"Defect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 those in the room, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... wrong," said Mlle. Cadet to Caesar, "what have you to say of that woman? I have been looking at her ever since she came in, and I don't find the slightest defect." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... invented falsehoods as naturally as her brother spoke the truth.... Whosoever observed her would have perceived that those lies were all told to paint herself in a favorable light. The germ, too, of another defect was springing up within her—a jealousy instinctive, irrational, almost wicked. She could not see a new plaything in Florent's hands without sulking immediately. She could not bear to see her brother embrace her father without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... other cases, in which a charitable judgment will impute no positive betrayal of trusts, but a defect of vision to recognize the claim of the higher ideal. Tory or Revolutionist a man might be, according to his temperament and conviction; but where a man begins with protests against tyranny and ends with subservience to ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... the orchestra; even then the shades are so very much softened by youth, and the parts so rounded, and so utterly free from acute angles, that they can, as yet, but faintly express strong, turbulent emotions, or display the furious passions. In a boy of his age, this, so far from being a defect, is a beauty, the reverse of which would be unnatural; and if it were a defect, every day that passes over his head would remedy it. What is now wanting in muscular expression, is in a great measure supplied by his eye, which glows with animation, and intelligence, and at times SPEAKS ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterian seceders from the Church of Scotland, and the Independents. It appeared, therefore, that the Act had been disallowed because it was not liberal enough, but this defect was speedily remedied by the passage of another bill during the session of 1834 in the terms suggested by the colonial secretary, and the Dissenters' Marriage ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... custom of even the most polished people of America then to call asparagus. They had gone together to the asparagus bed on Loam Island, and had found the plant absolutely luxuriating in its favourite soil. The want of butter was the greatest defect in this mess, for, to say the truth, Bridget refused the ship's butter on this occasion, but luckily, enough oil remained to furnish a tolerable substitute. Mark declared he had never tasted anything in his ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... to pronounce the English language properly. She had to a certain extent picked up the accent of the vulgar. It was impossible, considering her surroundings and associations, to be otherwise. But proper treatment and proper companions would soon rid her of this defect. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... columns; the number of lines in each column, and the number of words in each line. No word must be written till the copyist has first inspected it in the example before him, and pronounced it aloud; before writing the name of God he must wash his pen; all redundance or defect of letters must be carefully avoided: prose must not be written as verse, or verse as prose; and when the copy has been completed, it must be examined for approval or rejection within thirty days. Superstitious, and even ridiculous, as these rules are, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... happiness was forcibly illustrated, as well as the perniciousness of error. Exempt as this lady was from almost every defect, she was indebted for her ruin to absurd opinions of the sacredness of consanguinity, to her anxiety for the preservation of a ruffian because that ruffian was her brother. The spirit of Clithero was enlightened and erect, but he weakly ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... to by seamen, no accommodation of the kind. There is barely room for Jack to foot it in a reel, the tap-room is so small; and as Jack is soon reeling after he is once on shore, it is a very great defect. Now, the Lust Haus is a room as large as an assembly-room in a country-town, well lighted up with lamps and chandeliers, well warmed with stoves, where you have room to dance fifty reels at once, and still have plenty of accommodation ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... convention and in the government, when it goes into operation? Unanimity is impracticable, for where there are many men there will be differences of opinion. The rule of unanimity gives to each individual a veto on the whole proceeding, which was the grand defect of the Polish constitution. Each member of the Polish Diet, which included the whole body of the nobility, had an absolute veto, and could, alone, arrest the whole action of the government. Will you substitute the rule of the majority, and say the majority must govern? By what right? ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... also be of a construction that will bear to take the ground; and of a size, which in case of necessity, may be safely and conveniently laid on shore, to repair any accidental damage or defect. These properties are not to be found in ships of war of forty guns, nor in frigates, nor in East India Company's ships, nor in large three-decked West India ships, nor indeed in any other but North-country-built ships, or such as are built for the coal-trade, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... this too brief time of tranquillity and satisfaction I cannot help but sigh for its passing. Preceded and followed by periods of turbulence and stress, it stands out in my life as an incredible moment, a soothing dream. Perhaps a faint defect, so small as to be almost unnoticed, was a feeling of solitariness—an inevitable concomitant of my position—but this was so slight that I could not even define it as loneliness and like many another defect it merely heightened the charm ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... deerest to the world: full many a Lady I haue ey'd with best regard, and many a time Th' harmony of their tongues, hath into bondage Brought my too diligent eare: for seuerall vertues Haue I lik'd seuerall women, neuer any With so full soule, but some defect in her Did quarrell with the noblest grace she ow'd, And put it to the foile. But you, O you, So perfect, and so peerlesse, are created ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... to understand that the very worst subject for a ghost trick to be played upon, was Charley Channing. It was, however, going to be done. The defect—for it really is a defect—had never transpired to the College school, who would not have spared their ridicule, or spared Charley. Reared, in that point, under happier auspices, they could have given nothing but ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... intrusted to him, adventured in a little business on his own account; and thinking, I suppose, that the late Earl of Etherington had forgotten fully to