"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... diameter; weighing 14,826 pounds, or nearly seven tons, after being polished, and possessing a magnifying power of 42,000 times!—a perfectly pure, spotless, achromatic lens, without a material bubble or flaw! ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... only Christmas visitors, for the state of the country did not invite Londoners; but we did not want them. The suppression of Clarence was the only flaw in a singularly happy time; and, after all I believe I felt the pity of it more than he did, who expected nothing, and was accustomed to being ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flaw in your reasoning which escapes me now. In Spain, the Mother Country, this body lends and ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... upon the page of history. Disputes arose about the wording of the creeds, about the canon of the Scriptures, about the number and nature of the mortal sins, and the penances which they should entail. Periodically a curious investigator raised a storm by claiming that he had discovered a flaw in the traditional formulae, or a mistake in the sense which was currently attached to them. The one way of meeting such doubts was to compare the traditions of the older churches. This could be done ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... time some distance out. The wind had carried him along finely, the boat scudding, as he expressed it. He was congratulating himself on the success of his trial trip, when all at once a flaw struck the boat. Not being a skillful boatman he was wholly unprepared for ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... gratification before truth and upright dealing with one's own understanding, creates a character that is certainly far less unlovely than those who sacrifice their intellectual integrity to more material convenience. The moral flaw is less palpable and less gross. Yet here too there is the stain of intellectual improbity, and it is perhaps all the more mischievous for being partly hidden under the mien of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by them at Rheinberg. The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's sieges, possess no more interest to the general reader than the working out of a geometrical problem. He was incapable of a flaw in his calculations, but it was impossible for him quite to complete the demonstration before the arrival of de la Chatre. Maurice received with courtesy the Marshal, who arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his contingent of 8000 foot and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was great show ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and delightfully casual social instincts of the House of Seagrave. Educated according to my own ideas, they must inevitably have become, in a measure, types of the set with which they are identified.... And the only serious flaw in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... not have a higher electrical resistance than 10 ohms from the point to the ground, including the "earth" contact. Exceptionally good conductors have only about 5 ohms. A high resistance in the rod is due either to a flaw in the conductor or a bad earth connection, and in such a case the rod may be a source of danger instead of security, since the discharge is apt to find its way through some part of the building to the ground, ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... hither and thither, intriguing in not always the most judicious manner for her family, but never resting, never leaving a stone unturned which might lead to their restitution. The sudden discovery that the lawyers had found a flaw in the conveyance was more than her overstrung nerves could endure, and in a fit of temper she attacked her husband, and rushed about the town denouncing him. Raleigh, in deepest depression of mind and body, wrote to Cecil, who had now taken another upward step in the hierarchy of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the Pastor to the HOUSE of GOD: Mean structure; where no bones of heroes lie! The rude inelegance of poverty Reigns here alone: else why that roof of straw? Those narrow windows with the frequent flaw? O'er whose low cells the dock and mallow spread, And rampant nettles lift the spiry head, Whilst from the hollows of the tower on high The grey-cap'd daws in ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if only we trust in the wisdom that pervades the whole universe, we need ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... and diplomacy, achieved after many attempts. He found it hard not to say too much, and quite as difficult not to say too little. He spent hours over this all-important missive. At last it was finished. He read and re-read it, searching for the slightest flaw: a fatal word or suggestion that might create in her mind the slightest doubt as to his sincerity. She was sure to read this letter a great many times, and always with the view to finding something between the lines: such as pity, resignation, an enforced conception ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the experiment, or questioned the judgment, at least have regretted his own integrity, but Browning could have done neither. The way was clear, and the decision must have been as quick as that of a child to reject a thing it abhorred. His unworldliness had not a flaw. So beautiful a life can never have become distinguished in the struggles and antagonisms which make the career of the man of the world, or even the man of letters, as letters are now written; for he was a man, and the only ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... captive should be chosen to be the earthly image of the god Tezcat, who created the world. Only two things are necessary to this captive, namely, that his blood should be noble, and that his person should be beautiful and without flaw or blemish. The day that you came hither, Teule, chanced to be the day of choosing a new captive to personate the god, and you have been chosen because you are both noble and more beautiful than any man in Anahuac, and also because being of the people of the Teules, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... actual leaders of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. The problem is less complicated and the solution less radical and less profound. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... being put to the test in a fierce ordeal—and the fiery ordeal of love is more searching even than the ordeal of war. Every smallest blot and blemish, every slightest impurity is shown up in startling clearness. Every flaw at once betrays itself. What will not bear a strain immediately breaks down. There is not an imperfection which is not glaringly displayed. The other may not see it, but he himself will—and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... thought is characteristically and purely Russian. An Englishman may be in love with an idea, and start out bravely to follow it; but if he finds it leading him into a position contrary to the experience of humanity, then he pulls up, and decides that the idea must be false, even if he can detect no flaw in it; not so the Russian; the idea is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... institutions received general adhesion. Even Scotus, like Ockham, a brilliant Oxford scholar whose hidden tomb at Cologne finds such few pilgrims kneeling in its shade, so hardy in his thought and so eager to find a flaw in the arguments of Aquinas, has no alternative to offer. Franciscan though he was, and therefore, perhaps, more likely to favour communistic teaching, his own theory is but a repetition of what his rival had already propounded. Thus, for example, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... but no reefs having been found there and the ground not having been pegged, it was afterwards withdrawn from proclamation. The Mining Commissioner of Johannesburg in the course of his duties discovered some flaw in the second or withdrawing proclamation. He advised the head office in Pretoria of this discovery and stated that it might be contended that the de-proclamation was invalid, and that great loss and inconvenience would follow if the ground were pegged and the title upheld. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... so modern, so praiseworthy and enlightened, had one serious flaw. What was a fact? And how did you know? This important problem, so significant for the growth of scientific medicine, we can study quite readily in the ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... and looked at it closely. He put it on the scales and weighed it carefully, measured it, and scrutinized it as closely as he could in the lamplight, but he knew himself that these were devices to gain time. The pearl showed all too clearly a flaw that would make it valueless. Every one waited for his verdict. He was conscious that his voice was a little shaky, but he answered ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... by a flash of lightning; and he still saw it, as one seems still to see the object in the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it one knows not ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... French Government will be here on Tuesday and all of these preliminary papers must be signed before he can close the matter up finally. I hope that the conference over those specifications this afternoon will be the last. Are you sure you discovered no flaw over which the old General or the ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... There was just one flaw for Rosalind in this "As You Like It" life and that was the persistence of the secret association with Nicky. It was ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... I had one," he answered dryly. "It seems now there's a flaw in it, and it's got to go back to Washington and be rectified. It ain't ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Father's House there shall be no second desolation, but the sounds of joy and melody, which were silent, shall be heard everlastingly; since we had now continued long in this even mind, seeking only to inform ourselves of his will; until as in a clear crystal without flaw shining with colored light, or as a glassy lake reflecting within itself the heavens and every cloud and star, so is he reflected in our minds; and in the house we are his viceregents, and in the world his co-workers; and for the glory which he has in his work ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... been foul play, sir," he said. "I thought there must have been, for I could not imagine that this bar would have broken unless there had been a flaw in the metal or it had been tampered with. I unshackled it myself, for I thought it was better that the men should not see it until I ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... the engagement ring is used as a guard to the wedding ring, it should be as handsome as possible, and a small, pure stone is a far better choice than a more showy one that may be a little off in color or possess a flaw. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... of honesty, Of honour and of truth, for which I lov'd you, For which I call'd you servant, and admir'd you; To steal that Jewel purchas'd by another, Piously set in Wedlock, even that Jewel, Because it had no flaw, you held unvaluable: Can he that has lov'd good, dote on the Devil? For he that seeks a Whore, seeks but his Agent; Or am I of so wild and low a blood? ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... took a flaw of pain, A hap of skiey pleasure, A thought had in his cradle lain, And mingled them in measure. That chrism he laid upon his eyes, And lips, and heart, for euphrasies, That he might see, feel, sing, perdie, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... lay beside me singing in the sunshine; The rough, white fur, unloosened at the neck, Showed the smooth skin, fair as the Almond blossoms, On which the sun could find no flaw or fleck. ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... successes. He disarmed envy and criticism everywhere, and even those disposed to withhold a frank and generous acknowledgment of his greatness did not dare to question powers of execution which seemed without a technical flaw. During his travels Thalberg composed a concerto for piano and orchestra, to play at his concerts. But this species of composition was so obviously unsuited to his abilities that he quickly forsook it, and thenceforward devoted his efforts exclusively to the instrument ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... to these representations, they seemed plausible; and though at first I had suspected that the man had only resorted to the buffoonery of his quotations in order to gain time for invention or to divert my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the close, as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to believe the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I contented myself, therefore, with asking, "Where do you ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enough, I am free to own, if it had been directed to a better end; but in the best contrived scheme some flaw is ever found, which is sure to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... within rose by half-inches and eighth-parts—stood sure. But the river is now high in flood—the waters are toppling over—the yielding masonry has begun to bulge and crack. The Queen's Speech, when we consider it as emanating from a Conservative Ministry, indicates a tremendous flaw; the speech of Sir Robert Peel betrays an irreparable bulge; the sudden conversions to free-trade principles of officials and place-holders show a general outpouring at opening rents and crannies: depend on it, Protectionists, your dam-dyke, patch or prop it as ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... her; I never knew of one who did not forgive her; I think had there been one it would have proved that there was a flaw in her. Perhaps, when good-bye came she was weeping because all the pretty things were said and done with, or she was making doleful confessions about herself, so impulsive and generous and confidential, and so devoid of humour, that they compelled even a tragic swain to laugh. She made a looking-glass ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Adeline determined Juan's wedding In her own mind, and that's enough for woman; But then with whom? There was the sage Miss Redding, Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman and Miss Knowman, And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding. She deem'd his merits something more than common. All these were unobjectionable matches, And might go on, it well ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... sits on the shoulders spread out in the form of iron wings or plates. The saddle, at some time in its history, had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... through the battering storm and the driving rain of dust and crystals. Out beyond the dense space that surrounds all stars, the long ship probed the ever-shifting currents in the four-dimensional universe. The long ship found a low-density flaw, where space could hardly be said to exist at all. The long ship, described mathematically, was half as long as the continuum—the length being inversely proportional and related only to mass. Time was but a moth's wing ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... sun shone on it, when they called it golden. He inherited the lines of his mother's features, however; also her good teeth, her stature (or the promise of her stature, for he was not yet full- grown), and, what was better, her health without flaw, and her spirits of that tone and equality which are better than ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... forgotten, and she believed, as sincerely as her husband, that Philip had been free from any unkind intention. But she chiefly dwelt on her own Guy, especially that last speech, so unlike some of whom she had heard, who were rather glad to find a flaw in a faultless model, if only to obtain a fellow-feeling ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resist a hopeless love was broken down, but that only increased the strength of her determination to conceal the weakness from every eye, to continue the struggle of life as though there were no flaw in her armor, and to work indefatigably for the independence of thought and feeling and action which she valued ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... him and be praised in like manner? It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that the paradoxist consciously argues thus. He doubtless in most instances convinces himself that he has really detected some flaw in the theory of gravitation. Yet it is impossible not to recognise, as the real motive of every paradox-monger, the desire to have that said of him which has been said of ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... into invalid habits, and made no effort to rally. If his father urged him to go out—nay, once or twice he gulped down his pride, and asked Osborne to accompany him—Osborne would go to the window and find out some flaw or speck in the wind or weather, and make that an excuse for stopping in the house over his books. He would saunter out on the sunny side of the house in a manner that the squire considered as both indolent and unmanly. Yet ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all the boy's characteristics that night and reviewed them, one by one: His poise and utter lack of self-consciousness, his fearless directness and faith in himself, in all that he said or did; and they came through the mental assay without fault or flaw. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... drastic proposal to put forward; and he added that when the historic provincial divisions of France were broken up into departments, the nation had been prepared by nearly 200 years of centralization under the monarchy. It is a flaw in his argument to say that the previously existing areas were racial, whereas populations of identical race were divided from one another by the course of events. And in the proposed obliteration of these divisions—to be effected in a less arbitrary fashion than in France, where ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... opened the case, for Mr. Scraper was sitting with his mouth wide open, staring at it with greedy, almost frightened eyes. Truly, a perfect specimen of this shell was, in those days, a thing seen only in kings' cabinets; yet no flaw appeared in this, no blot upon its perfect beauty. The old miser sat and stared, and only his hands, which clutched the table-cloth in a convulsive grasp, and his greedy eyes, showed that he was not turned to stone. He ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... grosser sense, 30 Reason had only, in full power array'd, To manifest her will, and be obey'd— Men make resolves, and pass into decrees The motions of the mind! with how much ease, In such resolves, doth passion make a flaw, And bring to nothing what was raised to law! In empire young, scarce warm on Gotham's throne, The dangers and the sweets of power unknown, Pleased, though I scarce know why, like some young child, Whose little senses each new toy turns wild, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind that we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... described as 'common to all the arts' is not in accordance with the ordinary use of language. Nor is it employed elsewhere either by Plato or by any other Greek writer. It is suggested by the argument, and seems to extend the conception of art to doing as well as making. Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be noted in the words 'men who are injured are made more unjust.' For those who are injured are not necessarily made worse, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... candid marble without flaw, Or alabaster blemishless and rare, Ruggiero might have fancied what he saw, For statue-like it seemed, and fastened there By craft of cunningest artificer; Save in the wistful eyes Ruggiero thought A teardrop gleamed, and ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... name in full conspicuously engraved upon its face—and the youthful society of his school-town was at his feet. Every door was open. So almost without fault was he that few mothers objected to his companionship with their daughters. Yes, here was to be the flaw!—he was soon to find that it was easy for him to have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowledge for a seventeen-year- old boy who had already reached higher social levels than his own home had known, who was much quicker of wit than his ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... hiding-place. No one came below, except my companion, during the day. Tiger took his station in the berth just by the aperture, and slept heavily, as if not yet entirely recovered from the effects of his sickness. Toward night a flaw of wind struck the brig before sail could be taken in, and very nearly capsized her. The puff died away immediately, however, and no damage was done beyond the splitting of the foretopsail. Dirk Peters treated Augustus all this day with great kindness and entered into a long conversation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... indulgence of their failing when they time their expeditions so opportunely—and arm themselves with keys to fit strange doors. Come to think of it, he had been rather willfully blind to that flaw in her excuse.... Again, why should she be up and dressed and so madly bent on leaving Troyon's at half-past four in the morning? Why couldn't she wait for daylight at least? What errand, reasonable duty or design could have roused her out into the night and the storm at that weird ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... spite of her effrontery, "you will please never speak like this again; it is, both to my wife and me, an insult which I will not tolerate. Virgie is a lady in every sense of the word; even my critical mother could pick no flaw in her were she to see her, and the moment that I am at liberty to do so I shall return to the United States and bring my darling back with me. And let me here repeat what I said a while ago—I expect and demand that she be received with ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... without a flaw or mistake in the execution of the work she had struggled so hard to teach them, the first scene of the first act drew to its close, and Margaret struck the final chords of the music and felt that in another minute she must reel and fall from that piano-stool. And yet she ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... out, in a sort of exaltation, "there never was in the world such a betrayal. Do you remember once telling me that the only flaw you could find in the perfect symbolism of the gospel story was that Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the foreigner from Kerioth, when he should have been betrayed by John, the beloved disciple; for it is only those we love who can betray us? Frank, how true, how tragically true that is! It is those ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... belonging to his proud position as an engaged man was very comical. So was the entire change from his former abasement and devotion to Nan to a somewhat lordly air with his little betrothed; for Dora made an idol of him, and resented the idea of a fault or a flaw in her Tom. This new state of things suited both, and the once blighted being bloomed finely in the warm atmosphere of appreciation, love, and confidence. He was very fond of the dear girl, but meant to be a slave no longer, and enjoyed his freedom immensely, quite unconscious ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... horror. Not only did she love and trust the old man, but he was a legacy from Humfrey, and she would have torn the page from her receipts rather than rouse the least suspicion against him. Yet she could not bear to leave any flaw in Humfrey's farm books, and she toiled and perplexed herself in vain; till Owen, finding out what distressed her, and grieving at his own incapacity, begged that Randolf might help her; when behold! the confused accounts arranged themselves in comprehensible columns, and poor old Brooks was proved ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his Erigone; because that little work is without a flaw, is he therefore a greater poet than Archilochus, with all his disorderly profusion? greater than that impetuous, that god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in tragedy a Sophocles or (save the mark!) an ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... their defects could not be seen plainly. When the purchase had been consummated they were brought out into the sunlight. The word also means "wax." It is said that in the days of imperial Rome when a sculptor came to a flaw in the marble he filled it with wax to hide the defect, but when the hot days came and the wax was melted the defect was seen plainly. Paul is desiring for these Philippians that there may be none of this, but ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... the deed, did not weigh in the minds of the general public. The man's guilt was freely believed; not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet get him off thought that he was innocent. There seemed no flaw in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... devastating the cosmical china-closet. The "blow-out" is a tragedy, and the cause of further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long, unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... which he retrieved himself showed a consummate knowledge of human nature and of the men with whom he had to deal. Nor did he ever forget the lesson. From that time forward he took care that no one should be able to pick a flaw in his orthodoxy; and whatever he may have thought of much of the policy of his party, he was always ready to defend it ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... and let him alone, for if he be once driven from his humour, he is like two inward friends fallen out: his own bitter enemy and discontent presently makes a murder. In sum, he is a bladder blown up with wind, which the least flaw ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... "Lily's" constant declaration that he "positively loathed" football, although his persistent attendance at all the great matches rather belied this declaration. "It is the one thing in you, Miss Bessie, that I deplore, 'the fly in the pot—' no, 'the flaw—' ah, that's better—'the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence. If we analyse the various cases of sympathetic magic which have ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had taken only minutes. But in those minutes the quarsteel of the watertight door had been subjected to half a dozen smashing blows, and already a flaw had appeared in the pane. Another grinding crunch, and there would be the visible beginning of a crack. Three more, perhaps, and the door would ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... these rhymes to you Who brought the cross to me, Since on you flaming without flaw I saw the sign that Guthrum saw When he let break his ships of awe And laid ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... endeavoring to mend the break. And although Hamilton proudly repelled his advances, Washington forgave all and generously did all he could to advance the young man's interests. Washington's magnanimity was absolutely without flaw, but his attitude towards Hamilton has a more suggestive meaning when we consider that it was a testimonial of the high estimate he placed ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... exterior, and the lesson he received was salutary and lasting. He watched with a critical eye the management and navigation as the Boadicea was pressed through the stream past Gallipoli into the sea of Marmora, and admitted to the second mate that but for the excessive carrying on there was no flaw to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... seen in the great Cullinan diamond, the splitting of which was perhaps the most thrilling moment in the history of precious stones.[A] The value of the enormous crystal was almost beyond computation, but it had a flaw in the centre, and in order to cut out this flaw it was necessary to divide the stone into two pieces. The planes of cleavage were worked out, the diamond was sawn a little, when the operator, acknowledged to be the greatest living expert, inserted a knife in ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... only one tiny flaw in this plan. If we head straight north, we drop Steve's car into the Little Choptank. If we cross that safely, we'll get wet in the ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... this invocation: "But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, — What IF or YET, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's — Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?"*2* How tenderly Lanier was touched by ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... all colors about it. It was alive. Never had he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he was surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl. He examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was without flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous, gleaming like a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when he dropped it into ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... straight around I see New torments, new tormented souls, which way Soe'er I move, or turn, or bend my sight. In the third circle I arrive, of show'rs Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang'd For ever, both in kind and in degree. Large hail, discolour'd water, sleety flaw Through the dun midnight air stream'd down amain: Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell. Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange, Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog Over the multitude immers'd beneath. His eyes glare crimson, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... whole scene: only above the accursed wood, as if through a horrid rift in the murky ceiling, a rainy deluge—'sleety-flaw, discoloured water'— streams down amain, spreading a grisly spectral light, even more horrible than that palpable night. Already the Earth pants thick and fast! the darkened Cross trembles! the winds ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... storm; she crouched low in the canoe, but remained perfectly still. The wind tore at them as if with frantic hands that sought their life; the water hissed under them, raced past them madly. No waves could rise under the raging gale, but black flaw after flaw flew along the surface of the lake. The rain fell in torrents; the falling streams were caught by the wind, tossed hither and thither, twisted into fantastic shapes of spray, sent flying ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... dare to mention much greater names, but I imply them), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust and to distrust, with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed, often taking revenge with their works for an internal blemish, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too accurate memory, idealists out of proximity to the mud:—what a torment these great artists ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... yielding to his taste she was still vigilant as to his interests—Virginia discovered a flaw in one of the plumes. The sylph in the trailing gown held volubly that it did not fait rien; the man with the open purse said he couldn't see that it figured much, but the small American held firm. That must be replaced by a perfect plume or they would not take the hat. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... herself. How old was he? Could it be that he was too young for her? As he seemed to grow inaccessible, she was drawn toward him more compellingly. He was so strong, so gentle. She lived over the events of the day. There was no flaw there. He had considered her and Mary, always. And he had torn the program up and danced only with her. Surely he had liked her, or he would ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... irrefragable; and if logicians, though unable to dispute it, have usually exhibited a strong disposition to explain it away, this was not because they could discover any flaw in the argument itself, but because the contrary opinion seemed to rest on arguments equally indisputable. In the syllogism last referred to, for example, or in any of those which we previously constructed, is it not evident that the conclusion may, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. "A flaw!" rejecting the last one. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and machinery of the crane, the whole is slowly hoisted out, and then swung round to some convenient level, where the ponderous mass is freed from its casing of masonry, and brought out at last to open day. It is then thoroughly examined with a view to the discovery of any latent flaw or imperfection, and, if found complete in every part, is conveyed away to be the subject of a long series of finishing operations in another place,—operations many and complicated, but all essential to enable it finally to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... forest poverty, and knowing how hard it is to break that thraldom, I would stop you from taking the first step towards it. The bloom upon your cheek, the mould you are the product of without flaw, the chaste lady's tastes and thoughts, and inborn strength and joy, are the work of God's favor to your family for generations. That favor he continues in laying those family burdens on another's shoulders, to spare ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a portion of the truth; for there was more in the background, which he did not wish to confide to his friend. Toto Chupin's revolt had disquieted him. Let there be but a single flaw in the axletree, and one day it will snap in twain; and Mascarin wanted ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... both, swifter, subtler, and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge." This divining and glorifying power it is that Browning ascribes to Love; the lack of it is in his conception the tragic flaw which brings to the ground the superbly gifted genius of Paracelsus. This genuine and original tragic motive is not worked out with uniform power; his degeneration, his failures, are painted with the uncertain hand ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... where his wife was allowed to bear him company, and where his youngest son was born. His estates were, in general, preserved to him, but Carr, the infamous minion of the King, under some pretext of a flaw in the conveyance of it by Raleigh to his son, seized upon his manor of Sherborne. In the Tower he continued for twelve years. These years his industry and genius rendered the happiest probably of his life. Immured ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in the eye of the law A something which lawyers would call a flaw Of title in such a conversion: But if weak in the law, he was strong in the hand, And had the "nine points."—He summoned his band, And ordered before him the archer Bertrand, Intending a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... voice became businesslike—"as you know, these manual tests are the last tests before actually blasting off. In the past weeks, you cadets have been subjected to every possible examination, to discover any flaw in your work that might later crop up in space. This manual operations test of the control board, like Manning's on the radar bridge and Astro's on the power deck, is designed to test you under simulated space conditions. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her. Even if her father's objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... He was her prince from a story-book, come true. If any flaw were conceivable in so complete a fulfilment, it might have been imagined only in this very fact of Hugo's all-perfectness. Marrying upward, in the nature of the case, involved a large material one-sidedness: ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Mason grumbled now and then because his chum was queening "like all the rest of the frat-men," and their jovial expeditions to Mayfield were over, "because she wouldn't understand" (most conclusive proof!), but he ended by taking it as he might have taken an inequality of temper—as a flaw in character to be overlooked in a friend. Then again, Pellams found it positively uncanny to be getting on so well in his work, an uneasy feeling as though he were walking along the edge of a steep place. As for the joke itself, he could laugh over it with Katharine, but there ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... but my voice must have been drowned in the creaking of blocks and yards. They were alert enough for every chance of getting away—for every flaw of wind. Already the ship was less distinct, as if my eyes had grown dim. By the time a voice on board her cried, "Belay," faintly, she had gone from my sight. Then the puff of wind passed away, too, and left us more alone than ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... imagination? He had illuminated her father for her and in so doing had given her a ray of real comfort. He had interpreted Paula—in terms how different from those employed by Aunt Lucile! He had comprehended Rush without one momentary flaw of resentment. Last of all, he had quite simply and without one vitiating trace of self-pity, explained himself, luminously, so that it was as if she had known ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... read the letter written in April of 1919 by her Vice-Chancellor, Mathias Erzberger, also her minister of finance? A very able, compact masterpiece of malignant voracity, good enough to do credit to Satan. Through that lucky flaw of stupidity which runs through apparently every German brain, and to which we chiefly owe our victory and temporary respite from the fangs of the wolf, Mathias Erzberger posted his letter. It went wrong in the mails. If you desire to read the whole of it, the International News Bureau can ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... were never inside of that historic cathedral, as I have known persons to live forty years not fifty miles distant from Niagara, and never to have heard the organ speech of that great cataract. This is a common flaw in intellect. We tend to underestimate the near, and exaggerate the remote. Another application of the same frailty is noticeable in literature. Homegrown literature is, with not a few, depreciated. According to their logic, good things can not come ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... a link in the chain some little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound link—between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far as I have ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... paper title to a thousand acre boundary traceable to the Commonwealth without break or flaw, might not be the owner in fact of a single acre of land; as the whole boundary might be covered by senior grants or the natural objects ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... are susceptible to disorder, be reasonably careful about what you eat, even though you consider yourself quite well. What a stomach has once done in the line of misbehavior, a stomach may do again. If a pitcher has in it a tiny flaw, it may crack when filled with boiling liquid. If you know of some article of food which disagrees with you, let it alone. If you are inclined to dyspepsia, eschew hot breads, pastry, fried or ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... stations The Native Force also is more than the sum of the station district returns (3) Different forms of work; one table revealing proportion of Missionaries, Native Workers, Foreign Funds, and Native Contributions employed in different forms of work One table of results A serious flaw in this table (4) The extent to which different classes, etc., are reached. One table including the station returns with the addition of special missions which work among special classes in the whole Province or Country (5) Self-support. One table showing the relation of the native contribution ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the open; then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience coming out of a theatre. Then we closed in on them to bring off the big drive. For about thirty seconds it looked as ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... meantime he had to accommodate himself to circumstances, ingratiate himself with the big ones, wherever he discovered there was a flaw in their relations to one another, and be obliging. He had to take his turn oftener than the others, and came off badly at mealtimes. He submitted to it as something unavoidable, and directed all his efforts toward getting the best that ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Table stories, merely as such, illustrate Valour; the Graal stories, Religion; the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere with the minor instances, Love. All these have their [Greek: amarthia]—their tragic and tragedy-causing fault and flaw. The knight wastes his valour in idle bickerings; he forgets law in his love; and though there is no actual degradation of religion, he fails to live up to the ideal that he does not actually forswear. To throw the presentation—the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of Anne's soul; and Maisie knew that if she too was to be beautiful she must keep safe the beauty of their passion as she had kept safe the beauty of their friendship. It was clear and hard, unbreakable as crystal. She had been the one flaw in it, the thing that had damaged its perfection. Now that she had let Jerrold ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... that her husband gave her this commission in order to prevent her from committing suicide. (4) See Book VIII., line 547. (5) See line 709. (6) This passage is described by Lord Macaulay as "a pure gem of rhetoric without one flaw, and, in my opinion, not very far from historical truth" (Trevelyan's "Life and Letters", vol. i., page 462.) (7) "... Clarum et venembile nomen Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod profuit urbi," quoted by Mr. Burke, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... conjecture that Thackeray's natural turn for comic burlesque, which comes out so plainly in his drawings, had become ingrained and inveterate by early practice, and certainly his immoderate delight in setting snobs and flunkeys on a pillory became a flaw in the perfection of his higher composition. It might well produce, among foreigners at any rate, an unreal impression of the true relations existing between ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Divine and His Human in their thinking and make His Divine equal to the Divine of the Father and His Human like the human of another man, unaware that in doing this they separate soul and body; nor do they see the flaw in this, that then a rational man would have been born from a ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the Papal theologians is, that the divine providence may possibly permit even the majority of a legally convened Council to err; but by force of a divine promise cannot permit both a majority and the Pope to err on the same point. The flaw in this is, that the Romish divines rely on a conditional promise unconditionally. To Taylor's next argument the Romish respondent would say, that an exception, grounded on a specific evident necessity, does not invalidate ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... (Dist. xlv), quoting the council of Toledo: "In regard to the Jews the holy synod commands that henceforward none of them be forced to believe: for such are not to be saved against their will, but willingly, that their righteousness may be without flaw." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... possibly overcome this advantage"—he raised his ray-gun slightly—"and, though I know you would not kill me—save in the direst emergency, since you wish to take me a living prisoner—I would find it most distressing to have to carry for the rest of my life a flaw on my body. So, may I request you to withdraw your ray-guns with two fingertips and put them on the floor? Observe—your fingertips. Will you be ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... did it as openly as I have said, you'd arrest him at once. But you must remember Cranze will have been thinking out his game for perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it, till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped on. If anything happens to Hamilton, his dear friend Cranze will be the last man to be suspected of it. And mark you, he's a clever chap. It isn't your clumsy, ignorant ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... it this way because I want you to realize that except for the one fault which has shadowed your father's life, there is no flaw in him. Other men have gone through the world apparently untouched by any temptation, but their families could tell you the story of a thousand tyrannies, their clerks could tell you of selfishness and hardness, their churches and benevolent societies could tell you ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... his character as if he had been a creature from another planet. He seemed, indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether in his own little province of art. A creature more unsullied by the world it is impossible to conceive, and I often thought it a flaw in his artistic character that he had not a harmless vice or two. It amused me greatly at times to think that he was of our shrewd Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better token of his American origin than this high aesthetic fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... on the left side of your hat, the other Susan has a flower on the right side of hers. Your brother there has buttons on the right side of his coat; the other John has buttons on the left side. There is a flaw in the looking-glass, and Drusilla, being a little taller than you two, was just tall enough for the end of her nose to be even with the flaw. That's the reason the other Drusilla's nose looks like it had been mashed ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once Of Robert Burns ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... seemed to see Fate as a thin female with a soppy expression and pince-nez, sniffing a little as she worked the thing out. He could picture her glutinous satisfaction as she re-read her scenario and gloated over its sure-fire qualities. There was not a flaw in the construction. It started off splendidly with a romantic meeting, had 'em guessing half-way through when the hero and heroine quarrelled and parted—apparently for ever, and now the stage was all set for the reconciliation and the slow fade-out on the embrace. To bring this last scene about, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... said that treatment is more important than subject, but no treatment can make a repulsive subject not repulsive. It can make a trivial, or even a stupid, subject interesting, but a really bad flaw in a subject cannot be treated out. Happily the man who has sense enough to treat a subject well will generally have sense enough to choose a good one, so that the case of a really repulsive subject treated in a masterly ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... it! Whisky never won a jury. In the Morse case you loaded up for your speech and I beat you because in all your agonizing about the wrong to old man Mueller and his 'pretty brown-eyed daughter' as you called her, you forgot slick and clean the flaw ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... hearers might have been excused for staring. It may be strange, but is not inconsistent, that a wolf which has eaten ninety-nine children should spare the hundredth. But the fact that a wolf has once spared a child is sufficient to show that there must be some flaw in the chain of reasoning purporting to prove that wolves cannot ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rhetoric, without one flaw, and, in my opinion, not very far from historical truth. When I consider that Lucan died at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... keep that fact steadily before him, but instinct was too powerful. His operations in the old days had never been conducted purely with an eye to financial profit. He had collected gems almost as much for what they were as for what they could bring. Many a time had the faithful Spike bewailed the flaw in an otherwise admirable character, which had induced his leader to keep a portion of the spoil instead of converting it at once into good dollar bills. It had had to go sooner or later, but Jimmy had always clung to it as long as possible. To Spike a diamond brooch of cunning ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... founder the ship. The tempest continued in all its fury, and the sails being extremely wet, clung round the masts and rigging so closely, that it was impossible to work them. Next day a sudden wave broke the mizen-mast, just where there was a flaw in the sail, and submerged the vessels for a few moments. The storm only abated sufficiently to allow the crew of the Swallow time to recover a little, and to repair the worst damage; then recommenced, and continued with violent squalls until the 7th of May. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... galactic plane we perceive that the density decreases with great rapidity. So far we can perceive no flaw in this reasoning if only it be granted (1) that the level planes are continuous and of equal density throughout; and (2) that an absolute and definite limit is set to telescopic vision, beyond which, if stars exist, they ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... looked like door-mats flung out upon the hillsides. The huge mountains raised their jagged heads through the snow, and were so sharp-edged that they might have been clipped out of cardboard. The sky was blue, without a flaw; but lost clouds crawled like snakes between heaven and earth. All day the sun scorched her, but the ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... rash extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... it, madam," returned Richard, and there for the time the conversation ended. The Queen had been most charming, full of gratitude, and perfectly reasonable in her requests, and yet there was some flaw in the gratification of both, even while neither thought the disappointment would go very hard with their son. Richard could never divest himself of the instinctive prejudice with which soft words inspire men of his nature, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and charm are such that we wish to sit at her feet at once. She is intellectual, but with a disarming smile, religious, but so charitable, masterful, and yet loved of all. None is perfect, and there must be a flaw in her somewhere, but to find it would necessitate such a rummage among her many adornments as there is now no time for. Perhaps we may come upon it accidentally in ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... as he ought. But let us dismiss these frigid cavils of the adversaries, concerning which, if at any time they are brought to the light, prudent men will easily decide what they should judge. They have found a flaw in words which are very plain and clear. But every one sees that in this passage confidence in ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... amount of opposition. He seldom allowed out-spoken enthusiasm to pass by him without some amount of hostility. But he was not so perverse as to be driven from his new views by the fact that Alice approved them, and she, as she drew near home, was able to think that the only flaw in his character was in process ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... perilous gun to handle. Owing to some undiscoverable flaw of construction or imperfection in the alloy, the monster soon developed a disconcerting knack of back-firing, hazardous to life and limb. It stands to reason that the Good Duke attached no undue importance to any ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... about a quarter of an hour ago, proud, and, I may say, swaggering, as he does over his learned friends when he has found a flaw in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin |
