"Defect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstances. Rising from out the surface of daily experience, like the watery issuings of a fountain, it throws itself upward for a moment, then descends in a soft, glittering shower to the level whence it rose. Herein resides the chief defect of Bayly's songs; that they are too general and vague—a species of pattern songs—being embodiments of some general feeling, or reflection, but lacking that sufficient reference to some season or occurrence which would justify their ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... the working of the steam, you can readily detect any defect in your cylinder or steam chest, by the use of your cylinder cocks. Suppose we try them once. Turn your engine on the forward center, now open the cocks and give the engine the steam pressure. If the steam blows out at the ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... the moment of requirement, but no material or mixture has been found to excel that made with wood and glue. Many, perhaps the majority of instances in which this has been used, have also been failures; not from any inherent defect in the substance, but from lack of proper management. Different varieties of wood have been tried, a great drawback being the contraction when the glue dries; this is markedly the case when a hard wood, powdered by glass-paper, is used. The granulations and their hardness ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... far as the guide's story goes) on whose privacy we have intruded ourselves! The narrative has a certain interest of its own, no doubt, but it has one defect—it fails entirely to explain the continued absence of Mr. Dunross. Is it possible that he is not aware of our presence in the house? We apply the guide, and make a few ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... "Louis wants," "Louis is hungry," or whatever his name may be. This phenomenon reappears in the second childhood of old age, when the power of reflection is weakened, and there is a reversion to the primitive animal condition. The same phenomenon also occurs in idiots, in whom there is a morbid defect ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... won't you?" I was agreeable to that, so we had it all round, and then my man and I took Tally-ho Thompson safe to the railroad, and I carried him to London that night. He was afterwards acquitted, on account of a defect in the evidence; and I understand he always praises me up to the skies, and says I'm one of the best ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... bear a secret mischance or grief with thee, which requireth secrecy and fidelity? I confess that a woman's wit commonly is too weak to keep a secret safely: but yet, Brutus, good education, and the company of virtuous men, have some power to reform the defect of nature. And for my self, I have this benefit moreover, that I am the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus. This notwithstanding, I did not trust to any of these things before, until that now I have found by experience, that no pain or ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... writing this memoir has been to follow the scriptural example, by fairly recording every defect discoverable in Bunyan's character; but what were considered by some to be blemishes, after his conversion, appear, in my estimation, to be beauties. His moral and religious character was irreproachable, and his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tongue ne'er silent in their praise has been, And how my feet not tender are, nor tired, Pursuing still with many a useless pace Of your fair footsteps the elastic trace; And whence the ink, the paper whence acquired, Fill'd with your memories: if in this I err, Not art's defect but Love's own ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... would be a minister, and before he changed and took up the law. But making light of a cause so high and noble seemed to show a want of earnestness at the core of his being. Not but that she felt herself able to cope with a congenital defect of that sort, and make his love for her save him from himself. Now perhaps the miracle was already wrought in him, In the presence of the tremendous fact that he announced, all triviality seemed to have gone out of him; she began to feel that. He sank down on the top step, and wiped his ...
— Different Girls • Various
... va comme ca," and sticking his umbrella upright in the road, he sketched the steps and gestures. All his criticisms of the present, all his regrets for the past, struck me as temperate and sensible. The short term of office of the Resident he thought the chief defect of the administration; that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he was recalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some fear the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. I am sure at least that I regard it so myself; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a soldier, it's Balder. He's a gentleman, and he's connected by tradition with the Army, and he's mad about everything military—and surely he's as clever as anybody else at everything except that wretched matter of books, and even there it's only a defect of memory—and yet that suffices to prevent his serving his Queen. And all over England there are young gentlemen like that—the very pick of the hunting-fields, strong and brave as lions, fit to lead men anywhere, the very men England ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... engendering is being built. The supposed enormity perpetrated in its production, provided it had fallen within the sphere of ethics, would, at the least, have ranked, with its denunciators, as a brand-new exemplification of total depravity. But, after all, what incontestable defect in it has any one succeeded in demonstrating? Mr. White, in opposing to the expression objections based on an erroneous analysis, simply lays a phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners of is being built have, absolutely, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... of indigestion is caused by the animal gorging itself with feed, and arises more from the animal's voracious appetite than from any defect in the quality of the feed supplied to it. The condition is, however, more severe if the feed consumed is especially concentrated or difficult of digestion. In cases of this kind there is comparatively no great formation of gas, and the gas which is formed is diffused through the stomach instead ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... certainly a very small business, Herbert. I think some men become meaner by indulgence of their defect." ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... so universally supported as it ought, are fear and indolence, and the causes why it has been opposed, are, avarice, down-right villany, and lust of personal power. There is not such a being in America as a Tory from conscience; some secret defect or other is interwoven in the character of all those, be they men or women, who can look with patience on the brutality, luxury and debauchery of the British court, and the violations of their army ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... verse of Shakespeare, broken lines and redundant syllables are numerous, but under his hand they become things of beauty, and "the irregularity is the foundation of the larger and nobler rule." To quote the historian of English prosody—"These are quite deliberate indulgences in excess or defect, over or under a regular norm, which is so pervading and so thoroughly marked that it carries them off on its wings."(44) Heine in his unrhymed "Nordseebilder," has many irregular lines—irregularities suitable to the variety of the subjects of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... genuine female experience. The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women. Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil, Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all cultivated Romans, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... moment he was angry with himself for his folly. She was, after all, nothing but a child—and a child set apart from her fellow creatures by her sad defect. He must not ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as policy than so ignominious an attempt at hedging would have been the acknowledgment to all the world of the noble crime of patriotism. But, as Massimo d'Azeglio once observed, Charles Albert had the incurable defect of thinking himself cunning. It was, moreover, only too true that, although in these diplomatic communications the King allowed the case against him to be stated with glaring exaggeration, yet they contained an element ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... or plea in abatement, was the defeating or quashing of a particular action by some matter of fact, such as a defect in form or the personal incompetency of the parties suing, pleaded by the defendant. It did not involve the merits of the cause, but left the right of action subsisting. In criminal proceedings a plea in abatement was at one time a common practice ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... year, her progress in study was far from being satisfactory to her teachers. She was at much pains to inform her classmates of her wealth and position, seeming to entertain the idea that this would cover every defect. Owing to Emma's superior attainments, compared with her own, she soon learned to regard her with a feeling of absolute dislike, which she took little pains to conceal; and many were the petty annoyances she endured from the vain and haughty Julia Carlton. She soon learned that Emma was poor; ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... men to think always consistently. He never had time to learn them of himself, because he was prevented from his youth, by the great affairs that fell unexpectedly to his share, and by the continual success he met with. This defect in him was the cause, that with the soul in the world the least inclined to evil, he has committed injuries; that with the heart of an Alexander, he has, like him, had his failings; that with a wonderful understanding, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... in general, be cured in part, by dropping into them a solution of sub-carbonate of potash; or, if the hardness be owing only to the presence of super-carbonate of lime, mere boiling will greatly remedy the defect; part of the carbonic acid flies off, and a neutral carbonate of lime falls down to the bottom; it may then be used for washing, scarcely curdling soap. But if the hardness be owing in part to sulphate of lime, boiling does not soften ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... paths of life, nor in his secret recesses, has any one vice been discovered. We see him reviewing every year of his life, and severely censuring himself, for not keeping resolutions, which morbid melancholy, and other bodily infirmities, rendered impracticable. We see him, for every little defect, imposing on himself voluntary penance, going through the day with only one cup of tea without milk, and to the last, amidst paroxysms and remissions of illness, forming plans of study and resolutions to ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... this plan for their consideration—no more than that. It was the plan of a mixed or composite electoral college, in which Mahomedans and Hindus should pool their votes, so to say. The wording of the recommendation in my despatch was, as I soon discovered, ambiguous—a grievous defect, of which I make bold to hope I am not very often in public business guilty. But, to the best of my belief, under any construction the plan of Hindus and Mahomedans voting together, in a mixed and composite electorate, would have secured to the Mahomedan electors, wherever ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... (c) A third defect of this theory of the Atonement is, that it is profoundly unethical. The need of man is represented as being, above all, escape from penalty. Whereas, at least, the conscience of the sinner himself is bearing at all times witness to the truth that his real necessity ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... And of the Lord Christ Jesus, salutation. My brethren, when you fall into temptation Of divers kinds, rejoice, as men that know From trial of your faith doth patience flow. But let your patience have its full effect, That you may be entire, without defect. If any of you lack wisdom, let him cry To God, and he will give it lib'rally, And not upbraid. But let him ask in faith, Not wavering, for he that wavereth, Unto a wave o' th' sea I will compare, Driv'n with the wind and tossed here and there. For let not such a man himself deceive, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... A certain amount of British folk-lore was brought back to Greece, according to Plutarch ('De defect. orac.' 2), by the geographer Demetrias of Tarsus about this time. He refers to the cavern of sleeping heroes, so familiar ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... length the government came to the aid of the distressed institutions and deposited $36,000,000 between October 19 and 31. Nevertheless, at the time when depositors were trying to get their money there was sufficient currency in existence to satisfy all needs. The defect lay in the lack of machinery for pooling resources in such a way as to relieve any institution that was in temporary straits. The experts pointed also to the unscrupulous manipulation of the supplies of currency ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... personal appearance was, to say the least of it, extremely odd; he was low in stature; and this defect was enhanced by a distortion of the spine, so considerable as almost to amount to a hunch; his features, too, had all that sharpness and sickliness of hue which generally accompany deformity; he wore his hair, which was black as soot, in heavy neglected ringlets about his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character, and still full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Indians must be kept Christians, educated and civilized. Here is the crucial point. In reading criticisms upon the Mission system of dealing with the Indians, one constantly meets with such passages as the following: "The fatal defect of this whole Spanish system was that no effort was made to educate the Indians, or teach them to read, and think, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... gain that might give them a master. The duller of those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they can frustrate the bungler ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Vernisset? Why Miss Williamson? If the affair is such as I conceived it, as a whole, that is to say, based upon the blind and fantastic logic of a madwoman, a choice was inevitably exercised. Now in what did that choice consist? What was the quality, or the defect, or the sign needed to induce the lady with the hatchet to strike? In a word, if she chose—and she must have chosen—what directed ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... time as, passing a bridge, the poor little poet was overturned into the river, and he would have been drowned, had not the postilion broken the coach window and dragged the tiny body through the aperture. We mark, however, that he generally contrives to hide this defect, as he would fain have hidden every other, from the lynx eyes of Lady Mary, who knows him, however, thoroughly, and reads every line of that poor little heart of his, enamoured of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... savages. In the autumn back to England with a string of ships went that tried and tested seafarer Christopher Newport. Virginia wanted many things, and chiefly that the Virginia Company should excuse defect and remember promise. So Gates sailed with Newport to make true report and guide exertion. Six months passed, and the Lord Governor himself fell ill and must home to England. So away he, too, went ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... called the little fairy. She had the misfortune to be lame in one of her hips; but by good management, and a briskness and alacrity in carrying herself, it was a very small blemish to her, and looked more like an idle childish gait, than any real defect. ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... national existence, no one would claim. There are other spheres of effort in which American character has been more adequately expressed than in words. Nevertheless the books are here, in spite of every defect in national discipline, every flaw in national character; and they deserve the closest attention from all those who are trying to ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... are due to putrefaction; the colours always show best when the oyster has been a bad one. Hence they are considered a defect and are ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... great: they would have been far greater, and his influence a far more unmixed good, if as a representative leader of religious thought, he had been more superior to what was to be its most characteristic defect. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... impossible, because the soul has not the necessary instruments for such an execution. Now however infinite the power and knowledge of God be, he cannot perform with a machine deprived of a certain piece, what requires the concourse of such a piece. He must supply that defect; but then the effect would be produced by him and not by the machine. I shall show that the soul has not the instruments requisite for the divine law we speak of, and in order to do it I shall make use of ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... to see that the French costume had begun to make its appearance. Instead of the handsome Roman head, with its dark, shining, braided hair, which is so elegant when uncovered, I saw on two of the children the deforming bonnet, which could have been invented only to conceal a defect, and which is never endurable, unless it be perfectly fresh, delicate, and costly. Nothing is so vulgar as a shabby bonnet. Yet the Romans, despite their dislike of the French, are beginning to wear it. Ten years ago ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... has the art of keeping himself before the public eye. Being myself so constituted—it is not any virtue in me, only a constitutional defect—that I cannot elbow for a place, it is difficult for me to understand how another, especially a man like Grenfell, can bring himself to do so. I had always thought he was miles above that ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the defect of his qualities. He was essentially Cromwellian. He too would have said, "Take away that bauble!" He did not look outside of himself for help. Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance" made small impression upon him, because he had the thing of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... thitherward; and he took it for an indication that nature had intended, by innumerable ways, to point out to us the great truth that death was an alien misfortune, a prodigy, a monstrosity, into which man had only fallen by defect; and that even now, if a man had a reasonable portion of his original strength in him, he might ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... important defect in the Regulations lies in the uncertainty it allows to exist as to the subdivision of the dismounted squadron, and how the skirmishers ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... of life and happiness was forcibly illustrated, as well as the perniciousness of error. Exempt as this lady was from almost every defect, she was indebted for her ruin to absurd opinions of the sacredness of consanguinity, to her anxiety for the preservation of a ruffian because that ruffian was her brother. The spirit of Clithero was enlightened and erect, but he weakly suffered the dictates of eternal justice ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... which was but a small craft that had been unstrung the day before, in order that the ship's carpenter might examine some fancied defect in the rudder. Fortunately a pair of oars had been left in her, and these Pharaoh now took in hand, bidding me steer for the volcanic flame, which played over the peak of ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... picture in the best light, that all its beauties may be revealed, she placed each one of her subjects in the most favorable aspect, studied her closely, searched out every fine point which might be heightened, and pondered over every defect which might be concealed. She had the rare gift of knowing how to embellish nature, how to bring forth all the capacities of a face and form, and how to modify the fashion of the day to the requirements of the wearer, instead of slavishly following an arbitrary mode, and thereby ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... kammer-junker! I reproach you for nothing, God forbid," I went on, feeling I was coarse, that I had not the tact, the delicacy which are so essential when you have to do with a fellow-creature's soul; in early days before I knew her I had not noticed this defect in myself. "But how could you fail to see what he was," I went on, speaking more ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was to clean up some armor that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner, eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it; that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... 'challenging.' 4-5. ne quis ... esset. The Decemvirs were to supersede temporarily both Consuls and Tribunes. 14-15. quid ... conferrent 'Should point out in the interest of all (lit. should contribute to the public good) any faults of excess or defect in the several articles.' —Stephenson. 15-17. ad rumores hominum in accordance with (ad) public opinion. 17. centuriatis comitiis. Servius Tullius divided the people into five classes, according to the value of their property. The people (Patricians ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... conviction; for she was markedly one of those who sigh for the unattainable—to whom, superlatively, a hope is pleasing because not a possession. And she knew it so well that her intellect was inclined to exaggerate this defect in herself. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... worn-out horse is not proper for Atlas to mount in battle, is impertinent; the horse here mentioned seems to be a post horse, rather than a war horse. Yet as arm-gaunt seems not intended to imply any defect, it perhaps means, a horse so slender that a man might clasp him, and therefore ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... commonwealth. The Mosaic books contained rules no longer adapted to the situation of the nation, and many difficult questions arose to which their law afforded no satisfactory solution. The rabbins undertook to supply this defect, partly by commentaries on the Mosaic precepts, and partly by the composition ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Peers, when the Duke de Broglie urged the same amendments on similar principles. In 1817 also, a new Concordat had been negotiated and concluded at Rome by M. de Blacas. It contained the double and contradictory defect of invading by some of its specifications the liberties of the old Gallican Church; while, by the abolition of the Concordat of 1801, it inspired the new French society with lively alarms for its civil liberties. Little versed in such matters, and almost entirely absorbed in the negotiations ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... German battle fleet and hung on its flanks near enough to report its position to the commander in chief. He underwent a heavy fire, but handled his frail ships so skillfully as to escape serious loss. At the same time the constant maneuvering he was forced to perform or a defect in the British system of communication made his reports of bearing seriously inaccurate. Whatever the cause, this error created a difficulty for the commander in chief, who, fifty miles away, was trying to locate the enemy for ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the Boston girl, but if there are defects, as is alleged by the writer above, and by other scientific persons, we do not see how giving less prominence to her intellectuality is going to do away with them. For instance, there is a defect in the girl whereby she has a shin on both sides of her lower limb, or an indentation where there should be the customary calf—we say calf advisedly, because it is a calf, and no person need be ashamed of it, even if it is terrible slim—we ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... would prevent the extension of the value of the symbol beyond the original element of similarity. More than this, it would recognize the fact that similarity does not suppose identity, but the reverse, to wit, defect of likeness; and this dissimilitude must be the greater, as the original and symbol are naturally discrepant. The supernatual,[TN-11] however, whether by this term we mean the unknown or the universal—still more if we mean ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and as at school." (I. p. 46.) And yet, as before, there is ample evidence that this negative result cannot be put down to any native defect on the part of the scholar. Idle and dull young men, or even young men who being neither idle nor dull, are incapable of caring for anything but some hobby, do not devote themselves to the thorough study of Paley's "Moral Philosophy," and "Evidences of Christianity"; nor are their reminiscences ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and more incredible things were disclosed to my gaze. Among the Cabacans there is a certain class without heads. These are born without that appendage. They speak through a hole in the middle of the breast. On account of this natural defect, they are generally excluded from offices where brains are thought to be useful. They are notwithstanding a serviceable class: the most of them are to be seen at court; being gentlemen of the bed-chamber, stewards of the household, keepers ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... reserve was not organized in the great self-contained divisions which would be required for fighting against armies organized for rapid action on modern Continental principles. Its formations in peace time were not those which would be required in such a war. There was in addition a serious defect in the artillery organization which would have prevented more than a comparatively small number of batteries (about forty-two only in point of fact) from being quickly placed on a war footing. The transport ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... persistency of the defect that had marked most of his life, even that portion of it spent in Boston and Waverton—the places he called "home." He was their citizen only by adoption, as only by adoption he was the son of Tom and ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the whole of his various qualities were directed upon one single thing, of that greatness which is the crown of simplicity. Ambition was the keynote of his life; not an unworthy keynote, by any means, if only the ambition be sound; but one serious defect of Columbus's ambition was that it was retrospective rather than perspective. He may have had, before he sailed from Palos, an ambition to be the discoverer of a New World; but I do not think he had. He believed there were islands ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... and Great Britain? And that means, further, How can we improve the condition and change the minds of the people of Ireland? Some say (I have heard many who say it in England, and I am afraid there are Irishmen also who would say it), that there is some radical defect in the Irish character which prevents the condition of Ireland being so satisfactory as is the condition of England and of Scotland. Now, I am inclined to believe that whatever there is that is defective in any portion of the Irish people comes not from their race, but ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... nothing, because it will not at once raise the nation from distress to prosperity, what are we to say of that system under which the nation has been of late sinking from prosperity into distress? The defect is not in the Reform Bill, but in the very nature of government. On the physical condition of the great body of the people, government acts not as a specific, but as an alternative. Its operation is powerful, indeed, and certain, but gradual and indirect. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... These ships seem to have taken their places skilfully without confusion, and their fire, which opened at once, was rapid, well-sustained, and well-directed; but their position suffered under the radical defect that, whether from actual lack of water, or only from fear of grounding, they were too far from the works to use grape effectively. The sides of ships being much weaker than those of shore works, while their guns were much more numerous, the secret of success ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Taddeo returned to Siena, where, labouring continually, he applied himself so zealously to the studies of his art, in order to become an able painter, that it can be affirmed, if perchance he did not realize his intention, that this was certainly not by reason of any defect or negligence that he showed in his work, but rather through indisposition caused by an internal obstruction, which afflicted him in a manner that he could not attain to the fulness of his desire. Having taught the art to one his ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... of jute can be separated. If any irregularity in the selection of the heads from the different bales of the batch takes place in this first selection of the heads of jute, the faulty handling may affect subsequent operations in such a way that no chance of correcting the defect can occur; it should be noted at this stage that if there are slight variations of any kind in the fibres, it is advisable to make special efforts to obtain a good average mixture; as a matter of fact, it is wise to insist upon a judicious selection ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... wonderfully strong and enduring; they are never shod, and the hoof often cracks, and they become pigeon-toed: they are frequently blind of one eye, when they are called "zemik" (blind ones), but this is thought no great defect. They average 5 pounds to 10 pounds for a good animal in Tibet; and the best fetch 40 pounds to 50 pounds in the plains of India, where they become acclimated and thrive well. Giantchi (Jhansi-jeung of Turner) is the best mart for them in this part of Tibet, where some breeds fetch very high ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... hundred and twenty or thirty years ago. It seemed that the reporter stood to take the sermon, and his chief idea was to caricature it, and these are some of the reportorial interlinings of the sermon of George Whitefield. After calling him by a nickname indicative of a physical defect in the eye, it goes on to say: "Here the preacher clasps his chin on the pulpit cushion. Here he elevates his voice. Here he lowers his voice. Holds his arms extended. Bawls aloud. Stands trembling. Makes a frightful ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Dr. Graham, who, as a corresponding member from the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England, supported the appointment, gave voice to the universal feeling when he described him as "a man of thought and labour and love and God, who had one defect which endeared him to them all—that he was the only man who did not know what a rare and noble ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... have learned them at all) the lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the essential note and the right word: things that to a happier constitution had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training, it had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faction believes or pretends that it alone possesses the light. Moreover, factions are blind men, who aim straight, errors are excellent projectiles, striking skillfully, and with all the violence that springs from false reasoning, wherever a want of logic in those who defend the right, like a defect in a cuirass, makes ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... fruit—so rich was the downy bloom on the delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were rich—quite unconsciously—in that magic of sex which belongs to only a minority of women, but that, a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... confidence which I predicted would come with time. Her knack of disguising her own identity in the impersonation of different characters so completely staggers her audiences that the same people come twice over to find out how she does it. It is the amiable defect of the English public never to know when they have had enough of a good thing. They actually try to encore one of her characters—an old north-country lady; modeled on that honored preceptress in the late Mr. Vanstone's family to whom I presented myself at Combe-Raven. This particular performance ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the wine thereof," said Conrad Kurzbold, rising to his feet. "Wine, blessed liquor as it is, possesses nevertheless one defect, which blot on its escutcheon is that it cannot carry over till next day, except in so far as a headache is concerned, and a certain dryness of the mouth. It is futile to bid us lay in a supply to-night that will be of any use ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... dynamo was running with no serious defect and that his wiring had been made properly. Then he heaped the furnace full of coal, and closed the door, leaving only enough draft to insure a fairly steady heat for ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... agrees with me. She is of a literary turn, and has helped me in the composition of this, but we both fear that the story having no moral you will not admit it into your Owlhoots. But if your wisdom could supply this, or your kindness overlook the defect, it would afford great consolation to a bereaved family to have printed a biography of the dear deceased. For we were greatly attached to him, though he preferred the cook. I can at any rate give you my word as a man of honor that these incidents ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... conflict with our opinions on the subject of national sovereignty and personal freedom, there is no prohibition of it or punishment for it provided in any act of Congress. The expediency of supplying this defect in our criminal code is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... know something," said Aramis, who thought he had pierced not merely through a defect in the harness, but through the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on the constitution of Aragon have bestowed comparatively little attention on the development of its parliamentary history; confining themselves too exclusively to mere forms of procedure. The defect has been greatly obviated by the copiousness of their general historians. But the statute-book affords the most unequivocal evidence of the fidelity with which the guardians of the realm discharged the high trust reposed in them, in the numerous enactments ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of it, through the entire social chain. But, hitherto, those who have undertaken to describe the ways of fashionable life, have not followed it even to its more direct and contiguous relations with other classes of mankind. This is a defect which it might be worth the while of any duly qualified writer to supply. It might be well, for instance, if any such writer would so far extend the sphere of his contemplations, as to observe and exhibit the effects of fashionable manners and customs upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... he differs, as indeed he does in almost every other respect, with Macaulay. The Englishman thinks little of nature; as he himself says of Dante, 'He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky; his business is with man.' Indeed, the absence of a true and universal sympathy is the one vast defect of Macaulay. No position is so high that it may not be overshadowed by the giant form of his violent partisanship, no character so small that it may not be raised to the semblance of greatness by the mere force of his political preferences. His scholarship was splendid, his ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... scarcely a lake in the whole kingdom, and, with the exception of two or three, such as the Elbe, the Iser, the Bober, &c., the rivers hardly deserve to take rank with the larger class of our mountain streams. Such a defect is sorely felt by him who, looking down from the brow of a lofty hill over a wide plain, beholds perfection in every particular, except that there is no water there; and when from the narrower ravines you miss the lochs and tarns, which give to Cumberland and the Highlands of Scotland their peculiar ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... one considers the mass of testimony pointing to Riel's mental defect—paranoia—the undoubted history of insanity from boyhood, with the recurring paroxysms of intense excitement, he wonders that there could have been the slightest discussion regarding it.'—'A Critical ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... but was sincere in his attachments, and munificent in rewarding his generals and friends. He was not envious nor cruel, but inordinately ambitious, and intent on aggrandizing his family. This was his characteristic defect, and this, in a man so prominent and so favored by circumstances, was enough to keep Europe in a turmoil for ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... The vital defect of the system of government provided by the soon obsolete Articles of Confederation lay in the fact that it operated not upon the individual citizens of the United States but upon the States in their corporate capacities. As a consequence the prescribed duties of any law passed by Congress ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... only occasional defect, which I appear to myself to find in these poems is the inconstancy of the style. Under this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity (at all events striking and original) to a style, not ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the defect in your policy. It is the existence of your system of slavery that makes you all this trouble." "As I told you of Miss Chandler, so it is with you, because you never lived in a slave State, and know nothing of their contented and happy condition. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... is that it has no passions. "O noble privilege of age! if indeed it takes from us that which is in youth our greatest defect." But the higher feelings of our nature are not necessarily weakened; or rather, they may become all the brighter, being purified from the grosser ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... being skeptical. Our point, however, is that there is such a tremendous difference between the intellectual and moral faculties of man and the barely instinctive impulses of the lower creatures, that no one can see any connection between the two, unless there is some serious defect in his own mental or moral perceptions. Every instinct and conviction of the human mind rises in indignant repudiation of the theory of ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... to meet a defect. It seems to hurry eagerly forward to overcome defects and difficulties. The blind man has more acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel. The deaf man's eyes grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears fail to tell him. The lame man leans more on other muscles, ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... shoulder, his gown apparently put on by being dropped upon him from the vestry ceiling, and his hair apparently unbrushed for several weeks. There was no suspicion of affectation about that good man; yet I regarded his untidiness as a defect, and not as an excellence. He gave a most eloquent sermon; yet I thought it would have been well, had the lofty mind that treated so admirably some of the grandest realities of life and of immortality been able to address itself a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... defect in the bread-and-water diet. While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a day were given to each prisoner. There was one ...
— The Road • Jack London
... cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers, without stockings. But lest you might fancy this to have chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean, when the evening is so hot that Adam would have been glad to leave off his fig-leaves. "It's a kind o' damp and unwholesome in these ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... fiddlers in England. Yet I sat down and tried to be as attentive as any mortal could be. I endeavoured, if possible, to get up an interest in what was going on; but it was all of no use. I felt no emotion whatever, excepting only a strong inclination to go to sleep. It must be a defect; but it is a fact, and I cannot help it. I suppose my ignorance of the subject, and the want of musical experience in my youth, may be the cause of it."*[11] Telford's mother was still living in her old cottage at ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... defect in a philosophy than that of contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all {83} relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... imagination. All the borders of the epic representation at which, in the first volume, I have aimed, seem to melt, and wander away vaguely on every side into space and time. I have now taken care to remedy that defect, supplying to the unset picture the clear historical frame to which it is entitled. I will also request the reader, when the two volumes may diverge in tone or statement, to attach greater importance to the second, as the ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... within requires that it should be closed. But there is an inner gate, leading from the home paddock through the gardens to the house, and another inner gate, some thirty yards farther on, which will take you into the farmyard. Perhaps it is a defect at Allington that the farmyard is very close to the house. But the stables, and the straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the lazy lingering cattle of the homestead, are screened off by a row of chestnuts, which, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... important that the jars, covers, and rubber rings be in perfect condition. Examine each jar and cover to see that there is no defect in it. Use only fresh rubber rings, for if the rubber is not soft and elastic the sealing will not be perfect. Each year numbers of jars of fruit are lost because of the false economy in using an old ring that has ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... then, preached. He had a defect in the left eye, and used such strange gestures and language that I think I never in all my life have heard any thing more miserable; indeed, I can compare him with no one better than with one D. van Ecke, lately the minister at Armuyden, in Zeeland, more in life, conversation and gestures than ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... architecture," would suit the most fastidious home-seeker. In his prospectus to the public he informed that the view from the windows was unrivalled, as it commanded the whole island and its surroundings. But either "The House of Mansions" had some defect, or the situation was still too remote from the city. The project was not a success, and in 1860 the Rutgers Female College, incidentally the first institution for the higher education of young women in the city, moved ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... children, some knowledge of those subjects which they so often find tedious and uninteresting.—Should the stories related inspire a love of virtue, and the lessons awaken a desire for the further acquisition of useful knowledge, the attempt, notwithstanding its defect, cannot, it is hoped, be deemed ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... to sustain the national honor, when it seemed probable that the country could be won from France only at the cost of war; but when the time actually came to incorporate Louisiana into the national domain, they showed that jealous fear of Western growth which was the most marked defect in Northeastern public sentiment until past the middle of the present century. It proved that the Federalists were rightly distrusted by the West; and it proved that at this crisis, the Jeffersonian Republicans, in spite of their follies, weaknesses, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... knowledge of obstetric operations. His ideas in relation to pathology did not proceed much further than the belief that disease was due to corruption of the humors. He was more scientific and accurate when he taught that paralysis results from a defect ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... that under our present Constitution the United States have no power to acquire territory for coaling or naval stations, within the country of a foreign power. It was the committee's intention to remedy this defect by the present section. But as it stands, I do not like it. The idea is somewhat awkwardly expressed. I wish to have the enabling ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the possibility of sin. At the moment of leaving this life, they see why they are sent to Purgatory, but never again; otherwise they would still retain something private, which has no place there. Being established in charity, they can never deviate therefrom by any defect, and have no will or desire save the pure will of pure love, and can swerve from it in nothing. They can neither commit sin nor merit ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Herr von Heydebrand I regret that in the mechanism of the Foreign Office, which for eleven years has worked smoothly under me, a defect should on one occasion occur. I will answer for it that such a thing does not happen again, and that with this object, without respect to persons, though also without injustice, what is ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw |
