"Fault" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was kept* *proclamation was obeyed* But few were there that night that slept, But *truss'd and purvey'd* for the morrow; *packed up and provided* For fault* of ships was all their sorrow; *lack, shortage For, save the barge, and other two, Of shippes there I saw no mo'. Thus in their doubtes as they stood, Waxing the sea, coming the flood, Was cried "To ship go ev'ry wight!" ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... who cleverly used him as a mask for schemes that were an insult to his integrity, but which his lack of experience and his utter inability to judge character kept hidden from his view. Honorable himself and loyal to a fault to his friends, he believed in the honesty of men who betrayed him, long after the rest of the world had discovered what they were. He could accept costly gifts from admirers and appoint these same men to offices, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... one simple rule to go by," he answered. "If you make a promise, fulfil it. Of course, I know that certain inconveniences may arise in consequence. The authorities at the Cape will probably find fault with you, and various complaints may be made; but still, Mr Barwell has a perfect right to demand the fulfilment of the promise you made him, and you cannot in ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... grew white with anger. Surely God was pleased with him, Who had built the wondrous organ for His temple vast and dim! Whose the fault then? Hers—the maiden standing meekly at his side! Flamed his jealous rage, maintaining she was ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... will be our fault if we are not there to receive him. Meanwhile, let me see the inside ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... first to the inquiries of Coningsby, urged, as they ever were, with a modesty and deference which do not always characterise juvenile investigations, as if Coningsby were speaking to him of the unknown tongues. But Mr. Rigby was not a man who ever confessed himself at fault. He caught up something of the subject as our young friend proceeded, and was perfectly prepared, long before he had finished, to take the whole conversation ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... built of stone taken from the quarry where the murder was committed. As the eye of the murderer rested on a certain stone, blood was seen to issue from it. This completed the murderer's horror and remorse; he confessed his fault and died shortly after, leaving ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... a general retreat was ordered. Of the six hundred continental troops, more than one-third had fallen, and about one-fifth of the French. The Charleston militia had not suffered, although they had bravely borne their part in the assault, and it had certainly been no fault of theirs if their brethren behind the embankments had not fired upon them. Count D'Estaing had received two wounds, one in the thigh, and being unable to move, was saved by the young naval lieutenant Truguet. Ramsey gives ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... where even a true mother will not, so jealous is it of the perfection of the beloved. But one thing was plain, even to this seraphic dragon that dwelt sleepless in him—and there was eternal content in the thought—that such a woman, once started on the right way, would soon leave fault and weakness behind her, and become as one of the grand women of old, whose religion was simply what religion is—life, neither more nor less than life. She would be a saint without knowing it, the only grand kind of sainthood. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Enid? I don't think you do. It means that my blood has been poisoned from my very birth. Of course, you don't know this. Your parents don't know it, any more than they know that it is too late to redeem the ruin which has fallen upon me. That, at least, I can say with a clear conscience is no fault or sin of mine. Since then I have thrashed this miserable thing out in every way that I can think of. I have talked it over with my father, and he has talked it over with yours. I have been wandering about the ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... won his way into my foolish heart. I used him as a model frequently, and let him hang around me in my idle moments. I even gave him clay to play with, and he played with it to some effect, his great fault—and it is a very great one—being a tendency to do things in miniature. I reproved him good-naturedly—for me, and he so far improved as to model a horse—the size of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... was very slow, purposely so, as he knew that any mistake or accident might be fatal, and he intended that no fault of his should precipitate such a crisis. Once or twice he thought of going back, deeming his a foolish quest, lost in a wilderness of bushes and blinding fog, but the sharp, clear clank stirred his purpose anew, and he went on down the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... got some oyster and broiled chicken, not however without paying for it an exorbitant price. I rather think, however, I shall go to the Stacy House again when next I visit Zanesville, for, on the whole, I have no fault to find with it. Starting at eight the next morning, we were four hours making the distance (59 miles) from Zanesville to Columbus. The road passes through a country of unsurpassed loveliness. Harvest fields, the most luxuriant, were everywhere in view. At nearly every stopping-place the boys besieged ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... alike, an' set everything by each other. He was just the kind of strong, hearty young man that goes right off if they get a fever. We was just settled on a little farm, an' he'd have done well if he'd had time; as it was, he left debts. He had a hasty temper, that was his great fault, but Albert had a lovely voice to sing; they said there wa'n't no such tenor voice in this part o' the State. I could hear him singin' to himself right out in the field a-ploughin' or hoein', an' he didn't know it half o' the time, no more 'n a common bird would. I don't ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... affairs of the Diet were neglected, either through the procrastination of the Emperor, or through the fault of the Protestant Estates, who had determined to make no provision for the common wants of the Empire till their own grievances were removed. These grievances related principally to the misgovernment of the Emperor; the violation of the religious ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... love. Consider this well, that our dear Lord has said, 'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' You know from what source the apparent want of this can be supplied; and I am sure, if every one would search out his own fault, with kindness and benevolence acquitting others, then would you feel that you loved one another from the heart fervently. Be of one mind; live in peace, then shall your conferences be kept with much blessing, and you be subject one to another ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... extent of his property interests and the popular animosity which endangered them, no gentleman in Stockbridge had more necessity to keep the right side of Perez Hamlin than Squire Edwards, and it was not the storekeeper's fault if he did not. Comparatively few days passed in which Perez did not find himself invited to take a glass of something, as he passed the store, and without touching the point either of servility or hypocrisy ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... men who unhesitatingly declare that the red man, if capable, is unwilling to entertain in his character even one redeeming trait; but, on investigating their individual case, we find that they are but superficial observers who are prone to find fault with everything that does not exactly suit their tastes. It is necessary to spend a whole life with Indians, in order to judge them without prejudice. The Great Spirit has endowed his red children with reason, the same in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... "It is my fault that you are here; for if I had not pulled you out of the river, you would have been drowned," replied Harry, indignantly; and perhaps he felt a little sorry just then that he ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... your fault, Slavin,' he said in slow, cool voice, 'that you and your precious crew didn't sent me to my death, too. You've won your bet, but I want to say, that next time, though you are seven to one, or ten times that, when any of you boys offer me a drink I'll take you to mean fight, ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... "hath not the same punishment; but those things which may easily be reformed do bring on us greater punishment:" and what can be more easy than to reform this fault? "Tell me," saith he, "what difficulty, what sweat, what art, what hazard, what more doth it require beside a little care" to abstain wholly from it? It is but willing, or resolving on it, and it is instantly done; for there is not any natural inclination disposing to it, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... suggestion to cut their way out. The shell which struck MacMahon withdrew him from the catastrophe; Ducrot's blunder, the inopportune order to retreat given to General Lebrun, is explained by the confused horror of the situation, and is rather an error than a fault. Wimpfen, desperate, needed 20,000 soldiers to cut his way out, and could only get together 2000. History exculpates these three men; in this disaster of Sedan there was but one sole and fatal general, the Emperor. That which was knitted together on the 2d December, 1851, came apart on the 2d ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... rector severely, "you are too bad; you make fun of things the most sacred. It is entirely your fault if I ever associated in my mind for a moment—— However," he added, "there is one thing certain: you can't go away till you have dined at the Warren, according to Mrs. Warrender's invitation. In her circumstances one must be doubly particular, and as she ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... strangle him therewith: which being done, he cuts his dead body into morsels, and al his friends and kinsfolks are inuited vnto the eating thereof, with musique and all kinde of mirth: howbeit his bones are solemnely buried. And when I found fault with that custome demanding a reason thereof, one of them gaue me this answer: this we doe, least the wormes should eat his flesh, for then his soule should suffer great torments, neither could I by any meanes remooue them from that errour. Many other nouelties ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... But now I remember that a shrewd debater sometimes gains a point by denying the premise which he is expected to concede. Can it be done in this case? Certainly! Human judgment, you know, is fallible. Not that mine can be at fault now; but it may have been so heretofore. All men have erred; but no man errs. There is the point! I was in error when I said women were angels. They are, they must be, mortal. There are unmistakable signs that they are but human—indeed, some of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at the outset to see nothing that was not favorable, the slowness with which adverse impressions were formed, and the eager recognition of every truthful and noble quality that arose and remained above the fault-finding, are discoverable only in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... quite so—so that it is clear that the whole light from the great 6-feet mirror is collected into a space not bigger than the point of a needle. But in other positions of the telescope the definition is not good: and we must look to-day to see what is the cause of this fault. It is not a fault in the telescope, properly so-called, but it is either a tilt of the mirror, or an edge-pressure upon the mirror when the telescope points lower down which distorts its figure, or something of that kind. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... expect it. And hasn't she the right to expect it? However, that's neither here nor there. The point is that, in common honesty and manliness, I should repay her if I can; and there's no other way—at least, I can't see any other way. It is my fault, and not hers, that I don't take to the notion; for a better woman never walked, nor one that would make a better mother to the boy. But, somehow, you DO like to have your free choice, don't you?" He had come as far as this—that he could entertain the idea of choice, which ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... outlay without even a temporary interruption, and the country grew rich, not only nominally in an inflated currency, but actually in a great development of material resources, beneath his management of the treasury. To find fault with him, and to talk of the "might have been" seems unworthy; also unsatisfactory, since the consequences of a different policy are wholly ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... to want. I moreover considered that, in what he had done and said, he had probably only obeyed some private orders which he had received; I therefore freely forgave him, and if he does not retain his situation at the present moment, it is certainly no fault of mine. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Jonas; her face, that had been a little pale, flushed deeply, and her eyes had an angry flash. "And it's all your fault!" she added, with a sudden brave indignation in her tiny voice as she turned on the schoolmaster and looked ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... reading the paper. If the name is that of a suffragist, it is legitimate and entirely fair that we should offer the paper for her at $1.00 a year and should expect her to renew, and it may be considered our fault if she does not. If, on the other hand, the paper is being sent merely as a piece of propaganda literature to a person who knows nothing of the cause, to one who is undecided, or to an avowed anti-suffragist, it ought to be paid for as literature ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... nothing about it. Creline's son had left his master and gone North. Creline herself had asked and obtained scanty wages for her work. A little black boy across the street had been sentenced to receive twenty-five lashes for some trifling fault, and they had just begun to whip him in the yard, when a Union officer stepped up and stopped them. A little girl, not a quarter of a mile away, whose name June had often heard, had just found her father, who had been sold away from her years ago, and had come into Richmond with ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the Bachelor, so lonely and gay, For it's not his fault, he was born that way; And here's to the Spinster, so lonely and good; For it's not her fault, she ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... said Kenny. "Whatever you can think to say, I've already told myself. Though," he added pensively, "it's queer, Garry. Wherever I go, things begin to thicken up before I've had a chance to be at fault in any way. And I'm so darned ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... it was discovered, to their utter consternation, that the trunk had been cut off by thieves and carried away with its contents, the value of which amounted to near 1000l. Sir James bore the loss with the most philosophic coolness; for, instead of finding fault with the servant for placing such valuable articles in so hazardous a situation, with his true habitual kindness, he used his utmost endeavours to soothe the distress she felt as having been the unintentional cause of the loss. Information was immediately given at the Police-office, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the old charges against Collins. The defendant appealed to Judge Sherwood, who occupied the bench, representing that his counsel was not in Court, and that he had never been arraigned. The Attorney-General replied that the absence of the defendant's counsel was not the fault of the Crown, and that he had been arraigned at the spring Assizes. The latter statement was denied by the defendant, and upon referring to the Clerk of Assize it appeared that there had been no arraignment. Next day the Attorney-General ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... no fault with my present company," she said demurely, dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to follow the falling lashes over her cheek. "I don't think ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dear boy—one can't be brutal with the little darlings, so that is the only course open to one, for their limited reasoning power does not enable them to grasp that it is not one's fault at all when one ceases to care—the trouble lies with their own weakening attraction.—So one has to go on bluffing until they themselves weary, or find out inadvertently that one's affection ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... they have been degraded by slavery, and STILL FURTHER DEGRADED by the mockery of nominal freedom. We have endeavored, but endeavored in vain, to restore them either to self-respect, or to the respect of others. It is not our fault that we have failed; it is not theirs. It has resulted from a cause over which neither they, nor we, can ever have control. Here, therefore, they must be for ever debased: more than this, they must be for ever ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... and permanent value; Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory; a tale in verse on the Conquest of Ireland, with the title 'Dermot MacMorrogh'; an account of Travels in Silesia; and a volume of 'Poems of Religion and Society.' He had some facility in rhyme, but his judgment was not at fault in informing him that he was not a poet. Mr. Morse says that "No man can have been more utterly void of a sense of humor or an appreciation of wit"; and yet he very fairly anticipated Holmes in his poem on 'The Wants of Man,' and hits rather neatly a familiar foible ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... One fault which you must contract, and which you must never correct, will consist in a sort of heedless curiosity, which will make you examine unceasingly all the boxes, and turn upside down the contents of all dressing-cases and work-baskets. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... point. Our colonial friends still suffer from an abundance of vitality and the too daring use of the initiative. That is a good fault, and yet a bad one. In guerilla warfare it would be a tremendous asset. In a concerted scheme it might prove disastrous. No matter how daring and clever the individual soldier or officer, if he forgets that there are men, sections, regiments, and brigades to his right or left—if he fails to ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... in Padua, was of this breed. Like this were the Trinci and their bands of murderers. Like this were the bravi who hunted Lorenzaccio to death at Venice. Like this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could not succeed in being "perfettamente tristo." Beautiful, but inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered impotent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... blame that we are unhappy? Of course you live in a way to make any woman perfectly happy—you are never at fault there!" ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... powder had been placed in the cellar windows of each of the four houses, wrecking them, and the fifth house was saved only because the fuse there was damp. Luckily no one was killed, but that was not the fault of the "dynamiters," as every ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... morning on the Lard. Side to examine the portage.- the Indian woman verry bad, & will take no medisin what ever, untill her husband finding her out of her Senses, easyly provailed on her to take medison, if She dies it will be the fault of her husband as I am now convinced-. we crossed the river after part of the day and formed a Camp from which we intended to make the first portage, Capt. Lewis stayed on the Std Side to direct the Canoes over the first riffle 4 of them passed this evening the others unloaded & part of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... proofs still remaining in all their force and vigour ..., they ordered him to be put to the torture to make him declare what the king required; that if he lost his life, or the use of some limbs, it would be his own fault; and that he alone would be responsible. He repeated, once more, his former assertions, and protested, moreover, against the use of torture towards him, for these two reasons: first, because he was of a noble family; and secondly, because his life would be ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Madame Mirmiton's chapter and verse, were of a different opinion. Every rule has an exception, and the cat is certainly in fault—sometimes. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... things like money or social position count. If an honest girl shrinks from a man instinctively, there's something not right—sensuality is too big a part of what the man feels for her—and look here, Sylvia, that's not always the man's fault. Women don't realize as they ought how base it is to try to attract men by their bodies," she made her position clear with relentless precision, "when they wear very low-necked dresses, for instance—" At ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... have heard the confession of my fault," he resumed, turning with desperate assurance toward the audience; "now hear the atonement I have made for it at the altar ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... same, so fair a reward as life being in his prospect? I believe the ground of this invention proceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience: for, to the guilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the innocent against the torture. But when all is done, 'tis, in plain truth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say, what would not a man do, to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... accusation was most unfortunate and ill-judged, and should in itself have sufficed to open the eyes of the monarch, who had, assuredly, had sufficient experience in female tactics to be quite aware that where a woman is compelled mentally to condemn herself, she is the most anxious to transfer her fault to others, and to blame where she is conscious of being open to censure. Madame de Verneuil had not, however, in this instance at all miscalculated the extent of her influence over the royal mind; as, instead of resenting ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... of the few with whom Frisky Squirrel never could have a good time. Frisky often tried to play with him. But their games always ended in trouble; and I must say that it was not Frisky's fault. ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... The prospect of immortality were nothing without this. Longer life were but a greater evil were we not made alive to sin and righteousness. Life on earth, Aurelian, is not the best thing, but virtuous life: so life without end is not the best thing, but life without fault or sin. But to the necessity of such a life men are now insensible and dead. They love the prospect of an immortal existence, but not of that purity without which immortality were no blessing. But it is this moral ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... it. Kentucky is the daughter of Virginia though a large part of Kentucky takes sides with the Yankees. But that's not your fault. Remember, for the time being you're a Virginian, one of us by ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... table in one corner are three excessively "ugly mugs," leering at each other and pouring down champagne. These men are all dressed as nearly like gentlemen as the tailor can make them, but even he cannot change their hard, brutal faces. It is not their fault that money and clothes do not make a gentleman; they are well fed and vulgarly prosperous, and if you inquire you will find that their women are in silks and laces. This is a good place to study the rulers of New York; and impressive as they are in appearance, it is a relief to notice that they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... would some day become his master. He long deceived himself with the idea that the English, who had sold Parga to him, would never allow a Turkish fleet to enter the Ionian Sea. Mistaken on this point, his foresight was equally at fault with regard to the cowardice of his sons. The defection of his troops was not less fatal, and he only understood the bearing of the Greek insurrection which he himself had provoked, so far as to see that in this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... end of a rather stupefying half-hour for them, "you've heard what I have to say. You know that I love you all. You will agree that I have been a fond, foolish and over-indulgent father. As I've said before, it is my fault entirely that you are triflers and spendthrifts. I should have done better by you. You are college men. At least, you are CALLED college men, because, with the unceasing aid of well-paid tutors you managed to get your degrees. I regret, however, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... article that would have served to throw light on this horrible affair had been left or forgotten, or lost here, and to obtain it, to find it, he decided to run this terrible risk. And to think that it was my fault, my fault alone, that this convincing proof escaped us! And I thought myself so shrewd! What a lesson! The door should have been locked; any fool would have thought of it—" Here he checked himself, and remained with open mouth and distended eyes, pointing with his ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... afterward inserted. I recollect very well that when Chopin played this Ballade for me it finished in F major; it now closes in A minor." Willeby gives its key as F minor. It is really in the keys of F major—A minor. Chopin's psychology was seldom at fault. A major ending would have crushed this extraordinary tone-poem, written, Chopin admits, under the direct inspiration of Adam Mickiewicz's "Le Lac de Willis." Willeby accepts Schumann's dictum of the inferiority of this Ballade to its predecessor. Niecks does not. Niecks is quite ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... may find fault with my modest productions, and perhaps justly, in regard to grammatical construction, and mechanical arrangement, but I shall be satisfied, if the public discern a vein of true poetry glittering here and there through what I have just written. The public are the final judges ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... him back after he had paid a visit to their great king, who would return him to his country with great presents. As a matter of fact, not one of these Indians rapt away by Cartier ever saw Canada again. But this was not the fault of Cartier, but of the distractions of the times which turned away the thoughts of King Francis I from American adventures. The Indians were well and kindly treated in France, but all of them died there before Cartier left St. Malo to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... to feel that this is not my fault. I am sure it is not yours. It can be nobody's fault but that of the house. They, like myself, are also really very sorry for ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... preparation. The sentences will all be finished to a degree, and unquestionably will give a feeling of artificiality. However, the attention to sentence-structure necessary in order to make it periodic is a thing devoutly to be wished at this stage of growth. No other fault is so common in sentence-construction as carelessness. A theme will be logically outlined, a paragraph carefully planned, but a sentence,—anybody standing on one foot can make a sentence. A well-turned sentence ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... is as follows: The material in hand is loosely grouped in eighteen sections, according to origin, chronology, content, or form. Though logically at fault, because of the cross-division thus inevitably entailed, this plan has seemed to be the best. No real confusion will result to the user in consequence. In fact, no matter what system be adopted, certain songs will belong equally well to two ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... success of the well-cooked dinner, reproached herself generously. It was all her fault. Before the war she had been ignorant, idle. But the war had taught her many things. Above all it had taught her ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... that, Jane. I'm not blamin' him; he can't help it. But them who has the bringin' up of him are at fault. What do the Royals know about the trainin' of a child? Didn't the only chick they ever had go wild, an' him a parson's son, too? I went to school with Alec, an' I tell ye they kept a tight rein on him. I was sure that he'd be a parson like ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... and his generous confidence was usually justified. High-minded and possessing a keen sense of honor himself, he had an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in others. A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done with a tact and courtesy which left no sting. In all business matters he required a rigid economy though never ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... it," said my father; and turning to my mother, added: "It must be your fault, my dear, that my children are so serious that they always take a joke for earnest. However, it was no joke with my uncle. If he didn't look like Sintram he looked like ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... the last night of our undergraduate life, the last night we shall meet in Oxford as students. To-morrow we make our bow to youth and become men. We have not seen much of each other this term at any rate, and I daresay that is my fault. But at least let us part as friends. Surely our friends are not so many that we can afford ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not with the deceived husband—a fault, he says, which stains no play written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in the Spectator, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... hired man was slack and neglected his work; yet when he threatened to go, and afterward compromised the matter by offering to stay if she'd marry him, at a loss what to do, and partly because she was lonely, she married him. He was a respectable man, whose only fault was laziness, and she hoped that now he would take an interest. When Armida and her husband came back from the minister's and announced to Lucas that they were married, his only comment was, "Well, a slack help will make a ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... She knows as well as anything that she supported me on three different occasions when I was out for a month or two at a stretch. I will say this for her, she supported me better than the other two did,—a lot better. And it's her own fault her nose is flat. If she'd stood still that time—But I'm not goin' to discuss family affairs with ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... supervision, Keimer evidently began to think of discharging him, or cutting down his wages. On paying his second quarter's wages, he told him that he could not continue to pay him so much. He became uncivil in his treatment, frequently found fault with him, and plainly tried to make his situation uncomfortable so that he would leave. At length a rare opportunity offered for him to make trouble. An unusual noise in the street one day caused Benjamin to put his head out of ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... intend to accuse the wind of inconstancy, as that was not her fault; nor of treachery, for she loved dearly; nor of violence, for she was all softness and mildness; but we do say, that "South West and by West three-quarters West" was the occasion of Jack being very often in a scrape, for our hero kept his word; he forgot ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... fault of the Grosvilles," said Ashe, after a moment, lighting another cigarette, "in shutting up their great heavy house, and drawing their great heavy curtains on a May night, when all reasonable people want to be out-of-doors. My dear mother, what's the good of paying any attention to ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not one to find fault unnecessarily. I know it is the duty of a Christian to be patient and long-suffering; but there is a limit to one's endurance, and I regret to say that you have passed that limit. I should not be fulfilling my duty to a young person who is under my charge if ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... family at Baron Parke's[58] at dinner. Lord Melbourne thinks that Lord Prudhoe's marriage[59] was to be expected.[60] Upon looking at the Peerage, he is only fifty years old, and fifty is young enough to marry anybody. The only fault of fifty is that it advances too rapidly on to sixty, which, on the other hand, is too old to marry anybody. It is Lord Melbourne's opinion that if a man does marry either at fifty or sixty, he had much better take a young girl than a woman of more age and experience. Youth ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Parsonage to compare Kate's handing her plate to a chimpanzee asking for nuts, it was hard that in Bruton Street these manners should be attributed to the barbarous country in which she had grown up! But that, though Kate did not know it, was very much her own fault. She could never be found fault with but she answered again. She had been scarcely broken of replying and justifying herself, even to Mr. Wardour, and had often argued with Mary till he came in and put a sudden sharp stop to it; and now she usually defended herself with "Papa says—" or ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'is fault,' put in Sally, amidst her sobs; 'it's only because 'e's 'ad a little drop too much. 'E's ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... having done nothing to offend my Maker, it is unnecessary for me to seek reconciliation with Him. I have done all that I could for religion; it is not my fault if her interests are not identical with those of the church. But pardon me that I should have strayed to themes so unbecoming to my character as host, and yours as my guest. Let us speak of science, art, life, and its multitudinous enjoyments. Your holiness, I know, is a distinguished ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... as myself, and so Jack—why, there didn't seem any harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found out. I ought not to have let him, I know—it was my fault—" ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... waiting until you were strong to tell you. I've noticed how their silence hurt you, but—it's my fault that they haven't been here. I ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... being repugnant to us causes self-reproach, which we avoid by "projecting" the fault ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... criticism is base and mean, and quite contrary to the orders of the immortal Goethe, who was only for allowing the eye to recognize the beauties of a great work, but would have its defects passed over. It is an unhappy, luckless organization which will be perpetually fault-finding, and in the midst of a grand concert of music will persist only in hearing that unfortunate ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fault of mine?" asked Sir Montague, in a tone which made me look at him. The voice was not harsh, nor rough, nor unpleasant, yet it gave me the idea that it could be all three, and worse than all three, upon occasion. So ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... cloth jacket down, and generally shook herself together. Crabbed age and jackets should not live together. Age should be wrapped in the ample and tolerant cloak, hider of frailties. It was not Aunt Anna's fault, however, if her garments were uncompromising and scanty of outline. Predestination reigns nowhere more strongly than in clothes, and it would have been inconceivable that either Miss Martin's body or her mind should have assimilated the harmonious fluid adaptability of the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... of experience and surroundings was always that of his own personal, natural endowment. This he found fault with and tried to change, as most people do at some period of their lives, but finally accepted and concluded to use as best he could, without murmuring, but always conscious ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... that the iliac artery does not appear in its usual situation, unaware at the time that he has lifted the vessel in connexion with the peritonaeum. I have once seen a very distinguished surgeon, whilst performing this operation on the living body, at fault owing ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... dear!—you against the Saints and the Fathers, and the holy martyrs and confessors, from our Lord's time till now! Oh! your poor father. I know. But he never came near the faith, Laura—how could he judge? It was not offered to him. That was my wicked fault. If I had been faithful I might have gained my husband. But Laura"—the voice grew so eager and sharp—"we judge no one. We must believe for ourselves the Church is the only way. But God is so merciful! But you—it is offered to you, Laura. And Alan's ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... merely meant, Miss Mildred," resumed Tom, who feared he might have gone too far; "that the young gentleman—quite without any fault of his own—is probably ignorant how he came by two names that have so long pertained to the head of an ancient and honourable family. There is many a young man born, who is worthy of being an earl, but whom the law considers—" here Tom paused to choose ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the both ought. It'll be no fault of our forebears if we ha' not religion in plenty, an' some o' the gude ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... Grandma. "The boy and girl in my story were stung severely; but it was all their own fault, as you shall see. ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... position of agriculture as a whole has very much improved since the depression of three and four years ago. But there are many localities and many groups of individuals, apparently through no fault of their own, sometimes due to climatic conditions and sometimes to the prevailing price of a certain crop, still in a distressing condition. This is probably temporary, but it is none the less acute. National Government agencies, the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... did not know. It certainly was not Fisker's fault that she should still be in the dark as to her own destiny, for he had asked her often enough, and had pressed his suit with all his eloquence. But Marie had now been wooed so often that she felt the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... not like to be questioned. You perceive no fault can be found with my reasons,' she added with ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... almost a pauper; so nearly a pauper that he has to achieve each new rhyme by a trick—which tricking is fatal to rapture, alike in the poet and the hearer. Let me instance a poem which, planned for sublimity, keeps tumbling flat upon earth through the inherent fault of the machine—I mean Myers's "St Paul"—a poem which, finely conceived, pondered, worked and re-worked upon in edition after edition, was from the first condemned (to my mind) by the technical bar of dissyllabic rhyme which the poet unhappily chose. I ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the girl, showing a red nose and swollen eyes. "Sweetapple Cove ain't a-goin' ter be the same place after you folks goes. 'Course I knows ye'd have no room fer a girl like me over ter yer place in Ameriky. 'Tain't my fault if we Newfoundlanders is said ter be that green th' devil has to put us in th' smoke-house ter dry afore we'll burn. Ye'd ought ter have hustled me hard an' said mean things ter me. Then I'd 'a' been glad when ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... picked up the spoils of the field, retired to his own camp, without saying any harsh or reproachful thing to his colleague; who also on his part, gathering his army together, spoke and said to them: "To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature; but to learn and improve by the faults we have committed, is that which becomes a good and sensible man. Some reasons I may have to accuse fortune, but I have many more to thank her; for in a few hours she hath cured a long mistake, and taught me that I am not ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... friend Mr Gordon, wise from many tens of thousands of shorn sheep that have been counted out past his steady eye, criticises temperately, but watchfully. He reproves sufficiently, and no more, any glaring fault; makes his calculation as to who are really bad shearers, and can be discharged without loss to the commonwealth, or who can shear fairly and can be coached up to a decent average. One division, slow, and good only when ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... already found fault with for the shocking description Jack Belford gives of that levy of damsels who attended mother Sinclair on her death-bed, such a scene must certainly be shocking enough, yet could not be near so much on the part of the ladies as is represented; but it must be remembered, that Jackey had then ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... "Chivalry," Hastings' "British Archer," Strutt's "Sports," Johnes Froissart, Hargrove's "Archery," Longman's "Edward III," Wright's "Domestic Manners." With these and many others I have lived for months. If I have been unable to combine and transfer their effect, the fault is mine. ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we did, in truth. If Jack had a fault as a seaman, it was a too great fondness for carrying on to the last. We neither of us took warning from our misfortune in the Opossum. The faster the little schooner ran through the water, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Dick; they have got other counsellors than their landlords now,' said she mournfully, 'and it is our own fault if ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... failure, owing to the neglect of shade, had a most unfortunate effect, for it was owing to this that Coorg naturally acquired such a doubtful coffee reputation in the eyes of the uninformed public—a reputation which, as I shall afterwards show, arose not from any fault of the country as a coffee field, but solely from the fatal mistake of attempting to plant without providing shade for the coffee. And this mistake the planters, as we shall see, had great difficulty in shaking off, for when they saw the inevitable end approaching, and hastened to take up ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... of my grace. [1:8]For God is my witness, how much I desire you all with the tender affections of Christ Jesus. [1:9]And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all understanding, [1:10]that you may prove the excellent, that you may be without fault and without offense in the day of Christ, [1:11]filled with the fruit of righteousness, through Jesus Christ, to the glory ...
— The New Testament • Various
... Heav'n, have my unhappy days Been lengthened to this sad one? Oh! dishonour, And deathless infamy have fall'n upon me. Was it my fault? Am I a traitor? No. (C.) But then, my only child, my daughter wedded; There my best blood runs foul, and a disease Incurable has seized upon ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... politically it was useful in encouraging and comforting the country in a time of stress; for the opposition was as fully persuaded as the ministry of the efficacy of the fund. If, then, it be allowed that the war was just and necessary, little fault should be found with the way in which money was provided for it. That Pitt's subsidies were sometimes unwise may be conceded; that his coalitions disappointed him is certain. He had to contend with selfishness and deceit in the rulers of Europe, and laboured with ability and courage ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... you have suffered. Doesn't your religion demand too much—resignation? Does a God of Justice demand that we tamely submit to injustice? I am not saying this to be personal, or to pain you, but everyone seems to wonder at your resignation to injustice. Why should such a fault be in the ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... not until he got to Roselands and she met him with her wistful eyes! He was not a fool; the Absolute within him knew where lay the need for forgiveness, but it was deeply overlaid with human pride and wrath. He was at the old, old trick of anger with another when the fault was all his own. As ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... I didn't know I was noisy," replied Maggie. "I came upstairs as softly as possible. That door"—she pointed to the door by which she had entered—"creaks horribly. That is not my fault." ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... end this with a short Letter I writ the other Day to a very witty Man, over-run with the Fault I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... you have the 'sabots' on your hands you can protect yourself against the walls by putting out your arms to the right and the left, according as you are shaken up against them. I do not say that you will not have a few bangs, but that is your own fault; you will go. Now listen, my little lady. When you are at the bottom, on the rock in the middle, mind you don't slip, for that is the most dangerous of all; if you fall in the water I will pull the rope, for sure, but I don't answer for anything. In that cursed whirlpool of water you might be ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... time, the traveller necessarily finds himself reduced to cruel extremities. A native from the plains, taken into an elevated mountainous district near his own country for the first time, is equally at fault. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... to tell me—that's why I have requested this interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and mentally unfit; I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am, and if it is myself I have to fight in future, or the devil that lives within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit the way to heaven for me. I want to climb up to her, to win her, to be ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... frogs that fill the swamps of America whistle or chirp so exactly like little birds, that many people, upon hearing them for the first time, have mistaken them for the feathered songsters of the groves. Their only fault is that they scarcely ever ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Game shall be declared by the Umpire in favor of the club not in fault, at the request of such club, in ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... went much further, declaring that he would take no refusal from you, either; or, rather, that he would take it so often as to wear out your patience, and secure you by proving that resistance was useless. He had one decided fault to find with you, also. He much ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... enemy of the people and never to counsel any thing that I do not know to be injurious to them." "This," he continues, "is the very opposite of what they ought to do or to pretend to do ... It is a political fault which is often committed in oligarchies as well as in democracies, and where the multitude has control of the laws, the demagogues make this mistake. In their combat against the rich, they always divide the State into two opposing parties. In a democracy, on the contrary, the ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... an outlaw, an excommunicate, an alien, under age, or the like[c]. Next, with regard to his faith or morals; as for any particular heresy, or vice that is malum in se: but if the bishop alleges only in generals, as that he is schismaticus inveteratus, or objects a fault that is malum prohibitum merely, as haunting taverns, playing at unlawful games, or the like; it is not good cause of refusal[d]. Or, lastly, the clerk may be unfit to discharge the pastoral office for want of learning. In any of which cases the bishop may ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... have been content to confine itself to positive assertions, there might have been less cause to find fault with it. But its name stood for negation, and its temper was in accord with its name. The exponents of Agnosticism were not {47} satisfied with affirming that the Power behind phenomena is beyond ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... however, to make sure of two things,—that the alleged facts are verities and that they are inexorable. Prejudice we acknowledge as a fact; but we know that it is neither an ineradicable nor an inexorable one. We find fault with Mr. Parton because he starts a trail on antipathy, evidently purposeless, and fails to track it down either systematically or persistently, but branches off, desipere in loco, to talk loosely of 'physical antipathy,' ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... lived very happy in this good family if it had not been for the ill-natured cook, who was finding fault and scolding him from morning to night, and besides she was so fond of basting that when she had no meat to baste she would baste poor Dick's head and shoulders with a broom or anything else that happened to fall in her way. At last her ill-usage of him was told to Alice, Mr. Fitzwarren's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... with some regret, the excessive attachment you indulge towards those who see and feel as you do yourself, and the total neglect with which you seem to treat every one else. I should reproach a man with such a fault who was destined to pass his life in a small and unvarying circle; but in an artist, who has a great object in view, and whose country is the whole world, this disposition seems to be likely to produce ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to make an apology when he had censured unjustly, than Johnson. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to him, he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged, refused to read it, and in a passion desired that the compositor might be sent to him. The compositor was Mr. Manning, a decent sensible man, who had composed about one half of his Dictionary, when in Mr. Strahan's ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... mark in calling vulgarity our national sin, he has done well in calling attention to the danger which may beset educational reform from what we may call democratism, the tendency to level down all superiorities in the name of equality and good fellowship. It is the opposite fault to the aristocraticism which beyond all else led to the decline of Greek culture—the assumption that the lower classes must remain excluded from intellectual and even from moral excellence. With us there is a tendency to ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... and, you know, it's an unpardonable crime for one mate to refuse another a few quid when he's in a hole; but it seems that the messenger was but a fool who brought Cassius's answer back. It is generally the messenger who is to blame, when friends make it up after a quarrel that was all their own fault. Messengers had an uncomfortable time in those days, as witness the case of the base slave who had to bring Cleopatra the news of Antony's ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... had gathered herself together though still, it was evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