acknowledge his services, as valet to his son, he supplied that defect by a small check on our house for L.100, in name, and bearing the apparent signature, of the deceased. This small mistake being detected, Mr. Solmes, porteur of the little billet, would have been consigned to the custody of a Bow-street officer, but that I found means ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... bad, and indifferent, go together to form something that Dickens missed, merely because the England of his time most disastrously missed it. In this case, as in every case, the only way to measure justly the excess of a foreign country is to measure the defect of our own country. For in this matter the human mind is the victim of a curious little unconscious trick, the cause of nearly all international dislikes. A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... immortal glory and happiness which they confidently promised to those who were so fortunate as to shed their blood in the cause of religion. They inculcated with becoming diligence, that the fire of martyrdom supplied every defect and expiated every sin; that while the souls of ordinary Christians were obliged to pass through a slow and painful purification, the triumphant sufferers entered into the immediate fruition of eternal bliss, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and stand.—There's something wanting in me. I see you loving Henry, and understanding him better daily, and I know that death wouldn't part you in the least. But I—Is it some awful appalling, criminal defect?" ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... years old, was retired on the ground of his health, and Bennigsen succeeded him, but the bad commissary administration was not remedied. The Russian army was strong in regular infantry, but weak in well-disciplined cavalry, although the latter defect was largely supplied by the Cossacks, a peculiar body of riders from the Volga and the Don, who paid the rental of their lands to the crown by four years' military service at their own charges. Then, as now, they fought with barbaric ferocity; they attacked in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... characteristics which have been acquired by individuals from the influence of their environment. When we attribute a certain per cent of poverty to intemperance, for example, it is probable that that particular personal defect may be ascribed almost wholly to the environment. On the other hand, there are other personal defects, such as sickness, vice, and mental deficiency, that cannot always with certainty be traced to environmental ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... nine years (and those the most eventful) of his hero's career to be narrated. The premature removal of the heroine from the narrative, so early in the course of it, would therefore, at first sight, appear to be a serious defect in the conception of this romance. Here it is, however, that the credulous gossip of the old biographer comes to the rescue of the modern artist. I apprehend that the Cleonice of the novel would, after her death, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... of M. Delacroix, Rue Croix-des Petits Augustins, to remedy the defect of nature by a gymnastic process, is unique in France. I shall give the prospectus a place here; and feeling my inability to do it justice, shall not ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... authors whom he intensely admired did not often blind him to ethical defects. It is true that some objects of his literary admiration—Goethe and Byron and George Sand—could scarcely be regarded as moral exemplars; but, while he praised the genius, he marked his disapproval of the moral defect. In writing of George Sand, who had so profoundly influenced his early life, he did not deny or extenuate "her passions and her errors." Byron, though he thought him "the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our literature ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... manuscript submitted by him to educated Indians of the Lenni Lenape is pronounced to be a genuine oral composition of a Delaware Indian in an ancient dialect, evidently dictated to one not wholly conversant with, all the terminal inflections of the words, which occasional omissions form the chief defect of the curious ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... caused me to devote such hours as I could spare from the preparation of my series of sermons on the miracle of Jonah to personal introspection, in the endeavour to discover, if possible, whether the cause of our estrangement lay in any defect ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... defect—Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too deep ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... effect than from any defect of vision, for he was as sharp as a needle; and could see a bit of spunyarn adrift or a rope out of place aloft even quicker than the commander, keen-sighted as ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet, innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and more intimately, was less and less the creature ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... 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 manhood of efficiency, and became the source ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... had been consulted. All gave me very much the same advice; each one urged extreme carefulness and gave me glasses that seemed to relieve for a time. None of them held out any hope that my sight would ever be restored, saying that the defect had existed since infancy, and that in ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... she expected him to carry—perhaps as a return for her own act of self-sacrifice? Was this the appeal she had been making to his chivalry, his gratitude, his honor? The perspiration stood in beads on his forehead. What defect lay hidden in his nature that seemed to make him an easy victim of these intriguing women? He had not even the excuse of gallantry; less susceptible to the potencies of the sex than most men, he was still compelled to bear that reputation. He remembered his coldness to Miss ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has not this defect; his moral is as pure as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... on the part of the courts, it is practically unmodifiable. A very small percentage of the American people can in this respect permanently thwart the will of an enormous majority, and there can be no justification for such a condition on any possible theory of popular Sovereignty. This defect has not hitherto had very many practical inconveniences, but it is an absolute violation of the theory and the spirit of American democratic institutions. The time may come when the fulfillment of a justifiable democratic purpose may demand the limitation of certain ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the heart of any one is shaggy—a quality which the all-wise poet commends, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very hard, then there is a corresponding defect in the mind—the soft are good at learning, but apt to forget; and the hard are the reverse; the shaggy and rugged and gritty, or those who have an admixture of earth or dung in their composition, have the impressions indistinct, as also the hard, for there is no depth in ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... since whose reforms the conventional and often idiotic libretti of former times have entirely disappeared. In spite of the sneers of the professed anti-Wagnerians, which were based as often as not upon some ineptitude on the part of the translator, not upon any inherent defect in the original, the plots invented by Wagner have won for themselves an acceptance that may be called world-wide. And whatever be the verdict on his own plots, there can be no question as to the superiority of the average libretto since his day. No composer dare face the public ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... carved, and every straight surface sculptured with foliage or historical subjects in relief. The ornaments of the frieze consist of foliage and animals, with a variety of other things. The great exuberance of ornament is considered a defect, although when applied to some structures it is exceedingly beautiful. In the time of the first Caesars architecture had a character of grandeur and magnificence. Columns and arches appeared in all the leading public buildings, columns generally ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... occurred, so nearly as I can recollect, when I was about the age of nine. Her vehicle was a little blue-eyed girl of eight or so, one of a family of eleven, with flaxen hair about her shoulders, which attempted to curl, but ignominiously failed, hanging like chimney-crooks only. This defect used rather to trouble me; and was, I believe, one of the main reasons of my Beloved's departure from that tenement. I cannot remember with any exactness when the departure occurred. I know it was ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... when I say you are not perfect. You have your little failings, and at times the defect of one man recoils on 20,000. There are matters I should like to see changed. But, on the whole, you are admittedly still the best ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... is charming," exclaimed Paganel, "a thousand times too charming, and if I must tell you all, she would please me better if she were less so. I wish she had a defect!" ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of the road, and turning eastward, we find the Roman Catholic Pro-Cathedral, almost hidden behind houses. It is of dark-red brick, and was designed by Mr. Goldie, but the effect of the north porch is lost, owing to the buildings which hem it in; this defect will doubtless be remedied in time as leases expire. The interior of the cathedral is of great height, and the light stone arches are supported by pillars ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... have passed for a sprightly, entertaining fellow, was considered in the brilliant assemblies of France as a youth of a very phlegmatic disposition. No wonder, then, that his pride was mortified at his own want of importance, which he did not fail to ascribe to their defect in point of judgment and taste. He conceived a disgust at the mercenary conduct, as well as the shallow intellects, of the ladies; and after he had spent some months, and a round sum of money, in fruitless attendance and addresses, he fairly quitted the pursuit, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and general maxims which alone are able to form men to think always consistently. He never had time to learn them of himself, because he was prevented from his youth, by the great affairs that fell unexpectedly to his share, and by the continual success he met with. This defect in him was the cause, that with the soul in the world the least inclined to evil, he has committed injuries; that with the heart of an Alexander, he has, like him, had his failings; that with a wonderful understanding, he has acted imprudently; that having ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... may be housed, lodged and provided for of diet till they be marryed for such was the haste of sending them away, as that straightned with time, we had no meanes to putt provisions aboard, which defect shalbe supplied by the magazine shipp; and in case they cannot be presently marryed we desire they may be putt to several householders that have wives till they can be provided of husbands. There are neare fifty more which are shortly to come, we sent by our ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... that Eileen had studied her harder than she ever studied any book, that she had deliberately set herself to make the most of every defect or idiosyncrasy in Marian, at the same time offering herself as a charming substitute. Marian was prepared to be the mental, the spiritual, and the physical ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... them: but I even then remarked (though I did not venture to make the remark to him) that though he reproached me when I read a sentence ill, and told me how I ought to have read it, he never by reading it himself, showed me how it ought to be read. A defect running through his otherwise admirable modes of instruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that of trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract, when not embodied in the concrete. It was at a much later period ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... meet a defect. It seems to hurry eagerly forward to overcome defects and difficulties. The blind man has more acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel. The deaf man's eyes grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears fail to tell him. The ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... this? Every other capital in Europe has handsome plans, easy to be obtained: nay more, almost every provincial town, whether in this country or on the Continent, possesses better engraved and more accurate plans than this great capital can pretend to. Try and use your influence to get this defect supplied. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... means of our initial simple ideas, justifying ourselves at every step by adequate proof, our final result will necessarily be as firmly established and as certainly true as the elementary ideas we started with. The reliability of this whole procedure more than compensates for its tediousness—a defect Spinoza ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... which boils over the edge of the 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
... of which the features are not, as the phrase is, prominent, and carries the eye to distances even more poetic than the green horizons of Touraine. It is a very fitful stream, and is sometimes observed to run thin and expose all the crudities of its channel—a great defect certainly in a river which is so much depended upon to give an air to the places it waters. But I speak of it as I saw it last; full, tranquil, powerful, bending in large slow curves and sending back half the light of the sky. Nothing can be finer than the view of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... mutilation of the sculpture all round this chapel, it can be seen that for perfection of exquisite work there is no building of the size in this country worthy for one moment to be compared with this in its unmutilated state. Its single defect strikes the beholder at once: the span of the roof is too broad and the vaulting too depressed for the size of the chapel. The windows, of which those on the north have been restored, have already been described. The end windows, which are of great ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... This wording seems 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', a Welsh term for a variety ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... not as warmly dressed for venturing into the open as the other girls. But Mrs. Canary, one of the kindest souls in the world, mended this defect. She furnished Ida with a fur coat and gloves that ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... gloomy darkness of many portions of the buildings. It is also noteworthy 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 lavish of material, and less perfect in workmanship, been adopted, the buildings ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... her poetry is that it was composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the tendency to look at the world on its ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... defect in the evidence, Mr. Lavie was called to say, that he believed it to be De Berenger's hand-writing; and though this does not appear to be the ordinary undisguised hand of this Defendant, yet after Lord Yarmouth, who had given his evidence that he did not consider it his hand-writing, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... evaded the hospitalities which establish intimacies. Some people said he was jealous of his young and beautiful wife. But for the most part his reserve was set down to the old inhospitable cause, some ungenial defect in his character; and in a little time the tramp of horses and roll of carriage-wheels were seldom heard up or down the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, that it is a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, whether they be such as are cultivated in the schools of the philosophers, or ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... easily perceptible from the ground, though a practised eye can discern them at distances that would almost seem to be marvellous. But Ben had other assistants than his eyes. He knew that the tree he sought must be hollow, and such trees usually give outward signs of the defect that exists within. Then, some species of wood are more frequented by the bees than others, while the instinct of the industrious little creatures generally enables them to select such homes as will not be very likely to destroy all the fruits of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... this. By no means; in every school there may be found one or two this way inclined, giggling, forward young things who want whipping and sending to play cricket or dolls again. But in this land of youthfulness it is the rule more frequently than the exception, and herein lies the chief defect of the very young Australian girl. She is like a peach, a beautiful, smooth, rich peach, that has come to ripeness almost in a day, and that hastens to rub off the soft, delicate bloom that is its ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... said she. "Do not blame the men; they did not want to use force against a woman." She had not a good voice and she knew it; but she covered up this defect by a choice of intonations that carried her lightest speech to the heart. Hard-visaged Amos Fenton gave a grunt, which was as near an expression of approval as he ever gave ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... refinement. Their colour is brown, and their skin shines, being varnished with bears fat and paint. To appearance the men have no beards, nor hair on their head, except a round tuft on its crown; but this defect is not natural, as many people are given to believe, but the effect of art, it being customary among them to tear out such hair by the root. They go naked, except those parts which natural decency teaches the most barbarous nations to cover. The huts in which they live are foul, mean and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... I wish you had seen him, how hot and haughty he was, as if you were not my own sister, and as if I had not more business with you than he had yet. 'I wonder how any one who has any regard for Joanna can term that mark a defect: it is very sacred and beautiful, otherwise Joanna is without spot'—and there he caught himself and turned away—he was about to add, 'or wrinkle or any such thing,' and I am afraid it was a quotation from the Bible; but I fancy he felt that he was making a fool of himself, and held his tongue. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 363. Bosworth was travelling on the eleventh of June of that year, being Sunday, from Warren, Rhode Island, to Fall River on business connected with a suit in the United States Court, and was injured by reason of a defect in ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth or honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness. In two or three small instances lately, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... again have to use my work without waiting for proofs, bear in mind this golden principle. From a congenital defect, I must suppose, I am unable to write the word OR—wherever I write it the printer unerringly puts AS—and those who read for me had better, wherever it is possible, substitute or for as. This the more so since many writers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beauty of Schiller's descriptions all can relish; their fidelity is what surprises every reader who has been in Switzerland. Schiller never saw the scene of his play; but his diligence, his quickness and intensity of conception, supplied this defect. Mountain and mountaineer, conspiracy and action, are all brought before us in their true forms, all glowing in the mild sunshine of the poet's fancy. The tyranny of Gessler, and the misery to which it has reduced the land; the exasperation, yet patient courage of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... to find that content will not dwell in the great house they have built. To number the varieties of human endeavour to escape discomfort would be to enumerate all the modes of such life as does not know how to live. All seek the thing whose defect appears the cause of their misery, and is but the variable occasion of it, the cause of the shape it takes, not of the misery itself; for, when one apparent cause is removed, another at once succeeds. The real cause of his trouble is a something the man has not perhaps ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... the enumerated collections was published 'in extenso,' about twenty-five years since, by the Marquis of Bute, while recently the gist of all the Latin collections has been edited with rare scholarship by Rev. Charles Plummer of Oxford. Incidentally may be noted the one defect in Mr. Plummer's great work—its author's almost irritating insistence on pagan origins, nature myths, and heathen survivals. Besides the Marquis of Bute and Plummer, Colgan and the Bollandists have published some Latin Lives, and a few isolated ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... all the experiments which had been made on this subject, the result of which is that the mean temperature of these kinds of animals appears to be 64 degrees 9 minutes Fahrenheit; and that the greatest variation in excess is 1 degree 7 minutes; and in defect 2 degrees 9 minutes Fahrenheit. Is it possible, then, that an animal can live in a fluid, the temperature of which is constantly varying, and preserve nearly a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... depending on symbols he leads, thus Badarayana thinks; there being a defect in both cases; and he whose ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the well-known definition of Dharma ascribed to Vasishtha, viz., "That which is laid down in the Srutis and Smritis is Dharma." The defect of this definition is that the Srutis and the Smritis do not include every duty. Hence Vasishtha was obliged to add that where these are silent, the examples and practices of the good ought to be the guides ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a considerable aptitude for letters. He wrote poor verses, and could not distinguish good poetry from bad. That perhaps was the defect of l'esprit geometrique. But he wrote lucid prose. There was an ironical side to his temper, and he had an ingenious paradoxical wit, which he indulged, with no little felicity, in his early work, Dialogues of the Dead. These conversations, though they show no dramatic power and are simply ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... carbons. This arises from an imperfection of the glass lens, called its spherical aberration, which is due to the fact that the circumferential and central rays have not the same focus. The human eye labours under a similar defect, and from this, and other causes, it arises that when the naked light from fifty cells is looked at the blur of light upon the retina is sufficient to destroy the definition of the retinal image of the carbons. A long list of indictments might indeed be brought against the eye—its ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... all the elements of political life in Canada, premature as it was, marked, perhaps, the limitation of Lord Durham's scheme. But although he was mistaken in the degree of allowance to be made for the distinct individuality of the French province—a defect afterwards made good on Dominion Day—the work he did, the counsel he gave, made an epoch in the progress of Canadian nationality, and prepared the ground for the completer ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... unquestionably a master-force. I will not go so far as to say it is limitless, for certainly a hungry man cannot imagine he is eating a dinner and secure the same benefits that he would from the meal itself. Nor can a man who is passing away into the other world, through a definite vital defect, bring back life through ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... Thomas Aquinas completed it together, endowed it with the faculty of speech, and made it perform the functions of a domestic servant. In this capacity it was exceedingly useful; but, through some defect in the machinery, it chattered much more than was agreeable to either philosopher. Various remedies were tried to cure it of its garrulity, but in vain; and one day, Thomas Aquinas was so enraged at the noise it made when he was in the midst of a mathematical problem, that he seized a ponderous ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that lack of ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... 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, self-made saints, immediately become impatient at sight of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... that they would finally understand each other. His blood was coursing through the boy's veins; he was good, with no other defect than a certain obstinacy. He was excusing him now for all the past, blaming himself for a great part of it. He had ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... affirming that should they be found and gnawed by any animal, the child's new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth of the animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named old Master Simmons, who had a very large pig's tooth in his upper jaw, a personal defect that he always averred was caused by his mother, who threw away one of his cast teeth by accident into the hog's trough. A similar belief has led to practices intended, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace old teeth by new and better ones. Thus in many parts of the world it ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... weakness," said Miriam, flinging out her hands, as a person does when a defect is acknowledged, and beyond remedy. "What I need, now, is an opportunity to show ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to him in order to judge of his understanding and talents, and to procure him a situation suitable to his character and education. But how great was our surprise to find, that in addition to a defect in his utterance, which rendered it difficult for him to speak, and still more difficult to be understood, we observed an almost total deprivation of sense and reason. Those who accompanied us, during this interview, saw how much our heart ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... defect is in the stomach and liver, and of no common kind. If I hold out till I have finished what I have now on hand, I shall retire from ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate with our most intimate powers as to deny them all {83} relevancy in universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... "ordinary manual labor" is capable of producing wealth, and that, therefore, all wealth ought to go to the manual laborers. One looks in vain for a single passage in all the writings of Marx which will justify this criticism. It may be conceded at once that if Marx taught anything of the kind, the defect in Marxian theory is fatal. But it must be proven that the defect exists—and the onus probandi rests upon Mr. Mallock. One need not be a trained economist or a learned philosopher to see how absurd such a theory must be. Suppose we take, for example, a man working ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... as the log had carried them safely through the worst stretch of water he had ever seen he regarded it in the light of a first-class canoe—with the exception that it was unpleasantly rounded on top. But this little defect did not worry him. To Neewa's horror he sat up boldly, and looked ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... you write about in your studies are, but not the men we see in the real world. There is some apparently congenital defect in the Indians, for instance, that keeps them from choosing civilization and Christianity. So with the Gypsies, very likely. Everybody knows that Catholicism or Protestantism is a good deal a matter of race. Constitution has more to do with belief than people think for. I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not, lo, they were, but, lo, they were very good." All things are, in so far as they are good. "But the things that are not are also called good, and are far better than those which are." Being, in fact, is a defect, "since it separates from the superessential Good." The feeling which prompts this strange expression is that since time and space are themselves onesided appearances, a fixed limit must be set to the amount of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... A third defect of the one-teacher school consists in its monotony and lack of color and variety as compared with larger schools. Rivalry is lacking and the recreation enterprises are limited. Of course, much depends upon the qualities of the individual teacher, ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... around it, and spread, untouched by the axe, up the sides of the neighboring Saddleback Mountain. The position of the fort was bad, being commanded by high ground, from which, as the chaplain tells us, "the enemy could shoot over the north side into the middle of the parade,"—for which serious defect, John Stoddard, of Northampton, legist, capitalist, colonel of militia, and "Superintendent of Defence," was probably answerable. These frontier forts were, however, often placed on low ground with a view to an abundant supply ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... fifteen years of the century the Broad Church party in the Church of England was in no very satisfactory state. It had lost not only in spirit and energy, but also in earnestness and piety. Hoadly, Herring, Watson, Blackburne, all showed the characteristic defect of their age—a want of spiritual depth and fervour. They needed a higher elevation of motive and of purpose to be such leaders as could be desired of what was in ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Peter was a very absolute and despotic Grand-Vizier, and if it had not been that he could neither read nor write, it would have been utterly impossible to have wrested from him a particle of power over the property. This happy defect in his education—happy so far as Kate's rule was concerned—gave her the one claim she could prefer to any superiority over him, and his obstinacy could never be effectually overcome, except by confronting him with a written document or a column ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... resentment; when he perceives clamour and malice let loose upon him as a public enemy, and incited by every stratagem of defamation; when he hears the misfortunes of his family or the follies of his youth exposed to the world; and every failure of conduct, or defect of nature, aggravated and ridiculed; he then learns to abhor those artifices at which he only laughed before, and discovers how much the happiness of life would be advanced by the eradication of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... late Mr. Smart Lethiullier, I met the very tomb of Gainsborough this winter that you mention; and, to be secure, sent to Lincoln for an exact draught of it. But what vexed me then, and does still, is, that by the defect at the end of the inscription, one cannot be certain whether he lived in CCC. or CCCC. as another C might have been there. Have you any corroborating circumstance, Sir, to affix his existence to 1300 more than 1400? Besides, I don't know any ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Cicero there is not a letter written with more force and delicacy of feeling, none better suited to accomplish its purpose than this letter to Matius. It is a work of art; but in that fact lies its defect, and in that respect it is in contrast to the answer which it called forth from Matius, The reply of Matius stands on a level with another better-known non-Ciceronian epistle, the famous letter of condolence which ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... money-bill, nor insert any clause in one increasing or even altering the burden laid by one on the people, but that they were within their right in absolutely rejecting one. But such a right has a tendency to lapse through defect of exercise; and we shall hereafter see that "the disposition to make encroachments," which in this matter Hallam imputes to the Commons, has led them in the present reign to carry their pretensions to a height which at a former period had been ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Minister in the House of Commons, and recommended that Lord Palmerston should be intrusted with the portfolio of war. The Prime Minister refused to recommend the proposed change to the Queen, on the ground that it would be unfair to the Duke of Newcastle, against whom, he said, no positive defect had been proved. As soon as Parliament assembled on January 25, the opposition moved for a commission of inquiry "into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those departments whose duty ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... women are for you," Hewet interrupted. "I asked them solely for your benefit. What you want, Hirst, you know, is the society of young women of your own age. You don't know how to get on with women, which is a great defect, considering that half the world consists ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... world! Full many a lady I've eyed with best regard; and many a time The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil:[420-5] but you, O you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... alienist will tell you that. Sometimes the chief mark of insanity may be knowing the nature and consequences, craftily avoiding detection with an almost superhuman cunning. No; the test is whether knowing the nature and consequences, a person suffers under such a defect of will that in spite of everything, in the face of everything, that person cannot ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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
... 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 dressed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the understanding of the various kinds of caresses. In embraces we lose the sentiment of delicacy, while the man over whom we rule remains master of himself, capable of judging the foolishness of certain words. Take care, my dear; that is the defect in our armor. It is ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... an indolent expression to the hazel eyes; nothing more finely cut than the transparent nostril and the short upper-lip. Perhaps the chin and lower jaw were too small for an irreproachable profile, but the defect was on the side of that delicacy and finesse which was the distinctive characteristic of the whole person, and which was carried out in the clear brown arch of the eyebrows, and the marble smoothness of the sloping forehead. Impossible to ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... 