"Shortcoming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the circumstances connected with the days gone by, when he was in a state of penury, naturally felt very unhappy in his mind. But at a later period, he succeeded, by ultimately finding in him some shortcoming, and deporting him to a far-away place, in setting ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... appearance. Mellicent was often untidy, and even Esther had moments of dishevelment, but Peggy was a dainty little person, whose hair was always smooth, whose dress well brushed and natty. Her artistic sense was too keen to allow of any shortcoming in this respect; but she seemed blessed with a capacity of acting before she thought, which had many disastrous consequences. She was by no means a robust girl, and Mrs Asplin fussed over her little ailments like an old mother-hen ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... over-forward to self-vindication,—an infirmity springing from the innate nobility of his temperament, which was impatient of the faintest suspicion of backwardness or negligence, and at the same time resolved that for any shortcoming or blunder, occurring by his order or sanction, no other than himself should ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion the attitude of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was his chief characteristic and made him lovable—in his personality and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... jailor brought was eaten with such a relish as hunger only can impart. I was fortunate in respect to quantity, for my companion was not well, and could not eat much; but I atoned for his shortcoming by eating both of our allowances ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... followers, all of whom give ear to my word and obey my bidding." Asked the nurse, "Why, then, O my lord, didst thou conceal the secret of thy rank and lineage and passedst thyself off for a foreigner and a wayfarer? Alas for our disgrace before thee by reason of our shortcoming in rendering thee thy due! What shall be our excuse with thee, and thou of the sons of the kings?" But he rejoined, "By Allah, thou hast not fallen short! Indeed, 'tis incumbent on me to requite thee, what while I live, though from thee I be far distant." Then he called his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so various ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... at work trying to get the stuff unloaded from the ship, and succeeded in getting most of it ashore, but were utterly unable to get transportation for anything but a very small quantity. The great shortcoming throughout the campaign was the utterly inadequate transportation. If we had been allowed to take our mule-train, we could have kept ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... In the shortcoming of the English mind in judging of this book, its great alienation from the philosophy of Art is revealed. This book is not comprehended as a work of Art, claiming as such due proportions and relative significance of parts; otherwise many individuals would at least have been moved to a more sparing ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... laughs and talks, but she never says anything that people have not said a hundred times before. Oh, I am so tired of it all! I grow more cross and disagreeable every day,' finished Jill, who was very frank on the subject of her shortcoming. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... is a fable extant of a man who tried to please everybody, and his failure is a matter of record. Robinson Asbury was not more successful. But be it said that his ill success was due to no fault or shortcoming of his. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... assisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses—yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... day, I would recommend rather that the gentlemen be beguiled into doing the talking themselves, if any shortcoming in the menu is to be concealed from them, for then their attention ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... is well that ends well, and only that is well, then this story fails at the finish, for we never caught the cannibals, so never taught them the lesson in housekeeping and economics that they needed. But there is no other shortcoming to record. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... of quantity or degree.] Inequality. — N. inequality; disparity, imparity; odds; difference &c. 15; unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... by prejudice, and by the limitations of each witness's powers of observation and opportunities of ascertaining the truth. But after all deductions for prejudice, mistake, inaccuracy and every other shortcoming, there is left a strong, an invincible consensus of testimony, honest, independent and full of undesigned corroborations, to the development of the mind of all races in the lower culture along the lines here indicated. Nay, more; the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... appearance almost equal to an opal. To make sure of the picture adhering to the glass, however, and at the same time to give greater brilliancy, it is better to flow the glass with a 10 or 15 grain solution of clear gelatine before squeezing it down. The one fault or shortcoming of the plain argentic paper is the dullness of the surface when dry, and this certainly makes it unsuitable for small work, such as the rapid production of cartes or proofs from negatives wanted in a hurry; the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... he gave my verses that I had better not lavish myself upon that kind of thing, unless there was a great deal more of me than I could have made apparent in our meeting, no doubt he was right. I was only too painfully aware of my shortcoming, but I felt that it was shorter-coming than it need have been. I had somehow not prospered in my visit to Emerson as I had with Hawthorne, and I came away wondering in what sort I had gone wrong. I was not a forth-putting youth, and I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... on too different a plane of thought, feeling, and interest from the life of the uncultured, undeveloped, childish, old woman. Yet no one who saw them together would have detected any trace of this shortcoming in Mercy's feeling towards her mother. She had in her nature a fine and lofty fibre of loyalty which could never condescend even to parley with a thought derogatory to its object; was lifted above all consciousness of the possibility of any other course. This is a sort of ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... record, though probably many will think them superfluous. Perhaps they will serve to give a true idea of the magnitude of the undertaking, and of the great responsibility which weighed upon me, and thus prove an anticipatory excuse for any accusation of shortcoming or dilatoriness that may be preferred against me. I will not, however, enter further into the business-details of the expedition—merely observing that, among other things to which I had to attend during my ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... depressed and dispirited to a degree; and to that genial temper, which once he could count on against every reverse that befell him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led him to attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault or shortcoming of others. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... notes to the recipes are interesting, copious and well-authenticated. The editor reveals himself to be a better scholar, well-read in the classics, than a practical cook, well-versed in kitchen practice. Frequently, for instance, he confounds liquamen with garum, the age-old shortcoming of ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... is well to avoid. Copy what is good in them, but test in a critical spirit whatever you take, so as to be sure that you take only what is wisest and best for yourselves. More important even than avoiding any mere educational shortcoming is the avoidance of moral shortcoming. Students are already being sent to Europe to prepare themselves to return as professors. Such preparation is now essential, for it is of prime importance that the University should be familiar with what is being done in the best universities ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... truth; I felt abashed. How can we expect the heathen to become Christians, when those who call themselves so show so little regard to the religion of Christ? I see the same sad shortcoming on shore. Christians do not strive to bring honour ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... cabin that faced them in the wilderness carried in its rude completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art—a world of desolation, and behold a log cabin with smoke issuing from the chimney and curtains at the windows! The interior was unplastered, but this shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth neatly over the logs, a device at once simple and strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was that of plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from the actual ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... of this conversion means many things. It means first and foremost an understanding of human nature; a realization that the great shortcoming of industry has been that it held, as organized, too little opportunity for a normal outlet to the normal and more or less pressing interests and desires of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... again. At the next station the clock and I both gave the same time to a second, and then what must he do but begin to regulate me! After a minute calculation he made the astounding discovery that I had lost a minute and a quarter in four hours, and that in order to compensate for this shortcoming it would be necessary for him to move my regulator forward the two hundred and fortieth part of an inch. This feat he set himself to accomplish with the point of his scarf-pin while the train was jolting forward at the rate ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... very athletic or puissant cohort this, that stands on parade here on the grass within hearing of the church bells. The grizzled old soldiers, sooth to say, look rather the worse for wear. There is a decided shortcoming among them of the proper complement of limbs, and one at least, in speaking of the battlefields he had seen, might with truth echo the old soldier in Burns's ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine (see {cray}). Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... be, for the best of us, much sense of failure and shortcoming when we look back on our lives. But whilst some of us will have to say, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' it is possible for each of us to lay himself down in peace and sleep, awaiting a glorious rising again ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... pianoforte, being produced by a blow, begins to die the moment it is created. The history of the instrument's mechanism, and also of its technical manipulation, is the history of an effort to reduce this shortcoming to a minimum. It has always conditioned the character of the music composed for the instrument, and if we were not in danger of being led into too wide an excursion, it would be profitable to trace the parallelism which ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... preaching—the doors of the church were closed, wherein he was like Nero, who allowed no one to leave the theater while he was singing. But the former did it for the salvation and the latter for the corruption of souls. Fray Salvi rarely resorted to blows, but was accustomed to punish every shortcoming of his subordinates with fines. In this respect he was very different from Padre Damaso, who had been accustomed to settle everything with his fists or a cane, administering such chastisement with the greatest good-will. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... him on his road, and before they parted she spoke thus, "Thou art not fitted out from home, son, as I fain would thou wert, a man so well born as thou; but, meseems, the greatest shortcoming herein is that thou hast no weapons of any avail, and my mind misgives me that thou ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... the composition of his satire, he formed a plan of travelling; but there was a great shortcoming between the intention and the performance. He first thought of Persia; he afterwards resolved to sail for India; and had so far matured this project, as to write for information to the Arabic professor at Cambridge; and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... thought in the young man's mind. His consciousness seemed to be full of rebellion, longing and amazement. Never in his life had he been refused anything he greatly desired, when he had justice on his side. Now he was rejected, not for a shortcoming, but, according to his religious lights, for a virtue instead. His gaze searched the visible portion of the other chamber and found Rachel. In the half-light he saw that she had cast herself down against the sarcophagus, face toward the stone, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... "You give yourself away, old sport! Don't you, now!" The mirrored head shook in disparaging admission of its own shortcoming. Jenny bent nearer, meeting the eyes with a clear stare. There were wretched lines about her mouth. For the first time in her life she had a horrified fear of growing older. It was as though, when she shut her eyes, she saw herself ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... wrote: "A sea officer cannot form plans like those of a land officer; his object is to embrace the happy moment which now and then offers; it may be this day, not for a month, and perhaps never." So also Farragut is reported to have said of a conspicuous shortcoming: "Every man has one chance; he has had his and lost it." Certainly, by failure that man lost promotion with its chances. It is somewhat congruous to this train of thought that Smith, whom I have so often mentioned, said one day to me: "If I had a son (he ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... slowly up the bank. Her head was bent, and could Gilbert have seen her face he would not have been quite so sure that his shortcoming was to her such an entirely impersonal affair. With her usual self-effacement, she made a brave attempt to put aside her grief. She had promised to spend this last evening with Arabella, and she must be cheerful and comforting. As she neared Mrs. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... went by; Alan picked up increasing skill at the game, but failed to win. He saw his shortcoming, but could not do anything to help it: he was unable to extrapolate ahead. Hawkes was gifted with the knack of being able to extend probable patterns two or three moves into the future; Alan could only work with the given, and so he never made the swift series of guesses ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... Man can avoid each but not every act of sin, except by grace, as stated above. Nevertheless, since it is by his own shortcoming that he does not prepare himself to have grace, the fact that he cannot avoid sin without grace does not excuse him ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the sound of her horse's footsteps died away on the road; and then, sinking on her knees beside her rocking-chair, she poured forth her whole heart in prayers and tears. She confessed many a fault and shortcoming that none knew but herself, and most earnestly besought help that "her little rushlight might shine bright." Prayer was to little Ellen what it is to all that know it—the satisfying of doubt, the soothing ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... spiritual things, matters have gone from bad to worse." Catherine's sorrowful denunciations of the sins of the Church recall the thought of Dante, the thought of Petrarch—which is also the thought of all the great saints, seers, and loyal Catholics, to whom through the Christian ages the shortcoming of their spiritual mother has meant grief beyond words. The lovely conception of Holy Church as a garden, borrowed though it be from Holy Writ, she has made peculiarly her own by constant repetition. We recognize in it the womanly imagination which, we are told, always found refreshment ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... in their ideas. Outwardly polite, they are not unfrequently coarse in conversation. If the Canadian evinces respect, it is expected that he will be treated with respect in consideration therefor. His chief shortcoming is excessive sociability. When once settled among friends and relatives he cannot leave them—absence from home does in truth only make the heart grow fonder of home associations. He is active, compactly made, but generally below rather than above the middle ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... self-emptying, self-denial, and self-abasing, in hungering and thirsting after more of righteousness, in the secret engagements of the heart to God in Christ, in these burstings of heart and bleeding of soul, to which God alone is witness, because of shortcoming in holiness, because of a body of death within, and because of that law in the members warring against the law of the mind, and bringing often into captivity to the law of sin, as it grows upward in a profession. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... interests, into the centre and criterion of all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of being variously affected, have ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... sense of shortcoming that I offer the reader this volume on a great subject, but should it succeed in stimulating interest in Breton story, and in directing students to a field in which their research is certain to be richly rewarded, I shall ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of agriculture at heart should turn the attention of the farmer exclusively to the results of the material sciences and ignore completely the thorough, scientific interest in the processes of the mind. To be sure, until recently we had the same shortcoming in industrial enterprises of the factories. Manufacturer and workingman looked as if hypnotized at the machines, forgetting that those wheels of steel were not the only working powers under the factory roof. A tremendous effort was devoted to the study and improvement ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... singular combination of qualities, apparently the most opposite, may be partly anticipated, but not quite. It results occasionally in a certain shortcoming as regards verite vraie, absolute artistic truth to nature. Those who would range Balzac in point of such artistic veracity on a level with poetical and universal realists like Shakespeare and Dante, or prosaic and particular realists like Thackeray and Fielding, seem not only ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... by arbitrary interference with the orderly course of human development ... a suppressed or perverted good quality—a good tendency, only repressed, misunderstood or misguided—lies at the bottom of every shortcoming." Hence the only remedy even for wickedness is to find and foster, build up and guide what has been repressed. It may be necessary to interfere and even to use severity, but only when the educator is sure of unhealthy growth. The motto of the biologist ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... duty. The field of light expands to a new length and breadth every time the plough passes through it. And, knowing well to whom he writes on this subject, Rutherford goes on to say that there is a sorrow for sin, and for shortcoming in service, that is as acceptable with God in the evangelical covenant as would be the very service itself. But, then, it must be what Rutherford calls 'honest sorrow after a sincere aim.' And let no man easily allow himself to take shelter ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... which any one who begins giving public lectures meets at the very outset is the fact that the audience won't come to hear him. This happens invariably and constantly, and not through any fault or shortcoming ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... I am using terms unjustifiable in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate and accurate,—except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the capital of the country, the river ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... The shortcoming of the Stoics is not in the superiority to fortune which they seek; but in the fact that they seek it directly by sheer effort of naked will, instead of being lifted above subjection to fortune ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... in the drawing-room at Westbourne Terrace: Marian writing, Elinor at the pianoforte, working at some technical studies, to which she had been incited by the shortcoming of her performance on the previous night. She stopped on hearing a ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... stone for the living form. The only test of a work of Art is, how far it will carry us,—not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary shortcoming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Again and again he had tramped through them on foot, picked his way along their treacherous paths on horseback, and finally put their few roads to the supreme test of the motor car. He knew their every shortcoming and advantage. His topographical information included fording places for men ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... ago considered the establishment of the Institute so sensibly, and supported it so heartily, I earnestly entreat the gentlemen—earnest I know in the good work, and who are now among us,—by all means to avoid the great shortcoming of similar institutions; and in asking the working man for his confidence, to set him the great example and give him theirs in return. You will judge for yourselves if I promise too much for the working man, when I say that he will stand by such an enterprise with the utmost ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... life. More critically he studied the situation. Deep down below the slavery and servitude of the Negro people he saw their fatal weaknesses, which long years of mistreatment had emphasized. The dearth of strong moral character, of unbending righteousness, he felt, was their great shortcoming, and here he would begin. He would gather the best of his people into some little Episcopal chapel and there lead, teach, and inspire them, till the leaven spread, till the children grew, till the world hearkened, till—till—and then across his dream gleamed some faint after-glow of that ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sense of shortcoming in his farming operations. Notwithstanding his many acres, he felt himself growing "land-poor," as country people phrase it. He was not a reader, and looked with undisguised suspicion on book-farming. As for the agricultural journals, he said "they were full of new-fangled ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... shown itself, not, as usual, in solitude, but in well-lit company. Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the whole relieving army had been in Orleans since May 4, he supposes that, on the evening of Friday the 6th, it was still expected.[53] From such blunders we may judge of the muddled condition of this poor priest's brain. His most serious shortcoming, however, is the invention of miracles. He tries to make out that when the convoy of victuals reached Orleans, there occurred, by the Maid's special intervention, and in order to carry the barges up the river, a sudden flood of the Loire which ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... our path also. We must descend with Christ, if we would ascend to sit at His side. We must submit to the laying of our pride in the very dust. We must accept humiliations and mortifications, the humblings of perpetual failure and shortcoming, the friction and fret of infirmity and pain; and when we have come to an end of ourselves, we shall begin to know Christ in a new and deeper fashion. He will pass by and say, "Live!" The spirit of His life will enter into us; the valley ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... shortcoming it must be said that Freytag, at the time of the accession to the throne of the present head of the German Empire, laid himself open to much censure by attacking the memory of the dead Emperor Frederick who had always been his friend ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... case with most of us, it had ten times the reference to the action of other people that it had to his own: I mean, he made far greater demand for justice upon other people than upon himself; and was much more indignant at any shortcoming of theirs which crossed any desire or purpose of his than ho was anxious in his own person to fulfill justice when that fulfillment in its turn would cross any wish he cherished. Badly as he had himself behaved to Mary, he was now furious with his wife for having treated her so heartlessly ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... his behalf the yearly miracle of the renewal of vegetation, and the growth of the corn-plants from the seed which the Greeks typified by the descent of Proserpine into Hades for a season of the year and her triumphant re-emergence to the upper air. Meanwhile he fasts and atones for any sin or shortcoming of his which may possibly have offended the goddess and cause her to hold her hand. From the beginning of Asarh (June) the Oraons cease to shave, abstain from eating turmeric, and make no leaf-plates for their food, but eat it straight from the cooking-vessel. This they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... had full command of the phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency. A few days before the Presidential election in July, 1910, when making a speech in Monterey, Madero was arrested as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... think, I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating, enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which they could not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and that, adjusting a valve here and tightening ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six months later, made up for any shortcoming in The Abbot, where, except the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in him, and rarely equalled out of him. Nor was there any falling ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... knowledge of the part),—putting ourselves in this mental attitude, the performance may safely be said to defy criticism, or rather to be above it, except such criticism as accords with enthusiastic admiration. It is absolutely without a shortcoming, seen from this standpoint. His majestic bearing, his beautiful elocution, his pure voice, his graceful, expressive gestures, and above all his perfect freedom from affectation or self-consciousness, delight us throughout; and when to these qualities are added the marvelous vigor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, as ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... my deeds in the service of my master, and that shalt thou see," said I. "I lack not the spirit, nor the will, but I lack experience woefully; and, because of that shortcoming, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... professions. Besides, who was to teach the boys when he was away? and would he always find spare time to do it, and regular hours also? I was certain he would never be punctual as to time; only he did not like to be told so, because, being aware of this shortcoming, he made earnest efforts to correct it, and constantly failed. It was difficult to him to bear any kind of interruption, or any compulsory change of work—involving loss of time—and on that score ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of the heart, it is far from being well with him at the moment, and in these days it was very far from being well with Paul Armstrong. Yet the jaundiced fit served its turn, and even whilst its anguish burned and nauseated, he began to ask one wholesome question: 'For whose shortcoming, for whose wrong-doing, for whose virtues turned vicious, and whose vices tuned to airs of virtue, do I thus suffer?' The answer was at first confused and loud. Annette's name was noisy in it Claudia's sounded there. So did Gertrude's. And of course the poor writhing worm must ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... For the past thirteen years he has been busiest with dramas, in none of which has he more than approximated to a dramatic quality that is as great as the quality of his lyrics. He has owned himself one reason of such shortcoming, in the notes to "Deirdre."[2] "The principal difficulty with the form of dramatic literature I have adopted is that, unlike the loose Elizabethan form, it continually forces one by its rigour of logic away from ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt |
