"Weak point" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was Queen of the States. Another poor fellow, gentlemanly in appearance, said it was a hard run between him and Prince Albert who should have the Queen of England. He had written and received several letters from her. I discovered they had all some weak point, and the doctor gave me the cue. I felt quite at ease amongst them: nearly all are unrestrained; and, strange to say, they never talk to each other, or molest each other in any way. We then visited the House of Correction for the State, where about three-fourths ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... that his weak point was slowness of recovery. His thrusts were quick and well planted, he had an excellent guard and mastery of the weapon; but he was slow in recovering after making a lunge, and the longer the fight continued the more evident did this defect become. And it was plain that ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on the side of the husband. Quite as often is a devoted, patient, good-tempered man harassed and hunted and baited by the inconsiderate fault-finding of a wife whose principal talent seems to lie in the ability at first glance to discover and make manifest the weak point in everything. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... please, how you select your election officials in your large cities. Our mode of selection is really the weak point with us, for no matter how good a law we might procure, its enforcement would be left to "boss" tools—corruptionists of the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... that the body had been found?" asked De Chauxville, perceiving the weak point in his companion's chain ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Mr. Hamblin, looking upon the floor of the carriage; for this, he was conscious, was his weak point. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... Bada[EN150] the centre of Thamuditis, as it was at the time of Pliny and Ptolemy, and as it continued to be until the Balee (Baliyy), and other Qodha' (Kuda') tribes, came from Southern Arabia, and exterminated the Thamudites?" This is, doubtless, a valid objection: its only weak point is that it goes too far back. We cannot be Conservatives in geography and ethnology; nor can we attach much importance, in the nineteenth century, to a race, the Beni Tamud, which had wholly disappeared before the seventh. On the whole, it still appears to me that ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the premise which does not appear. In an enthymeme, great care should be taken with the suppressed premise. Be sure it is true when you use this form of argument, and be sure to look for it and state it in full when examining another's argument. It is a common way of hiding a weak point to cover it in the suppressed premise ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... at this stage abruptly. Evidently each had touched on the other's weak point, so both tacitly agreed ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... I could give as favourable a view of the parental relations. They are undeniably the weak point of family life in the colonies. During childhood a certain obedience is of course enforced; but public feeling is strong in favour of the naughty boy and wilful girl, looking as it does upon these qualities ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... who look for a real advance in household science the weak point of the present situation is the want of proper correlation and standardisation of the work going on. The Board of Education does not examine; it accepts the diploma given by any one of a fairly large number of domestic science schools. In consequence, teachers from different quarters may be ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... removal. The Lieutenant-Governor insisted it was not only legal, but absolutely necessary, and he lamely concluded by saying the soldiers were not under his control. Then it was Master Adams took advantage of this weak point in His Excellency's remarks, to say that if he had the power to remove one, he could remove both regiments, and he added—I can well fancy with what power—'A multitude, highly incensed, now awaits the result of this application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands that ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... to have forgotten the gloves! Gloves are the weak point of a grisette's costume. To be fresh, they must be renewed often, but they cost the price of two days' work. Hers were, O horror! imitation Swedish, which truth compels me to value at nineteen ha'-pennies, or ninety-five centimes, to conform to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... (judging from Mr. Choate's own practice, as displayed in the parts of his oration which we are sure he will one day wish to blot) would seem to be, that, having the honor of her acquaintance, they may apply very contemptuous epithets to everybody that disagrees with them. The only weak point in our case is, that Mr. Choate himself seems to allow them the one merit of knowing something of Geography,—for he says they wished to elect a "geographical President,"—but, perhaps, as they did not succeed in doing so, he will forgive them the possession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... trifle, a drop in the bucket, when looked at beside other dark and ruthless deeds which he had witnessed, and even actually aided in. But hard, pitiless, utterly impervious to human suffering as he had become, there was one point in Laurence Stanninghame's character—a weak point, he regarded it—which he had never succeeded in eradicating. He could not forget or ignore a good turn. These people, monstrous, repulsive as they were in his sight, had saved his life—twice indeed—the first time unconsciously from the Ba-gcatya, the second time ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... any other would not have looked well. After the severe and bald west fronts in Provence, I was disposed, I suppose, to be pleased with the rich facade at Vienne. I confess that "clumsy and without delicacy" though it might be, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But that facade caught me quite by my weak point. There is a central doorway, and one into each aisle, and round the archways into these lateral doors are sculptured angels playing upon musical instruments. As I have told the reader, ancient forms of musical instruments ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... it is not certain that the minister of justice can secure a conviction. Sometimes the judge of inquiry is as anxious as the accused himself. Nearly all crimes are in some particular point mysterious, perhaps impenetrable to justice and the police; and the duty of the advocate is, to discover this weak point, and thereon establish his client's defence. By pointing out this doubt to the jury, he insinuates in their minds a distrust of the entire evidence; and frequently the detection of a distorted induction, cleverly exposed, can change the face of a ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... experience of authors. It is not always the fault of the critics. They sometimes deal honestly and fairly by a book, and not so often they deal adequately. But in making a book, if it is at all a good book, the author has learned all that is knowable about it, and every strong point and every weak point in it, far more accurately than any one else can possibly learn them. He has learned to do better than well for the future; but if his book is bad, he cannot be taught anything about it from the outside. It will perish; and if he has not the root of literature in him, he will perish as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that was generous! "No salt to it; but a fair supplement of brandy. Browne, from his bed of pain (died 26th June), had been strongly urgent. Aim is, To force the Prussian lines, by determination and the help of darkness, in some weak point: the whole Army, standing ranked on the walls, shall follow, if things go well; and storm itself through,—away Daun-wards, across the River by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... for a port or an exit, it was necessary to bring these two skins close together at the desired point, and strengthen this weak point with many braces. As a further protection against an emergency—and a fighting ship must be prepared against all emergencies—the ports were all shuttered with massive doors of solid metal, hermetically fitted. I am ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... designated to uphold the negative, and for an hour we argued the matter pro and con. Whinney advanced a number of arguments, the difference in our nationalities, our standing in our home communities (which I thought an especially weak point), our lack of a common language, and several other trivial objections, all of which Swank and I demolished until Whinney got peevish and insisted that he and I ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... A weak point in the first Marconi apparatus was that anybody within the working radius of the sending-instrument could read its messages. To modify this objection secret codes were at times employed, as in commerce and diplomacy. A complete deliverance from this difficulty is promised ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... often occurs in pregnancy, with symptoms orchestrating from mild notes like nausea and vomiting to the high keys of convulsions and insanities. They represent what happens when an unbalanced endocrine system is attacked by the placenta. Depending upon where in the internal secretion chain the weak point, the Achilles' heel spot, will be found, the nature of the reaction will vary. And even after labor, after the explosive crisis, so much of the reserve endocrine materials may be consumed, that an actual mania or a chronic weakness may come in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... permitted to hang down, reached to the small of their backs, and gave them the appearance of Chinese mandarins, or Turkish pachas of a single tail. These tails were their pets the only ornaments about their persons for which they manifested any interest. This pride in their queues was the weak point in their characters. Every Sunday they performed on each other the operation of manipulating the pendulous ornaments, straightening them out like magnified marlinspikes, and binding them with ribbons or rope-yarns, tastily fastened at the extremity ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... when they were alone; and he could even ask her to play his accompaniment for him, since Lucy's fingers were so busy with that bazaar-work, and lecture her on hurrying the tempo, which was certainly Maggie's weak point. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... our position at Romani. Here our left flank rested on the sea; the left of the line was held by the 52nd Division, while the 53rd Division was on the right. The East Lancashire Division was in reserve. The right flank comprised a chain of posts, behind which were a force of cavalry. The weak point was, therefore, our right flank, for a little force working round by the south would threaten our communications and might possibly cut us off from our reinforcements down the line and from our base at Kantara. Accordingly, on the night of the 3rd/4th, one Light Horse Brigade ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... cut on the bias, and laid on to imitate tucks," Matilda repeated. I think she was not sorry there should be some weak point in the fashionable mourning in which ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... not answer, but paced up and down the room, eyeing the ambassador keenly, and endeavoring to detect some weak point in his manner of cynicism and audacity. Then speaking in the calm tone of a man who had made up ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Desprez, still humbly, but with a return of spirit at sight of a distinction to be drawn; "pardon me, Casimir. You possess, even to an eminent degree, the commercial imagination. It was the lack of that in me—it appears it is my weak point—that has led to these repeated shocks. By the commercial imagination the financier forecasts the destiny of his investments, marks ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conditions. A heavy gale was blowing on the Belgian coast and British naval support was impossible. The Germans enjoyed the advantage of having strong coast batteries all along the dunes which they could move about at will from one point to another. There was, however, no blinking the fact that a weak point existed in the British defenses. Such success as the Germans won was attributed by some critics to their superiority in the air, the British at the time ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... now been pushed forward against the outworks of Finnish freedom, an assault was prepared against the ramparts—the constitution itself. The assailants discovered in it a weak point, a lack of clearness in the clauses specifying the procedure to be followed in matters where common action had to be taken in Finland and in Russia. They saw here a chance of setting up an independent authority, which, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... continues still to be made, though in a rather less degree,—that the soldiers are relatively superior to the officers, so that the officers lead, perhaps, but do not command them. The reason is plain. Three years are not long enough to overcome the settled habits of twenty years. The weak point of our volunteer service invariably lies here, that the soldier, in nine cases out of ten, utterly detests being commanded, while the officer, in his turn, equally shrinks from commanding. War, to both, is an episode in life, not a profession, and therefore military ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... conscious of the necessity of some such institution as slavery, by way of basis for his beautiful life according to nature. The celestial purity and felicity of St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia are sustained by the labour of two faithful slaves. A weak point of Cowper's philosophy, taken apart from his own saving activity as a poet, betrays itself in ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... believed it safe to allow the young, either girl or boy. This freedom is of course the logical result of what we call the "emancipation of women." It is the swinging of the pendulum from the old system of chaperonage and authority. The weak point is in the fact that the girl has not knowledge enough for her freedom. It is not a return of the old system of guarded girls which is needed. That is impossible under modern conditions, out of harmony with modern ideas. The great need is that the women of the country realize that freedom ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... drawings and had received from them a hint for the discovery and ask him if he were willing to share with him, Walter, in the result if the lamp proved worth while financially. But here was Walter's weak point. He was proud of his technical knowledge. Already it was conceded by all the students in the electrical engineering department that Douglas of Milton was the star. The instructors had given him special notice. He had already made one or two very valuable and ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... we studied last we found the Apostle coming to the weak point of the Christian life of the Philippians. On the whole, he was full of thankful and happy thoughts about them. Theirs was no lukewarm religion; it abounded in practical benevolence, animated by love to Christ, and it was evidently ready ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... him his hopes in emigrating. They were like those of so many others, vague and unfounded: times were bad at home; they were said to have a turn for the better in the States; and a man could get on anywhere, he thought. That was precisely the weak point of his position; for if he could get on in America, why could he not do the same in Scotland? But I never had the courage to use that argument, though it was often on the tip of my tongue, and instead I agreed with him heartily, adding, with reckless originality, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same view of it that I did. Besides, the machine had only been tried as a model, and might not act perfectly when tested in actual warfare. But, of course, I knew that my inventive powers would readily overcome each weak point as it ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon the one weak point of her armor. "So? He send yoh then to talk with Ramon at midnight? Yoh come to ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... quick to defend itself, searches for the weak point in reason and finds it in scepticism, which it straightway fastens upon, seeking to save itself by means of this stranglehold. It needs the weakness of ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... them. You have gone on excusing yourself without correcting the fault (perhaps without seeing it) until the Law of Attraction stopped hinting and administered a kick. And if one kick will not cause you to develop that weak point the Law of Attraction will bring you other and yet harder kicks on the same line. You will attract worse experiences of the ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... before, did Menard's face relax. He looked about cautiously to see if he was observed, then settled back and gazed stolidly into the fire. The old Oneida had played directly into his hand; by letting slip the motive for the Seneca raid of the winter before, he had strengthened the one weak point in the speech Menard meant ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Commissariat of Public Education I showed Professor Pokrovsky a copy of The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy, published in America, containing documents supposed to prove that the German General Staff arranged the November Revolution, and that the Bolsheviks were no more than German agents. The weak point about the documents is that the most important of them have no reason for existence except to prove that there was such a conspiracy. These are the documents bought by Mr. Sisson. I was interested to see what Pokrovsky ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the argument, but he was no match for Maitland in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his arguments with an armoury of texts, which he used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what he thought was the weak point in Maitland's argument was this—that in every sect and every church there were certainly people who held with the same inflexible determination to the belief that they were absolutely in the right, and had unique possession of the exact faith delivered ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... girl tearfully as the shears snipped relentlessly over her head, for her hair had always been a weak point with her. "O, spare my ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... run after other men; the best branches of their rose-trees climb over the garden-wall, and people who smell at the flowers there appear to supply a reason for any roses being planted inside. Such people always know their weak point, and spend their own money as if they had ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... genius," she declared, "must be impressionable. We ought to set ourselves to discover your weak point." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heard this, he felt sure in his mind that Tai-y was availing herself of this opportunity to make fun of him, but he made no remark, merely laughing to himself and paying no further notice. Pao Ch'ai, again, knew full well that this habit was a weak point with Tai-y, so she too did not go out of her way to heed what ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... was the end of all my struggles and strivings. I was to be led back again like a poor silly sheep who has broken through the hurdles. They little knew me who could fancy that I should submit to such a fate. I had heard enough to tell me where the weak point of these two men was, and I showed, as I have often showed before, that Etienne Gerard is never so terrible as when all hope seems to have deserted him. With a single spring I seized one of the clubs and swung it over ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Nor'-Wester." It is amusing to read the comments upon its entrance made by Hudson's Bay Company writers, both English and French. The constitution and conduct of the Council of Assiniboia was certainly the weak point in the Hudson's Bay regime, and the Nor'-Wester kept this point so constantly before the people that it was really a thorn in the side of the Company. The Nor'-Wester, itself, was surely not free from troubles. The Red River Community was very small, so that it could not very well supply ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... once saw the weak point in Reimarus's argument, but his method of disposing of it differed signally from that adopted by his orthodox contemporaries. The more advanced German theologians of that day, while accepting the New Testament records as literally historical, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the handling. It is refreshing to be able to say for Miss Prescott that she absolutely reaches the end of the book without a suicide or a murder, although the heroine for a moment meditates the one and goes to the theatre to behold the other. The dialogue, usually a weak point with this writer, is here for better managed than usual, having her customary piquancy, with less of disfigurement from flippancy and bad puns. The plot shows none of those alarming pieces of incongruity and bathos which have marred some of her stories. And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The weak point of McClellan's strategy was making itself felt. In advancing on Richmond by way of the Peninsula he had deliberately adopted what are called in strategy "the exterior lines." That is, his forces were distributed on the arc of a circle, of which Richmond and the Confederate army were the centre. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... at Kulong Cha the night was warm and stuffy! last night up here at Nampoung it was precious cold. We could hardly sleep, though we had on our whole wardrobe. The weak point was our having only two thin quilts underneath on the charpoys. As these bungalows are all made after one design on the principle of a meat-safe, to keep you cool in the low hot levels, they are only too effective up here. So we turned out very early to find a spot where the sun shone ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... waiting game too long. A day sooner would have saved some trouble—but my father had carried habits of absolute action into all the occurrences of daily life. Indecision is, in character, a sad failure, but his weak point ran directly in an opposite direction. He thought, weighed matters hastily, decided in five minutes, and that decision once made, coute qui coute, must be carried out to the very letter. He felt all the annoyance of leaving the old roof-tree and its household ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... the rebels that a free Parliament would be held at York to discuss their grievances, that a full pardon would be granted to all who had taken up arms, and that in the meantime the monks and nuns would be supported from the revenues of the surrendered monasteries and convents. Aske, whose weak point had always been his extreme loyalty, agreed to these terms, and ordered his followers to disband. He was invited to attend in London for a conference with the king, and returned home to announce that Henry was coming ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... they rose again. After some seven or eight minutes of this performance, they evidently concluded either that the stranger was too formidable to tackle, if alive, or that he was not good to eat, if dead, and they flew off to resume fishing, for the weak point about a bird is ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... in the closest touch with the human side. Nature does a marvelous work, but Nature without society is like a vast storehouse of treasure without a demand for its use. The one weak point in farm life is the lack of opportunity for ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... much of a weak point, anywhere, as far as your play goes," Mr. Morton responded. "In many respects your play has been better than Cobber's. Weight is ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... exposure to the wave may effect. It exerts an influence on healthy life in the middle-aged man, and I know of no disease which it does not influence disastrously. Is the healthy man exhausted, it favors internal congestion; has he a weak point in the vascular system of his brain, it renders that point liable to pressure and rupture, with apoplexy as the sequence; is he suffering from bronchial disease, and obstruction, already, in his air passages, here is a means by which the evils ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... is but one weak point in all your chain of arguments. To do as you ask, it will be necessary that I—I, Paul Jesen, so well-known, whose opinions are followed by millions of my country people—it would be necessary for me to abandon my convictions, to turn a right-about-face. Ask yourself, is it ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young poet found that he had planted a blow which "told" upon his antagonist. In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,) he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended in the hulk being led or carried home. In all my knowledge of my fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as Keats. His indignation ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... But the weak point of mysterious occurrences is that they lead nowhere, and do not materially alter the facts of life. One cannot, for instance, plead a mystery in a court of law; so, dropping the imaginative side of the question as one beyond ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... "That is a weak point," Andy admitted. "But we'll have to consider all that later. The question is: How can we get Link out on bail? Got ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... thought it all out in his solitary lodgings, and had put fear from him. He felt his failings and allowed for every one of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials were in his pocket. Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... favorable circumstances. After a great victory his enemies might indeed say they had conquered the King of Prussia, but never that they had subdued him. He stood ever undaunted, ever ready for the contest, prepared to attack them when they least expected it; to take advantage of every weak point, and to profit by every incautious movement. The fallen ranks of his brave soldiers appeared to be dragons' teeth, which ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... love at first sight on both sides, and so marked were your father's attentions that they were the talk of the ball. Edward Morris—the greatest wit of his day, you know—remarked at supper that the weak point of Achilles was proved at last to be not his heel, but ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the weak point of our defence. To the right, and somewhat to the rear, was the suburb of Sabzi Mandi (vegetable market), a succession of houses and walled gardens, from which the rebels constantly threatened our flank. To protect this part of the position as much as possible, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... report submitted to the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House on the 29th of April, 1859: 'I must bear my testimony,' he says, 'to the perfect openness, candour, and honour of Professor Holmes. He has answered every question, concealed no weak point, explained every applied principle, given every reason for a change either in this or that direction, during several periods of close questioning, in a manner that was very agreeable to me, whose duty it was to search for real faults or possible objections, in respect both of the present ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... on his weak point, and having him at a great advantage. He could not help thinking, either, what a brisk fellow this Mark was, and how great a change he had wrought in the atmosphere of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... set out to track this savage animal. They attacked the boar with spears, or surrounded him and drove him into nets. He was a ferocious antagonist to both dogs and men, and when sore pressed would wheel about, prepared to fight to the death. Before the dogs could grip him by the ear, his one weak point, and pin him down, his sharp teeth would often wound or even kill both the hunter and his dogs. The pluckier the animal the louder the praise sung in his honor when his head was brought into the hall. The great head, properly soused, was borne in on an immense salver by the "old blue-coated serving-man" ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... able to explain the difference between a trust and a labor union. Will you kindly, through your columns, make a clear explanation of this distinction? Our opponents holdthat both trusts and unions are combinations, which appears to be true, but there is apparently a weak point in our ability to definitely show the difference, and we beg that ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... about it, Mr. Slick," I replied; "I plead guilty. You took me in then. You touched a weak point. You insensibly flattered my vanity, by assenting to my self-sufficiency, in supposing I was exempt from that universal frailty of human nature; you "threw ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... behaving very well for a boat with such a bad reputation. Dory had been gaining confidence in her ability every moment of the time since she left the breakwater. It was evident to him that sailing on the wind was her weak point, or rather her dangerous one. But she had the wind on her port quarter at present; and Dory did not care to run her directly before the wind, as he would have been obliged to do if he had taken a direct ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... fellows that we're going to squeeze would move heaven and hell to prevent our getting that Settlement, if they got wind of what was going on. The only weak point in our game is just there. Absolutely everything hangs on the Settlement being granted. Naturally, then, our play is to concentrate everything on getting it granted. We don't want to raise the remotest ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... enough to meet the drafts of Death at sight, must be an unmatched tonic. We saw our light-hearted youth come back with the modest gravity of age, as if they had learned to throw out pickets against a surprise of any weak point in their temperament. Perhaps that American shiftiness, so often complained of, may not be so bad a thing, if, by bringing men acquainted with every humor of fortune and human nature, it puts them in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... took him on his weak point," he said. "If he could get on a good trail of the Scowrers, he's ready to follow it into hell. I took his money," McMurdo grinned as he produced a wad of dollar notes, "and as much more when he ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... True, perhaps half of this great island is situated South of the Straits of Singapore, but the island cannot therefore be correctly said to lie to the South of the Straits and, at any rate, such a business-like nation as the Dutch would have noticed a weak point here and have included Borneo in the list with Battam and the other islands enumerated. Such was the view taken by Mr. GLADSTONE'S Cabinet, and Lord GRANVILLE informed the Dutch Minister in 1882 that the XIIth Article of the Treaty could not be taken ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... He had four splendid new men-of-war that formed a homogeneous squadron, four other sizable warships, and nine new gunboats. All spars and rigging that could be dispensed with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with Mississippi mud; and all decks whitened for handiness at night. A weak point, however, was the presence of mortar-boats that would have been better out of the way altogether. These boats had been sent to bombard the forts, which, according to the plan preferred by the Government, were to be taken before New Orleans was attacked. In other words, the Government wished to ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... pupils who, like my brother Ludo, were pursuing the study of the sciences, he, the mathematician of the institute, must have been an unusually clear and competent teacher. I was under his charge only a short time, and his branch of knowledge was unfortunately my weak point. Shortly before my departure he married a younger sister of Barop's wife, and established an educational institution very similar to Keilhau at Gumperda, at Schwarza ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... evolution of morals, the author's unexampled grasp of facts, with his power of correlation, is, according to The Saturday, seen at its highest, in an exquisite chain of philosophical deduction. The mode in which, at a remote period, the races of mankind became differentiated, is declared to be the weak point ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... once found the weak point in the Pre-Raphaelites' principle of work, Malcom. It is forced and artificial to do that in the nineteenth century which was natural and charming in the fourteenth. That which our artists of to-day must do if they desire any reform is to so fill themselves ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... every brother's and sister's weak point. To the brother who has been fond of ardent spirits he comes behind the deceitful, covetous smile of the rumseller. In this instance the order of the fable is reversed. There the ass put on the lion's ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... at her brother's gate—not in a tyrannical spirit, but from a philanthropic desire to be useful to everybody. In person she was tall and angular; she had a gray complexion, gray eyes, gray eyebrows, and generally wore a gray dress. Her strongest weak point was a belief in the efficacy of "hot-drops" as a cure for ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... system and theory of government in Nova Scotia. Well defended as it was, it had one fundamentally weak point: the people of Nova Scotia did not want it. Howe had no great regard for the professional politician, whether in the legislature or in the village store. 'Rum and politics are the two curses of Nova Scotia,' he said. But he saw that it would be absurd to tell the people ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... attack is undeniable, but attack would not be the more likely to occur. Add to all this that Irish discontent or sedition would, during a war, help France as much as Irish independence. Ireland is no doubt the weak point in the defences of Great Britain. This no one denies. The only question is whether and to what extent the independence of that country would widen the breach in ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... eyes twinkled beneath an intellectual forehead, scarred by a sabre wound. After I had watched him with attention for some time, his firmly-compressed lips and sombre countenance showed the solidity of his character, and no weak point at which I might attack him with an observation. Sailor, who had been reclining in his hutch, disliking to wet his hide, and who was still labouring from the ill effects of the Danish brown bread, now came forth to stretch himself; and, seeing a man, unknown, standing by the compass-box, approached, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... was so baffling. That was his weak point and she had picked it out infallibly. Whatever his suspicions, he had been able to prove nothing, though he suspected much in the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... this army can strengthen the regular field army. At the most 150,000 men may be reckoned upon for an English expeditionary force. These troops compose at the same time the reserve of the troops stationed in the Colonies, which require reinforcements at grave crises. This constitutes the weak point in the British armament. England can employ her regular army in a Continental war so long only as all is quiet in the Colonies. This fact brings into prominence how important it will be, should war break out, to threaten England in her ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... adversary's coast it chose, and to dominate the country inland for several miles with its gun-fire. All the enemy's sea-coast towns would be at its mercy. It would be able to effect landing and send raids of cyclist-marksmen inland, whenever a weak point was discovered. Landings will be enormously easier than they have ever been before. Once a wedge of marksmen has been driven inland they would have all the military advantages of the defence when it came to eject them. They might, for example, encircle and block some fortified post, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Catherine, "the only weak point in your story is that the girl had a meagre bosom. A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows. But don't you know, d'Anquetil, what we ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... burner which, for its power, is, perhaps, the most compact and gives the highest temperature of any burner yet known, and it is easily made in almost any size; it has, I think, many special advantages. The use of gauze, which is its only weak point, is more than compensated for by the very high duties obtained in practice with it, owing to the compactness and concentration of the heat obtained. The following extract from my communication to the Gas Institute will give ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... that I have heard engineers say, that one may betray the weak point to the enemy, by too much ostentation of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... investigating. Then the great parrot-beak laid hold on the shell, expecting to crush it. Making no impression, however, it slid tentatively all over the exasperating prize, seeking, but in vain, for a weak point. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... spite of all those precautions which the King and Queen take for their darling princess, those dragons, and that impenetrable forest, and that castle of steel? The fairy prince penetrates the impenetrable forest, finds the weak point in the dragon's scale armour, and gets the better of all the ogres who guard the castle of steel. Away goes the princess to him. She knew him at once. Her bandboxes and portmanteaux are filled with ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the nut is thinner than the average and the cracking quality distinctly superior. The kernels of nuts promptly harvested, hulled and cured have been bright, plump, rich in quality, and especially pleasing in flavor. The one weak point of the Tasterite appears to be in the matter of size, but this smallness is well offset by superiority in the points just mentioned, and also in what is perhaps more important, the latitude and altitude of the place of origin. Any variety which will yield heavy crops ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... used to assert That naught his digestion could hurt, Was forced to admit That his weak point was hit When they gave ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... 26th of April, the mutinous troops in perfect order, marched into the city, effecting their entrance precisely at the weak point where they had been expected. Numbering at least three thousand, they encamped on the esplanade, where Requesens appeared before them alone on horseback, and made them an oration. They listened with composure, but answered briefly and with one accord, "Dineros y non ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... know. There is the weak point in my whole scheme. I evade it by failing to sacrifice you, but I support my theory by saying there is no ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... introduced a set of resolutions calling upon the President for information as to the time and mode in which the repeal of the French decrees had been communicated to our government. His unerring sagacity in singling out the weak point in his enemy's armor and in choosing his own keenest weapon, was never better illustrated than on this occasion. We know now that in the negotiations for the repeal of the decrees, the French government tricked us into war with England ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... existing in many forms, of Beauty and the Beast. There is written, with all the authority of a human scripture, the eternal and essential truth that until we love a thing in all its ugliness we cannot make it beautiful. This was the weak point in William Morris as a reformer: that he sought to reform modern life, and that he hated modern life instead of loving it. Modern London is indeed a beast, big enough and black enough to be the beast ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... an independent course of their own. 'But it soon appeared that, unconsciously I think more than consciously, he is set upon the object of avoiding the responsibility either of taking the government with the Peel squadron, or of letting in Stanley and his friends.' Here was the weak point in a strong and capable character. When Graham died ten years after this (1861), Mr. Gladstone wrote to a friend, 'On administrative questions, for the last twenty years and more, I had more spontaneous recourse to him for advice, than ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "That is the weak point of our system, which has a hundred strong points, while it has this besetting vice. Our laws are not only made, but they are administered, on the supposition that there are both honesty and intelligence enough in ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was thinking. "She is a keen one," he reflected admiringly. "Caught the weak point in that yarn ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... a widow. She was American by birth and marriage, and English by education and habits. She was a fair, beautiful woman, with large eyes and a white complexion. Her weak point was ambition, and ambition with her took the form ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... with doubtful success, and with great slaughter on both sides. After this, the enemy's forces were led back into camp, and the Romans having thus gained time to make preparations for the war afresh, Tarquin, thinking that the weak point of his army lay specially in the want of cavalry, determined to add other centuries to the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres which Romulus had enrolled, and to leave them distinguished by his own name. Because Romulus had done this after inquiries by augury, Attus Navius, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... a recess extending by haphazard computation at least a couple of yards. It occurred to him that perhaps the fault in the interior of the tunnel had its outcrop here, and the deodorizing influences of rain and sun had extended the weak point thus exposed in ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... opens. There's no longer any back to the safe; they've cut it clean out of it—a very neat piece of work. Safes like this should always be fixed against a wall, not stuck in front of a door. The backs of them are always the weak point." ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... The weak point of the expedition was its leader, for Vaudreuil, who was himself a Canadian, had the greatest jealousy of the French officers, and had intrusted the command of the expedition ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... we may take the well-known theory of Adhemar and Crohl, which is founded on changes in the ellipticity of the earth's orbit. This is expounded and amplified by Sir Robert Ball in his "Cause of an Ice Age." The weak point of this theory, which is mathematically unassailable, is that it proves too much, and postulates a constant succession of glacial periods throughout earth-history, and for this there is no evidence. The geographical explanations are chiefly ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... immovable tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back, while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit, his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... communicated with you upon the changes which have taken place; I was completely ignorant of them till the papers announced them, but think altogether it is a much improved administration; the weak point of Vansittart is strengthened, and though perhaps Robinson may not have been the fittest man for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, there is none other who would have done so well with Lord Liverpool, and he is a very popular man in the House of Commons. Wallace is most indignant at ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... every here and there, a suggestio falsi [suggestion of a falsehood], or a suppressio veri [suppression of the truth], or a fallacious analogy nebulously expressed, or a mendacious metaphor, or a passage which is contrived to lead off attention from some weak point in the feminist case.[1] Moreover, Mill was unmindful of the obligations of intellectual morality when he allowed his stepdaughter, in connexion with feminist questions, to draft letters [2] which went forward as ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... him. If I won off him, it was hard he should be beat by an author. If he won, it would be strange if he did not understand the game better than I did. If I mentioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general silence, as if this was my weak point. If I complained of being ill, it was asked why I made myself so. If I said such an actor had played a part well, the answer was, there was a different account in one of the newspapers. If any allusion was made to men of letters, there ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... protect his realm. This living man of brass hurled great rocks at the vessel, and destruction would have overwhelmed the voyagers but for Medea. Talos, like all the invulnerable men of legend, had his one weak point. This her magic art enabled her to discover, and, as Paris had wounded Achilles in the heel, Medea killed this vigilant sentinel by striking him in his ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Schiller's mind, but are too brief and summary to be counted among his works. They show that by 1793 he had come to feel at home in the field of aesthetic speculation. He had read Kant and Moritz and Burke, and was ready with his criticisms. In particular, he had found what he regarded as a weak point in the system of Kant, who had not only made no attempt to establish an objective criterion of beauty, but had summarily dismissed the whole problem as obviously hopeless. Schiller felt that, if this were so, there was no firm foundation anywhere, and all aesthetic judgments ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... over and over again; but there is no positive evidence, at present, that any group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to another group which was, even in the least degree, infertile with the first. Mr. Darwin is perfectly aware of this weak point, and brings forward a multitude of ingenious and important arguments to diminish the force of the objection. We admit the value of these arguments to their fullest extent; nay, we will go so far as to express ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... classified according to their importance as proofs; they can only be reckoned as true or false. Thus incidents which have only a restricted value as proofs are on a level with others which are in themselves very valuable as proofs. This is really the weak point of these statistics. The proofs need to be examined one by one, ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... affection, to the son. Twenty-six years of peace had partly of themselves filled up the blanks in the Macedonian population, partly given opportunity to the government to take serious steps towards rectifying this which was really the weak point of the land. Philip urged the Macedonians to marry and raise up children; he occupied the coast towns, whose inhabitants he carried into the interior, with Thracian colonists of trusty valour and fidelity. He formed a barrier on the north to check once for ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... dead? I should require at first but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my weak point. I have only to remember what happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the occasion in question I had lost everything—everything; yet, just ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... perplexity at any rate," said she, when I had been speaking of that family failing which was also mine. "You know your weak point. I remember a long talk I had, years ago, with Mrs. Rampant, whom I used to know very well when we were young. She said one of her great difficulties was not being able to find out her besetting sin. She said it always made her so miserable when clergymen preached on that subject, and said ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... who thought differently. The Polish composer Sowinski declared without circumlocution that Chopin "wrote admirably for the orchestra." Other countrymen of his dwelt at greater length, and with no less enthusiasm, on what is generally considered a weak point in the master's equipment. A Paris correspondent of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (1834) remarked a propos of the F minor Concerto that there was much delicacy in the instrumentation. But what do the opinions of those critics, if they deserve the name, amount to when weighed against ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... book in his hand and opened the door, he went back and sat down again. Though brave as a lion in war, and often impetuous at home, he was still timid in his own household. His womenkind and Father Nicholas had found out his weak point, and ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... enveloped. There could hardly, indeed, have been a much greater service rendered to a person in the situation of Mr. Sheridan, than thus affording him an opportunity of silencing, once for all, a battery to which this weak point of his pride was exposed, and by which he might otherwise have been kept in continual alarm. This gentlemanlike retort, combined with the recollection of his duel, tended to place him for the future in perfect security against any indiscreet tamperings with his personal history. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Paris—for Paris was Nominalist now—namely, that as a Realist he could not be sound on the doctrine of the eucharist. Others were vague enough, as that he had sown discord between the church and the state. Nor were accusations wanting which touched a really weak point in his teaching, namely, the subjective aspect which undoubtedly some aspects of it wore; as when he taught that not the baptized, but the predestinated to life, constituted the Church. Beset as he was by the most accomplished theologians of the age, the best or the worst ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Rocklands, was the first man to go to the plate. He was known to be a most remarkable little hitter, without a weak point that any pitcher ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... burly labourer, clumsy in his movements, but knowing very well what he wants. The British force at first is divided upon a front of forty miles, each of its halves looking away from the other, so that there is little attention to the weak point of such a front, the communication between its parts. The first event is the cutting of this communication (on the 19th), and not until the 21st is there an attempt to clear it, and that attempt, though it leads to ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... latch of the gate. My father had now come up, and caught his hand. "What are all the printers that ever lived, and all the books they ever printed, to one wrong to thy fine heart, brother Roland? Shame on me! A bookman's weak point, you know! It is very true, I should never have taught the boy one thing to give you pain, brother Roland,—though I don't remember," continued my father, with a perplexed look, "that I ever did teach it him, either! Pisistratus, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had touched his weak point. He had the passion to acquire, and through his science ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... noble ship has stranded because of one defective timber, when all other parts were strong. Guard the weak point. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hard not to tell her everything that concerned himself, but the streak of native reticence in his nature had been strengthened by the vicissitudes of the life he had lived. While Billy Louise had found the sole weak point which made that reticence scarcely a barrier to full confidence, still he knew that he would keep this from her if he made up his ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... part of it that frightens me," he said. "You wouldn't think that sensitiveness was my weak point. But it is. I've stood up to a Birmingham mob that was waiting to lynch me and enjoyed the experience; but I'd run ten miles rather than face a drawing- room of well-dressed people with their masked faces and ironic ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Ireland is our weak point, and, as we have to atone there for cruelty, and injustice, and neglect, too long persisted in, that will be the quarter from which we shall receive our share of the national judgments which are being ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... that is standing by the sofa.) Surely I can get over there by myself? (Gets up from the sofa with the help of the stick, and smiles.) I have not much strength left. (Takes a few steps.) Scarcely enough to get across the floor. (A few more steps.) To think that I should have—so much vanity—my weak point—. (His breath fails him, but he gets as far as the chair on which EVJE was sitting, and sits down.) One ought to have done with all that before the soul can get quite away from the dust that—. (Begins to rake the paper towards him with ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... question, but in this he found himself face to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found a weak point in the plan, and had attacked him with such plainness that the financier, seeing his enterprise collapse at the sound of the mistress's voice-like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the Jewish trumpets—had beaten a retreat, and had changed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... provost-marshal learned my story, he sent for me, and I was conducted to his office. Just as I came out of the depot, you went in. He wanted to question me, he said. Well, I happened to know him, though he did not know me. I knew his weak point; and, in a word, I bamboozled him. I assured him I was an officer in the Third Tennessee, and that, on further inquiry, he would find I was all right; that I had rendered greater service to my country by going over to the Yankees than ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... wise. It is simplicity and even innocence that has made Manchester. As a philosophical fancy this is interesting or even suggestive; but it must be confessed that as a criticism of the relations of England to Ireland it is open to a strong historical objection. The one weak point in John Bull's Other Island is that it turns on the fact that Broadbent succeeds in Ireland. But as a matter of fact Broadbent has not succeeded in Ireland. If getting what one wants is the test and fruit of this mysterious strength, then the Irish peasants are certainly ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... seeds—so they say—and it will flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to a young plant—have a strong root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will outlast the eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains, and the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak point of tuitui is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what has been said before, it may be unnecessary to refer again to the subject, but the constant reiteration by wiseacres that the weak point in mining investments lies in their short life and possible loss of capital, warrants a repetition that the A, B, C of proper investment in mines is to be assured, by the "A" value, of a return of the whole or major portion of the capital. The risk of interest ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... of his vehemence and his reproach. What he wondered at, what he chafed at, was, that she showed no wonder concerning an incident which her last statement made all the more remarkable. She began to turn to go towards the house, and the mind of Caius hit upon the one weak point in her own ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it could not hold out an hour against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... ever had an equal for mischief, and for the last years we had him we could do nothing with him. He was perpetually getting into the fields of grain, and leading all the other cattle after him. We used to hobble him in all sorts of ways, but he would manage to push or rub down the fence at some weak point, and unless his nose was fastened down almost to the ground by a chain from his head to his hind leg, he would let down the bars, or open all the gates about the place. There was not a door about the barn ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... place the Doctor suffered from dysentery—it is his only weak point, he says; and, as I afterwards found, it is a frequent complaint with him. Whatever disturbed his mind, or any irregularity in eating, was sure to end in an attack of dysentery, which had lately become ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... this by way of explanation, and Mrs. Dobson accepted it all, warming up at once on the subject of the house—that was her weak point; while to show strangers through the handsome rooms was her delight. No opportunity to do this had for some time been presented, and the good woman's face glowed with the pleasure she anticipated from showing the governor's cousin his house and grounds. ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... is a pity to have to write it, but his weak point was exactly that he was not quite honest. He wanted to be, just because his angel-twin might be watching him, and he was afraid of thunder. But Crow was so anxious to be "smart" that he had long ago begun doing ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... course, may well appear ridiculous in the extreme. To this I would say, in the first place, that the exposing of every clause of every measure of importance to the criticism of a large assembly, has long been regarded as the weak point of the Parliamentary system. It is thirty years since I heard the remark that a Code would never get through the House of Commons; so many people thinking themselves qualified to cavil at its details. In Mill's "Representative Government," there is ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... that it was he, James Kent, who had supervised the building of these cells! Acquainted with every trick and stratagem of the prisoner plotting for his freedom, he had left no weak point in their structure. Again he clenched his hands, and in his soul he cursed Mercer as he went to the little barred window that overlooked the river from his cell. The river was near now. He could hear the ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... these lines as equal to those of other nations. We never have regarded German culture as superior, but rather as inferior, to that of certain other countries; and the Germans' loud claims to superiority have seemed to us egotistical and the result of a weak point in the German character. For your form of government and the philosophy of history taught by your university professors we could never have much admiration or respect. Both seemed to us unworthy of an intelligent, civilised people, and sure to lead to disaster. ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... Dr. Nearing points out that the income of the ten thousand dollars would be equally secure if the owner of them had them left him by his father or given him by his uncle, then at last he smites capital on a weak point in its armour. There, is, without question, much to be said for the view that it is unfair that a man who has worked and saved should thereby be able to hand over to his son or nephew, who has never worked or saved, this right to an income which is derived from work done by somebody ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... and unnatural exercise. Unnatural, because the hours designed by God, our maker, to be used in rest and sleep are appropriated to another and very different purpose. Here the tempter discovers another weak point, and he makes the attack. The great draw made upon the physical forces makes it necessary—the tempter says—to use an artificial stimulant, which is here often taken the first time, and which is not unfrequently repeated, until many ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... out under the apple tree in Gloucester Street. And the captain argued, in his hopeful way, that Tucker's visit betrayed a weak point in Grafton's position. But the barrister shook his head and said that Grafton was too shrewd a rogue to tender me an estate if he feared me. It was Mr. Swain's opinion that the motive of my uncle was to put himself in a good light; and perhaps, he added, there was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