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 which, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... must be mentioned. It is a defect in our thought which, in some quarters, has by itself almost cancelled all the advantages secured. I mean the exaggerated emphasis on uniformity or continuity; the unwillingness to rest any part of faith or of our practical expectation ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... objections to your writing poetry with such an object in view; but to print and sell it about town was carrying the thing a little too far," replied Mr. Franklin. "It is not too late to begin now. I rather think you have discovered an important defect in your writing. John evidently has a better command of language than you have, hence his style is more polished. But you are at work, now, in the right way to improve. ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... must paint, not what is there, but what you see there. They forget that human beings are men with two eyes, and not daguerreotype lenses with one eye, and so are contriving and striving to introduce into their pictures the very defect of the daguerreotype which the stereoscope ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... require another. Ah, the Comtesse de Montluisant, my friend, there is a precious soul! What a misfortune that she is a little over-ripe! It is all the same to you, and if you are wise, you will pass over that defect, which she amply atones for by her amiable qualities. She has the complete mastery of Monseigneur. She is the Maintenon of that old Louis XIV. Be to her what she is to him, and have the mastery of her in your turn. I was talking to you a ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... defect that I had noted in the modern young woman is not less notable in the modern young man. Briefly, he is a boor. If it is true that 'manners makyth man,' one doubts whether the British race can be ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... varying measure, so that in the case of some of our acquaintance we deplore its non-existence, but never in ourselves. Nobody really believes that he is wholly without it, partly because, in proportion as the sense is really defective, the defect must be in its own nature unperceived, but also because the gift is so precious, so winsome, that no one could bear to believe that it has been denied him. By a merciful law of nature, the delusion is unsuspected, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... intoxication. As a matter of fact HANKIN would not be a bad servant if his zeal was distributed over him rather more evenly. It is always either excessive or defective. It comes out in lumps. In neglecting to have the chimney swept HANKIN had shown defect; in the way that he had piled up the fire he had shown excess. In subsequently absenting himself from the flat he had shown a certain amount of wisdom, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... The two pathological processes that operate to destroy the function of the retina suffice to produce scotomata in the field of vision of varying shapes. The typical glaucomatous field in the acute cases shows a defect most pronounced to the nasal side. As has been shown by Bjeraum, the blind spot corresponding with the optic disc is enlarged in glaucoma, a relative scotoma often connecting it with the blind nasal portion of the ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... uncoloured, even to a fault, with the emotional weaknesses of humanity.[8] While the effects of the Reformation of England had been chiefly visible in the outward dominion of scoundrels and in the eclipse of the hereditary virtues of the national character, Lady Jane Grey had lived to show that the defect was not in the reformed faith, but in the absence of all faith—that the graces of a St. Elizabeth could be rivalled by the pupil of Cranmer and Ridley. The Catholic saint had no excellence of which Jane Grey was without the promise; the distinction was in the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Erckmann was certainly a tempting adventure in mid ocean. Upon recalling her, his imagination always saw a race horse—large, spare, roan colored, and with a long stride. She was an up-to-date German who admitted no defect in her country except the excessive weight of its women, combating in her person this national menace with every known system of dieting. For her every meal was a species of torment, and the procession ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the work by a soft rag loosely rolled up and just a few drops of spirit dropped upon it, applied quickly the way of the grain. This will remove every defect, and leave it clear and brilliant. If, in a short time after finishing, the polish becomes dull or rough, it will be owing to too much oil being absorbed in the process and working through the surface, combined ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... the serious difficulties was getting artillery to the front. The roads had become very muddy from the rain during the night, and were blocked up with the immense multitude of wagons, so that artillery could not pass. Here was sadly exemplified the grand defect of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... not particularly 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... never attained to a periodic style. And hence we find the same sort of clumsiness in the Timaeus of Plato which characterizes the philosophical poem of Lucretius. There is a want of flow and often a defect of rhythm; the meaning is sometimes obscure, and there is a greater use of apposition and more of repetition than occurs in Plato's earlier writings. The sentences are less closely connected and also more involved; the antecedents of demonstrative and relative pronouns ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... made to counteract this great defect, but without much success. For several years afterwards Mr Pepys still complained that frigates were unable to stow a sufficient quantity of provisions, or to carry their guns high enough out of the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... invective fails. The Tory satire at the expense of Sir William Harcourt is always desperately endeavouring to represent that he is inept, that he makes a fool of himself, that he is disagreeable and disgraceful and untrustworthy. The defect of all that is that we all know that it is untrue. Everyone knows that Sir William Harcourt is not inept, but is almost the ablest Parliamentarian now alive. Everyone knows that he is not disagreeable or disgraceful, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... last sentence is literally translated from the MS which we follow; but there is evidently a defect or error in the text—probably arising from some mistake made by the first copyist, as the MS. is not the first original, but a copy made apparently by some ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... special objection that old men have weak memories is answered by showing that this is due either to an original defect ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "If he has a defect, it is perhaps a too reckless indulgence in draw poker," said the Colonel, musingly; "not unbecoming a gentleman, understand me, Mrs. Scott, but perhaps too reckless for his own good. George played ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... sacrifices ever stink; nor was a fly seen in the slaughter house; nor did legal uncleanness happen to the high priest on the day of atonement; nor did the rain extinguish the fire of the wood arranged on the altar; nor did the wind prevent the straight ascension of the pillar of smoke; nor was any defect found in the omer, the two loaves, and the showbread; and though the people stood close together, yet when they worshipped there was room enough for all; nor did a serpent or scorpion injure a person in Jerusalem; ...
— Hebrew Literature
... cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If there is any defect in service then that must be instantly and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not merely a personal whim that is being voiced. Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... did not see at all with one of his eyes, though its appearance was little different from that of the other. There is amongst his prayers, one inscribed 'When my EYE was restored to its use[130],' which ascertains a defect that many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it[131]. I supposed him to be only near-sighted; and indeed I must observe, that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... has been (in my judgment) a defect in what may be called the Brewsterian theory of other worlds, a defect not altogether dissimilar has characterised the opposite or Whewellite theory. Very useful service was rendered to astronomy by Whewell's treatise upon, or rather against, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... his canvass in 1864. I sympathized with him in his struggles with the leaders of the Rebellion and admired his courage during the war, when, as Governor of Tennessee, he reorganized that state upon a loyal basis. The defect of his character was his unreasoning pugnacity. He early became involved in wordy warfare with Sumner, Wade, Stevens and others. In his high position he could have disregarded criticism, but this was not the habit ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... 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
... mere nonsense. The instance of some one seeing the moon double is not analogous. For in his case the non-cessation of wrong knowledge explains itself from the circumstance that the cause of wrong knowledge, viz. the real defect of the eye which does not admit of being sublated by knowledge, is not removed, although that which would sublate wrong knowledge is near. On the other hand, effects, such as fear and the like, may come to an end because they can be sublated by means of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... objections that have frequently been stated against what are called Historical Romances, have been suggested, we think, rather from observing the universal failure of that species of composition, than from any inherent and constitutional defect in the species of composition itself. If the manners of different ages are injudiciously blended together,—if unpowdered crops and slim and fairy shapes are commingled in the dance with volumed wigs ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... husband of your choosing loses aught "In that the world doth know him basely born, "And with a shrine that fits the inner thought; "Think not a silly woman's heart will mourn "A shape in Nature's merry moments wrought, "Or weep the finding of each broad defect, "Or wish the form ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... assembly. The separation of the orders favoured its views; it reckoned on fomenting their differences, and thus preventing them from acting. The states-general had never achieved any result, owing to the defect of their organization; the court hoped that it would still be the same, since the two first orders were less disposed to yield to the reforms solicited by the last. The clergy wished to preserve its privileges and its opulence, and clearly foresaw that the sacrifices ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... thirty centuries? If, accordingly, any competent critic shall trouble himself to convict the present writer of error: "This view of Epictetus confuses the earlier and the later Stoics;" or "This account of the Hebrew prophets lacks the latest fruit of research,"—or, other like defect,—acknowledgment of such error as quite possible may be freely made in advance. But, in our bird's-eye view of many centuries, any fault of detail will not be so serious as it would be if there were here attempted a chain of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... make her more sport then she makes me? Shall I conclude her simple, that has her time to begin or refuse sportivenesse as freely as I my self have? Nay, who knows but that our agreeing no better, is the defect of my not understanding her language? (for doubtlesse Cats talk and reason with one another) and that shee laughs at, and censures my folly, for making her sport, and pities mee for understanding her no better? To this purpose speaks Mountagne ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... The main defect here appears to consist in the central motive of Redgrave's struggles being limited to purely personal ambition. His aim is no higher than that of a speculator in a hurry to be rich, and when he fails, he gets little more than the sympathy which is ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... Of the acquittal? What does it matter to me? I don't care—on the contrary, I prefer it. I am certain the advocate won't ferret out some unintentional defect—some formality gone ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... ourselves nearer to him—that we even stood in a personal relationship to him. For so wretched is man that he never feels himself brought into such close contact with a stranger as when the latter shows some sign of weakness, some defect. That our philosopher had lost his temper and made use of abusive language helped to bridge over the gulf created between us by our timid respect for him: and for the sake of the reader who feels his indignation rising at this suggestion ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of form which is oftener seen among women of foreign races than among women of English birth. She was unquestionably a handsome person—with the one serious drawback of her ghastly complexion, and with the less noticeable defect of a total want of tenderness in the expression of her eyes. Apart from his first emotion of surprise, the feeling she produced in the Doctor may be described as an overpowering feeling of professional curiosity. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... infested with robbers, assassins, and incendiaries, the natural consequences of degeneracy, corruption, and the want of police in the interior government of the kingdom. This defect, in a great measure, arose from an absurd notion, that laws necessary to prevent those acts of cruelty, violence, and rapine, would be incompatible with the liberty of British subjects; a notion that confounds all distinctions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett |
