"Shortcoming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idol of the army. Nor was his reputation confined to the Confederate ranks. "I think even our men," says a Federal officer, "had a kind of admiration for him, as he sat unmoved upon his horse, and let them pepper away at him as if he enjoyed it." His one shortcoming was his ignorance of drill and discipline. But in the spring of 1862 these deficiencies were in a fair way of being rectified. He had already learned something of tactics. In command of a few hundred mounted riflemen and a section ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... while they sound. The tone of the pianoforte, being produced by a blow, begins to die the moment it is created. The history of the instrument's mechanism, and also of its technical manipulation, is the history of an effort to reduce this shortcoming to a minimum. It has always conditioned the character of the music composed for the instrument, and if we were not in danger of being led into too wide an excursion, it would be profitable to trace the parallelism which is disclosed by the mechanical evolution of the instrument, and the technical ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dumbly—as an animal will still love the man or woman who ill-treats it. She never uttered a word of complaint or blame. Her greatest hope was that the advent of the child would induce from him something of the consideration and tenderness that he had never given her. She believed it was some fault, some shortcoming, of hers that had kept it from her. It didn't occur to her that it might be the beauty of ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... ourselves, and our own interests, into the centre and criterion of all things. Hence arises our notion of evil. If the universe be what this philosophy has described it, the perfection which it assigns to God is extended to everything, and evil is of course impossible; there is no shortcoming either in nature or in man; each person and each thing is exactly what it has the power to be, and nothing more. But men imagining that all things exist on their account, and perceiving their own interests, bodily and spiritual, capable of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... have but one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly a quality, the defect of impeccability. It is at any rate impeccable; to seek in it a blemish, or, within its own limitations, a distinct shortcoming, is to lose one's pains. As workmanship, and workmanship of the subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure is perceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarely enthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visibly and beautifully ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... to pay every stage to Uyofu, and then the heavy work will begin; for all these men, although they assume the dignity of chief to themselves, are mere officers, who have to pay tribute to Suwarora, and he would be angry if they were shortcoming." ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hand, if in following these lines we can contrive to adhere faithfully to the worldwide laws of all true art, who knows but our very gardening may tend to correct more than one shortcoming or excess ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... Art is, how far it will carry us,—not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary shortcoming of the means. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... replied the other. "And d'ye know, this makes me think of that Injun that got lost, and was found, half starved, by some white men; but he was too proud to admit his little shortcoming; so when they asked him if he hadn't kinder managed to get twisted in his bearings, he slaps his breast with his hand, take a pose like this, and says he: 'Injun not lost; wigwam lost; Injun here!' And we're like that Injun, Giraffe; oh! no, we're not lost one little bit, because we know ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the sound of her horse's footsteps died away on the road; and then, sinking on her knees beside her rocking-chair, she poured forth her whole heart in prayers and tears. She confessed many a fault and shortcoming that none knew but herself, and most earnestly besought help that "her little rushlight might shine bright." Prayer was to little Ellen what it is to all that know it—the satisfying of doubt, the soothing of care, the quieting of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... as they, or even more so, being convinced of her own shortcoming in not having won the affection or confidence that would have made all open between them. She could not understand why Hubert Delrio should not have been made ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... process going on within it, getting it absorbed even with its own dying!). Let us come as fast as we can to letting the seed-vessel go as well as the leaves, God wants to bring us to a life of childlike simplicity, taken up with His Christ; always lower and lower at His feet in the consciousness of shortcoming and unworthiness as His Glory shines, but with our spiritual selves and all their intricacies fading out of sight before Him. As we go on, we learn to draw the supply of every need for spirit and soul and body from the simplest, ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... ending with e or other letters not good to sing. Some exceptionally beautiful poems possess this shortcoming, and, again, words that prove insurmountable obstacles. I have in mind one by Aldrich in which the word 'nostrils' occurs in the very first verse, and one cannot do anything with it. Much of the finest poetry—for instance, the wonderful writings ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... "store-clothes," and some even with "boiled" if not laundered shirts. One felt disappointed, almost defrauded. It was not what was expected, what we believed we had a right to expect, after so much waggoning and tracking and drenching, and river turmoil and trouble. This woeful shortcoming from bygone days attended other aspects of the scene. Instead of fiery oratory and pipes of peace—the stone calumets of old—the vigorous arguments, the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence, here was a gathering ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... problems contingent upon space flight it is doubtful if any are more perplexing than the biological ones. In fact, it now appears quite likely that the limiting factor on manned space exploration will be less the nature of physical laws or the shortcoming of space vehicle systems than the vulnerability of the ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... conventional, between man and society, between moral possibility and formal civilization,—to give growth, with all its immortal issues, a place, and means, and opportunity,—this was Goethe's aim; and if the execution be less than perfect, as I admit, it yet suggests the whole; and if the shortcoming be due in part to his personal imperfections, which doubtless may be affirmed, it yet does not mar the sincerity of his effort. His hand trembles, his aim is not nicely sure, but it is an aim at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... zealously applied myself to the writings of Anaxagoras, I found that he adduces only external causes, such as atmosphere, ether, water, and the like." It is evident that the defect which Socrates complains of respecting Anaxagoras' doctrine does not concern the principle itself, but the shortcoming of the propounder in applying it to nature in the concrete. Nature is not deduced from that principle; the latter remains, in fact, a mere abstraction, inasmuch as the former is not comprehended and exhibited as a development of it—an organization produced by and from Reason. I wish, at the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... A shortcoming in many houses is the lack of a newspaper, and the thoughtful hostess who has the morning paper sent up with each breakfast tray, or has one put at each place on the breakfast table, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... inadmissible. Let me see no more of it whilst we are in the city. Further, your orders are that in addressing Christian prisoners, the manners and tone of your men must express abhorrence and contempt. Any shortcoming in this respect will be regarded as a breach of discipline.(He ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... along with Lord Newton, whose special qualifications for the Committee, if he had any, were unknown to the public. Finally Lord Ribblesdale, the argute son of a Scotch mother, was thrown in to make up for any shortcoming in intellectual subtlety that might arise in the case of his younger colleagues; and this completed the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... superfluous. Perhaps they will serve to give a true idea of the magnitude of the undertaking, and of the great responsibility which weighed upon me, and thus prove an anticipatory excuse for any accusation of shortcoming or dilatoriness that may be preferred against me. I will not, however, enter further into the business-details of the expedition—merely observing that, among other things to which I had to attend during my stay in Mourzuk, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... smoking, chatting, and laughing. Alessandro walked up and down between the kitchen and the shed. He could hear the sounds of rattling dishes, jingling spoons, frying, pouring water. Savory smells began to be wafted out. Evidently old Marda meant to atone for the shortcoming of the noon. Juan Can, in his bed, also heard and smelled what was going on. "May the fiends get me," he growled, "if that wasteful old hussy isn't getting up a feast for those beasts of Indians! There's mutton and onions, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... with a sense of shortcoming that I offer the reader this volume on a great subject, but should it succeed in stimulating interest in Breton story, and in directing students to a field in which their research is certain to be richly rewarded, I shall ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... purpose of our creation, we call to mind our lamentable and tragical fall from that blessed station we were constitute into. "All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God," Rom. iii. 23. His being in the world was for that glory, and he is come short of that glory. O strange shortcoming! Short of all that he was ordained for! What is he now meet for? For what purpose is that chief of the works of God now! The salt, if it lose its saltness, is meet for nothing, for wherewithal shall it be seasoned? Mark ix. 50. Even so, when man is rendered ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sorrowful denunciations of the sins of the Church recall the thought of Dante, the thought of Petrarch—which is also the thought of all the great saints, seers, and loyal Catholics, to whom through the Christian ages the shortcoming of their spiritual mother has meant grief beyond words. The lovely conception of Holy Church as a garden, borrowed though it be from Holy Writ, she has made peculiarly her own by constant repetition. We recognize in it the womanly imagination ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... "You give yourself away, old sport! Don't you, now!" The mirrored head shook in disparaging admission of its own shortcoming. Jenny bent nearer, meeting the eyes with a clear stare. There were wretched lines about her mouth. For the first time in her life she had a horrified fear of growing older. It was as though, when she shut her eyes, she saw herself as ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... by a quotation which showed a certain haziness of memory concerning the marriage and baptismal services: "No, little boy, if this conduct continues, I shall think that you neither love, honor, nor obey me!" However, the culprit was much impressed with a sense of shortcoming as to the obligations he had undertaken; so the result was as satisfactory as if the quotation had been from the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the same time, our critics somewhat too easily forgot that material must make ready the foundation for ideal triumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries. But it must be allowed that democracy stood for a great deal in our shortcoming. The Edinburgh Review never would have thought of asking, "Who reads a Russian book?" and England was satisfied with iron from Sweden without being impertinently inquisitive after her painters and statuaries. Was it that they expected too much from the mere miracle ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... and hardly a "story," it is nevertheless done with sober and conscientious craftsmanship, very much like Bunin and very unlike the usual idea we have of Pilniak. The only thing Pilniak was incapable of taking from his model was Bunin's wonderfully rich and full Russian, a shortcoming which is least likely ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the composition of his satire, he formed a plan of travelling; but there was a great shortcoming between the intention and the performance. He first thought of Persia; he afterwards resolved to sail for India; and had so far matured this project, as to write for information to the Arabic professor ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... served in the best way. Failure on such points would have so much surprised him that he would scarcely have known what steps to take. But Jervis, his butler, knew what was best as well as Mr. Tatham did, and was quite as little disposed to put up with any shortcoming. I say I am not sorry for him that he was not married—up to this time. But, as a matter of fact, the time does come when one becomes sorry for the well-to-do, highly respectable, refined, and agreeable ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... your father remembers nothing of it, and if there was a single human being who shed a tear in Barchester for that woman, I believe it was your father. And it was the same with mine. It came to that at last, that I could not bear to speak to him of any shortcoming as to one of his own clergymen. I might as well have pricked him with a penknife. And yet they say men become heartless and unfeeling as they ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... cannot bear this thought of the direct acting throughout nature of the infinite Creator. It brings us too close beneath His gaze in our sinful shortcoming and nakedness. ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... be conceded that the general notion upon which liability to an action is founded is fault or blameworthiness in some sense, the question arises, whether it is so in the sense of personal moral shortcoming, as would practically result from Austin's teaching. The language of Rede, J., which has been quoted from the Year Book, gives a sufficient answer. "In trespass the intent" (we may say more broadly, the defendant's state of mind) "cannot be construed." Suppose that a defendant ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... that the bet was distasteful to Posthumus; it is not so offenceful to him as it should have been according to our modern temper; but this shortcoming, an unconscious shortcoming, is the only fault which Shakespeare will allow in his hero. In the first scene of the first act Posthumus is praised as men never praise the absent without a personal motive; the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... bidding." Asked the nurse, "Why, then, O my lord, didst thou conceal the secret of thy rank and lineage and passedst thyself off for a foreigner and a wayfarer? Alas for our disgrace before thee by reason of our shortcoming in rendering thee thy due! What shall be our excuse with thee, and thou of the sons of the kings?" But he rejoined, "By Allah, thou hast not fallen short! Indeed, 'tis incumbent on me to requite thee, what while I live, though from thee I be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... reveals himself to be a better scholar, well-read in the classics, than a practical cook, well-versed in kitchen practice. Frequently, for instance, he confounds liquamen with garum, the age-old shortcoming of ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... centered on a pool of cool water, very pleasant in the hothouse climate of Singhalut. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely young servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack, and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called the Barangipan, he made the acquaintance of a girl-musician named Soek ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... but very conservative in their ideas. Outwardly polite, they are not unfrequently coarse in conversation. If the Canadian evinces respect, it is expected that he will be treated with respect in consideration therefor. His chief shortcoming is excessive sociability. When once settled among friends and relatives he cannot leave them—absence from home does in truth only make the heart grow fonder of home associations. He is active, compactly made, but generally below ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... movements in the adjoining room. She wove her needle into the seam, a practise so habitual that probably she would have done the same if the lamp had exploded unexpectedly, and crossing to the kitchen door, opened it without warning. A small untidy woman, the shortcoming of her appearance partly concealed by the old plaid shawl that enveloped her person, dodged away from the key-hole with a celerity ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... desk of a growing factory. Each had technical knowledge enough to run a plant three times the size. But all failed. The first was an autocrat, who tried to boss from a pedestal, and the men didn't like him. The next was a politician, whom the men liked thoroughly—which was his shortcoming, for he tried to run the place as they thought it should be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere at once. He didn't fail, really—he snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working tension ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... stock, and most families not more than a few days; yet no one ever entertains the slightest apprehension of a failure in the supply, or even of a variation in the price from day to day in consequence of any possible shortcoming. That this should be so, would be one of the most surprising things in the history of modern London, but that it is sufficiently accounted for by the magnificent system of roads, canals, and railways, which connect it with the remotest corners ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... few months. His English became blurred with regard to grammar; the local speech was good enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, as ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... below my window and dimly wonder if I should get out at all on the morrow. If not, I proposed to return to Montreal at once. I should gain nothing by being confined in the house at Bonneroy. Delle Josephine appeared with eggs and tea—green tea, alas for that village shortcoming— there was no black tea to be found in it, and I looked narrowly at her as she set it down, wondering if anything was amiss with her. But she seemed all right again and I conjectured that I had simply interrupted ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Alan picked up increasing skill at the game, but failed to win. He saw his shortcoming, but could not do anything to help it: he was unable to extrapolate ahead. Hawkes was gifted with the knack of being able to extend probable patterns two or three moves into the future; Alan could only work with the given, and so he never made the swift series ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... wrote to Luther: "Daily we change much in the Apology. I have eliminated the article On Vows, since it was too brief, and substituted a fuller explanation. Now I am also treating of the Power of the Keys. I would like to have you read the articles of faith. If you find no shortcoming in them, we shall manage to treat the remainder. For one must always make some changes in them and adapt oneself to conditions. Subinde enim mutandi sunt atque ad occasiones accommodandi." (C. R. 2, 60; Luther, 16, 689.) Improvements suggested by Regius and Brenz ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... of the list of offenses for which extradition may be claimed and granted is most desirable between this country and Great Britain. The territory of neither should become a secure harbor for the evil doers of the other through any avoidable shortcoming in this regard. A new treaty on this subject between the two powers has been recently negotiated and will soon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... every seventh day, and let him alone on week-days. If the fanatics who are preoccupied day in and day out with their salvation were healthy, virtuous, and wise, the Laodiceanism of the ordinary man might be regarded as a deplorable shortcoming; but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism. What people call goodness has to be kept in check just as carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... "new Vasari" the standard of Giorgione's genuine work. Finding here sufficient to explain his influence, and the true seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the Holy Family in the Louvre, in consideration of certain points where it comes short of this standard. Such shortcoming, however, will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred personages, with some wind- ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... men. He was a fanatic, let it be admitted, but a fanatic who suffered and labored for his cause. He was stigmatized as a demagogue, and many of the attributes of the demagogue adhered to him. But he was not a demagogue, for he sought nothing for himself... His great shortcoming was singleness of vision. He fixed his eyes upon one height and was unable ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... further in the leadership crisis that developed in black units early in the war. The logic of segregated units demanded a black officer corps, but there were never enough black officers to command all the black units. In 1942 only 0.35 percent of the Negroes in the Army were officers, a shortcoming that could not be explained by poor education alone.[2-48] But when the number of black officers did begin to increase, obstacles to their employment appeared: some white commanders, assuming that Negroes did not possess leadership ability and that black troops preferred white (p. ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... of quantity or degree.] Inequality. — N. inequality; disparity, imparity; odds; difference &c. 15; unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. unequal, uneven, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... marked eighteenth-century idiosyncrasy; in the second some; and it was by no means absent from Byron though hardly present at all in most respects as regards Shelley and Keats. Certainly in none of the groups, and only in one or two individuals, is there much if any shortcoming as concerns letter-writing. Wordsworth indeed makes no figure as a letter-writer, and nobody who has appreciated his other work would expect him to do so. The first requisite of the letter-writer is "freedom"—in ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... them. This was the germ of the later 'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a diploma of respectability not easily vitiated by individual conduct. No disreputable persons had ever yet set up their unholy Lares and Penates in one of those new slack-baked villas; and that person must have been very bold who, conscious of moral unfitness or pecuniary shortcoming, should have ventured to pitch his tent ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... conviction that they were displeased: their displeasure, awful as she believed it to be, did not terrify her, but it vexed her to the inmost heart: she feared that they had not been rightly propitiated, and resolved that the shortcoming ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... same time, she has shown more and more anxiety to win laurels as a dramatic singer. But here the vocal style which she has exclusively cultivated has proved an insuperable obstacle. Although free from the smaller vices of the Italian school, she could not overcome the great and fatal shortcoming of that school—the maltreatment of the poetic text. She could not find the proper accents required in operas where the words of the text are as important as the melody itself; and she has failed therefore to give satisfaction even in such works ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... is not everything; the singing of mere sounds, however lovely, is but a tickling of the ear. The shortcoming of the Italian school of singing, as of composition, has been too exclusive devotion to sensuous beauty of tone as an end in itself. The singer must never forget that his mission is to vitalize text with tone. The songs of Schubert, Schumann, ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... repaired, with all the haste possible, to the breakfast room, where her consciousness of shortcoming was in nowise lessened when she saw who occupied the seat at her father's ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... like him to write that. It spoke in his whimsical fashion the attitude of humility, the ready acknowledgment of shortcoming, which was his chief characteristic and made him lovable—in his personality and in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... dispirited to a degree; and to that genial temper, which once he could count on against every reverse that befell him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led him to attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault or shortcoming of others. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... This funny shortcoming about him was known; this trait of his was ridiculed good-naturedly and unceremoniously, but willingly forgiven for the sake of that independent comradely obligingness and faithfulness to his word, given to a man (oaths to women did not count), of which he was so naturally possessed. However, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... who give. Thus, God is superior to all because he is the supreme giver, and the offerings of man fall short by an infinite distance of being a full return for the gifts of God; but gratitude in some degree makes up for this deficiency and shortcoming. I therefore, grateful for the favour that has been extended to me here, and unable to make a return in the same measure, restricted as I am by the narrow limits of my power, offer what I can and what I have to offer ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... are running in and out of each other's houses, so that her mother might as well have no daughter at all." I do beg that none of you will bring this discredit on school life, for the system gets blamed when it is really your individual shortcoming which is in fault; you ought to be big enough to hold both school and home interests! But, setting aside this form of term-time selfishness, which we shall all agree to condemn, there remains another form of it, which is a duty. You must put lessons first, or you will ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... the death of Adam. He then sent His Word, and raised him up and said to him, "Fulfil your offering, for indeed, Adam, it is worth much, and there is no shortcoming ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... have still to learn that "it is not cricket" to report only the speeches of their political friends and to omit or compress into a few lines the speeches of their adversaries. A glaring instance of this shortcoming was afforded by the Bengalee. The Nationalist organ published Mr. Bupendra Nath Bose's speech on the partition of Bengal in extenso, as he had intended to deliver it, without taking the slightest notice of the fact ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... four romances—of which, though written last of all, this is the third, chronologically speaking—the author is very conscious of error and shortcoming. But the theme was surely worth attempting; and if the failure to convince be only partial then is the writer grateful to the Fates, and well content to leave it to the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... of lyrics. For the past thirteen years he has been busiest with dramas, in none of which has he more than approximated to a dramatic quality that is as great as the quality of his lyrics. He has owned himself one reason of such shortcoming, in the notes to "Deirdre."[2] "The principal difficulty with the form of dramatic literature I have adopted is that, unlike the loose Elizabethan form, it continually forces one by its rigour of logic away from one's capacities, experiences, and desires, until, if one have not patience ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But, naturally, to become ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... In the shortcoming of the English mind in judging of this book, its great alienation from the philosophy of Art is revealed. This book is not comprehended as a work of Art, claiming as such due proportions and relative significance of parts; otherwise many individuals would at least have been moved to a more sparing ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... to find pride in the achievements of our friends and camp comrades. Our mistake was in selecting for our standard bearer one whose temperament disqualified him for the particular mission which he undertook. No shortcoming of cowardice is his, at all events, and I blame myself that I did not suggest one of you ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... scheme and course of The Massacre at Paris. Whatever in King Edward III. is mediocre or worse is evidently such as it is through no passionate or slovenly precipitation of handiwork, but through pure incompetence to do better. The blame of the failure, the shame of the shortcoming, cannot be laid to the account of any momentary excess or default in emotion, of passing exhaustion or excitement, of intermittent impulse and reaction; it is an indication of lifelong and irremediable impotence. And it is further to be noted that by far ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... various success, and often was vanquished. You will not judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do not altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,—and everybody respects the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,—so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane's shortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of the case. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain and indignation, Lola never made a question ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... are told, Salvini himself has gained his knowledge of the part),—putting ourselves in this mental attitude, the performance may safely be said to defy criticism, or rather to be above it, except such criticism as accords with enthusiastic admiration. It is absolutely without a shortcoming, seen from this standpoint. His majestic bearing, his beautiful elocution, his pure voice, his graceful, expressive gestures, and above all his perfect freedom from affectation or self-consciousness, delight us throughout; and when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... you, Mrs. Upton, with the deepest pain," he said, "that I agree with Miss Imogen. I must inform you, Mrs. Upton, that you have no right, legal or moral, to bind us by your own shortcoming. Miss Imogen and I may do our duty without your help ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... every sort of bitterness. But I cannot believe that it has any power over remorse. It is better that mother should think some person guilty of Victor's death, than that she should connect it with a weakness of her son or a shortcoming of her own." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... to leave the theater while he was singing. But the former did it for the salvation and the latter for the corruption of souls. Fray Salvi rarely resorted to blows, but was accustomed to punish every shortcoming of his subordinates with fines. In this respect he was very different from Padre Damaso, who had been accustomed to settle everything with his fists or a cane, administering such chastisement with the greatest good-will. For this, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... moment, and in these days it was very far from being well with Paul Armstrong. Yet the jaundiced fit served its turn, and even whilst its anguish burned and nauseated, he began to ask one wholesome question: 'For whose shortcoming, for whose wrong-doing, for whose virtues turned vicious, and whose vices tuned to airs of virtue, do I thus suffer?' The answer was at first confused and loud. Annette's name was noisy in it Claudia's sounded there. So did Gertrude's. And ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... life was wretched. He was not stupid, as his master asserted; for indeed in other matters he was bright and clever, and his father had been well pleased with the progress he made with his studies; but, in the first place; he hated his work, and, in the second, every shortcoming and mistake was magnified and made the most of by the foreman, Andrew Carson. This man had long looked to be taken into partnership, and finally to succeed his master, seeing that the latter had ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... neatness of her appearance. Mellicent was often untidy, and even Esther had moments of dishevelment, but Peggy was a dainty little person, whose hair was always smooth, whose dress well brushed and natty. Her artistic sense was too keen to allow of any shortcoming in this respect; but she seemed blessed with a capacity of acting before she thought, which had many disastrous consequences. She was by no means a robust girl, and Mrs Asplin fussed over her little ailments like an old mother-hen with a delicate nursling. One prescription after another was unearthed ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... way of resistance to the law. There have even been found here among us those who have signed agreements to disobey such as are set over us, unmindful of the order to render to Caesar that which is his. Let there be among Friends neither fear nor any shortcoming. Let us bear testimony against evil-doers, whether they be of us or not. Let us cut down and utterly cast forth those who depart from righteousness. Are they not of the scum which riseth on the boiling pot? There is a time for Friends to remonstrate, and a time to act. I fear lest these too gentle ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... in the young man's mind. His consciousness seemed to be full of rebellion, longing and amazement. Never in his life had he been refused anything he greatly desired, when he had justice on his side. Now he was rejected, not for a shortcoming, but, according to his religious lights, for a virtue instead. His gaze searched the visible portion of the other chamber and found Rachel. In the half-light he saw that she had cast herself down against the sarcophagus, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... may be It brings no peace, but care;" they create more thirst and render increase more defective and insufficient. And here it is requisite to know that defective things may fail in such a way that on the surface they appear complete, but, under pretext of perfection, the shortcoming is concealed. But they may have those defects so entirely revealed that the imperfection is seen openly on the surface. And those things which do not reveal their defects in the first place are the most dangerous, since very often it is not possible to be ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... that he was the originator of many of China's greatest reform measures, is equally true; but that he lacked the power to execute what he conceived, and the ability to select great statesmen to assist him, seems to have been his chief shortcoming. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... confident that all of the high officials in the bank, from the president down to the seventh assistant cashier, had noticed his tremendous shortcoming, and that they were even now whispering among themselves that he ought to be discharged forthwith. He could feel people glaring at him from behind; he could feel the president's eyes, and the four vice-presidents' ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... there had been all these rejoicings and tribulations at the great doings on the Rhine and the shortcoming in Friesland, the real operations of the war had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two. The specialists have advanced surgery immensely, but, with many honorable exceptions, they have laid too much stress on their several specialties, making too wide a range of ailments fall within them. As for the community at large, their shortcoming lies in the fact that most of them would seek for a specialist in mumps in case that painful but transitory infliction were to come upon them, and in their underrating of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... live so near to the fin de siecle; nor was he ashamed to own that for years it had been his pet ambition to write for the "London Charivari." Unhappily, its realisation came too late to permit him to do justice to his talent and his humour; and he himself was only too conscious of his sad shortcoming, or, rather, of his failing powers. Only eight papers had come from his hand when it closed in death. In September the first of his papers was published—"Personal Recollections;" the last in November—"A Visit to the British Museum;" they are garrulous and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... conviction, however, for Samuel Rowlands showed him up in Martin Mark-All. Yet another instance of wholesale "conveyance" is mentioned in the Note to "Canting Rhymes" (ante). In spite of this shortcoming, however, and a certain recklessness of workmanship, the scholar of to- day owes Dekker a world of thanks: his information concerning the social life of his time is such as can be obtained nowhere else, and it is, therefore, now ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... be affected by prejudice, and by the limitations of each witness's powers of observation and opportunities of ascertaining the truth. But after all deductions for prejudice, mistake, inaccuracy and every other shortcoming, there is left a strong, an invincible consensus of testimony, honest, independent and full of undesigned corroborations, to the development of the mind of all races in the lower culture along the lines here indicated. Nay, more; the numerous remains of archaic institutions, as well as of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... pianist Mdlle. de Belleville. Indeed, we shall see in the sequel that unless an artist possessed these qualities Chopin had but little sympathy to bestow upon him. He was, however, not slow to discover in these distinguished lady artists a shortcoming in a direction where he himself was exceedingly strong—namely, in subtlety and intensity of feeling. Chopin's opinion of Mdlle. Sontag coincides on the whole with those of other contemporaries; nevertheless, his account contributes some details ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... floor to wall, and were lost as gray cold dawn began to light the window. Phoebe had less to reproach herself with than any one of Mr. Fulmort's children, save the poor innocent, Maria; but many a shortcoming, many a moment of impatience or discontent, many a silent impulse of blame, were grieved over, and every kindness she had received shot through her heart with mournful gladness and warmth, filling her with yearning for another embrace, another word, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was on too different a plane of thought, feeling, and interest from the life of the uncultured, undeveloped, childish, old woman. Yet no one who saw them together would have detected any trace of this shortcoming in Mercy's feeling towards her mother. She had in her nature a fine and lofty fibre of loyalty which could never condescend even to parley with a thought derogatory to its object; was lifted above all consciousness of the possibility of any ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the best of us, much sense of failure and shortcoming when we look back on our lives. But whilst some of us will have to say, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' it is possible for each of us to lay himself down in peace and sleep, awaiting a glorious rising again and a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of this conversion means many things. It means first and foremost an understanding of human nature; a realization that the great shortcoming of industry has been that it held, as organized, too little opportunity for a normal outlet to the normal and more or less pressing interests and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... equipped with religious institutions and organizations. Grave complaints are on record, which indicate that the great number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of instruction in the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... has the same shortcoming as the others. While accounting for the capture, it does not explain the resistance of the women. In real capture they had real reasons for kicking, biting, and howling, but why should they continue these antics in cases of sham capture? ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... One shortcoming of such methods of arming an aeroplane will be observed. Ahead firing only is possible; the weapon cannot be trained astern, while similarly the line of fire on either broadside is severely limited. This is one reason why the machine-gun armament of aerial craft of the heavier-than-air ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... not been so successfully met as when Abraham and Isaac were fitted into the narrow niche on the Campanile; but the affectionate attitude of these boys and their sincerity make one overlook a slight technical shortcoming. The two heads in close proximity give a certain sense of atmosphere between them, not easily rendered when one of them had to be ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... attached to both these explanations (viz. 'That is the immortal, the fearless; that is Brahman') shows, at the same time, the individual soul to be free from sin, and the like. After that Prajapati, having discovered a shortcoming in the condition of deep sleep (in consequence of the expostulation of Indra, 'In that way he does not know himself that he is I, nor does he know these beings,' VIII, 11, 2), enters on a further explanation ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... day, I would recommend rather that the gentlemen be beguiled into doing the talking themselves, if any shortcoming in the menu is to be concealed from them, for then their ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... and then what must he do but begin to regulate me! After a minute calculation he made the astounding discovery that I had lost a minute and a quarter in four hours, and that in order to compensate for this shortcoming it would be necessary for him to move my regulator forward the two hundred and fortieth part of an inch. This feat he set himself to accomplish with the point of his scarf-pin while the train was jolting forward at the rate of thirty miles ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... been said "that, to combine the ceremonial shortcoming of the eunuch with the imperfect faith of the Samaritan, is to arrive at the admission of the Gentiles[56]." Preparation had been made in both these instances for the carrying out of the Divine scheme by means of St. ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... and Phebe were in the welfare of Felix and Hilda. But they could never quite reconcile themselves to this marriage. They had quitted England with no intention of dwelling here again, but they felt that Phebe's shortcoming in her attachment to them made their old country less attractive to them. She had severed the last link that bound them to it. Possibly, in the course of years, they might visit their old home; but it would never seem ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... necessarily follow, that, because a man is a great painter, he is also a great artist. Yet we may safely infer, that, if he has been true in one department of the several which constitute art, he cannot have been false in others. Should there be a shortcoming, it must be that of a man whose mission does not include that wherein he fails. Fidelity to himself is all we should demand. We say this for those who are disposed to depreciate what an artist actually accomplishes, because in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... competent moralist than there is to suppose that I am a competent mathematician. But truly it does not matter whether he is a moralist or not. Let nobody dream for a moment that what is wrong with the Censorship is the shortcoming of the gentleman who happens at any moment to be acting as Censor. Replace him to-morrow by an Academy of Letters and an Academy of Dramatic Poetry, and the new and enlarged filter will still exclude original and epoch-making work, whilst passing conventional, old-fashioned, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... driving well. But the road was against him. He had not sufficient experience to be able to keep his foot steady upon the accelerator when a high speed and a rude surface conspired to dislodge it—a shortcoming which caused us all three much discomfort and lost a lot of mileage. Then, again, I dared not let him drive too close to the side of the road. Right at the edge the surface was well preserved, and I knew that Jonah's off wheels would make good use of it. Such finesse, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... But if Emerson thought from the glance he gave my verses that I had better not lavish myself upon that kind of thing, unless there was a great deal more of me than I could have made apparent in our meeting, no doubt he was right. I was only too painfully aware of my shortcoming, but I felt that it was shorter-coming than it need have been. I had somehow not prospered in my visit to Emerson as I had with Hawthorne, and I came away wondering in what sort I had gone wrong. I was not a forth-putting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... armed Never affiliate with inferiors; always climb Not Mark Twain's habit to strive for humor Nothing that glitters is gold Out of the window, and I carried the sash along with me. Perfect air of not knowing it to be humorous Ready acknowledgment of shortcoming Seeing them in print was a joy Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character Sick were made well, and the well made better Swayed by every passing emotion and influence Twain did not remember ever having seen or heard ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... issued eighteen spotted stones daily, ordering a day's work each,—then the six extra stones would be forged or false money; and the effect of this forgery would be the depreciation of the value of the whole coinage by one-third, that being the period of shortcoming which would, on the average, necessarily ensue in the execution of each order. Much occasional work may be done in a state or society, by help of an issue of false money (or false promises) by way of stimulants; and the fruit of this ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... nakedness, leaves small chance for self-unconsciousness. Edith could not help examining her mental attitude toward her companions, and it was perhaps a proof of the sweetness of her nature that she found in her thought nothing of that shortcoming in them, or reason for lack of fervor in friendship other than such as must come ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... pushing through the crowd. He stood before me and thrust out his hand. "Hello!" he said. I thought his "Hello!" might be French quite as easily as American, so I merely returned his handshake. He grinned, and then said in perfectly good "American": "You forget me, huh?" I admitted my shortcoming in memory; but his beard was very thick and stubby and his uniform was very dirty. I complimented his linguistic ability. He waved his arms, saying: "Huh, didn't I live eight years in little old New York?" Then he came still nearer, saying: "You don't remember me, and I ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... distinctively raised above the brutal sense; intellect, as we have said, peculiarly separating and vast; the moral sentiments like in essence, but boundlessly expanded, as attached to an infinite object, and laboring in an infinite field: each part mortal in its shortcoming, immortal in the accomplishment of its perfection and purpose; the opposition which we at first broadly expressed as between body and spirit, being more strictly between the natural and spiritual condition of the entire creature—body natural, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... The shortcoming is not in the artists, but in Art. Painting shares the same fate as Sculpture: not only is the soul not a thing, it is not wholly an appearance, but combines with its appearing a constant protest against the finality of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... chances to succeed in life, but lost them all. The first cause of his failure was lack of perseverance. He tired of the sameness and routine of his occupation. His second shortcoming was too great liberality, too much confidence in others. Third, economy was not in his dictionary. Fourth, "I had too much hope, even in the greatest extremities." Fifth, "I believed too much in friends and friendships. I couldn't read human nature, and did not make allowance enough ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... growing sense of shortcoming in his farming operations. Notwithstanding his many acres, he felt himself growing "land-poor," as country people phrase it. He was not a reader, and looked with undisguised suspicion on book-farming. As for the agricultural journals, he said ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... stammering, revealed three-tenths of one per cent. with an organic defect—that is, a defect in the organs themselves. In other words, only three persons out of every thousand afflicted with defective utterance were found to have any physical shortcoming that was ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, they were violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate and accurate,—except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of the impotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, in the capital of the country, the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... jailor brought was eaten with such a relish as hunger only can impart. I was fortunate in respect to quantity, for my companion was not well, and could not eat much; but I atoned for his shortcoming by eating both ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... is done in a corner; everything is openly discussed and investigated. Every week the visiting committee go round the house, and enter every ward and store-room. They taste and test the provisions, and the least shortcoming is certain to be severely brought home to those who are fulfilling the contracts. They pass through the dormitories, and see that everything is clean; woe betide those responsible if a spot of dirt be visible! There is the further check ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... away from the city, towards which she knew her cousin would go in pursuit of his own business. And indeed the hour was now close at hand in which he should be sitting as a director at the Shadrach Fire Assurance Office. If not at the Shadrach by two, or, with all possible allowance for the shortcoming of a generally punctual director, by a quarter past two, he would be too late for his guinea; and now, as he looked at his watch, it wanted only ten minutes to two. He was very particular about these guineas, and the chambers of the Shadrach ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... The low, beetle-browed cabin that faced them in the wilderness carried in its rude completeness a hint of the prestidigitateur's art—a world of desolation, and behold a log cabin with smoke issuing from the chimney and curtains at the windows! The interior was unplastered, but this shortcoming was surmounted by tacking cheesecloth neatly over the logs, a device at once simple and strategic, as in the lamplight the effect was that of plaster. Miss Carmichael, suddenly released from the actual rumbling of the stage, felt its confused motion the more strongly in imagination, and hardly knew ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses—yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... also. We must descend with Christ, if we would ascend to sit at His side. We must submit to the laying of our pride in the very dust. We must accept humiliations and mortifications, the humblings of perpetual failure and shortcoming, the friction and fret of infirmity and pain; and when we have come to an end of ourselves, we shall begin to know Christ in a new and deeper fashion. He will pass by and say, "Live!" The spirit of His life will ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the lens-maker's art can not, perhaps, be commanded at will, yet, they are turned out with increasing frequency, and the best artists are generally able, at all times, to approximate so closely to perfection that any shortcoming may be disregarded. ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... unfinished palate flattered the second-rate cook. He knew nothing of vintages; it sufficed him to distinguish between Bordeaux and Burgundy; yet one saw him raise his glass and peer at the liquor with eye of connoisseur. All unaffectedly; for he was conscious of his shortcoming in the art of delicate living, and never vaunted his satisfactions. He had known the pasture of poverty, and the table as it is set by London landladies; to look back on these things was to congratulate himself that nowadays ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... finest if not among the greatest of English poets if he had but had the sense of form—the instinct of composition. Whether it was modesty, indolence, indifference, or incompetence, some drawback or shortcoming there was which so far impaired the quality of his strong and delicate genius that it is impossible for his most ardent and cordial admirer to say or think of his very best work that it really does him justice—that it adequately represents the fulness ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... what is good in them, but test in a critical spirit whatever you take, so as to be sure that you take only what is wisest and best for yourselves. More important even than avoiding any mere educational shortcoming is the avoidance of moral shortcoming. Students are already being sent to Europe to prepare themselves to return as professors. Such preparation is now essential, for it is of prime importance that the University should be familiar with what ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... She laughs and talks, but she never says anything that people have not said a hundred times before. Oh, I am so tired of it all! I grow more cross and disagreeable every day,' finished Jill, who was very frank on the subject of her shortcoming. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... first to admit their sisters to equal citizenship with themselves, and she brilliantly proved her fitness for her right by her wonderful ability on the hustings, which had been free from any vocal shortcoming and unacquainted with hesitation in replying to the knottiest question ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the best to repair this omission on my part, and offer my warmest expressions of gratitude to Captain Sedgewick and Miss Nowell for their goodness to me? Pray apologise for me also to Mr. and Mrs. Lister for my inability to make my adieux in a more formal manner than this, a shortcoming which I hope to atone for on some future visit. Tell Lister I shall be very pleased to see him if he will look me up at the Pnyx when he ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the filbert develop during the summer, lie dormant through the winter, and shed their pollen very early in the spring. Should the temperature fall as low as -35 deg.F, the catkins winterkill. To overcome this shortcoming, I bend down and peg to the ground, in the late fall, a few slim shoots with dormant catkins, so that the snow, or some other mulching material supplied when there is insufficient snow, will cover and protect ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... been living in Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of every German shortcoming. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... corn-plants from the seed which the Greeks typified by the descent of Proserpine into Hades for a season of the year and her triumphant re-emergence to the upper air. Meanwhile he fasts and atones for any sin or shortcoming of his which may possibly have offended the goddess and cause her to hold her hand. From the beginning of Asarh (June) the Oraons cease to shave, abstain from eating turmeric, and make no leaf-plates for their food, but eat it straight ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... previously happened to my father; and if they are good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors of to-day. Of the specific points of change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the whole matter; whose ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religious people. "Repent ye, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." There is a terrible intensity and immediate imperativeness about this call. But to all there comes at one time or another an urgent sense of spiritual shortcoming and the desire to lead a better life. The lamenting of sins becomes the least part; what is important is the immense new impetus toward a better life. The records of religious conversion are full of instances where men by this ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... which any one who begins giving public lectures meets at the very outset is the fact that the audience won't come to hear him. This happens invariably and constantly, and not through any fault or shortcoming of ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... there is an underlying cause in extenuation for this temperamental shortcoming which in justice to the ostensibly weaker sex should be set forth here. Even though I am taking on the role of Devil's Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... had been lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from beyond the Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy. Savonarola's chief shortcoming as a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened the old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers.[1] Had he taught the Italians to work out their self-regeneration from within, instead of preparing them to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a far more lasting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... singular combination of qualities, apparently the most opposite, may be partly anticipated, but not quite. It results occasionally in a certain shortcoming as regards verite vraie, absolute artistic truth to nature. Those who would range Balzac in point of such artistic veracity on a level with poetical and universal realists like Shakespeare and Dante, or prosaic and particular realists like Thackeray and Fielding, ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as in any position which would lack the tribute ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... increases with every new progress in duty. The field of light expands to a new length and breadth every time the plough passes through it. And, knowing well to whom he writes on this subject, Rutherford goes on to say that there is a sorrow for sin, and for shortcoming in service, that is as acceptable with God in the evangelical covenant as would be the very service itself. But, then, it must be what Rutherford calls 'honest sorrow after a sincere aim.' And let ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... physical shortcoming, from her mother's occasional headaches to the mortally afflicted Mr. Hazzard with the great chronic sore crisscrossed with court plaster at the end of one of his eyes, amounted in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... it should hardly be imputed to John as a fault or a shortcoming that he did not for a long time realize his father's failing powers. True, as has been stated, he had noted some changes in appearance on his return, but they were not great enough to be startling, and, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... indignation that came into them. In truth, he began distinctly to resent this state of affairs in the life of John and Mary Richling. An ill-defined anger beat about in his brain in search of some tangible shortcoming of theirs upon which to thrust the blame of their helplessness. "Criminal helplessness," he called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea—or the idea tried to define itself—that they had somehow ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... that Gissing will ever succeed in impressing himself. There is an absence of transcendental quality about his work, a failure in humour, a remoteness from actual life, a deficiency in awe and mystery, a shortcoming in emotional power, finally, a lack of the dramatic faculty, not indeed indispensable to a novelist, but almost indispensable as an ingredient in great novels of this particular genre.[1] In temperament and vitality he is ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... course, just at the last hour as it might be Bob's father had put the vital question to him, asking squarely if he could vouch for it that he had mailed that important letter; and poor Bob had to confess his shortcoming. Then Mr. Jeffries, with a return of his old- time sternness, had told the offender that in punishment he should not be allowed to participate in the great Thanksgiving morning game ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... isn't he handsome?—handcuffed, and on the way to the penitentiary! And I'm only an ordinary mother! The fisherwomen were now groaning and weeping all around the square, not forgetting, meanwhile, to study the Virgin's costume for any improvement or shortcoming as ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the time a few hours. It is nearly sundown, and the slant beams are coming in through the partly-raised blinds, and falling on the bed, where, white, and panting for the shortcoming breath, lies Mary Carson, a little raised by pillows against which her head rests motionless. Her eyes are shut, the brown lashes lying in two deep fringes on her cheeks. Away from her temples and forehead the hair has been smoothly brushed by loving ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... above; godliness grows as far downwards in self-emptying, self-denial, and self-abasing, in hungering and thirsting after more of righteousness, in the secret engagements of the heart to God in Christ, in these burstings of heart and bleeding of soul, to which God alone is witness, because of shortcoming in holiness, because of a body of death within, and because of that law in the members warring against the law of the mind, and bringing often into captivity to the law of sin, as it grows upward in a profession. And this is that pure religion ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... of course it is only one. A very large number of causes are unquestionably at work to the same end, and the result can be adequately changed only if it is analyzed into as many of its component parts as possible, and each one of these dealt with separately. The writers have emphasized the shortcoming of women's colleges, because it is easily demonstrated and, they believe, relatively easily mitigated. But the record of men's colleges ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... it unctuously, almost reconciled to his own shortcoming, because it was the first time, as far as he knew, that a Belwether might legitimately enjoy the pleasures of holding the word of a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... in the confusion of the capture, turning with their own hands against the enemy a cannon that had just been taken. Barlow was as cool as when he fired off the old cannon in Cambridge ten years before. This stroke proved futile, but from no shortcoming of Barlow's. A few weeks later at Cold Harbor he effected a lodgment within the Confederate works when all others failed. That too proved futile, but his reputation was confirmed as one of the most brilliant ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... in and closed the door, saying nothing. A touch of panic rippled through her. He was so silent, so unbending, so impersonal. Was this a reflection of her inability to communicate with him? Could their relationship fail because of this shortcoming on her part? What good was love if you couldn't communicate it ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman |
