"Flaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returning to Europe, told of the "sapphires, topazes, amethysts, garnets, and other costly stones" of Ceylon, and of the ruby which belonged to the king of the island, "a span in length, without a flaw, and brilliant ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... progress. A gleam, as of a lake, streaked the eastward. Gigantic pine trees reared their graceful heads against the opal of the evening sky, and at their feet the dense scrub through which he had so painfully toiled, spread without break and without flaw. It seemed as though he could leap from where he stood upon a solid mass of tree-tops. He raised his eyes, and right against him, like a long dull sword, lay the narrow steel-blue reach of the harbour ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... breath, so furious was the onset of the 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 forward, forward ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... 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 ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... of that," she replied thoughtfully. "I want the pedestal of my hero to be a low one; and Cooee declares that she wishes no pedestal at all. If her hero is worthy of the name, he must bear inspection even from above. The worst flaw of all might lurk in the very crown ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... had a hooked nose, a long, sharp chin, a dried-apple mouth, and two fiercely bright eyes, that looked clear through you, and plainly indicated that she thought you all wrong, and at fault. Whenever she heard any one praised, she immediately set about finding a flaw somewhere, and heralded it to the world, as soon as found. She knew the Dering family were not as nice and worthy of praise and sympathy, as people seemed to think, and she had come this morning on purpose to find out, and then correct the deluded public mind. She was quite ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... come hither. But when this fairest of the sisters led them through her palace and showed them all the treasures that were hers, envy grew in their hearts and choked their old love. Even while they sat at feast with her, they grew more and more bitter; and hoping to find some little flaw in her good fortune, they asked a ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... covered here. But into your hands, young man, I put the one measure that is to be the most savage test of our honesty. I have put the most thought on it. Every lawyer in this State will try to find a flaw in it. But if I know anything about constitutional law it is framed to beat them all. I'll not bother to read it to you. Carry it away, and ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... with interest the group below. This is that princess whose hand the Crown Prince, Frederick, thrice divorced, has sought in vain; for, he failing heirs, Holstein passes from the present dynasty to the Ducal House of Augustenburg. This political flaw is, while I write, being adjusted by the Danish Senate, as the impotency of Frederick, now reigning Sovereign of Denmark, has been pretty well admitted. The company took no heed of the royal presence, but ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... on McGregor's height, How didst thou grow to such a lofty bearing, For song of bird or beat of breeze uncaring, There where thy shadow touched the dying brow? Were all thy sinewy fibres shaped aright? Was there no flaw? With what mysterious daring Didst thou put forth each murmuring, odorous bough And trust it to the frail support of air? We only know that thou art now supreme: We know not how thou grewest so tall and fair. So from the unnoticed, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... own Hearts. They either do not see our Faults, or conceal them from us, or soften them by their Representations, after such a manner, that we think them too trivial to be taken notice of. An Adversary, on the contrary, makes a stricter Search into us, discovers every Flaw and Imperfection in our Tempers, and though his Malice may set them in too strong a Light, it has generally some Ground for what it advances. A Friend exaggerates a Man's Virtues, an Enemy inflames his Crimes. A Wise Man should give a just Attention to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... without error or flaw, That the sty was deserted when found: And the Judge kept explaining the state of the law In a ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... which, if reached, the world's history would be crowned, then these spiritual beings must do it perfectly. Their obedience must be complete. There can be no interruption to it from sin, no effort in it because of weakness, no resistance because of temptation, no flaw because of ignorance, no pause because of weariness, no pain because of rebellious will. Their obedience must be free, constant, spontaneous, happy. It must cover all their lives. Their whole being must be a sacrifice and service to the God whom they behold, and their life must be a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... is the flaw or the depth of the plan In the make of that wonderful creature called man, No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same. Though like as was ever twin-brother to brother. Possessing the one shall ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... that of suffering myself to be over-ruled by the opinion of people, whose judgment I despise — I own, with shame and confusion of face, that importunity of any kind I cannot resist. This want of courage and constancy is an original flaw in my nature, which you must have often observed with compassion, if not with contempt. I am afraid some of our boasted virtues maybe ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... chair, with his arms folded on the top and said nothing. There was really nothing for him to say, but there were many things to think. He had saved that dear face from flame or flaw, the dear eyes had been hidden against his shoulder—his fingers smarted where he had clutched at her ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... yet a certainty, however. The estate of Coila was well worth fighting for. Was there not the possibility, the bare possibility, that the solicitors or advocates of Le Roi, or the M'Rae, who now held the castle and glen, might find some fatal flaw in the evidence which Townley had spent so much time and care in ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... position more honourable than that of a clergyman's wife unless indeed it were a bishop's. Considering his father's influence it was not at all impossible that Theobald might be a bishop some day—and then—then would occur to her that one little flaw in the practice of the Church of England—a flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but in its policy, which she believed on the whole to be a mistaken one in this respect. I mean the fact that a bishop's wife does not take ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... demonstration by one of the most learned and responsible men of science in the world, and one of their most sarcastic and hitherto successful flouters had been compelled to confess that he could find no flaw in the calculations of this mathematical Daniel so unexpectedly come to judgment. They did not understand his proofs, but that was no reason why they should reject them, and so they rose as one man in support of their champion to demand that Professor van Huysman should withdraw his imputations ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... aware of the slight discrepancy in Ears, she suffered only a slight Annoyance. It handed her a tiny Pang to find a Flaw in a Piece of Work that she had ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... changed dramatically in Virginia in the 1760's. This was partially due to changing economic conditions. Prosperity did not return as rapidly as expected. The long war probably masked a basic flaw in the Virginia economy which Virginians believed they had solved—they were too reliant on tobacco. The great Virginia fortunes of the mid-18th Century were built on extensive credit from Britain, the efficient operation ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... expenses. From the establishment of order and of confidence sprang a prosperity which enabled her to obtain a certain revenue, though entirely inadequate to her expenditure. Thus we beheld her pressing solidly on, and we knew not where she might stop. Pretexts, such as it was difficult to find a flaw in, were never wanting on which to ground a fresh absorption of territory. And seeing behind this advance a vast country—almost a continent—which was not merely a great Asiatic Power, but a great European State, under autocratic, irresponsible rule, with interests ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... speak of Leonard's position at the mill, as junior clerk. He had been there for six months, without a flaw being detected, either in his integrity, his diligence, or his regularity; indeed, it was evident that he had been gradually acquiring a greater degree of esteem and confidence than he had at first enjoyed, and had been latterly ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and rigidly testing both by the fastidious canons that often rendered him hypercritical, Mr. Palma could find no flaw in contour or in colouring, save that the complexion was too dazzlingly white, lacking the rosy tinge which youth and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... her off the beach upon which she had grounded, and as she receded from the shore, leaped on board of her. Placing an oar at the stern, he sculled her out a short distance from the land, and then shook out the sail. The first flaw of wind that struck it heeled the boat over so far that Thomas leaped with desperate haste up to the ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... the brightest fair That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force, or flight; But what, or where, the Fates have wrapt in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail China jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour, or her new brocade; Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heaven has doom'd that Shock must fall, 110 Haste then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... minds being busy with the new situation thus presented,—mine, in wonderment at this flaw that so often declared itself in enviable natures of fullest endowment,—in a grown-up man and a good cricketer, for instance, even as this curate; Edward's (apparently), in the consideration of how such a state of things, supposing ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... restraint. A mark of such unwholesomely divided minds is the passion for interference with others: the Fox without the Tail was of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be trusted) a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties of life, that spoils his temper, that threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must never he suffered to engross his thoughts. The true duties ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not the seventh son of a seventh son, sir. I did not see the flaw in your strategy. You lost by one of those strange accidents which must be attributed to the interference of the Almighty ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... replied. "Maybe not the necessity exactly, but the spirit surely. Why should you quarrel? You're the first one to insist on perfection—to quarrel if there is any flaw in the order ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, Corrupt and pestilent: Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice, And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud, And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn; With adverse blast upturns them from the south Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... was living. But Thyrza resolved to breathe no word till the two years were gone by. Would it, then, make a coldness between her and her sister? It should not; her happiness should not have that great flaw. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... he saw his mistake, the way in 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 ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... of laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the soi-disant detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous—that is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... voluntarily come to grief. If Dorothea was a genuine Doederlein, she would march straight to her objective, and take by storm the good and useful things of life. If she failed, it would be proof that there was a flaw somewhere in her birth. This was his logic; and having applied it, theoretically, he enshrouded himself in the clouds of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... in 1850, bore little resemblance to the well-known pleasure resort of to-day. So far as I can remember, there was not a modern building in the city, and as a picture of an old-world Scottish town it was without a flaw. No club-house faced the sea, nor were there the fashionable residences which adorn the modern St. Andrews. The grass grew and the oats ripened where now stretch the long terraces devoted to summer lodgings for the visitors. North ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... friend Essex gave him a villa in Twickenham, which he soon mortgaged, for he was in debt all his life, although in receipt of sums which would have supported him in comfort and dignity were it not for his habits of extravagance,—the greatest flaw in his character, and which was the indirect cause of his disgrace and fall. He was even arrested for debt when he enjoyed a lucrative practice at the courts. But nothing prevented him from pursuing his literary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... to follow the same trade in the same field, as in India; for the published proceedings of the court bring down upon him the indignation of society—the moral and religions feelings of his fellow men are arrayed against him, and from these salutary checks no flaw in the indictment can save him. Not so in India. There no moral or religions feelings interpose to assist or to supply the deficiencies of the penal law. Provided he eats, drinks, smokes, marries, and makes his ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... magnificent ideas, his enthusiasm for truth, his passion to be the benefactor of his kind; with all the charm that made him loved by good and worthy friends, amiable, courteous, patient, delightful as a companion, ready to take any trouble—there was in Bacon's "self" a deep and fatal flaw. He was a pleaser of men. There was in him that subtle fault, noted and named both by philosophy and religion in the [Greek: areskos] of Aristotle, the [Greek: anthropareskos] of St. Paul, which is more common than it is pleasant to think, even ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... fully satisfies the conditions of artistic triumph. Are we to ignore the grandeur of a colossal statue, and the nobility of the human conceptions which it embodies, because here and there we notice a flaw in the marble, a blemish in its colour, a jagged slip of the chisel? "It is not force of intellect," as George Eliot has said, "which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision that causes the eye to ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... insignificant a thing as dress is in itself) is now become an object worthy of some attention; for, I confess, I cannot help forming some opinion of a man's sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself. Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. Most of our young fellows here display some character or other by their dress; some affect the tremendous, and wear a great and fiercely cocked hat, an enormous sword, a short waistcoat and a black cravat; these I should be almost ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was safe. For that they had to thank Villon. It was he who had grasped the flaw of Saxe's over-proof, and so tumbled the whole fabric of lies into a ruin never to be built up again. For both these mercies he humbly thanked God. It is to be noted by the student of the ways of men that ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... decency to say that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly ignorant or ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... defence of existing 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 ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... will hide all my infirmities and defects; and, through your loving sympathy no finger of contempt or dislike will be pointed at me.' 'I come,' said the moss; and it crept up and around, and in and out, till every flaw was hidden, and all was smooth and fair. Presently the sun shone out, and the old thatch looked bright and fair, a picture of rare beauty, in the golden rays. 'How beautiful the thatch looks!' cried one who saw it. 'How ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... two households became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing something of each other. Try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet which had drawn the Contessa ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... deleuerly Gert bend the gyn in full gret hy; And the stane smertly swappyt out. It flaw out quethyr, and with a rout, And fell rycht ewyn befor the sow. Thair harts than begouth to grow. Bot yhet than, with thair mychts all Thai pressyt the sow towart the wall; And has hyr set tharto ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... true that blessings, equally with afflictions, come from Heaven; but this truth is not so generally felt. A sharp disappointment will suddenly drive us to God. The mariner of life sails, unthinking, over its prosperous seas, but a flaw of storm will bring him to his prayers. And religion, reason as we will, is peculiarly associated with affliction. And does not sorrow possess this supernatural air, not merely because it interrupts the usual ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... "the piece of skin is as safe and sound as my eye. There was a flaw in your reservoir somewhere, or a crevice in the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Here, now and then, a stray gull from the sea sends a flying throb of white light across the mirror below, or the sweeping wings of a hawk paint their moth-like image on the blue surface, or a little flaw of wind shudders across the water in a black ripple; but except for these casual stirs of Nature, all is still, oppressive, and beautiful, as earth seems to the trance-sleeper on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... He lit his lamp to read the sacred law, Before he spread his mantle for the night; But the wind rising with a sudden flaw, He read no more,—the gust put ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... considerably larger than the end of my thumb—as large as a big hickory-nut and, my uncle averred, flawless. Rubies of such a size and without a flaw are extremely rare, I believe; in fact, there are only one or two known to be in existence. The old gentleman declared that one of five carats was worth five times as much as a diamond of equal weight, and that the value increased proportionately ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... pause before they err, for they are a world's beacon. Every eye turns towards them for example and for support; and thus, where the one is evil, and the other wanting, the results of the failure may prove incalculable. The flaw in the diamond, the alloy in the gold, the stain in the purple, the blot upon the ermine—all these are detected upon the instant; the value of the jewel is decreased, the price of the metal is deteriorated, the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it down on his snout. Then—Pouf!—-the false flint falls all to flinders, and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in your flank! I have felt them. At evening, too, in the dew, or when it ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... stampers, and you find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and the crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure, and the worker has but to turn a tap to give shape to the immense mass of steel, which makes a far more homogeneous metal, without crack or flaw, of the blooms, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... 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 had told you ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic hero as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien to him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to his destruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatal imperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds and degrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo, which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other the murderous ambition of Richard III. In most cases the tragic error ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... monstrous flame; and did be half stunned by the noise, which did be now an utter and furious roaring, as you shall remember; and the Maid and I did stand as but two lonesome strangers in the mouth-part of that deep and desolate Gorge, and did stare voiceless unto the great flaw; and mine arm did be about the Maid, and she to stand very nigh to me; and neither to speak; and surely, how should we anywise; for the noise did be ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... lessons, and more precious even as models for Democracy, than the humdrum samples Burns presents. The motives of some of his effusions are certainly discreditable personally—one or two of them markedly so. He has, moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he never reach'd (and yet I think he leads the way to it.) He gives melodies, and now and then the simplest and sweetest ones; but harmonies, complications, oratorios in words, never. (I do not speak this in ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... this 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 it, and the ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that surrounded him. He knew the danger was rapidly increasing because whenever he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear the almost inaudible tickings and vibrations as the bubble's skin contracted or expanded and the Nothing tapped and searched with its empty fingers for a flaw or crack that it could tear ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... to the halyards, though he was nearly jerked overboard by the sudden pitching and rolling of the craft. Recovering the sheet which had run out into the water, he took his place at the helm. He flattened down the sail, when the flaw had spent its force, and headed his boat towards Friedrichshafen. The next gust that struck the sail carried her down so that the water poured in over her lee rail by the barrel. The lady screamed lustily; ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... flaw for Rosalind in this "As You Like It" life and that was the persistence of the secret association with Nicky. It was the strangest ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... confess. Jennings did not pursue the subject, but abruptly began the lesson. That day and several days thereafter he put her to tests he had never used before. She saw that he was searching for something—for the flaw implied in the adverse verdict of the son of Lucia Rivi. She was enormously relieved when he gave over the search without having found the flaw. She felt that Donald Keith's verdict had been proved false or at least faulty. Yet she was not wholly ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... braced again. Life became like what the poet Johnnie says—one grand, sweet song. Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that I give you my word that I'd almost forgotten such a person as Motty existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was still pained and distant. It wasn't anything he said or did, mind you, but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There was a kind of grieved look ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... should be annealed and the iron in the bar should be sufficiently ductile to be bent cold to a right angle without fracture. When heated it should be capable of being flattened out to one-third its diameter without crack or flaw. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... lightning conductor should 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, rather than entirely by the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... turned out to be a good driver of aeroplanes," commented Roy, as he watched; "see that flaw strike them! There! he brought the Cobweb through it like an old general ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... some trouble in his time with imperfect respectabilities. Nice, well-dressed, well-housed, civil, agreeable people are they. No fault to find with them but that there is some little flaw in their history, for which the very good (rigid) don't visit them. The degree to which one is incommoded with imperfect respectabilities, depends of course a good deal upon the extent of his good-nature, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... his own laundry bill, Mawruss, has no trouble getting a thousand dollars because the second vice-president is buffaloed already by a stovepipe hat, a Prince Albert coat and a four-carat stone with a flaw in it." ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... through many forefathers, each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title-deeds? Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any home whatever? One day or another, safe as they deem ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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, if well wound up, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... like to know that your generosity can be supreme—without a flaw. Love at its highest should be the origin of ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... she smiled he explained. "Oh, not what the priests would call a conscience; that I know. But none the less I have a conscience—a conscience about the things which really matter, at all events to me. There is a flaw in that new invention. It can be improved; I know that. But as yet I do not see how, and—I cannot help it—I must get it right; I cannot let it go imperfect when I know that it's imperfect, when I know that it can be improved, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... with heart of flame, The coming man of the race will find her. For petty purpose and narrow aim, And fault and flaw she will leave behind her. He grown tender, and she grown wise, They shall enter the Eden by both created; The broadened kingdom of Paradise, And love, and mate, as the ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... early Bermuda letters we may gather that Mark Twain's days were enjoyable enough, and that his malady was not giving him serious trouble, thus far. Near the end of January he wrote: "Life continues here the same as usual. There isn't a flaw in it. Good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day and every day, without a break. I shouldn't know how to go about bettering my situation." He did little in the way of literary work, probably finding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... light lanthorn shoots above the crowd! Here, 'neath the lines, Hygeia's fount that shade, Smart booths allure the lounger on parade. Bohemia's glass, and Nevers' beaded wares, Millecour's fine lace, and Moulins' polish'd shears; And crates of painted wicker without flaw, And fine mesh'd products of Germania's straw, Books of dull trifling, misnamed "reading light," And foxy maps, and prints in damaged plight, Whilst up and down to rattling castanettes, The active ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... harmonies, to be always rejecting and refining. It had its sorrows, of course. How often in the old days one came in contact with some gracious and beautiful personality, and flung oneself into close relations; and then one began to see this and that flaw. There were lapses in tact, petulances, littlenesses; one's friend did not rightly use his beautiful mind; he was jealous, suspicious, trivial, petty; it ended in disillusionment. Instead of taking him as a passenger on one's vessel, and determining ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... collars. They will suit your soft head. As for food, I'm afraid you're not taking enough arsenic. A slight touch of relationship to my family has evidently turned your brain. I cannot say how sorry I am that you should have discovered the one flaw in my pedigree. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... far, mark aw flaw, caught ay bake, rain e less, men ee easy, ski eir their, software i trip, hit i: life, sky o father, palm oh flow, sew oo loot, through or more, door ow out, how oy boy, coin uh but, some u put, foot y yet, young yoo few, chew [y]oo /oo/ with ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... meals after years of dreadful restaurants gave me especial satisfaction, but alas! there was a flaw in my lute. We had to eat in our living room; and when I said "Mother, one of these days I'm going to move the kitchen to the south and build a real sure-enough dining room in between," she turned upon ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... satisfied with his opponents' admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 almost ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... fret, and the servants annoy, and our best-laid plans fall to pieces, and our castles in the air are dissipated like bubbles that break at a breath, then can we walk with God? That religion which fails us in the every-day trials and experiences of life has somewhere in it a flaw. It should be more than a plank to sustain us in the rushing tide, and land us exhausted and dripping on the other side. It ought, if it come from above, to be always, day by day, to our souls as the wings of a bird, bearing ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... 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 ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... leave you so, my young gallant; we three are sick in state, and your wealth must help to make us whole again. For this saying is as true as old— Strife nurs'd 'twixt man and wife makes such a flaw, How great soe'er their wealth, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... found to be at variance with the highest views of Morality and Government, then the more logical the process by which they have been deduced, the more certain will it be that there is some fundamental flaw in the basis on which the whole superstructure is reared. In other cases, it might be doubtful how far the consequences that may seem to be deducible from a theory could be legitimately urged in ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... he made the remark, while Westcott was talking to Katy, and playfully holding his fingers in the water as he leaned over the gunwale that almost dipped, there came a flaw in the wind, and the little boat, having too much canvas and too much loading, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat. He endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last. "You'd be perfect then—as lovely as ever any woman—why, you're perfect now! And yet without that one flaw where would you be? You'd not be married then, though ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... here: the British they found out a flaw In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law: (They make all laws, you know, an' so, o' course, It's nateral they should understand their force:) He'd oughto took the vessel into port, An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court; She was a mail-ship, an' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Little Arcadians of my own sex younger than myself—and, if I may suggest it, less discerning—were not only not menaced, but she invited them with a cordiality in which the keenest eye among them could detect no flaw. Miss Lansdale's mother had also pleased the masculine element of the town at her first progress through its pleasant streets. But Miss Caroline, despite many details of dress and manner that failed ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... For pain and time, which trace deep lines and write a story on a human face, have a strangely different effect on one face and another. The face that is only fair, even very fair, they mar and flaw; but to the face whose beauty is the harmony between that which speaks from within and the form through which it speaks, power is added by all that causes the outer man to bear more deeply the impress of the inner. The pretty ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... there from that moment—absolutely, marvelously at home, for he fitted the setting perfectly, and there was not a hitch or flaw in his adaptation. To see him over the billiard-table, five minutes later, one could easily fancy that Mark Twain, as well as the house, had "been there always." Only the presence of his daughters was needed now to complete his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... different development of the same type of quiet unassuming English gentleman,—the gallant, thrusting, never-tiring Plumer. Small spare man of dainty gait and finish, yet moulded in a clay which hitherto has shown no flaw in the rougher elements of the soldier. It is no inconsiderable tribute to his sterling qualities as a leader that he gained both the confidence and devotion of the rough Bushboys from the Antipodes, with whom he was associated. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... blinded him. So, instead of lashing Miki to the sledge as Le Beau had fastened him to his improvised drag, Durant made his captive comfortable, covering him with a warm blanket before he began his journey eastward. He made sure, however, that there was no flaw in the muzzle about Miki's jaws, and that the free end of the chain to which he was still fastened was well hitched to the Gee-bar ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... To return He sought, but could not find the way. Alone He was, and in perplexity, because His huntsmen he no longer could descry. Then, wandering to and fro, he found at last A pleasure garden of the days gone by, Belonging to King Lila, beautiful And without flaw. He was astonished quite When he perceived a palace. All alone He found himself, when he had entered there. He walked about, but found no living soul. Unto himself he said: "Can this domain A habitation be of demons ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... 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
... good Fortune that has befallen one of her Acquaintance; and she wishes it may prosper with her, but her Mother used one of her Nieces very barbarously. Her usual Remarks turn upon People who had great Estates, but never enjoyed them, by reason of some Flaw in their own, or their Father's Behaviour. She can give you the Reason why such a one died Childless: Why such an one was cut off in the Flower of his Youth: Why such an one was Unhappy in her Marriage: Why one broke his Leg on such a particular Spot of Ground, and why another ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to herself, that this man, even in such a supreme moment, should not forget his art—that, even in prayer, his eyes should mechanically detect an error of the chisel, a flaw in the metal, or some such detail familiar to his daily life. She did not think the worse of him for it. He was an artist! The habit of his whole existence could not cease to influence him—he could as soon have ceased to ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... forward; a flood of moonlight seemed to envelop it, and through it swept Aksel Aaroe's voice. His voice was a clear, full, deep baritone, from which every one derived great pleasure. He could have drawn it out, without break or flaw, from here to Vienna. But within this voice Ella heard another, a simultaneous sound of weakness or pain, which she never doubted that everybody could hear. There was an emotion in its depths, an affecting confidence, which went to her heart; it seemed to say, "Sorrow, ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... not join in it. He felt a sudden sinking of the heart at the words, "save one wing under Thomas." Then the victory was not complete. It could be complete only when the whole Union army was driven from the field. As long as Thomas stood, there was a flaw in the triumph. He had heard many times of this man, Thomas. He had Grant's qualities. He was at his best ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... country within fifty miles of Boston, which, moreover, can be reached in half an hour's ride by railway. But the nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... system, and is obliged to stand up for his system to justify the consequences. Now a barber can be dispassionate; the only thing he necessarily stands by is the razor, always providing he is not an author. That was the flaw in my great predecessor Burchiello: he was a poet, and had consequently a prejudice about his own poetry. I have escaped that; I saw very early that authorship is a narrowing business, in conflict with the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... however, be supposed that General Gordon availed himself of a flaw in his instructions to carry out a policy of his own. On the contrary, he clearly understood from the British Government that evacuation was what was required, and that all the Egyptian employes must be given a chance of leaving the Soudan if possible. From beginning to end this ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... so many different ways, I find, of loving a man. You are fond of him, at first, for what you consider his perfections, the same as you are fond of a brand-new traveling bag. There isn't a scratch on his polish or a flaw in his make-up. Then you live with him for a few years. You live with him and find that life is making a few dents in his loveliness of character, that the edges are worn away, that there's a weakness or two where you imagined only strength to be, and that instead of standing a saint ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... kind. It was a small stone, and had a flaw in it. Number Five said she did n't want a diamond with a flaw in it, and that she did want to see how a ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... go back with you to fetch the other 5,000 francs.'—'No,' returned the jeweller, giving back the diamond and the ring to Caderousse—'no, it is worth no more, and I am sorry I offered so much, for the stone has a flaw in it, which I had not seen. However, I will not go back on my word, and I will give 45,000.'—'At least, replace the diamond in the ring,' said La Carconte sharply.—'Ah, true,' replied the jeweller, and he reset the stone.—'No matter,' observed Caderousse, replacing the box in his pocket, 'some ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... master desperately, "have you considered what must inevitably happen if a flaw of wind should come round that point, at the critical moment, and break us off, as it is likely enough ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... like himself. Men are merciful to him, 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
... not Rosamund; this was a woman with Rosamund's figure, face, hair, eyes, voice, gestures, movements—one who would be Rosamund but for some terrible flaw. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... basement door gleefully. All seemed propitious, yet he meant once more and carefully to examine the preparations he had made, to see if there was any flaw anywhere. He was so absorbed, so excited, that he scarcely breathed as he crept slowly along the inside of the wall, just as a moment before he had passed along its outer surface. At one spot he paused and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... had been rather hard for her, and she judged it as it appeared, and there did seem a great flaw somewhere which she was trying her best to solve by noting every phase of life as she found it. Naturally bright, keenly intellectual and very independent, she was a philosopher as well as an artist, and always ready for ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... study of those scriptures, in order that the solemn question might be safely resolved, 'Can such a fallen sinner rise again?' was like the investigation of the title to an estate upon which a whole livelihood depended. Every apparent flaw must be critically examined. Tremblingly alive to the importance of a right decision, his prayers were most earnest; and at length, to his unspeakable delight, the word of the law and wrath gave place to that of life ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... NICHOLAS for December, 1877, Jack-in-the-Pulpit says that "sincere" is made of the words sine-cera, meaning "honey without wax." I have been told that it refers also to the Greeks, who, when they found a crack in a statue, would sometimes fill the flaw with wax; and that hence a "sincere" statue, one "without wax," would have no flaw, but be ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... that the ladder was fifty feet in length; and consequently it reached to a point on the face of the cliff nearly fifty feet above the surface of the glacier. At this height there chanced to be a slight flaw in the rock—a sort of seam in the granite—where a hole could easily be pierced ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... preacher himself be sound, and of good life. (2.) That thou takest not seeming graces for real ones, nor seeming fruits for real fruits. (3.) Take heed that a sin in thy life goes not unrepented of; for that will make a flaw in thine evidence, a wound in thy conscience, and a breach in thy peace; and a hundred to one, if at last it doth not drive all the grace in thee into so dark a corner of thy heart, that thou shalt not be able, for a time, by all the torches that are burning in the gospel, to find ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... moments later Ormuz Khan entered. He wore faultless morning dress, too faultless; so devoid of any flaw or crease as to have lost its masculine character. In his buttonhole was a hyacinth, and in one slender ivory hand he carried a huge bunch of pink roses, which, bowing deeply, he ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... There was a flaw somewhere in the argument, but I only said, "'Valeat quantum valere potest.'" Bez looked solemn; a little Latin goes a long way with some people. He was an object of charity, and I made him ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the Roman Empire," the conception of which had come to him in 1764 in Rome whilst "musing amongst the ruins of the Capitol"; in 1787 his great work was finished at Lausanne, where he had resided since 1783; modern criticism, working with fresh sources of information, has failed to find any serious flaw in the fabric of this masterpiece in history, but the cynical attitude adopted towards the Christian religion has always been regarded as a defect; "a man of endless reading and research," was Carlyle's verdict after a final perusal of the "Decline," "but of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... very fond of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall, and had put the bulky ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and placed concrete the film of cement paste which flushes to the surface will take the impress of every flaw in the surface of the forms. It will even show the grain marks in well dressed lumber. From this it will be seen how very difficult it is so to mold concrete that the surface will not bear evidence of the mold used. The task is impracticable of ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... the joyous hopes of youth! The faith that knew no flaw of doubt! The spotless innocence and truth That clothed my maiden soul about! Bring back the grace of girlhood gone, The rapturous zest of other days! The dew and freshness of the dawn, That lay on life's untrodden ways— The glory that will shine no more For me ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... somewhat older, the ordinary critic and observer could still detect no flaw of age or tendency to fade in the sparkling black eyes and fair delicate complexion. As Honor saw almost at a first glance, this woman's theory of life began and ended in "self." Not so much as to exclude any impulse towards ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... spiritual and spectacular, and he brought to the big house an exotic atmosphere that was spicy with delights. The little boy prayed that this hero might be made again the man he once was; not because of any flaw that he could see in him—but only because the sufferer appeared somewhat less than perfect to himself. To Bernal's mind, indeed, nothing could have been superior to the noble melancholy with which Cousin Bill J. looked back upon his splendid past. There was a perfect dignity in ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... bring out and make visible his inner exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an older world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I would have fitness. Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without flaw in the crown.—We will talk no more about ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... proclaimed as a goldfield, 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 ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of brilliant, crystal clarity which he had dreamed of adding to the honors of the Stabilimento Magagnati—so strong that a single sheet might be framed in the great spaces of the windows of the palaces and show neither curve nor flaw—so pure that their only trace of color should come from a chance reflection which would but lend added charm—these might not be the discovery of his later days, though the time was near in which this gift must come to Venice. He had not dreamed that he could ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... pick out if you could. In short, Mr. Bentham writes as if he was allowed but a single sentence to express his whole view of a subject in, and as if, should he omit a single circumstance or step of the argument, it would be lost to the world for ever, like an estate by a flaw in the title-deeds. This is over-rating the importance of our own discoveries, and mistaking the nature and object of language altogether. Mr. Bentham has acquired this disability—it is not natural to him. His admirable little work On Usury, published forty ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... of propositions which require qualification. The Cambridge man's explanation, therefore, does not suit the meaning. I have always supposed that salis was added to denote a small grain. I find in Forcellini that the Romans called a small flaw in crystals sal. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... barred; we have found that this of necessity is lacking in force, it is statement where we look for demonstration. And so we must see for ourselves, the author must so arrange matters that Strether's thought will all be made intelligible by a direct view of its surface. The immediate flaw or ripple of the moment, and the next and the next, will then take up the tale, like the speakers in a dialogue which gradually unfolds the subject of the play. Below the surface, behind the outer aspect of his mind, we do not penetrate; this is drama, and in drama the spectator must judge by appearances. ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... iron that have been rolled only once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. The uniformity of texture and the toughness of the bars which have been thrice rolled are so great that they may be twisted, cold, into a knot without showing any signs of fracture. The bars of iron, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan, In the make of that wonderful creature, call'd man, No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same, Though like as was ever twin brother to brother, Possessing the one shall imply ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the difficulty. I could have taken out the gold back, as I said, with very little trouble, by simply cutting it. But the locket would never have been quite the same, though we put a new back; and, more than that, the pressure of the tool might flaw the enamel, or even crack the portrait, for the make of this thing is peculiar. Now first I submit the rim or verge, without touching the brilliants, mind you, to the action of a little preparation of my own—a gentle but penetrative solvent. You are welcome to watch me; ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... two surprising pieces of news to give you, Eliza. In the first place it has been discovered that there was a very serious flaw in the title to Fairclose, and that the sale to me was altogether illegal. Mr. Hartington has behaved most kindly and generously in the matter, but the result is he comes back to Fairclose ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... let his volumes tell: Who can with him the folio's limit swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographize or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and spade, alike without a flaw.—[D. erased.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I talk. A charming face, is it not? She has been finely educated at a fashionable convent. In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear. And now I must tell you the flaw, for there is one. Who is blameless? The daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she returned to live with her mother. It was there, in this environment-ahem! ahem!—that an accident happened to her. To be brief, she has a sweet little child that the father ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... on the road to the mountains. In the many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself, search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... single pupils, goes forward without hesitation, and threads the obstacles without contact. So well it directs its tortuous flight that, in spite of all the obstacles to be evaded, it arrives in a state of perfect freshness, its great wings intact, without the slightest flaw. The darkness is light ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... chancellor Hyde, afterwards made Earl of Clarendon. He had been in the beginning of the long parliament very high against the judges upon the account of the ship-money and became then a considerable man; he spake well, his style had no flaw in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he sometimes shewed more wit than discretion. ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... no fate — God's love Is law beneath each law, And law all laws above Fore'er, without a flaw. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... general who has completed his disposition without one discoverable flaw, who has foreseen all emergencies, and anticipated every possible combination, may await the action with a certain moral confidence of success. But he would be a man of no human fibre, were he not to feel ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... talk into the channels of this delicate subject. But he as sedulously confined it to trivial matter whenever she approached him in this mood, fencing himself about with a wall of cold reserve that was not lightly to be overthrown. In this his conscience was at work. Cynthia was the flaw in the satisfaction he might have drawn from the contemplation of the vengeance he was there to wreak. He beheld her so pure, so sweet and fresh, that he marvelled how she came to be the daughter of Gregory Ashburn. His heart smote him at the thought of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... served quite almost at once. This he fell upon. I may say that he has always a hearty manner of attacking his soup. Not infrequently he makes noises. He did so on this occasion. I mean to say, there was no finesse. I hovered near, anxious that the service should be without flaw. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... you have shown me this afternoon something which I did not believe existed—an absolutely perfect body without a fault or flaw anywhere. I did not believe there could be ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... who know how dear a fresh coat of paint is to a seaman's heart. She had just been thus decorated within and without, and was standing into a West-Indian port to show her fine feathers, when a sudden flaw of wind knocked her off, and over, dangerously close to a rocky point. The first order given was, "Stand clear of the paint-work!"—an instance of the ruling passion strong in extremis. He had another woesome account of a sloop-of-war in which he had gone through ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... to tell without strict inquiries. I doubt me if we could learn all before next May Day, when we might get hold of the man himself and find out who and what he is. Such wedlock as his cannot be without flaw, and might be made invalid by law; but, wife, there is no getting over this, that the child took her vows in the name of God, and I dare not act as though such vows were unspoken. Her youth and ignorance may plead in part for her. She scarce knew ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... conduct of Marcus Aurelius that neither the malignity of contemporaries nor the sprit of posthumous scandal has succeeded in discovering any flaw in the extreme integrity of his life and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory of great men rages, though less openly, in the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Edred felt himself carried away in spite of his inner consciousness that there was a flaw in the argument of the preacher. He was intensely interested by the whole scene. He could not help watching the faces of the group of which he made one, watching the play of emotion upon them as they followed with breathless attention their instructor's words, and drank in his fiery eloquence ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... be superfluous. However it may be, I get much pleasure in the companionship of this lovely creature, the single flaw in the fine fabric of your villainy. Do not fear her convincing me. She ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... sentiments that come with mellow age. He held his back straight and his head with an air—an air that was not a swagger but the sign-token of seasoned experience in the world. The most carping could have found no flaw in the quiet taste of his attire. To sum up, Kirkwood's very good friend—and his only one then in London—Mr. Brentwick looked and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... duties as a prince (of the kingdom). To be prepared for unforeseen dangers, Be cautious of what you say; Be reverentially careful of your outward behaviour; In all things be mild and correct. A flaw in a mace of white jade May be ground away; But for a flaw in speech Nothing can ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... might be childishly faulty, but the feeling of the speech was without a flaw, and from the heart Daisy would have accepted Mrs. Yorke as she was, and thought it no shame or embarrassment to escort her anywhere; but bonny Allie was a lady of high degree, with an eye for appearances and the proprieties, and Mrs. Yorke's antiquated and incongruous ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... keenly. There seemed little doubt that what he told was the truth. There was no flaw ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... at the last it was, indeed, but a careful toilet had preceded it. Now that she was about to see Karl again, after months of separation, he must find no flaw in her. She searched her mirror for the ravages of the past few days, and found them. Yet, appraising herself with cold eyes, she felt she was still beautiful. The shadows about her eyes did not ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... good-by for 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 ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... upstanding, bore himself easily, was clean in line and tough of frame. True, he was long of the leg, among a people who, having to climb and descend hills constantly, are, in the providence of fitness, short-legged, but he was all of a part. The kilt tests a man's figure, bringing out any flaw in it, and the Black Colonel's stood ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... the maestro's windows. 'Hark! it is her voice,' he said, and drew up his clenched fists with rage, as if pumping. 'Cold as ice! Not a flaw. She is a lantern with no light in it—crystal, if you like. Hark now at Irma, the stork-neck. Aie! what a long way it is from your throat to your head, Mademoiselle Irma! You were reared upon lemons. The split hair of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who ever heard of a music student making a regular business of learning the profession as would a doctor or a lawyer? Have not students contented themselves with two lessons a week since time immemorial? Need we go further to discover one of the flaws in our own educational system,—a flaw that is not due to the teacher or to the methods of instruction, but rather to our time-old custom. Two lessons a week are adequate for the student who does not aspire to become a professional, but altogether insufficient for the student who must accomplish a vast amount ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... came down upon the gale, and flew past, when it disappeared. I followed the white mass as it sailed down the wind; it did not, as it appeared to me, vanish in the darkness, but seemed to remain in sight to leeward, as if checked by a sudden flaw; yet none of our sails were taken aback. A thought flashed on me. I peered still more intensely into the night. I was now certain. "A sail, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... resolute Man was produced at last—without a flaw in him anywhere. They were both exhausted by the effort. Mr. Mool suggested ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... well—like very devils!" he exclaimed. "And yet—even now I see a flaw. Is Lang's threat merely a threat? Would he, after all, actually have the letter given to Adare? If these letters are his trump cards, why did he try to have him killed? Would not Adare's death rob him of his ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood |
