"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cementing merely the edge of the orifice of the shell to the glass with resin, (propolis), and thus it became a prisoner for life." Now the instinct that prompts the gathering of propolis in August, and filling every crack, flaw, or inequality about the hive, would cement the edges of the snail-shell to the glass, and a small stone, block of wood, chip, or any substance that they are unable to remove, would be fastened with it in the same ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... been foul play, sir," he said. "I thought there must have been, for I could not imagine that this bar would have broken unless there had been a flaw in the metal or it had been tampered with. I unshackled it myself, for I thought it was better that the men should not see it until I had ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... began to speak of prosaic affairs. I hoped that I should hear something more about her brother and their island life, and sat idly by the kitchen window looking at the morning glories that shaded it, believing that some flaw of wind might set Mrs. Todd's mind on its former course. Then it occurred to me that she had spoken about our supper rather than our dinner, and I guessed that she might have some great scheme ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... off, the Baron steps back with that same look in his face, and lifts his hat. His courtesy shows at the last some flaw, for, although Mrs. Steele is there, his lips and ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... this school the last human teacher is gone. Gone are all the human weaknesses, the temper fits of teachers, their ignorance and prejudices. The roboteachers are without flaw." ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen
... and tough of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... rolled twice is formed from a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that have been rolled only once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. The uniformity of texture and the toughness of the bars which have been thrice rolled are so great that they may be twisted, cold, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... there must be a flaw in it," retorted Random, but did not seem to be unmoved by Hope's generous action. "Sit down, Professor; it appears that you are ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... north. At the pasture corral below the barn he guided the broncho close to the fence and scarcely checking him leaned over and lifted a rope, coiled and hung on a post near the gate, from its place—the one Chuck that morning had left because of the flaw. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... being done to death by a natural disease that was prevalent at the time, while every effort was made to save him, all the world looking on—"see, just to show you there's no deception"—"all open and above board"—only the one flaw which she, by accident, had hit upon. Yes, she alone of all the household had held the clue in her hand, and had not had the wit to use it, to follow it up! Fool, fool, that she was! Yet, no—not quite that. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... will through blissful gentleness, Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points, But loving-kindly ever looks them down With the o'ercoming faith that still forgives; A love that shall be new and fresh each hour, As is the sunset's golden mystery, Or the sweet coming of the evening-star, Alike, and yet most unlike, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Bernadine was dead and she had realized quickly enough the best market for his secrets. In a few days' time his friends would have come and she would have received nothing. He told himself that he was foolish to doubt her. There was not a flaw in the sequence of events, no possible reason for the suspicions which yet lingered at the back of his brain. Intrigue, it was certain, was to her as the breath of her body. He was perfectly willing to believe that the death of Bernadine would have affected her ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had not been for this accident the visit of the six little Bunkers to Seaview would have been without a flaw. Even as it was, it turned out to be most delightful. Seaview was a fine place to spend the end of the summer, and Cousin Tom and his wife made the children feel so at home, and did so much for them, that Russ and the others said they never had been ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... the next morning, to an anxious Doggie, after some minutes of thumping and listening, "but that's merely a matter of unused muscles. Physical training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my dear Trevor, you're in splendid health. There's not a flaw in ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... (1862). At the last he tried later kinds still in books like The Coming Race (1871), The Parisians (1873), and Kenelm Chillingly. And once, Pallas being kind, he did an almost perfect thing (there is not a speck or a flaw in it except, perhaps, the mechanical death of the bulldog) and produced one of the best examples of one of the best and oldest classes of fiction known to the world, in the ghost-story of The Haunted and ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the Empress, impatiently, "I have criticised your plan; criticise mine if you find a flaw in it." ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... two years bustled hither and thither, intriguing in not always the most judicious manner for her family, but never resting, never leaving a stone unturned which might lead to their restitution. The sudden discovery that the lawyers had found a flaw in the conveyance was more than her overstrung nerves could endure, and in a fit of temper she attacked her husband, and rushed about the town denouncing him. Raleigh, in deepest depression of mind and body, wrote to ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... yet a certainty, however. The estate of Coila was well worth fighting for. Was there not the possibility, the bare possibility, that the solicitors or advocates of Le Roi, or the M'Rae, who now held the castle and glen, might find some fatal flaw in the evidence which Townley had spent so much time and care in working ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... served in the shop, and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe her. I do not believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but still like her), and, for aught I know, that picture is still hanging where I last looked ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... farther. lava, larva. halm, harm. calve, carve. talk, torque. daw, door. flaw, floor. yaw, yore. law, lore. laud, lord. maw, more, gnaw, nor. raw, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... mind Abelard found a flaw in this position: on many questions of faith the authorities themselves disagreed. "In such cases,"—he said in effect,—"how shall I come to any definite belief unless I first reason it out?" "By ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... The only flaw in his happiness at the moment was the fact that his circle of friends was so small. He had not missed the old brigade of the studio before, but now the humblest of them would have been welcome, provided he would have sat still and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... rang in those last words? It sounded so strangely like it, that Tyrker involuntarily curved his hand around his ear to amend some flaw in his hearing. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... French Revolution, men must have looked for an immediate and universal improvement in their condition. Christianity, up to that time, had been somewhat of a failure politically. The reason was now obvious, the capital flaw was detected, the sickness of the body politic traced at last to its efficient cause. It was only necessary to put the Bible thoroughly into practice, to set themselves strenuously to realise in life the Holy Commonwealth, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flag-decked street. I saw white waving hands from every roof and window. I heard the dull, deep roar of welcome, as with superb seat upon my snow-white charger—or should it be coal-black? The point cost me much consideration, so anxious was I that the day should be without a flaw—I slowly paced at the head of my victorious troops, between wild waves of upturned faces: walked into a lamp-post or on to the toes of some irascible old gentleman, and awoke. A drunken sailor stormed from between ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... appeal to those who know how dear a fresh coat of paint is to a seaman's heart. She had just been thus decorated within and without, and was standing into a West-Indian port to show her fine feathers, when a sudden flaw of wind knocked her off, and over, dangerously close to a rocky point. The first order given was, "Stand clear of the paint-work!"—an instance of the ruling passion strong in extremis. He had another woesome account of a sloop-of-war in which he had gone through the Straits ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... essential flaw in compulsory arbitration in competitive industries (its limitations under monopolies will be mentioned later). The courts cannot apply a different standard to different employers. On the other hand, they cannot fix a wage which any employer ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... is that which he composed and set to tune several years ago about Sergeant Alvin C. York, who is Jilson Setters' idea of "a mountain man without nary flaw." ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... insisted that Frederick should begin his masterpiece. He had himself sought out the finest, purest oak wood, without the least vein or flaw, which had been over five years in his wood-store, and nobody was to help Frederick except old Valentine. Not only was Frederick put more and more out of taste with his work by the rough journeymen, but he felt a tightness in his throat as he thought that this ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... regard me with such disfavor." She looked at the girl almost wistfully. "Life is hard, Vesta, and exacting, spite of all that we can do; and the world is hard and exacting, supercilious, ready to pick at a flaw—you ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... generally take it for granted that satisfaction goes with the goods; their experience enables them to size up a proposition quickly and if there is any flaw in the advertisements or the company's methods, they pass it by. But women, not so familiar with business affairs, must be approached from a different angle. Little points must be explained and guarantees must be strongly emphasized. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... queening "like all the rest of the frat-men," and their jovial expeditions to Mayfield were over, "because she wouldn't understand" (most conclusive proof!), but he ended by taking it as he might have taken an inequality of temper—as a flaw in character to be overlooked in a friend. Then again, Pellams found it positively uncanny to be getting on so well in his work, an uneasy feeling as though he were walking along the edge of a steep place. As for the joke itself, he could laugh over it ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... defect; as, moreover, I am vastly more sure that Socrates was morally imperfect, than that I am able to censure him rightly; so also, a disputant who concedes to me that Jesus is a mere man, has no right to claim that I will point out some moral flaw in him, or else acknowledge him to be a Unique Unparalleled Divine Soul. It is true, I do see defects, and very serious ones, in the character of Jesus, as drawn by his disciples; but I cannot admit that my right to disown ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... recalled the fact that he had been sent for by his dead relative to inquire into Milburgh's mode of living and that Milburgh was under suspicion of having robbed the firm. Suppose Milburgh had committed the crime? Suppose, to hide his defalcations, he had shot his employer dead? There was a flaw in this reasoning because the death of Thornton Lyne would be more likely to precipitate the discovery of the manager's embezzlements—there would be an examination of accounts and everything would come out. Milburgh himself ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... sedulously confined it to trivial matter whenever she approached him in this mood, fencing himself about with a wall of cold reserve that was not lightly to be overthrown. In this his conscience was at work. Cynthia was the flaw in the satisfaction he might have drawn from the contemplation of the vengeance he was there to wreak. He beheld her so pure, so sweet and fresh, that he marvelled how she came to be the daughter of Gregory ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... by her wit. Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big desolate empty room, warming three generations of the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... just then, had been in a mood for theological discussion, he might have pointed out to his mother the flaw in the logic of her own belief. Grandfather Wheeler, translated into the glory that awaits the faithful servant of the Lord, in all surety should have been beyond the danger of vicarious and everlasting death. However, Scott was too much in earnest, just then, about ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the flaw of the modern world, to keep life and religion apart," protested Raphael; "to have one set of principles for week-days and another for Sundays; to grind the inexorable mechanism of supply and demand on pagan principles, and make it up out of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... principle to be observed by the writer of 'slams' is that he must resolutely shut his eyes to any qualities which appeal, even to him, as good qualities, while dwelling with ferocious zest upon every point that he can possibly magnify into a flaw. Or he may even fly at one bound to a pinnacle of wisdom by basing his criticism entirely upon the first chapter or the last chapter of a book, or the first act or the last act of a play. Or he may win his spurs for smartness by deliberate ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... hand then draweth Sigurd Andvari's ancient Gold; There is nought but the sky above them as the ring together they hold, The shapen ancient token, that hath no change nor end, No change, and no beginning, no flaw for God to mend: Then Sigurd cried: 'O Brynhild, now hearken while I swear, That the sun shall die in the heavens and the day no more be fair, If