with great care, and with even greater care stepped into the inclosure. Then it was seen, since he was a Mexican who ran true to form, there was a flaw in all this splendor. For he had drawn on the new overalls over the older pair—worse, had drawn them on over two older pairs, as revealed at the bottoms, where peered plaintively two shades of blue—lighter blue of the older pair, very light blue of the oldest ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... took a flaw of pain, A hap of skiey pleasure, A thought had in his cradle lain, And mingled them in measure. That chrism he laid upon his eyes, And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, That he might see, feel, sing, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... it! I'm not a Spiritualist, I'm sure, and nothing would tempt me to be. But still that sort of reasoning has a flaw in it, hasn't it, dear? The King of ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... labors, may be worse than useless, since it would tend to keep up the idea that he is an actual London entity. We are very confident that he is not a London non-entity, but are willing to agree that he is either the one or the other. The flaw that we are after lies in his interstitial logic, not in the hallucination in which he indulges respecting nonentities. His assumption that life cannot exist without an organism, of which it is the phenomenal manifestation, is what ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... reasoning according to the inductive philosophy, that there is not one drop of water in slavery for the parched lips of a dying slave. I stated this to a member of our Junior Class who is a wonderful metaphysician. He was kind enough to say that he could discover no flaw in the logic. Your letter, which, I trust, is now on its way to me, I know will fully ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... some flaw about this," I suggested. "If your magnet is so strong as all that, you would have your own ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the wind we were aground. The captain immediately ordered the sails to be clewed up and handed. While the people were on the yards, we caught sight of a boat pulling from the brig towards the town. Just then, before the people were off the yards, a sudden flaw of wind drove the ship's head off the bank. Hoping now to get off, the order was given to hoist the driver and mizzen-staysail, and to keep the sheets to windward. The instant the ship lost her way, the bower-anchor ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... She replied, "By Allah, though thou cut my flesh to bits I will not forswear the faith of Al-Islam! It may be Almighty Allah will bring me speedy relief, for He cloth even as He is fief, and the wise say: 'Better body to scathe than a flaw in faith.'" Thereupon the old man called his eunuchs and women, saying, "Throw her down!" So they threw her down and he ceased not to beat her with grievous beating, whilst she cried for help and no help came; then she no longer implored aid but fell to saying, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... said Jean gruffly, for he did not like any one to find a flaw in the wife whom he often ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... emblem of staid middle-aged respectability. The major's hat was always of the glossiest, the major's coat was without a wrinkle, and, in short, from the summit of the major's bald head to his bulbous finger-tips and his gouty toes, there was not a flaw which the most severe critic of deportment—even the illustrious Turveydrop himself—could have detected. Let us add that the conversation of the major was as irreproachable as his person—that he was a distinguished soldier ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear the almost inaudible tickings and vibrations as the bubble's skin contracted or expanded and the Nothing tapped and searched with its empty fingers for a flaw or crack that it could tear into ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... village as of yore, in no wise changed, except that a few new graves had been added to the little churchyard. The little spinster still abode in her dainty cottage, not much changed, except to look a trifle more aged and careworn. The fastidious eye of the lawyer's accomplished wife could detect no flaw in the demeanour of Miss Peck, and she added her entreaties to those of Gladys. In truth, the poor little careworn woman was not hard to persuade. She had no ties save those of memory to bind her to the fen country, so she gave her promise freely, accepting her new home ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... that old song came up in my head. That was fairly non-committal and encouragin'. The only flaw was that his Emperor wasn't appeased by very long chalks. Stalky extricated himself from his mountain fastnesses and leafed up to Simla at his leisure, to be offered up on ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... he said in conclusion, 'I put it to you, sir, as to her: do you find any flaw in my argument? Is there, madam, a single text which, honestly interpreted, affords the least foothold for the Paedobaptists; in other words, for your opinion on the efficacy of the rite administered to you in your unconscious infancy? ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... deception about names? He who first gave names, gave them according to his conception, and that may have been erroneous. 'But then, why, Socrates, is language so consistent? all words have the same laws.' Mere consistency is no test of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, there may be a flaw at the beginning, and yet the conclusion may follow consistently. And, therefore, a wise man will take especial care of first principles. But are words really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise which signify rest as which signify motion? There is episteme, which is connected with stasis, ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... but remained perfectly still. The wind tore at them as if with frantic hands that sought their life; the water hissed under them, raced past them madly. No waves could rise under the raging gale, but black flaw after flaw flew along the surface of the lake. The rain fell in torrents; the falling streams were caught by the wind, tossed hither and thither, twisted into fantastic shapes of spray, sent flying forward, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... 'Antony and Cleopatra,' probably in 1609. In its austere temper it contrasts at all points with its predecessor. The courageous self-reliance of Coriolanus's mother, Volumnia, is severely contrasted with the submissive gentleness of Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife. The hero falls a victim to no sensual flaw, but to unchecked pride of caste, and there is a searching irony in the emphasis laid on the ignoble temper of the rabble, who procure his overthrow. By way of foil, the speeches of Menenius give dignified ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not tell you what I mean. Miss Farrel gives herself clean away just by her looks. No living woman was ever made so there wasn't a flaw in her face but that there was a flaw in her soul. We're none of us perfect. If there ain't a flaw outside, there's a flaw inside; you mark ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not have been, the knowledge remained with him that she herself had suspected and convicted him. In all that mattered their friendship had ended there. Distrust was unbearable between friends. It was a flaw in his little lady that she could believe him capable of baseness.... But not an unforgivable flaw, it would seem, since every hour that he had spent in her presence had become roses and music in his memory, and the thought that he would see her ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... toward suffrage. Nothing of the kind. Intensely romantic, she determined to await the grand passion or go it alone. No experimental adventures for her. Be assured that she weighed every new man she met, and finding some flaw discarded him as a matrimonial possibility. Besides, her unusual facilities to view and judge men had shown her masculine phases the average woman would have discovered only after the fatal knot was tied. She did not suspect that she was romantical. She attributed ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... know he wouldn't stand that; and it's an old story now, and there's naught can be proved concerning it; and what I think is this—I wouldn't wonder the poor lady was beguiled. But anyhow she surely thought she was his lawful wife; and though the law may hev found a flaw somewhere—and I take it 'twas so—yet sure I am she was an honourable lady. But where's the use of stirring that old sorrow? or how can ye prove aught? and the dead hold their peace, you know; dead mice, they say, feels ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... that nasty custom in excess, and it grows worse instead of better, as the influence of the better mannered and better educated diminishes; but this is a spot on the sun—a mere flaw in the diamond, that friction will take out. But what a country—what a glorious country, in truth, it is! You have now done the civilized parts of the old world pretty thoroughly, my dear boy, and must be persuaded, yourself, of the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... of purely divine descent. Her maternal ancestor, Sonisonbu, had not been a scion of the royal house, and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect of birth could only be remedied by a miracle,* and the ancestral god, becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception, had ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... cunning. Shut out by the Olympians, one group of little boys found a strategic way into the Hall by means of a fire-escape staircase. They had already shaken hands with the Prince before their flank movement had been discovered and the flaw in the endless queue repaired. That queue was never finished. Although, on the testimony of the experts, the Prince shook hands at the rate of forty-five to the minute, the time set aside for the reception only allowed of some 2,500 filing ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. Cautelous chastity and crafty sobriety were far from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... moving effects by portraying the commonplace aspects of the water in a way that reminds people of things which they noticed but failed to admire promptly. Mr. Russell's gospel is plain enough; he watches minutely, and there is not a flaw of wind or a cross-drift of spray that does not offer some new emotion to his quick ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... my good lady," replied the traveller "he is an English lord, and, as they say, a Lord of Parliament—but some folk pretend to say there is a flaw in the title." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... have arrived at a point where one can run over facts and figures again and again without detecting a flaw or foreseeing a difficulty. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... critical, questioning mind Abelard found a flaw in this position: on many questions of faith the authorities themselves disagreed. "In such cases,"—he said in effect,—"how shall I come to any definite belief unless I first reason it out?" "By doubting we are led to inquiry, and by inquiry ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... I believe you're right," said he at last. "You have the thing sized up; and there isn't a flaw in your reasoning. I always said that you were the brains of this concern. If it were not for one thing, I'd compromise sure; and that one thing was beyond your power ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... theory of Divine revelation a religion would be most perfect at its beginning. It would be without flaw when born. It would be incapable of improvement or growth. In a word it would be immovable. It would possess the fixation of which Emerson speaks. It would not have to readjust itself to the changed and improved conditions of man, and its word would be ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... done it," sniggered the stepfather-in-law. "I writ a document a Philadelphia lawyer and a Pinkerton detective combined couldn't pick a flaw in. I hedged it in with roundabout reasons an' facts, tellin' 'im he'd 'a' had letter after letter about how the baby was thrivin' if he'd just answered Hettie's first official proclamation, and so on, and so on. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... question. In that very remarkable but eccentric genius, William Blake, mysticism was rich in fruits of faith and love, and it is needless, therefore, to add that he was a good man, of blameless morals; yet, by a strange flaw or partial derangement in his profoundly spiritual nature, 'he was for ever, in his writings, girding at the "mere moral law" as the letter that killeth. His conversation, his writings, his designs, were equally marked by theoretic ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Comique also gave grand opera on Sunday afternoons, and the one performance that I was fortunate enough to see—Carmen—was the most perfect production of grand opera that I have ever seen or heard. From the standpoint of the critic I could find no flaw, and though Carmen is not a favorite of mine, I revelled in the perfection of staging, acting and singing of this performance. The street and mob scenes were so realistic that one forgot that they were not real street scenes; the acting of the singers was so fine that one was carried ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... an object by a flash of lightning; and he still saw it, as one seems still to see the object in the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it one knows ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... going to give you, Raphael, is the little picture of a lass who is in my eyes a thing of Heaven's best making. For loyalty, honour, courage, truth, faith, she is an unmatchable maid. I have known her all the days of my life and never found a flaw in her.' ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... suddenly and strode over to Mr. Czenki, who was twisting the jewel in his fingers, singling out, dissecting, studying the colorful flashes, measuring the facets with practised eyes, weighing it on his finger-tips, seeking a possible flaw. ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Arrange the argument how we please, we shall never get it into a form clearer than this:—The more perfect a thing is, the more it must exist (as if existence could admit of more or less); and therefore the all-perfect Being must exist absolutely. There is no flaw, we are told, in the reasoning; and if we are not convinced, it is solely from the confused habits of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was almost a shock to her. She had believed that her knowledge of him was perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic in temperament; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... but my voice must have been drowned in the creaking of blocks and yards. They were alert enough for every chance of getting away—for every flaw of wind. Already the ship was less distinct, as if my eyes had grown dim. By the time a voice on board her cried, "Belay," faintly, she had gone from my sight. Then the puff of wind passed away, too, and left us more alone than ever, with only the small disk of the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... investigating both the laws, the true canons of scientific induction had been kept in view; but if it did occur, it must terminate in the total rejection of one of the supposed laws. It would prove that there must be a flaw in the logical process by which either one or the other was established; and if there be so, that supposed general truth is no truth at all. We can not admit a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. We must disbelieve the alleged fact, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... almost without flaw. Even Helen, whose fancy had played with him at first, but who in time had indolently yielded to the fascination exerted over her, and even gone so far as to permit his adulation, and accept in the ring the mystic pledge thereof (during all the countless ages of its experience it had never touched ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... encourage any one who seeks to discuss my stories with me, being a modest chap with a flaw in my vanity, she abandoned the subject after a few ineffectual attempts to find out how I get my plots, how I write my books, and how I keep from losing ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... ignite. Fusion then takes place in a terrible heat. The heat must be sufficient to remove the obstacles that the mass may become unified. We have as a result a firmly established representative union of local self-governments. The cooling and finishing process has left no flaw. Sir, what sort of a soldier must he be who is not proud of having been tempered in such a trial? If after the unmatched tournament this is not the spirit of victor and vanquished, then the lights of chivalry are burnt out ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... heart-softening strains they heard, Which did but harden these; and when at noon They sought the shaded waters' freshening boon, And all unhidden once again they saw That peerless beauty, free from any flaw, Which now at last had won its precious meed, Her kindness then but fed the fire of greed Within their hearts—her gifts, the rich attire Wherewith she clad them, where like sparks of fire The many-coloured gems shone midst ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... ended, Jerome made a dash from the shelter of the lava-block and began forcing his way back against the wind to the "Hot Springs," wavering and struggling to resist being carried away, as if he were fording a rapid stream. After waiting and watching in vain for some flaw in the storm that might be urged as a new argument in favor of attempting the descent, I was compelled to follow. "Here," said Jerome, as we shivered in the midst of the hissing, sputtering fumaroles, "we shall be safe from frost." ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... be good, when it really is not so. Reasoning very often appears to be good, while there is all the time some latent flaw in it which makes the conclusion wrong. Very often something is left out of the account which ought to be taken in and calculated for, and that is the case here. The truth is, that the current helps ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... easy neglige, but in port she must appear in full dress. Not a sign of the long voyage, of the storms, of the glowing heat she has suffered, must be visible. Then begins an incessant hammering, planing, and sawing; every flaw, every crack or injury is made good, and, to wind up, the whole vessel is painted afresh. The worst of all, however, is the hammering when the cracks in the deck are being repaired and filled up with pitch. This is ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... disturbed their devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... temper. He exclaimed: "If there is a flaw in my sister-in-law's pedigree, what is to be said of people who visit women of alien religions, take food from their hands, and tipple strong liquor ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... She thought of disturbing all the wedding preparations, stopping the bride with her veil on and the orange blossoms in her hair, and all the guests assembled—for what? because of—one who made no claim, who would never make any claim, who had not been heard of for more than six years. That was the flaw which disturbed Lizzie. It was not quite out seven years. Had that mystic period been accomplished she felt that she could have left Chatty to the protection of God. But at the outside it was only six and a half, and he had heard of her through Lizzie herself—though she ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... though he was nearly jerked overboard by the sudden pitching and rolling of the craft. Recovering the sheet which had run out into the water, he took his place at the helm. He flattened down the sail, when the flaw had spent its force, and headed his boat towards Friedrichshafen. The next gust that struck the sail carried her down so that the water poured in over her lee rail by the barrel. The lady screamed lustily; and the tones of her voice indicated that she did ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... obliged to stand up for his system to justify the consequences. Now a barber can be dispassionate; the only thing he necessarily stands by is the razor, always providing he is not an author. That was the flaw in my great predecessor Burchiello: he was a poet, and had consequently a prejudice about his own poetry. I have escaped that; I saw very early that authorship is a narrowing business, in conflict with the liberal art of the razor, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... don't believe it! I don't believe it!" Jack broke out. "You'll find a flaw in his art, if you find a moral chaos in him. It must be ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cousin Mr. Percy's estate. He suggested that the conveyance might not be forthcoming; but Sir Robert assured him that both his grandfather and the present Mr. Percy were men of business, and that there was little likelihood either that the deeds should be lost, or that there should be any flaw in the title. Afterwards a fire broke out at Percy-hall, which consumed that wing of the house in which were Mr. Percy's papers—the papers were all saved except this deed of conveyance. Mr. Sharpe ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of no moral or theological problem to disturb his serenity, and as gentle as a gentle woman; a man in whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life, as he found it come to him.... His unworldliness had not a flaw."[6] To Dante Rossetti he appeared, as an old man, "lovable beyond description," with that "submissive yet highly cheerful simplicity of character which often ... appears in the family of a great man, who uses at last what the others have kept for him." He is, Rossetti ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... replied Caderousse, 'I will go back with you to fetch the other 5,000 francs.'—'No,' returned the jeweller, giving back the diamond and the ring to Caderousse—'no, it is worth no more, and I am sorry I offered so much, for the stone has a flaw in it, which I had not seen. However, I will not go back on my word, and I will give 45,000.'—'At least, replace the diamond in the ring,' said La Carconte sharply.—'Ah, true,' replied the jeweller, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have been rolled only once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. The uniformity of texture and the toughness of the bars which have been thrice rolled are so great that they may be twisted, cold, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... unable. To return He sought, but could not find the way. Alone He was, and in perplexity, because His huntsmen he no longer could descry. Then, wandering to and fro, he found at last A pleasure garden of the days gone by, Belonging to King Lila, beautiful And without flaw. He was astonished quite When he perceived a palace. All alone He found himself, when he had entered there. He walked about, but found no living soul. Unto himself he said: "Can this domain A habitation ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... ever again unbarred for the children of fallen humanity. He has gone there as their surety-Saviour. If his suretyship be accepted—if He meet and fulfil all the requirements of an outraged law, the gates of the dismal prison-house will and must be opened. If, on the other hand, there be any flaw or deficiency in His person or work as the Kinsman-Redeemer, then no power can snap the chains which bind Him; the tomb will refuse to surrender what it has in custody; the hopes of His people must perish along with ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff |
