"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 we propose ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... author by profession for a party. As a Tory writer he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MSS. to the printer, who was never discovered; and was once saved by a flaw in the indictment, from the simple change of an r for a t, or nor for not, one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its perpetual disgrace, so often protects the criminal from punishment. Dr. Drake had the honor of hearing himself censured from the throne, of being imprisoned, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... because whenever 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 ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... well understand, friend Reasono," observed Noah, "why the 'arth should heel under so sudden a flaw, though a well-ballasted ship would right again when the puff was over; but I cannot understand how a little steam leaking out at one end of a craft should set her agoing at the rate we are ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... still hoped to find it in Manicheeism, but he began to think that it was a long time coming. The leaders of the sect could not have trusted him thoroughly. They feared his acute and subtle mind, so quick to detect the flaw in a thesis or argument. That is why they postponed his initiation into their secret doctrines. Augustin remained a simple auditor in their Church. By way of appeasing the enormous activity of his intelligence, they turned him on to controversy, and the critical ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... than that, but there is no flaw in your claim, and I have unearthed a delightful relative for you, a cousin of your mother's with whom much of her early life was passed. After her marriage they seemed to fall apart as people often do, and she ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... self-respecting; but there were plenty of other men, spoiled and selfish, weak and stupid; men who amused and flattered Isabelle Carter perhaps, but among whom her husband loomed a very giant. Harriet had watched Richard Carter with a keenness of which she was hardly conscious herself, ready to detect the flaw, the weakness in his character, but she never found it, and after awhile she became his silent champion, his secret ally in all domestic matters, quick to see that his mail and his telephone messages were sacred, that his meals never were late, and that any small request, such as the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... a field of slush and flaw Red with a blood red dye. And a million faces fungus pale ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... why. It was a sudden new realisation of his physical perfection. His tall, great body was so complete in grace and strength, each line and muscle of it so fine a thing. In the workings of such a physical being there could be no flaw. There was such beauty in his countenance, such strength and faithful sweetness in his firm, full mouth, such pure, strong passion in the deeps of his large, kind, human eye. The handsomest and the tallest man ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... raised eyes and played on her delicately-moulded mouth—a smile that was like sunlight on clear water, revealing a nature so simple and candid; and deep down, trembling into light, the crystalline soul which had come without flaw from its Maker's hands, and in the midst of evil had caught no stain to dim its perfect purity. It seemed now to Mrs. Churton, as she expounded the sacred doctrines which meant so much to her, that she had not known so great a happiness since her daughter, white even to her lips at the thought ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... content with mastering and getting through my work, and with mingling out of hours with the small but thoroughly charming set I had found ready to welcome me on my arrival as the "new Englishman." On the whole, I was popular, though one great flaw—i.e.—lack of high birth and desirable home connections, weighed to an alarming extent with the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... produce the illusion. Everybody agrees that Great Britain has acted in a most blackguardly fashion towards Ireland; everybody assumes that blackguardism always succeeds in this world, therefore Ireland is a failure. The only flaw in this syllogism is that it is in direct conflict with every known fact. For the rest we have to thank or blame the sentimentalism of Mr Matthew Arnold. His proud but futile Celts who "went down to battle but always fell" have been mistaken ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... had several results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the choice ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... him to lend me the money; for which, to be sure, I gave him something, and left my lease of our farm with him, as he insisted upon it, by way of security for the loan. Attorney Case is too many for me. He has found what he calls a flaw in my lease; and the lease, he tells me, is not worth a farthing, and that he can turn us all out of our farm to-morrow if he pleases; and sure enough he will please, for I have thwarted him this day, and he swears he'll be revenged ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... predicated of a Scottish parish, in which there cannot be discovered a reason for enlarging the endowments of the minister. I returned after two, with a sousing shower for companion; I got very wet and very warm. But shall we go mourn for that, my dear?[394] I rather like a flaw of weather; it shows something of the old man is left. I had Mr. Buchanan to help pack my papers and things, and got through ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... by this time some distance out. The wind had carried him along finely, the boat scudding, as he expressed it. He was congratulating himself on the success of his trial trip, when all at once a flaw struck the boat. Not being a skillful boatman he was wholly unprepared for ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... part of the 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 pressed into his shoulder with her weight upon it. It was nothing ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... happiness to be without flaw, it was invariably necessary that others should be in practically the ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Kremlin live in fear their power and position would collapse were their own people to acquire knowledge, information, comprehension about our free society. Their world has many elements of strength, but this one fatal flaw: the weakness represented by their iron curtain and their police state. Surely, a social order at once so insecure and so fearful, must ultimately lose its ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 'All things that pertain to life, all things that pertain to godliness.' The whole circle all round, all the 360 degrees of it, God's love will come down and lie on the top of it as it were, superimposed, so that there should not be a single gift where there is a flaw or a defect. Everything you want of life, everything you want for godliness. Yes, of course, the gift must bear some kind of proportion to the giver. You do not expect a millionaire to put down half a crown ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... deliberately to lay such a train of damning facts. It's a frame-up, Wessex! I had begun to suspect this even before I met Camber. Having met him, I knew that I was right. Then came an inspiration. I saw where there must be a flaw in the plan. It was geographically impossible that ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... doctors with his wit. He applauded, and loved him, too, and protected him, and taught him mischief. I wish Addison could have loved him better. The best satire that ever has been penned would never have been written then; and one of the best characters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw. But he who had so few equals could not bear one, and Pope was more than that. When Pope, trying for himself, and soaring on his immortal young wings, found that his, too, was a genius, which no opinion of that age could follow, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at this or that incident in a singular chain of events. Yet, in the main, the story must rest upon Smith alone, and the most will think that it is more likely that one brain, however outwardly sane, has some subtle warp in its texture, some strange flaw in its workings, than that the path of Nature has been overstepped in open day in so famed a centre of learning and light as the University of Oxford. Yet when we think how narrow and how devious this path of Nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment, with a dreary grave-yard toll, betokening a flaw, the ship's forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers, proclaimed ten o'clock, through the leaden calm; when Captain Delano's attention was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic black, emerging from the general crowd below, and slowly ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole 'em off ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... palace and showed them all the treasures that were hers, envy grew in their hearts and choked their old love. Even while they sat at feast with her, they grew more and more bitter; and hoping to find some little flaw in her good fortune, they ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw SUB VOCE Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be defined as "a founded, artificial ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, perdie, The simple things that are the wise. Beside ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... The man has lived day by day for five months with Carlotta's magical beauty, and all he has noticed as characteristic is the little white scar—she fell on marble steps as a child—the only flaw, if flaw can be in a thing so ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Christmas visitors, for the state of the country did not invite Londoners; but we did not want them. The suppression of Clarence was the only flaw in a singularly happy time; and, after all I believe I felt the pity of it more than he did, who expected nothing, and was accustomed to being ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... just below, she thought it a strange thing that so favored a woman should rail at her own country and kinsmen. It oppressed her loyal little heart, for she had begun to like the titled lady, and hated to find so grave a flaw ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... ass," said Jean gruffly, for he did not like any one to find a flaw in the wife whom he ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... just come to this determination, when there blew a flaw of wind through the autumnal gardens; the dead leaves showered down, and a flight of sparrows, thick as a snowfall, wheeled above my head with sudden pipings. This agreeable bustle was the affair of a moment, but it startled ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... thy glory, noble initiator. Thy work is completed; thy divinity is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy efforts crumble through a flaw. Henceforth, beyond the reach of frailty, thou shalt be present, from the height of thy divine peace, in the infinite consequences of thy acts. At the price of a few hours of suffering, which have not even touched thy great soul, thou hast purchased the most complete immortality. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... and flayed Raffaele Muti, and, out of jealous malignancy, were wearing his skin as a vest. But just now a marvellous thing has happened, for at the foot of the hill Raffaele Muti has been found, freshly slain by a wandered arrow. Save for that wound his skin is without flaw. Moreover, he lived and breathed but a moment ago. So the whole tale was false, and this war against you outrageous. All the gentlemen who came here have gone away in great amazement and shame, leaving me to ask pardon for what they have done. Forgive them, Cercamorte, in the name of Christ, for ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... simplicity of the thing that took his breath away. That and its possibilities. This was the idea. Why not start a Lines Trust in the school? An agency for supplying lines at moderate rates to all who desired them? There did not seem to be a single flaw in the scheme. He and Linton between them could turn out enough material in a week to give the Trust a good working capital. And as for the risk of detection when customers came to show up the goods supplied to them, that was very slight. As has been pointed out before, there was practically ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... added the Master, "I can find no flaw in him. Living on meagre food and drink; yet providing to the utmost in his filial offerings to the spirits of the dead! Dressing in coarse garments; yet most elegant when vested in his sacrificial apron and coronet! ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... to examine all the preceding deeds in order to be quite certain that they were valid; even then, if he bought the land, and another person, for any reason whatever, laid claim to it, the owner had to prove the validity of each of a long series of documents, going back, perhaps, for centuries. A flaw in any one of these would give rise to a contest which could be settled only after a very tedious investigation; and thus arose the long and ruinous Chancery suits which were the disgrace of English law. When a man's title to his estate ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... that defiled temple. It was a crude plot, too, and quite unworthy of Francis Bullard, as he 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
... the frigate came head to wind, she grounded. The breeze, however, was light, and the water perfectly smooth, and the sails were clewed up and handed. While this was being done, we saw a boat pull away from the brig, towards the town. Before the men aloft had left the yards, a sudden flaw of wind drove the ship's head off the bank, when her anchor was let go, and she swung head to wind. Her heel, however, was still on the shoal, and the rudder immovable. To get her off, the launch was hoisted out, and the kedge anchor with a hawser, was put ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... are. Find what sort of company they claim to have, in the first place, and if they are an honorable set of men they ought to make open claims, instead of sneaking around, and trying to find out things that might cause a flaw in the title. I am suspicious, for one," she ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. There were no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a little distance all the time we stayed. I ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say, swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything. When Miss — was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... the ball with the heel results in the slice being put on more quickly and in there being more of it, but I need hardly observe that the stroke must be perfectly judged and played, and that there must be no flaw in it anywhere, or disaster must surely follow. As I say, it is not an easy shot to accomplish, but it is a splendid thing to do when wanted, and I strongly recommend the golfer who has gained proficiency ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... into an easy-chair. He felt like a man who has built a mighty piece of machinery, has set it swinging through space, and watches now its imminent collapse; watches some tiny but ghastly flaw, pregnant with disaster, growing wider and wider ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for the amusement of other high-level scientific brains. Mathematicians zestfully contrive problems to stump each other. Specialists in the higher branches of electronics sometimes present each other with diagrammed circuits which pretend to achieve the impossible. The problem is to find the hidden flaw. ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... She, poor woman, had now for nearly two years bustled hither and thither, intriguing in not always the most judicious manner for her family, but never resting, never leaving a stone unturned which might lead to their restitution. The sudden discovery that the lawyers had found a flaw in the conveyance was more than her overstrung nerves could endure, and in a fit of temper she attacked her husband, and rushed about the town denouncing him. Raleigh, in deepest depression of mind and body, wrote to Cecil, who had now taken another upward step in the hierarchy ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... crimes; but any special law inflicting, or threatening to inflict, punishment on an individual on account of acts not universally recognized as penal always appeared to the Romans, even when there was no flaw in point of form, an arbitrary and unjust proceeding. Far more restricted still was the power of the community in respect of the rights of property and the rights of family which were coincident, rather than merely connected, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... supper she dressed herself carefully in her blue, beaded crepe—for vanity is harder to quell than pride and Irene always saw any flaw or shortcoming in another girl's appearance. Besides, as Rilla had told her mother one day when she was nine years old, "It is easier to behave nicely when you have your ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conversation was resumed after Mr. Singleton had been requested to speak a little louder—there seemed some flaw ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... children are all left-handed. You have a flower on the left side of your hat, the other Susan has a flower on the right side of hers. Your brother there has buttons on the right side of his coat; the other John has buttons on the left side. There is a flaw in the looking-glass, and Drusilla, being a little taller than you two, was just tall enough for the end of her nose to be even with the flaw. That's the reason the other Drusilla's nose looks like it had been mashed with ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... always longed, during the past three years of boarding-house existence, for a settled abode, a place where she could lock the door on herself and be alone. The apartment was small, but it was undeniably a haven. She looked about her and could see no flaw in it... except... She had a sudden ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... shell dropped. It was on the same spot as all the others, but blow me if it didn't get three of them infantry. They fell squirmin' right on top o' us an' the instrument, so I concluded that spot wasn't as safe as the F.O. had reckoned, an' there was a flaw in 'is argument somewheres that the Coal-Box 'ad found out. The F.O. saw that too, an' we shifted out quick-time. After that things quietened down a bit, an' the short hairs on the back o' my neck had time to lie down. They stood on end again once or twice in the afternoon, when we'd ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... knees' grip-the great rearing war That frothed with lips flung up, and shook men's lives Off either flank of it like snow; I saw (You could not hear as his sword rang), saw him Shout, laugh, smite straight, and flaw the riven ranks, Move as the wind moves, and his horse's feet Stripe their long flags with dust. Why, if one died, To die so in the heart and heat of war Were a much goodlier thing than living soft And speaking sweet for fear of men. Woe's me, Is there no way to pluck ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... conclusions are found to be at variance with the highest views of Morality and Government, then the more logical the process by which they have been deduced, the more certain will it be that there is some fundamental flaw in the basis on which the whole superstructure is reared. In other cases, it might be doubtful how far the consequences that may seem to be deducible from a theory could be legitimately urged in argument, especially when these consequences are disavowed by the author of it; ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... on the road to the mountains. In the many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself, search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... years of dreadful restaurants gave me especial satisfaction, but alas! there was a flaw in my lute. We had to eat in our living room; and when I said "Mother, one of these days I'm going to move the kitchen to the south and build a real sure-enough dining room in between," she turned ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... land often became the property of those richer peasants, who borrow additional incomes from trade, or of outside traders, who buy land chiefly for exacting rack rents from the peasants. It must also be added that a flaw in the land redemption law of 1861 offered great facilities for buying peasants' lands at a very small expense,(36) and that the State officials mostly used their weighty influence in favour of individual as against communal ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... returned Jack, emphatically. "When we got caught in that flaw yesterday afternoon he wanted to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Britain, and despite his special pleading for Germany, Mr. Shaw can show no flaw in it. He does say, however, that the British Government, instead of first seeking a mild way of preserving peace, ought to have said point blank to Germany: "If you attack France we shall attack you." I also think that such a declaration would have been the right one. To me and to many ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Peacocke isn't going to take the curacy?" This, the very same question in the very same words, was put to the Doctor on the next morning by the vicar of the next parish. The Rev. Mr. Puddicombe, a clergyman without a flaw who did his duty excellently in every station of life, was one who would preach a sermon or take a whole service for a brother parson in distress, and never think of reckoning up that return sermons or return services were due to him,—one who gave dinners, too, ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... There was no deceiving his colonel's eyes, hang him! Whatever had induced fate to force this old Argus-eyed soldier upon the scene? He glanced into the kitchen mirror. He instantly saw the salient flaw in his dress. It was the cravat. Tie it as he would, it never approached the likeness of the conventional cravat of the waiter. It still remained a polished cravat, a worldly cravat, the cravat seen ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... as the sun shone on it, when they called it golden. He inherited the lines of his mother's features, however; also her good teeth, her stature (or the promise of her stature, for he was not yet full- grown), and, what was better, her health without flaw, and her spirits of that tone and equality which are better than ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... s'pose you can't help it. If 't wasn't for that you'd be just splendid, and they don't seem to mind—much—anyway," remarked Alfaretta, beaming upon pretty Molly with loving smiles. Molly's liking for "boys" seemed to honest, sensible Alfy the one flaw in ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... work upon a fractured or lost piece that may have been knocked off a projecting part of the scroll, there are other injuries likely to occur to this part of the instrument and caused in a variety of ways, some occasionally seeming mysterious in their origin. Thus from a weakness or flaw in the grain of the wood, or it may be from a blow having first started a crack and successive ones gradually increasing the fracture, the scroll itself will come away bodily, separating at the weakest part just behind the second turn. This is a delicate matter for manipulation. ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... like Aphrodite rising from the foam should have been seen to be realized—looking startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud, united throughout, the portion visible being the inner surface only, which, never before exposed, was white as snow, and without flaw or ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the master desperately, "have you considered what must inevitably happen if a flaw of wind should come round that point, at the critical moment, and break us off, as it ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... as he had hoped, leave Salem. He was an abstemious man, one of a family of long lives, and he would linger here, increasingly unimportant, for a great while, an old man in new epochs, isolated among strange people and prejudices. Whatever the cause—the small safety or an inward flaw—he had never been part of the corporate sweating humanity where, in the war of spirit and flesh, the vital ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... house,' he said quickly. 'I got it all arranged at once. Dain was to have sent the deed in last Tuesday night for you to sign, but he sent in a letter instead. That's why I had to go over and see him. There was some confounded hitch at the last moment, a flaw ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... this connection. As after the wedding the engagement ring is used as a guard to the wedding ring, it should be as handsome as possible, and a small, pure stone is a far better choice than a more showy one that may be a little off in color or possess a flaw. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... this morning's Times. You have never voiced the feeling of the moment with more force or keener insight. But you will, I am sure, pardon me when I say that in the fifty-eighth stanza there is a regrettable flaw, which could however quickly be put right. To me, that fine appeal to Monaco to give up its neutrality is impaired by the use of the word "cope," which I have always understood should be avoided by good writers. "Deal" has the same meaning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... as can be, but she's "Precious" to me, Though her conduct cannot be called free from a flaw; For in spite of blackmail, I have vowed ne'er to fail In the duty I owe to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend—and his only one then in London—Mr. Brentwick looked and was an ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... matchless Mr. Clark Russell—gets his most 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 ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... other to the number of 30. of their small boates, wherein were many people which passed from one shore to the other to come and see vs. (M336) And behold vpon the sudden (as is woont to fall out in sayling) a contrary flaw of wind comming from the sea, we were inforced to returne to our ship, leauing this lande to our great discontentment, for the great commodity and pleasantnesse thereof, which we suppose is not without some riches, all the hils shewing minerall waters ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... some particular. Therefore, while man is asleep, according as sense and imagination are free, so is the judgment of his intellect unfettered, though not entirely. Consequently, if a man syllogizes while asleep, when he wakes up he invariably recognizes a flaw in some ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... ghost it was, pass through unopened doors. The flaw in Trenholme's comfortable theory was that he had forgotten that the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place he found this door ajar, and neither in his own room, nor in the baggage room, nor in the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a safe dulness prove, Nor envy the proud heights of those who range above. Folly, sure friend of a misguided will, Affords a kind excuse for doing ill; And Socrates, that prudent, thinking tool, Had the gods lik'd him would have prov'd a fool. Methinks our author, when without a flaw, The graces of his mistress he does draw, Wishes (if Metempsychosis be true, And souls do change their case, and act anew), In his next life he only might aspire To the few brains of some soft country squire, Whose head with ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... manner his compass and his helm. What he wanted 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 do everything ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave it to you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go all the way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in your title? I tell you that the beginning and the root of your wealth is necessarily in injustice. And why? Because Nature did not make this man rich and that man poor from the start. Nature does not intend for one man to have capital ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... as much as another would a false quantity, and making 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 oftener quoted by our learned pedants than the "Odyssey" of Homer. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... doing so when Phil's needs cried so stridently aroused the direst apprehensions. They had all received from Amzi their exact proportion of their father's estate; even Waterman had never been able to find a flaw in the adjustment. Through Waterman they had learned that Lois's proper receipt was on file; they knew exactly the date on which it had been placed of record in the county clerk's office. They had looked upon this as the final closing of all the doors that shut ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... conscious weakness on their part," he remarked with great complacency, as he and Mr. Whitney were dining at the club on the following day. "They have evidently discovered some flaw in their defence which it will take some time to repair. I can afford to wait, however; my attorneys and experts will soon be here, and while our side could easily have been in readiness in a much shorter time, this, of course, will give us an opportunity for ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... 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
... cube-doublers, had seen their long-flouted theories proved to demonstration by one of the most learned and responsible men of science in the world, and one of their most sarcastic and hitherto successful flouters had been compelled to confess that he could find no flaw in the calculations of this mathematical Daniel so unexpectedly come to judgment. They did not understand his proofs, but that was no reason why they should reject them, and so they rose as one man ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... dead and 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
... inexpert handling of the little group, a long time before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly lowered, and landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious glance was cast at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a flaw of wind:—and even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and as the rope began to coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every eye was strained to discern the identity of the first voyagers in this aerial journey,—the two children, securely lashed to the chair. This ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that he could see in him—but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... will through blissful gentleness, Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points, But loving-kindly ever looks them down With the o'ercoming faith that still forgives; A love that shall be new and fresh each hour, As is the sunset's golden mystery, Or the sweet coming of the evening-star, Alike, and yet most unlike, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 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 had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... executed to give (fidelity granted) a notion of life as it is among the remarkable inhabitants of Utah. Nor let the connoisseur, who detects the shortcomings of some of these pictures, fancy that he has discovered a flaw in the armor of the doughty Artemus. That astute gentleman knows their worth as well as anybody else, and while he ostensibly extols them, as a showman is bound to do, he every now and then holds them up to ridicule in a vein of the deepest irony. In one case a palpable error of perspective, by ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... an opportunity of justifying herself! Another girl in Peggy's position might have blamed Arthur in return, and regarded herself as a martyr, but that was not Peggy's way. Far harder to bear than her own smart would have been the necessity of admitting a flaw in her idol. Her one desire was to justify Arthur, and place him beyond the reach of blame. Before she had taken twenty steps forward, she was ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... their smiles. She had a lonely assurance that she had never met the sister-soul (for such there must be by the score, as silent as she), who shared her rage and her detestations. Valeria, with all her native pride, regarded these as proof of a big flaw in an otherwise sound nature. Yet how deep, how passionately strong, these feelings were, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... "A flaw in what he had conceived to be the scheme of the universe," replied my master. "It annoys many people. The young man being annoyed, cast the fruits of his genius into the fire, tore up his purple and fine linen and smashed his furniture with a Crusader's ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... HOMER writes, For well-soal'd boots no less than fights, They ow'd that glory only to His ancestor, that made them so. Fast friend he was to REFORMATION, 430 Until 'twas worn quite out of fashion. Next rectifier of wry LAW, And wou'd make three to cure one flaw. Learned he was, and could take note, Transcribe, collect, translate, and quote. 435 But PREACHING was his chiefest talent, Or argument, in which b'ing valiant, He us'd to lay about and stickle, Like ram or bull, at conventicle: For disputants, like rams and bulls, 440 Do fight with ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and he would, if he were a true worshipper, feel that while God, on His part, already dwelt in the midst of the people, he, on the other hand, can only enter into the enjoyment of His presence by sacrifice. The offering was to be 'a male without blemish'; for bodily defect symbolising moral flaw could not be tolerated in the offerings to a holy God, who requires purity, and will not be put off with less than a man's best, be it ox or pigeon. 'The torn and the lame and the sick,' which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... it, as a painter had to name his picture. And in the case of music, he added, as in that of painting, the real question finally was not whether the suggestion of the title had been fully satisfied, but whether the picture were good painting and the composition good music. If it were good music, no flaw in the title and no disagreement between the title and the work could impair ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... inclined to limit himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... this, that, very early in his Portsmouth career, he should have been regarded at the bar of New Hampshire as the man to be employed against Jeremiah Mason, and his only fit antagonist. Mason was a vigilant, vigorous opponent,—sure to be well up in the law and the facts of a cause, sure to detect a flaw in the argument of opposing counsel. It was in keen encounters with this wary and learned man that Daniel Webster learned his profession; and this he always acknowledged. "If," he said ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... bedside of some dying man of rank;—the doctors to take the advantage of some incalculable chance of an exertion of nature—the lawyers to avail themselves of the barely possible occurrence of some legal flaw. Edward pressed into the court, which was extremely crowded; but by his arriving from the north, and his extreme eagerness and agitation, it was supposed he was a relation of the prisoners, and people made way ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... transparent and colourless; but if you continue to split and divide them further, you shall find at last that each plate shall appear most lovely tinged or imbued with a determinate colour. If, further, by any means you so flaw a pretty thick piece that one part begins to cleave a little from the other, and between these two there be gotten some pellucid medium, those laminated or pellucid bodies that fill that space shall exhibit several rainbows or coloured ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... 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 the steamer in going down ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... looks as though you'd broken down somehow. You didn't. From the day you came here, everyone looked for weaknesses. If there'd been a flaw, they'd have found it—and they'd have been on you till you came apart—or the flaw disappeared. We lose people ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... jib set, the Skylark occasionally put her scuppers under, but she was as stiff as Mount Desert itself, and only heeled over just so far, under any flaw ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palm-leaf fan tied with a black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that night, was: "It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in it. It would 'a' be'n perfect if there'd be'n anybody to shed tears. I come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and Mis' Butterfield ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the world," he admitted; but be contended there was a flaw in the argument; for that it was impossible to accept any religion on merely prudential grounds. And he then went on, in his curious way, to lament that an unreasonable candor prevented him from here taking advantage of an ingenious argument adopted by some of the modern ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... fingers, others by crushing it with a small pair of Plyers; which I had no sooner done, then the whole bulk of the drop flew violently, with a very brisk noise, into multitudes of small pieces, some of which were as small as dust, though in some there were remaining pieces pretty large, without any flaw at all, and others very much flaw'd, which by rubbing between ones fingers was easily reduced to dust; these dispersed every way so violently, that some of them pierced my skin. I could not find either ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the lawyer brother; While Salkeld still beknaves the parson, And says he cants to keep the farce on. Yet will I readily suppose They are not truly bitter foes, But only have their pleasant jokes, And banter, just like other folks. And thus, for so they quiz the law, Once on a time th' Attorney Flaw, A man to tell you, as the fact is, Of vast chicane, of course of practice; (But what profession can we trace Where none will not the corps disgrace? Seduced, perhaps, by roguish client, Who tempt ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... house, incessantly repeating to himself, 'World, I know you now.' What annoyed him most was, that having studied and re-studied the process during a whole month, without having discovered this important flaw, he could not understand how it had ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... sinking of the heart at the words, "save one wing under Thomas." Then the victory was not complete. It could be complete only when the whole Union army was driven from the field. As long as Thomas stood, there was a flaw in the triumph. He had heard many times of this man, Thomas. He had Grant's qualities. He was at his best ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... experienced an unprecedented happiness and satisfaction. There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly mended as was humanly possible. But after a season the stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries. Helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and since the time ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... however, appears to have found a flaw in Laplace's calculation, and to have shown that only half the observed retardation could be accounted for in the way he had suggested. There remains, therefore, the other half to be accounted for; and here, in the absence of all positive knowledge, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... then stepped aside to let his visitor precede him, at the same time glancing seaward to where the dark flaw of wind was ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... of reasoning," Cyril remarked. "There's scarcely a flaw in it, as you'll see by my account of the affair. After saying good-by to Prescott on the night I left the settlement, I went on until I was near the muskeg and had dismounted to camp when a stranger rode up. We sat talking for a while and I foolishly ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... most ingenious. But there is in this plan one flaw which no one has noted. I suppose that you, Maternus, evolved this really promising idea from pondering on what Claudius told us. All the hearsay about Rome and its festivals which ever came to the ears of all of us put together is as ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... proposition, namely, that Life, meaning by the word that sort of growth which takes place by means of a peculiar organization, consists in that sort of growth which is peculiar to organized life. Thirdly, the definition involves a still more egregious flaw in the reasoning, namely, that of cum hoc, ergo propter hoc (or the assumption of causation from mere coexistence); and this, too, in its very worst form. For it is not cum hoc solo, ergo propter hoc, which would in many cases supply a presumptive proof by induction, but cum hoc, et plurimis ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the ship; and they were now come nigh unto land; but there was yet a flaw of wind in their teeth. So then did Frithiof take the two bow oars again, and rowed full mightily. Therewith the weather brightened, and they saw that they were come out to Effia Sound, and so ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... his mere 'at they ca' Kelpie jist the pictur' o' the deil's ain horse 'at lay at the door an' watched, whan he flaw oot an' tuik ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... unexpected denouement, that they all sat mute and dumb-founded for some moments; both lawyer and clients being scarcely able to credit their own senses, and each hoping that the other had discovered some flaw in the testimony, by which it could be picked to pieces. But no such flaw or discrepancy could be discovered; and the testimony, after the severe and prolonged cross-examination to which it was subjected by the rallying and desperate attorney, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... moment ago. But I was afraid I might be a little slow. When you downed Laskar I watched you, trying to learn the secret of your draw. I didn't learn it, because there is no secret—you're just a natural gunslinger without a flaw. You're the fastest man with a gun I ever saw—and I'm taking my hat ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... window in disgust; he was looking at tomato-cans and cinder-heaps, and did not see fit to turn around. But the superintendent knew that he was hearing, and considered it necessary to cover the flaw in his argument. "Young man," said he, "you have violated several of the ordinances of ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... panes of the bottom sash were out altogether, and pine shingles, such as are used even at the present day for covering the roofs of dwelling houses, had been fitted into the squares, excluding air and light at the same time. The centre pane of this tier was, however, clear and free from flaw of every description. Opposite to the window blazed a cheerful wood fire, recently supplied with fuel; and at one of the inner corners of the room was placed a low uncurtained bed, that exhibited marks of having been lain in since it was last made. On a chair at its side were heaped a few dark-looking ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... so with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic hero as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien to him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to his destruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatal imperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds and degrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo, which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other the murderous ambition ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... upright life, had a right to expect to be happy. Happiness, "his being's end and aim," was his legitimate and covenanted reward. If God therefore was just, such a man would be happy; and inasmuch as God was just, the man who was not happy had not deserved to be. There is no flaw in this argument; and if it is unsound, the fallacy can only lie in the supposed right to happiness. It is idle to talk of inward consolations. Job felt them, but they were not everything. They did not relieve the anguish of his wounds; they did not make the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Maria about her to-morrow. Tom remembers that he was a fool last night, and knows what he thinks and always has thought to-day; but pretty Seraphina thinks he adores her, so that no matter what she does he will never see a flaw, she is sure of that,—poor little puss! She does not know that philosophic Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will do for him to take of the stimulus without interfering with ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... basement door gleefully. All seemed propitious, yet he meant once more and carefully to examine the preparations he had made, to see if there was any flaw anywhere. He was so absorbed, so excited, that he scarcely breathed as he crept slowly along the inside of the wall, just as a moment before he had passed along its outer surface. At one spot he paused and tried a simple-looking tube that had been brought from the outside, through a convenient ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 general of the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... at these entertainments great ladies and courtesans brushed beautiful shoulders in utmost familiarity, but those who delighted in the high charm of society probably shook their heads. We need not, however, find it a flaw in Georges social bearing that he did not check this kind of freedom. At the first, as a young man full of life, of course he took everything as it came, joyfully. No one knew better than he did, in later life, that there is a time for ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Herschel's glass) in diameter; weighing 14,826 pounds, or nearly seven tons, after being polished, and possessing a magnifying power of 42,000 times!—a perfectly pure, spotless, achromatic lens, without a material bubble or flaw! ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked, Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows— These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 superiority ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... those who, like Alick, could bear the sin of the beloved as the sacrifice of pride, of self, of soul to that love. He himself might be stained from head to heel with the soil of sin, but his wife must be, as has been said, without flaw or blemish, immaculate and free from fault. Any lapse, involving the loss of repute should it ever be made public, would have been the death-knell of his hopes, the requiem of his love; but such an infamy as this! If true it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... gale in no way abating. I watched the mountain seas till I grew weary of looking at them; still I learned to feel perfectly secure—a sensation I was at first very far from experiencing. Yet much, if not everything, depended on the soundness of our spars and rigging: a flaw in the wood or rope might be the cause of our destruction. I went below at meal-time, but I hurried again on deck, fascinated by the scene, though I would gladly have shut it out from my sight. At length, towards night, literally wearied with the exertion of keeping ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force or slight; But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall, Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... pieces 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 Fairclose and we ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... 'Though my dejection,' he says, 'honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life must be a flaw in life itself; and that the question was whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free, and in a state of physical ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... Antiche," the first Italian collection of short stories, made in the 13th century, where a prisoner informs the king of Greece that a certain horse has been suckled by a she-ass, that a jewel contains a flaw, and that the king himself is a baker. Mr. Tawney, in a note on the Vetala story, as above, refers also to the decisions of Hamlet in Saxo Grammaticus, 1839, p. 138, in Simrock's "Quellen des Shakespeare," I, 81-85; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "Flaw in the mirror, sir; when you move your 'ed, you do ketch that effect. I've observed it myself frequent. Chin cut, sir? My fault—my fault entirely," ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... rigging, for Ben had superintended the fitting out of the vessel, and set up each shroud and stay, and carefully examined every inch of her masts and yards, so that he felt confident that not a flaw existed. In a short time the helm was put up and the yacht stood for the passage between the Land's End and the Scilly Isles, guided by the two magnificent lights, the Longships on the starboard bow and those of the light vessel off the Seven Stones ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, for there were no words to describe the magnitude of it. 'An' young Bannister's sayin' it's no more than a superfeecial flaw!' ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling |
