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More "Foible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... investigated. But genuine knowledge begins when the investigator admits that he must learn of nature, not nature of him. It might be truly said of one who held the alchemical conception of nature that "his foible was omniscience"; and omniscience negatives the attainment ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... just what you did. And besides—I seem to have a queer foible for telling the truth just now. Odd, isn't it, when I've been lying so ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... report at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar say, from an epigram in the Anthology?), ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... sense. Had his studies been more serious, had his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Mrs. Detlor praised was as wine and milk to Hagar. He was about to speak, but Baron, whose foible was hurriedly changing from one subject to another, pulled a letter out of his pocket and said: "But maybe this is of more importance to Mrs. Detlor than my foolishness. I won't ask you to read it. I'll tell you what's in it. But, first, it's supposed, isn't it, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... played upon by those who, it is true, were not at all conscious of the injury they were inflicting upon him at the time. He was certainly the pride of the family, and even while they humored and increased this his predominant and most dangerous foible, we are bound to say that they gratified their own affection as much as they ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... you are a sort of nephew on his mother's side; he was explaining it to me again only yesterday. If you are his nephew, it follows that I must also be a relation of yours, most excellent prince. Never mind about that, it is only a foible; but just now he assured me that all his life, from the day he was made an ensign to the 11th of last June, he has entertained at least two hundred guests at his table every day. Finally, he went so far as to say that they never rose from the table; they dined, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... irony in the last words, for Lady Markland had, if the truth must be told, a foible that way, and liked, as so many women do, the idea of having a large correspondence, and took pleasure in keeping it up. She answered eagerly that she had no letters to write (though not without a glance at her ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... should be careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... a thousand faults that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against a sister, is Ridicule. Not only does it rob her who indulges it of the rich joys of admiration, but it poisons the depths of her own spirit, and breaks the peace of her associates. Few are they, who have not some foible or personal defect, on which this vice may fix itself. One is an object of taunts for her ignorance; another for a plain face; a third for an impediment in her speech; and how many suffer this infliction for some article of dress proscribed ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... reverse of these, I was constantly receiving evidence; but let it be remembered that before I joined Rossetti (which was only in the last year of his life) in that intimate relation which revealed to my unwilling judgment every foible and infirmity of character, the whole nature of the man had been vitiated by an enervating drug. At my meeting with him the brighter side of his temperament had been worn away in the night-troubles of his unrestful couch; and of that needful volition, which establishes for a man the right ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... it has been generally conceded, in spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... d'aveuglement: qu'il faut avoir un grand soin de se defaire de ses prejuges, et autres choses semblables. Ils pensent que cela suffit pour ne plus se laisser seduire a ses sens, et pour ne plus se tromper du tout. Il ne suffit pas de dire que l'esprit est foible, il faut lui faire sentir ses foiblesses. Ce n'est pas assez de dire qu'il est sujet a l'erreur, il faut lui decouvrir en quoi consistent ses erreurs."—MALEBRANCHE, Recherche ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... prerogatives. Such interference, by whomsoever exercised, is wholly intolerable to her. This susceptibility may perhaps be a feminine weakness, but it is a veritable maternal instinct, and one with which few who have observed it will have the heart to find fault. In Mrs. Savareen's bosom this foible existed in a high state of development, and her stepmother so played upon it as to make life under the same roof with her a cross too hard to be borne. After a few months' trial, the younger of the two women resolved ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... hardness of heart; brutality &c. (malevolence) 907; corruption &c. (debasement) 659; knavery &c. (improbity) 940[obs3]; profligacy; flagrancy, atrocity; cannibalism; lesbianism, Sadism. infirmity; weakness &c. adj.; weakness of the flesh, frailty, imperfection; error; weak side; foible; failing, failure; crying sin, besetting sin; defect, deficiency; cloven foot. lowest dregs of vice, sink of iniquity, Alsatian den[obs3]; gusto picaresco[It]. fault, crime; criminality &c. (guilt) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, mostly, by his latent savagery—which she would hardly have been willing to apply to Ignacio's worshipful ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... This good lady, whose foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which were known only ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... imply affectation, nor even insincerity, but merely a different conception of the social amenities from that of the all-conquering American, who, it is to be hoped, will not treat this foible with the contempt which, in his superior wisdom, he may ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... fancies which have been imputed to him, or whether he merely amused himself by giving currency to them among his domestics and dependents. He certainly never scrupled to express a belief in supernatural visitations, both verbally and in his correspondence. If such were his foible, the Rook Cell was an admirable place to engender these delusions. As I have lain awake at night, I have heard all kinds of mysterious and sighing sounds from the neighboring ruin. Distant footsteps, too, and the closing of doors in remote parts of the Abbey, would send hollow reverberations ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the case, but never leaning too much upon authorities. Charles Emerson's beautiful phrase in his epitaph upon Professor Ashmun, "Books were his helpers, never his masters," was most aptly applied to Thomas. If he had any foible which affected at all his usefulness or success in life it was an impatience of authority, whether it were the authority of a great reputation, or of party, or of public sentiment, or of the established and settled opinions of mankind. He went ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts and emotions, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Mr. THURSTON'S generalities (his talk of "hysteria," which was never a British foible, showed his lack of elementary observation), but the character of John intrigued me as a fair example of the type of egoist, very common among quite good fellows, who is more concerned to satisfy his own sense of the proper thing to do than to consider in what way, less romantic ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable —and they are so. Whereas, some ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the keeper, usually so keen to take a hint, only answered that the lime was the quickest wood to grow of which he knew. In his heart he enjoyed the squire's difficulty. Finally the squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a ladder and a hatchet, and chopped off the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... this was Jim's especial Foible, He ran away when he was able, And on this inauspicious day He slipped his hand and ran away! He ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene: and, lastly, they never produce the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... III's than in any preceding reign. The extravagance in dress which prevailed in this period is too well known a characteristic of it to need dwelling upon. Sumptuary laws in vain sought to restrain this foible; and it rose to such a pitch as even to oblige men, lest they should be precluded from indulging in gorgeous raiment, to abandon hospitality, a far more amiable species of excess. When the kinds of clothing respectively worn by the different classes served ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825. Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency to consider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set it down to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth. There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... "have been accused of a foible for wedding-rings. I grant you I had rather marry a healthy couple than leave them aching, and that the sooner there's a christening the better I am pleased. Another soul for Christ to save; another ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... seen more often a strong than a pretty thing; and another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. Chercher le midi a quatorze heures is no foible of his. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... a fool, Shirley, in some respects; I do despise myself. But I said I would not make you my confessor, for you cannot reciprocate foible for foible; you are not weak. How steadily you watch me now! Turn aside your clear, strong, she-eagle eye; it is an insult to fix ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and toys was inherent, and it had been increased by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week or two, he made such an inroad on it as compelled a flight. Having made up his mind to quit ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... reason. I have spoken much More than my wont: it is a foible which Was not of mine, but more excuses you, Inasmuch as it shows, that I approach A dotage which may justify this deed Of yours, although the law does not, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... distinguished cut; and if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of materials, surely the numerous straight folds of her dress invested her with a great dignity. Moreover, there may have been some lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish habit, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... he had his weak points; but in speaking of these, I must not be understood as referring to his obstinacy: which was one of his strong points—"assurement ce n' etait pas sa foible." When I mention his weakness I have allusion to a bizarre old-womanish superstition which beset him. He was great in dreams, portents, et id genus omne of rigmarole. He was excessively punctilious, too, upon small points of honor, and, after his own fashion, was a man of his word, beyond ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... very frequently, and always treated her with the respect to which she was entitled. He added also to her dowry a third million of francs, that she might feel no inconvenience from the habits of expense to which it was her foible to be addicted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... that we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as the winds" is our death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds unfickle? Would a perpetual northeaster lay us open to perpetual gratitude? or is a soft south gale to be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... screen, so that the chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; and here had been her oratory, where she daily ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was suddenly transformed, and fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if he had seen ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... that worthy man's character to be imitated. On the contrary we wish it, so far as it goes, to operate as a warning against the indulgence of a spirit, which, though it be a virtue of the highest order when kept under the control of discretion, does, like every other virtue, degenerate into a foible, when carried to excess. Fortunately for that member of doctor Cooper's family of whom we are writing, he found, when his youth wanted it, a sincere friend. Mr. Godwin, whose name is well known in the republic ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... up, and waited with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... though many a New Englander is bravely free from it, while it is not unknown in Alaska or Japan. From such an over-conscientious conscience, and from its incidents and its counterfeits, there is bred a redundancy of verbal moralising. That was not a foible of Lincoln. The sense of moral obligation underlies his weightier utterances, as the law of gravitation underlies scientific demonstrations,—not talked ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... work. His study in its perfect neatness was more like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so. 'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly no one had reason ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... some of them of a sort not to have been expected in him. Vanity, the common weakness of small minds, was the most disfiguring foible of this great one. He had not the simplicity which becomes greatness so well. He could give himself theatrical airs, strike attitudes, and dart stage lightnings from his eyes; yet he was formidable even in his affectations. Behind his great intellectual powers lay a burning enthusiasm, a force ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... struck, G.J., one of whose monastic weaknesses was a ritualistic regard for punctuality, was in his place at the head of the table, and the table well filled with members, for the honorary secretary's harmless foible was known and admitted. The table and the chairs, the scraping of the chair-legs on the bare floor, the agenda papers and the ornamentation thereof by absent-minded pens, were the same as in the committee's youth. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Henry V. It is in them an inexhaustible stimulus to action. It is never quiescent, but its operations are regulated by morality and reason, and it finally induces a serene exaltation of temper. It was a pardonable foible of Elizabethan writers distinctly to identify with the English character this healthily energetic sort of patriotism—the sort of patriotism to which an atmosphere of knavery ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... totally unqualified for business, as she knew not how to charge. On my observing that that was a piece of ignorance with which few landladies or landlords either were taxable, he said that however other publicans might overcharge, undercharging was her foible, and that she had brought herself very low in the world by it—that to his certain knowledge she might have been worth thousands instead of the trifle which she was possessed of, and that she was particularly ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept up to ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... ends. I have faithfully recounted the events of the 9th of November, at what cost to my own sensibilities none but myself can ever know. But the one foible of my life is amiability; and, from the first, I had no intention of breaking off abruptly when my promise was fulfilled, leaving the reader to conclude that I woke up at my camp, and found the whole thing a dream. The dream expedient ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... vois, victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living Emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he enquired the cost of all this funeral pomp—"Ten million of sesterces!" On this he observed that if they would give him but a hundred thousand they might throw his body into ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... been so elaborate upon the head of breakfast, which meal, I freely confess to be my foible, that I feel as though any description of dinner would now come comparatively weak; besides, to speak verily, one might, with time and prudent choice, get as good a dinner, perhaps, a-shore in favoured countries: but for a breakfast, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... account ("Memoirs," vol. i., ch. xvi.) of Bonaparte's contempt for any officer who could not give him definite information, and of the devices by which his orderlies played on this foible. See too Bourrienne for Bonaparte's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, 'Mind the edge of the carpet'; and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little hysterically—all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which accuse the hostess. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... sense for rhetoric than for poetry, like the Romans; but, like the Romans, they had too high a spirit not to like a noble intellectual stimulus of some kind, and thus they were carried out of the region of the merely prosaic. Their foible,—the bad excess of their characterising quality of strenuousness,—was not a prosaic flatness, it ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... shook his head. "Oh, dear! How unfortunate! I'm afraid Miss Brump will not suit, Miss Ram. My uncle—extraordinary foible—has a violent objection to brown hair. He will not have it in ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... my things to rights to go off to-morrow. Though I always wonder why it should be so, I feel a dislike to order and to task-work of all kinds—a predominating foible in my disposition. I do not mean that it influences me in morals; for even in youth I had a disgust at gross irregularities of any kind, and such as I ran into were more from compliance with others and a sort of false shame, than ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes sought ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... which this old officer spoke of his profession, and the high point of view in which he placed it, increased our hero's desire to serve a campaign abroad. Good sense, politeness, and experience of the world preserved Count O'Halloran from that foible with which old officers are commonly reproached, of talking continually of their own military exploits. Though retired from the world, he had contrived, by reading the best books, and corresponding with persons of good information, to keep up with the current of modern affairs; ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... crack it some day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken pity on me the last few summers, and I think she loves it as much ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... Manchester was not accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy. He concluded that it was a foible of ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby—it was a foible, a vanity, what you will—of my omniscience. I knew months ahead the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who were jilted; of wives ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... peuvent venir y mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... diocese of Barchester the Archdeacon of Barchester does the work. In that capacity he is diligent, authoritative, and, as his friends particularly boast, judicious. His great fault is an overbearing assurance of the virtues and claims of his order, and his great foible is an equally strong confidence in the dignity of his own manner and the eloquence of his own words. He is a moral man, believing the precepts which he teaches, and believing also that he acts up to them; though we cannot say that he would give his coat to the man who took ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... always pleased to see her: I always knew I loved her like a good sister. The other I worshipped as an angel: and as soon as she ceased to be an angel for me, as a mere woman I felt none of the former fire towards her: nothing remained, not even smoke nor ashes. But this girl, whose every foible I know, whose beauty was enhanced by no reverie, whom I only saw as she really is,—I love her now, as a faithful woman, who repays love in true coin: and I shall marry her—not out of gratitude, but because she has ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... failure of his hopes, it preyed on his spirits, and the luckless caligrapher went down to his grave—without dining at the Academy! This authentic anecdote has been considered as "satire improperly directed"—by some friend of Mr. Tomkins—but the criticism is much too grave! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing-master presents a striking illustration of the class of men here delineated. I am a mere historian—and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians of his day, and was a frequent ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Dr. Gardner was the President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, and in any discussion of the incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses) seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In that mood the incomprehensible had ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... idealized him as she did Old Plod, but after all it's not a very serious foible in ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... every twenty-four hours by the tides. It is the skill to apply the force that is needed; not the force itself, which exceeds that of all the steam-engines in the nation. And he says that the great scientific foible of the day is the neglect of natural forces, which are cheap and inexhaustible, and the mania for steam-engines and gas, which are expensive, and for coal, which is not to last forever. He implores capital and science to work in this question. His various schemes ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... never been the foible of the rich American, but as the seigneur is a species of recent growth and has not yet had time to blossom into flower and show us just to what his nature turns, we must watch his movements hereafter with interest. So far, he seems endued with quiet ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause of the pain being mysterious, they went ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether our people ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... they do," said my godmother. "I have told you already that I consider it a foible of ill-educated people, whose interests are very limited, and whose feelings are not disciplined. You know James, the butler, Selina, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... through his lugubrious accents. An ugly saint is an unmixed calamity to jolly fellows; but to be lord and master, and possessor, of a beautiful saint, was not without its piquant charm. His jealousy was dormant, not extinct; and Kate's piety tickled that foible, not wounded it. He found himself the rival of heaven,—and the successful rival; for, let her be ever so strict, ever so devout, she must give her husband many delights she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... answered the first speaker, "for a lady of such excellent qualities to make herself ridiculous by a single foible." ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had not come by a drop of usquebaugh. It was, we remarked, only on such occasions that Donald talked with an air of importance of the family of MacLeish; and we had no title to be scrupulous in censuring a foible, the consequences of which were confined within ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... a time there was an ostrich who, though very ostrichy, was even more of an egoist. He thought only of himself. That is not a foible peculiar to ostriches, but this particular fowl—and he was very particular—was notable for it. "Where do I come in?" was a question written all over him—from his ridiculous and inadequate head, down his long neck, on his plump fluffy body, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... more perplexity to his Whig Government and have played a better party game, it is perhaps fortunate for the country, and certainly happy for his own reputation, that his virtues thus predominated over his talents. The most remarkable foible of the late King was his passion for speechifying, and I have recorded some of his curious exhibitions in this way. He had considerable facility in expressing himself, but what he said was generally ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... celui a fol Qui trop met en fame sa cure; Fame est de trop foible nature, De noient rit, de noient pleure, Fame aime et het en trop poi d'eure: Tost est ses talenz remuez, Qui fame ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... crimes he may hereafter commit; or, if this be thought an extravagant scheme, and not likely to take with the public, at least let a list of prices be drawn up, that a man may know, at a glance, at what cost he may gratify a pet crime or favourite little foible. Thus:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "De mon sexe foible et sensible, Ils ne veulent que des vertus; Nous pouvons imiter Titus, Mais dans un sentier ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... one of those whom you call honest men. He is just, noble-minded, and attentive to the duties of his situation; but, like all of you, he has a foible to counterbalance his virtues; this is an unbounded tenderness for the other sex: and as he, out of principle, required the blessing of the priest to his pleasures, so did he, after the death of his first wife, make a fool of himself by marrying the woman whom you have seen. Through a few hours' ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... pain or trouble, so that by his ready apprehension of things, he was able to do more in one hour than others could do in many days by hard study and close application; and yet he was ever humble, and never exalted with self-conceit, the common foible of young men. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... though on these accounts he was much respected by the eminent ministers of the city, and learned professors of the university, yet was he ever humble, never exalted above measure, nor swelled with the tympany of pride and self conceit, the common foible and disease of young men of any ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of approval from the gray heads, Daddy was soon off at a tangent in playful fancy, hitting off a foible or "celebrating truth and justice" in one of the unconscious epigrams which it is sought herein to preserve, even when having occasionally to hammer them into shape, for, while Daddy was almost unerring ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as "great dramatists,"—as if Shakspeare did not differ ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... instructive than anything in our Lockes, Berkeleys, or other express and professional philosophers. Having said this by way of showing that I do not overlook their just pretensions, let me have leave to notice a foible in these writers which is not merely somewhat ludicrous, but even seriously injurious to truth. One and all, through a long series of two hundred and fifty years, think themselves called upon to tax their countrymen—each severally in his own age—with a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... through contrast with the crudities of actual rusticity. In the same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular writers in his realistic pictures of village love. But though the satirist might find ample scope for his wit in anatomizing the foible of the day, fashionable society continued none the less to encourage the exquisite inanity, and to be flattered by the elegant obscurity, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... unwise half-disdain, which an unenlightened masculine Herakles might have shown, for the blessedness of five o'clock tea. At dinner he was in his toilet what Mr Henry James calls the "member of society," never the poet whose necktie is a dithyramb. Good sense was his habit if not his foible. And why should we deny ourselves here the pleasure of imagining Miss Browning at these pleasant ceremonies, as Mrs Bronson describes her, wearing "beautiful gowns of rich and sombre tints, and appearing each day in a different and most dainty French cap and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too; an over-age dizzy blonde who was still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with mother and daughter, and submitted to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... we make such an ado about it? And what is constancy, that it commands such usurious interest? The one is a foible only in its relations. The other is only thus a virtue. "Fickle as the winds" is our death-seal upon a man; but should we like our winds un-fickle? Would a perpetual Northeaster lay us open to perpetual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... died in her confinement, leaving her (temporarily) broken-hearted husband with one little girl. 'An angel without fault or foible' was his epitaph upon the woman to whom, in spite of his many fictitious bonnes fortunes, he is said to have been faithfully attached. But Willis was not born to live alone, and in the following summer he fell ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... sharpened his thought. For him the morning was suddenly transformed, and fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... Saltwell, for his want of the polish he possessed and his indifference to the elegancies of life, though he was not unable to appreciate his messmate's frankness of manner and truthfulness of character. His foible was his admiration for the poets, and his belief that he could write poetry ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... all sides how very little great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of their own line. On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... very high: he would indeed put it, in its own compartment, almost on a level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825. Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency to consider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set it down to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth. There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... appealed to Ione's ruling foible—most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, he now led her to ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... praise is in some instances a ridiculous, and in others a mischievous passion; that to it we owe the breed of coquettes and coxcombs, and, a more serious evil, the noxious race of heroes and conquerors. We too are ready, when it appears in the shape of vanity, to smile at it as a foible, or in that of false glory, to condemn it as a crime. But all these are only its perversions; and on account of them to contend against its true forms, and its legitimate exercise, were to give into the very error which you formerly ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... nobility, at the affectation of majestic stateliness inherent in royalty. But the pedantic display of learning, the disregard of the real wants of the people, the contempt of all knowledge which does not wear the academic garb, show the same foible, the same conceit, the same spirit of caste among those who, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have occupied the most prominent rank in the society of Germany. Professorial knight-errantry still waits for its Cervantes. Nowhere have ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... mother's side; he was explaining it to me again only yesterday. If you are his nephew, it follows that I must also be a relation of yours, most excellent prince. Never mind about that, it is only a foible; but just now he assured me that all his life, from the day he was made an ensign to the 11th of last June, he has entertained at least two hundred guests at his table every day. Finally, he went so far as to say that they never rose from the table; they ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Redgauntlet; 'the foible of which you complain so heavily has always been that of kings and heroes; which I feel strongly confident the king will surmount, upon the humble entreaty of his best servants, and when he sees them ready to peril ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... began to fail. Then, more than ever, did he entertain and plan new schemes, as if to persuade himself that he had unlimited time before him in which to execute them. His flatterers knew how to play upon his weakness, and they never failed to do so. Perhaps this foible explains the influence which Doctor Jameson undoubtedly exercised upon the mind of Rhodes. He believed himself to be in safety whenever Jameson was about him. And so in a certain sense he was, because, with all his faults, the Doctor had a real ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... time," wrote Veblen. It was curious, said Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was dear old Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he had a foible for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a gentleman was the ease with which he found the joints of all kinds of meat, and he was in arms against the modern tendency to turn such accomplishments over to butlers. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... day has given me time to form a correct judgment of you—and at the very time that my husband was trying to discover some foible in you he might make use of, or what evil passions he might rouse in you, I looked in your heart and discerned that it still contained good feelings which eventually ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... send a note," answered Dr. Rochecliffe, "to the King—a note such as all women know how to write better than any man can teach them—to meet you at the precise hour of the rendezvous. He will not fail you, for I know his unhappy foible." ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... It contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent, to which he replied in a letter so characteristic ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... a foible, which was more characteristic of the superstition of the age than of the man, Columbus himself entertained an idea of the kind, and assures the sovereigns, in his letter from Jamaica, that the people of Cariari and its vicinity are great enchanters, and he intimates, that the two Indian ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... with breathless anxiety. We stood face to face, more like two men about to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then I was out ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... a masculine foible, and this sort of brag is the natural recreation of a young man in the presence ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... certain sympathetic vivacity made him very agreeable. At times he was all sunshine, and his outrageous temper slumbered peacefully till some new offence wakened it again; nor is there much doubt that many of his worst outbreaks were the work of his enemies, who knew his foible, and studied to exasperate him. He was full of contradictions; and, intolerant and implacable, as he often was, there were intervals, even in his bitterest quarrels, in which he displayed a surprising moderation and patience. By fits he could be magnanimous. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... friend: "An old procrastinator, Sir, I am: do you wonder that I hate her? Though she but seven words can say, Twenty and twenty times a day She interferes with all my dreams, My projects, plans, and airy schemes, Mocking my foible to my sorrow: I'll advertise ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... enthusiasm with which this old officer spoke of his profession, and the high point of view in which he placed it, increased our hero's desire to serve a campaign abroad. Good sense, politeness, and experience of the world preserved Count O'Halloran from that foible with which old officers are commonly reproached, of talking continually of their own military exploits. Though retired from the world, he had contrived, by reading the best books, and corresponding with persons of good information, to keep up with the current ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... East,' and as Mr. Touch-and-go Bullet-head came from the East, it follows that Mr. Bullet-head was a wise man; and if collateral proof of the matter be needed, here we have it—Mr. B. was an editor. Irascibility was his sole foible, for in fact the obstinacy of which men accused him was anything but his foible, since he justly considered it his forte. It was his strong point—his virtue; and it would have required all the logic of a Brownson to convince him that it was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... her diversions, the accomplishments and acquirements she was mistress of will show what they must have been. She was far from being fond of cards, the fashionable foible of modern ladies; nor, as will be easily perceived from what I have said, and more from what I shall further say, had she much time for play. She never therefore promoted their being called for; and often insensibly diverted the company from them, by starting some entertaining subject, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that philosophical study and scientific vivisection of character which two friends are always so ready to practice at the expense of a third, and which weak-minded people confound with scandal, to no foible is the knife so pitilessly applied as to vanity. What makes this rigor seem all the more cruel and unnatural is that vanity never gets so little quarter as from those who ought, one would think, to be on the best possible terms with her. She is never justified of her children, and, like ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... came to the "Packhorse" now and then; but Mercy protected her husband's heart from pain. She was kind, and even pitiful; but so discreet and resolute, and contrived to draw the line so clearly between her husband and her old sweetheart, that Griffith's foible could not burn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... You have reason. I have spoken much More than my wont: it is a foible which Was not of mine, but more excuses you, Inasmuch as it shows, that I approach A dotage which may justify this deed Of yours, although the law does not, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... unflinching supporter of religious liberty and constitutional law. The battle of Heiliger Lee and the capture of Mons were his most signal triumphs, but the fruits of both were annihilated by subsequent disaster. His headlong courage was his chief foible. The French accused him of losing the battle of Moncontour by his impatience to engage; yet they acknowledged that to his masterly conduct it was owing that their retreat was effected in so successful, and even so brilliant ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... grosses caraques Genoises peuvent venir y mettre echelle a terre. Mais comme tout le monde sait cela, je m'abstiens d'en parler. Cependant il m'a semble que du cote de la terre, vers l'eglise qui est dans le voisinage de la porte, a l'extremite du havre, il y a un endroit foible. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... He dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his peculiar disease: "Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellect must be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,—memory sadly impaired!" This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks were wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was generally believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imposition, instead of the honorable reward of science. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the faculty has always possessed members of a spirit to condemn and regret such despicable practices. There cannot be juster objects of satire than such empirics, nor is there a foible more deserving of ridicule than the selfish timidity of the hypochondriac, who, ungrateful for the store of good health with which nature has endowed him, assumes the habitual ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... excess is no foible of mine, Though liking and needing a glass of good wine, To help the digestion, to quicken the heart, And loosen the tongue for its eloquent part, But never once yielding one jot to excess, Nor weakly consenting the least to transgress. For let no intolerant bigot pretend My Temperance Muse ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... poor child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her. that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's speeches to Ophelia in the Player scene as a violation of propriety, is shocked by the lack of decency in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable —Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh." The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene is "very unbecoming to tragedy"; the satire on the "Children of the Chapel" is not allowable in ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... merry, and we will write her a hymn and Walmisley {4} shall set it to music. And any shall be eligible to this society by only changing his name; for this is one of its happiest hits, to give a name to each of its members arising from some mental peculiarity (which the gods and peacemakers call "foible"), whereby each being perpetually kept in mind of this defect and being always willing to justify it shall raise a clamour and cause much delight to ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... brutality &c. (malevolence) 907; corruption &c. (debasement) 659; knavery &c. (improbity) 940[obs3]; profligacy; flagrancy, atrocity; cannibalism; lesbianism, Sadism. infirmity; weakness &c. adj.; weakness of the flesh, frailty, imperfection; error; weak side; foible; failing, failure; crying sin, besetting sin; defect, deficiency; cloven foot. lowest dregs of vice, sink of iniquity, Alsatian den[obs3]; gusto picaresco[It]. fault, crime; criminality &c. (guilt) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... my comfort!" he could not help saying to Mrs. Bretton. That lady had her own "comfort" and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and, for the moment, absent; so she sympathised with his foible. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... by his death than by his life? Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. "The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... ideas, and very absolute in his whims. By a strange madness, this prince spent his time seated at a table, upon which were placed three dice and a dice-box. One end of the table was covered with pieces of silver, designed to excite the avarice of his courtiers and people. He, knowing the foible of his subjects, addresses them as follows: Slaves, I wish your happiness. My goodness proposes to enrich you, and make you all happy. Do you see these treasures? Well, they are for you; strive to gain them; let each, in his turn, take the box and dice; whoever has the fortune to throw sixes, shall ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... impolitic. But whereas certain men genuinely tried to ease the forced situation and meet with fairness and justice upon common ground, others still kept the flag of discord in their hands, though they hid it under the table, so to speak, and only produced it when, as they chose to assert, some pet foible of their countrymen was ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... people, she occupied a house of which the rent absurdly exceeded the due proportion of her income, a pleasant foible turned to such good account by London landlords. Whereas she might have lived with a good deal of modest comfort, her existence was a perpetual effort to conceal the squalid background of what was ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... him to West Point so he might win decorations on the field of valor and then be shunted off to sit behind an unsoldierly desk. I broke with tradition when I kept him from a military career, quite on purpose, just as I was thinking of his welfare and not some silly foible of my own when I called him by the simplest ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... treat ye with one instance more of his Hypocrisie, and then I pass on to another Head. This instance I find Mr Vanbrook has taken particular notice of at the latter end of his Book, where, 'tis true, every one may see the Absolvers Foible is very plain, but that Author has not made the Case parallel with the others Remark upon Mr. Congreve's Comedy the Old Batchelor, which shews his contradiction of himself, and his fallacy undeniable, for there he seems to roar at young Belmour for his forgetfulness of Religion, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... accounting for. A trick of hers, which had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case. "You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and gratitude, and ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... always the supreme end, to know what each instrument was fit for, and to bring all forces to bear in the right way—a man of consummate adroitness, to sail in torpedo-sown waters without exciting an explosion, though conducting wires of local prejudice, class sensitiveness, and personal foible on every hand led straight down to magazines of wrath which might shatter the cause in a moment—a man having resources of his own to such an extent that he could supplement from himself what was wanting ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Sully's Memoirs, which you (with the fond vanity of a book-collector) insist upon preferring to that which is reduced to the useful and ordinary form of Memoirs, but which I think curious, solely as illustrating how far so great a man as the author was accessible to the foible of self-importance. If I recollect rightly, that venerable peer and great statesman had appointed no fewer than four gentlemen of his household to draw up the events of his life, under the title ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... faultless figure harmonized with flowing folds and soft laces which can do so much for outlines that are not soft. Eleanor was not without a consciousness of this; nevertheless, vanity was not her foible; and her state of mind was anything but enviable when she left the dressing-room for the gallery. But Mr. Carlisle was there, to meet her and her mood too; and Eleanor found herself taken in hand at once. He had a way of mixing affection with his power over her, in such a way as to soothe ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... poetical. They had more sense for rhetoric than for poetry, like the Romans; but, like the Romans, they had too high a spirit not to like a noble intellectual stimulus of some kind, and thus they were carried out of the region of the merely prosaic. Their foible,—the bad excess of their characterising quality of strenuousness,—was not a prosaic flatness, it ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... has been generally conceded, in spite of prejudices, that the Irish, of all peoples, had been preeminently moral and Christian. No one has dared accuse them of open vice, however they may have been accused of folly. Intemperance is the great foible flung at them by many who, careful to conceal their own failings, are ever, ready to "cast the first stone" at them. It would be well for them to ponder over the rebuke of the Saviour to the accusers of the woman taken in adultery; when perhaps they may think twice before repeating ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... remarkable degree, and if they possess at the same time the art of telling the humorous story about themselves, they become very popular. This popularity accounts for a good deal of seeming modesty and humorous self-depiction; it is a sort of recompense for the self-confessed foible and weakness; it is a way of seeking the good opinion and applause of others and is sometimes ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... but of men. In build WILLIAM is pear-shaped, the upper part of him, where you would expect to find the stalk, broadening out into a perpetual smile. He has lived in the Baths twenty-three years, and yet his gaiety is not eclipsed. If he has a foible it is his belief that he thoroughly understands London ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... carried obligations which must be met, and he was constantly laying plots to inveigle or surprise his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as a social lion was a rara avis, from first to last. The foible of artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous, society is that it so seldom ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming to ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... less than twenty minutes for each; and if we had not spent many another twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side track among many miles of desert, we might have taken an hour to each repast and arrived at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not the foible of an emigrant train. It gets through on sufferance, running the gauntlet among its more considerable brethren; should there be a block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they cannot, in consequence, predict the length of the passage within a day or so. Civility is the main comfort ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Detlor praised was as wine and milk to Hagar. He was about to speak, but Baron, whose foible was hurriedly changing from one subject to another, pulled a letter out of his pocket and said: "But maybe this is of more importance to Mrs. Detlor than my foolishness. I won't ask you to read it. I'll tell you what's in it. But, first, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... all his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the first spring-tide ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... enclosing the people's commons. It was a wrong, but there was no one of the wronged who was brave enough or rich enough to dispute it through the broken law, and no witness public-spirited enough to come to their aid. Such things make us think patiently, almost proudly, of our national foible of graft, which may really be of feudal origin. Doubtless the aggression was attacked in the press, but we all know what the attacks of the press amount to against the steadfast will of a powerful corporation, and a great nobleman in England is a powerful corporation. In this instance ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... hidalgo for his very splendid present. The nuns thanked him each and all; until the old crocodile actually began to cry and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, indeed, he remarked, was his foible ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and as they can instal themselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled if pains are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. And if it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle, though made up of the best. All the greatness of each is kept back and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... misfortunes which beset the latter years of Raleigh's life. In consequence of this intrigue, he was committed to the Tower. One or two amusing anecdotes are related of the devices which he employed to obtain forgiveness, by working on that vanity which was the Queen's chief foible. He succeeded in appeasing his indignant mistress so far as to procure his release; and about the same time, in 1594, she granted to him the valuable manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire; but though she requited ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... one; and so gained two advantages: 1st, he rarely irritated a fellow-creature; for if he began a sentence hot, what with its length, and what with its windiness, he ended it cool: item, stabs by polysyllables are pricks by sponges. 2ndly, this foible earned him the admiration of fools; and that is as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... you are aware, Mrs. Creighton, that false taste is always a very expensive foible," said Mr. Wyllys; "for it looks upon ornament and improvement as the same thing. My neighbour, Mr. Taylor, certainly has as much of that spirit as any man I ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that the nations of Europe were wholly destitute of this grand desideratum; and he strongly recommended the establishment of a college founded upon the simple principles he had suggested. The king, either to humour this Quixotic foible, or to gratify his own ambition at the expense of truth, observed, in reply, 'Why, Sir, I have a Professor of Signs in one of the northernmost colleges in my dominions; but the distance is, perhaps, six hundred miles, so ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... what countenance to put on during a narrative which raised in him nearly the same conjectures; he shrugged up his shoulders, and faintly said that appearances were often deceitful; that Lady Chesterfield had the foible of all beauties, who place their merit on the number of their admirers; and whatever airs she might imprudently have given herself, in order not to discourage his royal highness, there was no ground to suppose that she would indulge him in any greater liberties to engage him: but in vain was it that ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... careful to make my entrance after the lady's party was seated, always ordering the same number of portions, always giving the girl the same tip. It wasn't long before I began to be observed. I soon saw that not only the attendants but the patrons of the Terrace were becoming interested in my foible. One day as I passed ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... in the last words, for Lady Markland had, if the truth must be told, a foible that way, and liked, as so many women do, the idea of having a large correspondence, and took pleasure in keeping it up. She answered eagerly that she had no letters to write (though not without a glance at her table where ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... as eager for this promised land as Denys; for the latter constantly chanted its praises, and at every little annoyance showed him "they did things better in Burgundy;" and above all played on his foible by guaranteeing clean bedclothes at the inns of that polished nation. "I ask no more," the Hollander would say; "to think that I have not lain once in a naked bed since I left home! When I look at their linen, instead of doffing habit and hose, it ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... composition is pride, which, according to the doctrine of some, is the universal passion. There are others who consider it as the foible of great minds; and others again who will have it to be the very foundation of greatness; and perhaps it may of that greatness which we have endeavoured to expose in many parts of these works; but to real greatness, which is the union of a good heart with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... caligrapher went down to his grave—without dining at the Academy! This authentic anecdote has been considered as "satire improperly directed"—by some friend of Mr. Tomkins—but the criticism is much too grave! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing-master presents a striking illustration of the class of men here delineated. I am a mere historian—and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the Royal Academicians ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... To be sure, when the golden door has been opened, and the black horse has vanished with that vicious switch of his tail, we have a little feeling of having been "sold,"—a feeling which great art never gives. But we are in the best of humor; for were we not warned all along against just this foible of curiosity, and is not the story-teller smiling inscrutably and advising us to be thankful that we at least still ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... naturally desired to attach to himself the patronage and countenance of a person of Mannering's wealth and consequence. He was aware, from his knowledge of mankind, that Mannering, though generous and benevolent, had the foible of expecting and exacting a minute compliance with his directions. He was therefore racking his recollection to discover if everything had been arranged to meet the Colonel's wishes and instructional and, under this uncertainty of mind, he traversed the house more than once from the garret ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great Nabob's that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of—being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a lapsus, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents—you ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... rules introduced vices, and of a very black kind, into this work. To which I shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions, and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene: and, lastly, they never produce the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... down: "Look here, Amy. Do you know that you have one little infinitesimal ewe-lamb of a foible? You think too ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... laughing. "It is only my foible for making a thing look nice. And, Ethel," she added, drawing her down close over her, "I did not think the trouble wasted, if seeing me look fresher cheered ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... in money matters, down even to the most trifling sums, was no doubt a foible, but it is well to observe that it was not a foible which sought only a selfish advantage, for the rule which he applied to others he applied also to himself. He meant to have his due, no matter how trivial, and he meant also that ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... tout!" he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. "These experiments in costume are a foible with me." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... this work. To this I shall answer: First, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here, are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty, or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene; lastly, they never ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready. Hans ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to him Lord Rufford's note. It had been quite unexpected, and a month or two before, when his hopes had still been high in regard to Mary Masters, would have filled him with delight. It was the foible of his life to be esteemed a gentleman, and his poor ambition to be allowed to live among men of higher social standing than himself. Those dinners of Lord Rufford's at the Bush had been a special grief to him. The young lord had been always courteous ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... qui sortoit de dessous la neige et qui rouloit son eau crystalline sur un sable argente, et ce qui etoit plus seduisant encore, une vue d'une etendue et d'une beaute dont une description ne peut donner qu'une bien foible idee. ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... whose foible is well known to my readers, made me laugh when she said that her genius had told her that I had got myself arrested to be talked about, for reasons which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... you are, search into the characters of men; find out, if possible, their foible, their governing; passion, or their particular merit; take them on their weak side, and you will generally succeed: their prevailing vanity you may readily discover, by observing; their favourite topic of conversation, for ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... a general should have been selected for so important a movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp) and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils commanding his armies; and it was moreover natural ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... wood of spears— A wood still nourish'd by the dews, Which smiles, and softest looks diffuse. Thrice happy youths! who midst yon shades Sweet converse hold with Idham's maids, What bliss, to view them gild the hours, And brighten wit and fancy's powers, While every foible they disclose New transport gives, new graces shows. 'Tis theirs to raise with conscious art The flames of love in every heart; 'Tis yours to raise with festive glee The flames of hospitality: Smit by their glances lovers lie, And helpless sink and hopeless die; While slain by you ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... the man by report at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar say, from an epigram in the Anthology?), ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late. I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business, but it always was, and I fear will ever be, my foible that after I am once got behind-hand with business, I am hard to set to it again to recover it. In the evening I begun to look over my accounts and upon the whole I do find myself, by what I can yet see, worth near L600, for which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to the nailing up of boards over the dividing screen, so that the chancel was entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of being uninterrupted; and here had been her ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... agency has been very efficacious. He has a great deal of sound genius, is well remarked by the King, and rising in popularity. He has nothing against him, but the suspicion of republican principles. I think he will one day be of the ministry. His foible is a canine appetite for popularity and fame; but he will get above this. The Count de Vergennes is ill. The possibility of his recovery renders it dangerous for us to express a doubt of it; but he is in danger. He is a great minister in European affairs, but has very imperfect ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be seen more often a strong than a pretty thing; and another that the Englishman, inveterately a draper, is often horrified and occasionally heart-broken. The Spaniard may regret, but cannot mend the organ. His own will never suffer the same fate. Chercher le midi a quatorze heures is no foible of his. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the truth must ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... dispraise. The candor and openness of the man's nature would not allow him to conceal or feign anything. If he loved praise, why should he not be frank about it? Did he not lay claim to the vices and vanities of men also? At its worst, Whitman's vanity was but the foible of a great nature, and should count for but little in the final estimate. The common human nature to which he lay claim will assert itself; it is not always to be kept ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... God. His natural bias and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of God. These excellencies, in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am constrained to consider him a Christian far above the common run. ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... had thought the invitation should come from her, and, as the subject-matter was distasteful to her, sooner than discuss it she had acquiesced. Few pin-pricks had rankled as this one. She had never had any feeling but toleration for Lingen; James had erected him as a foible; and that he should use him now as a counter-irritant made her both sore and disgustful. She wished to throw up the whole scheme, but was helpless, because she could neither tell James, who would have chuckled, nor Urquhart either. To have told Urquhart, whether she told him her reason or ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... considerable expectations, and very amusing qualifications. Horace is a strange composition of all the good-natured whimsicalities of human nature, happily blended together without any very conspicuous counteracting foible. Facetious, lively, and poetical, the cream of every thing that is agreeable, society cannot be dull if Horace lends his presence. His imitations of Anacreon, and the soft bard of Erin, have on many occasions puzzled the cognoscenti of Eton. Like Moore too, he ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... robust man in the late thirties, in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party manner ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... hopes, it preyed on his spirits, and the luckless caligrapher went down to his grave—without dining at the Academy! This authentic anecdote has been considered as "satire improperly directed"—by some friend of Mr. Tomkins—but the criticism is much too grave! The foible of Mr. Tomkins as a writing-master presents a striking illustration of the class of men here delineated. I am a mere historian—and am only responsible for the veracity of this fact. That "Mr. Tomkins lived in familiar intercourse with the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Egyptian appealed to Ione's ruling foible—most dexterously had he applied the poisoned dart to her pride. He fancied he had arrested what he hoped, from the shortness of the time she had known Glaucus, was, at most, but an incipient fancy; and hastening to change the subject, he now led her to talk of her brother. Their ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... abhorrence than any sins against decency. It contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent, to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects as ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... you talk of modesty, madam, there, I own, I'm accessible to praise: modesty is my foible: it was so the Duke of Brentford used to say of me. 'I love Jack Lofty,' he used to say: 'no man has a finer knowledge of things; quite a man of information; and when he speaks upon his legs, by the Lord he's prodigious, he scouts them; and yet all men have ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... trifles and toys was inherent, and it had been increased by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week or two, he made such an ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... several at St. Germains, frequently shared the benefit. Napoleon visited her very frequently, and always treated her with the respect to which she was entitled. He added also to her dowry a third million of francs, that she might feel no inconvenience from the habits of expense to which it was her foible to be addicted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... Thiebault's amusing account ("Memoirs," vol. i., ch. xvi.) of Bonaparte's contempt for any officer who could not give him definite information, and of the devices by which his orderlies played on this foible. See too Bourrienne for Bonaparte's dislike ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Governor, had privately sent for reinforcements to Marguerita and Cumana, meaning to attack him suddenly. At the same time the Indians came secretly aboard the English ships with terrible complaints of Spanish cruelty. Berreo was keeping the ancient chiefs of the island in prison, and had the singular foible of amusing himself at intervals by basting their bare limbs with broiling bacon. These considerations determined Raleigh to take the initiative. That same evening he marched his men up the country to the new capital of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... grunts of approval from the gray heads, Daddy was soon off at a tangent in playful fancy, hitting off a foible or "celebrating truth and justice" in one of the unconscious epigrams which it is sought herein to preserve, even when having occasionally to hammer them into shape, for, while Daddy was almost unerring in rhyme, his rhythm, never at fault in ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... especial attractions to him. This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. Webster to substitute glittering rhetoric for ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... who knew him from a very young man, declared that Rodney once afloat would do his duty." Naval officers will recognize a familiar ring in these words, and will recall instances where high professional ability has been betrayed by personal foible. Nor does Sandwich stand alone in offering a clue to the hesitation of the Government. Rodney's biographer and son-in-law quotes without reprobation the account of Mr. Richard Cumberland, who professed to have interested himself warmly for Rodney's employment and to have secured the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... occasion, and far less condescended to parry the effects on the public mind. It was too puny a contest for him, and he reposed upon the consciousness of his own integrity.... With many sublime virtues, he had no vice that I knew or ever heard of, and scarcely a foible. I have thought, indeed, that he was too much attached to property,—a defect, however, which might be excused when we reflect on the largeness of a beloved family, and the straitened circumstances in which he had been confined during a great part ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... our hearing upon some point, we should be careful to let the light and worth of the rest of his character in upon the company, so that they should go away with something of the impression that we have of him; instead of suffering them to dwell only upon this fault or foible that was commented upon, which was as nothing against him in our hearts—mere fringe to the character, which we were accustomed to, and rather liked than otherwise, if the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... was Godolphin, for he had instinctively felt that in choosing a name he might as well take a handsome one while he was about it, and that if he became Godolphin there was no reason why he should not become Launcelot, too. He did not put on these splendors from any foible, but from a professional sense of their value in the bills; and he was not personally characterized by them. As Launcelot Godolphin he was simpler than he would have been with a simpler name, and it was his ideal to be modest in everything that personally ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... what road a man's indulgence takes. Is it body or spirit that rules him—his fear, lust, vanity, gluttony, surliness, or sloth? his humility, generosity, piety, sense of justice, sense of duty? Is his cardinal weakness a vice or only a foible—a crime that degrades or only a pettiness that ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Irish question. Every American newspaper reader is cheerfully satisfied with the conviction that the Celtic race on its native sod has no real faults. A constitutional antipathy to rent may exist, but that is a national foible which, owing doubtless to some peculiarity of the climate, is almost praiseworthy in Ireland, though elsewhere regarded as hardly respectable. At any rate, with the consciousness that he was about to come face to face with the much-talked-of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... twenty-one feet twice in every twenty-four hours by the tides. It is the skill to apply the force that is needed; not the force itself, which exceeds that of all the steam-engines in the nation. And he says that the great scientific foible of the day is the neglect of natural forces, which are cheap and inexhaustible, and the mania for steam-engines and gas, which are expensive, and for coal, which is not to last forever. He implores capital and science ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... brought out the invisible characters traced by experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after the divine ideal. Her sincerity was terrible. In her frank exposure no foible was spared, though by her very reproof she roused dormant courage and self-confidence. And so unerring seemed her insight, that her companion felt as if standing bare before a disembodied spirit, and communicated without reserve thoughts ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber bands, which ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... perfect neatness was more like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so. 'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly no one had ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... not send him to West Point so he might win decorations on the field of valor and then be shunted off to sit behind an unsoldierly desk. I broke with tradition when I kept him from a military career, quite on purpose, just as I was thinking of his welfare and not some silly foible of my own when I called him by the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... he replied promptly, tucking them under his chair. "These experiments in costume are a foible with me." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... little irony in the last words, for Lady Markland had, if the truth must be told, a foible that way, and liked, as so many women do, the idea of having a large correspondence, and took pleasure in keeping it up. She answered eagerly that she had no letters to write (though not without a glance at her table where one lay unfinished) ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... acknowledge a thousand faults that she had not, to this which she had she could never be got to own. But if there came a woman with even a semblance of beauty to Castlewood, she was so sure to find out some wrong in her, that my lord, laughing in his jolly way, would often joke with her concerning her foible. Comely servant-maids might come for hire, but none were taken at Castlewood. The housekeeper was old; my lady's own waiting-woman squinted, and was marked with the small-pox; the housemaids and scullion were ordinary country wenches, to whom Lady Castlewood ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evade the risks and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as "great dramatists,"—as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... he was not; nothing more. I am sure, however, that he was very ill at ease upon this point, and that if a dangerous illness had overtaken him, and he had had the time, he would have thrown himself into the hands of all the priests and all the Capuchins of the town. His great foible was to pride himself upon his impiety and to wish to surpass ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... own compartment, almost on a level with the drama of 1585-1625 or the poems of 1798-1825. Just at the present moment there may be a pretty general tendency to consider this allowance exaggerated if not preposterous: and to set it down to the well-known foible of age for the period of its own youth. There is no need to do more than suggest that those who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature of their nonage. One does not care ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to engage in deadly duel than a pair of amateurs with blunt foils. My antagonist was evidently a practised swordsman. I could see that as he came to guard. As for myself, the small-sword exercise had been a foible of my college days, and for years I had not met my match at it; but just then ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms. Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel that a new day could dawn upon the world. I think from the way I huddled to his ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... et que pour ces maitresses, Les hommes soient sujets a de telles foiblesses— Tout le monde connoit leur imperfection, Ce n'est qu'extravagance et qu'indiscretion. Leur esprit est mechant, et leur ame fragile, Il n'est rien de plus foible et de plus imbecille, Rien de plus infidele—et malgre tout cela, Dans le monde on fait tout pour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... health began to fail. Then, more than ever, did he entertain and plan new schemes, as if to persuade himself that he had unlimited time before him in which to execute them. His flatterers knew how to play upon his weakness, and they never failed to do so. Perhaps this foible explains the influence which Doctor Jameson undoubtedly exercised upon the mind of Rhodes. He believed himself to be in safety whenever Jameson was about him. And so in a certain sense he was, because, with all his faults, ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... entirely concealed from the church; and no one ever thought of setting foot there till Eustacie, whose Catholic reverence was indestructible, even when she was only half sure that it was not worse than a foible, had stolen down thither, grieved at its utter desolation, and with fond and careful hands had cleansed it, and amended the ruin so far as she might. She had no other place where she was sure of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... talked about books to Mr. Welbore, and Mr. Welbore heard him with respect, because the Minister was in the swim. He said afterwards to me that people's foibles were very odd; but he so far respected the Minister's success as to think that he had a right to a foible. He would have crushed one of my colleagues who had battled in the same way, with a laugh and a few ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by hard study and close application, and though on these accounts he was much respected by the eminent ministers of the city, and learned professors of the university, yet was he ever humble, never exalted above measure, nor swelled with the tympany of pride and self conceit, the common foible and disease of young men ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... this composition is pride, which, according to the doctrine of some, is the universal passion. There are others who consider it as the foible of great minds; and others again who will have it to be the very foundation of greatness; and perhaps it may of that greatness which we have endeavoured to expose in many parts of these works; but to real greatness, which is the union of a good heart with a good head, it is ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... We are vexed, and perhaps tormented, by the vices or foibles of those with whom we are thrown in contact. Let us not stop in vexation, but study our own hearts, and see if there is not some kindred vice or foible in ourselves that perhaps troubles our friends quite as much as this disturbs us; for it is often the case that our own vices, when we meet them in others, are precisely those which irritate us most; and we are almost always more irritable through our vices than through ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... the far earlier allusion to these facts by the younger Bartram should have been overlooked or disregarded. With the genuine love of Nature and fondness for exploration, 'William Bartram did not inherit the simplicity of his father, the earliest native botanist of this country. Fine writing was his foible; and the preface to his well-known "Travels" (published at Philadelphia in 1791) is its full-blown illustration, sometimes perhaps deserving the epithet which he applies to the palms of Florida—that of pomposity. In this preface he declares that "all ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... to inveigle or surprise his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as a social lion was a rara avis, from first to last. The foible of artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous, society is that it so seldom achieves simple ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Japanese landscape gardens. The annals state that fifty thousand men were engaged on the work, and the assertion ceases to seem extravagant when we consider the nature of the task and the singularly brief period devoted to its completion. It was Hideyoshi's foible to surpass all his predecessors and contemporaries alike in the magnitude of his designs and in the celerity of their achievement. Even his pastimes were conceived on the same stupendous scale. Thus, in 1594, at the very ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... instance, and if you surmount them, of keeping out in the second, are pretty much on a par, and no slight ones either—and so Miss Amelia Martin shortly discovered. It is a singular fact (there being ladies in the case) that Miss Amelia Martin's principal foible was vanity, and the leading characteristic of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph an attachment to dress. Dismal wailings were heard to issue from the second-floor front of number forty-seven, Drummond-street, George-street, Euston-square; it was Miss Martin practising. Half-suppressed murmurs disturbed the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable —and they are so. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... should have been selected for so important a movement, was not at all surprising; it was well known that the emperor was attached to him both from habit, (for he was his oldest aid-de-camp) and from a secret foible, for as the presence of that officer was mixed up with all the recollections of his victories and his glory, he disliked to part from him. It is also reasonable to suppose that it flattered his vanity, to see men who were his pupils ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... circulating library into Scotland, and among his other enterprises was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a theatre in Edin. On the whole his life was a happy and successful one, and he had the advantage of a cheerful, sanguine, and contented spirit. His foible was an innocent ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... ingrained in the man. Mrs. Vint had pricked his conscience, but she had wounded his foible. He was not in love with Mercy, but he esteemed her, and liked her, and saw her value, and, above all, could not bear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... time there was an ostrich who, though very ostrichy, was even more of an egoist. He thought only of himself. That is not a foible peculiar to ostriches, but this particular fowl—and he was very particular—was notable for it. "Where do I come in?" was a question written all over him—from his ridiculous and inadequate head, down his long neck, on his plump fluffy body, and so to his exceedingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... the Mens sana in corpore sano was the famous Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity. Mr. Murray tells a story of his concern at a dinner-party upon a prospect of an altercation between Borrow and Whewell. With both omniscience was a foible. Both were powerful men; and both of them, if report were true, had more than a superficial knowledge of the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Vivisection or the Defence of Philosophic Doubt. His social agreeableness has, indeed, been marred by the fatuous idolatry of a fashionable clique, stimulating the self-consciousness which was his natural foible; but when he can for a moment forget himself he still is excellent company, for he is genuinely amiable and thoroughly ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... come!" the reader will object. "All this happened a hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a foible—but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist, discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in this fashion: "Well, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... accomplishments and acquirements she was mistress of will show what they must have been. She was far from being fond of cards, the fashionable foible of modern ladies; nor, as will be easily perceived from what I have said, and more from what I shall further say, had she much time for play. She never therefore promoted their being called for; and often insensibly diverted the company from them, by starting some entertaining ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... figure in it, who preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... has written learnedly on many subjects: his most valuable works are: A History of the Inductive Sciences, The Elements of Morality, and The Plurality of Worlds. Of Whewell it has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his foible." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... do, and vice versa. In the diocese of Barchester the Archdeacon of Barchester does the work. In that capacity he is diligent, authoritative, and, as his friends particularly boast, judicious. His great fault is an overbearing assurance of the virtues and claims of his order, and his great foible is an equally strong confidence in the dignity of his own manner and the eloquence of his own words. He is a moral man, believing the precepts which he teaches, and believing also that he acts up to them; though we cannot say that he would give his coat to the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... leapers; and, with all deference to his Eminence, upon a better assurance than that, Professor Wilson may be rated, at the time I speak of, as the flower of all Protestant leapers. Not having the Cardinal's foible of connecting any vanity with this little accomplishment, knowing exactly what could and what could not be effected in this department of gymnastics, and speaking with the utmost simplicity and candour ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... overlooking the lake, or villa overlooking the bay, and some abstruse fun in the tender ridicule of his readings of his poems to friends; for Mr. Austin smiled effusively in alluding to the illustrious Roman pleader's foible of verse: but Pliny bore no resemblance to that island barbarian Nevil Beauchamp: she could not realize the friend of Trajan, orator, lawyer, student, statesman, benefactor of his kind, and model of her own modern English gentleman, though he was. 'Yes!' she would reply encouragingly to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy. He concluded that it was a foible of the ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... that I dare to say it, all my life will I live in your presence, and trust to your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Campbell, and Charlie Wetherell, when the latter warned Lyndhurst and Brougham of Campbell's design, in terms almost prophetic of what has occurred. 'My biographical friend will excel in exhibiting every little foible; Hunc tu Romane caveto.' I cannot describe the whole scene to you, but ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... seigneur" has never been the foible of the rich American, but as the seigneur is a species of recent growth and has not yet had time to blossom into flower and show us just to what his nature turns, we must watch his movements hereafter with interest. So far, he seems endued with quiet tastes, as far as personal ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... plea for this pursuit, as about the least costly foible to which those who can afford to indulge in foibles can devote themselves, one might descant on certain auxiliary advantages—as, that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low company; that it offends no one, and is not likely ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne, but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen, as we behold him in his ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the hereditary nobility, at the affectation of majestic stateliness inherent in royalty. But the pedantic display of learning, the disregard of the real wants of the people, the contempt of all knowledge which does not wear the academic garb, show the same foible, the same conceit, the same spirit of caste among those who, from the sixteenth century to the present day, have occupied the most prominent rank in the society of Germany. Professorial knight-errantry still waits for its Cervantes. Nowhere have the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' consortment,—consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, and ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... being recognized on the way and perhaps followed—'t was a foible of his to believe that throughout all France his fame was as great and popular as it was at Tarascon—he had made a great detour before entering Switzerland and did not don his accoutrements until after he had crossed the frontier. Luckily for him; for never ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case. "You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and gratitude, and all those swimmy ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... the last generation of discovery is nothing in comparison with the expansion of our knowledge and the enslavement of natural forces which must be looked for in the years on which we enter. Well, we are not sure of that. It has been a foible of many an era to think itself remarkable as a time when "the world's great age begins anew." But let us grant, if you choose, that we are moving into an incomparable age of scientific light and clearness, and at the same time of unprecedented social change. Is it necessary ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... the poor old chap was," said Jaffery, with a laugh at the harmless foible of the artist who would not give even an incurious housemaid a clue to his mystery. "Well, clear the rubbish away, and we'll ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Armenian; "take another glass of wine; you possess a great deal of philological knowledge, but it appears to me that the language of this Petulengro is your foible: but let us change the subject; I feel much interested in you, and would fain be of service to you. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Queen. It was replete with the usual quaint Vicary details—such as the solemn warning whisper of an equerry in Vicary's ear as he walked backwards, 'Mind the edge of the carpet'; and we all laughed, I absently, and yet a little hysterically—all save Vicary, whose foible was never to laugh. But immediately afterwards there was a pause, one of those disconcerting, involuntary pauses which at a social gathering are like a chill hint of autumn in late summer, and which ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... day passed but that her coldly dispassionate dissection of this or that foible of their own set, did not startle or sometimes distress Barbara Allison; hardly a day but that her cool voice, which could be as tempered as edged steel, did not cut through the veneer of some custom or other and expose ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... petits, qui y venoient de la mer, et dont le gout, qui etoit passable, parut excellent a des gens affamez. Mais n'aiant point de feu pour les faire cuire, l'usage continuel qu'ils en firent, commenca de les incommoder, et ils sentirent bien que ce foible remede ne les empecheroit pas de mourir dans peu ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... Mrs. Willis died in her confinement, leaving her (temporarily) broken-hearted husband with one little girl. 'An angel without fault or foible' was his epitaph upon the woman to whom, in spite of his many fictitious bonnes fortunes, he is said to have been faithfully attached. But Willis was not born to live alone, and in the following summer he ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian to any Saxon was remarkable. Yet this was explained by his love of color, his foible for the picturesque, his vagabond irresponsibility, and, mostly, by his latent savagery—which she would hardly have been willing to apply to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... hide a scowl of irritation. Alice Webster was her friend, and she disliked having her display herself in her worst light. She knew her to be a warm-hearted, honorable girl whose gravest fault, which, after all, might be only a foible, was her tendency to turn coquettish when she was in ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... est inconstant, divers, Foible, lger, tenant mal sa parole, J'avois jur, mme en assez beaux vers, De renouncer tout Conte frivole. Depuis deux jours j'ai fait cette promesse Puis fiez-vous Rimeur qui rpond D'un seul moment. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the Caesars would not have represented his, all the gratification they could have commanded would have been for him but a whet. If he had a weak side it was his own astuteness: he could not always see how unutterably foolish a man might be if he were let alone. Another foible he had—intellectual appreciation of beauty pushed to fainting-point. His senses were so straitly tied to his brains that to pluck at one was to thrill the other. Made on a small scale, he was pretty rather than handsome, had quiet watchful eyes, a smiling mouth, very little hands and feet. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken pity on me the last few summers, and I think she loves it ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... of their island, to form a sort of outpost, from which an alarm could be given on any descent of the Iroquois. La Salle was the man for such a purpose. Had the priests understood him,—which they evidently did not, for some of them suspected him of levity, the last foible with which he could be charged,—had they understood him, they would have seen in him a young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less ardently for the veil of reserve that covered it; who would shrink from no danger, but would not court it in bravado; and ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... haply find There least amusement where he found the most. But is amusement all? studious of song And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, I would not trifle merely, though the world Be loudest in their praise who do no more. Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay? It may correct a foible, may chastise The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch; But where are its sublimer trophies found? What vice has it subdued? whose heart reclaimed By rigour, or whom laughed into ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... waxed old in misery and disgrace, having only one-half of my posteriors, and always remembering I was a Pope's daughter. A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one's existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... though all the while there rose A ready answer, which at once enables A matron, who her husband's foible knows, By a few timely words to turn the tables, Which, if it does not silence, still must pose,— Even if it should comprise a pack of fables; 'T is to retort with firmness, and when he Suspects with one, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and fearing an evil thing had indeed befallen the other, he turned to the terrace and entered the breakfast-room from it. The time was now five minutes to nine, and as unfailing punctuality had ever been a foible of Sir Walter, his guests usually respected it. Most of them were already assembled, and Mary May, who was just stepping into the garden, asked Henry if he had ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... displeasure at his name whenever Mrs. Thrale has mentioned it. That poor man is so wonderfully narrow-minded in his authorship capacity, though otherwise good, humane and generous, that he changes countenance at either seeing or hearing of any writer whatsoever. Mrs. Thrale, with whom, this foible excepted, he is a great favourite, is so enraged with him for his littleness of soul in this respect, that merely to plague him, she vowed at the rooms she would walk all the evening between Dr. Delap and me. I wished so little to increase his unpleasant ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... enough Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a Society of Authors, that "you are the one who will live." To that end, humanly speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr Gully and his "water-cure," a foible of that period. In 1848 he made a tour to King Arthur's Cornish bounds, and another to Scotland, where the Pass of Brander disappointed him: perhaps he saw it on a fine day, and, like Glencoe, it needs tempest and mist lit up by ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... be distanced by a stranger in such munificence. All vied to surpass him, and exhausted their fortunes in this costly emulation, while the Spaniard made a timely retreat to his native country, and by the frugality of four years repaired the extravagance of one year. It was the foible of the Netherlandish nobility to contest with every stranger the credit of superior wealth, and of this weakness the government studiously availed itself. Certainly these arts did not in the sequel produce the exact result that had been calculated on; for these pecuniary burdens only ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... funeral of Vespasian. This archimimus performed his part admirably, not only representing the person, but imitating, according to custom, ut est mos, the manners and language of the living Emperor. He contrived a happy stroke at the prevailing foible of Vespasian, when he enquired the cost of all this funeral pomp—"Ten million of sesterces!" On this he observed that if they would give him but a hundred thousand they might throw his ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... with its function and the operation with its meaning has been a persistent foible in modern philosophy. It could thus come about that the function of intelligence should be altogether misconceived and in consequence denied, when it was discovered that figments of reason could never become elements of sense but must always remain, as of course they should, ideal ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... character. If the preacher did not keep strictly to the words of the Canon, he could scarcely avoid making it appear, by the names omitted or inserted, what might be his political, his ecclesiastical, or his academical opinions. Those, again, whose respect for dignities was in excess—a foible to which the age was prone—would go through a list of titles, illustrious, right reverend, and right honourable,[1201] which ill accorded with a time of prayer. Before the middle of the century, except in university churches or on formal occasions, the Canon became generally ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... connected by marriage. It seems also that you are a sort of nephew on his mother's side; he was explaining it to me again only yesterday. If you are his nephew, it follows that I must also be a relation of yours, most excellent prince. Never mind about that, it is only a foible; but just now he assured me that all his life, from the day he was made an ensign to the 11th of last June, he has entertained at least two hundred guests at his table every day. Finally, he went so far as to say that they never ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... there is no resource so successful as raking up the weaknesses of the opponent's family, especially when the parties are married, for having gossiped with each other for so long in the most confidential manner, they know every foible. How Robert drank, and Tom bet, and Sam swore, and Bill knocked his wife about, and Joseph did as Potiphar's spouse asked him, and why your uncle had to take refuge in Spain; and so on to an indefinite extent, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... it unfortunately gets possession of a wise man's head, is as keenly sensible of ridicule, as it is impassible to its shafts when more appropriately lodged with a fool. Of the sensitiveness arising out of this foible Walpole seems to have had a great deal, and it certainly dictated those hard-hearted reproofs that repelled the warm effusions of friendship with which poor Madame du Deffand (now old and blind) addressed him, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... at him with gentle compassion; she felt that what she wished was beyond the power of this man, and that he must be taken as he was, with his little foible. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a big tanned fellow, nearly forty—eldest of the party—whom the others used to guy discreetly, because you couldn't mention a place anywhere on the known globe, except the far north, which he had not personally inspected. But for this foible, as the untravelled considered it, he was well liked and a little feared—except by the Boy, who liked him "first-rate," and feared him not at all. They had promptly adopted each other before they discovered that it was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... had the opportunity to get pretty well used to this foible; so that the daily examination of the strong box seemed to them a part of the order of things, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... celebrated Elleviou, and the Troubadourish "Partant pour la Syrie" of Queen Hortense, are emblematical. Mme. Recamier, although in date all but the contemporary of Mme. Lebrun, is, in her position of mistress of a salon, essentially the impersonation of a foible peculiar to the present day; she typifies the class of women who, in Paris, are absolutely absorbed by the thought of their salons, for whom to receive is to live, and who are ready to expire at the notion of any celebrity not being a frequenter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... is so. One of the New York dailies is still printed with that human foible in mind. It caters to this very curiosity that ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... trenchant blade of Dryden never makes a thrust in vain, and never strikes but at a vulnerable point. This, we have elsewhere remarked, is a peculiar attribute of his satire;[24] and it is difficult for one assailed on a single ludicrous foible to make good his respectability though possessed of a thousand valuable qualities; as it was impossible for Achilles, invulnerable everywhere else, to survive the wound which a dexterous archer had aimed at his heel. With regard to Settle, there is ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... civilians for political reasons, though one retired in July 1917, when the submarine campaign had reached its zenith, and the other as a result of the German offensive in March 1918. Deliberation had been the foible of the Asquith regime; the characteristic of his successor's was the speed of its versatility. The War Cabinet's agenda resembled nothing so much as a railway time-table with ten minutes allowed on an average for the decision of each supremely important ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... received him with politic honours. He took his guest by his foible for pageantry, all the easier as it was a foible of his own; and Charles walked right out of prison into much the same atmosphere of trumpeting and bell-ringing as he had left behind when he went in. Fifteen days after his deliverance he was married ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men, but it was not prepared to have them brandished in its face, and it would have none of Lady Hamilton,—nor would Lady Nelson. The general public opinion at the time receives, probably, accurate expression from Sir William Hotham, a man then in London society. "His vanity, excusable as such a foible is in such a man, led him to unpardonable excesses, and blinded him to the advantages of being respected in society.... His conduct to Lady Nelson was the very extreme of unjustifiable weakness, for he should at least have attempted to conceal his infirmities, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Bell's little shop on the quay. {9} You know the man by report at least; he is more a collector than a bookseller, though poor; and I verily believe that he would sell all his children—Douglas Bell, Percy Bell, Hobbie Bell, and Kinmont Bell—"for a song." Ballads are his foible, and he can hardly be made to part with one of the broadsides in his broken portfolios. Well, semel insanivimus omnes (by the way, did it ever strike you that the Roman "cribbed" that line, as the vulgar say, from an ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... inevitably had one of two terminations: either his competitor had to buy him off at an exorbitant price, or he was left in undisputed possession. His principal biographer, Croffut, whose effusion is one long chant of praise, treats these methods as evidences of great shrewdness, and goes on: "His foible was 'opposition;' wherever his keen eye detected a line that was making a very large profit on its investment, he swooped down on it and drove it to the wall by offering a better service and lower rates." [Footnote: "The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune," by W. A. Croffut, 1886: ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... besides himself. Perhaps while his friends were admiring the "greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a twinkling hope of immortality. Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... in his Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire de la Hollande, "who displayed so many heroic accomplishments, had this foible, of wishing to be thought beautiful by all the world. I heard from my father, that at every audience he had with her majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times to display her hands, which indeed were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Surely, respected sir, you labor under a deplorable hallucination. Why, pardon again, you seem to have not the slightest confidence in boys, I admit, indeed, that boys, some of them at least, are but too prone to one little foolish foible or other. But, what then, respected sir, when, by natural laws, they finally ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... especial Foible, He ran away when he was able, And on this inauspicious day He slipped his hand and ran away! He hadn't ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... yours to a lady for a small fault—or a large one.—[When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... revolt of the Poles in 1863. It remained to keep France quiet. In this Bismarck thought he had succeeded by means of interviews which he held with Napoleon III. at Biarritz (Nov. 1865). What there occurred is not clearly known. That Bismarck played on the Emperor's foible for oppressed nationalities, in the case of Italy, is fairly certain; that he fed him with hopes of gaining Belgium, or a slice of German land, is highly probable, and none the less so because he later on indignantly denied in the Reichstag that he ever "held out the prospect to anybody ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... blinded at first by his own foible, and after that the sport of circumstances, was single-hearted by nature; and his conscience was not hardened. He desired earnestly to free himself and both his wives from the cruel situation; but to do this, one of them, he saw, must be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... accepted by the highest aristocracy of the province as a genuine Valois; and he distinguished himself, like the rest of his homonyms, by excellent manners, which proved him a man of society. He dined out every day, and played cards every evening. He was thought witty, thanks to his foible for relating a quantity of anecdotes on the reign of Louis XV. and the beginnings of the Revolution. When these tales were heard for the first time, they were held to be well narrated. He had, moreover, the great merit of not repeating his ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... his want of the polish he possessed and his indifference to the elegancies of life, though he was not unable to appreciate his messmate's frankness of manner and truthfulness of character. His foible was his admiration for the poets, and his belief that he could write poetry and was a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... are aware, Mrs. Creighton, that false taste is always a very expensive foible," said Mr. Wyllys; "for it looks upon ornament and improvement as the same thing. My neighbour, Mr. Taylor, certainly has as much of that spirit as any man ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... religious liberty and constitutional law. The battle of Heiliger Lee and the capture of Mons were his most signal triumphs, but the fruits of both were annihilated by subsequent disaster. His headlong courage was his chief foible. The French accused him of losing the battle of Moncontour by his impatience to engage; yet they acknowledged that to his masterly conduct it was owing that their retreat was effected in so successful, and even so brilliant a manner. He was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... about love to each other!" The gentleman was astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent dismay for the rest of the evening. Thackeray then, as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... really corresponds with the "forte" of a sword or stick. If you have learned fencing with the foils it will be of the greatest possible advantage to you, for you will then understand how slight an effort brought to bear on the foible of your opponent's staff—in this case it will be somewhere within two feet of the end—will suffice to turn aside the ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... being educated amain, let us hope. Germany has prided herself on her education, her learning, and on her Kultur. To-day she is beyond the calculation of all that foresight which has been her boast, and foible. Human nature, other than German, has not been on the national curriculum, and, as in other departments of study, what has not been reduced to rule and line is beyond the ken and apprehension. How stupendously wrong a Power which could count, and into a ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... stick, remarked that they grew extremely fast. But the keeper, usually so keen to take a hint, only answered that the lime was the quickest wood to grow of which he knew. In his heart he enjoyed the squire's difficulty. Finally the squire, legalising his foible by recognising it, fetched a ladder and a hatchet, and chopped off the boughs ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... absorbed in one of those great educational crises which from time to time shake a university to its base. The meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... are, however, at most only calculated to excite a smile; there is no turpitude in them, and they merit notice but as indications of the humour of character. It was his Lordship's foible to overrate his rank, to grudge his deformity beyond reason, and to exaggerate the condition of his family and circumstances. But the alloy of such small vanities, his caprice and feline temper, were as vapour compared with the mass of rich and rare ore which constituted ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of this sex against a sister, is Ridicule. Not only does it rob her who indulges it of the rich joys of admiration, but it poisons the depths of her own spirit, and breaks the peace of her associates. Few are they, who have not some foible or personal defect, on which this vice may fix itself. One is an object of taunts for her ignorance; another for a plain face; a third for an impediment in her speech; and how many suffer this infliction for some article of ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... about these things. He cared little how his father scraped and saved, if he had but money in his pockets sufficient for the needs of the day. Extravagance in money was less Tom's foible than recklessness in his exploits, and a daring disregard of authority. No doubt he would have made away with money had he possessed it; but as everybody knew that he did not possess a long purse, and that the Squire would not be ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Ambassador was 262 lamenting one day before the King, that the nations of Europe were wholly destitute of this grand desideratum; and he strongly recommended the establishment of a college founded upon the simple principles he had suggested. The king, either to humour this Quixotic foible, or to gratify his own ambition at the expense of truth, observed, in reply, 'Why, Sir, I have a Professor of Signs in one of the northernmost colleges in my dominions; but the distance is, perhaps, six hundred miles, so that it will ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... any remark upon it—every lady has some foible, some little peculiarity. She was a perfect wife, and this little feeling of small jealousies was not worth mentioning. If they went to a ball and he danced three times with the same lady, he knew he would hear something in faint dispraise. If he admired any one as a good rider or a ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... "Poetics" of Aristotle, with illustrations drawn liberally from recent authors, was perhaps begotten of a natural wish to satisfy the public that qualifications for the laurel were not wholly wanting. A barren devotion to the drama was always his foible. It was freely indulged. With few exceptions, his plays were affairs of partnership with Samuel James Arnold, a writer of ephemeral popularity, whose tale of "The Haunted Island" was wildly admired by readers of the intensely romantic school, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Vizard gave Miss Maitland an outline of this conversation; and, so far from seeing the humor of it, which, nevertheless, was pretty strong and characteristic of the man and his one foible, she took the huff, and would not even stay to dinner at the hotel. She would go into her own county by the next train, bag ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... invariable effect of vanity. You cannot so disguise it, but that it will be detected, and cover you with disgrace. There is no foible more common than this, and there is none more ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... his faults, inseparable it may be from the society into which he had been thrown, was not vicious. Loving and beloved, he existed but as the object of woman's regard. This foible he indulged not farther. But many a bright eye waxed dim,—many a fond heart was withered, in the first spring-tide of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... whims. By a strange madness, this prince spent his time seated at a table, upon which were placed three dice and a dice-box. One end of the table was covered with pieces of silver, designed to excite the avarice of his courtiers and people. He, knowing the foible of his subjects, addresses them as follows: Slaves, I wish your happiness. My goodness proposes to enrich you, and make you all happy. Do you see these treasures? Well, they are for you; strive to gain them; let each, in his turn, take the box and dice; ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... other men, partakers like him of the grace of God. His natural bias and habits are his own, and differ as much from those of other men as theirs differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of God. These excellencies, in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... own, where they probably would have been readily adopted, as being so much in their own way. But I never found that he used the least endeavour to make himself master of any one. This kind of indifference is indeed the characteristic foible of his nation. Europeans have visited them at times for these ten years past, yet we could not discover the slightest trace of any attempt to profit by this intercourse, nor have they hitherto copied after us in any one thing. We are not, therefore, to expert ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... man, inferior in a general way to Edouard Riviere, would have made a sensible reply to this. Such as, "Oh, any friend of yours, mademoiselle, must be welcome to me," or the like. But the proposal caught Edouard on his foible, his vanity, to wit; and our foibles are our manias. He was mortified to the heart's core. "She refuses to know me herself," thought he, "but she will use my love to make me amuse that old man." His heart swelled against her injustice and ingratitude, and his crushed vanity turned to strychnine. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
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