"Fail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he rises from his knees, and at once notices something remarkable in his face. Nehemiah is pale and anxious and troubled; his whole face tells of the struggle going on within, and the king cannot fail to perceive it. Turning to the Rab-shakeh he asks: 'Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart.' 'Then,' says Nehemiah, 'I was very sore afraid.' It is no wonder that he was alarmed, for it was actually a crime, proscribed ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... But I fail to see how Christian Banneker's son and eleve could. Yet you write editorials ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... passed away and left no trace. The other great experiment is still going on, - the experiment which is to solve the problem, so long contested in the Old World, of the capacity of man for self-government. Alas for humanity, if it should fail! ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... worthies, therefore, Hornigold unfolded Morgan's plan, which they embraced with alacrity, promising each to do his share. Velsers was too stupidly drunk to be told anything, but they knew they could count upon him without fail. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... say this from any confidence in myself? Far from it. It is from my confidence in our cause, and in the ability, the learning, and the constitutional principles which this House contains within itself, and which I hope it will ever contain,—and in the assistance which it will not fail to afford to those who with good intention do their best to maintain the essential privileges of the House, the ancient law of Parliament, and the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... carried the greatest number of courses and assumed the most outside duties. In my capacity as adviser to college students I find many who are able to accomplish thirty per cent more work than is expected of college students but fail to do equally well the regular amount. There are others who can carry the regular amount but not more without ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... letters from the other leaders, of a treasonable nature, were discovered. Nine years after this event, when Mr. O'Brien as a pardoned convict was permitted to return to his country, he had the puerility to complain of this act in a letter to the public. The man who could fail to see the justice and propriety of such a step on the part of the government, was so far beyond reason on political matters, that all astonishment at the impracticability of his insurrectionary attempts during ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that a person who would be saddened by the success of another, would not fail to rejoice at that other's misfortune. This is a grievous offense against charity, but it is not, properly speaking, envy, for envy is always sad; it is rather an effect of envy, a natural product thereof and a form ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... "You will fail miserably here. Why? Because the Americans are the greatest of individual property owners. The sense of possession is satisfied. And woe to the fool who suggests they surrender this. Little wooden houses, thousands and thousands of them, with a small plot of ground in the rear ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... fencing, wrestling, and shooting. A further principle in Freeland education was that the children should not be forced into activity any more than the adults. We held that a properly directed logical system of education, not confined to the use of a too limited range of means, could scarcely fail to bring the pliable mind of childhood to a voluntary and eager fulfilment of reasonably allotted duties. And experience justified our opinion. Our mode of instruction had to be such as would make school exceedingly ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... not only because of his invention of the simplest and best method of conveying intelligence by electricity, but because he, alone and unaided, carried forward the enterprise when, but for him, it would have been allowed to fail. With no thought of disparaging the others, who can hardly be blamed for their loss of faith, and who were of great assistance to him later on when the battle was nearly won, I feel that it is only just to lay emphasis ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... bushy eyebrows, and black eyes that sparkled from time to time with a malicious fire, gave to his countenance a sinister aspect, and belied the expression of his mouth and lips, that presented rather a pleasant and smiling contour. But the man's features, when viewed as a whole, could not fail to inspire a certain feeling of repulsiveness mingled with fear. A short carbine that lay by his side, together with the long knife, whose haft protruded above the top of his boots, did not in any way tame down the ferocious aspect of his face. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... either. Her nature could not imagine perils or disasters. There was too proud a force in her life for her to admit a dread of being defeated. Her man must live and be safe, because she needed him. Harry could not fail her. But she was desperately impatient. She wanted him every instant, and even more she wanted to stand before him and accuse herself, confess herself. For the truth is that Geoffrey Waverton had profoundly ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... popular student in the academy, gains the enmity of several of the boys, but their efforts to injure him fail. A mystery, connected with Jack's earlier life, is used against him, but he ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... which the true points of the subject were skilfully embraced and applied, and which, in spite of the mutilation they were speedily doomed to undergo, established an advance in the liberty of the press, properly understood, which sooner or later cannot fail to extend itself. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Italians are remarkable engineers, first-rate mathematicians, clever, if unscrupulous, diplomatists. Though they overrate their power and influence, they have shown a capacity for organisation which is creditable on the whole. If they fail to obtain the position they seek in Europe, their failure will have been due to their inordinate vanity and over-governing, if I may coin the word, rather than to an innate ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... department of their labours to Steevens than to any other critic. But he lacked taste as well as temper, and excluded from his edition Shakespeare's sonnets and poems, because, he wrote, 'the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service.' {320} The second edition of Johnson and Steevens's version appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third edition, published in ten volumes in 1785, was revised by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed (1742-1807), a scholar of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... must guard ourselves against the conclusion that because a work is unlike those that we are accustomed to admire it is necessarily bad. There are many kinds of excellence. And this little book must have been poorly put together indeed if it fail to suggest to the reader that France possesses a wealth of lyric verse which, whatever be its shortcomings in those qualities that characterize our English lyrics, has others quite its own, both of form and of spirit, that give it a high and serious ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... last of these was the famous Dushti Suffaed, which leads to Badjgh[a]r. There is a sameness in the features of these Toorkisth[a]n passes which renders a faithful description tedious, from its monotony and the necessary repetition of similar characteristic features; yet the reader will hardly fail to draw important conclusions from the immense difficulty and almost practical impossibility that a modern army of considerable numbers, with all its incumbrances, through such a country, with any hope of its retaining its efficiency or even a tithe of its original numerical ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... accepting her gold. I did not dread the road I had to travel in order to rejoin her; all my apprehension was that by treachery or miscalculation a scheme, the safety of which was not sufficiently clear to me, should fail. I could answer for all those who belonged to the service immediately about the Queen's person, and I was right; but her wardrobe woman gave me well-founded reason for alarm. I mentioned to the Queen many revolutionary ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... treatment in and of itself would appear too transparent, and would fail to inspire the patient with a proper confidence. But nowadays this element is supplied by the work of the analytical laboratory. Whatever is wrong with the patient, the doctor insists on snipping off parts and ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... them almost by intuition. The causes of failure are numerous, but you will notice that they are always to be found in the physician or patient; never in the law of cure. If I be not able to apprehend and duly estimate the symptoms of a given case, I must, of necessity, fail to cure. Or if the patient be unruly, stupid, or willful, he must pay the penalty. Frequently, the case has been rendered incurable by massive dosage or surgery. My system cures all that is curable when intelligently applied. And you ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... personal recollections. Unlike most of my brother officers, I found my stay in Newfoundland (in the summer months, during which we were stationed there, be it understood) very pleasant. The island is a hilly one, covered with pine forests. Where the woods fail, there are lakes and rivers, admirably clear, and swarming with salmon and trout. There was plenty of game, and all this in the midst of the uninhabited region where every one can enjoy the completest liberty, with no limits but those ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... in its lighthouse, and he thought that it was like some lamp which a woman sets in the window to guide her husband home. With that feeling came a deep sense of the love and the confidence which he and Jane had in each other; he knew that she would not fail him whether he were rich or poor, happy or unhappy, and that seemed the only thing in the world worth ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... black locks of the Niblung, and the King's face set and proud: Then the face is alone on the dark, and the dusky Niblung mail Is nought but the night before him: then whiles will the visage fail, And grow again as he gazeth, black hair and gleaming eyes, And fade again into nothing, as for more of vision he tries: Then all is nought but the night, yea the waste of an emptier thing, And the fire-wall Sigurd forgetteth, nor feeleth the hand of the King: Nay, what is ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... public schools accomplish an end so desirable as this, they will fulfil their mission, and they will not before. I seriously doubt whether one school in a hundred, public or private, comprehends its duty in this particular. They fail to inculcate the idea that the majority of the offices of life are humble, that the powers of the majority of the youth which they contain have relation to those offices, that no man is respectable when he is out of his place, and that half of the unhappiness of the world grows out of the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... detail. Sturdy, grimly resolute, painfully honest, industrious, patient, moral and seeing God's hand in every affliction, they smothered their groans while writhing in the pangs of starvation and gasped in husky whispers: "He doeth all things well; praise to his name!" Such people could not fail in ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... Then they thrust open the gate to make their escape with speed; but that gate, as it opened, made such a creaking, that it waked Giant Despair, who, hastily rising to pursue his prisoners, felt his limbs to fail, for his fits took him again, so that he could by no means go after them. Then they went on, and came to the King's highway, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... joy came the heaviest of sorrows. Sara's health began to fail, and the incipient malady which had been working upon her physical frame so silently for years rapidly developed itself. The delicious climate had lost its influence; and when the boy was only three months old, his mother breathed her last. ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... dramatic work of the kind is to be found in Spain merely represents a further borrowing from Italy. Schoenherr, on the other hand, regards the Jus Robins et Marion as the source of the Arcadian drama. Not only, however, did Adan de le Hale's play fail to originale any dramatic tradition in its own country, but it is itself nothing but an amplified pastourelle, a form which, in spite of marked Provencal influence, never obtained to any extent in Italy. It need hardly be said that there is not a vestige of historical ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... daylight. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sebastian, a great strong lad like you, to run away from a ghost! But now go and take a message to my old friend the doctor; give him my kind regards, and ask him if he will come to me to-night at nine o'clock without fail; I have come by express from Paris to consult him. I shall want him to spend the night here, so bad a case is it; so he ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... on, and the turnkey began to fail. His chest swelled, and his legs got weak, and he was short of breath. The well-worn wooden stool was 'beyond him,' he complained. He sat in an arm-chair with a cushion, and sometimes wheezed so, for minutes together, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... visitation, many a jocose night we spent over the story of the same; for the bailie was a kittle hand at a bowl of toddy; and his adventure was so droll, especially in the way he was wont to rehearse the particulars, that it cannot fail to be an edification to posterity, to read and hear how it happened, and all about it. I may therefore take leave to digress into the circumstantials, by way of lightening for a time the seriousness of the sober and important ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded. The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would come up privately and say: "Are you sure now they aren't fooling us again?" The Sinn Fein propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent asseveration ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... large measure histories; but these are exhaustive works traversing minutely certain periods, like Rhodes's History of the United States from 1850 to 1877, or Nicolay and Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History; or they are shorter "patriotic" accounts which seek to prove something, or which fail to tell the whole story. Important as these classes of historical literature are, they hardly suffice for the teachers of advanced college classes, or for business and professional men who would like to know how the isolated European plantations or corporations in North America became in so short ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... I believed my stepfather to be tortured were not likely to escape the observant affection of his wife; she could not fail to know that there was a dark shadow on his life which even her love could not dispel. Who knows but she had suffered from the worst of all jealousy, that which is inspired by a constant thought not imparted, a strange emotion hidden ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the adorable Trinity be present at such a scene as this? Present! "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He will not appoint this ordinance, and fail to be present; the God of redemption is a party to that transaction by which an immortal soul, with an existence commensurate with his own, is consecrated to him by its natural guardians, acting in the place of God, and for the child, and joining ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the sun and stars from every spot of earth? Shall I not be free to meditate the sweetest truths in every place beneath the sky unless I make myself ignoble, nay, ignominious to the people and the state of Florence? Nor truly will bread fail.' These words, if Tasso had remembered them, might have made his cheek blush for his own servility and for the servile age in which he lived. But the truth is that the fleshpots of Egyptian bondage enticed him; and moreover he knew, as half-insane people always know, that he required treatment for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... he knew not where such things were to be procured, and that, wanting them, he could only try and fail. Then the young man, taking off his own shoes, said: "First, you shall use these shoes till you have taken the Terrible Head, and then you must give them back to me. And with these shoes you will fly as fleet as a bird, or a thought, over the land or over the waves of the sea, wherever the shoes ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... she boasted joyously with all the triumphant air of one who felt assured that mental discrimination such as this could not possibly fail to impress even a person ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... our flight, caught hold of us, bit very hard, and did not fail to draw blood. Senhor Silva, as we marched on, gave us a very interesting account of these white ants, with the habits of which he was well acquainted, as he told us he had had one of the mounds cut completely in two, so as to examine the interior. The under part alone of the mound is inhabited ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... anything your heart craves. All the shame and sorrow of your life shall be forgotten—as if they had never been. This is how much I'd leave you here alone—you sad-eyed girl. I love you! Didn't you know it? How could you fail to know it? I love you! I'm free! I'm a man—a man you've made—no more a beggar!... Kiss me! This is how much I'd leave you here alone—you beautiful, strange, unhappy girl. But I'll make you happy. What—what ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... and manly was his greeting to the party by the fire! It did Tom's heart good to see him and young Brooke shake hands, and look one another in the face; and he didn't fail to remark that Brooke was nearly as tall and quite as broad as the Doctor. And his cup was full when in another moment his master turned to him with another warm shake of the hand, and, seemingly oblivious of all the late scrapes which he ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... other. The 'season' is a great element of uncertainty in all our farming calculations; but we know that we shall have a season of some kind. We have the promise of seed-time and harvest, and we have never known the promise to fail us. Crops, however, vary very much, according to the season; and it is necessary to bear this fact in mind. Let us say that the sun and heat, and rain and dews, or what we call 'the season,' is capable of ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... well as the Indians assembled on the bank of the Big Muddy, shouting a good bye as he was borne away. The officers of the fort had warned him about a party of Indians that had gone out hunting before they had received word from General Terry, and Paul did not fail to keep a careful eye on the banks ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... consequence of their unequal nutrition; for although the germ-cell as a whole usually receives sufficient nutriment, minute fluctuations in the amount carried to different parts within the germ-plasm cannot fail to occur. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... cemetery the sexton's men dug twenty new graves every morning. By evening there would be twenty shaped mounds of clay where the twenty holes had been. The crop of the dead was the one sure crop upon which embattled Europe might count. That harvest could not fail the warring nations, however scanty other yields ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... or sea to Newcastle, from which place smacks were constantly sailing to London. As to his personal conduct and behaviour there, the brothers overwhelmed him with directions and advice; nor did they fail to draw out of the strong box in the thick wall of their counting-house a more than sufficient sum of money for all possible expenses. Philip had never had so much in his hands before, and hesitated to take it, saying it was more than he should require; but they repeated, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... said—but I will stay not quite so long, nor talk nearly so loud as of old-times; nor will you, if you understand anything of me, fail to send down word should you be at all indisposed. I should not have the heart to knock at the door unless I really believed you would do that. Still saying this and providing against the other does not amount, I well know, to the generosity, or justice rather, of staying away ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... stirred, so thrilled, that the creative power that had seemed to fail him, that had left him so emptily alone these many bitter months, came to him with a rush. He got to his feet and went tramping up and down the strip of shore, his eyes clouded with visions. Before his mind's eye the picture he meant to paint ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... shall not fail in my duty as long as I serve the congregation of Shearith Israel," answered the ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... rank, with the humanity that belongs to conscious power, and with the diminishing havoc that belongs to increasing skill in the arts of destruction. Even as to this last feature in warfare, which in the war of brigands and condottieri would for many reasons instantly decay, no reader can fail to be aware of the marvels effected by the forces of inventive science that run along side by side with the advances of civilization; look back even to the grandest period of the humane Roman warfare, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... will with the homestead, for there was little shelter from icy blizzard and scorching heat at Cedar; but though here and there the frame-boarding gaped and the roof-shingles were rent, no man accustomed to that country could fail to notice the signs of careful management and prosperity. Corrals, barns, and stables were the best of their kind; and, though the character of all of them was not beyond exception, in physique and fitness for their work it would have been hard to ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... two years in a country as energetic as America, and in which nothing seems to be stationary but the ages of Tontine nominees and three-life leases, a cordial esteem was created among the principal actors in the events of this book, which is likely to outlast the passage, and which will not fail to bring most of them together ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... "I didn't dare fail," replied Susan. "If I had, I couldn't have faced you." And by the light of the waning moon he saw the passionate gratitude ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... will be herself, her own true, simple, and virtuous self; will resort to no subterfuge, adopt no meretricious methods, scorn to rely upon tactics or strategy, be ever reserved, reluctant, shy;—yet fail. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. The years 1994-98 witnessed solid increases in real output, low ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... birds how readily could the practised observer distinguish the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... annoyance, and to interfere in some instances with his plans. During a short visit to Segura, where the Carlist court then was, he experienced much disgust and vexation. His health, moreover, began to fail him; and a week later, from the town of Vergara, which he had just taken, with its garrison of 2000 men, he sent in his resignation. The following day Don Carlos himself came to Vergara, and had a short conference with Zumalacarregui, after which the latter marched upon Durango and Ochandiano, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Bisnaga, you must know that before you arrive at the city gates there is a gate with a wall that encloses all the other enclosures of the city, and this wall is a very strong one and of massive stonework; but at the present time it is injured in some places. They do not fail to have citadels[411] in it. This wall has a moat of water in some places, and in the parts where it was constructed on low ground. And there is, separate from it, yet another (defence) made in the following manner. Certain pointed ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... another for the inhabitants of Rheims. Each night they went to bed in terror; each morning they rose to face new trials and dangers. Yet their spirit did not fail. Each day the roar of guns toward the west grew fainter and more distant, and the people knew with sinking hearts that the Germans had driven the Armies of France farther and farther back toward Paris. Each day the conduct of the conquerors ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... a mistake for which you could scarcely hold me responsible," Granet protested, "and you must really excuse me if I fail to see the connection. Perhaps you will tell me, Major Thomson, what I ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the salt was there, but where was the savour? The discourses he heard from his rector were in one point of view faultless, but the old Scottish word 'fushionless' would rise into his thoughts whenever they ended, and something of effect and point was sure to fail; they were bodies without souls, and might well satisfy a certain excellent solicitor, who always praised them as 'just the right medium, sober, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moments, and as the time neared for giving the order for action, Marcus' heart did not fail, for it beat as strongly as ever, but a feeling of doubt began to grow as he glanced along the line of the army he was approaching, and then at the loose mass standing or moving about at right angles, and thought how impossible it would be ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... right then in saying that it is in consumption, in mankind, that at length all political phenomena find their solution. As long as we fail to follow their effects to this point, and look only at immediate effects, which act but upon individual men or classes of men as producers, we know nothing more of political economy than the quack does of medicine, when instead of following the effects of a prescription ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... they were so fickle and so split up by jarring interests and small jealousies, that never more than half of them went to war at the same time. Very frequently even the members of a tribe would fail ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Talboys," said Robert, "was last seen entering these gardens, and was never seen to leave them. I will have such a search made as shall level that house to the earth, and root up every tree rather than I will fail in finding the grave of my ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... will be most effectually illustrated by the sublime and beautiful odes that occasioned them; in those it will appear how happily this allegorical painting may be executed by the genuine powers of poetical genius, and they will not fail to prove its force and utility by passing through the imagination to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... encouraged to propose.... Don't let this go any further, however. I confess to think all the better of the General for this discovery, for it shows that he had forty years ago both taste and judgment in a matter in which men so often fail."[69] ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... regretted anything that she had done; if she had acted wisely, all was well; and if she had not acted wisely, it was over and done with, and what was the use of bothering any more about it? This was her usual point of view, and it proved as a rule a most comfortable one. But now she could not fail to see that she had been in the wrong—hopelessly and flagrantly in the wrong—and that she had behaved abominably to Christopher into the bargain. She had to climb down, as other ruling powers have had to climb down before now; ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the city gate near Calvary; and Cassius went to Pilate with the lance, related all that he had seen, and promised to give him an exact account of everything that should happen, if he would put under his command the guards whom the Jews would not fail to ask to have put round the tomb. Pilate listened to his words with secret terror, but only told him in reply that his ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... carelessly and poorly treated. The management of food is nowhere in the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful. Every thing betokens that want of care that waits on abundance; there are great capabilities and poor execution. A tourist through England can seldom fail, at the quietest country-inn, of finding himself served with the essentials of English table-comfort—his mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private apparatus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot of marmalade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... studious, though he sometimes relieved his attention by the amusements of fowling and fishing. As it is highly probable that he did not want capacity, we may, therefore, conclude, upon this confession of his diligence, that he could not fail of being learned, at least, in the degree requisite to the enjoyment of a fellowship; and may safely ascribe his disappointment to his want of stature, it being the custom of sir Henry Savil [42], then warden of that college, to pay much regard to the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... could not endure the ordeal of rejecting the thousands of submitted manuscripts. This is a distressing phase of an Art Director's duties and to my mind his most sacred obligation. No matter how hardened by experience, a conscientious editor cannot fail to suffer for and with the unhappy authors and artists whose work goes back with the proverbial pink rejection slip. Why are drawings and photographs rejected? What is wrong with the great mass of rejected material? My observation ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... people I saw a good deal of at that time in Bermuda was "Mark Twain," who had, however, begun to fail, and that most cultivated and delightful of men, the late William Dean Howells. I twice met at luncheon a gentleman who, I was told, might possibly be adopted as Democratic Candidate for the Presidency of the United States. His name ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... plane is quite thronged with them, and they are just as eager to come back as their friends could be to welcome them. One good yearn deserves another, as we say. The only time when these seances fail is when some inharmonious soul is present—some personality not completely EN RAPPORT with the spirit of the gathering. I remember, for instance, an occasion when a gentleman from Kentucky had most ardently desired to get into communication with the astrals of some ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... tell you what: if your prayers fail to move Osterley you might, as a last resort, try a few tears. Tears are dreadful things; and these cantankerous men ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... least, and every day when the weather is too bad for country pursuits, Emile and I go to work under a master-joiner. We do not work for show, like people above our trade; we work in earnest like regular workmen. Once when Sophy's father came to see us, he found us at work, and did not fail to report his wonder to his wife and daughter. "Go and see that young man in the workshop," said he, "and you will soon see if he despises the condition of the poor." You may fancy how pleased Sophy was at this! They talk it over, and they decide to surprise him at his work. They question ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... will ask to see the pedigree of the woman, and will not fail to comment favourably thereon. If she be already a mother you will inquire in regard to her children. If she be not a mother, you will supplicate her to speak of her potential children. You will extol the virtue of her offspring—or her visions thereof,—and will not fail to speak favourably ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... liberally. In what country will not a man succeed, possessing such advantages? As Turin was at that time the seat of gallantry and of love, two strangers of this description, who were always cheerful, brisk and lively, could not fail to please the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... recognition by the management. Madame Necker was forty, and her voice was failing just when her powers were at their height. Every fresh young voice was an enemy, and this one was accompanied by gifts which she could not fail ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... only fail if I try for the position of organist there," she said, "and if I succeed in this interior town, I can hide myself from all the world without ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... this opera and examine its wonderful mastery of technique and its depth of musical inspiration, it displays beauties which cannot fail to appeal to connoisseurs of every race and school. But regarded as a whole, one is inclined to doubt its ever becoming a standard work outside its native home. Its true scope and meaning can only be justly estimated by a public acquainted with Russia herself, with ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... It's very odd indeed. If Gama fail To put in an appearance at our Court Before the sun has set in yonder west, And fail to bring the Princess Ida here To whom our son Hilarion was betrothed At the extremely early age of one, There's war between King Gama and ourselves! (aside to Cyril) Oh, Cyril, how I dread this interview! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... took in two orphans to foster and rear. Thus in the work of caring for the outcast and the forlorn Annie Macpherson was "to the manner born." Inheriting her father's enthusiasm and her mother's sympathetic nature, the quick-witted, warm-hearted girl would not fail to note the equal footing enjoyed by the stranger children, and would know the reason why: the much tact employed to keep the new and difficult relations sweet would engage her attention; and the exceeding tenderness with which ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... began to creep in and ask him whether he could relate the trouble so coolly and easily when his mother's clear eyes were watching him closely and searching for every scrap of truth; and then he began to think it possible that he might fail, and stand before her feeling guilty of keeping ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man.' And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: 'It is the Night of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... you decided to undergo a cure? I have heard," hesitated Julius, "that these things are not always successful—that they sometimes fail!