"Hair's breadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dishonesty will be greatly to your benefit. Believe not this syren song. This is the time you are in the most danger of being deceived to your serious injury. Although there may be occasions when you will seem actually to lose by adhering to honesty, yet you should not shrink a hair's breadth. Whatever you may lose, in a pecuniary point of view, at any time, by a strict submission to honesty, you will make up an hundred-fold in the long-run, by establishing and preserving a reputation for integrity. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... subject to recurrent dreams of some kind. My present one is of a painful or at least sad nature; it returns approximately every three months and never varies by a hair's breadth. I am in a distant town where I lived many years back, and where each stone is familiar to me. I have come to look for a friend—one who, as a matter of fact, died long ago. My sleeping self refuses to admit this ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... fat little thing, with red rosy cheeks and right friendly black eyes, with which she looked boldly into the face of the sunshine of life, as it had dawned upon her, without blinking. In respect of her education and her character she had not risen a hair's breadth above the sphere of the handicraftsman. She gossiped with her female relatives and friends, and liked dressing herself, though in gay colours and without taste; but her own peculiar element, wherein she "lived and moved, and had her being," was the kitchen. Nobody's hare-ragout ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... have put the round pier so exactly under the round cliff. It is under it so accurately, that if the nearly vertical falling line of that cliff be continued, it strikes the sea-base of the pier to a hair's breadth. But Turner knew better than any man the value of echo, as well as of contrast,—of repetition, as well as of opposition. The round pier repeats the line of the main cliff, and then the sail repeats the diagonal shadow which crosses it, and emerges above ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... poised erect in the great calm of the public performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap! the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of that mighty sepulchre. The patient earth submits to the rule of man, and the mountains bow their rocky heads before the hammer of his power and the blast of his terrible enginery. The sea cares not for him; not so much as a single hair's breadth can its level be lowered or lifted by all the art, and all the effort, and all the enginery of all the generations of time. He comes and goes upon it, and a moment after it is as if he had never been there. He may engrave his titles upon the mountain top, and quarry ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... by a breeze, sometimes alighting on a patch of green grass, then gently whirled away to a still sunnier spot.... O, how blest should I be were there nothing to do! Then I would watch every inch and hair's breadth of the progress of the season; and not a leaf should put itself forth, in the vicinity of our old mansion, without my noting it. But now, with the burden of a continual task upon me, I have not freedom of mind to make such observations. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the ever deepening wash in the bottom of the boat, she seized the pole and worked frantically. But after a few moments she realized the futility of her puny efforts to deviate the heavy craft a hair's breadth from its course. The tree-root that had knocked the Texan unconscious had descended upon the boat, and remained locked over the gunwale, holding the trunk with its high-flung tangle of roots and branches close alongside, the whole structure ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... by a hair's breadth from what he considered his duty, even for party ends. "I would rather be right than be President," he said, and men knew that he ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... An improper sound it was to come from his manly chest; and what made it worse was the thought that for the least thing, by a mere hair's breadth, he might have taken this affair sentimentally. But clearly Anthony was no diplomatist. His brother-in- law must have appeared to him, to use the language of shore people, a perfect philistine with a heart like a flint. What Fyne precisely meant by "wrangling" I don't ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the Senate, but no concession in the form of a treaty would be acceptable. His words were emphatic. "One inch of ground yielded on the northwest coast,—one step backward from the claim to the navigation of the St. Lawrence,—one hair's breadth of compromise upon the article of impressment would be certain to meet the reprobation of the Senate." In this temper of parties, Adams added, "All we can hope to accomplish will be to adjourn controversies which we cannot adjust, and say to Britain as the Abbe Bernis said ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... success and failure is sometimes only a hair's breadth, the turning of a hand, and although the man who loses is frequently as deserving of commendation as the man who wins he seldom receives it, and Bruce knew that this would be particularly true of his attempt ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... nations. It is the same. In both cases there is the same necessity of idealization, the same tendency to personify the unknown. And it may be said that between Punch and Jupiter, Mother Hubbard and Venus, there is only a hair's breadth. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... odour of horse was replaced by that of cigars, less objectionable to Clyde. As he took his seat he glanced at her frankly, a shade of drollery in his eye, as if he were quite aware of her disapproval, and was amused by it. She stiffened a trifle, ignoring him utterly. Not by a hair's breadth would she encourage this ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of the unoccupied house above the jail Nan Keith stood rigid, her hand upon her heart. During the period of the committee's absence inside the jail she did not alter her position by a hair's breadth. She was in the hypnosis of a portentous waiting. Time fell into the abyss of eternity: whether it were ten minutes or ten hours did not matter ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... vote for seven, was haughtily received by the Prime Minister, who had already given his reasons, supported by the Emperor, by Von Moltke, and other eminent military authority, for adhering to the longer term. "I will not abate a hair's breadth of the septenate," said he. "If you do not vote it, I prefer to deal with another Reichstag." This on the second day of the debate. On the third day Bismarck replied to some of the positions of the Opposition, in a speech of three quarters of ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the arch-traitor withdrawn his foot one hair's breadth from his purpose, or paused one moment in his career of crime ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... got abreast of the point, and turned the bows of his own boat to the land; first casting loose his tow, that his movements might be unencumbered. The canoe hung an instant to the rock; then it rose a hair's breadth on an almost imperceptible swell of the water, swung round, floated clear, and reached the strand. All this the young man noted, but it neither quickened his pulses, nor hastened his hand. If any one had been ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... chief map-maker to him, and said: "Make a map of my kingdom and divide it by a line so evenly that each part shall be exactly half. There must not be one hair's breadth more on the east of the ...
— Wonderwings and other Fairy Stories • Edith Howes
... eugenics, that question was exclusively in the hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever might be the value of the experiment—and a first experiment cannot well be ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... same sense of superior size and strength and a slight whitening of the eye, as if ready to shy at any moment. At the door he "backed." Then he entered sideways. I noticed that he cleared the doorway at the top and the sides only by a hair's breadth. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the spell of the mosque's witchery that the next instant I should have forgotten both door and panel had not Joe touched the toe of my boot with his own—he was sitting close to me—and in explanation lifted his eyebrow a hair's breadth, his eyes fixed on the slowly sliding panel—sliding noiselessly, an inch at a time. Only then did my ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it, that it's almost impossible to make a consecutive story for you. It's the total cumulative effect that is so—so disquieting." He chose his words with care, as though determined not to travel one hair's breadth beyond ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... every day. I questioned him closely. He was an intelligent man, and had, I could see, taken quite a liking to his little patient. He told me that the knife had just missed, by a hair's breadth, the carotid artery, but unfortunately it had struck the cervical plexus, that important nerve-plexus, situated in the side of the neck; and had cut the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which arises from the cervical ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quixana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when dark clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with him, he girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he suffered for the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth from it. "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... opening, of which he was not slow to avail himself. He sprang forward, lunging at me furiously, and would have run me through there and then, and ended the matter, bad not his foot, as he advanced, caught in the stool, which still lay against the wall. He stumbled, his point missed my hip by a hair's breadth, and he himself fell all his length on the floor, his rapier breaking ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... no doubt where their sympathies would lie, should Roger cross courses with our new master. The carpenter, working on a plank laid on deck, heard him coming, glanced up, and seeing who it was, continued at his labor without moving so much as a hair's breadth to let him by; the steward looked him in the eye brazenly and impersonally; and others of the crew, among them the strange Blodgett, treated him with a certain subtle rudeness, even contempt. Yet here and there a man was glad to see him coming and gave him a cordial nod, or ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... ground of complaint, but if they are not, the federal government, if not specially called on according to the terms of the constitution, is helpless. Citizen A.B., grievously wronged, beaten, robbed, lynched within a hair's breadth of death, may apply in vain to any and all prosecuting officers of the State. The forms of law that might give him redress are all there; the prosecuting officers, judges, and sheriffs, that might act, are there; but, under an oppressive and tyrannical public ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... would like to know! It would please your pride to feel that your sister was truly married! Well, you shall not know. That was my revenge on you, and I do not mean to change it by a hair's breadth. I have come here tonight simply to let you know that I am alive, so that if any violence be done me where I am going there may be ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... old men, white-haired, scarred with the wounds of bygone battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned, never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did little more than waste their ammunition. But the shattering detonations ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... wiser to dismount. He gave a frantic 'whoop' and tried to get round, then, as he seemed falling over, he pulled the handles straight again and to the left by an instinctive motion, and shot behind her hind wheel, missing her by a hair's breadth. The pavement kerb awaited him. He tried to recover, and found himself jumped up on the pavement and riding squarely at a neat wooden paling. He struck this with a terrific impact and shot forward off his saddle into a clumsy entanglement. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... anything at all. Their language and writing are childishly imperfect, though the oldest in existence. In government, in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, they follow rules laid down for them three thousand years ago or more and from which to swerve a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and gone the length of trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing pigeon's "locality," he would not be one whit better prepared to appreciate Kipling's "Dipsy Chanty," and not a hair's breadth nearer a point where he could write a poem equal ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... with two quick movements—a flash and a jerk of one hand up, and the other down, the eye riveted to the nicety of a hair's breadth, the stroke downward gauged to the cup of a thimble, to settle over the point of the spindle's end; for the missing of a thread's breadth would send a spindle blade through the hand, or tangle and snap a thread which was turning with a thousand ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... expend upon a book an amount of labour and a value of material quite out of proportion to the importance of the book. Still, being a thoroughly conscientious workman, who never hurried the forwarding, never cut from a margin a hair's breadth more than was necessary, and hated finger-marks on the whiteness of a page, he was well known as such, and had plenty of work—had often, indeed, to refuse what was offered him, hence was able to decline all such jobs as would give him no pleasure, and grew more fastidious as he grew older ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... five-mile in the morning we found Mac "packed up" and ready for the start, and, passing the reins to him, the Maluka said, "You know the road best "; and Mac, being what he called a "bit of a Jehu," we set off in great style across country, apparently missing trees by a hair's breadth, and bumping over the ant-hills, boulders, and broken boughs that lay half-hidden in the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... may be objected that the moral state of men is fixed at death, and that nothing that we or they can do can influence it by a hair's breadth. That this has been a popular opinion is true; and it is equally true that many have supposed that all who have had faith on the earth are in bliss; and that all who have been without faith are in misery; and that the beatitude of all the good is equal and ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... have not found it out for yourself, real life is not like a book. Hector Garret is not the man to beg and implore, and wait patiently for a score of years. I wish you saw how he manages his strong horse. He sits, and does not yield a hair's breadth. Though it paws and rears, he just holds its head tight and pats its neck. Now, I want him to check and guide me. I have been left a great deal to myself. Papa and mamma are not young, and it appears to me that a single child is not enough to draw out the sympathies of a staid, silent ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... which had caused the Assembly's dismissal; it resolved to preserve order, and quietly dissolved itself. "I doubt," said the British Attorney-General, "whether they have committed an overt act of treason, but I am sure they have come within a hair's breadth of it." ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... is here!' said the old man gently. 'Thou hast never stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child, I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall. Day by day, since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine, art thou weakened. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... before the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by a hair's breadth. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... mechanism suffers from the smallest disturbance; the instrument gets out of gear and will not answer to the player. After a night of play or drink, Camillo Agrippa himself could not thrust straight, and his parries were neither sure nor rapid. An error of a hair's breadth will suffice to let three inches of steel into one's body.' They were at the top of the Via Condotti, and in the distance they could see the Piazza di Spagna, lighted up by the full moon, the stairway ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... again. He held her still, and the point of the knife crept a hair's breadth closer to the life within her. A little more and it would have slipped into ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... by a hair's breadth, shooting up to the roof, where it struck the rock with such violence that the head was shattered and the remaining portion fell ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... no more was published. The introduction is an account of the editorial staff to wit, a learned divine who "hath entered with so much discernment into the true spirit of the schoolmen, especially Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, that he is qualified to resolve, to a hair's breadth, the nicest cases of conscience." A physician who "knows, to a mathematical point, the just tone and harmony of the risings pulses...." A lawyer who "what he this day has proved to be a contingent remainder, to-morrow he will with equal learning show must ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... its old timbers could scarcely have resisted, when the girl suddenly shot between him and the door, placing herself with her back to it and her arms spread out, so quickly that he only missed by a hair's breadth dealing her such a blow as would undoubtedly have ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Redmain?—I would send for him at once— not wait for him to come to me—and entreat him, as he loved me, to deliver me from the dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, if I were you. If I were myself in your circumstances, and hated him as you do, that would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free, but I would behave myself so that he could not do it. While I begged him, I mean, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... in which the Lord's Prayer will become a fulfilled prophecy upon this earth. Remembering, however, that you may call anything by any name without in the least changing its nature—bethinking myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a buffalo, without advancing a hair's breadth towards making it one— I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very homely intention I had previously formed. This was merely to tell you, the members, students, and friends of the Birmingham and Midland Institute—firstly, what ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... hair's breadth, hardly the shade of a shade, your honor! Oh, it's the miraculous eye ye've got, for the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... leaning against the stockade marked the boundaries of our diminutive world. Beyond them, invisible, lurked a relentless foe. Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man's worth was set down to a hair's breadth. Some were always to be found squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight with a fair field and no favor was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... enough when you know. If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to reason. Who is the author? Tell me that; and I'll place the play for you to a hair's breadth. ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... positivist; and he knew positively; "There was no world beyond this certain drop. Prove me another! Let the dreamers dream Of their faint gleams, and noises from without, And higher and lower; life is life enough." Then swaggering half a hair's breadth hungrily, He seized upon an ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation. For this there were various reasons. To begin with, she had a very plain face and she was entirely without illusions as to her appearance. She had taken its measure to a hair's breadth, she knew the worst and the best, she had accepted herself. It had not been, indeed, without a struggle. As a young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her eyes out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the habit ...
— The American • Henry James
... he hurled another mighty rock, which almost lighted on the rudder's end, yet missed it as if by a hair's breadth. So Ulysses and his comrades escaped, and came to the island of the wild goats, where they found their comrades, who indeed had waited long for them, in sore fear lest they had perished. Then Ulysses divided among his company all the sheep which ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... It had not been his fault that the man crawled through a small avenue of technicalities and avoided the punishment that had seemed so certain. He had waged war bitterly against the blackmailer, and he missed complete victory by a hair's breadth. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... when our telyaga was built, else it would have been wider and longer. When our small parcels were arranged inside there was plenty of room for one but hardly enough for two. Borasdine and I were of equal height, and neither measured a hair's breadth less than six feet. When packed for riding I came in questionable shape, my body and limbs forming a geometric figure that Euclid never knew. Notwithstanding my cramped position I managed to doze a little, and contemplated an essay on a new mode of triangulation. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... age, and it is alien to many all their lives. But the stars! From them, the least and the greatest, man can learn to go his way patiently, year by year. Always the same course and the same pace. No deviation even one hair's breadth, no swifter or slower movement for the unresting wanderers. No sudden wrath, no ardent desire, no weariness or aversion urges or delays them. How I love and honour them! They willingly submit to the great law until the end of all things. What they appoint for this hour is for it alone, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a modest man, as well as an honest one. Censure cannot move me by one hair's breadth from the narrow path of rectitude; praise cannot unduly puff me up. Had I been other than I am, this last week would have gone fatally near to ruining that timid and shrinking diffidence which (I say it without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... which, up to now, he had leaned against the rail. He knew that he had been within a hair's breadth of instant death, but there was nothing in his bearing to ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.' See also post, March 24, 1775. Hume said of the evidence in favour of second-sight—:'As finite added to finite never approaches a hair's breadth nearer to infinite, so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest accession of probability by the accumulation of testimony.' J. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the most exposed. Out of six guns in the battery which he calls "ours," five were disabled in six days. On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, "seldom missed our battery;" and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, "I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained absent from ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... he missed his stroke. But it was only by a hair's breadth, and had it not been for his own sword and my fleetness of foot, the false Wringham Pollixfen might for the second time have vanished as completely as before, while if Louis had died, no one would have suspected as his murderer a man so important as his Excellency ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... silence, but this time quickly broken; a boy's black head appeared above the bracken, a little brown hand was held out, and David, without troubling himself to move a hair's breadth, looked full into his ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... have been more than twenty-five years of age, and was a little above the ordinary height; had he a single hair's breadth taller, the matchless symmetry of his form would have been destroyed. His unclad limbs were beautifully formed; whilst the elegant outline of his figure, together with his beardless cheeks, might have entitled him to the distinction ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... destiny had not only dragged into political life, but, as Whip of the Parnellite Party, had made him the official representative of a body for the most part socially unknown, and disliked with a fervour happily not often imported into Parliamentary warfare. DICK POWER, whilst never swerving by a hair's breadth from loyalty to his colleagues and his leader, so bore himself that he was welcome in any Parliamentary circle, from "GOSSET's Room" to the floor of the House, which he sometimes "took" to deliver a witty speech in support of a Motion for adjourning over the Derby. He was only in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... me! You'll admit, a feather's weight, A hair's breadth only held you from the gates That Oldham entered. Almost they sufficed Your spirit; yes, a moth's wing could have blown You toward them! 'Twas so nearly I fulfilled All that I promised. Therefore when I speak, You will, for justice's sake, concede I am No absolute bungler, no coarse-palated ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... people he was wont To take some trouble with his toilet, but This morning rather spent less time upon 't; Aside his very mirror soon was put; His curls fell negligently o'er his front, His clothes were not curb'd to their usual cut, His very neckcloth's Gordian knot was tied Almost an hair's breadth too ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... no reply, but the gleaming black eyes never left his own, nor did the figure on the horse move a hair's breadth. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... half-paralyzed with desire to bend down and kiss them. How would a kiss be? how would they—And so there is a momentary, barely perceptible pause, filled with a painful intensity of feeling, to which neither gives way one hair's breadth. Then he gives ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... at the end of a wide avenue, a broad alley of turf between double lines of unrivalled beeches, the first glimpse of the Court burst upon Clarissa's sight—unchanged and beautiful. A man must have been a Goth, indeed, who had altered the outward aspect of the place by a hair's breadth. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... theoretical reformer. He would never take the wrong road; but, if he could not go as far as he wanted to along the right road, he would go as far as he could, and bide his time for the rest. He would not compromise a hair's breadth on a principle; he would compromise cheerfully on a method which did not mean surrender of the principle. He perceived that there were in political life many bad men who were thoroughly efficient and many good men who would have liked to accomplish high results ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... the first performance of Electra, when the author was carried home on the shoulders of his admirers. La de San Quintn and El abuelo were not far behind. But neither success nor failure made the dramatist swerve a hair's breadth in his methods. Firmly serene in his consciousness of artistic right, he kept on his way with characteristic stubbornness and impassivity. Only on two occasions did he allow the criticisms of the press to goad him into a reply. In the prefaces to Los condenados and Alma y vida he defended ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... enough to take us and the side boxes on the pad through the tangle. Often a wrong direction was taken, and a circuit had to be made to get round a tree, a mass of creepers, or a deep pool. Both the Burman and the elephant seemed to calculate, to a hair's breadth, the height and width of all it carried. I think the corner of one box only once touched a branch, and when we lay low no branches touched our heads; either the Burman's dah or the elephant's trunk cleared them ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... suspecting the madness that was in his mind. He was absolutely sober and self-collected. He walked along a seam of the matting that ran the whole length of the gallery, and did not deviate from it one hair's breadth. Now he was ready. Perfectly prepared to deliver his lecture. He sat down and picked up the newspaper, and the print was clear. "The weather still continues to be fine over the British Islands. The anti-cyclone has not yet passed away from the Bay of Biscay...." He read the jargon through ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... church. It was the custom to ring the bells at sunset. He had ensconced himself between the wall and the great bell, and "when this rose, and showed to him the whole opening of its mouth," he found he was within a hair's breadth of contact with it. Retreat was impossible, and the least movement exposed his head to be shattered. The conception is terrible enough, but by no means a novel one, as all readers conversant with the pages of this Magazine will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... make-shifts and utterly demoralizing. There is "not much in a truthfulness which is only phrase-deep." Whether we deceive others or no, we cannot afford to deceive ourselves; we should never deviate a hair's breadth from the truth without acknowledging the deviation to ourselves as a necessary but unfortunate evil. A man may say nothing but what is true, and yet intentionally give a wrong impression; "truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity." "A lie may ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... knowledge, youngster," cried the man, firing his pistol; and finding that it had missed Gerald's head, though by a hair's breadth alone, he lifted his cudgel and would have effectually put an end to his young assailant, had not Larry interposed his cutlass, and, before the man could again raise his weapon, inflicted so severe a wound that he was compelled to drop it. The lieutenant and more seamen coming up threw ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... patience for cutting in confined spaces. When this has been accomplished to satisfaction, a piece of maple without curl or knot must be cut a little thicker than what has been removed, but as to superficial area, fitting to a hair's breadth if ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... of the nature of the love of Christ, is obtained, and retained, by keeping of these two doctrines at an everlasting distance as to the conscience; to wit, not suffering the law to rule but over my outward man, not suffering the gospel to be removed one hair's breadth from my conscience. When Christ dwells in my heart by faith (Eph 3:17), and the moral law dwells in my members (Col 3:5), the one to keep up peace with God, the other to keep my conversation in a good decorum: then am I right, and not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and able to imbue the child-bride, her daughter, with such an unyielding devotion to the faith of Nicaea, that not one of all the formidable personages whom she met in her new husband's home could avail to move her by one hair's breadth ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... steaming I blew out the water and steam, took off the manhole cover, and there were the things as I had left them thirteen weeks previously; of course they were all coated with fine mud, but no signs of having moved a hair's breadth. ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... rightly rejected the prayers of monks and priests, who howl and growl day and night like fiends; but none of them think of praying for a hair's breadth of anything. And if we would assemble all the churches, together with all ecclesiastics, they would be obliged to confess that they have never from the heart prayed for even a drop of wine. For none of them has ever purposed to pray from obedience to God and faith in His ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... endeavour in a stern land with its own dangers and adventures which Toby accepted as a matter of course and to be expected. In his city streets Charley might dodge an automobile at a crossing and escape with his life by a hair's breadth, but Charley would scarcely give such an adventure a second thought. But to Toby such would have been an adventure to think and talk about and to remember with ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... faithful, their sentinels were everywhere, watching for the enemy's approach. Athanasius was always warned in time and led by trusty guides to another and a safer place. Sometimes it was only by a hair's breadth that he escaped, but for six years he eluded his enemies. There was not one of the monks who would not gladly have laid down his life for him. He lived among them as one of themselves, and they learned more from him of the religious ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... and supplemented his weakness, helping and learning alternately, while his blind master's skill filled him with wonder and despair. The years of struggle for perfection had not been wasted; and though the eye that once detected the deviation of a hair's breadth could no longer tell the true from the false, yet nature had been busy with her divine work of compensation. The one sense stricken with death, she poured floods of new life and vigor into the others. Touch became something more ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... drop the quill, for my tale is told. For me, life is full of many quiet interests and much happiness, but even now there grips me at times a longing for those mad wild days, when death hung on a hair's breadth, and the glamour of romance beckoned the feathered ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... girl, I know. I should not be here speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit, right through to the very depths of your soul. Tell me, like one good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for? And if there is I'll never trouble you a hair's breadth again, but will be, if you will let ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Cincinnati platform of 1856, with the addition of a demand for Cuba and an indorsement of the Dred Scott decision and of any future decisions of the Supreme Court on slavery in the Territories. But the Southerners would not yield a hair's breadth. Yancey, their orator, upbraided Douglas and his followers with cowardice because they did not dare to tell the North that slavery was right. In that strange way the question of right and wrong was forced again upon the man who strove to ignore ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... paneled wall, against which I had laid my ear. No crack or seam indicated a hidden door, yet I knew there must be one, and gently pressed the wainscot with my shoulder. It gave, almost imperceptibly; I pressed again, and the hidden door opened a hair's breadth, a finger's breadth, an inch, widening, widening noiselessly; and I bent forward and peered into another closet like the one I stood in, also lighted by a loop for rifle-fire. As my head advanced, first ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... but this I can vouch is his true story. For the most part it is told exactly in his own words. You'll admit its truth when you have read it, for there isn't a line in it which will stretch your imagination a hair's breadth. It's the plain unvarnished tale of an average young man who joined the army because he considered it his duty—who fought for many months. That's why I am trying to record it; for if I tell it truly I shall have written the story of many thousands—I shall have ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... reluctance; they are ugly things to think of; but some illustrations are necessary in order to put in your mind some notion of what jails mean. An episode which, as it turned out, had elements of the ridiculous, but which came within a hair's breadth of having very fatal consequences, occurred a short time before I became an inmate; it is still spoken of with emotion by those ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... you," he said, "that between me and the Unconditioned, the Absolute, scarcely a hair's breadth intervenes. To gasify metals, I only need to find the means of submitting them to intense heat in some centre where the pressure of the atmosphere is nil,—in ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... what an occasion to a truly chaste writer like ourself of touching that nice brink and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something 'not quite proper,' while like a skilful posture master, balancing between decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line from which a hair's breadth deviation is destruction.... That conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember where allusively to the flight of Astroea we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still—that 'Modesty, taking her final leave of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... ease, his great bushy head, in which the gray was beginning to sprinkle thick, a contrast to the dark pillar of the porch. "I just returned an hour ago," he added as casually as though food for gossip had not been avoided by a hair's breadth and was not still imminent. "It's good, unqualifiedly, to ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... over him? In spite of his passion for her had she ever turned him by so much as a hair's breadth from the direction of his impetuous desires? Once only she had withstood him—once only she had triumphed, and for that triumph she had paid by a complete surrender! She had been too glad to yield, too fearful of bringing a cloud over the sunny blue ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... American clock on the mantelpiece. The result relieved him; it was not so late as he had feared. He knelt down, to steady himself, as nearly as possible on a level with the nurse's knees. By a hair's breadth at a time, he got both hands under the child. By a hair's breadth at a time, he drew the child away from her; leaving her hand resting on her lap by degrees so gradual that the lightest sleeper could not have felt the change. That done (barring accidents), all was done. Keeping the child ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... and closed with a snap—but not on the crunch of human flesh, not on the crackle of human bones. The wretched little native, with incredible dexterity, had swerved and dived, just eluding the hungry jaws by no more than a hair's breadth. But to what avail? ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford |
