"Defect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defect in the position of woman that one like Mariana should have found reason to write thus. To a man of equal power, equal sincerity, no more!—many resources would have presented themselves. He would not have needed to seek, he would have been called by life, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... for the condition unless one accepts the mother's theory. While it sounds somewhat like the discarded theory of maternal impression, yet it is not impossible that the fright and shock which the mother received may have interfered with the nutrition of the unborn child and resulted in the mental defect. The story in brief is as follows. Shortly before this child was born, the mother was compelled to take care of a sister-in-law who was in a similar condition and very ill with convulsions. Our child's mother was many times frightened ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... now, classification may be aided by development and ultimate analysis to a considerable extent; and the defect in Mr. Bain's work is, that he has not systematically availed himself of them as far as possible. Thus we may, in the first place, study the evolution of the emotions up through the various grades of the animal ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... proud to style scores of Base Ball players, I know, as gentlemen. They are optimists. Defect is unrecognized. Team work makes them brotherly. Bickerings break a Baseballist. Every member of the team gives himself wholly to the game. Jeers are ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... call, which Kate recognized, with some amusement, as a parochial visit. He was an earnest young man, with views, and it was evident that he regarded Mrs. Kildare's frank indifference to matters of dogma as a serious defect in her character. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... physician, desires medicines in moderation, so much as will do him good and no more; but, so far as his end is health, he desires all possible health, perfect health. The last end, then, is to be desired as a thing to possess without end or measure, fully and without defect. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... that the jars, covers, and rubber rings be in perfect condition. Examine each jar and cover to see that there is no defect in it. Use only fresh rubber rings, for if the rubber is not soft and elastic the sealing will not be perfect. Each year numbers of jars of fruit are lost because of the false economy in using an old ring that has lost its softness ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... nature we are more largely and gravely and importantly sexual than men but that men have shifted the responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made us pay in servitude and restriction and blame for the common defect of the species. So that you see really I was right all along in writing of this as though it was women when it wasn't, and I hope now it is unnecessary for me to make my meaning clearer than it is now and always has been in this matter. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... is needed in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, a mental defect in the eyes of practical folk, who would busy himself with the lesser creatures? Yes, let us be simple, without being childishly credulous. Before making insects reason, let us reason a little ourselves; let us, above all, consult ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... an indispensable condition of prosperity, or even of domestic order and the reign of law, in the Southern States. The lack of moral courage among the physically brave men of the South has already been indicated and illustrated. It was something of this same defect that held back the slave-masters from the condescension, as they esteemed it, of establishing any relation whatever with the negro in his new condition of freedom. Such action was frowned upon by the public opinion of this class throughout ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... force of arms, but it is necessarily very mild. It is so easy for any one who is unkindly treated to make his escape to other tribes, that the Makololo are compelled to treat them, to a great extent, rather as children than slaves. Some masters, who fail from defect of temper or disposition to secure the affections of the conquered people, frequently find themselves left without a single servant, in consequence of the absence and impossibility of enforcing a fugitive-slave law, and the readiness with which those who are themselves ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... frequented by Christians: but in the north are savages altogether harmlesse. Touching the commodities of this countrie, serving either for sustentation of inhabitants, or for maintenance of traffique, there are and may be made; so and it seemeth Nature hath recompensed that only defect and incommoditie of some sharpe cold, by many benefits: viz., with incredible quantitie and no less varietie of kindes of fish in the sea and fresh waters, as trouts, salmons, and other fish to us unknowen: also cod, which alone draweth many nations ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art." His art never taught him prejudice or to wear only one eye. "His art is less for every deduction from his holiness and less for every defect of common sense." And this common sense has a great deal to do with this distinguishing difference of Emerson's between genius and talent, repose and truth, and between all evidences of substance and manner in ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... muscles, his frequent defects and inequalities in other respects become, as faults of inattention, less incomprehensible. For example, his values of distance are often faulty, and give the unpleasant sensation that one figure is standing on the top of another,[39] a defect of carelessness, for no one is a better master of aerial perspective when he chooses. Again, his hands and feet are often incorrectly drawn and badly modelled, but it is only when they are not essential to the ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... weak point was slowness of recovery. His thrusts were quick and well planted, he had an excellent guard and mastery of the weapon; but he was slow in recovering after making a lunge, and the longer the fight continued the more evident did this defect become. And it was plain that he was aware of it, for though he pressed upon his antagonist with great determination and with much dexterity of sword play, he was afraid to take advantage of his longer reach ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... traverse" for some minutes, before it shall discover, among his armed followers, which is Joshua! Not modern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from defect of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to show of the preternatural in painting, transcending the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing between two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles with newly-apprehending gratitude ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to do anything useful. He still continues, with all he has acquired, with all his usefulness, and with all his innocence of character, without any proper sense of religion, though he has attained a rather advanced age. If it be observed that this want of religion is a great defect in the story, the author begs leave to observe that he cannot help it. Lavengro relates the lives of people so far as they were placed before him, but no further. It was certainly a great defect in so good a man to be without religion; it was likewise a great ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... would it seem!—and yet one ought to be able, by the mere use of language, to supply to every reader the total of that white, honeyed, trailing sweetness, which summer insects haunt and the Spirit of the Universe loves. The defect is not in language, but in men. There is no conceivable beauty of blossom so beautiful as words,—none so graceful, none so perfumed. It is possible to dream of combinations of syllables so delicious that all the dawning and decay of summer cannot rival their perfections, nor winter's stainless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... as about serious moral offences. In the course of the same day that they have given way to some outbreak of temper, they may act with great self-denial and watchful kindness; but they can hardly expect their subordinates to be at ease with them. Another defect which prevents confidence, is a certain sterility of character, which does not allow of sympathy with other people's fancies and pursuits. A man of this character does not understand any likings but his own. He will be kind ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... refiner's crucible. Her forehead was free from all harshness, broad and intelligent, her beautiful smiling lips of the colour of the berries of the mountain ash, her teeth a shower of lustrous pearls. Her face and form, her limbs, hands and feet, were such that no defect, blemish or disproportion could be observed, though one might watch and observe long, seeking to discover them. In that daughter of the High Poet and Historian of the Hound-race of the North, [Footnote: The hound was the type of valour. Though Cuculain was pre-eminently the Hound, the Gaelic equivalents ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... to see. Witnesses in court, testifying upon oath concerning an accident, usually produce as many different versions as there are pairs of eyes. Books upon psychology report many enlightening and amusing cases of this defect of accurate ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... a comedy by Mrs. Inchbald (1794). By the fault of rigid pride, Lord Norland discarded his daughter, Lady Eleanor, because she married against his consent. By the fault of gallantry and defect of due courtesy to his wife, Sir Robert Ramble drove Lady Ramble into a divorce. By the fault of irresolution, "Shall I marry or shall I not!" Solus remained a miserable bachelor, pining for a wife and domestic joys. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... scale, the philosopher who acknowledged Hutcheson as his master and gave his ideas a still more expansive character, be the apostle of egotism; and how can the science which he founded be its gospel? There is here an error of fact and a defect of appreciation. Hutcheson had based moral philosophy on the feeling which, according to him, engendered all the other virtues, on benevolence, which is disinterested, busied with the welfare of others, with the public weal and the general interest. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... was delightful they weren't interrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that season, that people got a good talk. But luckily now, of a fine Sunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it better for those who didn't go, when these others were in sympathy. It was the defect of London—one of two or three, the very short list of those she recognised in the teeming world-city she adored—that there were too few good chances for talk; you never had ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... fairy, or whatever you choose to call her, came out of the shop and had to push Tommy aside to get past. Oh, what a sweet foot to be kicked by. At the time, he thought she was dressed not unlike the women of his own stair, but this defect in his vision he mended afterward, as you may hear. Of course, he rose and trotted by her side like a dog, looking up at her as if she were a cathedral; but she mistook his awe for impudence and sent him sprawling, with the words, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... This serious defect may have been the result of the constant and unremitting neglect with which Indians generally treat their dogs. They are fond of them in a way, and are unwilling to part with them, except at a good price; yet, except when working them, they very seldom feed them. The ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... a 'ferb' or ulcer could be produced," says Mr. Stokes, in his preface to 'Cormac's Glossary,' "forms the groundwork of the tale of Nede mac Adnae and his uncle, Caier." The names of the three blisters (Stain, Blemish, and Defect) are almost identical with those Ferdiah is threatened ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... England, where four-fifths of the population use cotton to the exclusion of linen, they make nothing but cotton paper. The cotton paper is very soft and easily creased to begin with, and it has a further defect: it is so soluble that if you seep a book made of cotton paper in water for fifteen minutes, it turns to a pulp, while an old book left in water for a couple of hours is not spoilt. You could dry the old book, and the pages, though yellow and faded, would still be ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... The first defect of the texts is in the distribution and arrangement of the matter, as I have noticed in the case of Sindbad the Seaman (vol. vi. 77). Moreover, many of the earlier Nights are overlong and not a few of the others are overshort: this, however, has the prime recommendation ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... man was dumb. He hardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected his imagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed to be something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room with a deaf mute. It was almost as if such a defect were a deformity. It was almost as if it went with other and worse deformities. It was as if the shape he could not trace in the darkness were some shape that ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... your friend—and, like a friend, Point out your very worst defect—Nay, never Start at that word! But I must ask you why You keep your school ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... paradoxical. I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemption is a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or to alter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this point or that, then simply I admit my own mental defect. And I believe in our Church, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrument in human affairs. I believe in the security of its tradition, in the complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... that the expenditure of materials and labour is greater in proportion to the effect attained than in any other style. The pyramids are the most conspicuous example of this prodigality. Before condemning this as a defect in the style, it must be remembered that a stability which should defy enemies, earthquakes, and the tooth of time, was far more aimed at than architectural character; and that, had any mode of construction less ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... facts. In 1893 Saint Loup (28 p. 85) advanced the opinion that dancing individuals appear from time to time among races of common mice. The peculiarity of movement may be due, he thinks, to an accidental nervous defect which possibly might be transmissible to the offspring of the exceptional individual. Saint Loup for several months had under observation a litter of common mice whose quick, jerky, nervous movements of the head, continuous activity, and rapid whirling closely resembled the characteristic ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... and human affairs wear every fifty years a different aspect; so that an arrangement which, in the year 1800, was perfection, may, perhaps, in the year 1850, be a defect. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... patriot hates foreigners; they are only men, and nothing to him.[Footnote: Thus the wars of republics are more cruel than those of monarchies. But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.] This defect is inevitable, but of little importance. The great thing is to be kind to our neighbours. Among strangers the Spartan was selfish, grasping, and unjust, but unselfishness, justice, and harmony ruled his home life. Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... grew some of the sweetest tobacco that ever left Virginia; but I could scarce treat him civilly, which only shows what an insufferable puppy I still was, and I made myself most miserable. His learning was more of the court and camp than of the bookshelf,—a defect which I soon discovered,—and I loved to set him tripping over some quibble of words, a proceeding which amused me vastly, though my mirth was shared by none of the others who witnessed it. In fact, Madame Stewart was partial to the man from the first, in ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... make out a distant object while other people can, they will say to you, "How short-sighted you are!" but if no one can discern it, the probability is that something external has made vision impossible. Now, in the things of God, it is almost always the first defect that mars our perception; and the main reason why "eye hath not seen" is in our own nature, and not because God has not prepared nor revealed such things for our perception. To them that love Him, He ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... soften their Meat, but a Stomach furnish'd with thick strong Mucles, whose use is to grind the Grains of Corn, or any hard Meat swallow'd whole, which they perform by the help of little Stones, which Birds and Fowls swallow now and then, and which supply the defect of Teeth. It is observable, that Fowls, for the most part, lay a greater number of Eggs than Birds, even many more than they can sit upon at one time. I have known about thirty Eggs lay'd by one common Poultry-Hen, but it is seldom that any Bird lays more than ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... from abroad and his running for a seat in the House of Commons. Of these opinions held by him then, and afterwards repudiated, he, in a speech delivered at the opening of the Palmerston Club, Oxford, in December, 1878, says: "I trace in the education of Oxford of my own time one great defect. Perhaps it was my own fault; but I must admit that I did not learn, when at Oxford, that which I have learned since, viz., to set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty. The temper ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... largely produced, and is soon deposited in the form of rain. No theory," my friend continues, "competent to explain this hygrometric law has been given (as far as I am aware) by Herschel, Dove, Glaisher, Tait, Buchan, or any other writer; nor do I pretend to supply the defect. I venture, however, to throw out the conjecture that it will be ultimately found to belong to the same class of natural laws as that agreeable to which a slice of toast always descends ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This defect is less likely to occur in cheese that is well cheddared than in sweet curd cheese. When acidity is produced, these gassy fermentations are checked, and in good cheddar the body is so close and firm as not readily ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... manhood at Soho The Newcomen engine was in fact a condensing engine, but as the condensation was effected inside the steam cylinder it was a very costly source of power in respect to steam. Watt's happy idea of condensing in a separate vessel removed the defect. This was first done in his experimental engine in the Glasgow University workshop, and before he had made the one at Kinniel for Dr. Roebuck. ...] of the condensing steam-engine it was the place where it attained its full ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Bingham, following her with astonished eyes. Then she turned to Langbourne. "It's perfectly ridiculous, and I don't see how I can ever explain it. I don't think Barbara has shown a great deal of tact," and Juliet Bingham was evidently prepared to make up the defect by a diplomacy which she enjoyed. "I don't know where to begin exactly; but you must certainly excuse my—manner, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... with their handiwork. "We appeared then to be a great subject of admiration for these women; they seemed to regard us with a tender satisfaction," wrote Peron; and the reflection occurred to him "that the white European skin of which our race is so proud is really a defect, a sort of deformity, which must in these distant climates give place to the hue of charcoal, dull red ochre, or clay." Bonaparte would not have concurred; for he, as Thibaudeau tells us, emphatically told his Council of State, "I am for ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... absolute failure. But as the load was piled up, to the extent of nearly 400 lb. per sq. ft., there was no sign of giving (over this span) other than an insignificant deflection of less than 1/4 in., which disappeared on removing the load. This slab still performs its share of the duty, without visible defect, hence it must be safe. The question naturally arises: if 4 in. of inferior concrete could make this showing, what must have been the value of the 6 in. of good concrete in the other slabs? The reinforcing in the slab, it should be stated, ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... some instances, its realities. The want of high finish is common to everything of this sort in America; and, perhaps we may add, that the absence of picturesqueness as connected with the works of man, is a general defect; still, this particular region, and all others resembling it— for they abound on the wide surface of the twenty-six states—has beauties of its own, that it would be difficult to meet with in any of the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study 197 the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the linea alba, which is in the median line; Epispadias, which is an urethral opening on the dorsum of the penis; and Hypospadias, which is a similar opening on its under surface, are of the same nature—namely, omissions in median union. Hermaphrodism may be interpreted simply as a structural defect, compared to the normal form of the male, and as a structural excess compared to that of the female. Spina bifida is a congenital malformation or hiatus in union along the median line of the sacrum or loins. As the process of union along the median line may err by a defect ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... the defect of his qualities. He was essentially Cromwellian. He too would have said, "Take away that bauble!" He did not look outside of himself for help. Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance" made small impression upon him, because he had the thing of which Emerson wrote. His strength came ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... a slate roof which leaks very much. I have not discovered any defect in the way in which it was put on; it appears to be perfect. The pitch may be too low, and the rain may be driven through by the wind on this account. Is there any wash, paint, or cement that might be used for the purpose of remedying this defect? A. There is an ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... possesses from liberty of invention, and correcting thereby the inequalities of life; and having also the additional fault of laying its scenes for the most part in a foreign country. The characters of Tragedy are always selected from high life; here is a great defect, for it is by no means a true observation, that men are inclined greatly to pity the misfortunes of their superiors; on the contrary, they are secretly rejoiced at seeing them fall from a situation so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... partridges! and that was unnatural! The fact was, ever since that talk with the master about Linty, he could not bear to kill anything, and was now and then haunted by the dying eyes of the pigeon he shot the first time he handled a gun. The grandmother thought it a defect in his manhood that he did not like shooting; but, woman, and old woman as she was, his heart was larger and tenderer than hers, and got in the way of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the complaints of the schoolmaster that the public does not defer to his professional opinion as completely as it does to that of practitioners in other professions. At first sight it might seem as though this indicated a defect either in the public or in the profession; and yet a wider view of the situation would suggest that such a conclusion is not a necessary one. The relations of education to the public are different from those of any other professional ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... themselves in part by cohesion, than to stone, which depends upon gravitation alone. Although it stands in stone in a long cordon of colonnades from the Ganges to the Guadalquivir, the eye never quite reconciles itself to the suggestion of untruth and feebleness in the recurved base of the arch. This defect, however, is obtrusive only when the weight supported is great; and the Moorish builders have generally avoided subjecting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... moreover indistinct by reason of the use of the word Ideas, a word to which so many different significations have been attached by different writers that its meaning is vague and undefined—to convey the impression of Laws or Principles. The same defect exists in the detailed exposition is perhaps the most extended ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven With spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... wondered at Lady Fogey's impudence in judging upon the point at all. She surveyed Laura with majestic glances through her eyeglass. She was pleased with the girl's artless looks, and gay innocent manner. Her manner is very good, her ladyship thought. Her arms are rather red, but that is a defect of her youth. Her tone is far better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is dancing opposite ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should have any occasion for a change of linen, I had brought none with me, but she soon found a cure for this defect; for after having undressed me she dried me lovingly, gave me one of her smocks, and I found myself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... always be sympathetic, kindly, calm, and noble, even when the most repulsive things are expressed. A tearful voice is a grave defect, and must be avoided. The same may be said of the tremulous voice of the aged, who emphasize and prolong their syllables. Tears are out of place in great situations; we should weep only at home. To weep is a sure ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... my plaints were not t' approve The conquest of thy beauty, It comes not from defect of love, But fear ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Ages compelled them to wear rags, to snuffle and whine and groan over their poverty in self-defence, till the habits induced by the necessities of other times have come to be, as usual, instinctive, a racial defect. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... which, having bloodied your nose, would put a knife-handle down your back, and apply a handful of cobwebs to the nasal extremity in order to arrest the haemorrhage. We are sorry that there is such a defect in his character; but we did not put it there. We should prefer that he should be perfect—the reader will believe us—but there are grave lamentations enough over the failures of humanity to render our homilies unnecessary. Ned Hinkley was not a gentleman, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... but, unless the office of 'devil' in your newspaper is a purely technical one, I think he has all the qualities required. He is very quick, active, and intelligent; understands English better than he speaks it; and makes up for any defect by his habits of observation and imitation. You have only to show him how to do a thing once, and he will repeat it, whether it is an offence or a virtue. But you certainly know him already. You are ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... illustrates an important defect in the law with regard to the revision of verdicts and judgments in the United States Circuit Court. In almost all other courts, an application for a new trial on the ground of erroneous rulings by the judge, is made to a higher and independent ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... The walls had tongues. He first noticed a little defect in the green paint in the living room, which I had retouched. Winnie told me of this, and I realized how clever Mr. Stone is. So, I threw away the paint I had used, which was in here, and I carefully ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... merely as a struggle between Germany and the Allies; and inferentially he is perfectly willing the Kaiser should remain in power. He is of course a patriotic man and a man of great cultivation. But he doesn't see the deeper meaning of the conflict. Add to this defect of understanding, a long period of bad health and a lasting depression because of the loss of his son, and his call to the war-weary ceases to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... distributed to all the different parts of the city. It is of more consequence to consult the health of the inhabitants in this article than to employ so much attention in beautifying their town with new streets, squares, and churches. Another defect, not so easily remedied, is the shallowness of the river, which will not float vessels of any burthen within ten or twelve miles of the city; so that the merchants are obliged to load and unload their ships at Greenock and Port-Glasgow, situated ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of human life, men set themselves first and chiefly to change those. We are always trying to improve the play by shifting the scenery. But no person of insight ever believed that the manipulation of circumstance alone can solve man's problems. Said Emerson, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." Said Herbert Spencer, "No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts." Said James Anthony Froude, "Human improvement is from within outwards." Said Carlyle, "Fool! ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... observer of character, and of conditions in affairs, and in a free debate he was never in peril of being overmatched. Of a mutual friend and an associate in politics he said: "He has no serious side to his character—a defect that has been the bane of many otherwise ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... what mistakes may arise. I have found out lately that I have been stating the very contrary to what I would have said. With this translation, I stand up to read a portion of the Word of God, for my interpreter can not read, and hence any slight defect or change in a syllable may give altogether a different sense from what ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... changes being necessary in the vocal part of many of the older classic writers, particularly of oratorio, is the frequently faulty syllabic accentuation. I have already mentioned this defect in the chapter on Accent. Handel, for instance, although living nearly all his life in England, never became quite master of its language; hence the numerous cases of the misplacing of syllables in his oratorios. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... be censured according to whose representations and views a Christian Church is to be advocated which should be in all respects without infirmity and defect, and who teach that, when perfection is not in evidence, there is no such thing as the Church of Christ nor as true Christians. Many erring spirits, especially strong pretenders to wisdom, and precocious, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... be constituted in which are Kings almost fathers and pastors, (as Homer calls them) they being consequently the most noble, and most generous members of the Republics, there neither is nor can be reasonable doubt as to the rectitude of their royal hearts. If any defect, wrong, and evil is suffered, there can be no other cause than that the Kings are ignorant of it; for if such were manifested to them, they would extirpate them with supreme industry and watchful diligence. 2. It is seemingly ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose of the tragedy; and the end is everywhere the chief thing. Besides this, a tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without Character. The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless—a defect common among poets of all kinds, and with its counterpart in painting in Zeuxis as compared with Polygnotus; for whereas the latter is strong in character, the work of Zeuxis is devoid of it. And again: one ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... Creator wise! that peopled highest heav'n With spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature? and not fill the world at once With men, as angels, without feminine? Or find some other way to generate Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on earth ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... again the zest of life. As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect, in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her made up for it. He was a good hater—that was well; but it was a question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... wonderful similarity to Philo. This being the case, it becomes of deep interest to us to know,—if we are to accept results at second hand from Paul and John,—what was the sort of evidence which convinced them? The moment this question is put, we see the essential defect to which we are exposed, in not being able to cross-examine them. Paul says that "Christ appeared to him:" elsewhere, that he has "received of the Lord" certain facts, concerning the Holy Supper: ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... argument used by the author of the tract above named has a striking defect. He talks of reducing this world and the next to "present value," as an actuary does with successive lives or next presentations. Does value make interest? and if not, why? And if it do, then the present value of an eternity is not infinitely great. Who is ignorant that a perpetual annuity at ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of bone, or sometimes of wood covered with leather, with a deep notch for the reception of the string. The only wood which they can procure not possessing sufficient elasticity combined with strength, they ingeniously remedy the defect by securing to the back of the bow, and to the knobs at each end, a quantity of small lines, each composed of a plait or “sinnet” of three sinews. The number of lines thus reaching from end to end is generally about thirty; but besides ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... fury of the crocodile, He fighteth in the saddle like a sharp-fanged dragon. In his wrath he staineth the earth with blood, As he wieldeth his bright scimitar around him. And though his hair is as white as is a fawn's, In vain would the fault-finder seek another defect! Nay, the whiteness of his hair even becometh him; Thou wouldst say that he is ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... for he was hardly ever missed from deck, was always fresh and vigorous, and his dress and appearance would, at any time, have done honour to the queen's drawing-room. Maitland was, withal, rather a little easy-going, and it occurred to me that, knowing his defect in this way, he contrived always to get a tolerable tartar of a first lieutenant, so that between the captain's good nature and the lieutenant's severity, which he occasionally checked and tempered when he thought the lieutenant was likely to exceed ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... may arise from physical or mental causes. The physical causes may be—too great or too tender an age; malformation of the genital organs; crypsorchides, defect or disease in the testicles; constitutional disease (diabetes, neurasthenia, etc.); or debility from acute disease, as mumps. Masturbation, and early and excessive sexual indulgence, are also causes. The mental causes ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... inoculation to the immortality of the soul—and every touch tells. It is the spirit of Humanism carried to its furthest, its quintessential point; indeed, at first sight, one is tempted to think that this quality of rarefied universality has been exaggerated into a defect. The matters treated of are so many and so vast, they are disposed of and dismissed so swiftly, so easily, so unemphatically, that one begins to wonder whether, after all, anything of real significance can have been expressed. But, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... have this defect, that they easily bend under any Weight, because of their great Humidity; but they have this Advantage, that their Humidity does not engender Worms, because of their Bitterness which ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... Nelly, ready to stamp with vexation; "as if it were not bad enough to have mother examining my poor empty cottage, without having him to look on all the time through those horrid spectacles, that will magnify every defect. Just hear now how mother is thanking him for all that he has done for her children, and see what a sly meaning glance he is casting at me, looking through his glasses, as much as to say—'There's one stupid dunce of a fellow; I could never ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... glaring defect in Cromwell—a defect which he had in common with many others of his time—that he threw himself into a revolution having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... The great defect of Wordsworth, in our judgment, was want of sympathy with, and knowledge of men. From his birth till his entry at college, he lived in a region where he met with none whose minds might awaken his sympathies, and where life was altogether uneventful. On the other ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... give happiness to the parents of Godless, wayward children. Some one has said, "Every drunkard, every gambler, every lost woman once sat in a mother's lap, and the downfall of the most of them may be traced to some defect in home life." ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... patronized, for the great man's own house. When it was nearly completed, however, a flaw was found in the marble, which somewhat detracted from its perfection. The flaw was in the shoulder of the image, and by no means serious; but Mr. Copperhead was not the man to pass over any such defect. After a long and serious consultation over it, which made the young artist shake in his shoes, a solution was found ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... himself will be loser, and so will the case be formed here; for such is the poverty and meanness of the people (by reason of the length and coldness of the winters, the difficulty of subduing a wilderness, defect of staple commodity, the want of money, etc.), that if with hard labour men get a subsistence for their families, 'tis as much as the generality are able to do, paying but very small rates towards the public charges; and yet if all the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to space under which the little volume called "The Old Masters" was originally written, caused me to omit, to my regret, many names great, though not first, in art. The circulation which the book has attained induces me to do what I can to remedy the defect, and render the volume more useful by adding two chapters—the one on Italian and the other on German, Dutch, and Flemish masters. These chapters consist almost entirely of condensed notes taken from two trustworthy sources, to which I have ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... 'That defect,' said Lord Granville, 'belonged to many of our good speakers—to Charles Fox—to Lord Holland. Indeed Fox required the excitement of serious business to become fluent. He never made ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of vision. But his good sense—which in the field of speculation was very good—joined to his gentleness, his insinuating charm, and his admirable ease of manner, ought to have compensated, more than they have done, for his defect of penetration. He has always suffered from an habitual irresoluteness; but I do not know to what this irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior, though very much a soldier. He has never, through his own effort, succeeded ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the young inventor. "We'll, we'll have to wait and see." He was busy now, going over every detail of the Humming-Bird. Mr. Damon helped him, and they discovered the defect in the equilibrium ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... ironies and antipathies from her. Even retrospectively she saw things which at the time she had not seen, saw, for instance, that the idea of the Belots had not been alluring to him. He knew, too, that she would have considered dislike of the Belots as showing defect in him not in them, but cheerfully, if with a touch of her severity. She had an infinite tolerance for the defects and foibles of those she loved. He was glad to be able to reply with full sincerity: "Ils sont de braves gens ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... passion for the gum on the back of postage-stamps, and one hushes it up; but if he be deaf the visitor must be warned. My bat had a certain looseness in the shoulder, so that, at any quick movement of it, it clicked. If I struck the ball well and truly in the direction of point this defect did not matter; but if the ball went past me into the hands of the wicket-keeper, an unobservant bowler would frequently say, "How's that?" And an ill-informed umpire would reply, "Out." It was my duty before the game began to take the visiting umpire on one side and give him a practical ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... supplied with the Rochester Times, which would assure the farmers that cheap food tended to produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their own bad cultivation—and the more rapid the augmentation of the millers' fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the greater, they would be assured, must be the prosperity of the whole people; even although the same paper ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... good-looking; and when he walked about with his betrothed, it was half a matter of surprise that he should have ventured to propose to a young lady of such heroic proportions. Miss Leary had the gray eyes and auburn hair which I have always assigned to the famous statue. The one defect in her face, in spite of an expression of great candor and sweetness, was a certain lack of animation. What it was besides her beauty that attracted Locksley I never discovered: perhaps, since his attachment was so short-lived, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... expedition Ilfracombe contributed six vessels, and Liverpool one. We may take it that the whole Fowey estuary shared in the manning and maintenance of this gallant squadron. The Fowey men had certainly the defect of their qualities, being proud and stiff-necked under the successes that attended them. It is reported that Fowey was made a member of the Cinque Ports, that very elastic "five"; but its comradeship in that association was clearly of a stormy and high-handed ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... this side of the Atlantic. This remark leads Mr. White to surmise that the critic had not been five years in America, for, says he, Signora Borghese was not worthy to tie the shoes of Malibran, Pedrotti, Fanti, Garadori, or Mrs. Wood, the last two of whom had sung in English opera. Her chief defect seems to have been the tremolo—that vice toward which the American critics of to-day are more intolerant than those of any other people, as they are toward the sister vice of a faulty intonation. Mr. White talks sensibly on the subject in his ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... helpless! Look at me! Have I not hands, feet, a head, and wits? Am I not as well informed and naturally capable as three fine ladies out of every four? Would I not look as handsome as they, if I had a chance to wear their dresses and jewels? Have I any blemish, any defect, that makes me cease to be a woman, and become a thing? Bah, master Pisander! I am only a slave, but I will talk. Why does my blood boil at the fate of Agias, if it was not meant that it should heat up for some end? And yet I am as much ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... astounding portrait of Hurstwood—, but it seems to me plain that its relative popularity is by no means a test of its relative merit, and that the causes of that popularity must be sought in other directions. Its defect, as a work of art, is a defect of structure. Like Norris' "McTeague" it has a broken back. In the midst of the story of Carrie, Dreiser pauses to tell the story of Hurstwood—a memorably vivid and tragic story, to be sure, but still ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... he never meant to confirm, and he resolved to be further solicited for that protection which he had already determined to grant. But this reproof of Julia touched him where he was most conscious of defect; and the temporary triumph which he imagined it afforded her, kindled his resentment into flame. He mused in his chair, in a fixed attitude.—She saw in his countenance the deep workings of his mind—she revolved the fate preparing for her, and stood ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... wife knew how to read,—a slight defect of education which did not prevent them from ciphering admirably and doing a most flourishing business. Sauviat never bought any article without the certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per cent profit. To relieve himself of the necessity ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... and defect in the character of the native Cubans is a want of self-reliance. The remedy for the outrageous oppression under which they have so long struggled lies within themselves; "for they can conquer who believe they can." In the consciousness of strength is strength, but the Creole republicans have ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... pretty background for a drawing-room scene, and admit of entrances as I suggested. But screens with light grounds are also very valuable as reflectors, carrying the light into the back of the stage. There is generally a want of light on the amateur stage, and all means to remedy this defect and brighten up matters are ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and force him to come out of his works? Hooker, however, may have said that if they marched across his front, he would attack them en route, as did Napoleon at Austerlitz and Wellington at Salamanca, and cut their army in two. But here he came face to face with the fatal defect of the lines he had selected, and also of the disposition he had made of his cavalry. The country near Chancellorsville was very unlike the rolling plains of Austerlitz or the bare downs of Salamanca. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... very thickly with cabbage seed, early in the spring, to raise young plants to be sold as greens. The seed is sown broadcast at the rate of ten pounds and upwards to the acre. Seed of the Savoy cabbage is usually sown for this purpose, which may be sometimes purchased at a discount, owing to some defect in quality or purity, that would render it worthless for planting for a crop ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... it. Unfortunately for him, his grasping avarice one morning suggested a thought which his ignorance prevented his rejecting: 'Since this ruby—old-fashioned and stained as it is—can be worth so much, what would be its value if freed from all defect, and in modern setting?' And he soon found a lapidary, who, for a sum of 3000 francs, modernised it, and effaced the spot, and with it the impress, the stamp of its antiquity—all that gave it value, beauty, worth! This wanting, no jeweller ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... the sense of proportion was returning slowly, and with it some saner impulses. Truly, it had been his misfortune to be obliged to compromise with evil to some extent, and to involve others, but was not that rather due to the ineradicable faults of an imperfect social system than to any basic defect in his own theories? And was not the same imperfect social system partly responsible for the quasi-criminal attitude which had been forced upon him? He was willing to believe it; willing, also, to believe that he could rise above the constraining forces and be the man he wished to be. That ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... distance in space makes things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is why a landscape looks so much better in a contracting mirror or in a camera obscura, than it is in reality. The same effect is produced by distance in time. The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... things about life. Nobody could have guessed from that serene demeanour that her self-satisfaction was marred by any untoward detail whatever. Yet it was. All her frocks were designed to conceal a serious defect which seriously disturbed her: ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... one obvious disadvantage; their long, narrow shape made a large number of the seats and a large proportion of the spaces available for standing room distinctly bad places from which to see what was happening on the stage. To remedy this defect, the builders of the theaters took a suggestion from the bull-baiting and bear-baiting rings. These rings, of which a considerable number already existed {37} in the outskirts of London, had been built for fights between dogs and bulls ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... mass of testimony pointing to Riel's mental defect—paranoia—the undoubted history of insanity from boyhood, with the recurring paroxysms of intense excitement, he wonders that there could have been the slightest discussion regarding it.'—'A Critical Study ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... hating Rome, and our misfortunes fed his hopes. He was, indeed, far cleverer than most barbarians, and professed to be a second Sertorius or Hannibal, because they all three had the same physical defect.[271] He was afraid that if he openly rebelled against the Roman people they would treat him as an enemy, and march on him at once, so he pretended to be a keen supporter of Vespasian's party. This much was true, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... porcelain but without anything of Meredith's "rogue." Because Peter was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that she required. She seemed, as she sat there, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... of intelligence can be improved by education, but there appears to be a limit to the capacity of development of each individual. Lower intelligence, therefore, is not only due to lack of opportunity, but to an inborn constitutional defect. ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... he even trusted her. It is just conceivable that he would have allowed her to wander off by herself with several hundred thousand pounds worth of jewels while he argued with the Emperor and Donovan and the U. S. Ambassador. But Gorman pointed out a fatal defect in ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... square closely with the account given in the Introduction, of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak, 'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... anywhere in respect of opinion, skill, power, or money, either as regards quantity or quality, the chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, and the turtle and the clinching argument will fly asunder. Of course, if there is an initial failure in connection, through defect in any member of the chain, or of connection between the links, it will no more be attempted to bring the turtle and the clinching argument together, than it will to chain up a dog with two pieces of broken chain that are disconnected. The contact throughout must be conceived ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... The outstanding defect in the libretto of Patience is the decentralisation of interest in the second act. The alert ones who remembered that in that act the heroine has only one song, and certain passages of dialogue not remarkable for dramatic force, had predicted that Millicent would inevitably lose ground as the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... There are mysteries in it,—as truly so as in the human apostasy, origin of evil, permission of sin, which confound my reasonings as to the benevolence of God; in which, however, I, nevertheless, maintain my firm belief. Here was the great defect in Mr. Jefferson's views of slavery. In the highest Christian sense, he was not qualified to understand this subject; he reasoned like one who did not take into view the providence and the purposes of God, even while he was saying what he did of there being "no attribute in the Almighty that would ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... overcome. Let me see: there is a creeping defect here. Humble purpose-like reading of the word omitted. What plant can ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... achievement had been accomplished. He opened each of the windows, tested every iron bar, and saw that the fastenings of the external blind were undisturbed, whilst the fine wire mesh showed no irregularities in its hexagonal pattern wherein any defect would ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... 1909 model over that of 1908, apparently, was the lack of inherent lateral stability. This was caused by the lesser surface and lesser extent of curvatures at the portions of the aeroplane which were warped. This defect did not show so plainly after Mr. Orville Wright had become fully proficient in the handling of the new machine, and with skillful management, the 1909 model aeroplane will be just as safe and secure as the other though it will take a little more practice to get ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... at the table with slightly bowed legs—not the result of much riding, although he wore top-boots and breeches as if of daily habit—but a racial defect handed down like the nasal brand from remote progenitors. He looked at letter and newspaper as they lay side by side—not with the doubtfulness of warfare between conscience and temptation, but with a calculating thoughtfulness. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... the legal mind is not a bad fault at the worst, and the quality in which this defect inheres is of the greatest moment in any project of constructive engineering on the legal and political plane. But it is less to the purpose, indeed it is at cross purposes, in such a conjuncture as ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... you'll admit," said he with the exaggerated carelessness of a man with an unanswerable case, "that poor old Maturin was some authority, and he told me in confidence—I asked him about it, you know, just to be able to warn you fellows—that there was an absolutely fatal defect ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... supply, but also to supply it at a minimum cost for fuel. He by a peculiar arrangement of pipes embodied something of the regenerative system in his apparatus, using the heat taken from one lot of steam to generate more, and again the heat from this he used over again. The defect of his older arrangements was undue complexity and consequent trouble to keep ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... Madras and Calcutta, he persevered in an indomitable aversion to the use of the English tongue, which he so well knew how to write with precision and power. He spoke the broadest provincial Scotch with singular pertinacity. His voice was extremely dissonant, but, seemingly unconscious of the defect, he talked loud; and if engaged in argument, raised his voice to a pitch which frequently proved more powerful than the strength of his reasoning. He was dogmatical in maintaining his opinions, and prone to monopolise ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... baptised non-Catholic constitutes a "relative" impediment and needs a special dispensation and provisoes, such as a guarantee to bring up the children in the Roman faith to give it validity. Another impediment is based on the presumption of want of consent, "the nullity being caused by a defect of consent." "This defect," says the Catholic Encyclopedia, "may arise from the intellect or the will; hence we have two classes. Arising from the intellect we have: insanity; and total ignorance, even if in confuso of what marriage is (this ignorance, however, is not presumed to exist after the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Healthful Women in the Wealthy Classes. Causes which operate to undermine the Female Constitution. Excitement of Mind. Course of Intellectual Training. Taxation, in Domestic Life, of American Mothers and Housekeepers. Exercise and Fresh Air needful to balance Mental Excitement. Defect in American, compared with English, Customs, in this Respect. Difference in the Health and Youthfulness of Appearance between English and American Mothers. Liabilities of American Women to the uncommon Exposures ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... action", in the sense of a plan considered or adopted as a solution of the problem, has the defect that it appears to emphasize the action, rather than the paramount component, i.e., the objective. So long as this fact is borne in mind, the limitations of the term "courses of action" need not operate to influence, adversely, the solution of ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... young man had not borne to look on them, and had quickly escaped from the place, somewhere outside the gate. Was it the beginning, the promise of that reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last, or was it merely the effect, or defect, of ossified sensibilities, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of arguing that the heavy import duties which Germany levies on British goods have enabled German manufacturers in the first place to secure their home market, and in the second place to build up an enormous export trade at our expense. The argument is plausible, but it suffers from one fatal defect: it is unsupported by facts. As one reads the writings and listens to the talk of Protectionists, one's mind becomes unconsciously saturated with the notion that British trade is rapidly declining and German ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... reader against a common fault, much of the same nature; which is, mentioning any particular quality as absolutely essential to either man or woman, and exploding all those who want it. This renders every one uneasy who is in the least self-conscious of the defect. I have heard a boor of fashion declare in the presence of women remarkably plain, that beauty was the chief perfection of that sex, and an essential without which no woman was worth regarding; a certain method of putting all ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... defect was one of the deadly sins, and many were the admonitions which she received from Miss Dashwood. One evening, after a day in which they had been more frequent than usual, she went to bed, but lay awake. She was obliged to confess to herself that the light of three ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... enable the reader better to appreciate the true state of the case than many instances of ferocity I could enumerate. It shows that the natives occupy a wrong position in the minds of the whites; and that a radical defect exists in their original conception of their character, and of the mode in which they ought to ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... devotion to what is only the means—teaching the THING, but failing to instruct the PERSON—eager to pour in knowledge, but neglecting to bring out mind.' Is there not indicated in these words a real and a very grave defect of the manner in which subjects are now presented, studied, recited, and finished up in our schools? We think there is. And then, what is the effect of this study and teaching, with so much less thought toward the end than about the material?—what ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to establish that the term was already in use at the time in its current specific sense —- and Hopper herself reports that the term 'bug' was regularly applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII. Indeed, the use of 'bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and 'bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of 'bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to 'bugbear', ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... base line on the film. They have all been found to represent a contraction of a certain portion of the heart. Any change of the height, width, or time of any one of those lines shows that there is some defect or change in the contraction of that part of the heart. Thus Dr. Barron, who has studied this thing carefully, can tell infallibly not ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... greater epic; the stupendous figure of the rebellious archangel, the true hero of 'Paradise Lost,' is here dwarfed into a puny, malignant sophist; nor is the final issue in the later poem even for a moment in doubt—a serious defect from an artistic point of view. Jortin holds its peculiar excellence to be 'artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in the most specious manner, and refuted by the Son of God with strong unaffected eloquence'; merits for which Milton needed no original of any kind, as his ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with their improvised successor. On the throne as in the camp, whether general, consul, or emperor, he remains the military adventurer, and cares only for his own advancement. Owing to the great defect in the education of both conscience and sentiments, instead of subordinating himself to the State, he subordinates the State to him; he does not look beyond his own brief physical existence to the nation which is to survive him. Consequently, he sacrifices the future to the present, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a man is not working to advantage because of some defect in his physical make-up. He may have defective vision or some peculiarity of hearing that renders him unable to respond as quickly as he should to the demands made upon him. If these defects are ascertained, it is usually a simple matter ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... mechanical defect of the calibration of the time-power carried the Ceres off its course, light years beyond the segment of the ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... A fatal defect was the endeavor to combine the military and the political. Few men have succeeded in this. There were Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon,—but all came to an untimely end; the first met an early death in a foreign land, the second was assassinated, the third died a prisoner ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... character "ex informata conscientia, on the information of his own conscience, of which he was not obliged to give any account." He could at any time stop the course of justice, "by saying 'Non procedatur, let there be no process;' which could easily be cloaked under the pretence of some defect in point of form." When this atrocious law was at last abolished, Montesquieu wrote, "On a vu souvent des peuples demander des privileges; ici le souverain accorde le droit de toutes les nations." No ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... those occasions told him news of his relatives; perhaps he gave him good advice. Which, I know not. The man, known as Mr. Makhana, was always very pleasant towards me, but never communicative. Yet he made up for that defect by once or twice leaving half-a-sovereign within my ready palm. He appeared suddenly without warning, and left again, even Omar himself being ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Raikes and Farrell impressed Clarkson for three-handed Bridge. Sophia did not care to play and Amber was ignorant of the game—a defect in his social education which he found no cause to regret, since it left him in undisputed attendance ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... has spoken of a certain "home-made" character which he considers the greatest defect of his art, the character of an art belonging to no distinctive school and having no definite relation to the time and country in which it is produced. But it is not Mr. Vedder's art alone that is home-made. It is precisely the characteristic ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox |
