"Defect" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the holy state, to see how soon the flame of romantic love burns out, or rather is quenched in matrimony; and how deplorably the passionate, poetic lover declines into the phlegmatic, prosaic husband. I am inclined to attribute this very much to the defect just mentioned in the plays and novels, which form so important a branch of study of our young ladies; and which teach them how to be heroines, but leave them totally at a loss when they come to be wives. The play ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... it would have been an advantage for your son, whom you destine for the Navy, to have had relations in that service. But it is not too late to remedy this defect. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... do not admit that there are any defects in the Boston girl, but if there are defects, as is alleged by the writer above, and by other scientific persons, we do not see how giving less prominence to her intellectuality is going to do away with them. For instance, there is a defect in the girl whereby she has a shin on both sides of her lower limb, or an indentation where there should be the customary calf—we say calf advisedly, because it is a calf, and no person need be ashamed of it, even if it is terrible slim—we don't see how that defect can be ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... combined into a single force, to be called The Ulster Volunteer Force, which was to be raised and limited to a strength of 100,000 men, all of whom should be men who had signed the Covenant. When this organisation took place it became obvious that a serious defect was the want of a Commander-in-Chief of the whole force, to give it unity and cohesion. This defect was pressed on the attention of the leaders of the movement, who then began to look about for a suitable officer of rank and military experience to take command of the U.V.F. ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... over the other side, it disappeared altogether. Some stumps of the black cherry were found, and a solitary pair of snow-shoes was hanging high and dry on a branch, but no further trace of human hands could we see. While we were resting here a couple of hermit thrushes, one of them with some sad defect in his vocal powers which barred him from uttering more than a few notes of his song, gave voice to the solitude of the place. This was the second instance in which I have observed a song-bird ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... extreme jealousy of power," he said, "is the attendant of all popular revolutions, and has seldom been without its evils. It is to this source we are to trace many of the fatal mistakes which have so deeply endangered the common cause; particularly that defect—a want of power ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... no doubt the result of intuition, for "the poet is born, not made." He was not so much the poet of art as of instinct. Yet M. Charles de Mazede said of him: "Left to himself, without study, he carried art to perfection." His defect of literary education perhaps helped him, by leaving him to his own natural instincts. He himself said, with respect to the perusal of books: "I constantly read Lafontaine, Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Beranger." ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... fortunate both for our safety and the safety of the Constitution, that these politico-sentimental gentlemen represent only a certain theory of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself. Their leading defect is an incapacity to adjust their profound legal intellects to the altered circumstances of the country. Any child in political knowledge is competent to give them this important item of political information,—that by no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... pretended to say one was handsomer than the other. The more I examine them, the more clearly it appears to me each possesses, in a sovereign degree, the beauty of which both partake. Neither of them appears to have the least defect, to yield to the other the palm of superiority; but if there be any difference, the best way to determine it is, to awaken them one after the other, and to agree that the person who shall express most love for the other by ardour, eagerness, and passion, shall be deemed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... Although his contention that the race problem is interwoven with the economic problems of the country is presented as the reason for directing more attention to this problem, the author does not treat the race question from an economic point of view. This has been the defect of the historical works which Dr. DuBois has written. He is at best a popular essayist with a bit of poetic genius. In all of his discussions of the race problem his mind has not as yet been adequate to the task of scientific treatment of the question. The Suppression ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... their old habits, bent wholeheartedly to the only life they loved, and the prizes of a crowded haven and bursting granaries were the result. If a nation does not recover from such a blow, there must be some permanent defect in its economic life or some fatal flaw in its administrative system. The devastation caused by war merely accelerates the process of decay by creating a temporary impoverishment, which reveals the severity of the preceding ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... surprise—that he found it almost impossible to observe accurately, or to recall afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in what order the incidents had taken place. He never could understand what defect of vision on his part made it seem as though the cat had duplicated itself at first, and then increased indefinitely, so that there were at least a dozen of them darting silently about the floor, leaping softly on to chairs and tables, passing like shadows from the open door to ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... intellectual perception should shine far in advance of the heat of ethical invective, and an ounce of characterization is worth a ton of imprecations. Indeed, moral grit, relatively admirable as it is, partakes of the inherent defect of other and lower kinds of grit, inasmuch as its force is apt to be as unsympathetic as it is uncompromising, as ungracious as it is invincible. It drives rather than draws, cuffs rather than coaxes. Intolerant of human infirmity, it is likewise often intolerant of all forms ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... at 70,000. At Hamburg, where new waterworks had been installed with sand filtration, only a few sporadic cases occurred until the autumn, when a sudden but limited rush took place, which was traced to a defect in the masonry permitting unfiltered Elbe water to pass into the mains. In England cholera obtained a footing on the Humber at Grimsby, and to a lesser extent at Hull, and isolated attacks occurred in some 50 different localities. Excluding a few ship-borne cases ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Ponka,—and all other matters of like character. Power is tacitly committed to the leading chief, to be held so long as he governs to general satisfaction, subject, however, to the advice of the soldiers. Age, debility, or any other natural defect, or incapacity to act, advise, or command, would lead a chief to resign in ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... been worse," said he, as he survey'd the broken bauble: "it is a loss which can easily be repaired, and if in losing that, I have prevented more serious mischief, there is at least some consolation. Apropos, here is the very place for supplying the defect without loss of time. Dixon," {1} continued he, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... must content myself with not deserving, in this instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a country town, in a good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does not proceed from a conventual education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state of society into which they are directly plunged on coming ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... I understand your father now, and can sympathise with him at last. He held that even regicide might become a necessary weapon in the warfare of humanity, and though I knew that some of the greatest spirits had recourse to it, I always thought this belief the defect of your father's quality as a prophet and the limit of his vision. But now I see that the only difference between us was that his heart was bigger than mine, and that in those cruel crises where the people are helpless and can do nothing by constitutional means, revolution, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... anything to justify fear of him—he was more silent at home than elsewhere; but he was imperious, fastidious, and sarcastic with me by a look, a gesture, an inflection of his voice. My perception of any defect in myself was instantaneous with his discovery of it. I fell into the habit of guessing each day whether I was to offend or please him, and then into that of intending to please. An intangible, silent, magnetic feeling existed ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... career of some half-dozen years, established themselves as painters of noteworthy prominence. Their romanticism has always been free from exaggeration and from that morbidity of subject and treatment which is occasionally a defect in the work of young artists. They have kept their art wholesome and sincere, and they have cultivated judiciously those tendencies in it which justify most completely the development of the new Pre-Raphaelitism. They are, indeed, standing examples of the value of this movement, which seems destined ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... lamented by his parents and tutors, was in fact, in the best opinions, an advantage to him; for it often happens that apparent superiority does us damage, and that from apparent defect springs the saving ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sensible of the defect of my plan, or rather absence of plan. By attacking as I do, one by one, so many incoherent Sophisms, which clash, and then again often mingle with each other, I am conscious that I condemn myself to a disorderly and capricious struggle, and am exposed ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... defect in this pre-eminently honest way of regarding the matter was that it handicapped the junior partner when it came to forecasting his parent's probable movements. If you persist in basing your calculations on the assumption that a bird ought ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... is, that most men, the intelligent and virtuous as well as the ignorant and vicious, are intolerant of other individualities. They are uncharitable by defect of sympathy and defect of insight. Society, even the best, is apt to be made up of people who are engaged in the agreeable occupation of despising each other; for one association for mutual admiration there are twenty for mutual contempt; yet while conversation is thus ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... sovereign states. There was no pretence that it was an incorporation, that the people had laid down a constitution, an organic law. The people were never consulted, did not exist, had not for political purposes been invented. It was the great primal defect of their institutions, but the Netherlanders would have been centuries before their age had they been able to remedy that defect. Yet the Netherlanders would have been much behind even that age of bigotry had they admitted the possibility in a free commonwealth, of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... teeth, affirming that should they be found and gnawed by any animal, the child's new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth of the animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named old Master Simmons, who had a very large pig's tooth in his upper jaw, a personal defect that he always averred was caused by his mother, who threw away one of his cast teeth by accident into the hog's trough. A similar belief has led to practices intended, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace old teeth by new and better ones. Thus in many ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... politician, and to draw from the refined intrigues of state situations interesting to humanity. The relations which I bear to society are such as unfold to me more of the heart than of the cabinet; and, perhaps, this very political defect may have become a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as ever. Every Pope of course is to give origin or restoration to a great family by the means of large donations. The foreign revenues have long been gradually on the decline, and seem now in a manner dried up. To supply this defect, the resource of vexatious and impolitic jobbing at home, if anything, is rather increased than lessened. Various well-intended, but ill-understood practices, some of them existing, in their spirit at least, from the time of the old ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the market gardener must be on the stable-manure which he can obtain from the city or village. The chief defect of this manure is that it is not rich enough in available nitrogen. The active nitrogen exists principally in the urine, and this in our city stables is largely lost. A ton of fresh, unmixed horse-dung contains about 9 lbs. of nitrogen. A ton of horse-urine, ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... be insensible of the present outcry against the triviality and meanness both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect where it exists, is more dishonorable to the Writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From such ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... lodgings were very miserable and confined, I had only in my power to remedy the latter defect, by putting ourselves at watch and watch; so that one half always sat up, while the other half lay down on the boat's bottom, with nothing to cover us but the heavens."—A Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the Governor, now addressing me, "it would be improper for me to indicate what course I shall pursue in regard to it if it should come to me for my signature. Yet I may go so far as to say that the defect it seeks to remedy seems to me a real one. Come in and see me, Mr. Paret, when you are in town, and give my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... take the wayside hearer. There is no defect about his understanding. His head is as clear in matters of business as any man's. He understands what the preacher says when he is sowing the seeds of gospel truth as readily as any one in the congregation. Why then does ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... was the wish to abolish the cruelty which the use of ponies and dogs necessarily entails. "A small measure of success will be enough to show their possibilities, their ability to revolutionize polar transport. Seeing the machines at work to-day [leaving Cape Evans] and remembering that every defect so far shown is purely mechanical, it is impossible not to be convinced of their value. But the trifling mechanical defects and lack of experience show the risk of cutting out trials. A season of experiment with a small workshop at ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... data are to be found, on which Science may form just conclusions, we should not long remain in ignorance with respect to the natural history of this earth, a subject on which hitherto opinion only, and not evidence, has decided: For in no subject, perhaps, is there naturally less defect of evidence, although philosophers, led by prejudice, or misguided by false theory, may have neglected to employ that light by which they should have seen ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture, paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of asbestos ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... pointing out myself what many readers will consider the principal defect of the work. This book is written to favor no particular views, and in composing it I have entertained no designs of serving or attacking any party; I have undertaken not to see differently, but to look further than parties, and whilst they are busied for the morrow ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... had conveyed to the parish a lot for the use of the ministry, attached to the parsonage house. A question having arisen in consequence of a lost deed, or some other imagined defect in the Houlton title, whether the land originally belonged to him or to Nathaniel Ingersoll, the latter disposed of it at once by an instrument recorded in the Essex Registry, of which ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... investigations of the density of light near a caustic (on the theory of emissions). On Feb. 5th I finished a Paper about the defect in my eye, which was communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on Feb. 21st. Mr Peacock or Mr Whewell had some time previously applied to me to write a Paper on Trigonometry for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, and I had been collecting some materials (especially in regard to its history) ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth or honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness. In two or three small instances lately, I ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to be imperceptible. If the movement becomes perceptible, on the contrary, and multiplied by the number of times that the gesture is repeated, it ends by throwing the conductor behind in the time he is beating, and by giving to his conducting a tardiness that proves injurious. This defect, moreover, has the result of needlessly fatiguing the conductor, and of producing exaggerated evolutions, verging on the ridiculous, which attract the spectators' attention, and ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... worked over since it was rejected from the Royal Academy in '47, and now under promise of sale to White for L20. But I cannot help it. When I see a work going out of my hands, it is but natural, if I see some little defect, that I should try to mend it, and what follows is out of my power to direct: if I give one touch to a head, I give myself three days' work, and spoil it half-a-dozen ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... the description: and pag. 765, 766, of the historie of England.] made an abstract, but that the same is sufficientlie handled in the first booke and fourth chapter of the description of Britaine; whereto if the seuenth chapter of the same booke be also annexed, there is litle or no defect at all in that case wherof iustlie ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (1 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... Many of them originate in superstition; and altogether, in whatever the savage does, he sees but the immediate consequences of his acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and ulterior consequences— thus simply exaggerating a defect with which Bentham reproached civilized legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage obeys the prescriptions of the common law, however inconvenient they may be. He obeys them even more blindly than the civilized man obeys the prescriptions ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... short of stature—he was scarcely five feet two inches: but his youth made up for this defect, set off likewise by great nobleness in all his movements, and by considerable ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... family marks; facility (to judge by these imprudent marriages) being at once their quality and their defect; but in the case of Charles, a man of exceptional beauty and sweetness both of face and disposition, the family fault had quite grown to be a virtue, and we find him in consequence the drudge and milk-cow of his relatives. Born in 1766, Charles served at sea in his youth, and smelt ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one vital defect in the bread-and-water diet. While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a day were given to each prisoner. There was one good thing, ...
— The Road • Jack London
... curiously soothing; and he had a feeling for her which seemed to him ridiculous to entertain towards a shop-girl of nineteen: he respected her. And he admired her magnificent healthiness. She was a splendid animal, without defect; and physical perfection filled him always with admiring awe. She made ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... for love-making and a time for parenthood," he said. "Parenthood is a serious responsibility. That is where medicine comes in, surgery. If a child is not perfect there are emergency measures which can be taken to correct the defect." ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... not contain the necessary proportion of each. The frequent occurrence of unfavorable seasons in Europe, when the grapes did not ripen fully, and were sadly deficient in sugar, set intelligent men to thinking how this defect could be remedied; and a grape crop, which was almost worthless, from its want of sugar, and its excess of acids, could be made to yield at least a fair article, instead of the sour and unsaleable ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to pay for the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay the fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy of the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the proprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close bargains for the lands or else to eject ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... submit one thing more to the consideration of the visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and the omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of education pursued in all the academies I have ever visited. The error I mean is, that the students never draw exactly from the living models which they have before them. It is not indeed their intention, nor are they directed to do ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... splendid and noble and beautiful and mighty king that has come into the whole world. He is the mildest and gentlest and most perfect king that has come to it, even Conaire son of Eterscel. 'Tis he that is overking of all Erin. There is no defect in that man, whether in form or shape or vesture: whether in size or fitness or proportion, whether in eye or hair or brightness, whether in wisdom or skill or eloquence, whether in weapon or dress or appearance, whether in splendour or abundance or ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... Lamb, the latter stopped him at once by jangling his metaphysics into jokes. It was in conversation with Coleridge, begun at school and continued afterward at frequent meetings, that Lamb first ventured to try his own powers and was prompted to literary activity. But for a slight defect in his speech, he would probably have followed Coleridge to the University with the intention of going into the Church. A delightful clergyman he would have been, if he had duly undertaken the office, and one would have walked far to see him in the priestly robe, to hear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... duty, or rather one may say, the natural impulse of every rational and humane person, to seek that only such children may be born as will be able to go through life with a reasonable prospect that they will not be heavily handicapped by inborn defect or special liability to some incapacitating disease. What is called "positive" eugenics—the attempt, that is, to breed special qualities—may well be viewed with hesitation. But so-called "negative" eugenics—the effort to clear all inborn obstacles out of the path of the coming generation—demands ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... sing, and that, notwithstanding they have all the structural peculiarities of singing birds, and must, almost certainly, have come from ancestors who were singers? We have already mentioned the house sparrow, whose defect is the more mysterious on account of his belonging to so highly musical a family. But he was never accused of not being noisy enough, while we have one bird who, though he is classed with the oscines, passes his life in almost unbroken silence. Of course I refer to ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... necessary to suppose another power limiting its efficacy, if we do not find it necessary to suppose its own constitution and essence such as we term infinitely powerful. However, after noticing this manifest defect in the fundamental part of the argument, that which infers infinite power, let us for the present assume the position to be proved either by these or by any other reasons, and see if the structure raised upon it is such as can ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... ridiculous when they mean to be interesting, and silly when they try to be playful. If they would only leave off attitudinizing, one would be appeased. It may not be possible to acquire agreeable manners, any more than a pleasant voice; but it is possible to be quiet. But no suspicion of defect seems ever to have penetrated the bosoms of such girls. They act as if they thought attention was admiration. Levity they mistake for vivacity. Peevishness is elegance. Boldness is dignity. Rudeness is savoir faire Boisterousness is their vulgate ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... broken lines and redundant syllables are numerous, but under his hand they become things of beauty, and "the irregularity is the foundation of the larger and nobler rule." To quote the historian of English prosody—"These are quite deliberate indulgences in excess or defect, over or under a regular norm, which is so pervading and so thoroughly marked that it carries them off on its wings."(44) Heine in his unrhymed "Nordseebilder," has many irregular lines—irregularities suitable to the variety of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... a great slaughter. O Kesava, amongst the steeds, elephants and soldiers, in all the divisions of Duryodhana's army, it is seen, O slayer of Madhu, that while small is the food these take, ample is the excreta they evacuate. The wise have said that this is an indication of defect. The elephants and steeds of the Pandavas, O Krishna, all seem to be cheerful, while all the animals wheel along their right. This also is an indication of their success. The same animal, O Kesava, pass by the left side of Duryodhana's army, while incorporeal voices are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... we owe most valuable translations of some of Fichte's works; to be followed, I trust, by more. And though, as a humble disciple of Bacon, I cannot but think that the method both of Kant and Fichte possesses somewhat of the same inherent defect as the method of the Neoplatonist school, yet I should be most unfair did I not express my deep obligations to them, and advise all those to study them carefully, who wish to gain a clear conception either of the old Alexandrian schools, or of those intellectual movements ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... gothic paper, in green, but over each window was a chasm in the upper border; and as this border supplied the arches, the unity of the entire design was broken in no less than four places, that being the precise number of the windows. The defect soon attracted the eye of Eve, and she was not slow in ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... combatants, Greece and Egypt, and to check each party where it was the aggressor. If the prime object of the government in the eastern question was the maintenance of order, these proposals were excellent. The one capital defect of the whole scheme was that it ignored the Russian desire for war, which rendered it impossible for the tsar to postpone the settlement of his own grievances until an arrangement should be come to on the Greek question; on the other hand, by isolating the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... mended skin bags for water, made shoes, white-washed houses, worked in the gardens, and made himself generally useful. He had some property, and his garden, the heritage of his ancestors, was one of the finest in the country. He was honest, but his defect was want of moral courage. The turjeman had lived a good while in Tunis, with some French, where he learned his Italian, and a few French words. He always said, "When I lived with the Christians, I drank wine like them." Some of the people, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... existence of God, but neither does he posit eternal motion as Aristotle does. And the result is that he has no valid proof that this unmoved mover is a pure spirit not in any way related to body. This defect was made good by Maimonides. Let us frankly adopt tentatively, he says, the Aristotelian idea of the eternity of the world, i. e., the eternity of matter and motion. We can then prove the existence of an unmoved mover who is pure spirit, for none but a pure spirit can have an infinite ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... praise, but to my mind it is saying everything, for I have known but few great men, especially of those I met in early life, when I wished to lavish my admiration upon them, whom I have not the impression of having left in my debt. Then, a defect of the Puritan quality, which I have found in many New-Englanders, is that, wittingly or unwittingly, they propose themselves to you as an example, or if not quite this, that they surround themselves with a subtle ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... but they are said not to last above two days. Where life is somewhat improved, they are now made of leather tanned with oak bark, as in other places, or with the bark of birch, or roots of tormentil, a substance recommended in defect of bark, about forty years ago, to the Irish tanners, by one to whom the parliament of that kingdom voted a reward. The leather of Sky is not completely penetrated by vegetable matter, and therefore cannot ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... the gigantic as a vulgar straining after effect. Witness St. Paul before Agrippa, and St. Paul at Athens; Alexander the Great, or the Archangel Michael. Nowhere throughout the whole world is the opposite defect carried to a more intolerable excess than amongst the low (but we regret to add—and in all but the very highest) of London artists. Many things, which the wretched Von Raumer said of English art, were abominable ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Others expand their souls with knowledge, only to find that content will not dwell in the great house they have built. To number the varieties of human endeavour to escape discomfort would be to enumerate all the modes of such life as does not know how to live. All seek the thing whose defect appears the cause of their misery, and is but the variable occasion of it, the cause of the shape it takes, not of the misery itself; for, when one apparent cause is removed, another at once succeeds. ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... whereas in the astronomical Telescope a stop or diaphragm can be inserted in the tube so as to cut off what is called the ragged edge of the field of view (which includes all the part not reached by full pencils of light from the object-glass), there is no means of remedying the corresponding defect in the Galilean Telescope. It would be a very annoying defect in a telescope intended for astronomical observation, since in general the edge of the field of view is not perceptible at night. The unpleasant nature of the defect may be seen by looking through an opera-glass, ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... quality, not a defect, of all photoplays that human beings tend to become dolls and mechanisms, and dolls and mechanisms tend to become human. But the haughty, who scorn the moving pictures, cannot rid themselves of the feeling that they are being ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... though comprehensive and exact, labours under the defect of most systems—it is too topical. It includes every thing; but it includes every thing alike. It is rather like an inventory, than a valuation of different arguments. Every possible suggestion finds a place, so that the mind is distracted ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... them devoid of vegetation. There was little of geological interest; gneiss and syenite predominated, with extremely large crystals of hornblende in the latter rock, that would have afforded handsome slabs had not the prevailing defect throughout Cyprus rendered all blocks imperfect through innumerable cracks and fissures. A peculiar greenish and greasy-looking rock resembling soapstone was occasionally met with in veins, and upon close examination I ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... of mingled pathos and humor could be written for a lame heroine. One excellent writer has offered to do it, and Hamlin Garland could do it excellently. Balzac in his marvellous book, "The Alkahest," declares that she is blest among women, who, having some great bodily defect, nevertheless wins a man's affections, for she never loses her hold on them, and it might very easily be the same with a lame actress and the affections of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... could not have written. For the one characteristic lacking to his genius was measure, and prose without measure, as numerous examples have shown, is usually rubbish. Even his dramas show a singular defect in the architectural quality of literary genius. The vast and formless creations of the writer's boundless fancy completely master him; his aspirations after the immense too frequently leave him content ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has produced numbers of ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Englishman thinks little of nature; as he himself says of Dante, 'He leaves to others the earth, the ocean, and the sky; his business is with man.' Indeed, the absence of a true and universal sympathy is the one vast defect of Macaulay. No position is so high that it may not be overshadowed by the giant form of his violent partisanship, no character so small that it may not be raised to the semblance of greatness by the mere force of his political preferences. His ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... due out presently it would be rather a good job. But if it involved my coming back to England for any length of time I wouldn't take it. I am perfectly satisfied with my present work, but still would very much like to become a real combatant. Against the defect of short sight I can put the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... as had always been available to the Californians. Sutter himself was a rather short, thick-set man, exquisitely neat, of military bearing, carrying himself with what is called the true old-fashioned courtesy. He was a man of great generosity and of high spirit. His defect was an excess of ambition which in the end o'erleaped itself. There is no doubt that his first expectation was to found an independent state within the borders of California. His loyalty to the Americans was, however, never questioned, and the fact that his lands were gradually ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... of insanity. The large number of would-be recruits for the army who have to be rejected because they are physically unfit; and the shameful condition of the children of the poor. More than one-third of the children of the working classes in London have some sort of mental or physical defect; defects in development; defects of eyesight; abnormal nervousness; rickets, and mental dullness. The difference in height and weight and general condition of the children in poor schools and the children of the so-called better classes, constitutes a crime that calls aloud ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... mathematics and physics. At Gratz he saw and operated a Gramme machine for the first time, and was so struck with the objections to the use of commutators and brushes that he made up his mind there and then to remedy that defect in dynamo-electric machines. In the second year of his course he abandoned the intention of becoming a teacher and took up the engineering curriculum. After three years of absence he returned home, sadly, to see his father die; ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... probably continue; and would diminish the intensity of the power in the same proportion as it promoted its extension. This monarchy would be absolute only by the personal presence of the monarch; elsewhere, from mere defect of organization, it would and must betray the total imperfections of an elementary state, and of a first experiment. More by the weakness inherent in such a constitution, than by its own strength, did the Persian spear prevail against the Assyrian. Two centuries revolved, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... precious stones was around him; two golden net-work sandals with golden buckles upon his feet; two spears with golden sockets and many red bronze rivets in his hand; while he stood in the full glow of beauty, without defect or blemish. You would think it was a shower of pearls that was set in his mouth, his lips were rubies, his symmetrical body was as white as snow, his cheek was ruddy as the berry of the mountain-ash, his eyes were like the sloe, his ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... particularly good-looking; and when he walked about with his betrothed, it was half a matter of surprise that he should have ventured to propose to a young lady of such heroic proportions. Miss Leary had the gray eyes and auburn hair which I have always assigned to the famous statue. The one defect in her face, in spite of an expression of great candor and sweetness, was a certain lack of animation. What it was besides her beauty that attracted Locksley I never discovered: perhaps, since his attachment was so short-lived, it was her beauty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and not the least defect of the English comedies is their offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve. Decency is not merely violated ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... disposition, and it had only to be applied elsewhere to produce the like results. With evident satisfaction Lord Elgin sets himself, in an official despatch, to refute this reasoning. After observing that the natives showed rather an exaggeration than a defect of the desire to live peaceably ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... one had set the church on fire. The sexton had lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter's working, but had not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in the furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... called love. She was wondering how it was that she saw Luke's faults and the thousand ways in which he was inferior to his brother, and yet that with all these to stay him up Fitz did not compare with Luke. After all, there must have been some small defect in the education which she had received, for instead of thinking these futile things she ought to have been attempting to discover—as was her mother at that moment—which of the two brothers seemed more likely to ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... all things rest,' nor e'er had ceased from rest Then when his task was heaviest. Two brief years He roamed on foot his spiritual realm: The simple still he taught: the sad he cheered: Where'er he went he founded churches still, And convents; yea, and, effort costlier far, Spared not to scan defect with vigilant eye: That eye the boldest called not 'vision-dazed'; That Saint he found no 'dreamer:' sloth or greed 'Scaped not his vengeance: scandals hid he not, But dragged them into day, and ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... notions of spirits, good and bad, and are alarmed by dreams, particularly, the slaves, some of whom cannot retain their urine in the night, as he thinks, from fear of 49 spirits, they take them often upon trial when they buy them, and if they have this defect, a considerable deduction is made in the price. A man possessed by a good spirit is supposed to be safe amidst 10,000 shot. A man guilty of a crime, who in the opinion of the judge is possessed by an evil spirit, is not punished! He never heard of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... 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 a most disagreeable style, and a great want of the highest faculties of what we would call a classical ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in the long trapeze. Not only must the thin wire ropes of this be strong enough to hold Joe's weight, but an added pressure, caused by the momentum of his jump. And not only must the cables be strong, but there must be no defect in the wooden bar and in the place where the upper ends of the ropes were fastened to ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... lack an absolute sense of rhythm—a great defect. Yet where latent it may be developed. Here Kreutzer is invaluable, since he presents every form of rhythmic problem, scales in various rhythms and bowings. Kreutzer's 'Exercise No. 2,' for example, may be studied with any number of bowings. To produce ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... Gut of Gibraltar, we made for Malta; which place seems to have such a magnetic attraction for our men-of-war, both homeward and outward bound, that none by any chance ever gives it the go-by, there being always some little defect to 'make good,' or despatches to wait for, or letters to post, or something that obliges them to cast anchor in Valetta harbour, if they are only allowed to ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... way you take it," laughed Dick. "Yes, George, your horse has no defect. You can always lead the charge on him ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 1,500 feet above the sea, and the plant was treated after the fashion of Madeira and Carniola (S. Austria). The latadas, or trellises, varied in height, some being so low that the peasant had to creep under them. All, however, had the same defect: the fruit got the shade and the leaves the sun, unless trimmed away by the cultivator, who was unwilling to remove these lungs in too great quantities. The French style, the pruned plant supported by a stake, was used only for the old and worn-out, and none dreamt of the galvanised ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... much dryness in it as to mark a shade of annoyance, as well as to give to what was said the character of rebuke, "Mademoiselle does not spare me: I am not vain enough to fancy that it is my merits which attract her attention; it must then be some defect. Dare I ask—what?" ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... remain two or three black sheep—licensing bodies which simply trade upon their privilege, and sell the cheapest wares they can for shame's sake supply to the bidder. Another defect in the existing system, even where the examination has been so greatly improved as to be good of its kind, is that there are certain licensing bodies which give a qualification for an acquaintance with either medicine or surgery ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... for this insinuation is that very advance in mildness and mellowness which has been noted—that comparative absence of the sharper and cruder strokes of the earlier work. But since the wit is as bright as ever, though less hard, it seems unreasonable to impute as a defect what, but for very obvious reasons, would be admitted ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... dark and long, and curled up at the ends; and her cheek, with its changing, come-and-go coloring; her mouth, with its upper lip creased deeply in the middle—so deeply that a bit more would have been a defect—and with an odd little dimple at one corner; luckily, it was on the side toward him, so that he might look at it all he wanted to for once; for it was always there, only growing deeper and wickeder when she spoke or laughed. He could not see her eyes, for they were ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect, in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her made up for it. He was a good hater—that was well; but it was a question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... brief time of tranquillity and satisfaction I cannot help but sigh for its passing. Preceded and followed by periods of turbulence and stress, it stands out in my life as an incredible moment, a soothing dream. Perhaps a faint defect, so small as to be almost unnoticed, was a feeling of solitariness—an inevitable concomitant of my position—but this was so slight that I could not even define it as loneliness and like many another defect it merely heightened the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore |
