"Foible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dancing to Daddy's music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... that philosophical study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to be on the best possible terms with her. She is never justified of her children, and, like Byron's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... views, as she used to call them: while I was for considering the liberties he took of this sort, as the effect of a temporary pleasantry, which, in a young man, not naturally good-humoured, I was glad to see; or as a foible that deserved raillery, but no ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... replete with the usual quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, 'Mind the edge of the carpet'; and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little hysterically—all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber bands, which ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... which had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case. "You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and gratitude, and all those swimmy ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of approval from the gray heads, Daddy was soon off at a tangent in playful fancy, hitting off a foible or "celebrating truth and justice" in one of the unconscious epigrams which it is sought herein to preserve, even when having occasionally to hammer them into shape, for, while Daddy was almost unerring in rhyme, his rhythm, ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... been putting my things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... came to the "Packhorse" now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart, that Griffith's foible could not burn him, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... of praise is in some instances a ridiculous, and in others a mischievous passion; that to it we owe the breed of coquettes and coxcombs, and, a more serious evil, the noxious race of heroes and conquerors. We too are ready, when it appears in the shape of vanity, to smile at it as a foible, or in that of false glory, to condemn it as a crime. But all these are only its perversions; and on account of them to contend against its true forms, and its legitimate exercise, were to give into the very error which you formerly yourself condemned, of arguing against the use ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the gout, Messer Bartolommeo's felicity was far from perfect: it was embittered by the contents of certain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of a correspondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible at that period (incredible as it may seem) to recite quarrels, and favour scholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthy correspondence; and this was neither the first nor the second, time that Scala had asked the candid ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little hands and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... neatness was more like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so. 'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly no ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... invariable effect of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none more ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... enthusiasm with which this old officer spoke of his profession, and the high point of view in which he placed it, increased our hero's desire to serve a campaign abroad. Good sense, politeness, and experience of the world preserved Count O'Halloran from that foible with which old officers are commonly reproached, of talking continually of their own military exploits. Though retired from the world, he had contrived, by reading the best books, and corresponding with persons of good information, to keep up with the current of modern affairs; ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular writers in his realistic pictures of village love. But though the satirist might find ample scope for his wit in anatomizing the foible of the day, fashionable society continued none the less to encourage the exquisite inanity, and to be flattered by the elegant obscurity, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... composition is pride, which, according to the doctrine of some, is the universal passion. There are others who consider it as the foible of great minds; and others again who will have it to be the very foundation of greatness; and perhaps it may of that greatness which we have endeavoured to expose in many parts of these works; but to real greatness, which is the union of a good heart with a good head, it is almost diametrically ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the morning was suddenly transformed, and fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... looked rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion, and if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of stuffs, surely those numerous straight folds invested her with a great dignity. There may have been some lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so much ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and—of reading. She reads incessantly and enormously; and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has omniscience for a foible and oratory ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... told her; there was no need for you to write or to trouble yourself in any way. I am afraid my mother is rather exacting; it is a Blake foible.' He smiled as he spoke, and there was no special meaning in his tone; he seemed to take it as a matter of course that Audrey's visits to the Cottage had ceased. 'It will be all right,' he said, as he put the letter in his breast-pocket; and then he stopped and called some boy ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... letter-writer, and habitually think of the uncertainty as to who may be the reader of anything that I write. It is my fate, as a writer of history, to have before me letters never intended for my eyes, and this has aggravated my foible, and makes me a wretched correspondent. I should like very much to write letters gracefully and easily, but I can't, because it is contrary to my nature." "I have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... lady who was presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert's en bon point, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This extended to a "declining love" between him and the Prince, whose foible was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... one had heard him. The men moved on and struck into the rutted track leading from the batteries to camp. He turned and followed them in a brown study. Ever since Badajoz, siege operations had been Sergeant Wilkes's foible. His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent parallels, traverses, rampart and glacis, scarp and counterscarp. But he had mastered something ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... has given me time to form a correct judgment of you—and at the very time that my husband was trying to discover some foible in you he might make use of, or what evil passions he might rouse in you, I looked in your heart and discerned that it still contained good feelings which eventually may ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Eleanor's cheeks only relieved her white drapery to perfection; and her beautiful hair and faultless figure harmonized with flowing folds and soft laces which can do so much for outlines that are not soft. Eleanor was not without a consciousness of this; nevertheless, vanity was not her foible; and her state of mind was anything but enviable when she left the dressing-room for the gallery. But Mr. Carlisle was there, to meet her and her mood too; and Eleanor found herself taken in hand at once. He had a way of mixing affection with ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... while his friends were admiring the "greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... all forces to bear in the right way—a man of consummate adroitness, to sail in torpedo-sown waters without exciting an explosion, though conducting wires of local prejudice, class sensitiveness, and personal foible on every hand led straight down to magazines of wrath which might shatter the cause in a moment—a man having resources of his own to such an extent that he could supplement from himself what was wanting in others—always awake, though others might want ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... generally conceded, in spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the woman taken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... waiting, even at what is called the best, the Bauer-Gruenwald, say, or the Pilsen, is leisurely. Add to this that the guests receive no welcome, partly because, all the places being understaffed, no one can be spared for that friendly office, and partly because politeness is not a Venetian foible. An immense interval then elapses before the lista, or bill of fare, is brought, partly because there is no waiter disengaged and partly because there seems to be a law in Venetian restaurants that one lista shall suffice for ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... fail. Then, more than ever, did he entertain and plan new schemes, as if to persuade himself that he had unlimited time before him in which to execute them. His flatterers knew how to play upon his weakness, and they never failed to do so. Perhaps this foible explains the influence which Doctor Jameson undoubtedly exercised upon the mind of Rhodes. He believed himself to be in safety whenever Jameson was about him. And so in a certain sense he was, because, with all his faults, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... It was the foible of Harvey to wish to conceal the humble avocation of his father: this forms a perpetual source of the bitterness or the pleasantry of Nash, who, indeed, calls his pamphlet "a full answer to the eldest son of the halter maker," which, he says, "is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of paper. Each one wants a certificate showing that he has contributed to my comfort and entertainment, and lastly comes the nawab himself and his bosom friend, the hospital doctor, to bid me farewell and request the same favor. This certificate-foible is one of the greatest bores in India; almost every native who performs any service for a Sahib, whether in the capacity of a mere waiter at a native hotel, or as retainer of some wealthy nabob—and not infrequently the nabob himself, if a government official—wants ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the third time you have spoken about her figure to-day," said Helen, irritably. "What on earth can you see in it?" for Mrs. Romer, who was slight almost to angularity, was, as all thin women are, openly indignant at the masculine foible for more flowing outlines, which was displayed with greater candour than discretion ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... prosper you!" The other gave him a crownpiece, and desired him to keep it for his sake. Had he given him a hundred crowns they would have been nothing to the honied words of the former. In truth, the leading foible of Hodgkinson through life, was vanity—the great taproot of all his irregularities and errors. He was quite agog to learn who those two men might be: he asked, but no one knew them—they were strangers. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... and have played a better party game, it is perhaps fortunate for the country, and certainly happy for his own reputation, that his virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally useless or improper. He never ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... glaring faults, some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foible, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Suppose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him with a one-sided and hostile ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... aware, Mrs. Creighton, that false taste is always a very expensive foible," said Mr. Wyllys; "for it looks upon ornament and improvement as the same thing. My neighbour, Mr. Taylor, certainly has as much of that spirit as any man I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the intemperate spirit exhibited, which destroyed the effect of the shrewd and just comments often appearing in "Home as Found." This was full as much impaired by the display of personal weaknesses. Cooper's foible about descent he could not help exposing. No thoughtful man denies the desirability of honorable lineage, or undervalues the possession of it; but not for the reasons for which the novelist regarded ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... There lies my foible, I confess; no fortifications, no courage, conduct, nor vigilancy, can pretend to defend a place where the cruelty of the governor forces ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... a fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... boards over the dividing screen, so that the chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... The prevailing foible of a nation is generally to be found in the proverbs of the country and of those adjacent. The Genevese appear to have the credit of excelling the Swiss generally: they say here, "Il faut trois Juifs pour faire un Baslois, et trois Baslois ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. "These experiments in costume are a foible with me." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... put in a plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, one might descant on certain auxiliary advantages—as, that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely to foster actions of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' consortment,—consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... shrewd foreigner as saying of Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech," he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foible especially of American youth to be—pretension; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages is imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... his lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... at all, with a soul centred on sport. His second son, Anthony, between five and six, was large and robust, like his father. Not having been polished at that time, it is hard to say what sort of gem Tony was. When engaged in mischief—his besetting foible—his eyes shone like carbuncles with unholy light. He was the plague of the family. Of course, therefore, he was ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... of pseudos. After all, it was nothing for an illiterate fool like you to take such a fancy into his head, and walk about with his chin in the air, aping the gait and dress and expression of his supposed model: even the Epirot king Pyrrhus, remarkable man that he was in other respects, had the same foible, and was persuaded by his flatterers that he was like Alexander, Alexander the Great, that is. In point of fact, I have seen Pyrrhus's portrait, and the two—to borrow a musical phrase— are about as much like one another as bass and treble; and yet he was convinced he was the image of Alexander. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... evil; and all evils were about of equal magnitude. Besides, in attacking an evil or an abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... James's presence in Manchester was not accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy. He concluded that it was a foible of the legal mind. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... he had his weak points; but in speaking of these, I must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy: which was one of his strong points—"assurement ce n' etait pas sa foible." When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him. He was great in dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. He was excessively punctilious, too, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion; and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible. To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them alone for the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... see," she dried her eyes on a handkerchief of costliest lace, "you see my—that is, the Duchess, is of such a romantic temperament, so enamoured of rural scenes, idyllic meadows, pretty shepherdesses, and the like—all the court makes merry at her foible. She thought to astonish Paris to-night by a lavish display of sweet simplicity—did Monsieur see it? That big dark place back there, behind the glass partition, was arranged as a meadow, with a stream winding through it, and rocks ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... first encounter with the man, after his long expiation had ended, willing to add at least a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I can analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reason and experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out of him, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls the light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but it does not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sage reflection, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... James Bisset's foible. Of some subjects, such as buttling, carpentry, and mending bicycles, it was practical; of others, such as shooting, gardening, and motoring, it was more theoretical. To Sir Reginald and my lady he was quite indispensable, for he could repair almost anything, knew his ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... king and court. Let me die, but I fear they have found my foible, and will turn me into ridicule. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... you to be on your guard against that intellectual foible, which I believe has held me back in a region of sadness and solitude that I need not have ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... could not help saying to Mrs. Bretton. That lady had her own "comfort" and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and, for the moment, absent; so she sympathised with his foible. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fame most congenial to Borrow's strange nature. Dinners, receptions, and the like caused him to despise those who found pleasure in such "crazy admiration for what they called gentility." It was his foible, as much as "gentility nonsense" was theirs, to find pleasure in the role of the mysterious stranger, who by a word could change a disdainful gypsy into a fawning, awe- stricken slave. Fame to satisfy George Borrow must carry with it something ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... than when he had not come by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, we remarked, only on such occasions that Donald talked with an air of importance of the family of MacLeish; and we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring a foible, the consequences of which were confined within such ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great Nabob's that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents—you understand me? I set out double charged ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Genoises peuvent venir y mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... juries. He became a very profound lawyer, always mastering the learning of the case, but never leaning too much upon authorities. Charles Emerson's beautiful phrase in his epitaph upon Professor Ashmun, "Books were his helpers, never his masters," was most aptly applied to Thomas. If he had any foible which affected at all his usefulness or success in life it was an impatience of authority, whether it were the authority of a great reputation, or of party, or of public sentiment, or of the established and settled opinions of mankind. He went on the Supreme Bench ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tanned fellow, nearly forty—eldest of the party—whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north, which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little feared—except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered that it was necessary to have one or more "pardners." It seemed, from ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... WILLIAM is a rubber—not of whist, bien entendu, but of men. In build WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly understands London and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... best of living creatures (as so many of us are), but he has one detestable foible—he always wants to read something aloud. Now, reading aloud is a very special gift. Few men have it, and even of those few there are some who do not force it upon their friends; the rest have it not, and Leeson ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... is explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is, a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery, renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... there at that particular instant. There was no blinking the fact that Ralston had enjoyed Paul's discomfiture, and his talk of the previous night came back to mind—the fun he had made of the Isolated Soul; his good-humoured allowance for the one foible in the character of a lady whom he had known from childhood, and for whom he professed both affection and esteem. It matters not how impossible a suggestion of this kind may seem to a lover's mind. His ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... you are, search into the characters of men; find out, if possible, their foible, their governing; passion, or their particular merit; take them on their weak side, and you will generally succeed: their prevailing vanity you may readily discover, by observing; their favourite topic of conversation, for every one talks most of what he would ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hear with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honored him,—except his son. Then I took him round the ruins (still not suffering him to enter the house); for those ruins are the key to Roland's character,—seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family pride. There, you distinguish it from the insolent boasts of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the pious reverence to the dead, "the tender culture of the tomb." We sat down on heaps of mouldering stone, and it was there that I explained ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... degree, and if they possess at the same time the art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes sought to a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... annoyed. Wellingsford was my little world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby—it was a foible, a vanity, what you will—of my omniscience. I knew months ahead the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who were jilted; of wives who led their husbands a deuce of a dance, and of wives who ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... them gregarious influences, and all of them contagious—may decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... one of which, "Damnation to the dogfish," gave opportunity to a wag, seated near the piper, to play upon the old man's well known foible by adding, "an' Cawmill o' Glenlyon;" whereupon Duncan, who had by this time taken more whisky than was good for him, rose, and made a rambling speech, in which he returned thanks for the imprecation, adding thereto the hope that never might one of the brood accursed go down ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of the island, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... once surprised and charmed with the choice of attitudes in both, I cannot be blind to the defects that stain as well the painting as the scene: there was always what the judges call a dryness, a hardness in the painter, and the same foible now and then discloses itself in the less guarded moments of the player: neither the one nor the other seem to have been perfect masters of the doctrine of lights and shadows, and both are therefore sometimes extravagant, and not always graceful: this happy difference, however, appears ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... what is to come, that even the last generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... with the minute finish of a miniature; it shows how Shakespeare had studied every fold and foible of Mary Fitton's soul. In the third act Cleopatra takes up again the theme of Octavia's appearance, only to run down her rival, and so salve her wounded vanity and cheat her heart to hope. The messenger, too, who lends himself to her ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Egyptian appealed to Ione's ruling foible—most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, he now led ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the relative respectability of the hair and the scalp, close neighbors, offspring of the same osseous tissue? Turn to baldness and dandruff, and you have your answer. To be bald is no more than a genial jocosity, a harmless foible—but to have dandruff is almost as bad as to have beri-beri. Hence the fact that the hair is in Class I, while the scalp is at the bottom of Class V. So again and again. To break one's collar-bone (Class II) is to be in harmony with the nobility and ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can rest peacefully ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the advent of a London pedler was a great and pleasant event at the Manor House. Katherine had that delightful and excusable womanly foible, a love of fine clothing; and shops for its sale were very rare, even in towns of considerable size. It was from packmen and hawkers that fine ladies bought their laces and ribbons and gloves; their precious toilet and hair pins, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... expectations, and very amusing qualifications. Horace is a strange composition of all the good-natured whimsicalities of human nature, happily blended together without any very conspicuous counteracting foible. Facetious, lively, and poetical, the cream of every thing that is agreeable, society cannot be dull if Horace lends his presence. His imitations of Anacreon, and the soft bard of Erin, have on many occasions puzzled the cognoscenti of Eton. Like Moore too, he both composes ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Englander is bravely free from it, while it is not unknown in Alaska or Japan. From such an over-conscientious conscience, and from its incidents and its counterfeits, there is bred a redundancy of verbal moralising. That was not a foible of Lincoln. The sense of moral obligation underlies his weightier utterances, as the law of gravitation underlies scientific demonstrations,—not ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... none too much wit in her pumpion-pate, observed:—"Did you but know by whom my charms are prized, then, for sure, you would have nought to say of the rest." Her gossip, all agog to hear, for well she knew her foible, answered:—"Madam, it may be as you say, but still, while one knows not who he may be, one cannot alter one's mind so rapidly." Whereupon my Lady Featherbrain:—"Gossip," said she, "'tis not for common talk, but he that I wot of is ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent, to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... is "one of the unloveliest female portraits ever traced." Mr. Watkinson is the opposite of a ladies' man. Gallantry was never his foible. He hates female Freethinkers with a perfect hatred. He pours out on Harriet Martineau his whole vocabulary of abuse. But it is, after all, difficult to see what he is in such a passion about. Harriet Martineau had no sexual sins, no dubious relations, no skeleton ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... always been Dr. Ellison's foible. In the beginning of the great antislavery agitation, he had exchanged letters (corresponded, he used to say) with John Quincy Adams on the subject of Lovejoy's murder; and he had met several Boston men at the Free Soil Convention in Buffalo in 1848. "A little formal perhaps, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sit talking about love to each other!" The gentleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... is it, that we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as the winds" is our death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds un-fickle? Would a perpetual Northeaster lay us open to perpetual gratitude? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Troubadourish "Partant pour la Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Recamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any celebrity not being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... was the consistent and unflinching supporter of religious liberty and constitutional law. The battle of Heiliger Lee and the capture of Mons were his most signal triumphs, but the fruits of both were annihilated by subsequent disaster. His headlong courage was his chief foible. The French accused him of losing the battle of Moncontour by his impatience to engage; yet they acknowledged that to his masterly conduct it was owing that their retreat was effected in so successful, and even so brilliant a manner. He was censured for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vois, victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis pour ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thinking anyway. His hair was thinning rapidly at the top, as if his brain was struggling to get as near as possible to the realities of things. He prided himself on having no fads. Few men are without some foible or hobby; Crowl felt almost lonely at times in his superiority. He was a Vegetarian, a Secularist, a Blue Ribbonite, a Republican, and an Anti-tobacconist. Meat was a fad. Drink was a fad. Religion was a fad. Monarchy was a fad. Tobacco was a fad. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... knew his father's foible, answered, that the cause of his surprise did not lie where Sir Robert apprehended, but that he only wondered they should think of attacking a house where there were so many servants, and where a signal to the neighbouring tenants could call in such strong assistance; and added, that he ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that I dare to say it, all my life will I live in your presence, and trust to your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great is ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... contradictions and falsities and hypocrisies which come every morning and go every night,—all these would soon have been to you—oh! I'm afraid they'd have been as big as a herd of buffalo! There would have been a bull fight for every foible." ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... his own, where they probably would have been readily adopted, as being so much in their own way. But I never found that he used the least endeavour to make himself master of any one. This kind of indifference is indeed the characteristic foible of his nation. Europeans have visited them at times for these ten years past, yet we could not discover the slightest trace of any attempt to profit by this intercourse, nor have they hitherto copied after us in any one thing. We are not, therefore, to expert that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge of Nesselrode's motives what would have been his conduct ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with all his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... circulating library into Scotland, and among his other enterprises was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a theatre in Edin. On the whole his life was a happy and successful one, and he had the advantage of a cheerful, sanguine, and contented spirit. His foible was ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... myself in Bell's little shop on the quay. {9} You know the man by report at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar say, from an epigram in the Anthology?), and you and I will scarce throw ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... characters traced by experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept up to ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause of the pain being mysterious, they went back to first principles ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... benefit. Napoleon visited her very frequently, and always treated her with the respect to which she was entitled. He added also to her dowry a third million of francs, that she might feel no inconvenience from the habits of expense to which it was her foible to be addicted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... to hide a scowl of irritation. Alice Webster was her friend, and she disliked having her display herself in her worst light. She knew her to be a warm-hearted, honorable girl whose gravest fault, which, after all, might be only a foible, was her tendency to turn coquettish when she was in the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... addicted myself to expense and pleasure, that now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late. I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business, but it always was, and I fear will ever be, my foible that after I am once got behind-hand with business, I am hard to set to it again to recover it. In the evening I begun to look over my accounts and upon the whole I do find myself, by what I can yet see, worth near L600, for which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... it some day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken pity on me the last few summers, and I think she loves it as much ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... Socialist, State bred. There are enormous handicaps at every other social level upon efficient parentage, and upon the training of children for any public and generous end. Parentage is treated as a private foible, and those who undertake its solemn responsibilities are put at every sort of disadvantage against those who lead sterile lives, who give all their strength and resources to vanity and socially harmful personal indulgence. These latter, with an ampler leisure and ampler means, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... knew I loved her like a good sister. The other I worshipped as an angel: and as soon as she ceased to be an angel for me, as a mere woman I felt none of the former fire towards her: nothing remained, not even smoke nor ashes. But this girl, whose every foible I know, whose beauty was enhanced by no reverie, whom I only saw as she really is,—I love her now, as a faithful woman, who repays love in true coin: and I shall marry her—not out of gratitude, but because she has ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... inferior in a general way to Edouard Riviere, would have made a sensible reply to this. Such as, "Oh, any friend of yours, mademoiselle, must be welcome to me," or the like. But the proposal caught Edouard on his foible, his vanity, to wit; and our foibles are our manias. He was mortified to the heart's core. "She refuses to know me herself," thought he, "but she will use my love to make me amuse that old man." His heart swelled against her injustice and ingratitude, and his crushed vanity ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of a very black kind, into this work. To which I shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene: and, lastly, they never produce ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... foible. Essex long has had An interest in her heart, which nothing can O'erturn, except his own ungovern'd spirit: It is, indeed, the instrument by which We work, and cannot fail, if ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones |
