"Hair's-breadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happens to us is the will of God, and what more can we wish? Do not be frightened into saying anything but what is strictly true. If they threaten you, or if they hold out promises, do not depart a hair's-breadth from the truth. Keep your conscience free from offence, for a clear conscience is a soft pillow. Perhaps they will separate us, and I shall no longer be with you to console; but if this should happen cling more closely to your heavenly Father. He is a powerful protector to innocence, ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... no mercy upon me hereafter if ever I should depart from it one hair's-breadth," Ughtred answered, with a sudden note of passion surging up in his tone. "I have no fancy for ruling a tributary state, sir. My forefathers have held safely for Theos through long generations the priceless gift of her liberty, and ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... have been written under what seemed to be the shadow of approaching death. Indeed, at one time I had no hope that I could live to complete my task. No man who writes thus, on the verge of another world, would willingly swerve by so much as a hair's-breadth from what he believes to be the truth. But human nature and human limitations remain the same from the beginning to the end of life, and I am fully conscious of the fact that the soundness of my judgments upon affairs and ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Nationalist Ireland to a man devotedly espoused. The question Mr O'Brien had to ask himself was what was his duty to Ireland and to the oppressed peasantry of the West. It could not affect the Boer cause by a hair's-breadth who was to be future member for South Mayo, but it meant everything to Irish interests whether the United Irish League was to make headway and to gain a grip on the imagination and sympathies of the people. And, influenced by the only consideration which could be ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... have also been achieved testifying to its unsurpassed excellence. Holden's and Schaeberle's views of planetary nebulae, Burnham's and Hussey's hair's-breadth star-splitting operations, Keeler's measurements of nebular radial motion, Barnard's detections and prolonged pursuit of faint comets, his discovery of Jupiter's tiny moon, Campbell's spectroscopic determinations—all this could ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Grahame of Montrose has enough knowledge of the polite arts of war to know the difference between a spy in his camp in a false uniform and a scout taking all the risks of the road by wearing his own colours. In the one case he would hang us offhand, in the other there's a hair's-breadth of chance that he might ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... seem singular how the life of a sailor—a life so full of vicissitude and enterprise, of hair's-breadth escapes, of contact with wild men and wild usages, and of intercourse with a form of nature so vast, so fluctuating, so mysterious, and so terribly sublime as the ocean, which, in its calm and silence, forms an emblem of all that is peaceful and ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... in absurd situations and under comically trying circumstances is quite funny enough for him; and if he exaggerates a little and goes beyond the absolute prose of life in the direction of caricature, he never deviates a hair's-breadth from the groove human nature has laid down. There is exaggeration, but no distortion. The most wildly funny people are low comedians of the highest order, whose fun is never forced and never fails; they found themselves on fact, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... down because I could not speak to tell what was to be done with it, when we didn't know that that book had really been the saving of my life. That hair's-breadth deviation of the bullet made all ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an hour moving my feet—a hair's-breadth at a time—till they were so that I could sleep in comfort; and I was awakened several times during the night by angry snarls from the Dog—I suppose because I dared to move a toe without his approval, though once I believe he did it ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... having secured, by a compromise, the nomination of Mr. Hayes. Apart from the fact that Mr. Hayes was not elected, but obtained the position which he holds through, we will say, "the accident of an accident," his possession of the Presidency has not advanced the cause of Reform by a hair's-breadth. We do not need to discuss his appointments or his views or his consistency: it is sufficient to say that he has had neither the power nor the opportunity to institute Reform, and that no President, while other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... suspicion, if not the mere desire to procrastinate, that had turned the scale in Trevethick's mind, and imposed this task upon him. The genuineness of the check had been almost taken for granted—entire success had been missed, as it were, by a hair's-breadth. And now he was as far from it as ever. Had he been but a little more earnest, or a little more careless in his own manner, all might have been well. The obstacle that intervened between him and ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... once more. Teresa noiselessly drew back the bolt; and, opening the baize door by a mere hair's-breadth, admitted sound from the sitting-room. She now heard him turning the key in a chiffonier, which only contained tradesmen's circulars, receipted ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... me afterwards. Part of the hair was gone from one side of my head, dashed off by the foot of the brother's horse, that had just thus narrowly missed dashing out my few brains. That is all, gentlemen. The dream-prophecy was fulfilled within that hair's-breadth (excuse the bad pun), by a succession of circumstances that were not arranged by human motion and could not have been expected from anything in the past; and until some one can explain or reason away the coincidence, I shall not give ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... explain to you what the others,—crew and passengers alike—know by the light of common sense: that until God's mercy delivers us my least word is the Ten Commandments rolled into one, we being where a hand's turn is either a hair's-breadth or broad as the Pacific. . . . Now cast off, and set your behaviour by No. 1 boat, where Mr. Ingpen has come up to wind and is waiting for us. . . . A cable's length on the port, and level with us—that's the order, and you'll watch it until I give the next. You have lost us twenty minutes. Happen ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after escaping danger after danger by a hair's-breadth, the great weariness of the almost interminable journey was coming to an end, for, far away in the distance, there was a building visible through the clear air. He could see a broad stretch of green, too, looking delightful with waving trees, after the ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... offered reward of hell, and involves no greatness; to be made greater than one's self, is the divine reward, and involves a real greatness. A man might be set above all his fellows, to be but so much less than he was before; a man cannot be raised a hair's-breadth above himself, without rising nearer to God. The reward itself, then, is righteousness; and the man who was righteous for the sake of such reward, knowing what it was, would be righteous for the sake of righteousness,—which yet, however, would not be perfection. But I must distinguish ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... defect, in the shape of a flaw, in the very heart of the stone. Even with this last serious draw-back, however, the lowest of the various estimates given was twenty thousand pounds. Conceive my father's astonishment! He had been within a hair's-breadth of refusing to act as executor, and of allowing this magnificent jewel to be lost to the family. The interest he took in the matter now, induced him to open the sealed instructions which had been deposited ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... once bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... totally different aspect from that of sensations. They would be real independent objects: and (what is the important part of the demonstration) they would acquire this status without overstepping by a hair's-breadth the primary limits of the sphere. Were such phraseology allowable, we should say that the sphere has understepped itself, and in doing so, has left its former contents high and dry, and stamped with all the marks which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the church compromise one hair's-breadth with sin. Better that she should err in excessive stringency. But I would have her gain a new vantage ground by being simply true, and not proclaiming unmixed evil, where evil and good are blended ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... were thus in no way calculated to hamper his actions, owing to his happy capacity for colouring his actions in conformity with them. When he set an end before himself, no influence could make him waver a hair's-breadth in his pursuit of it, and he spared neither friend nor foe in the attainment of it. As a statesman he did not lay down far-seeing designs. But he had the art of maintaining popularity, and a shrewd eye for a good servant. Thus as a rule he gave Wolsey ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... really have seen Medea; I might see her again; speak to her. The mere thought sets my blood in a whirl, not with horror, but with... I know not what to call it. The feeling terrifies me, but it is delicious. Idiot! There is some little coil of my brain, the twentieth of a hair's-breadth out of order—that's all! ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... spoken when La Robe Noire leaped into the air like a wounded rabbit. An arrow whizzed past my face and glanced within a hair's-breadth of the Indian's head. Both men were dumb with amazement. Such treachery would have been surprising among the barbarous tribes of the Athabasca. The Sault was the dividing line between Canada and the Wilderness, between ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at the fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot brought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was the quicker, Richard's life would have ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to the solid rock had quivered and resounded under the blow, but its vibrations were nothing more than those of the rigid metal; the base was unshaken and, except for an instant, the column had not been deflected a hair's-breadth. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... furious lunge at the "old man" and missed him by a hair's-breadth when he felt two great hairy arms encircle him from behind and the hot breath of one of his horrible opponents whistling savagely in his ear. He tried to lunge backwards at the creature, but toppled over ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... begin with; decidedly well-looking, all say, and of graceful presence, though hardly five feet seven, and perhaps stouter of limb than the strict Belvedere standard. [Height, it appears, was five feet five inches (Rhenish), which in English measure is five feet seven or a hair's-breadth less. Preuss, twice over, by a mistake unusual with him, gives "five feet two inches three lines" as the correct cipher (which it is of NAPOLEON'S measure in FRENCH feet); then settles on the above dimensions from unexceptionable authority (Preuss, Buch fur Jedermann, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... be? Don't I know Jack Mellon these twenty years! He would lie like a log in a calm for ten months together, without moving a hair's-breadth, if ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... length. What was the result? Even with this mighty line the stars are found to be so distant that many do not move at all, not even when measured with the finest instruments, and others move, it may be, the breadth of a hair at a distance of several feet! But even this delicate measure, a hair's-breadth, tells its own tale; it lays down a limit of twenty-five billion miles within which ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... conscious of is, not that he is there, but that the nerves of your hand have undergone a change. All you hear and see and touch and taste and smell are mere variations of your own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's-breadth, you cannot go. That anything answering to your impression exists outside of yourself is not a fact, but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... Whizz came a flint, apparently out of the air, and missed Mr. Marvel's shoulder by a hair's-breadth. Mr. Marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a complicated path, hang for a moment, and then fling at his feet with almost invisible rapidity. He was too amazed to dodge. Whizz it came, and ricochetted from a bare toe into ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... captain jerked round in his chair, escaping a gash by a hair's-breadth, and addressed ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
