"Failure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... productions might have been called forth, still it was impossible that such an extensive competition should not have been advantageous. Of all the different species of poetry the dramatic is the only one in which experience is necessary: and the failure of others is, for the man of talents, an experiment at their expense. Moreover, the exercise of this art requires vigorous determination, to which the great artist is often the least inclined, as in the execution he finds the greatest difficulty in satisfying himself; while, on the other hand, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... gazing sadly after her and wondering if her failure here were her fault—if there was anything else she ought to have done—if she had let her personal dislike of the girl influence her conduct. She sat for some time at her desk, her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed on vacancy with a ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... dream. It seemed to her that her father was in some inexplicable way meaner-looking than she had supposed, and yet also, as unaccountably, appealing. His tie had demanded a struggle; he ought to have taken a clean one after his first failure. Why was she noting things like this? Capes seemed self-possessed and elaborately genial and commonplace, but she knew him to be nervous by a little occasional clumsiness, by the faintest shadow of vulgarity ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... fishermen and townsfolk down still more narrowly to individuals. His landscape is always marvellously exact, the strokes selected with extraordinary skill ad hoc so as to show autumn rather than spring, failure rather than hope, the riddle of the painful earth rather than any joy of living. Attempts have been made to vindicate Crabbe from the charge of being a gloomy poet, but I cannot think them successful; I ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the Metropolitan Museum Ethel looked very lovely. She wore a bunch of Tom's orchids and a grey velvet suit. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were burning red. She was visibly excited. Tom saw that she felt her life had been a failure. ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... first time, he experienced the inconstancy of fortune. An Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine threatened his communications with Silesia. Saxony was all in arms behind him. He found it necessary to save himself by a retreat. He afterwards owned that his failure was the natural effect of his own blunders. No general, he said, had ever committed greater faults. It must be added that to the reverses of this campaign he always ascribed his subsequent successes. It was in the midst of difficulty and disgrace that he caught the first clear glimpse of the principles ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... again the Elkman household occupied the gossips, and news of it—second-hand, like everything that came to her—was picked up by Natalya on her rounds. Henry's third wife was, it transpired, a melancholy failure. Her temper was frightful, she beat her step-children, and—worst and rarest sin in the Jewish housewife—she drank. Henry was ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Joseph's, seven years; and the other in the twelfth century, of which the most distressing details are given, even to the extreme desperation of cannibalism. The same cause originated both,—the failure of the Nile overflow. Out of the sacred river came up for Egypt its fat kine and its lean,—its ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... enormous, ardent plans for the rescue and rehabilitation of Keggo, and they show the projection and the failure of the plans. They show work found for Keggo (through Simcox's scholastic side) and lost and found again and again lost and still again. They show Keggo's remorse and they show Rosalie's forgiveness. They show it repeated and repeated. They ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... amazing advance on the part of Germany and Austria, and a great success; yet, at the same time, a great failure, seeing that it failed of achieving its one and only object, which was the crushing of the Tsar's forces. Not once had the Russian line been broken, not once had it been demoralized even; it was there, still ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... to the danger to which this defiance of the authorities exposed us, but it was not the danger of failure, with the prison as penalty, that gave us pause. It was the horrible misconceptions that we saw might arise; the odious imputations on honour and purity that would follow. Could we, the teachers of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... my expedition to be no failure. I could not tell whether my key, which I found with my watch and seals, would still serve me. Ah! you look on fire; but remember the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mar the fruits of their benevolence. Such reflections, it may be said, are discouraging. What opinion, then, ought we to entertain of the wisdom of labours, which had been undertaken without a full view of obvious causes threatening their ultimate failure? It would little alleviate the mortification of disappointment, to exclaim, as is often done on such occasions, "Who could have thought it?" But the most enlightened judges of such undertakings, will not only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... so many cinders. Peter was so amazed that he could say nothing for himself, but the king said quite enough for both, and Peter was glad to get away home again as fast as his legs would carry him. To his father and brothers, however, he gave no account of his attempt, except that it had been a failure. ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... home, and promised to go to the glaciere in the morning, pledging his word and all that he was worth for the existence and soundness of the ladders; a matter of considerable importance, for M. Thury had been unable to reach the ice, as also my sisters, by reason of a failure ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... continued Tocqueville, 'is that when this man feels the ground crumbling under him, he will try the resource of war. It will be a most dangerous experiment. Defeat, or even the alternation of success and failure, which is the ordinary course of war, would be fatal to him; but brilliant success might, as I have said before, establish him. It would be playing double or quits. He is by nature a gambler. His self-confidence, his reliance, not only on himself, but on his fortune, exceeds even that ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... man couldn't make up his mind what to do. So here was May again, and the neglected lots were still in the nominal occupation of the idlers. The Doctor got no rent, and was annoyed at the partial failure of a scheme which he had not indeed originated, but for which he had taken much credit to himself. The negligent occupiers grumbled that they were not allowed a drawback for manure, and that no pigstyes were put up for them. "'Twas allers understood so," ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... as far north as the Russian possessions. Later the United States, by treaty with Spain and Russia, acquired a right to all that portion of the Pacific coast of North America which lies between California and the Russian possessions. But because of the greater energy of the English, and the failure upon the part of the United States to realize the value of this vast region, a considerable section was again lost by the terms of the treaty which made the forty-ninth parallel the boundary line. The intelligence and energy of Captain ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... am firmly convinced people will do who, seeking guidance from above, act with due judgment and discretion, taking advantage of the experience, as well as warning from the failure, of others. We, of course, had those ups and downs which all settlers in Australia must meet: dingos carried off our sheep, and the rot visited them; the blacks were troublesome, and droughts and blights occurred; bush-fires occasionally took place, and ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the welfare of the state. His keen eye had marked the evils of the time, and he had acknowledged that his efforts to extirpate the old maladies in order to make room for better things had been a failure, and that, instead of earning thanks, he had drawn down on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that an adjutant should be always able to walk straight to his tent, even after a warm night at mess. Now, although it seems to me that I have every other qualification, in that respect I should be a failure; and I imagine that, in a Portuguese regiment, the thing would be looked at more seriously than it is in an Irish one; where such a matter occurs, occasionally, among ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... up to his room. He closed the door behind him and sat on a straight-backed chair, his legs outthrust. Failure? He had come back home thus suddenly with immensely good intentions. Failure? On the whole, no. There was a great deal more he could have said downstairs, and a great deal more he had felt uncommonly inclined to say. But he had left the morning room without ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Salerno to plead its cause at the Court of Nuremberg. But in consequence of being forestalled by the cunning Don Pedro, the prince, when he arrived, found the case prejudged, and all his arguments and pleadings were of no avail. Disgusted with the failure of his errand, with the coldness of his reception, and with other indignities which he received at the hands of the emperor and his viceroy, he determined to abandon altogether the cause of Austria. Repairing ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... The failure here alluded to is his Ploutos or Plutus—an inoffensive but tame comedy written when Aristophanes was advanced in years, and of which the ill-success has been imputed to this fact. Mr. Browning, however, treats ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... be averted. The man has been travelling towards it with full knowledge from the day he began his mission: it is imposed by a will higher than his; whose but the Lord's! If he is consenting, if he goes to it voluntarily, what shall another do?" Nor less did Ben-Hur see the failure of the scheme he had built upon the fidelity of the Galileans; their desertion, in fact, left nothing more of it. But how singular it should happen that morning of all others! A dread seized him. It was possible his scheming, and labor, and expenditure of treasure might have been but blasphemous ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... contempt of court. The need of an injunction is often immediate. It would be worthless unless promptly granted. When, therefore, no court having power to issue one is in actual session, there would be a failure of justice if the judge could not act to the extent of granting temporary relief. Whether the injunction should be made permanent is a subsequent question, to be determined after a full hearing by the court. It may, in urgent cases admitting of no delay, be issued ex parte, ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... Binet, cynically, and explained himself. "The failure will be personal to yourself. The receipts will be safe ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... natives. Piper and his gin explain. Search for the junction with the Murray. Return by night. Followed by the natives. Horses take fright. Break loose and run back. Narrow escape of some men from natives. Failure of their intended attack. Different modes of interment. Reduced appearance of the Darling. Desert character of the country. Rainy morning. Return of the party. Surprise the females of the tribe. Junction of the Darling and Murray. Effect ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... (Lit. Anec. ii. 407) says that as Cleonice was a failure on the stage 'Mr. Hoole returned a considerable part of the money which he had received for the copy-right, alleging that, as the piece was not successful on the stage, it could not be very profitable to the bookseller, and ought not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... be still further defrauded and overreached—which he would be, if implicated by Riderhood, and punished by the law for his abject failure, as though it had been a success—he kept close in his school during the day, ventured out warily at night, and went no more to the railway station. He examined the advertisements in the newspapers for any sign that Riderhood acted on his hinted threat of so summoning him to renew their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to the East, but wished to send them farther West. The men refused, and after a few days took possession of a train of empty cars going eastward. The Police could not allow this commandeering of the property of the railway company for the failure of certain contractors, and so they caused the men to leave the train, but these same Police, once they discovered the real situation, made it so hot for those contractors that they were glad to yield and give the men what they had agreed. So all along the line, from ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... side. Here was my first mining, but being weary and worn out, I was unable to wield the pick and shovel, and so I left in a few days for Sacramento where I undertook to make a little money by painting, but it was a failure, both as to workmanship and as to financial gain. However, by this time I had gained some strength and left for Beal's Bar at the junction of the north and south forks of the American River. Here I mined through ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... various hypotheses that had been suggested to account for them:—Was it a failure in the law of gravitation? Was it due to the presence of a resisting medium? Was it due to some unseen but large satellite? Or was it due to a ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand. But in the late contest we were divided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we not come together for the future? Let every one who really believes and is resolved that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the last contest he has done only what he thought best—let every such one have charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be bygones; let past differences ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a smile at this specimen of that loyal air-castle building in which the tories of the revolution seemed to have so extravagantly indulged—"it does not occur to them that it is even possible these splendid schemes may fail, in the failure of their cause in this country, which has thus, in anticipation, been parcelled out into dukedoms and lordships, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... effort was a failure. He yanked the curtains shut that hung between music room and hall. Then, at a gesture from Gavin, he pulled them halfway open again, and, standing in the doorway, drew his bow ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... been carried in the last year by so great a majority, being quite unexpected, was a matter of severe disappointment; and might have discouraged the friends of the cause in this infancy of their renewed efforts, if they had not discovered the reason of its failure. After due consideration it appeared, that no fewer than nine members, who had never been absent once in sixteen years when it was agitated, gave way to engagements on the day of the motion, from ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... greatest living orator has said; but how he said it, and how it moved his audience, will be as obscure as if the reporters' gallery were still unknown. Walpole—when he was not affecting philosophy, or smarting from the failure of an intrigue, or worried by the gout, or disappointed of a bargain at a sale—could throw electric flashes of light on the figure he describes which reveal the true man. He errs from petulancy, but not from stupidity. He can appreciate great ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Archbishop Drummond's scheme for raising three thousand guineas had been received by the persons to whom he had applied, and the prejudice which he found almost universally entertained against the efforts of living genius, chagrined him exceedingly. He regarded the failure as a stigma on the age, and on his country; and, as a public man, he thought it affected himself personally. With this feeling, he declared to the gentlemen who had exerted themselves in the business, that he saw no way of engrafting a taste for the fine arts on the British ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... lose them and Palestine to gain them; they are useful in both ways, in their absence from here and their presence there." It is quite unnecessary to describe the movements and fate of the crusaders; suffice it to say that, from a military standpoint, the so-called Second Crusade was a miserable failure. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... eavesdropper by nature, but he found himself getting interested in the fate of this anonymous failure, and wondered if he was going to hear the cause of the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... first chancellor, and in which he resided until 1827, when he was obliged to return to England on account of his health. He left his collections of printed books, manuscripts, etc., at Corfu to the University, but in consequence of its failure to comply with certain conditions which accompanied the bequest, it was not carried out. Lord Guilford's fine library was sold by Evans, in seven parts, in the years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1835. The first sale took place on December 15th, 1828, and eight following days; and the others on January ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... have been of sufficient richness to cause the formation of mining companies for their development or further investigation. I do not, however, know of a single case where prospectors or mining companies have ever made expenses. The cause of failure has most frequently been the lack of transportation facilities in the island, on account of which the cost of carrying the ore to a place where it might be reduced became prohibitive. Sometimes enterprises ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... imagine what desperate adventurers they had suddenly become. Some had never been out of Ireland, others had been as far as Portsmouth, and taken a return voyage to the Isle of Wight. And each day we zigzagged across the blue seas towards some unknown Fate... death, perhaps... victory or failure—who could tell? ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... albuminuria. Leucocytosis is usually well marked before the injection of antitoxin; after the injection there is usually a diminution in the number of leucocytes. The false membrane may separate and be cast off, after which the patient gradually recovers. Death may take place from gradual failure of the heart's action or from syncope during some ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... had failed, and his failure had not been a thing of unfortuitous chance, not an incident of catastrophe, but a significant expression of character. Terry Lute was a coward, deep down, through and through: he had not lapsed in a panic; he had disclosed an abiding fear of the sea. He was not a coward by any act; no ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... politely said he had no work vacant on the paper except that of criticising the pictures in the Salon, which he presumed M. Thiers' could not undertake. On the contrary, Thiers felt sure he could do the work, which the editor, confident of his failure, allowed him to try. The result was a review that startled all Paris, and Thiers was at once engaged on the "Constitutionnel" as literary, dramatic, and artistic critic. He proved to have a perfect genius for journalism, and all his life he considered newspaper work his profession. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall, when the rest were withdrawn ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... others of the tribe will stand by me, I know. The glass beads and other glistening baubles will secure the young, while a few golden onzas skilfully distributed will do the same for the sagamores. No fear then, no failure yet! With the Tovas on my side, there isn't a spot in the Chaco to shelter them. So, caballeros! you can keep on. In a week from this time, I hope to hold an interview with you, less distant and more satisfactory ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... to-day, are influenced by their affections, their family complications, their prejudices, their rivalries, their avarice, their vanity. The circumstances of their private life temporarily excite or depress their energies, and often give them a new and unlooked-for direction; and the success or failure of their undertakings may be recognized as having been the result of their individual limitations, of their personal ignorance of the special conditions with which they were called upon to cope, or ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... but a few minutes to read the scrawl, and grasp the meaning. It told of failure in the city, and that she was coming home to the care of her parents. It was easy for Douglas to read between the lines, and he knew that more was contained there than ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... with his head buried in his hands, Amedee sank into the depths of melancholy. His life seemed such a failure, his fate so disastrous, his future so gloomy, he felt so discouraged and lonely, that for the moment the courage to live deserted him. It seemed to him that an invisible hand touched him upon the shoulder with compassion, and he had at ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... thought his country wanted a race of builders to clothe the new forms of religious, social, and national life afresh from the forest, the quarry, and the mine. Some thought he would succeed, others that he would be a brilliant failure. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... river. Against this powerful resistance upon tortuous streams, wind, as a motor, was found to be only partially successful, and for sure and rapid transit between settlements along the banks of great waterways a most discouraging failure. Down-river journeys were easily made, but the up-river or return trip was a very slow and unsatisfactory affair, excepting to those who travelled ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... up at the lofty crown of green wreathing the giant's head and shook his fist at it. He hated every inch of its height, for every inch meant an enforced renunciation that had brought him bitterness and a sense of failure. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... first, and how can stone and lime be so formed as to justify such fulsome praises as have been bestowed upon this tomb? One writer, for instance, exclaims, "There is no mystery, no sense of partial failure about the Taj. A thing of perfect beauty and of absolute finish in every detail, it might pass for the work of genii, who knew naught of the weakness and ills with which mankind were afflicted." The exact and prosaic Bernier had to express doubts whether "I may not be somewhat infected ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... a long, hard strain, like that of 1914, I left Avalon hopeful, of course, but serious, determined, and alive to the possibilities of failure. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... been telling him about me!" he said to himself, and went. For the stable Cosmo was then cleaning out, the horses that lived in it, and the house to which it belonged, were the proceeds of a late judicious failure. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... heard of any discovery, he could not be contented till he saw it introduced. We often tried to get the two together, and very soon managed to throw an apple of discord between them. Pincott occupied much of his thoughts about a flying-machine, which no failure had taught him to believe could ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... a moment to try and regain the command of my faculties. But it was as if a bombshell had exploded inside my skull, scattering all my wits to the four winds of heaven. Only the conviction of failure remained, attended ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... country. But where this is overlooked—where the vital principle of the infant system is rejected, and the mere mechanical parts alone retained, as to any great and lasting benefit, it will be a complete and unhappy failure. That the grand object of the infant system may be accomplished, namely, of raising up a generation superior to the last, both in religious, moral, and intellectual acquirements, an immense caution and great experience in the selection of teachers is required; till proper teachers are universally ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... log-walled cabin, with its barred window and padlocked oaken door, had been long disconsolate. But now, for the first time in many days, hope came to him as he walked back and forth, fighting pests, still tortured in mind, fearing failure, wondering, praying, yet proud and never beseeching, waiting for another and ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... strike for the eight hour day. For years the logger and mill hand had fought against the unrestrained greed of the lumber interests. Step by step, in the face of fiercest opposition, they had fought for the right to live like men; and step by step they had been gaining. Each failure or success had shown them the weakness or the strength of their union. They had been consolidating their forces as well as learning how to use them. The lumber trust had been making huge profits the while, but the lumber workers were still working ten ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... time very glad to be able in this way to invite attention to the undoubted fact that the distinction between the actual and the potential was recognised by the schoolmen as of a very deep significance. We believe further that the real secret of the failure of mediaevalism to extend its Knowledge of Nature was not so much a preference for deductive over inductive methods as the failure to realise that Nature ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... now, that above all times in my life I need the full command of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere with them, that I fear I shall often inadequately express myself. Any failure in my response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... he wore the quiet air habitual to him, and, in spite of his disgust, he could not help but admire the reckless courage and activity which would dare such a thing, for 'twas evident now that the jump had not only to be dangerously long but high also, and any failure to clear the chair and broken ice would inevitably result in ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... is both a symptom and a cause of our economic problems. Unless we reduce the dangerous growth rate in government spending, we could face the prospect of sluggish economic growth into the indefinite future. Failure to cope with this problem now could mean as much as a trillion dollars more in national debt in the next 4 years alone. That would average $4,300 in additional debt for every man, woman, child, and baby ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... dramatic production, which was also his first serious effort as a playwright, ought to have proved sufficient warning that he was moved by something more than a desire to amuse. "A Piece of Fiction" (Das Maerchen) must be counted a failure and, in some ways, a step backward. But its very failure is a promise of greater things to come. It lacks the grace and facility of "Anatol." Worse still, it lacks the good-humor and subtle irony of those first ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... speechless with excitement when the plan was broached to him, and he declared it to be too good for there to be any failure. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... What the elder brother was, most Brums know; he worked hard in the cause of Liberalism, he was almost idolised here, and his statue stands not far from the site of the Bank with which his name was unfortunately connected, and the failure of which is still a ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that, if those fellows had carried the hill, they would have made a signal, and there might have been a general attack. As it is, the affair is over for the night; and the Invulnerables will have some difficulty in accounting for their failure, and loss. ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... lawn so Pollymckittrick could have her sun bath. One day a big redtail hawk sailed by. Pollymckittrick fell backward off her perch, flat on her back. The sorrowing family gathered to observe this extraordinary case of heart failure. After an interval ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... temper in check, and profit by the jealousy which had now been aroused in Charles's mind. Hitherto she had always obeyed hasty impulses. Why should not she, too, succeed in accomplishing a well-considered plan? With the torturing emotions of failure, mortification, desertion, remorse, and yearning for forgiveness, now blended the hope of yet bringing to a successful conclusion the hazardous enterprise which she had already given up as hopeless, and, while walking on, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... canteen full of water and a razor, Bradley made himself comfortable upon the mat and was soon asleep, knowing that an attempted escape in the darkness without knowledge of his surroundings would be predoomed to failure. ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... collected. It was almost noon when we left Gray Corners, and it was after three o'clock before we reached Westbrook, five miles out of Portland. Here whom should we see but the old Squire, who, growing anxious over our failure to appear, had driven out to meet us. He could not help smiling when he heard Willis's indignant account ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... a waiter, who had gone out to India a gentleman's valet, and returned a nabob. Lord Mowbray's two daughters— he had no sons—were great heiresses. Lady Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud inquisitive. Egremont fell in love with neither, and the visit was a failure. Lord Marney declined to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... knew now what had been the name of the Englishman: Captain the Hon. Richard Mildare, late of the Grey Hussars—was dead. No hand made murderous by the lust of gold had helped him to his death. Sudden failure of the heart is common in aggravated cases of rheumatic fever, and with one suffocating struggle, one brief final pang, he had gone to join her he loved. But his dead face did not look at rest. There was some reflection in it of the terror ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the failure of the French assault upon the town, King Richard would make his own essay. He was not yet wholly recovered of his sickness; but it would have passed the wit of man to devise means by which he could be kept within his pavilion; nor must it be forgotten ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is now in Montreal, Canada. I was glad of the opportunity to travel with both these men, for I knew that one's traveling companions, on such a tour, were of the utmost importance in determining its success or failure, and I could not have chosen a better pair, had the choice been left to me—which, of course, it ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... terms of surrender were laid before the Virginia House of Burgesses, and received the entire approval of that wise body; who, although the expedition had ended in defeat and failure, most cheerfully gave Col. Washington and his men a vote of thanks, in testimony of their having done their whole duty as good and brave ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... himself, of his unhappy youth, of how he had been misunderstood, of his solitary life; a bitter, unsatisfactory life, and yet a life not wanting in an ideal—a glorious ideal. He thought how his projects had always met with failure, with disapproval, above all, failure... and yet, and yet he felt, he almost knew, there was something great and noble in him. His eyes brightened, he slipped into thinking of schemes for a monastic life; and then ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... I f the worst comes to the worst, you'll have had the best end of it. If you fail up there in the 'Hills' you'll get scoughed and be done with you. You'll at least have had a show. All we shall know of your failure will be the arrival of the flood! We'll be swamped ingloriously—shot, skinned alive and crucified without a chance of doing anything but wait for it! You're in luck—you can move about and keep ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... night we were crammed, stifled and suffocated on the steamer's deck, as she slowly felt her way up through the muddy and shallow water of Grand Lake. To have run aground would have been disastrous failure to the whole expedition. Towing astern were large flat bottomed scows, loaded with artillery and artillery men. These were indispensable when on Monday morning we found that it was impossible for our ship to approach within half a mile ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... similar object, this idea of the nightingale robbed of her young. The truthful and somewhat minute description in the song, however, represents the bird's ordinary performance, and but ill suits the circumstances under which it is supposed to be uttered. The failure on the part of the poet may be ascribed to his secret conviction, that the nightingale's was a cheerful melody; and his labouring against that conviction to the necessity he felt himself under of following ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Ballads" he used to declaim, and cannot recover the enigmatic charm of "Sordello." Books change like friends, like ourselves, like everything; but they are most piquant in the contrasts they provoke, when the friend who gave them and wrote them is a success, though we laughed at him; a failure, though we believed in him; altered in any case, and estranged from his old self and old days. The vanished past returns when we look at the pages. The vicissitudes of years are printed and packed in a thin octavo, and the shivering ghosts of desire and hope return to ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... even though I am a failure," she said determinedly. "Bruce never guessed that it might be quite as hard for a failure to be unselfish as for a successful person. He's always been successful, thanks to Aunt Louise and his own ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... significance of a partial distress, the bourgeoisie of political England, on the other hand, has managed to miss the general significance of a universal distress, which has been forced upon its attention partly by periodical recurrence in time, partly by extension in space, and partly by the failure of all efforts to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... lighting the stars by gas; but his systems never worked. The tides rebelled against their mistress, and the stars went out with a horrible stench. This is one of his creations, the most ingenious, though a failure. Jove made it a present to Pluto, who is quite proud of having a sun and stars of his own, and reckons it among the choice ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... men that would submit to it, if ever so little; he, so strong, so superior even in his errors, realized at last that his very individuality was snatched from within himself by the hand of a woman. Where was the assurance and pride of his cleverness; the belief in success, the anger of failure, the wish to retrieve his fortune, the certitude of his ability to accomplish it yet? Gone. All gone. All that had been a man within him was gone, and there remained only the trouble of his heart—that heart which had become a contemptible thing; which could ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... by care. One lies awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist of her dress; another is dying because no silk of a certain inexpressible shade is to be found in New York; a third has had a dress sent home, which has proved such a failure that life seems no longer worth having. If it were not for the consolations of religion, one doesn't know what would become of her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much correlated to human existence as shadow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of players ever had situations so fraught with danger of failure. They were very nervous. Mr. Warfield appeared in the part for several weeks before he felt at ease as the living man who returns as his ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... that it's not rehabilitation in the eyes of the world I seek. For you it would be sacrifice—and for me a failure. If you asked me because you loved me, and I believed I could make you happy I think you know what my answer would be. But to marry you without your loving me—well, that would be—" She paused and then finished: "It would be ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... parlor-mindedness. It does harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most in its failure to promote the one ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... to remark that Marko arrived safe and sound the same evening in Cetinje, and a dead criminal was found on the next day by the roadside. Now Yussuf, the Governor, was himself a soldier of some repute, and when he heard of the failure of his messenger he boastfully expressed a desire to meet the celebrated Marko in single combat. On this challenge being reported to him Marko rode off on a half-tamed steed at midday into the heart of Podgorica, and reined ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... base indulgence. I was warmed and fed. Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion that he was suffering some ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... repeat your voyage of discovery, or perhaps your bridal anticipations may prove an egregious failure. Do ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... which "M.D." dismisses "a little gout" in his last paragraph but one almost leads one to think that he is unaware of the failure of the natural defences of the body that must have gone on in a very serious degree before the manifestation of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... himself, wringing himself to a dry, fibrous husk of a man that his Way might be completed. His lips parted with a sigh of relief that this was all over. He was as an old man whose life, for good or ill, success or failure, is done, and who looks from the serenity of age on those who have still their youth to spend, their years to dole out day by day, painfully, in the intense anxiety of the moral purpose, as the price of life. In a spell of mysticism he ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... for trying to excuse my own failure on the plea that things generally have gone wrong. At times it seems to me that I'm responsible for having lost my faith in what I used to think was the right thing to do; and then again it seems as if the world were all so bad that no real good ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... blow so stoically as the death of the old is apt to be borne. In vain Catherine tried to console her with commonplaces; in vain told her it was a happy release for him; and that, as he himself had said, the tree was ripe. But her worst failure was, when she urged that there were now but two mouths to feed; and one ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... most unfavourable period possible. Three years of unfruitfulness through almost the whole of Europe had been followed by a commercial crisis, which threatened the town with entire destruction. Every mail from Europe brought intelligence of some failure, in which the richest firms here were involved. No merchant could say, "I am worth so much;"—the next post might inform him that he was a beggar. A feeling of dread and anxiety had seized every family. The sums already lost in England and this place ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... she was here I had a curious desire to keep her. I regarded the failure of my eumoirous little plans with more than satisfaction. I had done my best. I had found (through the dwarf's agency) Captain Vauvenarde. I had satisfied myself that he was an outrageous person, thoroughly disqualified ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... contrary, if an English perfumer attempts to make Eau de Portugal, &c., to bear any comparison as a fine odor to that made by Lubin, of Paris, without using grape spirit, his attempts will prove a failure. True, he makes Eau de Portugal even with English corn spirit, but judges of the article—and they alone can stamp its merit—discover instantly the same difference as the connoisseur finds out between "Patent ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe expressly designated the policy of the German Empire as "world politics." Thereby a goal was sketched for the development of the German Empire. We have not lost sight of it since then, keeping unconfused despite many an illusion and many a failure. And today we all live in the firm faith that the world war, which we are determined to bring to a victorious conclusion by the exertion of all our forces as a people, will bring us the safe guarantee for the attainment of our ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... That his motives were honourable only heightened the ludicrousness of his action: it seemed as if he had made a fool of himself. He almost wished that he had left the Democrats to their own devices. But no! he had done the right, and that was the main point. The sense of failure, however, robbed him of confidence in regard to the future. How should he act? Since high motives were ineffectual, Quixotic, ought he to discard them and come down to the ordinary level? 'Twould be better not to live at all. The half-life of a student, a teacher, dwelling apart ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... exorbitant prices for their cattle and stores, and actually cheat the soldiers who are come to fight their battles. No wonder the General swears, and the troops are sulky. The delays have been endless. Owing to the failure of the several provinces to provide their promised stores and means of locomotion, weeks and months have elapsed, during which time no doubt the French have been strengthening themselves on our frontier and ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the readers of NOTES AND QUERIES, who suffer from depression of spirits, confusion, headache, blushing, groundless fears, unfitness for business or society, blood to the head, failure of memory, delusions, suicidal thoughts, fear of insanity, &c., will call on, or correspond with, REV. DR. WILLIS MOSELEY, who, out of above 22,000 applicants, knows not fifty uncured who have followed his advice, he will instruct them how to get well, without a fee, and will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... welcomed by Delirium, seemed to brighten Italy's outlook on the future. Much was afterward made by the President's enemies of the subsequent change toward him in the sentiments of the Italian people. This is commonly ascribed to his failure to fulfil the expectations which his words or attitude aroused or warranted. Nothing could well be more misleading. Mr. Wilson's position on the subject of Italy's claims never changed, nor did he say or do aught that would justify a doubt as to what it was. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... follow his career. In fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race are entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its origin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that remedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan—John Milton—to bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... war is justified by their failure to keep their word and their pledges of friendship; for, as is well known, they have again and again, in the time of previous governors, been reconciled and have promised friendship, and thus have obtained pardon ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... Petersburg and London had been proposed to me, and I had only to make my selection; their engagement would be concluded as soon as I had entrusted the success of my work to their co-operation. In declining these proposals I think I was no less eloquent than he in making them. My complete failure, however, was due to the fact that I did not appear to understand the worthy minister when he informed me that the ballet in the first act counted for nothing, because those devotees of the theatre who only cared for the ballet on an opera night were accustomed, according ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... try to seem self-possessed; some will grin and talk all sorts of nonsense; some will utter sly bits of badinage; while others will study intently their cards, or gaze at the ceiling—all which is done merely to distract attention, or to conceal the feelings, as the chance of success or failure be for or against; and then begins the betting or gambling part of the game. The player next the blind is the first to declare his bet; in which, of course, he is entirely governed by circumstances. Some, being the first to bet, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... knew. Trading horses was not the Jew's only business; he was equally adept in buying and selling timber-lands and the hiring of men. When he was successful—and he was generally successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... at this period of the year is dry, except in the middle. On our side all is ready to give the Turk a good hiding, but every time at Helles we were just as prepared and the result always a practical failure. Now for the battle, and little chance of ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Aemilius and P. Africanus, fortunate men when I saw them with a company of young nobles about them. Nor should we think any teachers of the fine arts otherwise than happy, however much their bodily forces may have decayed and failed. And yet that same failure of the bodily forces is more often brought about by the vices of youth than of old age; for a dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state. Xenophon's Cyrus, for instance, in his discourse delivered on his death-bed and at a very advanced age, says that he ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... created what he called the Guild of Honourable Merchants. Every merchant of the first guild who had paid a tax of 150 per annum for ten years without failure was eligible to belong to it. The Honourable Merchants are free from all imposts, conscriptions, etcetera, and pay no taxes. Another mode Nicholas took of ruining the old nobility was to establish a pawn bank, where they could ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... in this way, and if ever a man was placed by his country in a painful and humiliating position, it was he. He faced it gallantly, but had to be carried through by Franklin. From first to last it was upon Franklin that the brunt fell; he had to keep the country from financial failure as Washington had to save it from military failure; he was the real financier of the Revolution; without him Robert Morris would have been helpless. Spain yielded but trifling sums in response to Jay's solicitations; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... one in the story of Jeannie and Effie Deans. Thrown into constant intimacy, with an endearing community of inheritance, duties, and associations-multitudes of sisters must become ardent friends. The failure of that result, in consequence of base qualities, irritating circumstances, or cold and meagre natures, is a great misfortune and loss in a household: the fruition of it is a blessing worthy of the most ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... a sort of acknowledgment of vague dependence on Rome, but the empire had acquired nothing more solid. Forty years before our date a Roman expedition had penetrated into South-west Arabia, of which the wealth was extravagantly over-estimated, but it had met with complete failure. Into Ethiopia a punitive campaign had been made against Queen Candace, and a loose suzerainty was claimed over her kingdom, but the Roman frontier still stopped short at Elephantine. Over the territories of the semi-Greek semi-Scythian settlements to the north of the Black ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... only by a profound thinker, and one in which even a profound thinker might have failed, unless his passions had been kept under strict control. But in all those works in which Mr. Southey has completely abandoned narration, and has undertaken to argue moral and political questions, his failure has been complete and ignominious. On such occasions his writings are rescued from utter contempt and derision solely by the beauty and purity of the English. We find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style, that, even when be writes nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been an utter failure, but Arnold still clung to the hope of commanding the great waterway from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson. At Crown Point he began to build ships, and by the end of September had a little fleet of nine. The ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... to rejoice at his failure to see El Carnicerin in the crowd; he felt positive that the fellow would show up ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... prompted it. Clear as daylight now was the explanation of that letter. Buoyed up by Trix's advice, by Trix's eloquence, she had once more attempted to put the high-sounding theories into practice. And it had proved a failure, ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... My failure, however, taught me to sink the next set of stakes ten or fifteen feet below the surface of the ice, instead of five; and the experiment was attended with happier results. A stake planted eighteen feet deep in the ice, and cut on a level with the surface ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to Mr. George Bartram. What is the certain end of that discovery? The end is, that you leave to your cousin and your friend the legacy of this woman's vengeance and this woman's deceit-vengeance made more resolute, deceit made more devilish than ever, by her exasperation at her own failure. What is your cousin George? He is a generous, unsuspicious man; incapable of deceit himself, and fearing no deception in others. Leave him at the mercy of your wife's unscrupulous fascinations and your wife's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... sit in judgment on him, Sir Henry explaining to him in the very best French the unheard-of cowardice and enormity of his conduct, more especially in letting the oiled rag out of his mouth, whereby he nearly aroused the Masai camp with teeth-chattering and brought about the failure of our plans: ending up with ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... cause of the failure of these governments was the character of the new ruling class. Every state, except perhaps Virginia, was under the control of a few able leaders from the North generally called carpetbaggers and of a few native white radicals contemptuously ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... crisis they received the unwelcome tidings of the failure of an expedition destined for their relief by Alonso de Aguilar. This cavalier, the chief of an illustrious house since rendered immortal by the renown of his younger brother, Gonsalvo de Cordova, had assembled a considerable body of troops, on learning the capture of Alhama, for the purpose of supporting ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott |
