"Shortcoming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they are mostly grown on the West Coast. The catkins of the filbert develop during the summer, lie dormant through the winter, and shed their pollen very early in the spring. Should the temperature fall as low as -35 deg.F, the catkins winterkill. To overcome this shortcoming, I bend down and peg to the ground, in the late fall, a few slim shoots with dormant catkins, so that the snow, or some other mulching material supplied when there is insufficient snow, will cover and protect ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... A shortcoming in many houses is the lack of a newspaper, and the thoughtful hostess who has the morning paper sent up with each breakfast tray, or has one put at each place on the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that time he did not appreciate how rapidly he was building for himself a bridge over that shortcoming. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... time a few hours. It is nearly sundown, and the slant beams are coming in through the partly-raised blinds, and falling on the bed, where, white, and panting for the shortcoming breath, lies Mary Carson, a little raised by pillows against which her head rests motionless. Her eyes are shut, the brown lashes lying in two deep fringes on her cheeks. Away from her temples and forehead the hair has been smoothly brushed by loving hands, and there is a spiritual beauty ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... moreover, that effort is most remunerative. For when we feel that a painter has made simplicity and subordination of importances his first aim, it is surprising how much shortcoming we will condone as regards actual execution. Whereas, let the execution be perfect, if the details given be ill-chosen in respect of relative importance the whole effect is lost—it becomes top-heavy, as it were, and collapses. As for the number of details ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... centered on a pool of cool water, very pleasant in the hothouse climate of Singhalut. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely young servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack, and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called the Barangipan, he made the acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek Panjoebang. He found her ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,—and observe, not in a minor, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... eighteenth-century idiosyncrasy; in the second some; and it was by no means absent from Byron though hardly present at all in most respects as regards Shelley and Keats. Certainly in none of the groups, and only in one or two individuals, is there much if any shortcoming as concerns letter-writing. Wordsworth indeed makes no figure as a letter-writer, and nobody who has appreciated his other work would expect him to do so. The first requisite of the letter-writer is ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... all of whom give ear unto my word and obey my commandment." "Why, then, O my lord," asked the nurse, "didst thou conceal the secret of thy rank and lineage and passedst thyself off for a wayfarer? Alas for our disgrace before thee by reason of our shortcoming in rendering thee thy due! What shall be our excuse with thee, and thou of the sons of the kings?" But he rejoined, "By Allah, thou hast not fallen short! Nay, it is incumbent on me to requite thee, what while I live, though I ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... nothing to do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane's shortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of the case. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain and indignation, Lola never made a ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... holiness there is in Jesus. And so, as often as we are conscious of how unholy we are, we have only to come under the covering of the Holiness of Jesus, to enjoy the full assurance that we and our gifts are most acceptable. However great be the weakness of our faith, the shortcoming in our desire for God's glory, the lack in our love or zeal, as we see Jesus, with Holiness to the Lord on His forehead, we lift up our faces to receive the Divine smile of full approval and ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... treasures of the lens-maker's art can not, perhaps, be commanded at will, yet, they are turned out with increasing frequency, and the best artists are generally able, at all times, to approximate so closely to perfection that any shortcoming may be disregarded. ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... Yue-ts'un, apprehending, on the other hand, lest he might in the presence of others, divulge the circumstances connected with the days gone by, when he was in a state of penury, naturally felt very unhappy in his mind. But at a later period, he succeeded, by ultimately finding in him some shortcoming, and deporting him to a far-away place, in setting his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... pity it could not borrow from Paris the towers of Notre Dame! But the glory of its interior made up for this shortcoming. Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by Dryden ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... amount of delicacy is too great in drawing the curves of a pattern, no amount of care in getting the leading lines right from the first, can be thrown away, for beauty of detail cannot afterwards cure any shortcoming in this. Remember that a pattern is either right or wrong. It cannot be forgiven for blundering, as a picture may be which has otherwise great qualities in it. It is with a pattern as with a fortress, it is no stronger than its weakest ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Quaker-like neatness of her appearance. Mellicent was often untidy, and even Esther had moments of dishevelment, but Peggy was a dainty little person, whose hair was always smooth, whose dress well brushed and natty. Her artistic sense was too keen to allow of any shortcoming in this respect; but she seemed blessed with a capacity of acting before she thought, which had many disastrous consequences. She was by no means a robust girl, and Mrs Asplin fussed over her little ailments like an ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... princes of his time. His faith in his hereditary paganism was probably only political, but he never made the desperate, and no doubt perilous, plunge of giving up all the world to save his own soul. Was it his fault, or was it any shortcoming in the teaching that was laid before him, and was that human honour a want of faith? It puzzles us! Here was Swartz, from early youth to hoary hairs unwavering in the work of the Gospel, gathering in multitudes to the Church, often at great ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... my window and dimly wonder if I should get out at all on the morrow. If not, I proposed to return to Montreal at once. I should gain nothing by being confined in the house at Bonneroy. Delle Josephine appeared with eggs and tea—green tea, alas for that village shortcoming— there was no black tea to be found in it, and I looked narrowly at her as she set it down, wondering if anything was amiss with her. But she seemed all right again and I conjectured that I had simply interrupted a tete-a-tetewith some visitor in the sitting-room at the time of my return. When ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... groaning, sank together, and faded into darkness, and the moonbeams retreated slowly from floor to wall, and were lost as gray cold dawn began to light the window. Phoebe had less to reproach herself with than any one of Mr. Fulmort's children, save the poor innocent, Maria; but many a shortcoming, many a moment of impatience or discontent, many a silent impulse of blame, were grieved over, and every kindness she had received shot through her heart with mournful gladness and warmth, filling her with yearning for another embrace, another word, or even ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wove her needle into the seam, a practise so habitual that probably she would have done the same if the lamp had exploded unexpectedly, and crossing to the kitchen door, opened it without warning. A small untidy woman, the shortcoming of her appearance partly concealed by the old plaid shawl that enveloped her person, dodged away from the key-hole with a celerity perhaps due ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... habit,—one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Jack Ruthven. And what did he do; take legal measures to free himself, as you or I or anybody with an ounce of temper in 'em would have done? No; he didn't. That infernal Selwyn conscience began to get busy, making him believe that if a woman kicks over the traces it must be because of some occult shortcoming on his part. In some way or other that man persuaded himself of his responsibility for her misbehaviour. He knew what it meant if he didn't ask the law to aid him to get rid of her; he knew perfectly well that his silence meant acknowledgment of culpability; that he couldn't remain in the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... work. Finding here sufficient to explain his influence, and the true seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the Holy Family in the Louvre, in consideration of certain points where it comes short of this standard. Such shortcoming, however, will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred personages, with some wind- searched brightness and energy; ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... said Harley, grimly, "and over the head of the Chief Constable, too. But I suppose it is unfair to condemn a man for the shortcoming with which nature endowed him, therefore we must endeavour to let Inspector Aylesbury down as lightly as possible. I have an idea that I heard him ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate and accurate,—except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the capital of the country, the river which, of all its ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... have the appearance almost equal to an opal. To make sure of the picture adhering to the glass, however, and at the same time to give greater brilliancy, it is better to flow the glass with a 10 or 15 grain solution of clear gelatine before squeezing it down. The one fault or shortcoming of the plain argentic paper is the dullness of the surface when dry, and this certainly makes it unsuitable for small work, such as the rapid production of cartes or proofs from negatives wanted in a hurry; the tone of an argentic print is also spoken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... sure there is an underlying cause in extenuation for this temperamental shortcoming which in justice to the ostensibly weaker sex should be set forth here. Even though I am taking on the role of Devil's Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... OF STANDARDS AN UNDERLYING LACK.—All shortcoming in the old time teaching may be traced to lack of standards. The worker had never been measured, hence had no idea of his efficiency, or of possible efficiency. No standard methods made plain the manner in which the work should be done. Moreover, no standard ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... increases with every new progress in duty. The field of light expands to a new length and breadth every time the plough passes through it. And, knowing well to whom he writes on this subject, Rutherford goes on to say that there is a sorrow for sin, and for shortcoming in service, that is as acceptable with God in the evangelical covenant as would be the very service itself. But, then, it must be what Rutherford calls 'honest sorrow after a sincere aim.' And let no man easily ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... replied the other. "And d'ye know, this makes me think of that Injun that got lost, and was found, half starved, by some white men; but he was too proud to admit his little shortcoming; so when they asked him if he hadn't kinder managed to get twisted in his bearings, he slaps his breast with his hand, take a pose like this, and says he: 'Injun not lost; wigwam lost; Injun here!' And we're like that Injun, Giraffe; oh! no, we're not lost one little ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... been lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from beyond the Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.[1] Had he taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within, instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a far ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... moralist than there is to suppose that I am a competent mathematician. But truly it does not matter whether he is a moralist or not. Let nobody dream for a moment that what is wrong with the Censorship is the shortcoming of the gentleman who happens at any moment to be acting as Censor. Replace him to-morrow by an Academy of Letters and an Academy of Dramatic Poetry, and the new and enlarged filter will still exclude original and epoch-making work, whilst passing conventional, old-fashioned, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... was his reputation confined to the Confederate ranks. "I think even our men," says a Federal officer, "had a kind of admiration for him, as he sat unmoved upon his horse, and let them pepper away at him as if he enjoyed it." His one shortcoming was his ignorance of drill and discipline. But in the spring of 1862 these deficiencies were in a fair way of being rectified. He had already learned something of tactics. In command of a few hundred mounted riflemen and a section of horse-artillery he ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary shortcoming of the means. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the jailor brought was eaten with such a relish as hunger only can impart. I was fortunate in respect to quantity, for my companion was not well, and could not eat much; but I atoned for his shortcoming by eating both ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... my verses that I had better not lavish myself upon that kind of thing, unless there was a great deal more of me than I could have made apparent in our meeting, no doubt he was right. I was only too painfully aware of my shortcoming, but I felt that it was shorter-coming than it need have been. I had somehow not prospered in my visit to Emerson as I had with Hawthorne, and I came away wondering in what sort I had gone wrong. I was not a forth-putting youth, and I could not blame ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... little chap pushing through the crowd. He stood before me and thrust out his hand. "Hello!" he said. I thought his "Hello!" might be French quite as easily as American, so I merely returned his handshake. He grinned, and then said in perfectly good "American": "You forget me, huh?" I admitted my shortcoming in memory; but his beard was very thick and stubby and his uniform was very dirty. I complimented his linguistic ability. He waved his arms, saying: "Huh, didn't I live eight years in little old New York?" Then he came still nearer, saying: "You don't remember me, and I have served ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... she said aloud. "You give yourself away, old sport! Don't you, now!" The mirrored head shook in disparaging admission of its own shortcoming. Jenny bent nearer, meeting the eyes with a clear stare. There were wretched lines about her mouth. For the first time in her life she had a horrified fear of growing older. It was as though, when she shut her ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... most exhaustive study and investigation of the Mazurian lakes and swamps. Again and again he had tramped through them on foot, picked his way along their treacherous paths on horseback, and finally put their few roads to the supreme test of the motor car. He knew their every shortcoming and advantage. His topographical information included fording places for men and guns, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... In the shortcoming of the English mind in judging of this book, its great alienation from the philosophy of Art is revealed. This book is not comprehended as a work of Art, claiming as such due proportions and relative significance of parts; otherwise many individuals ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... and outspoken, Madero had full command of the phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency. A few days before the Presidential election in July, 1910, when making a speech in Monterey, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... asserted; for indeed in other matters he was bright and clever, and his father had been well pleased with the progress he made with his studies; but, in the first place; he hated his work, and, in the second, every shortcoming and mistake was magnified and made the most of by the foreman, Andrew Carson. This man had long looked to be taken into partnership, and finally to succeed his master, seeing that the latter had no sons, and he conceived ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... sound of her horse's footsteps died away on the road; and then, sinking on her knees beside her rocking-chair, she poured forth her whole heart in prayers and tears. She confessed many a fault and shortcoming that none knew but herself, and most earnestly besought help that "her little rushlight might shine bright." Prayer was to little Ellen what it is to all that know it—the satisfying of doubt, the soothing of care, the quieting ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... wherein he was like Nero, who allowed no one to leave the theater while he was singing. But the former did it for the salvation and the latter for the corruption of souls. Fray Salvi rarely resorted to blows, but was accustomed to punish every shortcoming of his subordinates with fines. In this respect he was very different from Padre Damaso, who had been accustomed to settle everything with his fists or a cane, administering such chastisement with the greatest good-will. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... were Spartan in their severity. A teacher with the appropriate name of Slatter set him hard tasks and caned him unmercifully for every shortcoming. A weaker nature would have been crushed. Reade's was toughened, and he learned to resist pain and to resent wrong, so that hatred of injustice has been called ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... discriminate between the divine purpose and the human instrument. When we listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, or to Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, we are shocked at the discrepancy between the lofty public performance and the petty domestic shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them; the nature of which they are examples is the same nature that is shared also by the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... You will not judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do not altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,—and everybody respects the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,—so full of clouds, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Grave complaints are on record, which indicate that the great number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of instruction in the barbarous ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating, enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which they could not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and that, adjusting ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... interest; "indeed," says Mr. Sidney Lee, "he did not retain the favour of any patron long." It is only fair to state, however, that the withdrawal of Lord Southampton's patronage may not have been due to any fault or shortcoming on the part of Nash, for there is likewise no evidence whatever to show that any close intimacy existed between Southampton and Shakspeare after 1594. Probably there was much else to claim Lord Southampton's attention—his marriage, and ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... was the germ of the later 'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... my taste; and Sara is stupid. She laughs and talks, but she never says anything that people have not said a hundred times before. Oh, I am so tired of it all! I grow more cross and disagreeable every day,' finished Jill, who was very frank on the subject of her shortcoming. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... world is full of physical evils, pain, famine, blindness, disease, decay and death. But herein is nothing against nature: the several agents act up to their nature, so far as it goes: it is the defect of nature that makes the evil. But sin is no mere shortcoming: it is a turning round and going against nature, as though the July sun should freeze a man, or the summer air suffocate him. Physical evil comes by the defect of nature, and by permission of the Eternal Law. But the moral evil of sin is a breach of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... One shortcoming of such methods of arming an aeroplane will be observed. Ahead firing only is possible; the weapon cannot be trained astern, while similarly the line of fire on either broadside is severely limited. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... fable extant of a man who tried to please everybody, and his failure is a matter of record. Robinson Asbury was not more successful. But be it said that his ill success was due to no fault or shortcoming of his. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... long ago considered the establishment of the Institute so sensibly, and supported it so heartily, I earnestly entreat the gentlemen—earnest I know in the good work, and who are now among us,—by all means to avoid the great shortcoming of similar institutions; and in asking the working man for his confidence, to set him the great example and give him theirs in return. You will judge for yourselves if I promise too much for the working man, when I say that ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... one figure that exhibits equal truth to nature, and equal freedom from exaggeration. It is not possible, for example, to have greater truth to nature than we find in the figures of Adam and Eve in the first chapel. There is not one trace either of too much or too little, of exaggeration or of shortcoming; the nude figure of a man and of a woman were wanted, and the nude figure of a man and of a woman are given, with neither more or less modelling than what would be most naturally seen in a young and comely couple. So again with ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... and dispirited to a degree; and to that genial temper, which once he could count on against every reverse that befell him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led him to attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault or shortcoming of others. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... God looked at the death of Adam. He then sent His Word, and raised him up and said to him, "Fulfil your offering, for indeed, Adam, it is worth much, and there is no shortcoming in it." ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... Failure on such points would have so much surprised him that he would scarcely have known what steps to take. But Jervis, his butler, knew what was best as well as Mr. Tatham did, and was quite as little disposed to put up with any shortcoming. I say I am not sorry for him that he was not married—up to this time. But, as a matter of fact, the time does come when one becomes sorry for the well-to-do, highly respectable, refined, and agreeable man who has ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses—yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... sense; intellect, as we have said, peculiarly separating and vast; the moral sentiments like in essence, but boundlessly expanded, as attached to an infinite object, and laboring in an infinite field: each part mortal in its shortcoming, immortal in the accomplishment of its perfection and purpose; the opposition which we at first broadly expressed as between body and spirit, being more strictly between the natural and spiritual condition of the entire creature—body natural, sown in death, body spiritual, raised ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... This shortcoming could not be laid at his own door. He talked steadily on. After a while, though, a reaction of weariness began to blunt Dempsey's sprightly vivacity. His talk trailed off into grunts and he slept the sleep of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... shortcoming it must be said that Freytag, at the time of the accession to the throne of the present head of the German Empire, laid himself open to much censure by attacking the memory of the dead Emperor Frederick who had always been ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of the English Church with the tone of a judge delivering sentence—an orator pronouncing his well-written, formal harangue. Olive had to shut her ears before she herself could heartily pray. This pained her; there was something so noble in Mr. Gwynne's face, so musical in his voice, that any shortcoming gave her a sense of disappointment. She felt troubled to think that he was the clergyman of the parish, and she must necessarily ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... gained his knowledge of the part),—putting ourselves in this mental attitude, the performance may safely be said to defy criticism, or rather to be above it, except such criticism as accords with enthusiastic admiration. It is absolutely without a shortcoming, seen from this standpoint. His majestic bearing, his beautiful elocution, his pure voice, his graceful, expressive gestures, and above all his perfect freedom from affectation or self-consciousness, delight us throughout; and when to these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 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 have ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... human life and, secondly, early distortion of originally good human powers by arbitrary interference with the orderly course of human development ... a suppressed or perverted good quality—a good tendency, only repressed, misunderstood or misguided—lies at the bottom of every shortcoming." Hence the only remedy even for wickedness is to find and foster, build up and guide what has been repressed. It may be necessary to interfere and even to use severity, but only when the educator is sure ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... with other men; and therefore the repugnance to futility to a good extent coalesces with the incentive of emulation. It acts to accentuate the struggle for pecuniary reputability by visiting with a sharper disapproval all shortcoming and all evidence of shortcoming in point of pecuniary success. Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more creditable showing of accumulated wealth. Among the motives which lead men to accumulate wealth, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... it should hardly be imputed to John as a fault or a shortcoming that he did not for a long time realize his father's failing powers. True, as has been stated, he had noted some changes in appearance on his return, but they were not great enough to be startling, and, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... perhaps that some of the shortcoming lies with yourself?" continued Mr. Furlong. "Is it not possible that as a preacher you fail somewhat, do not, as it were, deal sufficiently with fundamental things as others do? You leave untouched the truly vital issues, such things ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... conceded that the general notion upon which liability to an action is founded is fault or blameworthiness in some sense, the question arises, whether it is so in the sense of personal moral shortcoming, as would practically result from Austin's teaching. The language of Rede, J., which has been quoted from the Year Book, gives a sufficient answer. "In trespass the intent" (we may say more broadly, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... old complaint of Japanese goods failing to come up to sample, the shortcoming is often due not to intentional dishonesty but simply to inability to produce a uniform product. In one factory an order had to be filled by bringing together work from 300 different places. The first ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the usual style of Middleton. Dekker would have taken a high place among the finest if not among the greatest of English poets if he had but had the sense of form—the instinct of composition. Whether it was modesty, indolence, indifference, or incompetence, some drawback or shortcoming there was which so far impaired the quality of his strong and delicate genius that it is impossible for his most ardent and cordial admirer to say or think of his very best work that it really does him justice—that it adequately represents the fulness of his unquestionable ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... painter, he is also a great artist. Yet we may safely infer, that, if he has been true in one department of the several which constitute art, he cannot have been false in others. Should there be a shortcoming, it must be that of a man whose mission does not include that wherein he fails. Fidelity to himself is all we should demand. We say this for those who are disposed to depreciate what an artist actually accomplishes, because in some one point Turner or Overbeck ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Each had technical knowledge enough to run a plant three times the size. But all failed. The first was an autocrat, who tried to boss from a pedestal, and the men didn't like him. The next was a politician, whom the men liked thoroughly—which was his shortcoming, for he tried to run the place as they thought it should be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere at once. He didn't fail, really—he snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working tension was relaxed and production ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... passage of his shortcoming comments on Bacon's "Essays," uses preparedness. Albeit that brevity is a cardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be better than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. In favor of indebtedness over others of like coinage, this is to be said—that it imports ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... context, we can hardly doubt that Sun Tzu is holding up I Chih and Lu Ya as illustrious examples of the converted spy, or something closely analogous. His suggestion is, that the Hsia and Yin dynasties were upset owing to the intimate knowledge of their weaknesses and shortcoming which these former ministers were able to impart to the other side. Mei Yao-ch'en appears to resent any such aspersion on these historic names: "I Yin and Lu Ya," he says, "were not rebels against the Government. Hsia could not employ the former, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... or degree.] Inequality. — N. inequality; disparity, imparity; odds; difference &c. 15; unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. unequal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... creation, we call to mind our lamentable and tragical fall from that blessed station we were constitute into. "All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God," Rom. iii. 23. His being in the world was for that glory, and he is come short of that glory. O strange shortcoming! Short of all that he was ordained for! What is he now meet for? For what purpose is that chief of the works of God now! The salt, if it lose its saltness, is meet for nothing, for wherewithal shall it be seasoned? Mark ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their own ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... man; only, as is the case with most of us, it had ten times the reference to the action of other people that it had to his own: I mean, he made far greater demand for justice upon other people than upon himself; and was much more indignant at any shortcoming of theirs which crossed any desire or purpose of his than ho was anxious in his own person to fulfill justice when that fulfillment in its turn would cross any wish he cherished. Badly as he had himself ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... though he had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though this proved that the man who had said it was an imbecile. Murguia, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely and with an oath, that they'd have to begin ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... to own that for years it had been his pet ambition to write for the "London Charivari." Unhappily, its realisation came too late to permit him to do justice to his talent and his humour; and he himself was only too conscious of his sad shortcoming, or, rather, of his failing powers. Only eight papers had come from his hand when it closed in death. In September the first of his papers was published—"Personal Recollections;" the last in November—"A Visit to the British Museum;" they are garrulous and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... placed him at once in the full enjoyment of personal and proprietary independence. The period of minority appears therefore to have been as unreasonably short as the duration of the disabilities of women was preposterously long. But, in point of fact, there was no element either of excess or of shortcoming in the circumstances which gave their original form to the two kinds of guardianship. Neither the one nor the other of them was based on the slightest consideration of public or private convenience. The guardianship of male orphans was no more designed ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... little which it is well to avoid. Copy what is good in them, but test in a critical spirit whatever you take, so as to be sure that you take only what is wisest and best for yourselves. More important even than avoiding any mere educational shortcoming is the avoidance of moral shortcoming. Students are already being sent to Europe to prepare themselves to return as professors. Such preparation is now essential, for it is of prime importance that the University should be familiar with what is being done in the best universities of Europe ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... (which makes it the more strange), had previously happened to my father; and if they are good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the whole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... visits. His obtuseness on the great Testimonial question was not calculated to awaken admiration in the paternal breast, but had rather a tendency to give offence in that sensitive quarter, and to be regarded as a positive shortcoming in point of gentlemanly feeling. An impression of disappointment, occasioned by the discovery that Mr Clennam scarcely possessed that delicacy for which, in the confidence of his nature, he had been inclined to give him credit, began to darken ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... rose Prudence, conscientiously pulling after her the thin cushion which had concealed the chair's shortcoming. "Look, Fairy!" she cried. "Did you take the bottom out of this chair?—It must have been horribly uncomfortable for those who have ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... That he was unusual, no one will deny; that he was the originator of many of China's greatest reform measures, is equally true; but that he lacked the power to execute what he conceived, and the ability to select great statesmen to assist him, seems to have been his chief shortcoming. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... chatting, and laughing. Alessandro walked up and down between the kitchen and the shed. He could hear the sounds of rattling dishes, jingling spoons, frying, pouring water. Savory smells began to be wafted out. Evidently old Marda meant to atone for the shortcoming of the noon. Juan Can, in his bed, also heard and smelled what was going on. "May the fiends get me," he growled, "if that wasteful old hussy isn't getting up a feast for those beasts of Indians! There's mutton and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to hear it. . . . Between ourselves, there is always something lacking in an abstainer—as in a man who has never learnt Greek. It is difficult with both to say what the lack precisely is; but with both it includes an absolute insensibility to the shortcoming." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unlike the gentler pair, each of these cherished lofty disdain for the other. Frank looked down upon the school-boy as an unlicked cub without two ideas; the bodily defect he endeavoured to cure by frequent outward applications, but the mental shortcoming was beneath his efforts. Johnny meanwhile, who was as hard as nails, no sooner recovered from a thumping than he renewed and redoubled his loud contempt for a great lout over six feet high, who had never drawn a sword or pulled a trigger. And now for the winter this book would be a perpetual ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... stock, and most families not more than a few days; yet no one ever entertains the slightest apprehension of a failure in the supply, or even of a variation in the price from day to day in consequence of any possible shortcoming. That this should be so, would be one of the most surprising things in the history of modern London, but that it is sufficiently accounted for by the magnificent system of roads, canals, and railways, which connect it with the remotest corners of the kingdom. Modern ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... historic works intended for the general public ... are the results of the insufficient preparation of the bad literary training of the popularisers." What an admirable criticism there is too of that peculiarly German shortcoming (one not, however, unknown elsewhere), which results in men "whose learning is ample, whose monographs destined for scholars are highly praiseworthy, showing themselves capable, when they write ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... nobody could (or indeed did) deny that the author, six months later, made up for any shortcoming in The Abbot, where, except the end (eminently of the huddled order), everything is as it should be. The heroine is, except Die Vernon, Scott's masterpiece in that kind, while all the Queen Mary scenes are unsurpassed in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... on conciliating them. It was now her conviction that they were displeased: their displeasure, awful as she believed it to be, did not terrify her, but it vexed her to the inmost heart: she feared that they had not been rightly propitiated, and resolved that the shortcoming ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... idea, gathered from some dim recollection of the past, that children needed constant correction and reproof; and she felt sure Mary Hawthorn neglected her duty in this respect, and was over-indulgent. So, being a most conscientious woman, she tried to supply this shortcoming, and the result was ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... him to write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion the attitude of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was his chief characteristic and made him lovable—in his personality ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... cribbage game under the barber shop was suspended, and the cribbage game was an institution. It was the deacon's one shortcoming, but even there he strove to get the better of the enemy, for the two men who were considered his only worthy antagonists at the game were Congregationalists. The three bickered and quarreled and threatened each other with violence, but they played daily. There were few afternoons ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... English became blurred with regard to grammar; the local speech was good enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Gissing will ever succeed in impressing himself. There is an absence of transcendental quality about his work, a failure in humour, a remoteness from actual life, a deficiency in awe and mystery, a shortcoming in emotional power, finally, a lack of the dramatic faculty, not indeed indispensable to a novelist, but almost indispensable as an ingredient in great novels of this particular genre.[1] In temperament and vitality he is palpably inferior to the masters (Dickens, Thackeray, Hugo, Balzac) ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... salient he and Barlow worked like privates in the confusion of the capture, turning with their own hands against the enemy a cannon that had just been taken. Barlow was as cool as when he fired off the old cannon in Cambridge ten years before. This stroke proved futile, but from no shortcoming of Barlow's. A few weeks later at Cold Harbor he effected a lodgment within the Confederate works when all others failed. That too proved futile, but his reputation was confirmed as one of the most brilliant of division commanders. There is a photograph in existence portraying Hancock and his division ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... away all which, however laboriously acquired, is dramatically unessential. Two of these powers belong in generous measure to Dr. Conan Doyle. The third, which is as necessary to complete success, he has not yet displayed. In 'Rodney Stone' an attempt has been made to cover up this shortcoming, in the form in which the story has been cast, and in the very choice of its title. But when the book comes to be read it is not the tale of Rodney Stone (who is a mere outsider privileged to narrate), but of his fashionable uncle's combat with Sir Lothian ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... they put it now among themselves, Mabel's shortcoming. She had never done anything to deserve this misery. Lying on her couch in the square, solid house in Augustus Road, Wimbledon, Mabel covered her nullity with the imperial purple of her doom. In the family she was supreme by ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... simply as a defect or shortcoming, a missing of the mark, as the Greek word hamartia implies, others treat it as a disease, or infirmity of the flesh—a malady affecting the physical constitution which may be {29} incurred by heredity ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... probably many will think them superfluous. Perhaps they will serve to give a true idea of the magnitude of the undertaking, and of the great responsibility which weighed upon me, and thus prove an anticipatory excuse for any accusation of shortcoming or dilatoriness that may be preferred against me. I will not, however, enter further into the business-details of the expedition—merely observing that, among other things to which I had to attend during my stay in Mourzuk, were, in the first place, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... attention to a couple of hours every seventh day, and let him alone on week-days. If the fanatics who are preoccupied day in and day out with their salvation were healthy, virtuous, and wise, the Laodiceanism of the ordinary man might be regarded as a deplorable shortcoming; but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism. What people call goodness has to be kept in check just as carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution will not stand very much of either ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... brother-in-law, if unusually silent, was driving well. But the road was against him. He had not sufficient experience to be able to keep his foot steady upon the accelerator when a high speed and a rude surface conspired to dislodge it—a shortcoming which caused us all three much discomfort and lost a lot of mileage. Then, again, I dared not let him drive too close to the side of the road. Right at the edge the surface was well preserved, and I knew ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the colored man's interest in the professional and business ventures of his race-variety can be of weight, there are several antecedent facts of primal value to be considered. If devotion to either class is lacking, it must be remembered, that shortcoming is traceable to causes which, however marked may be their effects in the Negro's case, are equally marked and striking in others of similar condition. Given centuries of environments and discipline hostile to the development of racial pride and co-operation, the result will not be unlike, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like." It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete. Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact, a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it—an organization produced ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... because he is the supreme giver, and the offerings of man fall short by an infinite distance of being a full return for the gifts of God; but gratitude in some degree makes up for this deficiency and shortcoming. I therefore, grateful for the favour that has been extended to me here, and unable to make a return in the same measure, restricted as I am by the narrow limits of my power, offer what I can and what I have to offer in my own way; and so I declare that for two full days I will maintain in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... officer cannot form plans like those of a land officer; his object is to embrace the happy moment which now and then offers; it may be this day, not for a month, and perhaps never." So also Farragut is reported to have said of a conspicuous shortcoming: "Every man has one chance; he has had his and lost it." Certainly, by failure that man lost promotion with its chances. It is somewhat congruous to this train of thought that Smith, whom I have so often mentioned, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... conversion means many things. It means first and foremost an understanding of human nature; a realization that the great shortcoming of industry has been that it held, as organized, too little opportunity for a normal outlet to the normal and more or less pressing interests and desires of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... The shortcoming of the Stoics is not in the superiority to fortune which they seek; but in the fact that they seek it directly by sheer effort of naked will, instead of being lifted above subjection to fortune by the attractive power of generous ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of every German shortcoming. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... coherent thought in the young man's mind. His consciousness seemed to be full of rebellion, longing and amazement. Never in his life had he been refused anything he greatly desired, when he had justice on his side. Now he was rejected, not for a shortcoming, but, according to his religious lights, for a virtue instead. His gaze searched the visible portion of the other chamber and found Rachel. In the half-light he saw that she had cast herself down against ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... truth; I felt abashed. How can we expect the heathen to become Christians, when those who call themselves so show so little regard to the religion of Christ? I see the same sad shortcoming on shore. Christians do not strive to bring honour to the name ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... their ideas. Outwardly polite, they are not unfrequently coarse in conversation. If the Canadian evinces respect, it is expected that he will be treated with respect in consideration therefor. His chief shortcoming is excessive sociability. When once settled among friends and relatives he cannot leave them—absence from home does in truth only make the heart grow fonder of home associations. He is active, compactly ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... souls report that they do not possess the answer to the Final Question—the "Why" of the Infinite Manifestation. And so we may be excused from attempting to answer it—and without shame or sense of shortcoming do we still say, to this question, "We do ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... dynamic or expressive force while they sound. The tone of the pianoforte, being produced by a blow, begins to die the moment it is created. The history of the instrument's mechanism, and also of its technical manipulation, is the history of an effort to reduce this shortcoming to a minimum. It has always conditioned the character of the music composed for the instrument, and if we were not in danger of being led into too wide an excursion, it would be profitable to trace the parallelism which ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was attracting the attention of the whole nation. This local contest not only enlisted Mr. Clay's interest, but aroused his deep personal feeling. In a private letter, since made public, he urged the editors of the Whig press "to lash Butler" for some political shortcoming which he pointed out. In a tone of unrestrained anger, he declared that "we should have a pretty time of it with one of Jackson's lieutenants at Washington, and another at Frankfort, and the old man in his dotage at the Hermitage dictating to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... between the two. The specialists have advanced surgery immensely, but, with many honorable exceptions, they have laid too much stress on their several specialties, making too wide a range of ailments fall within them. As for the community at large, their shortcoming lies in the fact that most of them would seek for a specialist in mumps in case that painful but transitory infliction were to come upon them, and in their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... his own favor. His own record has been taken sometimes as meaning what it has not meant—and sometimes as implying much more that the writer intended. A word which has required for its elucidation an insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. He has been injured, not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having them too well credited where they have been misunderstood. It ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... direct towards more money, which he loves much; incapable of sowing [as some of US do!] for a distant harvest. Treats, almost all the world as slaves. All his subjects are held in hard shackles. Rigorous for the least shortcoming, where his interest is hurt:—never pardons any fault which tends to inexactitude in the Military Service. Spandau very full,"—though I did not myself count. "Keeps in his pay nobody but those useful to him, and capable of doing employments well [TRUE, ALWAYS]; and the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... fanatic, let it be admitted, but a fanatic who suffered and labored for his cause. He was stigmatized as a demagogue, and many of the attributes of the demagogue adhered to him. But he was not a demagogue, for he sought nothing for himself... His great shortcoming was singleness of vision. He fixed his eyes upon one height and was unable to see ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... there was a single human being who shed a tear in Barchester for that woman, I believe it was your father. And it was the same with mine. It came to that at last, that I could not bear to speak to him of any shortcoming as to one of his own clergymen. I might as well have pricked him with a penknife. And yet they say men become heartless and unfeeling ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... slowly up the bank. Her head was bent, and could Gilbert have seen her face he would not have been quite so sure that his shortcoming was to her such an entirely impersonal affair. With her usual self-effacement, she made a brave attempt to put aside her grief. She had promised to spend this last evening with Arabella, and she must be cheerful and comforting. As she neared Mrs. Munn's ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... with a sense of shortcoming that I offer the reader this volume on a great subject, but should it succeed in stimulating interest in Breton story, and in directing students to a field in which their research is certain to be richly rewarded, I shall ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... contain syllables ending with e or other letters not good to sing. Some exceptionally beautiful poems possess this shortcoming, and, again, words that prove insurmountable obstacles. I have in mind one by Aldrich in which the word 'nostrils' occurs in the very first verse, and one cannot do anything with it. Much of the finest poetry—for instance, the wonderful writings of Whitman—proves unsuitable, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... editor reveals himself to be a better scholar, well-read in the classics, than a practical cook, well-versed in kitchen practice. Frequently, for instance, he confounds liquamen with garum, the age-old shortcoming of the Apician scholars. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, failure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... seems positively to have but one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly a quality, the defect of impeccability. It is at any rate impeccable; to seek in it a blemish, or, within its own limitations, a distinct shortcoming, is to lose one's pains. As workmanship, and workmanship of the subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure is perceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarely enthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visibly and beautifully ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... stores; mills, but no grist; an ample oven, and a dearth of bread. It was only when two of the ships had sailed for France that they took account of their provision and discovered its lamentable shortcoming. Winter and famine followed. They bought fish from the Indians, and dug roots and boiled them in whale-oil. Disease broke out, and, before spring, killed one third of the colony. The rest would have quarrelled, mutinied, and ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... all events is done in a corner; everything is openly discussed and investigated. Every week the visiting committee go round the house, and enter every ward and store-room. They taste and test the provisions, and the least shortcoming is certain to be severely brought home to those who are fulfilling the contracts. They pass through the dormitories, and see that everything is clean; woe betide those responsible if a spot of dirt be visible! There is the further check of ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... singular combination of qualities, apparently the most opposite, may be partly anticipated, but not quite. It results occasionally in a certain shortcoming as regards verite vraie, absolute artistic truth to nature. Those who would range Balzac in point of such artistic veracity on a level with poetical and universal realists like Shakespeare and Dante, or prosaic and particular realists ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... extradition may be claimed and granted is most desirable between this country and Great Britain. The territory of neither should become a secure harbor for the evil doers of the other through any avoidable shortcoming in this regard. A new treaty on this subject between the two powers has been recently negotiated and will soon be laid ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... to combine the ceremonial shortcoming of the eunuch with the imperfect faith of the Samaritan, is to arrive at the admission of the Gentiles[56]." Preparation had been made in both these instances for the carrying out of the Divine scheme by means of St. Philip, whose fellow-Deacon had gladly laid down his life in witnessing to the ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... thus accumulating a princely fortune at our expense. Others anthematised him for his slovenliness, casting hypercritical glances into their pots and pans, and scraping them with their knives. Then he would be railed at for his miserable "duffs," and other shortcoming preparations. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... natural human heart cannot bear this thought of the direct acting throughout nature of the infinite Creator. It brings us too close beneath His gaze in our sinful shortcoming and nakedness. ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... with that of other nationalities, but her system in the Philippines permitted abuses which good governments seek to avoid or, in the rare occasions when this is impossible, aim to punish. Here was the Spanish shortcoming, for these were the defects which made possible so strange a story as this biography unfolds. "Jose Rizal," said a recent Spanish writer, "was the living indictment of Spain's wretched ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... which any one who begins giving public lectures meets at the very outset is the fact that the audience won't come to hear him. This happens invariably and constantly, and not through any fault or shortcoming ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... sense of shortcoming in his farming operations. Notwithstanding his many acres, he felt himself growing "land-poor," as country people phrase it. He was not a reader, and looked with undisguised suspicion on book-farming. As for the agricultural ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... soften every sort of bitterness. But I cannot believe that it has any power over remorse. It is better that mother should think some person guilty of Victor's death, than that she should connect it with a weakness of her son or a shortcoming of her own." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... on his road, and before they parted she spoke thus, "Thou art not fitted out from home, son, as I fain would thou wert, a man so well born as thou; but, meseems, the greatest shortcoming herein is that thou hast no weapons of any avail, and my mind misgives me that thou wilt perchance ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... deserved,—and yet not so.— They had not baptism, which is the gate Of Faith,—thou holdest. If they lived before The days of Christ, though sinless, in that state God they might never worthily adore. And I myself am such an one as these. For this shortcoming—on no other score— We are lost, and most of all our torment is That lost to hope we live in strong desire." Grief seized my heart to hear these words of his, Because most splendid souls and hearts of fire I recognized, hung in that Limbo there. "Tell me, my master dear, tell me, my sire," ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... the circumference of a circle (taken from a paper by Mr. S. Drach[591] in the Phil. Mag., Jan. 1863, Suppl.) is as accurate as the use of 3.14159265. From three diameters deduct 8-thousandths and 7-millionths of a diameter; to the result add five per cent. We have then not quite enough; but the shortcoming is at the rate of about an inch and a sixtieth of an inch ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... disreputable persons had ever yet set up their unholy Lares and Penates in one of those new slack-baked villas; and that person must have been very bold who, conscious of moral unfitness or pecuniary shortcoming, should have ventured to pitch his ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... carried in its rude completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art—a world of desolation, and behold a log cabin with smoke issuing from the chimney and curtains at the windows! The interior was unplastered, but this shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth neatly over the logs, a device at once simple and strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was that of plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from the actual rumbling of the stage, felt its confused ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... same time, she has shown more and more anxiety to win laurels as a dramatic singer. But here the vocal style which she has exclusively cultivated has proved an insuperable obstacle. Although free from the smaller vices of the Italian school, she could not overcome the great and fatal shortcoming of that school—the maltreatment of the poetic text. She could not find the proper accents required in operas where the words of the text are as important as the melody itself; and she has failed therefore to give satisfaction even in such works as "Faust" ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... brings no peace, but care;" they create more thirst and render increase more defective and insufficient. And here it is requisite to know that defective things may fail in such a way that on the surface they appear complete, but, under pretext of perfection, the shortcoming is concealed. But they may have those defects so entirely revealed that the imperfection is seen openly on the surface. And those things which do not reveal their defects in the first place are the most dangerous, since very often it is not possible to be on guard against them; ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... freeholders of Westminster. Discontent became active and general. "Junius" began, in his letters, to attack boldly the King's friends, and into the midst of the discontent was thrown a message from the Crown asking for half a million, to make good a shortcoming in the Civil List. Men asked in vain what had been done with the lost money. Confusion at home was increased by the great conflict with the American colonies; discontents, ever present, were colonial as well as home. In such a time Burke endeavoured to show by what pilotage he would ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... writing of lyrics. For the past thirteen years he has been busiest with dramas, in none of which has he more than approximated to a dramatic quality that is as great as the quality of his lyrics. He has owned himself one reason of such shortcoming, in the notes to "Deirdre."[2] "The principal difficulty with the form of dramatic literature I have adopted is that, unlike the loose Elizabethan form, it continually forces one by its rigour of logic away from one's capacities, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the world has become secularized, and worship is but hollow consistency in the strict performance of outward acts of devotion. Our religion is but a hypocritical show of conformity. Our asylums, our hospitals, our institutions of charity? Alas! they but evidence our woeful shortcoming, and our persistent refusal to rise into the strength of the healing, saving Christ, which would render these obsolete institutions unnecessary in the world of to-day! The Holy Catholic Church is but a human ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... we see how we measure in length, we can turn the golden reed upon ourselves for specialization in breadth, and often again we find a shortcoming. The breadth must also be equal; we cannot fail in our breadth and come into true wisdom, true breadth means inclusion—this may vary in degree, but there must never be exclusion of anything in the well-rounded character, there is conscious selection, but never ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... contingent upon space flight it is doubtful if any are more perplexing than the biological ones. In fact, it now appears quite likely that the limiting factor on manned space exploration will be less the nature of physical laws or the shortcoming of space vehicle systems than the vulnerability ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... situation redolent with comedy. He had a quick eye for such matters; so quick an eye that he deplored on the present occasion her ladyship's entire lack of a sense of humor. But for that lamentable shortcoming, she might have enjoyed with him the grotesqueness of her having—she, who disliked him so exceedingly—toiled and anguished, robbed herself of sleep, and hoped and prayed with more fervor, perhaps, than she ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... you, Mrs. Upton, with the deepest pain," he said, "that I agree with Miss Imogen. I must inform you, Mrs. Upton, that you have no right, legal or moral, to bind us by your own shortcoming. Miss Imogen and I may do our duty without your help ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... rounds went by; Alan picked up increasing skill at the game, but failed to win. He saw his shortcoming, but could not do anything to help it: he was unable to extrapolate ahead. Hawkes was gifted with the knack of being able to extend probable patterns two or three moves into the future; Alan could only work with the given, and so he never made the swift series of guesses which ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... change much in the Apology. I have eliminated the article On Vows, since it was too brief, and substituted a fuller explanation. Now I am also treating of the Power of the Keys. I would like to have you read the articles of faith. If you find no shortcoming in them, we shall manage to treat the remainder. For one must always make some changes in them and adapt oneself to conditions. Subinde enim mutandi sunt atque ad occasiones accommodandi." (C. R. 2, 60; Luther, 16, 689.) Improvements suggested by ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... manifestly as wretched as they, or even more so, being convinced of her own shortcoming in not having won the affection or confidence that would have made all open between them. She could not understand why Hubert Delrio should not have been made ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to both these explanations (viz. 'That is the immortal, the fearless; that is Brahman') shows, at the same time, the individual soul to be free from sin, and the like. After that Prajapati, having discovered a shortcoming in the condition of deep sleep (in consequence of the expostulation of Indra, 'In that way he does not know himself that he is I, nor does he know these beings,' VIII, 11, 2), enters on a further explanation ('I ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
