"Foible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it, who preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge of Nesselrode's motives what would have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and ambition, we have been more indulgent to vanity than our proud readers will approve. We hope, however, not to be misunderstood; we hope that we shall not appear to be admirers of that mean and ridiculous foible, which is anxiously concealed by all who have any desire to obtain esteem. We cannot, however, avoid thinking it is a contradiction to inspire young people with a wish to excel, and at the same time to insist upon their repressing all expressions of satisfaction if they succeed. The desire ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... might hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... vois, victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... is one of those whom you call honest men. He is just, noble-minded, and attentive to the duties of his situation; but, like all of you, he has a foible to counterbalance his virtues; this is an unbounded tenderness for the other sex: and as he, out of principle, required the blessing of the priest to his pleasures, so did he, after the death of his first wife, make a fool of himself by marrying the woman whom you have seen. Through a few hours' ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... congruous scheme of saving truth and religious appeal. The result is that we see, on almost every page, contradictory teachings and conflicting methods of salvation. This, of course, is by no means fatal to it in the estimation of Hindus, with whom consistency has never been a foible, and in the eyes of whom two mutually contradictory teachings can rest ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... impulses), that the man who made it lived once indeed upon the mountains, but has at length come down to dwell finally upon the plain. Literary biography furnishes abundant examples of this imperfection of character, a foible, indeed, which in its multiform manifestations, probably goes as far as anything else to interfere with the formation of a just and final judgment of an author's merit within his own lifetime. When it goes the length ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... very high: he would indeed put it, in its own compartment, almost on a level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825. Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency to consider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set it down to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth. There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... College, Cambridge. He has written learnedly on many subjects: his most valuable works are: A History of the Inductive Sciences, The Elements of Morality, and The Plurality of Worlds. Of Whewell it has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his foible." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Fredericksburg, while attempting to pass into the enemy's lines. This, then, may have been Capt. Norton's secret mission; and I believe the government had traps set for him at other places of egress. Meantime the enemy came in at Savannah. This is considered the President's foible—a triumph over a political or personal enemy will occupy his attention and afford more delight than an ordinary victory over the common enemy. Most men will say Mr. Foote should have been permitted to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... silent brown girl, who for the last twelve years has run wild about our house in her Christmas holidays. She is Italian by name and extraction. Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as it's her foible to be proud of it. But they must not be over courtly or Lady-fied as she is with a Lady who says to her "go and she goeth; come and she cometh." Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist. The verses should be moral ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Veblen. It was curious, said Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was dear old Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he had a foible for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a gentleman was the ease with which he found the joints of all kinds of meat, and he was in arms against the modern tendency to turn such accomplishments over to butlers. He would hold forth on the subject, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... whose foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which were known only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... foible, and always spoke in disparaging tones of her establishment. She would ask her friends to take a cutlet with her, or to come and eat cold chicken with her after the play, but took good care that the menu should be of very different calibre. She, like ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... constantly laying plots to inveigle or surprise his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as a social lion was a rara avis, from first to last. The foible of artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous, society is that it so ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... expiation had ended, willing to add at least a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I can analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reason and experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out of him, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls the light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but it does not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sage ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... was so well ordered that it presented little which his enemies could use as a handle for their purpose. His only foible seemed to be a predilection for female society; while in return all the wives and daughters of the place, with the unerring instinct of their sex, seeing, that the new priest was young, handsome, and eloquent, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... information on any subject whatever. The author who writes over the head of the public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisher—and the most insidious as well, because so many publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... reason. I have spoken much More than my wont: it is a foible which Was not of mine, but more excuses you, Inasmuch as it shows, that I approach A dotage which may justify this deed Of yours, although the law does not, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... thought inconsistent with the affectation of possessing superior influence, which Barak had shown while at the Presidency; but exaggeration of their own consequence is a foible common to all who find themselves in a land of strangers. Addressing the senior Fakir, therefore, he told him in as few words as possible the villanous plot which was laid to betray Menie Gray into the hands of the Prince Tippoo. He made his suit for the reverend ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... in our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... her diversions, the accomplishments and acquirements she was mistress of will show what they must have been. She was far from being fond of cards, the fashionable foible of modern ladies; nor, as will be easily perceived from what I have said, and more from what I shall further say, had she much time for play. She never therefore promoted their being called for; and often insensibly ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ingredient in this composition is pride, which, according to the doctrine of some, is the universal passion. There are others who consider it as the foible of great minds; and others again who will have it to be the very foundation of greatness; and perhaps it may of that greatness which we have endeavoured to expose in many parts of these works; but to real greatness, which is the union of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Troubadourish "Partant pour la Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Recamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... German princes, he was the consistent and unflinching supporter of religious liberty and constitutional law. The battle of Heiliger Lee and the capture of Mons were his most signal triumphs, but the fruits of both were annihilated by subsequent disaster. His headlong courage was his chief foible. The French accused him of losing the battle of Moncontour by his impatience to engage; yet they acknowledged that to his masterly conduct it was owing that their retreat was effected in so successful, and even so brilliant a manner. He was censured for rashness and precipitancy in this last ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... robust man in the late thirties, in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts and emotions, which, even to himself, he ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... character to be imitated. On the contrary we wish it, so far as it goes, to operate as a warning against the indulgence of a spirit, which, though it be a virtue of the highest order when kept under the control of discretion, does, like every other virtue, degenerate into a foible, when carried to excess. Fortunately for that member of doctor Cooper's family of whom we are writing, he found, when his youth wanted it, a sincere friend. Mr. Godwin, whose name is well known in the republic of letters, particularly as the author of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept up to ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... unfortunately gets possession of a wise man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind) addressed him, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... in the streets with an umbrella under their arm. Such a foible may be permitted to such men as Mr. Southey and the Duke of Wellington: but in ordinary men it looks like affectation, and the monotony is ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she thought, waiting ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with its function and the operation with its meaning has been a persistent foible in modern philosophy. It could thus come about that the function of intelligence should be altogether misconceived and in consequence denied, when it was discovered that figments of reason could never become elements of sense but must always ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... especial Foible, He ran away when he was able, And on this inauspicious day He slipped his hand and ran away! He ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... and, sooth to say, not over-clean; yet he was jaunty, and moved with the air of a man much better clad. I was impressed with his appearance, and especially with his voice, which was vibrant, firm, and excellently intoned. It is my foible, perhaps, but I am always charmed with bonhommie, I class originality among the cardinal virtues, and I am as eager in the chase after eccentricity as a veteran fox-hunter is in pursuit of Reynard. M. Cesar promised a compensative proportion of all three qualities, could I only "draw him out"; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... on the way and perhaps followed—'t was a foible of his to believe that throughout all France his fame was as great and popular as it was at Tarascon—he had made a great detour before entering Switzerland and did not don his accoutrements until after he had crossed the frontier. Luckily for him; for never could his armament have ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. "They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily.. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood was kind, as her nature made ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leave of the Hall and its inmates, and brought the history of my visit to something like a close, there seems to remain nothing further than to make my bow, and exit. It is my foible, however, to get on such companionable terms with my reader in the course of a work, that it really costs me some pain to part with him; and I am apt to keep him by the hand, and have a few farewell wards at the end ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. "These experiments in costume are a foible ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... have caused more perplexity to his Whig Government and have played a better party game, it is perhaps fortunate for the country, and certainly happy for his own reputation, that his virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally useless or improper. He never received the homage of a ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... glances at his daughters when they send a whole inside of a half-sheet of note paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides. I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... explained to him, his agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is, a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery, renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, but ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry and ask him, 'Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth?' 'Two,' he would say, without any hesitation. 'Ay, indeed! and who are they?' 'Why, first, there's myself, that's one; and— and—' 'Well, and who's the other?' 'Why, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that moment the whole professoriate was absorbed in one of those great educational crises which from time to time shake a university to its base. The meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional examinations of the university. Anyone conversant with the inner life ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... weaknesses put together. Preachers and moralists are always having hits at it, and in that philosophical study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to be on the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Lord Rufford's note. It had been quite unexpected, and a month or two before, when his hopes had still been high in regard to Mary Masters, would have filled him with delight. It was the foible of his life to be esteemed a gentleman, and his poor ambition to be allowed to live among men of higher social standing than himself. Those dinners of Lord Rufford's at the Bush had been a special ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... color, cut low around the bust, with a stomacher of the same material, that fitted close to the figure, and exhibited the form, from the shoulders to the waist in its true proportions. Below, the dress was full, and sufficiently showed that parsimony in attire was not a foible of the day. A small loop displayed the beauty of the fabric to advantage, and aided in ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... for this promised land as Denys; for the latter constantly chanted its praises, and at every little annoyance showed him "they did things better in Burgundy;" and above all played on his foible by guaranteeing clean bedclothes at the inns of that polished nation. "I ask no more," the Hollander would say; "to think that I have not lain once in a naked bed since I left home! When I look at their linen, instead ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and last demand of Art is that it shall give us the artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible, and rank personality are blown away on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... this prince spent his time seated at a table, upon which were placed three dice and a dice-box. One end of the table was covered with pieces of silver, designed to excite the avarice of his courtiers and people. He, knowing the foible of his subjects, addresses them as follows: Slaves, I wish your happiness. My goodness proposes to enrich you, and make you all happy. Do you see these treasures? Well, they are for you; strive to gain them; let each, in his turn, take the box and dice; ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Oh, if you talk of modesty, madam, there, I own, I'm accessible to praise: modesty is my foible: it was so the Duke of Brentford used to say of me. 'I love Jack Lofty,' he used to say: 'no man has a finer knowledge of things; quite a man of information; and when he speaks upon his legs, by the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... against Folly and Affectation. There is at the same time an humble Ignorance, a modest Weakness, that ought to be spar'd; they are unhappy already in the Consciousness of their own Defects, and 'tis fighting with the Lame and Sick to be severe upon them. The Wit that genteely glances at a Foible, is smartly retorted, or generously forgiven; because the Merit of the Reprover is as well known as the Merit of the Reproved. In such delicate Conversations, Mirth, temper'd with good Manners, is the only Point in View, and we grow gay and polite together; perhaps there's no Moment of our Lives ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... he had his views on the Irish question. Every American newspaper reader is cheerfully satisfied with the conviction that the Celtic race on its native sod has no real faults. A constitutional antipathy to rent may exist, but that is a national foible which, owing doubtless to some peculiarity of the climate, is almost praiseworthy in Ireland, though elsewhere regarded as hardly respectable. At any rate, with the consciousness that he was about to come face to face with the much-talked-of boycott, Harold's spirits rose, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... thousands of millions of tons of water that are raised twenty-one feet twice in every twenty-four hours by the tides. It is the skill to apply the force that is needed; not the force itself, which exceeds that of all the steam-engines in the nation. And he says that the great scientific foible of the day is the neglect of natural forces, which are cheap and inexhaustible, and the mania for steam-engines and gas, which are expensive, and for coal, which is not to last forever. He implores ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... wonderfully narrow-minded in his authorship capacity, though otherwise good, humane and generous, that he changes countenance at either seeing or hearing of any writer whatsoever. Mrs. Thrale, with whom, this foible excepted, he is a great favourite, is so enraged with him for his littleness of soul in this respect, that merely to plague him, she vowed at the rooms she would walk all the evening between Dr. Delap ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Hell; the Pleasure in the Possession of us Wenches, abates in proportion to the Degrees we go beyond the Bounds of Innocence; and no Man is gratified, if there is nothing left for him to debauch. Well, Sir, my first Man, when I came upon the Town, was Sir Jeoffry Foible, who was extremely lavish to me of his Money, and took such a Fancy to me that he would have carried me off, if my Patroness would have taken any reasonable Terms for me: But as he was old, his Covetousness ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of excess is no foible of mine, Though liking and needing a glass of good wine, To help the digestion, to quicken the heart, And loosen the tongue for its eloquent part, But never once yielding one jot to excess, Nor weakly consenting the least to transgress. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... The Kogan-Bors-Wazalitz combine incurred your displeasure. I see you are also a man who does not forget easily. And that, too, I understand. It is a foible of my own, Out-Hunter. I neither forget nor forgive my enemies, though I may seem to do so and time separates them from their ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... defaire de ses prejuges, et autres choses semblables. Ils pensent que cela suffit pour ne plus se laisser seduire a ses sens, et pour ne plus se tromper du tout. Il ne suffit pas de dire que l'esprit est foible, il faut lui faire sentir ses foiblesses. Ce n'est pas assez de dire qu'il est sujet a l'erreur, il faut lui decouvrir en quoi consistent ses erreurs."—MALEBRANCHE, Recherche ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... general should have been selected for so important a movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp) and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it flattered his vanity, to see men who were ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... only a preface to what is to come, that even the last generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and at the same time of unprecedented social change. Is it necessary that ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... somehow, she gathered the idea he was chuckling inwardly and that there resided in him a broad and tender toleration for the little antics and makeshifts of mankind. Possibly he was holding Mrs. Blossom up to her as a model of rectitude; perhaps he was asking her to laugh with him at a foible of one of his own people. She wished she ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... Mrs. Detlor praised was as wine and milk to Hagar. He was about to speak, but Baron, whose foible was hurriedly changing from one subject to another, pulled a letter out of his pocket and said: "But maybe this is of more importance to Mrs. Detlor than my foolishness. I won't ask you to read it. I'll tell you what's in it. But, first, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... affectation of majestic stateliness inherent in royalty. But the pedantic display of learning, the disregard of the real wants of the people, the contempt of all knowledge which does not wear the academic garb, show the same foible, the same conceit, the same spirit of caste among those who, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have occupied the most prominent rank in the society of Germany. Professorial knight-errantry still waits for its Cervantes. Nowhere have the objects of learning ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... trust to your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... dancing to Daddy's music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming to ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... early for his purpose, and that it would be better not to appear at the place of rendezvous till nearer the time assigned. Other gallants were not unlikely to be on the watch as well as himself about the house of the Fair Maid of Perth; and he knew his own foible so well as to be sensible of the great chance of a scuffle ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the formidable revolt of the Poles in 1863. It remained to keep France quiet. In this Bismarck thought he had succeeded by means of interviews which he held with Napoleon III. at Biarritz (Nov. 1865). What there occurred is not clearly known. That Bismarck played on the Emperor's foible for oppressed nationalities, in the case of Italy, is fairly certain; that he fed him with hopes of gaining Belgium, or a slice of German land, is highly probable, and none the less so because ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and therefore the better listeners. Yet, to say nothing of the gout, Messer Bartolommeo's felicity was far from perfect: it was embittered by the contents of certain papers that lay before him, consisting chiefly of a correspondence between himself and Politian. It was a human foible at that period (incredible as it may seem) to recite quarrels, and favour scholarly visitors with the communication of an entire and lengthy correspondence; and this was neither the first nor the second, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... put up with the applause of the many. And thus his letters are full of that heartiness and vigour which comes from the determination to do everything he tries to do well. They have besides the most perfect and unmistakable reality. Every foible is confessed; every passing thought, even such as one would rather not confess even to oneself, is revealed and recorded to his friend. It is from these letters to a great extent that Cicero has been so severely judged. He stands, say ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... contradictions and falsities and hypocrisies which come every morning and go every night,—all these would soon have been to you—oh! I'm afraid they'd have been as big as a herd of buffalo! There would have been a bull fight for every foible." ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... to speak with so much indulgence of my foible," said miss Withers, and was going to proceed, when little Louisa Manners asked, "Pray, are not equipages carriages?" "Yes, miss Manners, an equipage is a carriage." "Then I am sure if my papa had but one equipage I should be very proud; for once when my papa talked of keeping a one-horse ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... truly an evil; and all evils were about of equal magnitude. Besides, in attacking an evil or an abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims with intense dislike, bordering on hatred. This style of attack, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... spoiled if pains are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the greatness of each is kept back and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians should meet to ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his own country a valet, in Prussia a soldier, then he came to Russia to be a tutor, not knowing very well what the word meant in our language. He was a good fellow, astonishingly gay and absent-minded. His chief foible was a passion for the fair sex. Nor was he, to use his own expression, an enemy to the bottle—that is to say, a la Russe, he loved drink. But as at home wine was offered only at table, and then in small glasses, and as, moreover, ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... especial attractions to him. This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. Webster to substitute ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... continued Glenn, knowing Joe's foible, though it was apparent he suffered from some ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... been heaped on his path by his own [Greek: hubris] and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... replete with the usual quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, 'Mind the edge of the carpet'; and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little hysterically—all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which accuse ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... these facts by the younger Bartram should have been overlooked or disregarded. With the genuine love of Nature and fondness for exploration, 'William Bartram did not inherit the simplicity of his father, the earliest native botanist of this country. Fine writing was his foible; and the preface to his well-known "Travels" (published at Philadelphia in 1791) is its full-blown illustration, sometimes perhaps deserving the epithet which he applies to the palms of Florida—that of pomposity. In this preface he declares ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the intemperate spirit exhibited, which destroyed the effect of the shrewd and just comments often appearing in "Home as Found." This was full as much impaired by the display of personal weaknesses. Cooper's foible about descent he could not help exposing. No thoughtful man denies the desirability of honorable lineage, or undervalues the possession of it; but not for the reasons for which the novelist regarded it and celebrated it. There was much in this single story to justify Lowell's sarcasm, uttered ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... We made our mistakes before, and during the war, but neither Mr. Asquith's Governments nor that of his successor need fear comparison with those of our Allies or our enemies on that account; and it is merely a modest foible of the people, which has hardly lost a war for nearly four hundred years, to ascribe its escape to fortune, and to envy the prescience and the science which have lightened the path ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience, but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could not bear another man should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... poor child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... to heighten his desires for the other: the extravagant fondness of that unhappy woman rendering her visibly uneasy at even the ordinary civilities she saw him behave with to any other, discovered to him that jealousy was not the least reigning foible of her foul, and the surest means to make her hate that person whom it was not the interest of his passion she should continue to love. When they were alone together one day at the place of their usual rendezvous, in the midst of the most tender endearments, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... effect of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none more ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... to conceal a foible, which was more characteristic of the superstition of the age than of the man, Columbus himself entertained an idea of the kind, and assures the sovereigns, in his letter from Jamaica, that the people of Cariari ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... a fol Qui trop met en fame sa cure; Fame est de trop foible nature, De noient rit, de noient pleure, Fame aime et het en trop poi d'eure: Tost est ses talenz remuez, Qui ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... however, that he was very ill at ease upon this point, and that if a dangerous illness had overtaken him, and he had had the time, he would have thrown himself into the hands of all the priests and all the Capuchins of the town. His great foible was to pride himself upon his impiety and to wish to surpass in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bow'r appears Embosom'd in a wood of spears— A wood still nourish'd by the dews, Which smiles, and softest looks diffuse. Thrice happy youths! who midst yon shades Sweet converse hold with Idham's maids, What bliss, to view them gild the hours, And brighten wit and fancy's powers, While every foible they disclose New transport gives, new graces shows. 'Tis theirs to raise with conscious art The flames of love in every heart; 'Tis yours to raise with festive glee The flames of hospitality: Smit by their glances lovers lie, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... wretched rhymes, even when not salaried for them; and once wrote an Essay on Cicero's character, for which his dotage was scarcely an apology;—so much he preferred amusement to prudence.[220] Another foible was to act tragedies with a squeaking voice[221], and to write them with a genius about the same size for the sublime; but the malice of his contemporaries seemed to forget that he was creating new dramatic existences in the exquisite personifications of his comic characters; ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... so elaborate upon the head of breakfast, which meal, I freely confess to be my foible, that I feel as though any description of dinner would now come comparatively weak; besides, to speak verily, one might, with time and prudent choice, get as good a dinner, perhaps, a-shore in favoured countries: but for a breakfast, pho! ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... horse has vanished with that vicious switch of his tail, we have a little feeling of having been "sold,"—a feeling which great art never gives. But we are in the best of humor; for were we not warned all along against just this foible of curiosity, and is not the story-teller smiling inscrutably and advising us to be thankful that we at least still ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... many reasons, the advent of a London pedler was a great and pleasant event at the Manor House. Katherine had that delightful and excusable womanly foible, a love of fine clothing; and shops for its sale were very rare, even in towns of considerable size. It was from packmen and hawkers that fine ladies bought their laces and ribbons and gloves; their precious toilet and hair pins, their paints and powders, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... and faultless figure harmonized with flowing folds and soft laces which can do so much for outlines that are not soft. Eleanor was not without a consciousness of this; nevertheless, vanity was not her foible; and her state of mind was anything but enviable when she left the dressing-room for the gallery. But Mr. Carlisle was there, to meet her and her mood too; and Eleanor found herself taken in hand at once. He had a way of mixing affection with his power over her, in such a way ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... thanked the hidalgo for his very splendid present. The nuns thanked him each and all; until the old crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, indeed, he remarked, was his foible next ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... passion. A man is a drunkard, and you tell him he ought to be sober; he is debauched, and you ask him to reform; he is idle, and you recommend industry to him as his wisest course; he gambles, and you remind him that he may be ruined by this foible; he has lost his character, and you advise him to get into some reputable service or lucrative situation; vice becomes a habit with him, and you request him to rouse himself and shake it off; he is starving, and you warn him that if he breaks the law, he will be hanged. None of this reasoning ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause of the pain being mysterious, they went back to first principles and blamed (or thanked) God for it. They believed that God ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... reports that are always flying about town; scandal all, I have no doubt—Your head a little to the right, if you please—And the publication will be stopped, of course, and the young lady's friends—you are interested for her, I see; so am I—always am for the young and fair, that's my foible; and indeed, confidentially I can inform you—If you could keep your head ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... fault for making that personal which should be general. But women they are so. 'T is our foible. I pray the good sergeant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... It is the foible, however, of many Americans, both at home and abroad, that they want to be taken nationally, and not personally, by foreigners. Beyond any other people we wish to be loved by other peoples, even by others whom we do not love, and we wish to be loved in the lump. We would ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly understands London and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... it is true, were not at all conscious of the injury they were inflicting upon him at the time. He was certainly the pride of the family, and even while they humored and increased this his predominant and most dangerous foible, we are bound to say that they gratified their own affection as much as they did ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the reader will object. "All this happened a hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a foible—but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist, discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in this fashion: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo, hands-across and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it some day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken pity on me the last few summers, and I think she loves it as much ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... blessedness of five o'clock tea. At dinner he was in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the "member of society," never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb. Good sense was his habit if not his foible. And why should we deny ourselves here the pleasure of imagining Miss Browning at these pleasant ceremonies, as Mrs Bronson describes her, wearing "beautiful gowns of rich and sombre tints, and appearing each day in a different and most dainty ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hearts he rather pitied, not to say despised, Saltwell, for his want of the polish he possessed and his indifference to the elegancies of life, though he was not unable to appreciate his messmate's frankness of manner and truthfulness of character. His foible was his admiration for the poets, and his belief that he could write poetry and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Man" is good enough to say of me that "cutting up monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be referred to the former or ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... little for Mr. THURSTON'S generalities (his talk of "hysteria," which was never a British foible, showed his lack of elementary observation), but the character of John intrigued me as a fair example of the type of egoist, very common among quite good fellows, who is more concerned to satisfy ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... seigneur" has never been the foible of the rich American, but as the seigneur is a species of recent growth and has not yet had time to blossom into flower and show us just to what his nature turns, we must watch his movements hereafter with interest. So far, he seems endued with quiet tastes, as far as personal parade is ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... at first by his own foible, and after that the sport of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... both looked so young, that having advised them to wait four years, he was ready to charge them with youthfulness, if not as a fault, at least as a folly; indeed, the state of his own affairs made him inclined to think it a foible, almost a want of patience, in any one to marry before thirty. It was a conflict of feeling. Guy was so cordial and good-humoured, that he could not help being almost gained; but, on the other hand, he had always thought Guy's ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ay! I see well enough, but I never will seem to look, fearing to distress them; thus I gain a double pleasure when I recite to them my poems; for I leave those poor fellows who have not breakfasted free to eat, even while I gratify my own dearest foible, see you? ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... of fourteen, was a rough diamond, if a diamond at all, with a soul centred on sport. His second son, Anthony, between five and six, was large and robust, like his father. Not having been polished at that time, it is hard to say what sort of gem Tony was. When engaged in mischief—his besetting foible—his eyes shone like carbuncles with unholy light. He was the plague of the family. Of course, therefore, he was the beloved ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... He had been at Eton with his son, and he used to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he had turned up with his wife again; that was before he—the old man—had been put to grass. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... statistics are the childish foible of modern statesmen, who think that figures are estimates, we must cipher to estimate. Figures are, moreover, the convincing argument of societies based on self-interest and money, and that is the sort of society the Charter has given us,—in my opinion, at any rate. Nothing ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... lasting community of thought between the two spirits, a lasting debt from the younger to the elder. Indeed, we cannot say that at all points Shakspere outwent his guide. It is a curious reflection that they had probably one foible in common; for we know Montaigne's little weakness of desiring his family to be thought ancient, of suppressing the fact of its recent establishment by commerce; and we have evidence which seems to show that Shakspere sought zealously,[181] ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... wants a certificate showing that he has contributed to my comfort and entertainment, and lastly comes the nawab himself and his bosom friend, the hospital doctor, to bid me farewell and request the same favor. This certificate-foible is one of the greatest bores in India; almost every native who performs any service for a Sahib, whether in the capacity of a mere waiter at a native hotel, or as retainer of some wealthy nabob—and not infrequently the nabob himself, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the best of living creatures (as so many of us are), but he has one detestable foible—he always wants to read something aloud. Now, reading aloud is a very special gift. Few men have it, and even of those few there are some who do not force it upon their friends; the rest have it not, and Leeson is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... beautiful lady would waste her blandishments on him? Even the low-born lasses with whom they at times consorted had scarce an eye for Barney Bill. The grapes were sour. Paul smiled indulgently on the little foible of his friend. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... what you did. And besides—I seem to have a queer foible for telling the truth just now. Odd, isn't it, when I've been ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... all his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the first ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Gresham, too; an over-age dizzy blonde who was still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with mother and daughter, and submitted to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... being educated amain, let us hope. Germany has prided herself on her education, her learning, and on her Kultur. To-day she is beyond the calculation of all that foresight which has been her boast, and foible. Human nature, other than German, has not been on the national curriculum, and, as in other departments of study, what has not been reduced to rule and line is beyond the ken and apprehension. How stupendously wrong a Power which ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... and Elgidia; on which she informed him of all the particulars related in the preceding chapter; adding, that after the receipt of the two letters he had sent, the sisters came to a mutual understanding, each confessed her foible to the other, and the cause of their quarrel being for ever removed, a sincere reconciliation ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... honorable reward of science. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the faculty has always possessed members of a spirit to condemn and regret such despicable practices. There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual precautions ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... When pose is a deliberate attempt to deceive other people for your own credit, it is detestable. But when it is merely harmless drama, to add to the interest of life and to retain your own self-respect, it's an amiable foible, and need not be discouraged. The real question is whether it is assumed seriously, or whether it is all a sort of joke. We all like to play our little games, and I find it very easy to forgive a person who enjoys ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and fortunately no one had heard him. The men moved on and struck into the rutted track leading from the batteries to camp. He turned and followed them in a brown study. Ever since Badajoz, siege operations had been Sergeant Wilkes's foible. His youngsters played upon it, drawing him into discussions over the camp-fire, and winking one to another as he expounded and illustrated, using bits of stick to represent parallels, traverses, rampart and glacis, scarp and counterscarp. But he had mastered ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the Armenian; "take another glass of wine; you possess a great deal of philological knowledge, but it appears to me that the language of this Petulengro is your foible: but let us change the subject; I feel much interested in you, and would fain be of service to you. Can you ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Popish leapers; and, with all deference to his Eminence, upon a better assurance than that, Professor Wilson may be rated, at the time I speak of, as the flower of all Protestant leapers. Not having the Cardinal's foible of connecting any vanity with this little accomplishment, knowing exactly what could and what could not be effected in this department of gymnastics, and speaking with the utmost simplicity and candour of his failures and his successes alike, he might always be relied upon, and his statements ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents —you understand me? I set out double charged ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... I want you to be on your guard against that intellectual foible, which I believe has held me back in a region of sadness and solitude that I need not have lingered in, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... apprehension of any permanent danger to freedom in the country at large. To those who read the letters of the time there is something inexpressibly touching in the general faith of their writers in the ultimate victory of the Law. Charles was obstinate, but obstinacy was too common a foible amongst Englishmen to rouse any vehement resentment. The people were as stubborn as their king, and their political sense told them that the slightest disturbance of affairs must shake down the financial fabric which Charles was slowly building ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... scarcely a day passed but that her coldly dispassionate dissection of this or that foible of their own set, did not startle or sometimes distress Barbara Allison; hardly a day but that her cool voice, which could be as tempered as edged steel, did not cut through the veneer of some custom or other and expose the crooked grain beneath. Barbara did not know just why she cared ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she could not give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... eight or nine at night. We had rarely less than twenty minutes for each; and if we had not spent many another twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side track among many miles of desert, we might have taken an hour to each repast and arrived at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not the foible of an emigrant train. It gets through on sufferance, running the gauntlet among its more considerable brethren; should there be a block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they cannot, in consequence, predict the length ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so. Such reality is not found in a satire, for a satire, as distinguished from a novel, both conceals and exaggerates: it gives half-truths instead of whole truths; it shows not all of life but only a part; and even this it cannot show quite truly, for its avowed object is to magnify some vice or foible. In doing so, a satire finds no means so effective as irony, which makes its appeal wholly to the intellect. A good novel, on the contrary, touches the head and the heart both; along with passages which give keen intellectual ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Margaret laughing. "It is only my foible for making a thing look nice. And, Ethel," she added, drawing her down close over her, "I did not think the trouble wasted, if seeing me look fresher cheered up dear ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... he had a greater and more heartfelt delight in the superiority of other men to himself than men in general derive from their belief of their own. His readiness to imagine a superiority where it did not exist, was for many years his predominant foible; his pain from the perception of inferiority in others whom he had heard spoken of with any respect, was unfeigned and involuntary, and perplexed him as a something which he did not comprehend. In the child-like simplicity ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, one might descant on certain auxiliary advantages—as, that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely to foster actions of damages for nuisance, trespass, or assault, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the staff which lies between your hands. This portion really corresponds with the "forte" of a sword or stick. If you have learned fencing with the foils it will be of the greatest possible advantage to you, for you will then understand how slight an effort brought to bear on the foible of your opponent's staff—in this case it will be somewhere within two feet of the end—will suffice to turn aside ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... 262 lamenting one day before the King, that the nations of Europe were wholly destitute of this grand desideratum; and he strongly recommended the establishment of a college founded upon the simple principles he had suggested. The king, either to humour this Quixotic foible, or to gratify his own ambition at the expense of truth, observed, in reply, 'Why, Sir, I have a Professor of Signs in one of the northernmost colleges in my dominions; but the distance is, perhaps, six hundred miles, so that it will be impracticable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