I seek not love in Lymdale and the house that fostered thee, And the land ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... snorted indignantly. "That's the pup worth two hundred dollars at eight months, 'because she has every single good point of Champion Rothsay Chief and not a flaw from nostril to tail-tip'! Rothsay wrote those very words about her, you remember. And he's supposed to be the most dependable man in the collie business! Lord! She's undersized—no bigger than a five monther! And she's prick-eared and apple-domed; and her ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... the imaginative and volitional life, is the glorious and saving unlikeness of God—His unthinkable and inexpressible glory; His utter comprehension and unbelievable compassion; His justice which knows no flaw and brooks no evasion and cannot be swerved; His power which may not be withstood and hence is a sure and certain tenderness; His hatred of sin, terrible and flaming, a hatred which will send sinful men through a thousand hells, if they will have them, and can only be saved thereby; His ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... present day he looks at with the feelings of an individual waiting for an earthquake. He is sure that the world is going round the other way, or is turned topsy-turvy, or is coming to an end. He is the quietest and best disposed man in his parish—his moral character is without a flaw—his honesty without a blemish, yet is his mind filled with designs which would astonish the strongest head that rebel ever wore. He talks calmly of the propriety of hanging, without trial, all publishers of immorality and sedition—of putting embryo rioters to death, and granting them a judicial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a hold-over from the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some old-timer paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was a liberal education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair and neat white shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course in any correspondence school in the country. She sometimes did a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... sort of company they claim to have, in the first place, and if they are an honorable set of men they ought to make open claims, instead of sneaking around, and trying to find out things that might cause a flaw in the title. I am suspicious, ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... most completely failed. It is but fair to the democrats to say it is no act of theirs; they inherited the misfortune, and are likely to keep it, as it is one of the fundamental principles of their Constitution, and they have a salutary dread—much to their praise—of tinkering up any flaw they find in that document, lest in mending one hole they make two. They have, as a nation, so greatly prospered under its combined enactments, and possess such an unlimited independence in their individual States, that although the exclusion of the Cabinet is now very generally admitted ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to hae her efternune cup yesterday, an' I was chappin' oot the dottle o' my pipe on the corner o' the chumla, when it flaw oot an' gaed oot o' sicht some wey. I socht heich an' laich for't, but na, na; it wasna to be gotten. I thocht syne it had gane into the fire. But it's my opinion noo, it had fa'in' into Bawbie's teapot! She was sayin' ilky noo-an'-than, "That tea has a dispert queer taste, Sandy. ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... will take no bribe, if that is what you mean, Sir George; but if there is a flaw in the proceedings he will point it out for us, and that will be better than naught. We shall have the satisfaction of knowing that everything was properly ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... together. The idea of building an air-ship had come to him while he lay dying with scurvy, as they thought, in a Confederate prison, and he had never abandoned it. He had been a teacher and a student, and was a trained mathematician. There could be no flaw in his calculations. He had worked them out again and again. The energy developed by his plan was great enough to float a ship capable of carrying almost any burden, and of directing it against the strongest head winds. Now, upon ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... she eventually marries seems unfortunately to have a bit of a flaw in his granite character; at any rate, something is wrong with him, as the heroine fails to hold him altogether, and matters even begin to look as though she might lose him. But with her great happiness had come a new standard of honour, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... escape from it through the several Greek dialects, when he was pressed with it in any particular syllable. For the most apt and elegant word in the whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in it, if it appeared blemished with a wrong letter. I shall only observe upon this head, that if the work I have here mentioned had been now extant, the "Odyssey" of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have been oftener quoted by our learned ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... marvellous chapter on "A Bird's-eye view of Paris," an amazing restoration by a poet, in which archaeology itself, in spite of the progress it has made, would find it difficult to discover a flaw. Well, what Victor Hugo has done for mediaeval Paris, M. Ernest Feydeau has attempted for the Thebes of the Pharaohs, and his restoration, as complete as it is possible for it to be, and which no historian had attempted, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... greatest nobles, like Pompey and Caesar, would imply that his income was enormous, much greater than that of any modern professional man. And yet he seems to have lived, like Bacon and our Webster, beyond his income, and was in debt the greater part of his life,—another flaw in his character; for I do not wish to paint him without faults, but only as a good as well as a great man, for his times. His private character was as lofty as that of Chatham or Canning,—if we could forget his vanity, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... Higgins's black colt, and aunt Hitty was dressed in deep mourning, with the Widow Buzzell's crape veil over her face, and in her hand a palmleaf fan tied with a black ribbon. Her comment to Si, as she went to her virtuous couch that night, was: "It was an awful dry funeral, but that was the only flaw in it. It would 'a' ben perfect if there' ben anybody to shed tears. I come pretty nigh it myself, though I ain't no relation, when Elder Weeks said, 'You'll go round the house, my sisters, and ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... work as efficiently and as cheaply. These statements are erroneous. The success of the British Post Office, as of every post office, is due not to ability but to monopoly, as the following example will prove. Private individuals in Germany discovered some years ago a flaw in the legislation regarding the Post Office which enabled them to compete with the Imperial Post Office, not in postal business between different towns, but in local delivery. Private post offices sprang up ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... safe. For that they had to thank Villon. It was he who had grasped the flaw of Saxe's over-proof, and so tumbled the whole fabric of lies into a ruin never to be built up again. For both these mercies he humbly thanked God. It is to be noted by the student of the ways of men that he never gave ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... competent to hold back the motes. They appeared from time to time afterwards, and gave me much trouble; but they were invariably traced in the end to some defect in the purifying apparatus—to some crack or flaw in the sealing-wax employed to render the tubes air-tight. Thus through proper care, but not without a great deal of searching out of disturbances, the experimental tube, even when filled with air or vapour, contains nothing competent to scatter ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... it was, it was their only hope now, for the leak was increasing and it was evident that the boat could not be kept afloat long. As they drew nearer they saw with dismay that the side which faced them was a solid wall of ice sixty feet high without a flaw or crevice in its whole extent. The berg was a large one, fifty paces at least each way, and there was a hope that the other side might be more favourable. Baling hard, they paddled round the corner, but only to find themselves faced by another gloomy ice-crag. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good, when it really is not so. Reasoning very often appears to be good, while there is all the time some latent flaw in it which makes the conclusion wrong. Very often something is left out of the account which ought to be taken in and calculated for, and that is the case here. The truth is, that the current helps the steamer in going down just as much as it retards her in coming ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... expenses. From the establishment of order and of confidence sprang a prosperity which enabled her to obtain a certain revenue, though entirely inadequate to her expenditure. Thus we beheld her pressing solidly on, and we knew not where she might stop. Pretexts, such as it was difficult to find a flaw in, were never wanting on which to ground a fresh absorption of territory. And seeing behind this advance a vast country—almost a continent—which was not merely a great Asiatic Power, but a great European ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... of the jewels of "Serendib;" and the travellers of the Middle Ages, on returning to Europe, told of the "sapphires, topazes, amethysts, garnets, and other costly stones" of Ceylon, and of the ruby which belonged to the king of the island, "a span in length, without a flaw, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and more than this, she saw Who reigned in Philip's house and heart. Far off, he seemed without a flaw; Close by, her tasteless counterpart, And slave to ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... to the son of Peleus glowed With hammered wonders, all without a flaw; The Shield of Union in its splendor showed ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... and the dragoman; and then, immediately after giving the third shock, which was as ineffectual as those that preceded it, he advanced to our grim host with a face radiant with satisfaction, and congratulated him vehemently. "You are a happy man," he said. "Your household has not a flaw in it. Fortunate it was that you sent for the wise man: I have discovered the matter." "What have you discovered?" "The fate of the ring. It has never been stolen: if it had, I would have restored it to you. Fear nothing; your household is trustworthy and virtuous. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... "Hum! There's a flaw there. Let us apply common sense to the matter. This Thaddeus Sholto WAS with his brother; there WAS a quarrel; so much we know. The brother is dead and the jewels are gone. So much also we know. No one saw the brother from the time Thaddeus left him. His bed had not been ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... withal, this Stephen Holmes, a man to be despised? A hero, rather, of a peculiar type,—a man, more than other men: the very mould of man, doubt it who will, that women love longest and most madly. Of course, if I could, I would have blotted out every meanness or flaw before I showed him to you; I would have given you Margaret an impetuous, whole-souled woman, glad to throw her life down for her father without one bitter thought of the wife and mother she might have been; I would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... rebuilding of her life on new foundations. To all appearances, she had succeeded admirably in her task. There was no drooping hopelessness in her attitude toward the world. And if beneath the surface there lay hidden the dangerous flaw of purposelessness, no one ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... observed that some people had been enough stirred to place little bunches of flowers at the feet of the statue as a tender tribute to its beauty. But one day I was greatly annoyed by the presence of a critical woman who had discovered a little flaw in the statue, where a bit had been broken off. She chattered about it like an excited magpie. Poor soul, she had no eyes for the beauty of the thing, the mystery which shrouded its past stirred no emotions in her breast. She was only just big enough in mind and soul to see the ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... just a long way of saying imagination? He had illuminated her father for her and in so doing had given her a ray of real comfort. He had interpreted Paula—in terms how different from those employed by Aunt Lucile! He had comprehended Rush without one momentary flaw of resentment. Last of all, he had quite simply and without one vitiating trace of self-pity, explained himself, luminously, so that it was as if she had known him all ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was, and in perplexity, because His huntsmen he no longer could descry. Then, wandering to and fro, he found at last A pleasure garden of the days gone by, Belonging to King Lila, beautiful And without flaw. He was astonished quite When he perceived a palace. All alone He found himself, when he had entered there. He walked about, but found no living soul. Unto himself he said: "Can this domain A habitation be of demons dread And spirits? Can this be the cause of all The solitude which ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... sands. When the snow came the sands were impassable. As soon as the ice on the bay would bear, there would be coming and going, no doubt; but until then Caius had the restful security that she was near him, and that it could not be many days before he saw her. The only flaw in his conclusion was that the fact did not bear it out; he ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the guileless frankness which, from first to last, characterises her whole relations to Ladislaw. If there is one flaw in this noble work, it is that Ladislaw on first examination is scarcely equal to this exquisite creation. Yet it might have been nearly as difficult even for George Eliot to satisfy our instinctive cravings in this particular with regard to Dorothea, as in respect to Romola or Fedalma. ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... the details needed for a successful chase. Indeed, he argued that he was saving valuable time by his prompt action, and, reviewing the whole of the facts while being carried swiftly up Broadway in a taxi, he found, at first, no flaw ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... stairs, which would then become his funeral pyre. He would do all this on Sunday evening while Miriam was at church, and it would appear that he had fallen downstairs with the lamp, and been burnt to death. There was really no flaw whatever that he could see in the scheme. He was quite sure he knew how to cut his throat, deep at the side and not to saw at the windpipe, and he was reasonably sure it wouldn't hurt him very much. And then everything would ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Trader's speech as he left the room, however, had touched the one flaw in Galen Albret's confidence of righteousness. Wearied with the struggles and the passions he had undergone, his brain numbed, his will for the moment in abeyance, he seated himself and contemplated the images those two words had ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... their home together. It was a stipulation that she advanced with a definite fear that here, at last, she might be taking Harry from his depth; that by natural instinct of generosity, or by instinct of immemorial custom to endow the wife with all the husband's worldly goods, he would here reveal a flaw in his till now flawless duplication of the views that were ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the following characteristic account, conveying the impression that while he was willing to waste all the resources of his colored inks and literary ingenuity on our friendship, I must pay the freight. I think he had a superstition that it would cause a flaw in his title of "The Good Knight, sans peur et sans monnaie" if he were to add the price of a two-cent ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Government for twenty-five years. He has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of 'that fierce light that beats against the throne,' but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain on his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or as better man than thousands of others we honor, but I present him for your deliberate consideration. I nominate ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... on the surface. Two causes have co-operated to produce the illusion. Everybody agrees that Great Britain has acted in a most blackguardly fashion towards Ireland; everybody assumes that blackguardism always succeeds in this world, therefore Ireland is a failure. The only flaw in this syllogism is that it is in direct conflict with every known fact. For the rest we have to thank or blame the sentimentalism of Mr Matthew Arnold. His proud but futile Celts who "went down to battle but always fell" have been mistaken for the Irish of actual history. The truth ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... stains, and smote My thought with waking pangs; I saw The white arm drooping from the boat, Round-moulded, pure from flaw; ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... made me sick to think of poor old Thompson scrawling in the inside of his envelope, furiously, furtively, while the ink of his neat copperplate dried on the outside, and Macartney likely stood by poring over the actual letter, wondering if there was any flaw in it that could show out and damn him. And the desperate scrawl in the envelope had been no good, thanks to the fool brain and tongue of myself, Nicky Stretton! It had done more to warn Macartney than either Dudley or ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... in conclusion, 'I put it to you, sir, as to her: do you find any flaw in my argument? Is there, madam, a single text which, honestly interpreted, affords the least foothold for the Paedobaptists; in other words, for your opinion on the efficacy of the rite administered ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... in the same field, as in India; for the published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the indignation of society—the moral and religions feelings of his fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes, marries, and makes his offerings to his priest according ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... perched yourself aloft on a pinnacle, didn't you? You looked down upon all your sisterhood who were deceived, or betrayed, or sorrowing; and you wondered how women could be so weak; how they could be deluded by base men. You looked upon poor dead Kitty, and wondered what was the flaw in her intellect that made her the slave of a gambler and a villain. You argued that only an unsophisticated school girl could be deceived as was poor Madeline. Oh, you have been very proud, and very high has been your standard of manly worth, Miss Claire Keith! So high that the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... had betrayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... flaw. Even Helen, whose fancy had played with him at first, but who in time had indolently yielded to the fascination exerted over her, and even gone so far as to permit his adulation, and accept in the ring the mystic pledge thereof (during all the countless ages of its experience ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... luxurious spiritual sensibilities. This choice of emotional gratification before truth and upright dealing with one's own understanding, creates a character that is certainly far less unlovely than those who sacrifice their intellectual integrity to more material convenience. The moral flaw is less palpable and less gross. Yet here too there is the stain of intellectual improbity, and it is perhaps all the more mischievous for being partly hidden under the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... however, suggested itself better than that which he had sketched out in his conversation with Sir John Fenwick; and without loss of time he put it down in writing, in order to take the Duke's opinion upon it. There was one flaw, indeed, in the chain which he could not but see, and which he feared might be used by an enemy to the Duke's disadvantage. He could prove, that after Lady Laura had been carried away the Duke had no ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... fair name is ruined. That is the only mistake I have made in my whole life and it was done in a moment of weakness. Before I was just like a piece of pure jade; everyone admired me for what I have done for my country, but the jade has a flaw in it since this Boxer movement and it will remain there to the end of my life. I have regretted many, many times that I had such confidence in, and believed that wicked Prince Tuan; he was ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... superstition; to another of his ancestors, who died laughing, he ascribed his buoyant spirits. Two of his relations had such an affection for each other, that they both died at the same time. "There seems," he said, "to have been a flaw in my escutcheon there, or that that loving couple have monopolised all the connubial bliss of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the passage of his supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by them at Rheinberg. The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's sieges, possess no more interest to the general reader than the working out of a geometrical problem. He was incapable of a flaw in his calculations, but it was impossible for him quite to complete the demonstration before the arrival of de la Chatre. Maurice received with courtesy the Marshal, who arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his contingent of 8000 foot and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... speculations, although sometimes fantastic, and originating in a too vivid imagination, were usually shrewd and carefully thought out. Thus they led from one discovery to another; and even when, through want of complete knowledge, there was a flaw in the chain of his reasoning, the results were ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... youth and endeavoring to mend the break. And although Hamilton proudly repelled his advances, Washington forgave all and generously did all he could to advance the young man's interests. Washington's magnanimity was absolutely without flaw, but his attitude towards Hamilton has a more suggestive meaning when we consider that it was a testimonial of the high estimate he placed ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... with a dreary grave-yard toll, betokening a flaw, the ship's forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers, proclaimed ten o'clock, through the leaden calm; when Captain Delano's attention was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of the girls themselves. Some of them will read this. So will some of their mothers-Mothers and daughters often, not invariably, are so truly en rapport that their mutual comprehension is without a flaw. There are homes in which, with the profoundest regard and the truest tenderness on both sides, they do not understand each other. The mother either sees the daughter's discontent, recognizes and resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... time he looked up he took a few cherries out of the bag and ate them abstractedly. Other boats passed them, crossing the backwater from side to side to avoid each other, for many were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round which curled a thread of blue—Lady Miller's picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durrant, without getting up, shoved their ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... exactly adapted to the bore of Mr. Pennifeather's rifle, while it was far too large for that of any other person in the borough or its vicinity. To render the matter even surer yet, however, this bullet was discovered to have a flaw or seam at right angles to the usual suture, and upon examination, this seam corresponded precisely with an accidental ridge or elevation in a pair of moulds acknowledged by the accused himself to be his own property. Upon finding of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... The captain's mistress is his ship. At sea he allows her to wear an easy neglige, but in port she must appear in full dress. Not a sign of the long voyage, of the storms, of the glowing heat she has suffered, must be visible. Then begins an incessant hammering, planing, and sawing; every flaw, every crack or injury is made good, and, to wind up, the whole vessel is painted afresh. The worst of all, however, is the hammering when the cracks in the deck are being repaired and filled up with ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law. The constitutional guardian I Of pretty young Wards in Chancery, All very agreeable girls—and none Are over the age of twenty-one. A pleasant occupation for A rather ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... pleasure to find one flaw in your wonderful summing-up. I am not Sir Carroll. Sir Hugo, my half-brother, bears the title, and Sir Hugo and I saw little of each other ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... show it,— Me, Serjeant Woodward,—counsel for the poet. Used to the ground, I know 'tis hard to deal With this dread court, from whence there's no appeal; No tricking here, to blunt the edge of law, Or, damn'd in equity, escape by flaw: But judgment given, your sentence must remain; No writ of error lies—to Drury Lane: Yet when so kind you seem, 'tis past dispute We gain some favour, if not costs of suit. No spleen is here! I see no hoarded fury;— ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... stuck to the halyards, though he was nearly jerked overboard by the sudden pitching and rolling of the craft. Recovering the sheet which had run out into the water, he took his place at the helm. He flattened down the sail, when the flaw had spent its force, and headed his boat towards Friedrichshafen. The next gust that struck the sail carried her down so that the water poured in over her lee rail by the barrel. The lady screamed lustily; and the tones ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... at one and the same moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe—if she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman. But what Portia does, is forgotten in what she is. The rare and harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feeling, in her fine character, make ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... clear and convincing, and all its parts harmonized among themselves as well as with the great undeniable facts of man's nature and destiny. While engaged in these inquiries, he has been more than once led to see what appeared to be a flaw in Calvinism itself; but without at first perceiving all its consequences. By reflection on these apparent defects; nay, by protracted and earnest meditation on them, his suspicions have been confirmed and his opinions changed. If what now so clearly appears to be ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... purpose? Hath not everything you could say been heard and examined with all the fairness imaginable? In a word have you not in every point been convinced out of your own mouth? And, if you can at present discover any flaw in any of your former concessions, or think of any remaining subterfuge, any new distinction, colour, or comment whatsoever, why do ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... "When a flaw or puff comes," Dory continued, "it changes the course of the boat. The helm has to be shifted to meet this change. Almost always the tiller has to be carried to the weather side of the boat. Do you know which the weather side of the boat is, fellows?" asked the expounder ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... Cousin Charles rather than to us. I had never seen a table so well arranged, so fastidiously neat; it glittered with glass and French china. Cousin Charles sent away a glass and a plate, frowning at the girl who waited; there must have been a speck or a flaw in them. The viands were as pretty as the dishes, the lamb chops were fragile; the bread was delicious, but cut in transparent slices, and the butter pat was nearly stamped through with its bouquet of flowers. This was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... set about making the necessary arrangements for the docking of the Thetis he at once found himself confronted with that adamantine procrastination which constitutes such a serious flaw in the Spanish character; manana (to-morrow) is the word that is most often in the Spaniard's mouth, and his invincible determination never to do to-day what can possibly be postponed until the morrow is perhaps ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... was wounded, and in the hospital, he repeatedly complained to me of the deficiency of the staffs. I reminded him of it, and he promised to do his best to organize a staff without a flaw. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... attendants much benefit is derived; some come from twenty to twenty-five miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-coloured lambas of many folded kilts—the women work hardest—the potters slap and ring their earthenware all round, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads, the women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets, strapped to the shoulders and forehead, and their hands are full besides; the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... I wanted to look after you—that I wanted our friendship to be what it has proved to be—without the flaw of sentiment. I wouldn't spoil a single hour by any thought of yours or mine that led us away ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... be hard to tell without strict inquiries. I doubt me if we could learn all before next May Day, when we might get hold of the man himself and find out who and what he is. Such wedlock as his cannot be without flaw, and might be made invalid by law; but, wife, there is no getting over this, that the child took her vows in the name of God, and I dare not act as though such vows were unspoken. Her youth and ignorance may plead in part for her. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... an indication of conscious weakness on their part," he remarked with great complacency, as he and Mr. Whitney were dining at the club on the following day. "They have evidently discovered some flaw in their defence which it will take some time to repair. I can afford to wait, however; my attorneys and experts will soon be here, and while our side could easily have been in readiness in a much shorter time, this, of course, will give us an opportunity ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... might occur that the engine should break down: but if the train is stopped from some trivial motive it will be found either that the strength of the necessary influences has been miscalculated, or that the man has been miscalculated, in the same way as an engine may break down from an unsuspected flaw; but even in such a case there will have been no spontaneity; the action will have had its true parental causes: spontaneity is only a term for ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... praise of America, as the "refuge of the oppressed and the hope of the world." He yet remembered how when the hand, every gesture of which was instinct with power, was lifted to the flag,—the flag, stainless, spotless, without blemish or flaw; the flag which was "fair as the sun, clear as the moon," and to the oppressors of the earth "terrible as an army with banners,"—he yet remembered how, as this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears had ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... first time in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her. Even if her father's objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast of the eye, and the put-by of the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... turn'd to clay, [Sidenote: Imperious] Might stop a hole to keepe the winde away. Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a Wall, t'expell the winters flaw.[4] [Sidenote: waters flaw.] But soft, but soft, aside; heere comes the King. [Sidenote: ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... to confess. Jennings did not pursue the subject, but abruptly began the lesson. That day and several days thereafter he put her to tests he had never used before. She saw that he was searching for something—for the flaw implied in the adverse verdict of the son of Lucia Rivi. She was enormously relieved when he gave over the search without having found the flaw. She felt that Donald Keith's verdict had been proved false or at least faulty. Yet she was not wholly ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... generous sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend—and his only one then in London—Mr. Brentwick looked and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... glow and gives him who sees it the delightful sense of being its original and sole discoverer. An artistic eye—or an eye that discriminates in and responds to feminine loveliness—would have been captivated, as it searched in vain for flaw. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... and a fly in a flue, Were imprisoned; now what could they do? Said the fly, "let us flee." "Let us fly," said the flea, And they flew through a flaw in the flue. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... babies were doing finely, and Aunt Hannah's health, and affairs at the Annex, were all that could be desired. As Billy, indeed, saw it, there was only one flaw to mar her perfect content on this holiday trip with Bertram, and that was her disappointment over the very evident disaster that had come to her cherished matrimonial plans for Arkwright and Alice Greggory. She could not forget Arkwright's face that day at the Annex, when ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... instead of lashing Miki to the sledge as Le Beau had fastened him to his improvised drag, Durant made his captive comfortable, covering him with a warm blanket before he began his journey eastward. He made sure, however, that there was no flaw in the muzzle about Miki's jaws, and that the free end of the chain to which he was still fastened was well hitched to the Gee-bar ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... "insufficient," because no one fears God as much, and loves God as much, and believes God as much as he ought. But let us dismiss these frigid cavils of the adversaries, concerning which, if at any time they are brought to the light, prudent men will easily decide what they should judge. They have found a flaw in words which are very plain and clear. But every one sees that in this passage confidence in our own works ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... because he is like himself. Men are merciful to him, and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he is like two inward friends fallen out: his own bitter enemy and discontent presently makes a murder. In sum, he is a bladder blown up with wind, which the least flaw crushes to nothing. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... happy day,' she had told Aunt Rutha, as, after the merry supper was over, she had stood by her side in the soft-lighted library. 'Such a happy day, without a flaw!' And now already it seemed to be fading into the dim, dim past! And yet it was only a few hours since Richard Everidge had climbed lightly up after the spray of brilliant leaves which she had admired, and she had pinned them against the ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... "O hero without flaw, is it well that thou shouldest seek to make me captive, and show me unto the army? For they have beheld our combat, and that I overcame thee, and surely now they will gibe when they learn that thy strength was withstood by a woman. Better would it beseem thee ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... tasting the delights of a tenpenny cigar. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in an habituated manner, and he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly a little bounder, round the end of it. It was just a trivial flaw upon our swagger, perhaps that we both were clear our cigars had to be "mild." He got obliquely across the spaces of his great armchair so as to incline confidentially to my ear, he curled up his little legs, and I, in my longer way, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request had got him like that. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... third, we cannot deny that The Ring and the Book, in its perfection and integrity, fully satisfies the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... has lived day by day for five months with Carlotta's magical beauty, and all he has noticed as characteristic is the little white scar—she fell on marble steps as a child—the only flaw, if flaw can be in a thing so imperceptible, in her ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... sister Maria about her to-morrow. Tom remembers that he was a fool last night, and knows what he thinks and always has thought to-day; but pretty Seraphina thinks he adores her, so that no matter what she does he will never see a flaw, she is sure of that,—poor little puss! She does not know that philosophic Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will do for him to take of the stimulus without interfering with his serious and settled plans ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... would yield to the potent fascination of this woman. As Sylvia looked, her feminine eye took in every gift of face and figure, every grace of attitude or gesture, every daintiness of costume, and found no visible flaw in Ottila, from her haughty head to her handsome foot. Yet when her scrutiny ended, the girl felt a sense of disappointment, and no envy mingled with ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... who shall wear the crown, and the traders to decide what king London shall befriend. Wherefore, cut thy trace from the cloister, and take thy road to the shop.' The next day my uncle gave up the ghost.—They had better clary than this at the convent, I must own; but every stone has its flaw." ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fines from other sources. Besides his large farm, one of these men, M'Loughlin, holds a smaller one of eighteen acres, of which there are fifteen years yet unexpired, yet on consulting with Mr. M'Slime, and examining the lease, he is of opinion that it contains a flaw, and can be broken. I am sure, my lord, for your sake I shall be glad ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... months, both men had studied her character as manifested in the trying phases of prison existence, finding no flaw; to-day they looked up reverently at the graceful form in its homespun uniform, at the calm, colorless face, wearing its crown of meekness, with an inalienable, proud air ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... proposal to put forward; and he added that when the historic provincial divisions of France were broken up into departments, the nation had been prepared by nearly 200 years of centralization under the monarchy. It is a flaw in his argument to say that the previously existing areas were racial, whereas populations of identical race were divided from one another by the course of events. And in the proposed obliteration of these ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... child of intellectual, cultured parents, born into savage surroundings, becomes the slave of this inherited habit—call it tendency, if you will, the intention is the same. I elaborated the theory by instance and introspection, and found no flaw ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a link in the chain some little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link—between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have been able ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... queen.'—Tarleton]—a place of command so acknowledged, that even the poet could call him in the ear of England 'her most dear delight'—such a one was not going to give up so easily the game he had been playing here so long. He was not to be foiled with this great flaw in his fortunes even here; and though all his work appeared for the time to be undone, and though the eye that he had fastened on him was 'the eye' that had in it 'twenty ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... of it, madam," returned Richard, and there for the time the conversation ended. The Queen had been most charming, full of gratitude, and perfectly reasonable in her requests, and yet there was some flaw in the gratification of both, even while neither thought the disappointment would go very hard with their son. Richard could never divest himself of the instinctive prejudice with which soft words inspire men of his nature, and Susan's ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... single annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind that we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... about them; and before very long, to her enormous pride, she was given the task of packing them for market. And oh! the joy of it! the pleasure she took in laying the rich brown and creamy-white eggs in cosy nests in the sweet-smelling hay; her pride in their appearance! The only flaw in her happiness was the fact that she could not carry the basket and dispose of the contents herself to the customers. She pictured herself turning back the snow-white cloth from the top of the basket, and counting out her beloved ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in the Heavens, though slow, produced Like change on sea and land; sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, Corrupt and pestilent: Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice, And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud, And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn; With adverse blast upturns them from the south Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... meantime he had to accommodate himself to circumstances, ingratiate himself with the big ones, wherever he discovered there was a flaw in their relations to one another, and be obliging. He had to take his turn oftener than the others, and came off badly at mealtimes. He submitted to it as something unavoidable, and directed all his efforts toward getting the best that it was possible to get out of the circumstances; but he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the causes of the movements of the heavenly bodies, as you, with your own common sense, would employ to detect a burglar. The only difference is, that the nature of the inquiry being more abstruse, every step has to be most carefully watched, so that there may not be a single crack or flaw in your hypothesis. A flaw or crack in many of the hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no moment as affecting the general correctness of the conclusions at which we may arrive; but, in a scientific inquiry, a fallacy, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I was standing to get a book, laid me on my back for a time. I fretted over it at first, but when I got about again, I found that I was a man maimed for life. I don't know what the injury was—some obscure lesion of the spinal marrow or brain, I believe—some flaw about the size of a pin's head—the doctors have never made out. But every time that I plunged into work, I broke down; for a long time I thought I should struggle through; but at last I became aware that I was on the shelf, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson |
