"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kremlin live in fear their power and position would collapse were their own people to acquire knowledge, information, comprehension about our free society. Their world has many elements of strength, but this one fatal flaw: the weakness represented by their iron curtain and their police state. Surely, a social order at once so insecure and so fearful, must ultimately lose its ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this way because I want you to realize that except for the one fault which has shadowed your father's life, there is no flaw in him. Other men have gone through the world apparently untouched by any temptation, but their families could tell you the story of a thousand tyrannies, their clerks could tell you of selfishness and hardness, their churches and ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... or Johnson could rise from the dead! 'Expende—quot libras in duce summo invenies?' I knew they were light in the balance of mortality; but I thought their living dust weighed more carats. Alas! this imperial diamond hath a flaw in it, and is now hardly fit to stick in a glazier's pencil;—the pen of the historian won't rate it worth a ducat. Psha! 'something too much of this.' But I won't give him up even now; though all his admirers have, 'like the thanes, fallen from him.'"—Journal, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the flaw instantly. "To be without a wife at all would be about as conducive to happiness as to be ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... a very long time before the inquest was over, and Aunt Jane had almost yielded to her niece's impatience and her own, and consented to walk down to meet the intelligence, when Fergus came tearing in, 'I've seen the rock, and there is a flaw of crystal- lisation in it! And the coroner-man ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a field of slush and flaw Red with a blood red dye. And a million faces fungus pale Stare ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... "The flaw in our power-loom is that double threads cannot be handled," explained Mr. Gautier to Pierre. "Any goods requiring such treatment must of necessity ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, And hath its 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... it. Jessica is a child of impulsive, yet absorbing affections. She can see no flaw in the character of anybody she loves; and—well, none of us are ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... and peril of drowning it pleased God to send safe home the Golden Hind, which arrived in Falmouth the 22 of September, being Sunday, not without as great danger escaped in a flaw coming from the south-east, with such thick mist that we could not discern land to put in right with the haven. From Falmouth we went to Dartmouth, and lay there at anchor before the Range, while ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... the sole flaw in a very fine opera book. Tannhaeuser is the noblest expression in music of the glory and worth of human life. An assertion of the glory and worth of human life is bound to be, as Tannhaeuser is, tragic; life and the value of life can only be realized when we see life in conflict with death ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the explanation lies 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 ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... rather hard for her, and she judged it as it appeared, and there did seem a great flaw somewhere which she was trying her best to solve by noting every phase of life as she found it. Naturally bright, keenly intellectual and very independent, she was a philosopher as well as an artist, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... him so sweetly and seriously in the face as she spoke, and was so completely unaware of any flaw in her reply, that Jock, argumentative as he was, only gasped and said nothing more. And it was in this pause of their conversation that they swept up to Mr. Rushton's door. Mr. Rushton was the town-clerk of Farafield, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... disturbed, puzzled—made Mildred understand why she had been so reluctant 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 reassured, and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... to reassure him. "It's all right, Ted dear," she said. "We hadn't told Miss Pat because we thought she mightn't like it and we wanted her to have this one evening without a flaw. But she has to know tomorrow, so she may ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... skipper he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Azarian's lonely nights on the water. "He leaned over his boat-side, miles away from any shore, a star looked down from far above, a star looked up from far below, the glint passed as instantly, and left him the sole spirit between immense concaves of void and fulness, shut in like the flaw in a diamond." How the subscribers to the Circulating Library of the enterprising Mr. Loring must catch their breaths in amazement, when that courteous gentleman hands them for the last new novel—sandwiched between "Pique" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peculiar experience came to the captain of the yacht Coral. A slight flaw in the breeze, which was bearing the vessel forward, caused the sails to flap, and must have made a sort of funnel of one of them for the moment; or rather, as may be said, it made a temporary whispering gallery of the deck ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... bettering her. Only once does he sound a false note. I find her speech a trifle rhetorical after she learns the facts in the case of Razumov (p. 354). Two lines are superfluous at the close of this heart-breaking chapter, and in all the length of the book that is the only flaw I can offer to hungry criticism. The revolutionary group at Geneva—the mysterious and vile Madame de S——, the unhappy slave, Tekla, the much-tried Mrs. Haldin, and the very vital anarchist, surely ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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. Again they went round, and again ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time is not long since when we met our adventures in cruelty alone—no concert of enlightened citizens on these subjects—and only the very few had found the flaw in the gospel that God had made the animals, and all the little animals, for delectation and service of man. Possibly there is a bit of galvanic life still in the teaching, but it cannot be said to belong to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... flaw in him Laura would have found it. Next to Tanqueray she was the best critic of the four. There followed a discussion of technical points that left Hambleby ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... bow, trying it, whether it had taken any hurt, but the suitors thought scorn of him. Then, when he had found it to be without flaw, just as a minstrel fastens a string upon his harp and strains it to the pitch, so he strung the bow without toil; and holding the string in his right hand, he tried its tone, and the tone was sweet ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... Hygeia's fount that shade, Smart booths allure the lounger on parade. Bohemia's glass, and Nevers' beaded wares, Millecour's fine lace, and Moulins' polish'd shears; And crates of painted wicker without flaw, And fine mesh'd products of Germania's straw, Books of dull trifling, misnamed "reading light," And foxy maps, and prints in damaged plight, Whilst up and down to rattling castanettes, The active ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... away into vacancy, ardently. Lady Holme felt a slight tingling sensation in her cool skin. For a moment it seemed to her as if she watched herself in caricature, distorted perhaps by a mirror with a slight flaw in it. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... to be 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was the opinion of Ned Newton, who was Tom Swift's particular chum. "You know when Mr. Foger lost all his money, the house was supposed to be sold. But I heard later that there was some flaw in the title, and the sale fell through. It is because he couldn't sell the place that Mr. Foger couldn't get money to pay some of his debts. He has some claim on the house, I believe, but I don't believe he'd come ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... group, a long time before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly lowered, and landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious glance was cast at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a flaw of wind:—and even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and as the rope began to coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every eye was strained to discern the identity of the first voyagers in this aerial journey,—the two children, securely ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... 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
... notion that way a moment ago. But I was afraid I might be a little slow. When you downed Laskar I watched you, trying to learn the secret of your draw. I didn't learn it, because there is no secret—you're just a natural gunslinger without a flaw. You're the fastest man with a gun I ever saw—and I'm taking my hat off ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... imagine no position more honourable than that of a clergyman's wife unless indeed it were a bishop's. Considering his father's influence it was not at all impossible that Theobald might be a bishop some day—and then—then would occur to her that one little flaw in the practice of the Church of England—a flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but in its policy, which she believed on the whole to be a mistaken one in this respect. I mean the fact that a bishop's wife does not take the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... in their explorations they passed over sections that Harris would have accepted, but McCrae objected, finding always some flaw not apparent to the untrained eye. Once, where a little river had worn its way across the plain, they came on a sod shack, where a settler was already located. "Nice spot," said McCrae, "but too sandy. His farm'll blow away when he breaks the sod. There's an easy ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... religion cannot exist without perfect physical religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not simply in our spirits, but in our bodies and spirits. The only example of perfect manhood the world ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the beautiful, the sympathetic, whose magnetic force and charm are such that we wish to sit at her feet at once. She is intellectual, but with a disarming smile, religious, but so charitable, masterful, and yet loved of all. None is perfect, and there must be a flaw in her somewhere, but to find it would necessitate such a rummage among her many adornments as there is now no time for. Perhaps we may come upon it accidentally in the ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... the present day for covering the roofs of dwelling houses, had been fitted into the squares, excluding air and light at the same time. The centre pane of this tier was, however, clear and free from flaw of every description. Opposite to the window blazed a cheerful wood fire, recently supplied with fuel; and at one of the inner corners of the room was placed a low uncurtained bed, that exhibited marks of having been lain in since it was last made. On ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... was tried for the unlawful possession of the will, which he had either procured to be stolen, or had dishonestly acquired and retained by other means as bad. By dint of an ingenious counsel, and a legal flaw, he escaped; but only to undergo a worse punishment; for, some years afterwards, his house was broken open in the night by robbers, tempted by the rumours of his great wealth, and he was found murdered ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... accumulation of experiment and variety. He was, indeed, far too strong-minded a man to accept the hazy modern notion that the soul in its highest sense can change: he seems to have held that religion can never get any better and that poetry rather tends to get worse. But he did not see the flaw in his political theory; which is that unless the soul improves with time there is no guarantee that the accumulations of experience will be adequately used. Figures do not add themselves up; birds do not label or stuff themselves; comets do ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... two households became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing something of each other. Try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the Contessa ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the nut the Cat had given to him, and there was seen a little dog so tiny that it could go through a ring without touching it; he was also able to dance, and play the castanets, while his ears touched the ground. The King was embarassed, for it was impossible to find a flaw in ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... older grew the documents as the lawyer's hand travelled downward; any flaw or failure must have been healed by lapse of time long and long ago; dust and grime and mildew thickened, ink became paler, and contractions more contorted; it was rather an antiquary's business now than a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to preserve the manly dignity belonging to his proud position as an engaged man was very comical. So was the entire change from his former abasement and devotion to Nan to a somewhat lordly air with his little betrothed; for Dora made an idol of him, and resented the idea of a fault or a flaw in her Tom. This new state of things suited both, and the once blighted being bloomed finely in the warm atmosphere of appreciation, love, and confidence. He was very fond of the dear girl, but meant to be a slave no longer, and enjoyed ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the ghost, if ghost it was, pass through unopened doors. The flaw in Trenholme's comfortable theory was that he had forgotten that the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place he found this door ajar, and neither in his own ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... sent to the son of Peleus glowed With hammered wonders, all without a flaw; The Shield of Union in its splendor showed The ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Somewhat as in the early days of the 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, and all abuses and iniquities would surely pass away. Thus, in a pageant ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great rearing war That frothed with lips flung up, and shook men's lives Off either flank of it like snow; I saw (You could not hear as his sword rang), saw him Shout, laugh, smite straight, and flaw the riven ranks, Move as the wind moves, and his horse's feet Stripe their long flags with dust. Why, if one died, To die so in the heart and heat of war Were a much goodlier thing than living soft And speaking sweet for fear of men. Woe's me, Is there no way to pluck this body ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long, unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... than to stand here and converse." Then she turned to the man and told him a deliberate lie. I am sorry to record this. But a tendency to avoid the straight and narrow issues of truth when facing a crisis is one of Tish's weaknesses, the only flaw in an otherwise strong ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... formed, but it was impossible that a permanent crystallization should take place where so strong a dissolvent as the Catholic clause had been admitted. In the sequel, therefore, the union fell asunder precisely at this fatal flaw. The next union was that which definitely separated the provinces into Protestant, and Catholic, into self-governing republics, and the dependencies of a distant despotism. The immediate effect, however, of the "Brussels Union" was to rally all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 roundness ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... severe or cruel conqueror; he gave privileges to the Scottish clergy, and re-instated the families of the barons killed in the war. Doubtless he hoped to do great good to the wild population, and bring them into the same order as the English; but the flaw in his title made this impossible; the Scots regarded his soldiery as their enemies and oppressors, and though the nobles had given in a self-interested adhesion to the new government, they abhorred ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... the culprit to follow the same trade 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... similitude," said Stearns, after the burst of laughter, by which these remarks were greeted, had a little subsided; "but methinks I see a flaw therein, friend Brush: you said our young republican's wisdom, alias ideas, all lay in his face; and then, in the matter of the fig-tree, you go on to intimate he has one distinct idea in his head, thereby lessening the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... secure gratis the assistance of men specially trained as clerks, book-keepers or handicraftsmen. Hence all manner of intrigues and manoeuvres were afoot on the arrival of drafts and there was a scramble for the best hands. Here at once was a palpable flaw in the system of assignment. The lot of the convict was altogether unequal. Some, the dull, unlettered and unskilled, were drafted up country to heavy manual labour at which they remained, while clever expert rogues found pleasant, congenial and often profitable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... see them; a skysail seems high enough in all conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... very grains of glass from the mirror, the magic mirror. You remember that horrid mirror, in which all good and great things reflected in it became small and mean, while the bad things were magnified, and every flaw became ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... offered, as best served your 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 ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... of life depends On our discretion, and a prudent choice. Look into those they call unfortunate, And, closer view'd, you'll find they are unwise: Some flaw in their own conduct lies beneath. Don Carlos is of ancient, noble blood, And then his wealth might mend a prince's fortune. For him the sun is lab'ring in the mines, A faithful slave, and turning earth to gold: His keels are freighted with that sacred pow'r, By which e'en kings ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... "Too bad! I don't blame you for not wanting to talk about it. They's a flaw in everything, Jig, and this is yours. If I was to be around you much, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing of the matter before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... whom 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
... I seldom got through it as the Lord would, for any one who loaned Clarissa a slate knew that it would come back with greasy, sweaty finger marks on it you almost had to dig a hole to wash off, and your pencil would be wet. And if there were the least flaw of crystal in the pencil, she found it, and bore down so hard that what she wrote ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... the most enchanting bit of unlaced disheveled country within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... another case in which a young factory worker had been injured by the bursting of an emery wheel; and the law held that the boy was guilty of "contributory negligence" because he had continued to work at the wheel after he had found a flaw in it—although he had had no choice except to work at it or leave the factory and find employment elsewhere. There was need of a law giving workmen better protection in such circumstances. Why should not Gardener enter the Legislature and introduce these bills?—which ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... finish of art differs from that of nature. The homogeneous gloss of the needle disappears under the fierce scrutiny of the lens, and its delicate point becomes furrowed and riven. But Nature's finish reveals no flaw, it remains perfect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... some boilermakers are so dishonest as to try and impose upon the locomotive engineer, who they know will carefully examine every part of his boiler, and who is able to detect any flaw, it is not to be expected that the farmer will escape. Nor does he. The great number of explosions of boilers used in thrashing and in other farm work proves that there are boilermakers who "force their boilers into such localities when their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... find that I had expressed my honest convictions in a way that would be open to any objection by you. The reasoning may be very stupid, but I believe that the observation is sound. Will you, therefore, look over the few pages which I have sent, and tell me whether you find any flaw, or whether you think I should change the form of expression? You have been so unhandsomely and uncandidly dealt with by a friend of yours and mine that I should be sorry to find myself in the position of an opponent to you, and more particularly ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... at the post-office. Her anxiety concerning the wayward Tessie constituted the one flaw in her otherwise happy new days. That she could not at once be with her parents was clear and reasonable to the girl, reared in hardship, and accustomed to many personal sacrifices, but that an incriminating letter would surely one day come from ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... against him on such wise as to do him a mischief; wherefore, as often as it came near him, he put it away from him as best he might with his hand, albeit he had little strength thereof. But presently there issued a sudden flaw of wind out of the air and falling on the sea, smote upon the chest and drove it with such violence against Landolfo's plank that the latter was overset and he himself perforce went under water. However, he struck out and rising to the surface, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in this morning's Times. You have never voiced the feeling of the moment with more force or keener insight. But you will, I am sure, pardon me when I say that in the fifty-eighth stanza there is a regrettable flaw, which could however quickly be put right. To me, that fine appeal to Monaco to give up its neutrality is impaired by the use of the word "cope," which I have always understood should be avoided by good writers. "Deal" has the same meaning and is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... There was one flaw in our content. Bobby Green's mother arrived shortly after one o'clock in a high state of wrath, and I was obliged to go out in the hall ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were thinking of driving to the hills," says Sir Adrian, making a feeble effort to find a flaw ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... and then wrote rapidly. A single side of notepaper was sufficient; he blotted it on the pad, and read it through. But something in it, it must be supposed, did not satisfy him, for he crumpled it up. Ah, at last and for the first time there was a flaw in the appointment of the house, for there was no wastepaper basket by the table. At any rate one must suppose that Mr. Taynton did not see it, for he put his rejected sheet into ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... her 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 Of Robert ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... ingenuity enough, I am free to own, if it had been directed to a better end; but in the best contrived scheme some flaw is ever found, which is sure ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... conscience clears me of the offence laid to my charge, and so far was I from avoiding investigation, that I courted it, and instructed my Counsel not to take advantage of any flaw, should there appear one in the indictment, but to ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... in full conspicuously engraved upon its face—and the youthful society of his school-town was at his feet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that few mothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, here was to be the flaw!—he was soon to find that it was easy for him to have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year- old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own home had known, who was much quicker of wit than his ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds which has not devoured more youths and maidens than any of those monsters the ancients used to tell such lies about. But it was a pretty pond, and never looked more innocent—so the native "bard" of Rockland said in his elegy—than ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ma'am. [Delighted with the opportunity. Taking up the different parcels.] Well, I've got an elegant pair of scissors for mother, marked down because of a flaw in the steel, but she's near-sighted, and she don't want to use 'em anyway—it's just to feel she has another pair. Scissors is mother's fad—sort of born in her, I guess, for my mother's mother was a kind of dressmaker. She didn't have robes and mantucks over her door, you know,—she ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... night I sat trying to piece my puzzle together, but without success. There was a flaw in the story, a missing point in it, somewhere, I felt certain. I often imagined I was about to touch it, when, heigh! ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... hands; or else, finally, it has left some one or more of our fundamental active and emotional powers with no object outside of themselves to react-on or to live for. Any one of these defects is fatal to its complete success. Some one {126} will be sure to discover the flaw, to scout the system, and to seek another in ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... not, however, be supposed that General Gordon availed himself of a flaw in his instructions to carry out a policy of his own. On the contrary, he clearly understood from the British Government that evacuation was what was required, and that all the Egyptian employes must be given a chance of leaving the Soudan if possible. From beginning to end ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... of charity. No man who has ever received a dole is ever again an independent person. Besides that, you are diverting the public mind from the real point of issue, which is not that so many thousand people are hungry, but that a flaw exists in the administration of the laws of the country so grave that a certain number of thousands of people who have a God-sent right to productive labour haven't got ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the Will-o'-the-Wisps around the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... morality to others. Last, not least, there were the Catholic priests and dignitaries of the Roman Church whose scandalous life Luther exposed. Aside from their disagreement from Luther in point of doctrine, personal revenge animated not a few of them with the desire to find a flaw in Luther's conduct. A few reckless spirits among them insinuated and declared openly that Luther was immoral, but the animus back of the charge was so well understood at the time, and the people who were ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed "rice-Christians" (occupationless incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to attempt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... 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 Colonel's ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... his temper. He exclaimed: "If there is a flaw in my sister-in-law's pedigree, what is to be said of people who visit women of alien religions, take food from their hands, and tipple strong ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... jaw claw haul Paul flaw faun yawn bawl thaw slaw fault hawk daub Maud fraud fawn gauze vault brawl cause dawn drawl pawn lawful crawl awful pauper straw brawn drawn pause awning ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... my good lady," replied the traveller "he is an English lord, and, as they say, a Lord of Parliament—but some folk pretend to say there is a flaw in ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... combated them with some amount of opposition. He seldom allowed out-spoken enthusiasm to pass by him without some amount of hostility. But he was not so perverse as to be driven from his new views by the fact that Alice approved them, and she, as she drew near home, was able to think that the only flaw in his character was ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... he would marry her, should be as little troubled with his wife as possible all this had been very grievous to her. She had tried to console herself by the conviction that Lady Aylmer not Frederic had been the sinner; but even in that consolation there had been the terrible flaw that the words had come to her written by Frederic's hand. Could Will Belton have written such a letter ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... beaux ceased to interest her. This would indicate that she was inclined toward suffrage. Nothing of the kind. Intensely romantic, she determined to await the grand passion or go it alone. No experimental adventures for her. Be assured that she weighed every new man she met, and finding some flaw discarded him as a matrimonial possibility. Besides, her unusual facilities to view and judge men had shown her masculine phases the average woman would have discovered only after the fatal knot was tied. She ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... chat with Comrade Parker, irrespective of the trend of his conversation. Still, as time is money, and this is our busy day, possibly it might be as well, sir, if you unburdened yourself as soon as convenient. Have you come to point out some flaw in those articles? Do they fall short in any way of your standard for ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in which we were now engaged. Dr. Finlay himself was somewhat chagrined when he learned of our failure to infect any one with mosquitoes, but, like a true believer, was inclined to attribute this negative result more to some defect in our technique than to any flaw in his favorite theory. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... rather on the side of ignoring functionally produced modifications than of insisting on them. The main agency with him is the direct action of the environment upon the organism. This, no doubt, is a flaw in Buffon's immortal work, but it is one which Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck easily corrected; nor can we doubt that Buffon would have readily accepted their amendment if it had been suggested to him. Buffon ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... even after the most careful revision, to find any flaw in my argument; and I incline to think none has been found by my critics—at least, if they have, they have kept the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... brilliant, save as regards a few individual players, assist the drama by giving a chance to the unacted of seeing their works on the stage? In many cases plays now rejected by managers because they have an instinctive feeling that there is some flaw which defies precise indication might, after such a production, be corrected and ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... dreary grave-yard toll, betokening a flaw, the ship's forecastle bell, smote by one of the grizzled oakum-pickers, proclaimed ten o'clock, through the leaden calm; when Captain Delano's attention was caught by the moving figure of a gigantic black, emerging from the general crowd below, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... they ca' Kelpie jist the pictur' o' the deil's ain horse 'at lay at the door an' watched, whan he flaw oot an' tuik ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... capable of a vengeance so mean. Strange how she had grown so gentle and so good under the constant persecution of this thieving gang! Her conscience was as clear as a windowpane; a man could look through her soul and see the world undisturbed by a flaw beyond it. A good girl; she sure was a good girl. And as pretty a figure on a horse as ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... triumph of skill and diplomacy, achieved after many attempts. He found it hard not to say too much, and quite as difficult not to say too little. He spent hours over this all-important missive. At last it was finished. He read and re-read it, searching for the slightest flaw: a fatal word or suggestion that might create in her mind the slightest doubt as to his sincerity. She was sure to read this letter a great many times, and always with the view to finding something between the lines: such as pity, resignation, an enforced conception of loyalty, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... application, were after a while quite eradicated or utterly defaced. For the rest, where he observed the embroidery to be worked so close as not to be got away without damaging the cloth, or where it served to hide or strengthened any flaw in the body of the coat, contracted by the perpetual tampering of workmen upon it, he concluded the wisest course was to let it remain, resolving in no case whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer injury, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... of the best (most natural) paintings in Europe. The pencil of Rubens has imitated nature so perfectly that the eye almost fails to detect a flaw in the execution. The spectator may know that he only stands before a flat surface of paper daubed with paint; but his soul will be stirred, his pulse begins to beat faster and his imagination runs away with him, as he looks at such masterly executions of a skillful hand as is the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... kind; with all the charm that made him loved by good and worthy friends, amiable, courteous, patient, delightful as a companion, ready to take any trouble—there was in Bacon's "self" a deep and fatal flaw. He was a pleaser of men. There was in him that subtle fault, noted and named both by philosophy and religion in the [Greek: areskos] of Aristotle, the [Greek: anthropareskos] of St. Paul, which is more common than it is pleasant ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... into action, Porter next attempted to run the Essex aground, where the crew could escape and the vessel be destroyed. She was headed for the beach and approached within musket-shot of it, when a flaw of wind from the land ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... was suspense indeed for a last "curtain" but one; and my fancy glows, all expertly, for the disclosure of the final scene, than which nothing could well have been happier, on all the premises, save for a single flaw: the installation in Forty-fourth Street of our admirable aunt, often, through the later years, domiciled there, but now settled to community of life with a touching charge and representing near him his extinguished, their extinguished, sister. The too few years that followed were ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... fell." Then again Prince Henry died shortly after he took possession, and Carr, Earl of Somerset, the next proprietor fell in disgrace. But the way the latter obtained Sherborne was far from creditable, for, having discovered a technical flaw in the deed in which Sir Walter Raleigh had settled the estate on his son, he solicited it of his royal master, and obtained it. It was in vain that Lady Raleigh on her knees appealed to James against this injustice, for he only answered, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... known to be superfluous. However it may be, I get much pleasure in the companionship of this lovely creature, the single flaw in the fine fabric of your villainy. Do not fear her convincing me. She ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... equally ready to prophesy, with wonderful ingenuity, all possible varieties of misfortune to any enterprise that may be proposed; and when the thing is produced, and has met with some success, to find a flaw in it. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... much tact to do more than embrace her, and express her joy, and give her her blessing. All as if the news contained no flaw, and had come in ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... his breath away. That and its possibilities. This was the idea. Why not start a Lines Trust in the school? An agency for supplying lines at moderate rates to all who desired them? There did not seem to be a single flaw in the scheme. He and Linton between them could turn out enough material in a week to give the Trust a good working capital. And as for the risk of detection when customers came to show up the goods supplied to them, that was very slight. As has been pointed out before, there was practically one ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... distinction between mine and thine," interrupted Lila, "you don't live next to her, and you don't know. Her disregard for the property rights of others indicates a fatal flaw——" ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... as detective stories, these cannot be granted a very good mark. There is scarcely a story that has not a serious flaw in it. A man—Flambeau, of whom more later—gains admittance to a small and select dinner party and almost succeeds in stealing the silver, by the device of turning up and pretending to be a guest when among the waiters, and a waiter when among the guests. But it is not explained what he did during ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... about it. It was alive. Never had he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he was surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl. He examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was without flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming like a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when he dropped ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... goddess of wisdom, had a character without a flaw, and ranked with Apollo in wisdom. She even expostulated with Zeus himself when he was wrong. But on the other hand she had few attractive feminine qualities, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... beast he was unable. To return He sought, but could not find the way. Alone He 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 ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... be rendered more 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 the truth is ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Zephoranim at last, dashing away the drops his merriment had brought into his eyes—"Wilt kill me with thy bitter-mouthed jests? ... of a truth my sides ache at thee! What ails thee now? ... Come,—we will have patience, if so be our mirth can be restrained,—speak!—what flaw canst thou find in our Sah-luma's pearl of poesy?—what spots on the sun of his divine inspiration? As the Serpent lives, thou art an excellent mountebank and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... psychology of which the type is presented us by Taine and Stuart Mill. Already in chapters ii. and iii. of the "Essay", and again all through "Matter and Memory", the system is riddled with objections, each of which would be sufficient to show its radical flaw. All the aspects, all the phenomena of mental life come up for successive review. In respect of each of them we have an illustration of the insufficiency of the atomism which seeks to recompose the soul with fixed elements, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... extends to all;... save one poor beast, That true to time and pace, is doom'd to plod, To bring the Pastor to the HOUSE of GOD: Mean structure; where no bones of heroes lie! The rude inelegance of poverty Reigns here alone: else why that roof of straw? Those narrow windows with the frequent flaw? O'er whose low cells the dock and mallow spread, And rampant nettles lift the spiry head, Whilst from the hollows of the tower on high The grey-cap'd daws in ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... thought; then, with the assistance of the clumsy seamen, he rolled out a small cannon-piece, and for one long hour did he keep up an incessant fire. The coming storm was now plainly discernible; the distant rolling of thunder was heard, the sea was agitated, and occasionally a flaw would shake the rattlings. They were in momentary expectation that the storm would burst upon them. Harry had left his firing, and ascending the hurricane deck, stood with folded arms, as if bracing himself to meet the foe. It is coming in ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Catholicism taught its partizans to cherish very different feelings, for they were instructed to believe that the gospel itself was without efficacy when promulgated by a minister who did not belong to their own party. They could not challenge a single flaw in the creed of Novatian, [649:3] and yet they strongly maintained that his preaching was useless, and that the baptism he dispensed was worthless as the ablution of a heathen. "You should know," says Cyprian, "that we ought not even to be curious as to what ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... chief of them all—the matchless Mr. Clark Russell—gets his most moving effects by portraying the commonplace aspects of the water in a way that reminds people of things which they noticed but failed to admire promptly. Mr. Russell's gospel is plain enough; he watches minutely, and there is not a flaw of wind or a cross-drift of spray that does not offer some new emotion to his quick and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction of seeing it shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! I perceive a possible flaw in my argument. Perhaps you were guided in your choice by a definite wish to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this was so. I shall not forget. Yours, etc., ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... thither, intriguing in not always the most judicious manner for her family, but never resting, never leaving a stone unturned which might lead to their restitution. The sudden discovery that the lawyers had found a flaw in the conveyance was more than her overstrung nerves could endure, and in a fit of temper she attacked her husband, and rushed about the town denouncing him. Raleigh, in deepest depression of mind and body, wrote to Cecil, who had now taken ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... that selleth house or land Shows leak in roof or flaw in right,— When haberdashers choose the stand Whose window hath ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various |