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... are noted as being the finest in the world. Don't fail to buy some," said a gentleman from California. "We raise good oranges in my state, but ours are not quite ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... Orleans to Cincinnati in those days, and it told terribly upon the weakened constitution of the wayfarer. Her heart beat too violently in her bosom; a fierce fever began to burn in her veins; she trembled with terror lest her strength fail her before she reached her journey's end. It was not of Death himself that she was afraid; but that he should overtake her before she had seen ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... night-*time, on his own private business, only a few hours before a battle, which all agree will be a bloody and perhaps a decisive one? His advancement, although nobly deserved, has been rapid. There are many who envy him, and such will not fail to attribute his absence to causes by which his friends well know he is incapable of being influenced. It will be pleasant for those friends to hear slanderous tongues busy ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... her health did not fail. People who saw her during that fearful summer, fresh and with color in her cheeks, marvelled. Great-hearted Puss Russell, who came frequently to inquire, was quieted before her friend, and the frank ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appearance had struck her fancy; but now it filled her with dismay. Nothing good to her could result from a union between her child and the daughter of Tyope. That union would be sure to lead Okoya over to the home of his betrothed, which was the home of her mother, where he could not fail to gradually succumb to the influence which that mother of Mitsha, a sensual, cunning, sly woman utterly subservient to her husband, would undoubtedly exert upon him. It was not maternal jealousy that beset her now and filled her with flaming passion, it was fear for ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... criminal."—"It is a decided case by the Great Master of writing."—Preface to Waller, p. 5. "Did they ever bear a testimony against writing books?"—Bates's Misc. Repository. "Exclamations are sometimes mistaking for interrogations."—Hist. of Printing, 1770. "Which cannot fail proving of service."—Smith's Printer's Gram. "Hewn into such figures as would make them easily and firmly incorporated."—BEATTIE: Murray's Gram., i, 126. "Following the rule and example are practical inductive questions."—J. Flint's Gram., p. 3. "I think there will be an advantage in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in the attempt to stand by our friends at all costs, under the mistaken supposition that they could not fail to carry out their repeated promises,{56} renewed to us by letter so lately as 11 a.m. this same day. It was now very nearly dark. In the dusk the Boers could be seen closing in on three sides—viz., north, east, and ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Indians in peace and war. Nobody has made the original collections which he has, and I know of no man possessing the capacity of throwing around them so much literary attraction. It is only to be hoped that his courage will not fail him when he comes to the sticking point. It requires more courage on some minds to write a book ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... friends, for I could never bear the thought of being in debt to those rascals. But if the affair turns out in that way, I must stay at home and work hard, to clear myself entirely. I am young, and if we fail to repel this claim, still I shall hope by industry and prudence, to discharge all obligations before I am ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... inflection. Possibly everything depends on just what kind of affixing we have to deal with. If we compare our English words farmer and goodness with such words as height and depth, we cannot fail to be struck by a notable difference in the affixing technique of the two sets. The -er and -ness are affixed quite mechanically to radical elements which are at the same time independent words (farm, good). They ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... occupation with homosexual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for the most part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it." Those readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his poems. This is also the opinion of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... often wrecked through the total absence of any chart to guide them in their new voyage of life. The transitory step is always a dangerous one to a people who have not entire confidence in their leader, for his plans may inspire neither conviction nor approval, and if they fail, leave his followers exposed to all the fury of storms without any haven in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the ideal man, as Webster seemed the ideal man to admiring Whigs. But Douglas, like Webster, was doomed to fail, at least in this convention. The prize was captured by Franklin Pierce, whom no one knew, but it was not until the forty-ninth ballot. On the forty-eighth ballot Douglas had thirty-three votes to Pierce's fifty-five. Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost. Young America was put aside ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... born in Donegal; coming to Scotland about 563, in his forty-second year, founded a monastery in Iona, and made it the centre of his evangelistic operations, in which work he was occupied incessantly till 596, when his health began to fail, and he breathed his last kneeling before the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... resists many temptations for which we fail to give him credit. He yields only to those which make such a strong appeal to his type that he lacks ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... the General; 'quite.' And he smiled. He seemed to fail to realise that Sir John Pleydell was in deadly earnest, and really harboured the implacable spirit of revenge with which he cynically ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... yours, yet instantly thrilling you with a glow induced by the contact, and—remain thoroughly master of yourself if you can. Retain, if you have the strength to do so, the opinions you had formed, the judgments you have passed. If you succeed, you are a giant; if you fail, you are just what I was—a man, ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Cortes replied, "Remember what has been settled between us, or if you don't, I shall be in your quarters before three days, and you shall be the first person at whom I will throw my lance." Duero answered laughing, that he would not fail, and immediately set off for the quarters of Narvaez, where he is reported to have said that Cortes and all his men were ready to submit to the command of Narvaez. Soon after this, Cortes sent for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... my boy, not a bit of it. We'll make a house-to-house canvass if the police fail us. Cheer up, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... would be absolutely free. I could no more than try to recommend myself to you. If I am so unhappy as to fail, how would you be anything but ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... "So many fail in the struggle—so many are changed or ruined. And, dear lad, you have one temptation that never was a temptation to me. Don't be angry, Harry," for Harry started and grew red. "Even if that is not to be feared for you, there is enough besides to make you hesitate. I have ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... divergence of opinion upon this subject. The general opinion was that the outspread wings and the stays which constituted the weakest parts of the structure were most susceptible to gun-fire, and thus were likely to fail. But practice has proved that it is the driving mechanism which is the most vulnerable part ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... this brief history will have for those readers who have had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with Sister Cole and who have had the privilege of listening to her stirring messages delivered under the anointing of God's Spirit, it can not fail to interest and profit all who take pleasure in reading about the ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... trivial, and I cannot explain how it is that it is to me so piercingly significant. I had to whip you. Your respect for the admirable and patient Mademoiselle Potin, the protectress and companion of your public expeditions, did in some slight crisis suddenly fail you. In the extreme publicity of Kensington Gardens, in the presence of your two little sisters, before a startled world, you expressed an opinion of her, in two languages and a loud voice, that was not only very unjust, but extremely offensive and improper. It reflected upon her ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... was apt to be noisy and blusterous. He had a loud voice, a rather demonstrative cough, he walked with a heavy tread, and, in fact, was generally assertive. Carrissima, not wishing to fail in her filial duty, went down-stairs to meet him in the hall, as the butler was helping him off with his ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... sometimes enjoy a very similar entertainment; either with their tiny fingers or with mamma's nail scissors they gradually deprive a fly of its wings and legs. The odd gyrations and queer thin buzzings of the creature as it spins comically round and round never fail to provide a fund of harmless amusement. Lucian, indeed, fancied himself a very ill-used individual; but he should have tried to imitate the nervous organization of the flies, which, as mamma says, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Rathhaus, and they were sensible of something like a genuine emotion in passing the famous and venerable university; the very air of Leipsic is redolent of printing and publication, which appealed to March in his quality of editor, and they could not fail of an impression of the quiet beauty of the town, with its regular streets of houses breaking into suburban villas of an American sort, and intersected with many canals, which in the intervals of the rain were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... days more, however, the provisions in the hooker began to fail, and they were obliged to have recourse to the scalpeens for sustenance, and Barny then got seriously uneasy at the length of the voyage, and the likely greater length, for anything he could see to the contrary; and, urged at last by his own alarms and those of his ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... eight days. And I herewith transmit to you a copy of the order, which his Majesty, in his Privy Council, has given to this effect. I send you a passport for yourself and your suite, and I shall not fail to take all the necessary steps, in order that you may return to France with all the attentions which are due to the character of minister-plenipotentiary, which you have exercised at this court. I have ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... are rare, and conversions from Rome to rationalism infrequent. The Sunday services of the little Protestant church are often attended by Catholics. Strangers passing through Osse, market-folk, peasants and others, never fail to inspect it curiously. The Protestant pastor is looked up to with respect and affection alike by Catholic and Protestant neighbours. The rival churches neither lose nor gain adherents to any extent. This fact is curious, especially in a spot where ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... often in this life what Milton has called, "a resurrection of character." Seen in Bunyan and others on earth, it will be one day accomplished as to all the families of mankind. We pronounce TOO SOON upon the apparent inequalities of fame and recompense around us; while we fail to take in the future as well as the present, and attempt to solve the mysteries of time without including in the field of our survey the retributions of that eternity which forms the selvage and hem of all the webs of earth. And we ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin |
