"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the offer! Parting from Polly, and were it only for a little while, would be painful; but, did he go alone, he would be free to do his utmost—and with an easy mind, knowing that she lacked none of the creature-comforts. Yes, the more he considered the plan, the better he liked it. The one flaw in his satisfaction was the thought that if their child had lived, no such smooth and simple arrangement would have been possible. He could not have ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... speak of Leonard's position at the mill, as junior clerk. He had been there for six months, without a flaw being detected, either in his integrity, his diligence, or his regularity; indeed, it was evident that he had been gradually acquiring a greater degree of esteem and confidence than he had at first enjoyed, and had been latterly more employed by his uncle. That a young man of superior education ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with grave consideration. "You've got nice eyes," was her verdict. "That deep brown is almost wasted on a man; some girl ought to have it. I used to hear a—a person, who made a deep impression on me at the time, insist that there was always a flaw in the character of a person with large, soft ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... white; the mountain breeze that is already whirling the dust-clouds on the Denver plains has not yet begun to ruffle the cottonwoods or the placid surface of the slow-moving stream, and in many a sheltered pool the waters of the "Smoky Hill" gleam like silvered mirror, without break or flaw. Far out on the gentle slopes small herds of troop-horses or quartermaster's "stock," each with its attendant guard, give life to the somewhat sombre tone of the landscape, while nearer at hand two or three well-filled cavalry "troops" with fluttering ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and so keep the kite aloft, whilst at the same time it was enabled to proceed through the air in any direction I chose; for, as may be conceived, a little too much weight made the kite a fixture, whilst a little too little, or a sudden flaw of wind, would topple the kite over and bring it to the earth. As a means of signalizing between ships when stationary, the flying of kites of different colours, sizes, or numbers, attached one to the other, would, I am sure, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... and exact was his explanation that his examiners could not find the least flaw in his doctrine. He was equally correct in the answer to the friar who proposed a ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... the orange blossoms in her hair, and all the guests assembled—for what? because of—one who made no claim, who would never make any claim, who had not been heard of for more than six years. That was the flaw which disturbed Lizzie. It was not quite out seven years. Had that mystic period been accomplished she felt that she could have left Chatty to the protection of God. But at the outside it was only six and a half, and he had heard of her through ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... else, finally, it has left some one or more of our fundamental active and emotional powers with no object outside of themselves to react-on or to live for. Any one of these defects is fatal to its complete success. Some one {126} will be sure to discover the flaw, to scout the system, and to seek ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Latin verses upon the rapture of returning home, and to have breathed out his life in the anguish of thus reviving the images which for him were never to be realized.... The reader must not fancy any flaw in the Latin title. It is elliptic; revisere being ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Suddenly there came a flaw of wind sweeping from the south round the end of the island, so narrow that most of the English fleet hardly felt it. It filled the sails of Hood's ships in the van, and they steered for two French battleships that dropped astern of their consorts. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... his flattery, but disappointed at the failure in herself. She had thought that surely these garments would make a man of her in which the keenest eye could not detect a flaw. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... it was upon the same footing on which the first physicians are usually summoned to the bedside of some dying man of rank;—the doctors to take the advantage of some incalculable chance of an exertion of nature—the lawyers to avail themselves of the barely possible occurrence of some legal flaw. Edward pressed into the court, which was extremely crowded; but by his arriving from the north, and his extreme eagerness and agitation, it was supposed he was a relation of the prisoners, and people made way for him. It was the third sitting of the court, and there were two ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... by this time some distance out. The wind had carried him along finely, the boat scudding, as he expressed it. He was congratulating himself on the success of his trial trip, when all at once a flaw struck the boat. Not being a skillful boatman he was wholly unprepared for it, and ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... flaw. He was a fanatic on formality, and he only addressed me in the third person—to the point where it ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... pine-tree on McGregor's height, How didst thou grow to such a lofty bearing, For song of bird or beat of breeze uncaring, There where thy shadow touched the dying brow? Were all thy sinewy fibres shaped aright? Was there no flaw? With what mysterious daring Didst thou put forth each murmuring, odorous bough And trust it to the frail support of air? We only know that thou art now supreme: We know not how thou grewest so tall and fair. So from the unnoticed, humble earth arose The sturdy man whom we, bewailing, deem Worthy ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... 'There wasn't any flaw in that evidence. Walen read out their last observations, and Mankeltow asked questions, and Lord Lundie sort o' summarised, and I looked at the photos in the album. 'J'ever see a bird's-eye telephoto-survey of England for military purposes? It's ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... revolve these propositions through your mind very seriously. See if you can find a flaw in any of them; and conceive if you can, of any reasonable theory whereby any ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... till I grew weary of looking at them; still I learned to feel perfectly secure—a sensation I was at first very far from experiencing. Yet much, if not everything, depended on the soundness of our spars and rigging: a flaw in the wood or rope might be the cause of our destruction. I went below at meal-time, but I hurried again on deck, fascinated by the scene, though I would gladly have shut it out from my sight. At length, towards night, ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... jestingly. "No one is perfect, and I least of all. If you expect perfection in this world you will be disappointed when you find the flaw." ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... was the conduct of Marcus Aurelius that neither the malignity of contemporaries nor the sprit of posthumous scandal has succeeded in discovering any flaw in the extreme integrity of his life and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory of great men rages, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... water-carrier day after day, when he had been engaged with his work for several hours, Velasquez found himself vexed by perceiving, as it were, the effect of a shadow cast by some of the drapery. Small flaw as it might have been, it appeared to him to interfere with and spoil the picture. Again and again, in endeavouring to do away with this 'shadow,' Velasquez undid portions of his work, and had to repeat them ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... changed dramatically in Virginia in the 1760's. This was partially due to changing economic conditions. Prosperity did not return as rapidly as expected. The long war probably masked a basic flaw in the Virginia economy which Virginians believed they had solved—they were too reliant on tobacco. The great Virginia fortunes of the mid-18th Century were built on extensive credit from Britain, the efficient operation of ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... ghost it was, pass through unopened doors. The flaw in Trenholme's comfortable theory was that he had forgotten that the large double door, which opened from the baggage room to the railway track, was barred on the inside. When he got back to his place ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... danger that surrounded him. He knew the danger was rapidly increasing because whenever he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear the almost inaudible tickings and vibrations as the bubble's skin contracted or expanded and the Nothing tapped and searched with its empty fingers for a flaw or crack that it could tear ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... proved correct. After supper she dressed herself carefully in her blue, beaded crepe—for vanity is harder to quell than pride and Irene always saw any flaw or shortcoming in another girl's appearance. Besides, as Rilla had told her mother one day when she was nine years old, "It is easier to behave nicely when you ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... only way. She dare not give him time to question, to suspect; she must sweep him along to conviction. She was by no means sure that there wasn't a flaw in the scheme somewhere, something that would betray her; and she could hardly wait till it was over, till he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... how anyone, however hypercritical, could find a flaw in Ted. His character was spotless. He was comfortably off. And so far from being in any way inferior socially, it was he who condescended. For Ted, she had discovered from conversation with Mr Murdoch, the glazier, was no ordinary ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... that such a youngling as this was looked upon by all as a lucky man without a lack; but there was this flaw in his lot, whereas he had fallen into the toils of love of a woman exceeding fair, and had taken her to wife, she nought unwilling as it seemed. But when they had been wedded some six months he found by manifest tokens, that his fairness was not so much to her but that she must seek to ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... major's hat was always of the glossiest, the major's coat was without a wrinkle, and, in short, from the summit of the major's bald head to his bulbous finger-tips and his gouty toes, there was not a flaw which the most severe critic of deportment—even the illustrious Turveydrop himself—could have detected. Let us add that the conversation of the major was as irreproachable as his person—that he was a distinguished soldier and an accomplished traveller, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Whatever beauty a thing has is by the way, not as the end for which it exists, and so it is left to be baffled and soiled by accident. This is the "jealousy of the gods," that could not endure that anything should exist without some flaw of imperfection to confess its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Church and the gorgeousness of her material fabric. The religious ideals taught him by his good mother took deep root. But the day arrived when the expansion of his intellect reached such a point as to enable him to detect a flaw in her reasoning. It was but a little rift, yet the sharp edge of doubt slipped in. Alas! from that hour he ceased to drift with the current of popular theological belief; his frail bark turned, and launched out upon the storm-tossed sea, where only ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... equations, Lancaster found what he believed was the flaw that was blocking progress. The man had used a simplified quantum mechanics without correction for relativistic effects. That made for neater mathematics but overlooked certain space-time aspects of the psi function. The error ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... hearers might have been excused for staring. It may be strange, but is not inconsistent, that a wolf which has eaten ninety-nine children should spare the hundredth. But the fact that a wolf has once spared a child is sufficient to show that there must be some flaw in the chain of reasoning purporting to prove that wolves cannot ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... instead of being used as an appendage to the toilet, though humble, I fear they will be traced to the vulgar bricklayer and plasterer, to be mingled with mortar, and "patch a wall, to expel the winter's flaw." Now, I believe, every particle is accounted for; and any little article, in the shape of a bijou, is the perquisite of those pickers-up ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... lose no more time by awaiting new orders from Angers, and fearing the least flaw in her marriage, the Court was obliged to comply with my proposal, and the ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... clearly upon it. It was the head of a beautiful woman, framed in thick, silken yellow hair, the eyes deep blue, and the skin of the wonderful fairness so often found in that state. The face was that of a woman about thirty-seven or eight years of age, and without a wrinkle or flaw. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The problem is to construct a design pleasant to the eye in line, form, colour, and suggestion; which will be interesting in detail, and yet repeat upon a wall-surface without flaw, and without becoming wearisome. Moreover, one which will lend itself to being cut upon wood, if for block-printing, and which may be reproduced with a due regard to economy of means. The designer may have a square of twenty-one inches ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... she rose to depart that the hand of fate intervened. I had only one lamp burning in the room, a table-lamp; and at this moment, preceded by a sudden accession of light due to some flaw of the generating plant, the filament expired, plunging the room into darkness! I stood up with a startled cry. I do not deny that I felt ill at ease in the gloom with my strange visitor; but worse ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... always deceived in some particular. Therefore, while man is asleep, according as sense and imagination are free, so is the judgment of his intellect unfettered, though not entirely. Consequently, if a man syllogizes while asleep, when he wakes up he invariably recognizes a flaw ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the two households became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing something of each other. Try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the Contessa ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason, else this flaw in your NEW CONSTITUTION, the first constitution founded on reason, will ever show that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... grief by just degrees: But like a hurricane on Indian seas, The tempest rose; An unexpected burst of woes; With scarce a breathing space betwixt— This now becalm'd, and perishing the next. As if great Atlas from his height Should sink beneath his heavenly weight, And with a mighty flaw, the flaming wall (At once it shall), Should gape immense, and rushing down, o'erwhelm this nether ball; So swift and so surprising was our fear: Our Atlas fell indeed, but ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... source. It was delightful to have her husband pleased by the smallest pains she took for his comfort; to know that his eye never failed to discover the little refinements of dress or cookery or household adornment; but wearing was the burden of understanding, too, that no flaw was too small to escape his sight. Mrs. Fenton's friends rallied her upon being a slave to her housekeeping; few of them were astute enough to understand that, kind as was always his manner toward her, she was instead ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... flaw in the project, from a merely utilitarian point of view, is that the future of these young women appears rather vague. The demand for female Hindu teachers in India is at present small, and a few only have found employment in ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... from his pocket the nut the Cat had given to him, and there was seen a little dog so tiny that it could go through a ring without touching it; he was also able to dance, and play the castanets, while his ears touched the ground. The King was embarassed, for it was impossible to find a flaw in this lovely ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... will to resist a hopeless love was broken down, but that only increased the strength of her determination to conceal the weakness from every eye, to continue the struggle of life as though there were no flaw in her armor, and to work indefatigably for the independence of thought and feeling and action which she valued above ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... he stood beside the helm, His pipe was in his mouth, And he watched how the veering flaw did blow The ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... illustrate Valour; the Graal stories, Religion; the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere with the minor instances, Love. All these have their [Greek: amarthia]—their tragic and tragedy-causing fault and flaw. The knight wastes his valour in idle bickerings; he forgets law in his love; and though there is no actual degradation of religion, he fails to live up to the ideal that he does not actually forswear. To throw the presentation—the mimesis—of all this into perfectly ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... How easy it would be for her to love and forgive him if only he would give her one little sign by which to know that he himself was conscious of the blackness of that past! Repentance would show at least that there was no twist in his conscience, no flaw in his ethical constitution; it would set him right with the universe, if not with himself. For the moment there was nothing Nan so passionately desired as to hear him own himself in the wrong—not for any personal satisfaction so much as for his own sake; also that she might ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... without perfect physical religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily system is just so much taken from the spiritual vitality: we are commanded to glorify God, not simply in our spirits, but in our bodies and spirits. The only example of perfect manhood the world ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... this masterly little sketch. But he detected one fatal flaw: "You don't say what is ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... particularly good humour. He had one, whom I took to be a renegade Englishman, with him, to aid in the examination, though, as this man never spoke in my presence, I was unable precisely to ascertain who he was. The two had a long consultation in private, after the closest scrutiny could detect no flaw in the papers. Then Monsieur Gallois approached ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... my abominable, unpardonable dialect," deplored Rouquin, who spoke English without a flaw. "Millions of babes have I seen, but not one so wonderful as this one. It is a—ah—it is ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... signifies now, quirk, quibble, or flaw, Since Law is made Justice, seek justice ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz., that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare homoeopathy, and all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think, in my beloved Dr. Gully, that he believes in everything. When Miss — was very ill, he had a clairvoyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homoeopathist, viz. Dr. —, and himself ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Wilford, pointing to the garment under the rail. "We had a flaw of wind just now, and it came pretty ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... From the establishment of order and of confidence sprang a prosperity which enabled her to obtain a certain revenue, though entirely inadequate to her expenditure. Thus we beheld her pressing solidly on, and we knew not where she might stop. Pretexts, such as it was difficult to find a flaw in, were never wanting on which to ground a fresh absorption of territory. And seeing behind this advance a vast country—almost a continent—which was not merely a great Asiatic Power, but a great European State, under autocratic, irresponsible rule, with ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... held a marvelous fascination for him, until now he was recognized as one of the world's greatest experts on these subjects. The great lock concerns often sent for him to test new inventions, and invariably he could point to any flaw in the constructions of them that existed. As he came to manhood his knowledge had grown apace until to many he seemed ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... eighteen months, both men had studied her character as manifested in the trying phases of prison existence, finding no flaw; to-day they looked up reverently at the graceful form in its homespun uniform, at the calm, colorless face, wearing its crown of meekness, with an inalienable, proud air of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... hesitation. "The rubies were uncut and of various sizes, ranging perhaps from ten to eighty carats. They were true rubies, not spinels, remember that. The sapphires ran from fifteen carats to sixty, and there was not a flaw ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... a flaw, says an eyewitness. Behind it the Canadians mounted Hill 70 and swept along the rest of the line. On the crest of the hill, where so much blood had been, spilled before, heavy fighting might have ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!" —Hamlet. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... do," the other said. "It's very seldom that you hear of a first-class gun exploding. I don't recall a case of one of ours for years and years. And even if by some chance flaw they did, the good ones, being nickel steel, would just make a hole in the barrel,—not fly to pieces. But, as a matter of fact, any barrel that has been through that 'proof-room' will have been subjected to the greatest strain it will ever have to undergo, for there is no cartridge made that ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... time she became aware of the slight discrepancy in Ears, she suffered only a slight Annoyance. It handed her a tiny Pang to find a Flaw in a Piece of Work that ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... any eye but that of a parent, made him watch her intently, while a new hope which made his heart beat more quickly sprang up within him. Christians had not shown up well that day; prosecuting and persecuting Christians are the most repulsive beings on earth! Did she begin to feel a flaw in the system she had professed belief in? Might she by this injustice come to realize that she had unconsciously cheated herself into a belief? If such things might win her back to him, might bridge over that miserable gulf ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... flatter us, as much as our own Hearts. They either do not see our Faults, or conceal them from us, or soften them by their Representations, after such a manner, that we think them too trivial to be taken notice of. An Adversary, on the contrary, makes a stricter Search into us, discovers every Flaw and Imperfection in our Tempers, and though his Malice may set them in too strong a Light, it has generally some Ground for what it advances. A Friend exaggerates a Man's Virtues, an Enemy inflames his Crimes. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility of clearly imagining them have necessarily presented obstacles thus far to a unified image of country. The time may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided consciousness of country will be a grave flaw ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... those watching anxiously from the deck of the trader were unable to discern her pursuer as she passed behind them. As soon as they were well assured that she must have gone on, the boats were got in, the sails hoisted again, and, taking advantage of every light flaw of wind, they proceeded on their course. In the morning the sails of the galley could be seen on the horizon, but the distance was too great for her to take up the pursuit again with any chance of success, and the trader continued her course ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... lanthorn shoots above the crowd! Here, 'neath the lines, Hygeia's fount that shade, Smart booths allure the lounger on parade. Bohemia's glass, and Nevers' beaded wares, Millecour's fine lace, and Moulins' polish'd shears; And crates of painted wicker without flaw, And fine mesh'd products of Germania's straw, Books of dull trifling, misnamed "reading light," And foxy maps, and prints in damaged plight, Whilst up and down to rattling castanettes, The active ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I, 'I am no very perfect craftsman. This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry. You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my tool slipped! Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and find a flaw in everything. Failures for Sale should be on my signboard. I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.' I cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and instantly became grave. 'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought himself so much wiser than his parents,—a man who had gained honours at the University,—a man of the gravest temperament,—a man of so nicely critical a turn of mind that there was not a law of art or nature in which he did not detect a flaw; that he should get himself into this mess was, to say the least ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it in a hurry yesterday; to-day I saw it again and read it carefully. There is no flaw in it; it is a will that must stand, that cannot be disputed. Charlotte, you were right in your forebodings. Niece Charlotte, you and your mother, before you, were basely robbed, cruelly wronged; your dead father was just and upright; your living brothers are villains; ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... at a turn and stopped to examine it. An indignant worker told him brusquely he needn't try to pick holes in their roads because there weren't any, and Christopher returned meekly he thought they looked good, but fancied the mark he examined was a flaw. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... cannot do that. It was I who asked him to marry me." The girl lied tremulously, panic-stricken at the threat. "Before God, I am his wife!" she maintained. "And if this marriage has a flaw, then I will stand beside the prison gates and remarry ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... knots an hour, though the ship was as stiff as a madman in a strait-jacket, with the compressed wool in her hold and loaded down to her main-chain bolts besides. By two bells (one o'clock) forward of the break of the poop the decks were deserted, though now and again, amidst some swiftly passing flaw in the storm of snow, you might just discern the gleaming shapes of two men on the look-out on the forecastle, with the glimpse of a figure in the foretop, also on the watch for anything that might be ahead. The captain in his tall hat was stumping the deck to and fro close against the wheel, cased ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... an easy-chair. He felt like a man who has built a mighty piece of machinery, has set it swinging through space, and watches now its imminent collapse; watches some tiny but ghastly flaw, pregnant with disaster, growing wider ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... One flaw there was in the picture, and that is where the first experiment in wheedling came in. A large telegraph pole on our property line bisected the horizon like one of the parallels on a map. It seemed to us at times to assume the proportions of the Washington Monument. I ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... now insisted that Frederick should begin his masterpiece. He had himself sought out the finest, purest oak wood, without the least vein or flaw, which had been over five years in his wood-store, and nobody was to help Frederick except old Valentine. Not only was Frederick put more and more out of taste with his work by the rough journeymen, but he felt a tightness in his throat ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... for pilgrim feet, Those stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... produced Like change on sea and land; sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, Corrupt and pestilent: Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice, And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud, And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn; With adverse blast upturns them from the south Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus and Zephyr, with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... most unexpectedly evicted, stood disconsolately on the porch of the Half Way House, peering out into the storm. The character of it had changed somewhat, the rain driving fiercely now and then, with an occasional quick flaw of wind, instead of falling monotonously. And now there came a few rumblings of thunder, with faint flashes of lightning low ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... overtook the merchantmen sufficiently to send a shot skipping along the crests of the waves, as a polite Invitation to stop. The two vessels hove to, and a boat was sent from the man-of-war to examine their papers, and see if all was right. Though no flaw was found in the papers of either vessel, Capt. Reid determined to take them back to Newport, which was done. In the harbor the two vessels were brought to anchor under the guns of the armed sloop, and without any reason ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... customs, and in its military equipment. A long epic can only present an unity of historical ideas if it be the work of one age. Wandering minstrels, living through a succession of incompatible ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could not preserve, without flaw or failure, the attitude, in the first place, of the poet of feudal princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by undisputed right divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being subject to gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets not living in feudal ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... a little sigh of relief. After all, what he had feared was not coming. He saw the flaw, he felt even now the revulsion of feeling with which her words had inspired him. Yet the other things remained. She was still wonderful. It was still she who was the presiding genius of that ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Fund which is running low, threatening to be at the lees if such drain on it continue. To fight with effect being the one sure hope, and salve for all sores, it is not in the Army, in the Fortresses, the Fighting Equipments, that there shall be any flaw left! Friedrich's budget is a sore problem upon him; needing endless shift and ingenuity, now and onwards, through this war:—already, during these months, in the Berlin Schloss, a great deal of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sequence.] Discontinuity — N. discontinuity; disjunction &c 44; anacoluthon^; interruption, break, fracture, flaw, fault, crack, cut; gap &c (interval) 198; solution of continuity, caesura; broken thread; parenthesis, episode, rhapsody, patchwork; intermission; alternation &c (periodicity) 138; dropping fire. V. be discontinuous &c adj.; alternate, intermit, sputter, stop and start, hesitate. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood the ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the room. Evelina's cheeks were pink, and her blue eyes glittered; but it seemed to Ann Eliza that the coquettish tilt of her head regrettably emphasized the weakness of her receding chin. It was the first time that Ann Eliza had ever seen a flaw in her sister's beauty, and her involuntary criticism startled her like a ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... it. Now listen to me carefully. I'll give you, step by step, the whole matter." He walked up and down for some minutes and then suddenly stopped beside me and thumped me on the back. "There's not a flaw in it!" he cried. "It's magnificent. My dear fellow, death is only a failure in human perfection. There's nothing mysterious in it. Religion has made a ridiculous fuss about it. There's nothing more mysterious in it than there is in a badly-oiled engine wearing ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... again, To sentence Letters, as he sentenced men. With hand less mighty, but with heart as black, With voice as willing to decree the rack; Bred in the Courts betimes, though all that law As yet hath taught him is to find a flaw,— Since well instructed in the patriot school To rail at party, though a party tool— Who knows? if chance his patrons should restore 450 Back to the sway they forfeited before, His scribbling toils some recompense may meet, And raise this Daniel to ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... embezzlement, or robbery, not alone in the State, but elsewhere in any direction,—in the department, in the commune, in the Church, or in educational and benevolent institutions. It excels in practicing distributive justice. The second defect is its hidden flaw: the legislator having introduced this into all local and special statutes, its effects differ according to different societies; but all these effects converge, paralyzing in the nation the best half of the soul, and, worse still, to leading the will astray and perverting the public ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... retorted Raffles Holmes. "My father was too fond of my mother to permit of any flaw in his title. A year later I was born, and— well, here I am—son of one, grandson of the other, with hereditary traits from both strongly developed and ready for business. I want a literary partner—a man who will write me up as Bunny did Raffles, and Watson did Holmes, so that I may ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... was dressed in a white lace dress, with a white crepe bonnet with a wreath of white roses round it. I went in the chariot with my dear Mamma and the others followed in another carriage." One seems to hold in one's hand a small smooth crystal pebble, without a flaw and without a scintillation, and so transparent that one can see through ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... senses told him there was nothing amiss, yet he had had a proof, and yet, as he peered most earnestly, there was, it seemed, something strange and not altogether usual in the expression of the eyes. Perhaps it might be the unsteady flare of the gas, or perhaps a flaw in the cheap looking-glass, that gave some slight distortion to the image. He walked briskly up and down the room and tried to gaze steadily, indifferently, into his own face. He would not allow himself to be misguided by a word. When ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... amongst the three thousand attendants much benefit is derived; some come from twenty to twenty-five miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-coloured lambas of many folded kilts—the women work hardest—the potters slap and ring their earthenware all round, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads, the women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets, strapped to the shoulders and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Majesty's reception of these poor people could not but be good; nothing now wanting in the formal kind. But better far, in all the essentialities of it, there had not been hitherto, nor was henceforth, the least flaw. This Salzburg Pilgrimage has found for itself, and will find, regulation, guidance, ever a stepping-stone at the needful place; a paved road, so far as human regularity and punctuality could pave one. That is his Majesty's shining merit. "Next Sunday, after sermon, they [this first lot ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... marry by their parents from their earliest years, they adored each other and were married, and their union gave to the sixteenth century the noble spectacle of a perfect conjugal love without a flaw. When the marchesa became a widow at the age of thirty-four, beautiful, intellectually brilliant, universally adored, she refused to marry sovereigns and buried herself in a convent, seeing and knowing thenceforth only nuns. Such was the perfect love that suddenly developed itself in ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not given to thinking things. Agatha's own mind had been a crystal without a flaw, ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... boon to secure gratis the assistance of men specially trained as clerks, book-keepers or handicraftsmen. Hence all manner of intrigues and manoeuvres were afoot on the arrival of drafts and there was a scramble for the best hands. Here at once was a palpable flaw in the system of assignment. The lot of the convict was altogether unequal. Some, the dull, unlettered and unskilled, were drafted up country to heavy manual labour at which they remained, while clever expert rogues found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... alive to the crisis in our national affairs, foresaw that our people, with their idealism fired by thought of increased freedom for the oppressed subjects of autocratic governments, might be aroused to new consciousness of the flaw in our own democracy. With this thought in mind, on the eve of the opening of the extraordinary session, she sent out a summons to the suffragists of the whole country to unite in a stupendous appeal to Congress for the immediate submission of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... "The only flaw in that theory," I said, "is that the people who still have this most precious possession don't want to keep it in the least. Nobody ever heard of the Irish-speaking peasants taking the smallest interest in their language. The ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... disturbed, puzzled—made Mildred understand why she had been so reluctant to confess. Jennings did not pursue the subject, but abruptly began the lesson. That day and several days thereafter he put her to tests he had never used before. She saw that he was searching for something—for the flaw implied in the adverse verdict of the son of Lucia Rivi. She was enormously relieved when he gave over the search without having found the flaw. She felt that Donald Keith's verdict had been proved false or at least faulty. Yet she was not wholly reassured, and from time ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Gauwaine, held his word without a flaw, This Mellyagraunce saw blood upon my bed: Whose blood then pray you? ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... called every morning for letters. If anybody rang me up on the telephone, the admirable man answered in the capacity of my servant, took a message, and relayed it on to me at my boarding-house. If anybody called, he merely said that I was out. There wasn't a flaw in the whole scheme, my dear, and its chief merit was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... ground together, and the windlass was out of commission. Following upon that, the seventy-horse-power engine went out of commission. This engine came from New York; so did its bed-plate; there was a flaw in the bed-plate; there were a lot of flaws in the bed-plate; and the seventy-horse-power engine broke away from its shattered foundations, reared up in the air, smashed all connections and fastenings, and fell over on its side. And the Snark continued to stick between ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... conversation was resumed after Mr. Singleton had been requested to speak a little louder—there seemed some flaw in the connection. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... had several results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... he gained considerable sums by buying, at inferior prices, such as had flaws in them, and afterwards disposing of them at a profit of cent. per cent. Madame du Hausset relates the following anecdote on this particular:— "The King," says she, "ordered a middling-sized diamond, which had a flaw in it, to be brought to him. After having it weighed, his Majesty said to the Count, 'The value of this diamond, as it is, and with the flaw in it, is six thousand livres; without the flaw, it would be worth, at least, ten thousand. Will you undertake to make me ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... in Africa was so called, as well as that in Italy. (3) Meaning that her husband gave her this commission in order to prevent her from committing suicide. (4) See Book VIII., line 547. (5) See line 709. (6) This passage is described by Lord Macaulay as "a pure gem of rhetoric without one flaw, and, in my opinion, not very far from historical truth" (Trevelyan's "Life and Letters", vol. i., page 462.) (7) "... Clarum et venembile nomen Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod profuit urbi," quoted by Mr. Burke, and applied to Lord Chatham, in his Speech ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... possession. (I take for granted, of course, that as you go and come you are, in imagination, perpetually lodging yourself and setting up your gods; for if this innocent pastime, this borrowing of the mind, be not your favourite sport there is a flaw in the appeal that Venice makes to you.) There may be happy cases in which your envy is tempered, or perhaps I should rather say intensified, by real participation. If you have had the good fortune to enjoy the hospitality of an old Venetian home and to lead your ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... all know that stage solicitors are more outrageous villains than even their originals. Mr. Gammon is, of course, a "fine speciment of the specious," as Mr. Hood's Mr. Higgings says. It is he who, finding out a flaw in Aubrey's title, angled per advertisement for the heir, and caught a Tittlebat—Titmouse. It is he who has so disinterestedly made that gentleman's fortune.—"Only just merely for the sake of the costs?" one naturally asks. Oh no; there is a stronger reason (with which, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... lightning conductor should not have a higher electrical resistance than 10 ohms from the point to the ground, including the "earth" contact. Exceptionally good conductors have only about 5 ohms. A high resistance in the rod is due either to a flaw in the conductor or a bad earth connection, and in such a case the rod may be a source of danger instead of security, since the discharge is apt to find its way through some part of the building to the ground, rather than entirely by the rod. It is, therefore, important to test lightning conductors ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... colonel," said Jimmie Dale softly, "that Thorold couldn't come, that old Jake found one of the diamonds cloudy and with a flaw, and that the deal fell through—and it means, colonel, that you will never be called upon to steal Mrs. Milford's diamonds again; there is ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Catholicism taught its partizans to cherish very different feelings, for they were instructed to believe that the gospel itself was without efficacy when promulgated by a minister who did not belong to their own party. They could not challenge a single flaw in the creed of Novatian, [649:3] and yet they strongly maintained that his preaching was useless, and that the baptism he dispensed was worthless as the ablution of a heathen. "You should know," says Cyprian, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... him all criticism was "rudeness": he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong. All his life he had ordered little human beings about, and now he was equally magisterial to big ones: Stephen was a fifth-form lout whom, owing to some flaw in the regulations, he could not send up to the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... whom she eventually marries seems unfortunately to have a bit of a flaw in his granite character; at any rate, something is wrong with him, as the heroine fails to hold him altogether, and matters even begin to look as though she might lose him. But with her great happiness had come a new standard of honour, and ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... case. His complaints were bitter; and, in a tranquil observer, might have produced the united feeling of pity for his sufferings, and horror at his depravity. He recollected all the precautions he had used; he could scarcely find a flaw in the process; and he cursed that blind and malicious power which delighted to cross his most deep-laid schemes. "Of this malice he was beyond all other human beings the object. He was mocked with the shadow of power; and when he lifted ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... preternatural clearness. I seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, Instinct, or Guardian Angel,—call it what you will,—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... them through her palace and showed them all the treasures that were hers, envy grew in their hearts and choked their old love. Even while they sat at feast with her, they grew more and more bitter; and hoping to find some little flaw in her good fortune, they ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... know that your generosity can be supreme—without a flaw. Love at its highest should be the origin of ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... alteration in our present system, let us for a moment survey the existing condition of affairs. I, myself, to begin with, I and my ancestors, for many generations, have held undisputed possession of this pollard. Not the slightest flaw has ever been discovered in our title-deeds; and no claimant has ever arisen. The rook has had, I believe, once or twice some little difficulty respecting his own particular tenancy, which is not a freehold; but his townsmen, as ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... one flaw in our content. Bobby Green's mother arrived shortly after one o'clock in a high state of wrath, and I was obliged to go out in the hall and ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would yield to the potent fascination of this woman. As Sylvia looked, her feminine eye took in every gift of face and figure, every grace of attitude or gesture, every daintiness of costume, and found no visible flaw in Ottila, from her haughty head to her handsome foot. Yet when her scrutiny ended, the girl felt a sense of disappointment, and no envy mingled ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... security system. Shortly after taking office I proposed and Congress enacted legislation to protect the stability of the old age and survivors trust fund and prevent the imminent exhaustion of the disability insurance trust fund, and to correct a flaw in the benefit formula that was threatening the long run health of the entire social security system. The actions taken by the Congress at my request helped stabilize the system. That legislation was later complemented by the Disability Insurance Amendments ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... idea, and start out bravely to follow it; but if he finds it leading him into a position contrary to the experience of humanity, then he pulls up, and decides that the idea must be false, even if he can detect no flaw in it; not so the Russian; the idea is right, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... merciful to him, and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he is like two inward friends fallen out: his own bitter enemy and discontent presently makes a murder. In sum, he is a bladder blown up with wind, which the least flaw ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... abstract of title, which is a paper showing the title as it appears on the records, and this title when not vouched for as perfect by an abstract title company, should be passed upon by a lawyer in order that any flaw or defect therein may be made right before the deed is passed from one owner to another. In some states, however, the law does not require the owner to furnish an abstract. When the title is proved or pronounced good, the deed should at once be ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... talk into the channels of this delicate subject. But he as sedulously confined it to trivial matter whenever she approached him in this mood, fencing himself about with a wall of cold reserve that was not lightly to be overthrown. In this his conscience was at work. Cynthia was the flaw in the satisfaction he might have drawn from the contemplation of the vengeance he was there to wreak. He beheld her so pure, so sweet and fresh, that he marvelled how she came to be the daughter of Gregory Ashburn. His heart smote him at the thought of how she—the innocent—must suffer ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... largest diamonds in the world. The question of accurately valuing it presented some serious difficulties. Its size made it a phenomenon in the diamond market; its colour placed it in a category by itself; and, to add to these elements of uncertainty, there was a defect, in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone. Even with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various estimates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father's astonishment! He had been within a hair's-breadth of refusing to act ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... narrowing eyelids, his voice rang changes upon chords of most exquisite tenderness; his whole manner was charged with a courtly reverence mingled with the subtlest hint of passion. Rupert as a lover had not a flaw in him. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... action to the word, she put the helm up just as a flaw of wind came sweeping over the waves. The boat came round; the three sails, caught by the flaw, suddenly flew over, filled on the other side, and the Greyhound careened till she ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... persuing and reperusing the verdict, counting the letters in each juror's name, and weighing every phrase, nay, every syllable, in the nicest scales of legal criticism. But the clerk of the jury had understood his business too well. No flaw was to be found, and Fairbrother mournfully intimated, that he had nothing to say in ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... but the rarest of virtues dwelt there? Rare virtues she had, but in commonplace ones Which make happy husbands and home loving sons She was utterly lacking. Ruth Somerville saw In sorrow and silence this blemishing flaw In the friend whom she loved with devotion! Maurice Saw only the angel with eyes full of peace. The faults of plain women are easily seen. But who cares to peer back of beauty's fair screen For things which are ugly to ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... had his time come as nigh as that of Crasweller, he too, like Crasweller, would impotently implore the grace of another year. He would ape madness like Barnes, or arm himself with a carving-knife like Tallowax, or swear that there was a flaw in the law, as Exors was disposed to do. He too would clamorously swear that he was much younger, as did the old women. Was not the world peopled by Craswellers, Tallowaxes, Exorses, and old women? Had I a right to hope to alter the ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... give. Just the things that I play to myself when I'm weary of listening to humanity tell of its ills and aches—the egotist! Then I look down into the beautifully clean inside of my fiddle, its good old mechanism without a flaw, and listen to the things it has to tell.... Thank you, just the same, Miss Maude; this is not a theme worthy of your brilliant rendition, but, as I said, a simple, old-fashioned playing of the fiddle. I'll supply the old-fashioned ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... parade. A whole brigade swings into line and must prove that it can move as one man, as a perfect machine, without flaw or friction. One master mind directs every motion, and at the word of command thousands of feet are moving in exact time, wheeling, marching, maneuvering with a precision that proves the long months of patient practice. ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... shape; it persists in this plan, and completes it. Here is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build—a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyramids. But there is not a flaw in its contour throughout; not one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a jeweler's faceted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as javelins; their ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... settlement, wondering meanwhile what could possibly be the explanation of certain whiffs of a singularly vile and offensive odour which now and then assailed his nostrils when there occurred an occasional flaw in the trade-wind which was sweeping briskly over the island. He might, of course, have asked, but the thought occurred to him that by doing so he might perhaps be betraying his ignorance, and so lay himself open to the chance of being misled upon a matter that might very well be of importance. ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... provided and so dimly inspired. Here was suspense indeed for a last "curtain" but one; and my fancy glows, all expertly, for the disclosure of the final scene, than which nothing could well have been happier, on all the premises, save for a single flaw: the installation in Forty-fourth Street of our admirable aunt, often, through the later years, domiciled there, but now settled to community of life with a touching charge and representing near him his extinguished, their extinguished, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... he admitted; but be contended there was a flaw in the argument; for that it was impossible to accept any religion on merely prudential grounds. And he then went on, in his curious way, to lament that an unreasonable candor prevented him from here taking advantage of an ingenious argument adopted ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... capable of resenting the loss of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it intensified the youth in her ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... and after her father's disappearance—for his body had never been found—she had been received into the governor's house out of pity and charity—she, a Melchite! The interpreter had little to say in her favor, by reason of her sect; and though he could find no flaw in her beauty, he insisted on it that she was proud and ungracious, and incapable of winning any man's love; only the child, little Mary—she, to be sure, was very fond of her. It was no secret that even her uncle's wife, worthy Neforis, did not care for her haughty niece and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is most ingenious. But there is in this plan one flaw which no one has noted. I suppose that you, Maternus, evolved this really promising idea from pondering on what Claudius told us. All the hearsay about Rome and its festivals which ever came to the ears of all of us put together is as nothing at all compared with what Claudius told us ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... make without question have been frankly repudiated by men quite as clever as he, and, perhaps, more critical. It opens the eyes to see that his standards of worth have been weighed by others and have been found wanting. It may well incline him to reexamine reasonings in which he has detected no flaw, when he finds that acute minds have tried them before, and ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener, while his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating power—the merely negative element of purity, the mere freedom from taint or flaw, in exercise [34] as a positive influence. Long afterwards, when Marius read the Charmides—that other dialogue of Plato, into which he seems to have expressed the very genius of old Greek temperance—the image of this speaker came back vividly before him, to take the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... of his northern language and accent. "That horrible instrument, the boot, was brought this very morning to my smiddy for repair. They had been so hard on some poor wretch, I suppose, that they broke part of it, but I put a flaw into its heart that will force them to be either less cruel or to come to me again ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ingate, a natural phenomenon, like the lie of the land and the river Moze. Her opinions offended nobody, not Mr. Moze himself—she was Miss Ingate. She was laughed at, beloved and respected. Her sagacity had one flaw, and the flaw sprang from her sincere conviction that human nature in that corner of Essex, which she understood so profoundly, and where she was so perfectly at home, was different from, and more fondly foolish than, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... greatly puzzled Marston; it gave him even a vague sense of uneasiness. Could there exist any flaw in his own title to the estate of Gray Forest? He had an unpleasant, doubtful sort of remembrance of some apprehensions of this kind, when he was but a child, having been whispered in the family. Could this really be so, and could ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... We have laid down above the received doctrine with regard to opposition: but it is necessary to point out a flaw ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... rant and ring fiercer than old Queen Elizabeth ever could do herself. Queen Mary's part was done by a bonny genty young lady, that was said to have run away from a boarding-school, and, by all accounts, she acted wonderful well. But she too was not altogether without a flaw, so that there was a division in the town between their admirers and visiters; some maintaining, as I was told, that Mrs Beaufort, if she would keep herself sober, was not only a finer woman, but more of a lady, and a better actress, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... always sprang afresh in the success of each new venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for a time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and disappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the bufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on their sails, and went away with good promise of a long ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force or slight; But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall, Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... another lady. Send him away by himself this time; and let him feel the want of some kind creature to look after him. And when he meets with that kind creature (they are as plenty as fish in the sea), never trouble your head about it if there's a flaw in her character. I have got a cracked tea-cup which has served me for twenty years. Marry him, ma'am, to the new one with the utmost speed and impetuosity which the law will permit.' I hate Mr. MacGlue's opinions—so coarse and so hard-hearted!—but I sadly fear that ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... which they had driven the jury. He was therefore reprieved, and committed to the Tower, where his wife was allowed to bear him company, and where his youngest son was born. His estates were, in general, preserved to him, but Carr, the infamous minion of the King, under some pretext of a flaw in the conveyance of it by Raleigh to his son, seized upon his manor of Sherborne. In the Tower he continued for twelve years. These years his industry and genius rendered the happiest probably of his life. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan |
